ABSTRACT
On 27 November 1095, Pope Urban II, after having held a Church council in the small French town of Clermont, went outside the town walls and there gave what must be considered one of the most effective speeches in human history. Urban II’s appeal was cast in terms of the brotherhood of Christians Eastern and Western, and of the help that the West should bring to the Byzantines who were the victims of the rapid expansion of the Seljuk Turks. The fact that the Byzantines neither developed nor embraced the concepts of holy war is in some ways remarkable. They had fought both defensive and aggressive wars against the Muslims for centuries. In texts of the twelfth century, the reasons clearly emerge for which a just war may be waged: for self-defence, for the recovery of territory, for averting a greater evil such as the destruction of the state and its inhabitants.
