Jerome of Périgord one of the "honest and learned" ("honestos et litteratos") French monks recruited by Bernard of Sedirac, archbishop of Toledo, at the suggestion of Pope Urban II. According to Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, Bernard went to Rome in 1096, where he tried to join the First Crusade only to be turned back by Urban. The pope, however, was travelling in southern France between the synod of Clermont (November 1095) and the synod of Nîmes (July 1096). Bernard was present at Nîmes, and he and Urban both attended the consecration of the Basilica of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse on 24 May 1096. Moreover,
Pope Urban II Crusades, and establishing the objectives, his letters to the Catalonian lords instead beseech them to continue the fight against the Moors, assuring them that doing so would offer the same divine rewards as a conflict against the Seljuks. It is Urban II's own letters, rather than the paraphrased versions of his speech at Clermont, that reveal his actual thinking about crusading. Nevertheless, the versions of the speech have had a great influence on popular conceptions and misconceptions about the Crusades, so it is worth comparing the five composed speeches to Urban's actual words. Fulcher of Chartres has Urban saying this: