Peter Bartholomew

Um, so like once you got that, like it was pretty much like, okay, we can figure it out.

And then they started refining the salt Peter and everything.

Um, and that gave it different colors.

And that's essentially also how the, uh, the, the people of India figured it out as well.

And then after the fact, he died three days later and he revealed like all of his doubts to like these different people.

And then there was a trial by fire where the guy who found it was burned.

Peter Bartholomew was burned and he died 12 days later of sepsis from the burns, although he said it wasn't from that.

He said it

In such moments, when ordinary hope has run out, people turn to other kinds, and it was now, at the lowest point of the entire Crusade, that a strange and powerful thing happened in Antioch, something that would either be remembered as a miracle or dismissed as a desperate trick, depending on who told the story.

A poor and otherwise unremarkable pilgrim, a man named Peter Bartholomew, came forward claiming that he had been visited in a series of visions by Saint Andrew and that the saint had revealed to him a secret hidden beneath the floor of one of the city's churches.

Buried there, Peter said, lay one of the holiest relics in all of Christianity, the very lance that a Roman soldier had thrust into the side of Christ as he hung on the cross.

If the Crusaders found it, the saint had promised, it would be the sign that God had not abandoned them, and with it, they would triumph.

It was a spark thrown into dry tinder, and what it set alight would carry the Crusade out of the trap of Antioch and back onto the road to Jerusalem.

The Holy Lance.

The man at the center of it all, Peter Bartholomew, was not the sort anyone would have chosen as a vessel for divine revelation.

He was a poor pilgrim of low birth and, by some accounts, a rather disreputable character, not a priest or a holy man, but an ordinary follower of the army.

It was in this moment of absolute despair that a miracle occurred.

A poor, uneducated peasant from Provence in Raymond's contingent, a man named Peter Bartholomew, came forward claiming to have had a series of visions of St. Andrew.

The saint, he said, had revealed to him the location of the Holy Lance, the very spear that had pierced the side of Christ on the cross, which was buried beneath the floor of the city's Cathedral of St. Peter.

Desperate for any sign of hope, the leaders agreed to let him dig.

After a day of fruitless labor, Peter Bartholomew himself jumped into the pit and emerged moments later clutching a piece of old iron.

Historians still argue whether the discovery was a genuine miracle, a fortunate coincidence, or a pious fraud orchestrated to raise morale.

Whatever its origin, the effect of the discovery of the Holy Lance on the starving, terrified army was immediate and profound.

... are beginning to muster their knights and soldiers and head towards Con- Constantinople to rendezvous with, uh, Emperor Alexius of the Byzantine Empire.

Before they get there, though, another group has already arrived, and it's the People's Crusade, led by Peter the Hermit.

Yes.

Petey.

It's a mob.

A rabble, rabble, rabble.

They come together, they're brought together by a popular preacher, Peter the Hermit, and his associate, Walter Sans Avoir.

Peter believes he's been commissioned by the church to command this armed pilgrimage, even though Adhemar, the Bishop of Le Puy, has already been called the true legate of the Crusade.