At a council of churchmen and magnates called to Clermont in France and in a flurry of papal letters accompanying it around 1095, Urban described renewed but completely imaginary atrocities against Christian pilgrims by Muslims in Jerusalem, so that he could arouse appropriate horror and action would follow. The effect was sensational: noblemen present hastened to raise their tenants to set out on a mission to avenge Christian wrongs in the East. In this state of heightened excitement, the Pope took time to consecrate the high altar of his old monastery of Cluny, dedicating the final
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