At Canossa the laity conceded as a probable hypothesis that the Church
could miraculously control nature; but they insisted that if the Church
possessed such power, she must use that power for the common good. Upon
this point they would not compromise, nor would they permit delay. During
the chaos of the ninth century turmoil and violence reached a stage at
which the aspirations of most Christians ended with self-preservation; but
when the discovery and working of the Harz silver had brought with it some
semblance of order, an intense yearning possessed both men and women to
ameliorate their lot. If relics could give protection against oppression,
disease, famine, and death, then relics must be obtained, and, if the
cross and the tomb were the most effective relics, then the cross and the
tomb must be conquered at any cost. In the north of Europe especially,
misery was so acute that the people gladly left their homes upon the
slenderest promise of betterment, even following a vagrant like Peter the
Hermit, who was neither soldier nor priest. There is a passage in William
of Tyre which has been often quoted to explain a frenzy which is otherwise
inexplicable, and in the old English of Caxton the words still glow with
the same agony which makes lurid the supplication of the litany,--"From
battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord deliver us":

"Of charyte men spack not, debates, discordes, and warres were nyhe
oueral, in suche wyse, that it seemed, that thende of the world was nyghe,
by the signes that our lord sayth in the gospell, ffor pestylences and
famynes were grete on therthe, ferdfulness of heuen, tremblyng of therthe
in many places, and many other thinges there were that ought to fere the
hertes of men....

"The prynces and the barons brente and destroyed the contrees of theyr
neyghbours, yf ony man had saved ony thynge in theyr kepyng, theyr owne
lordes toke them and put them in prison and in greuous tormentis, for to