Aicard Pope Urban II, the greatest of the Gregorian reformers after Gregory, travelled through Languedoc and Provence, visiting Montpellier, Nîmes, Saint-Gilles, Tarascon, Avignon, Aix, Cavaillon, and other cities, preaching the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095, he had to avoid Arles, where the deposed bishop was still in power. Between 1098 and 1099, however, Aicard probably relinquished his see to follow the Crusade. Ghibbelin appeared for the first time in Urban's papal bull releasing the citizens of Arles from the penalties incurred in 1080. Aicard was in the Holy Land from 1103 to 1105, where he joined Raymond
History of the papacy (1048–1257) held the possibility of a reunion between the eastern and western Churches after almost four decades of schism, thereby strengthening the western Church in general and the papacy in particular. On November 27, 1095, Urban II made one of the most influential speeches in the Middle Ages at the Council of Clermont combining the ideas of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with that of waging a holy war against infidels. The pope called for a “War of the Cross,” or Crusade, to retake the holy lands from the unbelievers. France, the pope said, was already overcrowded and the