The northern crusade was Peter the Hermit’s, a violent, apocalyptic, somewhat acephalous movement rooted in an expectation of the end times and of an imminent battle with Antichrist, likely to occur in Jerusalem. In the south Urban II’s crusade was a more tightly organized affair. It depended on the participation of the princes and the recruitment of men from their households and from among their immediate entourage of knights. Like Peter the Hermit’s crusade, Urban II’s emphasized the need to liberate Jerusalem, and whatever his exact words, the message tapped into similar prophetic emotions and expectations. But Peter and the pope were not the only ones who gave shape to the crusade idea. Other preachers, pilgrims, prophets, zealots, and crackpots delivered sermons infused with their own particular apocalyptic and feral sensibilities. Urban II may have preached a sermon at Clermont that stressed the need to create peace and the opportunity to attain salvation, but these themes would not be the dominant ones of the crusade.
