It is from this story of the historian William of Tyre, that Tasso, in his _Jerusalem Delivered,_ has drawn the admirable episode of Olindo and Sophronia; a fine example, and not the only one, of an act of tyranny and an act of virtue inspiring a great poet with the idea of a masterpiece.

"All the deeds of Hakem were without motive," says the Arab historian Makrisi, "and the dreams suggested to him by his frenzy are incapable of reasonable interpretation." These and many other similar stories reached the West, spread amongst the Christian people and roused them to pity for their brethren in the East and to wrath against the oppressors.

And it was at a critical period, in the midst of the pious alarms and desires of atonement excited by the expectation of the end of the world a thousand years after the coming of the Lord, that the Christian population saw this way opened for purchasing remission of their sins by delivering other Christians from suffering, and by avenging the wrongs of their creed.

On all sides arose challenges and appeals to the warlike ardor of the faithful.

The greatest mind of the age, Gerbert, who had become Pope Sylvester II., constituted himself interpreter of the popular feeling.