John filled his auditory with a holy love of peace, and the cities then at war swore, before him, to forget for ever the subjects of their long divisions and eternal rivalries. These evangelical discourses restored to Italy a few days of peace, and gave the Holy See an opportunity of preaching a new crusade with success. Gregory addressed pastoral instructions to all the bishops and prelates of Christendom. In his letters to the French bishops, he applied these words of Christ to the holy war: “If any one would come with me, let him renounce himself, let him take up my cross and follow me.” The sovereign pontiff declared all who would not employ their utmost efforts to conquer the heritage of Christ, guilty of treason. The circulars of the pope ordered all the faithful, of both sexes, to pay a denier per week towards the expenses of the crusade. The head of the Church compared these alms to those which St. Paul solicited for the poor of Jerusalem, and did not fear to assert, beforehand, that they would suffice for the maintenance of the army of Crusaders for ten years. The preaching of this crusade was confided to the fraternities of St. Dominick and St. Francis, which had, in Asia, missionaries for the conversion of infidels, and in the West, preachers to re-establish peace among Christians; the new apostles of the holy war received from the pope the power, not only to give the cross, but to commute the vow of pilgrimage to a pecuniary alms, a practice that had never been seen since the beginning of the crusades; they had likewise the faculty of granting indulgences for several days to all who came to listen to their sermons. According to the spirit of their institutions, the disciples of St. Francis and St. Dominick lived amidst austerities and penance; they devoted themselves to poverty, and were bound to furnish a constant example of Christian humility; but, in this instance, the pope desired they should be received into monasteries and cities with pomp and ceremony; and that the clergy should come out to meet them, with the banners and most splendid ornaments of their churches. Whether this magnificence changed the simplicity of their manners, or that the people did not like to behold men whom they had lately seen devoted to evangelical poverty, treated with ceremonial pomp, the preachers of the crusade inspired their auditors with neither esteem nor respect, and the crowd diminished every day. As they received abundant alms, of which no one could see the employment, neither the solemnity of their mission nor the sanctity of their characters could screen them from the suspicions and accusations of the multitude: the murmurs and complaints which arose on all sides, at length weakened the authority of their words, and assisted in cooling the zeal and devotion of the Christians for the holy war.