Middle Ages Egypt and suffering from a series of internal civil wars. The Byzantines also faced a revived Bulgaria, which in the late 12th and 13th centuries spread throughout the Balkans. The crusades were intended to seize Jerusalem from Muslim control. The First Crusade was proclaimed by Pope Urban II (pope 1088–99) at the Council of Clermont in 1095 in response to a request from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) for aid against further Muslim advances. Urban promised indulgence to anyone who took part. Tens of thousands of people from all levels of society mobilised across Europe and captured
Roman Catholic Diocese of Le Puy-en-Velay to the Bishops of Le Puy, also granting them the right, until then reserved to archbishops exclusively of wearing the pallium. "Nowhere", he said in his Bull, "does the Blessed Virgin receive a more special and more filial worship." It was from Le Puy that Pope Urban II dated (15 August 1095) the Letters Apostolic convoking the Council of Clermont, and it was a canon of Le Puy, Raymond d'Aiguilles, chaplain to the Count of Toulouse, who wrote the history of the crusade. Pope Gelasius II, Pope Callistus II, Pope Innocent II and Pope Alexander III visited Le Puy to