Children's Crusade
The so-called Children's Crusade of 1212 CE, was a popular, double religious movement led by a French youth, Stephen of Cloyes, and a German boy, Nicholas of Cologne, who gathered two armies of perhaps 20,000 children, adolescents, and adults with the hopelessly optimistic objective of bettering the failures of the professional Crusader armies and capturing Jerusalem for Christendom. Travelling across Europe, the would-be Crusaders perhaps reached Genoa but had no funds to pay for their passage to the Levant. While some participants simply returned home, a large number were sold into slavery, according to the legend. Whatever the exact events of the confused history of the 'Children's Crusade', the episode illustrates that there was a popular sympathy for the Crusade movement amongst the common people and it was not just nobles and knights who felt compelled to take the cross and defend Christians and their sacred places in the Holy Land during the Middle Ages.
Objective Jerusalem
Saladin, the Muslim Sultan of Egypt and Syria (r. 1174-1193 CE), had shocked the Christian world when he captured Jerusalem in 1187 CE. Despite the failure of the Third Crusade (1187-1192 CE) to then even get in touching distance of Jerusalem, and the even more dismal Fourth Crusade (1202-1204 CE), which had instead attacked Constantinople, there were still many Christians in the west eager to travel to the Holy Land and help in the task of retaking Jerusalem. There was perhaps, too, a frustration among the ordinary populace that despite the taxes they were asked to bear and the sacrifices in materials and supplies to repeatedly furnish Crusader armies, the primary objective of retaking the Holy City had still not been achieved. In 1212 CE a curious movement sprang up which has since gained legendary status. Thousands of children were organised into an 'army', and they set out for the Middle East thinking that they could do a whole lot better than the adults in defeating the Muslim infidels.
Continue reading...