The Children's Crusade is the name given to a variety of fictional and factual events in 1212 that combine some or all of these elements: visions by a French and/or German boy, an intention to peacefully convert Muslims to Christianity, bands of children marching to Italy, and children being sold into slavery. Several conflicting accounts exist, and the facts of the situation continue to be a subject of discussion among scholars. This article is about the medieval crusades. ... Combatants Christendom, Catholicism West European Christians, Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia Seljuks, Arabs and other Muslims The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II with the dual goals of destroying the peaceful Islamic civilizations and confirming the barbaric nature of European society. ... // The Crusade of 1101 was a minor crusade of three separate movements, organized in 1100 and 1101 in the successful aftermath of the First Crusade. ... The fall of Edessa, seen here on the right of this map (c. ... The Third Crusade (1189–1192), also known as the Kings Crusade, was an attempt by European leaders to reconquer the Holy Land from Saladin. ... The Crusade of 1197 (also known as the Crusade of Henry VI or the German Crusade of 1197) was an abortive crusade launched by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI in response to the failure of Frederick I Barbarossas crusade in 1190. ... The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (Eugène Delacroix, 1840). ... The Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade (1209 - 1229) was a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Roman Catholic Church to eliminate the heresy of the Cathars of Languedoc. ... Frisian crusaders confront the Tower of Damietta, Egypt. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The Seventh Crusade was a crusade led by Louis IX of France from 1248 to 1254. ... The Shepherds Crusade is two separate events from the 13th and 14th century. ... The Eighth Crusade was a crusade launched by Louis IX of France, (who was by now in his mid-fifties) in 1270. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The Aragonese Crusade or Crusade of Aragón was declared by Pope Martin IV against the king of Aragón, Peter III the Great, in 1284 and 1285. ... The Alexandrian Crusade of October 1365[1] was a seaborne[2] Crusade on Alexandria led by Peter I of Cyprus. ... // Combatants Ottoman Empire Kingdom of Hungary, France, Wallachia, Holy Roman Empire Commanders Bayezid I Sigismund of Hungary, John of Nevers #, Mircea the Elder Strength About 100,000 About 100,000 estimated to be more due capabilites of the coilition (120,000-200,000) Casualties About 35,000 About 35,000... The Teutonic knights in Pskov in 1240. ... The Northern Crusades, or Baltic Crusades, were undertaken by Western Europeans against the still heathen people of North Eastern Europe around the Baltic Sea. ... Crusades First – Peoples – German – 1101 – Second – Third – Fourth – Albigensian – Childrens – Fifth – Sixth – Seventh – Shepherds – Eighth – Ninth – Aragonese – Alexandrian – Nicopolis – Northern – Hussite – Varna – Otranto Hussite Wars Nekmer - SudomÄ•Å™ – Vítkov – VyÅ¡ehrad – Nebovidy - NÄ›mecký Brod – HoÅ™ice – Ústí nad Labem – Tachov – Lipany – Grotniki The Hussite Wars, also called... The Crusade of Varna was a string of events in 1443-1444 between the Kingdom of Hungary, the Serbian Despotate, and the Ottoman Empire. ... Combatants Ottoman Empire Kingdom of Naples Kingdom of Aragon Kingdom of Hungary Commanders Gedik Ahmed Pasha Francesco Largo † Alphonso II of Naples Strength Between 18,000 and 100,000 men. ... Events The first Great Fire of London burns most of the city to the ground Battle of Navas de Tolosa Childrens crusade Crusaders push the Muslims out of northern Spain In Japan, Kamo no Chōmei writes the Hōjōki, one of the great works of classical Japanese... A Muslim is a believer in or follower of Islam. ...

The long-standing view

The long-standing view of the Children's Crusade is some version of events with similar themes. A boy began preaching in either France or Germany claiming that he had been visited by Jesus and told to lead a Crusade to peacefully convert Muslims to Christianity.^[1] Through a series of supposed portents and miracles he gained a considerable following, including possibly as many as 20,000+ children. He led his followers southwards towards the Mediterranean Sea, where it is said he believed that the sea would part when he arrived, so that he and his followers could march to Jerusalem, but this did not happen. Two merchants gave passage on seven boats to as many of the children as would fit. The children were either taken to Tunisia and sold into slavery, or died in a shipwreck on the island of San Pietro (off Sardinia) during a gale. In some accounts they never reached the sea before dying or giving up from starvation and exhaustion. Scholarship has shown this long-standing view to be more legend than fact. This article is about Jesus of Nazareth. ... This article is about the medieval crusades. ... A miracle, derived from the old Latin word miraculum meaning something wonderful, is a striking interposition of divine intervention by God in the universe by which the ordinary course and operation of Nature is overruled, suspended, or modified. ... Composite satellite image of the Mediterranean Sea. ... For other uses, see Jerusalem (disambiguation). ... The beach on the south coast of the island. ... For the place in the United States, see Sardinia, Ohio. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Modern research

According to more recent research^[2] there seem to have been two movements of people in 1212 in France and Germany. The similarities of the two allowed later chroniclers to lump them together as a single tale.

In the first movement Nicholas, a shepherd from Germany, led a group across the Alps and into Italy in the early spring of 1212. About 7,000 arrived in Genoa in late August. However, their plans didn't bear fruit when the waters failed to part as promised and the band broke up. Some left for home, others may have gone to Rome, while still others may have traveled down the Rhône to Marseille where they were probably sold into slavery. Few returned home and none reached the Holy Land. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... For other uses, see Genoa (disambiguation). ... The Rhône River, or the Rhône (French Rhône, Arpitan Rôno, Occitan Ròse, standard German Rhone, Valais German Rotten), is one of the major rivers of Europe, running through Switzerland and France. ... City flag Coat of arms Motto: By her great deeds, the city of Massilia shines Location Coordinates Time Zone CET (GMT +1) Administration Country Region Provence-Alpes-Côte dAzur Department Bouches-du-Rhône (13) Subdivisions 16 arrondissements (in 8 secteurs) Intercommunality Urban Community of Marseille Provence M... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Holy Land (Biblical). ...

The second movement was led by a "shepherd boy"^[1] named Stephen de Cloyes near the village of Châteaudun who claimed in June that he bore a letter for the king of France from Jesus. Attracting a crowd of over 30,000 he went to Saint-Denis where he was seen to work miracles. On the orders of Philip II, on the advice of the University of Paris, the crowd was sent home, and most of them went. None of the contemporary sources mentions plans of the crowd to go to Jerusalem. Châteaudun is a commune of the Eure-et-Loir département, in France. ... Saint-Denis is a commune of France, in the Seine-Saint-Denis département, of which it is a sous-préfecture. ... Philip II Augustus (French: Philippe Auguste) (21 August 1165 – 14 July 1223) was the King of France from 1180 until his death. ... The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The historic University of Paris (French: ) first appeared in the second half of the 12th century, but was in 1970 reorganised as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). ...

The Children's Crusade, by Gustave Doré

Later chroniclers embellished these events. Recent research suggests the participants were not children, at least not the very young. In the early 1200s, bands of wandering poor started cropping up throughout Europe. These were people displaced by economic changes at the time which forced many poor peasants in northern France and Germany to sell their land. These bands were referred to as pueri (Latin for "boys") in a condescending manner, in much the same way that people from rural areas in the United States are called "country boys." Image File history File links Download high resolution version (963x1210, 347 KB) Gustave Doré (1832-1883), The Childrens Crusade File links The following pages link to this file: Childrens Crusade ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (963x1210, 347 KB) Gustave Doré (1832-1883), The Childrens Crusade File links The following pages link to this file: Childrens Crusade ... Doré photographed by Felix Nadar. ... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... ‹ The template below is being considered for deletion. ... In a detail of Brueghels Land of Cockaigne (1567) a soft-boiled egg has little feet to rush to the luxuriating peasant who catches drops of honey on his tongue, while roast pigs roam wild: in fact, hunger and harsh winters were realities for the average European in the... For other uses, see Latin (disambiguation). ... Sign in a rural area in Dalarna, Sweden Qichun, a rural town in Hubei province, China An artists rendering of an aerial view of the Maryland countryside: Jane Frank (Jane Schenthal Frank, 1918-1986), Aerial Series: Ploughed Fields, Maryland, 1974, acrylic and mixed materials on apertured double canvas, 52...

In 1212, a young French puer named Stephen and a German puer named Nicholas separately began claiming that they had each had similar visions of Jesus. This resulted in these bands of roving poor being united into a religious protest movement which transformed this forced wandering into a religious journey. The pueri marched, following the Cross and associating themselves with Jesus's biblical journey. This, however, was not a prelude to a holy war. This article is about Jesus of Nazareth. ... A reliquary in the form of an ornate Christian Cross Topics in Christianity Movements · Denominations · Other religions Ecumenism · Preaching · Prayer Music · Liturgy · Calendar Symbols · Art · Criticism Important figures Apostle Paul · Church Fathers Constantine · Athanasius · Augustine Anselm · Aquinas · Palamas · Luther Calvin · Wesley Arius · Marcion of Sinope Archbishop of Canterbury · Catholic Pope... Holy war may refer to: Jihad, war fought to spread the religion of Islam. ...

Thirty years later, chroniclers read the accounts of these processions and translated pueri as "children" without understanding the usage; thus the Children's Crusade was born. The resulting story illustrates how ingrained the concept of Crusading was in the people of that time— the chroniclers assumed that the pueri must have been Crusaders, in their innocence returning to the foundations of crusading characteristic of Peter the Hermit, and meeting the same sort of tragic fate. Peter the Hermit shows the crusaders the way to Jerusalem. ...

According to Matthew Paris, one of the leaders of the Children's Crusade became "Le Maître de Hongrie," the leader of the Shepherds' Crusade in 1251. Self portrait of Matthew Paris from the original manuscript of his Historia Anglorum (London, British Library, MS Royal 14. ... The Shepherds Crusade is two separate events from the 13th and 14th century. ...

Historiography

Sources

According to Raedts^[2] there are only about 50 sources from the period that talk about the crusade, ranging from a few sentences to half a page. Raedts categorizes the sources into 3 types depending on when they were written: contemporary sources written by 1220, sources written between 1220 and 1250 (the authors could have been alive at the time of the crusade but wrote their memories down much later), and sources written after 1250 by authors who received their information second or third generation. Raedts does not consider the sources after 1250 to be authoritative, and of those before 1250, he considers only about 20 to be authoritative. It is only in the later non-authoritative narratives that a "children's crusade" is implied by such authors as Beauvais, Roger Bacon, Thomas of Cantimpré, Matthew Paris and many others. The Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais (ca 1190 - 1264?) wrote the main encyclopedia that was used in the middle ages. ... For the Nova Scotia premier see Roger Bacon (politician). ... Thomas of Cantimpré was a Roman Catholic Medieval writer, preacher, and theologian Thomas was born of noble parentage at Sint-Pieters Leeuw near Brussels, in the Duchy of Brabant, 1201; died 15 May, 1272. ... Self portrait of Matthew Paris from the original manuscript of his Historia Anglorum (London, British Library, MS Royal 14. ...

Scientific studies

Prior to Raedts, there had only been a few scientific publications researching the Children's Crusade. The earliest were by Frenchman G. de Janssens (1891) and German R. Röhricht (1876). They analyzed the sources but did not analyze the story. American medievalist D. C. Munro (1913-14), according to Raedts, provided the best analysis of the sources to date and was the first to significantly provide a convincingly sober account of the Crusade sans legends.^[3] Later, J. E. Hansbery (1938-9) published a correction of Munro's work, but it has since been discredited as based on an unreliable source.^[2] German psychiatrist J. F. C. Hecker (1865) did give an original interpretation of the crusade, but it was a polemic about "diseased religious emotionalism" that has since been discredited.^[2] Dana Carleton Munro, L.H.D. (June 7, 1866-January 13, 1933) was an American historian, brother of Wilfred Harold Munro, born at Bristol, R.I. He was educated at Brown (A.M., 1890) and in Europe at Strassburg and Freiburg. ...

P. Alphandery (1916) first published his ideas about the crusade in 1916 in an article, which was later published in book form in 1959. He considered the crusade to be an expression of the medieval cult of the Innocents, as a sort of sacrificial rite in which the Innocents gave themselves up for the good of Christendom; however he based his ideas on some of the most untrustworthy sources.^[4] This T-and-O map, which abstracts the known world to a cross inscribed within an orb, remakes geography in the service of Christian iconography. ...

Adolf Waas (1956) saw the Children's Crusade as a manifestation of chivalric piety and as a protest against the glorification of the holy war. ^[5]

H. E. Mayer (1960) further developed Alphandery's ideas of the Innocents, saying children were the chosen people of God because they were the poorest, recognizing the cult of poverty he said that ""the Children's Crusade marked both the triumph and the failure of the idea of poverty."^[6]

Giovanni Miccoli (1961) was the first to note that the contemporary sources did not portray the participants as children. It was this recognition that undermined all other interpretations (except perhaps Cohn's).^[7]

Norman Cohn (1971) saw it as a chiliastic movement in which the poor tried to escape the misery of their everyday lives.^[8] Norman Cohn, also known as Norman Rufus Colin Cohn, (born 12 January 1915) is British academic, historian and writer, now Emeritus Astor-Wolfson Professor at the University of Sussex. ... It has been suggested that Messianic Age be merged into this article or section. ...

Peter Raedts 1977 analysis is considered the best source to date to show the many issues surrounding the Children's Crusade.^[1]

Popular accounts

Beyond the scientific studies there are many popular versions and theories about the Children's Crusades.

Norman Zacour in the survey A History of the Crusades (1962) generally follows Munro's conclusions, and adds that there was a psychological instability of the age, concluding the Children's Crusade "remains one of a series of social explosions, through which medieval men and women - and children too - found release."

Steven Runciman gives an account of the Children's Crusade in his A History of the Crusades^[9] Raedts notes that "Although he cites Munro's article in his notes, his narrative is so wild that even the unsophisticated reader might wonder if he had really understood it". Sir James Cochran Stevenson Runciman (7 July 1903 - 1 November 2000) was a British historian known for his work on the Middle Ages. ...

Donald Spoto, in a book about St. Francis of Assisi, said monks were motivated to call them children, and not wandering poor, because being poor was considered pious and the Church was embarrassed by its wealth in contrast to the poor. This, according to Spoto, began a literary tradition from which the popular legend of children originated. This idea follows closely with H. E. Mayer. This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Saint Francis of Assisi (September 26, 1181 – October 3, 1226) was a Roman Catholic friar and the founder of the Order of Friars Minor, more commonly known as the Franciscans. ...

In the arts

• La Croisade des Enfants (1902), a seldom-performed oratorio by Gabriel Pierné's, featuring a children's chorus, is based on the events of the Children's Crusade.
• The Children's Crusade (1964), children's historical novel by Henry Treece, includes a dramatic account of Stephen of Cloyes attempting to part the sea at Marseilles.
• The Death of the Bishop of Brindisi (1963), opera by Gian-Carlo Menotti, describes a dying bishop's guilt-ridden recollection of the Children's Crusade, during which he questions the purpose and limitations of his own power.
• Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, references this event and uses it as an alternate title.
• Crusade in Jeans (Dutch Kruistocht in spijkerbroek), is a 1973 novel by Dutch author Thea Beckman and a 2006 film adaptation about the Children's Crusade through the eyes of a time traveller.
• A Long March To Jerusalem (1978), a play by Don Taylor breathes much life and color into the story of the Children's Crusade.
• An Army of Children (1978), a novel by Evan Rhodes that tells the story of two boys partaking in the Children's Crusade.
• "Children's Crusade" (1985), is a song by Sting that juxtaposes the medieval Children's Crusade with the deaths of English soldiers in World War I and the lives ruined by heroin addiction.
• Lionheart (1987), a little known historical/fantasy film, loosely based on the stories of the Children's Crusade.
• "Sea and Sunset" (1989), short story by Mishima Yukio.
• The Children's Crusade (1993), comic series by Neil Gaiman.
• The Crusade of Innocents (2006), novel by David George, suggests that the Children's Crusade may have been affected by the concurrent crusade against the Cathars in Southern France, and how the two could have met.
• Sylvia (2006), novel by Bryce Courtenay, story loosely based around the Children's Crusade.

An oratorio is a large musical composition for orchestra, vocal soloists and chorus. ... Henri Constant Gabriel Pierné (Metz, 16 August 1863– Ploujean, Finistere, 17 July, 1937) was a French organist and composer. ... Henry Treece (December 1911 – June 10, 1966) was a British poet and writer, who worked also as a teacher, actor, and editor. ... Gian Carlo Menotti, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1944 Gian Carlo Menotti (born July 7, 1911, Cadegliano, Italy) is an Italian-born American composer and librettist. ... Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Childrens Crusade: A Duty Dance With Death is a 1969 novel by best-selling author Kurt Vonnegut. ... Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ... Crusade in Jeans (1973) is a childrens novel written by Thea Beckman. ... Thea Beckman (23 July 1923, Rotterdam – 5 May 2004, Bunnik) was a famous Dutch author of childrens books. ... Crusade in Jeans is a 2006 film adaptation of the book Crusade in Jeans. ... There are several people of note by the name Don Taylor or Donald Taylor known for achievements in various fields. ... The Dream of the Blue Turtles is the first solo album released by Sting. ... Sting circa 1987 Gordon Matthew Sumner, CBE (born October 2, 1951), best known by his stage name Sting, is an English musician and formerly bassist and lead singer of The Police. ... For other uses, see England (disambiguation). ... This article is about a military rank. ... “The Great War ” redirects here. ... For other uses, see Heroin (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see addicted. ... Loosely based on the historical Childrens Crusade, Lionheart was directed by Academy Award-winner Franklin J. Schaffner. ... Yukio Mishima Yukio Mishima (三島由紀夫 Mishima Yukio), was the public name of Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡公威 Hiraoka Kimitake), (January 14, 1925 - November 25, 1970), a Japanese author and rightist political activist, notable for both his nihilistic post-war writing and the circumstances of his... The Childrens Crusade is a two issue Vertigo mini-series. ... Neil Richard Gaiman () (born November 10, 1960) is an English author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels, graphic novels, comics, and films. ... David George is the name of: David Lloyd George (1863 – 1945), 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Harold George, South African cyclist, silver medalist in 2006 Commonwealth Games road race David George (Baptist) (1742-1810) Born into slavery in Virginia - organized... Sylvia is a 2006 novel by Australian author, Bryce Courtenay. ... Bryce Courtenay (born 14 August 1933) is an Australian novelist born in Johannesburg, South Africa. ...

Notes and references