Portal:Crusades/Selected article/4
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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 in the Holy Land to Christianity, bands of children marching to Italy, and children being sold into slavery.
With the publication of Peter Raedt's groundbreaking scientific study in 1977, it is now generally accepted that they were not "children" but multiple bands of "wandering poor" in Germany and France, some whom tried to reach the Holy Land and others who never intended to do so. Early versions of events, of which there are many variations told over the centuries, are largely apocryphal. According to more recent research there seem to have actually been two movements of people (of all ages) in 1212 in France and Germany. The similarities of the two allowed later chroniclers to combine and embellish the tales.
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 Marseilles where they were probably sold into slavery. Few returned home and none reached the Holy Land.
The second movement was led by a shepherd named Stephen of Cloyes (a village of near 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.
