When these had passed by, and the dreaded epoch had brought forth nothing, the current still continued to flow on in the course that it had taken; and during the eleventh century several circumstances tended to increase it. Among others the terror spread through France by the Papal Interdict, called forth by the refractory adherence of Robert I. to his queen[81] Bertha, brought more pilgrims than usual from that country.
Of many thousands who passed into Asia,[82] a few isolated individuals only returned; but these every day, as they passed through the different countries of Europe on their journey back, spread indignation and horror by their account of the dreadful sufferings of the Christians in Judea. Various[83] letters are reported as having been sent by the emperors of the east to the different princes of Europe, soliciting aid to repel the encroachments of the infidel; and if but a very small portion of the crimes and cruelty attributed to the Turks by these epistles were believed by the Christians, it is not at all astonishing that wrath and horror took possession of every chivalrous bosom. Pope Sylvester II. had made an ineffectual appeal to Christendom towards the end of the tenth century, bringing forward the first idea of a crusade;[84] but the age was not then ripe for a project that required a fuller developement of chivalrous feelings. Gregory VII. revived the idea, and made it the subject of a very pompous epistle; but he himself was one of the first to forget the miseries of his fellow-christians in Palestine, in the pursuit of his own aggrandizement.
Still, the persecution of the Christians in Palestine, and the murder and pillage of the pilgrims continued; still the indignation of Europe was fed and renewed by repeated tales of cruel barbarity committed in the Holy Land--sufferings of the church--insults to religion--and merciless massacres of countrymen and relations: still, also, the spirit of Chivalry was each day spreading further and rising more powerfully, so that all was preparing for some great and general movement. The lightning of the crusade was in the people's hearts, and it wanted but one electric touch to make it flash forth upon the world.