Peter the Hermit

Peter the Hermit, also known as Peter of Amiens and in French as Pierre l'Ermite, was a priest from northern France who became one of the most famous popular preachers associated with the First Crusade. Little can be established with certainty about his early life. Later tradition places his origins in Amiens in Picardy in the mid-eleventh century, and he is sometimes also called Peter of Achères. He appears in the sources as a charismatic ascetic who lived as a hermit and itinerant preacher, traveling barefoot, wearing a simple robe, and living with marked austerity. Near-contemporary writers such as Guibert of Nogent portrayed him as a man of striking appearance and popular appeal, around whom crowds gathered and to whom people attributed a reputation for holiness.

After Pope Urban II proclaimed the crusade at the Council of Clermont in November 1095, Peter preached the expedition widely in France and the Rhineland. According to crusade chroniclers, especially Albert of Aachen, he gathered a large following of peasants, townspeople, and lesser knights who set out in the spring of 1096, well before the departure of the princely armies. This movement, later called the People's Crusade, was poorly supplied and loosely organized. Related popular bands, particularly those associated with Count Emicho of Flonheim, carried out massacres of Jewish communities in the Rhineland in 1096; the degree of Peter's own involvement in those attacks remains debated among historians, and many accounts distinguish his following from Emicho's. Peter's host passed through Hungary and the Byzantine Empire and reached Constantinople. Emperor Alexios I Komnenos had the poorly disciplined force transported across the Bosporus. In October 1096, while Peter was absent seeking supplies in Constantinople, the crusaders in Asia Minor were drawn into a trap and largely annihilated by the Seljuk Turks near Civetot, close to Nicaea. Peter survived by virtue of his absence from the battlefield.

He subsequently attached himself to the main crusader armies of 1096–1099. He was present during the long and desperate siege of Antioch in 1097–1098. Chroniclers report that, amid famine and demoralization, he attempted to flee the city but was caught and returned, an episode that did not end his role in the expedition. After Antioch fell and the crusaders later marched south, Peter continued with the army to Jerusalem. Following the capture of the city in July 1099, he is said to have preached to the faithful on the Mount of Olives. His activities in the Levant after the taking of Jerusalem are sparsely documented.

Peter returned to western Europe around the turn of the twelfth century. He settled in the region of Huy, in the prince-bishopric of Liège, where he founded the monastery of Neufmoustier and became its prior, living thereafter as a regular canon under the Rule of Saint Augustine. He died there in 1115 and was buried at Neufmoustier. Later medieval writers, notably William of Tyre in the twelfth century, elaborated his legend, sometimes presenting him as a pilgrim who had visited the Holy Land before 1095 and as a prime mover of the crusade itself. Modern historians treat those embellishments with caution: Urban II's summons remains the official origin of the First Crusade, while Peter is best understood as a powerful popular preacher who channeled existing religious enthusiasm into an early, disastrous wave of the movement, then participated in the successful princely campaign and ended his life as a monastic founder in the Low Countries.