by Carl Mäsak
November 27 2010 — urban planning
915 years ago today, during the Council of Clement Pope Urban II held a speech that would eventually lead to the First Crusade.
The Council lasted from November 19 to November 28, and was attended by about 300 clerics from throughout France. Urban discussed Cluniac reforms of the Church, and also extended the excommunication of Philip I of France for his adulterous remarriage to Bertrade of Montfort. On November 27, Urban spoke for the first time about the problems in the east, as he urged Western Christians fight against the Muslims who had occupied the Holy Land and were attacking the Eastern Roman Empire.
The audience, one source claims, responded enthusiastically.
According to one version of the speech, the enthusiastic crowd responded with cries of *Deus vult!* ("God wills it!"). However, other versions of the speech do not include this detail.
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Today I didn't get a whole lot done. Had to reinstall ghostscript because of some library incompatibility. (ghostscript is used for generating the tutorial.) I added one page to the tutorial, making it a 7-page one. I fixed an error in a signature, and uncovered two bugs in the process.
Hoping I'll get further faster tomorrow. Today seems to have a bit of a startup cost in it.