PETER THE HERMIT. — Born ca. 1050 in the diocese of Amiens, died at Neufmoutier (diocese of Liège) on 8 July 1115. He is the best-known of the popular preachers of the First Crusade; yet legend has seized upon his name and greatly exaggerated the part he played in the enterprise. He was not the initiator of the Crusade, nor was he the only one to lead the popular masses that rushed toward the East. One must therefore reduce to proper proportion the importance attributed to him by contemporary accounts, such as those of Guibert of Nogent and Albert of Aix.
The monk Peter was already known in the region where he lived for his austerity when, following the Council of Clermont, he began to preach the reconciliation of Christians and to traverse the countryside of France as far as the region of Berry, promising salvation to those who would liberate the Holy Sepulchre. Even women, children, and the elderly wished to join the throng of those who, without supplies or arms, began to follow Peter the Hermit. He was also joined by a troop of Germans led by Walter Sans-Avoir. But Peter could not prevent excesses: massacres of Jews in German cities and devastations in Hungary. When Peter the Hermit arrived in Constantinople on 19 August 1096, many of his followers had died of hunger or hardship; the official Crusade of the barons had not yet left the West. Emperor Alexios I Komnenos received Peter and, to rid himself of a suspicious crowd, supplied him with the ships needed to cross the Bosporus. Once in Asia, Peter the Hermit was even less able than before to control his followers, who, entirely ignorant, thought they were already near the end of their journey. Instead, they became lost in an unknown land infested by Turks, who massacred many of them; others perished because of the climate. Peter had to beg the Emperor for a contingent of Greeks to save the rest from annihilation. Those who managed to return to Constantinople waited for the arrival of the barons and joined their forces. Peter himself was fortunate enough to escape the dangers and return to the West, retiring to Neufmoutier until his death. From then on, he remained in the popular imagination as the symbol of the mystique of the Crusade.