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Pope Urban II's address was crafted with precision, compelling and urgent, saturated with the language of righteousness. Speaking not in the elite Latin but in the vernacular so that all would understand, he proclaimed that Christianity was under siege. The Holy Land, specifically Jerusalem, had fallen to "a race utterly alien to God," he asserted, whose actions against Christian pilgrims and sacred sites demanded a response. The choice he presented was stark: remaining passive while the faith was crushed or rising as soldiers of Christ to reclaim what was lost.