Adhémar de Monteil

Adhémar (or Adémar , or Aimar ) of Monteil , bishop of Puy of 1077 with 1098, was one of the frank main leaders of the First crusade.

Member of a noble family of the area of Valence, he became bishop of Puy in 1077 and carried out a pilgrimage in Orient in 1086 - 1087. Savage partisan - and craftsman - Gregorian Réforme it showed a great enthusiasm for the idea of crusade at the time of the Concile of Clermont of 1095. Named apostolic legate by the pope Urbain II which regarded it as the true chief of forwarding - for Urbain II the crusade was an exclusively spiritual company -, Adhémar united with the army of Raymond of Toulouse. In way, it was wounded by Byzantine mercenaries during fixings with the imperial troops but was reached nevertheless the capital in April 1097.

With Constantinople, it negotiated with Alexis I {{er}}, helped with the re-establishment of the discipline within the crusaders with Nicée and was one of the principal craftsmen of the success of the seat of Antioche. The city taken and in its turn besieged by Kerbogha, Adhémar organized a procession in the streets and made block the doors of the city so that the crusaders, of which some were taken of panic, do not flee. Without being less convinced by the discovery of the Sainte Lance by Pierre Barthélemy - he knew the existence of a relic similar to Constantinople - he kept silence and left the conviction of cross stimulating their enthusiasm.

Once does Kerbogha demolish, it tried to solve the conflicts between the cross chiefs but died the 1098 at the time of an unspecified epidemic (Peste? Typhus? Cholera?). Its death left a vacuum to the head of the cross armies because, friend and envoy of the pope, he was the only chief of which nobody disputed the authority. The squabbles between the barons delayed several months walk towards Jerusalem but the basic soldiers - the pedestrians - continued to see in Adhémar their true chief. During the head office of Jerusalem, some claimed to have seen it of appearance and that it would have ordered to them to organize a procession around the walls of the city, which was made.

Adhémar had never tried to impose the supremacy of the Latin Church and its death increased the gap between Rome and Constantinople.

Random links: