Excerpt from The World Book, Vol. 8 of 10: Organized Knowledge in Story and Picture Peter's pence, the name applied in the Roman Catholic Church to voluntary Offerings for the support Of the Pope. It is of medieval origin, said to have originated in England, from which it spread to the Continent. The Seventh Provincial Council (baltimore, 1849) approved the collection of Peter's pence in the United States. Peter the hermit (about 1050 a monk of Amiens, the, famous preacher of the first of the Crusades, primarily responsible for one of the most gigantic religious movements the world ever saw (see illustration, page He was born in the diocese of Arnicas, but lit tle is known of his life from that time until 1095, when he began in his preaching to declare the necessity of a crusade to wrest the Holy Land from the infidel. Convinced that it was his mission to inspire men to regain possession Of Palestine, he rode about France on mule back, dressed in a monk's cloak of rough cloth and bearing in his hand a crucifix. In 1096 he set out toward Palestine with about undisciplined followers, mostly from the poorer classes. They straggled on through Europe, but after crossing the Bos porus into Asia Minor proved so unruly that Peter left them and joined the army of Godfrey de Bouillon. He had a part in the capture of Jerusalem, and in July, 1099, preached on the Mount of Olives. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.