Pope Urban II Launches the Crusades
A call to retake Jerusalem becomes two centuries of holy war, framed as the forgiveness of sins
Quick facts
- Date
- November 27, 1095 CE
- Location
- Council of Clermont, France
- Trigger
- Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos's appeal for troops
- Offer
- Full remission of sins for those who took the cross
What happened
Responding to an appeal from the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos for military help against advancing Seljuk Turks, Pope Urban II preached an open-air sermon at the Council of Clermont in France on November 27, 1095 CE, calling on Western Christians to march to Jerusalem and take it from Muslim rule. Urban promised full remission of sins to anyone who took up the cross, an offer on a scale no earlier pope had made, and the appeal drew tens of thousands of knights and commoners within months, launching the First Crusade the following year. The movement Urban started continued in repeated waves for nearly two centuries, reshaping relations between Western Christendom, the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic world across the eastern Mediterranean.
Why it matters
Clermont fused military service to the forgiveness of sin in a way that became the template for every later crusade, and it opened two centuries of warfare, negotiation, and cultural exchange between Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East whose consequences, including deep and lasting mistrust on multiple sides, outlasted the crusading movement itself by many centuries.
How we know
No verbatim transcript of Urban's speech survives; historians rely on several independent chronicle accounts written within a decade or two of Clermont that agree on its core content while differing in wording.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Council of Clermont · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Alexios I Komnenos · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The Crusades → · The full campaign history of the Crusades, from Manzikert in 1071 through the fall of Acre in 1291, is covered in its own dedicated timeline.
- The Rise of Islam → · The Muslim states the Crusaders fought and negotiated with are covered from their own side in the Rise of Islam timeline.