Pope Urban II Calls for a Crusade at Clermont

In late November 1095, Pope Urban II convened a major synod of clergy and laymen at Clermont in Auvergne, then part of the Duchy of Aquitaine. By one count the gathering brought together 13 archbishops, 82 bishops and 90 abbots to handle central matters of church governance and local discipline. Although modern memory focuses almost entirely on the final day, the assembly operated primarily as an ecclesiastical council devoted to church reform. Its delegates renewed the Truce of God to restrain violence among feuding Frankish aristocrats, penalized the selling of church offices, and excommunicated King Philip I of France over his remarriage.

The geopolitical context of the council stemmed from an initiative earlier that year. At the Council of Piacenza, Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos had dispatched envoys to request Western military assistance against the Seljuk Turks, who had steadily advanced across Byzantine Anatolia toward the Sea of Marmara. On 27 November 1095, Urban delivered an open address in response to these appeals. His summons framed a armed march to the east as both a defensive military intervention to assist eastern coreligionists and an act of religious devotion, an initiative that would ultimately launch the First Crusade.