Controversial claim somewhat debunked "Deus vult never said at Clermont" — or was it?

The original draft of this post is from 4 days after this video:

DEUS VULT was never said at Clermont in 1095
MDVAL History | 9 April 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2jBRhbFkjY

I'm basically publishing the comments and dialogues as back then, I think I postponed it waiting for further replies, and they perhaps didn't come.

4:46 Key point : how was Latin pronounced at this time?

French in Tours certainly had already divided French from Latin between 813 and 882 (Synod of Tours and Cantilene of St. Eulalia). In Italy and Spain, Latin and their local vernaculars were still pronounced the same. What was the situation in Clermont?

Key point : what language did Urban II preach in?

"Eudes de Châtillon ou Odon de Lagery ou encore Otton de Châtillon, né à Châtillon-sur-Marne en 1022 ou vers 1035 ou en 1040 ou 1042, mort à Rome le 29 juillet 1099, est le 159e pape de l’Église catholique sous le nom d'Urbain II (1088-1099)"

So, he was a Frenchman, could he have spoken in French? Especially as Clermont is in France?

Key point : what are the reasons to think he should have spoken in Latin?

a) He preached in Latin because that was done? False, since 813, in France you preached in "lingua romana rustica" or in "lingua theutisca" ... and if that was not the case yet in Clermont Ferrand, that would argue the shift to two completely different languages hadn't happened yet. Note, I say this of preaching, not of the ordinary of the Gospel text or so, just the sermon.
b) He preached in Latin, because Robertus Monachus gives it in Latin? Robert could be translating to adapt to his medium, which was a book in Latin.

So, hypothesis I, Urban II preached in French, Robert the Monk just translates to Latin.
Or, hypothesis II, the area near Lyon was not yet splitting Latin from Romance, and so the Church pronunciation of Latin coincided with the local pronunciation of Romance (as in Tours prior to 800, or as in Spain and Italy still at this point). This is slightly less likely, but not impossible, given ... or perhaps rather
hypothesis III, given Peter Waldo could read the Bible in Latin, but ordered a translation into Franco-Provençal for simple folk, the audience were people fluent in Latin while laymen, for instance knights or merchants. Clermont Ferrand is closer to Lyon than to either Châtillon-sur-Marne or Tours.

Georg Strack

@georgstrack9867

Well, all sources mention a Latin sermon which was typical for international gatherings of clerics. In addition, there was no 'French' around 1100 and it would have been hard for peoole from the Auvergne to understand Urban's dialect from the Champagne

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@georgstrack9867 "there was no 'French' around 1100"

What do you call Canticle of Saint Eulalia?

If you mean there was no standard French — sure. As to dialects, peasants were more divided and limited to their own than knights. Somewhat later, we find written evidence of a German that spans both Alemannic and Bavaro-Austrian and avoids rhymes that would function only in one of them (classic Mittelhochdeutsch).

Is this kind of thing only probable if attested in writing? And is it a product of the Crusades or could it predate them?

In Romance, how much could be due to residues of a unity before 813 and a bit past, while Gallo-Romance was spelled as Latin? At the Strassburg Oaths, all nobles from West Francia understood the Latin-Romance text spoken by Lewis the German. So, was this unity completely lost 250 years later? If so, what would that have meant for the unity of administration?

And again, if the sermon was in fact in Latin, why not assume nobles who were present could have understood it?

Wikipedia has this info:

"The Council of Clermont was a mixed synod of ecclesiastics and laymen of the Catholic Church, called by Pope Urban II and held from 17 to 27 November 1095 at Clermont, Auvergne, at the time part of the Duchy of Aquitaine.[1][2]"

As I presume you do not care much for wikipedia itself, the footnotes go to:

E. Glenn Hinson, The Church Triumphant: A History of Christianity Up to 1300, (Mercer University Press, 1995), 387.

Blumenthal, Utah-Renata. The Crusades – An Encyclopedia. pp. 263–265.

The official participants seem to have been 300 clergymen, but as two issues, investitures and the appeal from Alexios Comnenos, were of keen interest to laymen, their presence as audience or observers is probable. There is no need to presume there were zero laymen physically present just because they weren't actual participants.

Georg Strack

Sorry, I am not an expert for this but I mean standard French. I know a bit more about Germany in the Middle Ages where people from North and South could nit easily comunicate because of different dialects

@hglundahl ... and yes: no great umity and admistration around 1100 in Latin

@hglundahl most laymen around 1100 were illiterate and could not understand Latin

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@georgstrack9867 "different dialects"

I'd consider Niederdeutsch and Mittelhochdeutsch as two different languages.

"most laymen around 1100 were illiterate and could not understand Latin"

Knights are a select portion of laymen.

5:09 "Popes preach to other clerics in Latin"

But this was not a sermon held to other clerics, this was a sermon held to laymen, right?

Georg Strack

We do not find many laymen in charters etc, Clermont was a clerical assembly

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@georgstrack9867 Only clerics were debating and taking decisions, no doubt, but that doesn't preclude a lay audience.

What kind of charters are you speaking of other than canons and other decisions of the synod?

Georg Strack

See above :-)

5:41 Do the other three sources mention any sermon to the laymen at all?

If not, the catch phrase could have been omitted because its occasion was omitted. A sermon held to laymen would be a pretty low key "Church document" as one would say now, so, it could be omitted by three of the four.

Georg Strack

Only some chronicles mention laymen, but we do not find them in more reliable documents such as charters etc.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@georgstrack9867 What exactly do you mean by "charter" in this context?

You mean sth like the canons of the synod, right? They generally do not mention laymen, and they generally do not give sermons held at the synod, especially to laymen and not in Latin. That's a limitation of the genre. It's a bit like saying "the black and white photo doesn't show the red colours of the alleged sunset" ...

I do not subscribe to the Weibull school, so I do not think that narrative is inherently unreliable. It can be unreliable on occasion, but here you seem to be overdoing the potentiality.

Plus, the problem you initially mentioned simply isn't one.

Georg Strack

I refer here to a standard work by R. Somerville, Councils of Urban II, 1972 who deals with the attendence of the council. His sources for this are not the decrees but privileges and their lists of witnesses.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@georgstrack9867 It seems my previous comment vanished.

If the privileges are clerical ones, those bestowing, those receiving, and the witnesses would be clergymen.

So, it would be undecisive for the presence of laymen.

6:11 The Latin library disagrees:

According to Fulcher, Urban addressed various abuses of the church such as simony and the lack of adherence to the Peace of God. He then asked western Christians, poor and rich, to come to the aid of the Greeks in the east, because "Deus vult," ("God wills it"), the rousing cry with which Urban ended his final address. Fulcher records that Urban promised remission of sins for those who went to the east, although he probably did not mean what later came to be called indulgences.

Fulcher says the Pope himself ended an adress with the words "Deus vult"

https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/clermont.html

[I then tried to add]

Also, while the site says "Guibert, abbot of Nogent, was an eye witness;" it says no such thing for Fulcher, of whom the wiki says:

The details of the Council of Clermont of 1095, in his history, suggest he attended the council personally,[2] or knew someone who did; perhaps Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, who influenced Fulcher's opinions on Church reform and the investiture controversy with the Holy Roman Empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulcher_of_Chartres

Finally, it would seem that it is more probable that Pope Urban II said "Deus vult" or "Deus lo vult" in a manner comprehensible to the people and they repeated it, and Robert would have omitted the words in the Pope's mouth, perhaps because he had it from a source that hadn't heard that but only the response from the people.

I could perhaps add, I suspect that Georg Strack uses "charter" as German "Urkunde". In fact a "charter" doesn't correspond to all kinds of "Urkunden", but basically to "Gründungsurkunden" and "Priveligienurkunden" and perhaps "Donationsurkunden" ... here we are dealing with something which is closer to "Protokollurkunden" ... where I think English would use "protocols" or "documents" rather than "charters" ...