Summary Of Pope Urban's Response To Alexius Comnenus

In order to successfully establish authority for the papacy and himself Pope Urban’s response to Alexius Comnenus prioritised in creating unity amongst the Christians in the west. According to Robert the monk in his account of Urban’s speech at Claremont he notes how Urban pleas with the Christians “let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber” . Urban was referencing the on-going conflict between the Christians in the West and therefore it is clear that he is using his response to reduce the conflict. Accounts from eye witnesses such as Fulcher of Charters, Baldric of Dol and Guiber of Nognet help in identifying Urban’s intention to unify the Christians to take up arms. Urban’s main motive was to use

Pope Urban had succeeded in shifting the anger of Christians from each other onto the Muslims and therefore united and encouraged them to take up the cross. His speech had been so powerful that according to Baldric of Dol Urban’s listeners’ had tears in their eyes and trembled at his words. However According to Asbridge The Muslims and the Catholics had been living amongst each other for centuries with little conflict and the Muslims had proven to be the more tolerant of other religious views this thus contradicts Urban’s portrayal of Muslims as “subhuman savages” and we can assume that Urban may have exaggerated and constructed what the Muslims in the East were doing as an act of desperation to create unity amongst Christians. Asbridge goes on to state that the crusades were “proactive rather than reactive, and the crusades were designed, first and foremost, to meet the needs of the papacy” suggesting that the threat Urban preached he felt from Muslims in the east was not actually present and was fabricated in order to establish authority of himself and the