A shepherd boy with a letter from Christ to French king
In the summer of 1212, thousands of pilgrims carrying staffs waited for the sea to part before them. Later chroniclers added ships, slave traders, and a pope's lament to their story.
Around fifty medieval texts mention the mysterious Children's Crusade that swept through Europe in the summer of 1212. Historians generally consider only sources written before 1250 reliable. That cutoff is no accident. The further removed a chronicler was from the events, the younger the crusaders became in his account – and the more horrifying their fate.
That is why this story is best examined backward: starting with the later, more colorful accounts and working toward the sparse records left by contemporaries.
The villains came after the children
By the second half of the thirteenth century, the tragedy had acquired its villains. Vincent of Beauvais wrote that the children had been destroyed by the Old Man of the Mountain, a mysterious ruler from the East. In Roger Bacon's account, an evil man leads the crowd astray. According to Matthew Paris, not a single participant returns home.
Each successive storyteller knew less about the events of 1212 than his predecessor, yet spoke with greater certainty. One modern researcher observed that mythmakers are always convinced they are right. Another summed it up even more succinctly: with each new chronicle, the participants in the Crusade grew younger.
Hugh the Iron and William the Pig
The most detailed version comes from Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, who began writing his chronicle in 1232, twenty years after the events. Alberic's account has everything a compelling story needs: ships, a storm, a slave market, and even retribution.
So what is this mysterious story about?
Two Marseille merchants, Hugh the Iron and William the Pig, promise to take the children to the Holy Land. Of seven ships, two are wrecked near the island of San Pietro. The remaining children are sold into slavery in Béjaïa and Alexandria. The merchants are later hanged, though for an entirely different crime – conspiring against Emperor Frederick II.
The names of the villains sound as if they were invented by a fabulist. Perhaps they are simply nicknames of the kind given to merchants in port cities.
But no source predating Alberic mentions ships from Marseille. His account gave rise to the popular story of a twelve-year-old shepherd who led thirty thousand children to the sea. These figures have been repeated from book to book, but they appear nowhere in the early chronicles.
Words the Pope may never have spoken
Another famous scene takes place in Rome. Pope Innocent III learns of the Children's Crusade and exclaims with a sigh: "These boys put us to shame: they rush to reclaim the Holy Land while we sleep."
The remark sounds almost too literary. It was recorded by Albert of Stade, who began writing his chronicle in 1240. By then, the pope had been dead for twenty-four years. How the chronicler knew what he had supposedly said remains a mystery. Historians have long questioned the authenticity of the quotation.
What is well established, however, is that Innocent III did call upon Europe to launch another crusade, which took place several years later. In the spring of 1212, at Pentecost, papal processions made their way through the streets. People sang, "Restore to us the True Cross." Many scholars see these prayers as a possible catalyst for the events that followed that summer.
Who really marched to the sea?
The early chronicles paint a much more diverse picture of the crusading crowds. The Royal Chronicle of Cologne describes many thousands of "boys aged six and older, up to adulthood." They traveled in groups of twenty, fifty, or a hundred, often against their parents' wishes. The Annals of Marbach add that the participants included not only children but also adults, married women, and unmarried girls.
The key to the mystery lies in the Latin word chroniclers used to describe these people. It is usually translated as "boys" or "children." But in the Middle Ages, the same term could also refer to servants, farm laborers, and other people of humble status who owned no land and held no social standing.
In the late 1970s, historians proposed that the so-called Children's Crusade had actually been a crusade of the poor.
Later, scholarly opinion swung back in the other direction. Contemporary observers apparently did regard the participants as a distinct age group. There were many children in the crowds, but they were not alone. The Crusade of 1212 was a movement of the poor and the young, with adults, laborers, and young women marching alongside adolescents.
Letters for King Philip
The earliest account of the French crusaders' leader also has the makings of a legend. An anonymous chronicler from Laon tells of a shepherd named Stephen, from near Vendôme. Christ appeared to him in the guise of a pilgrim and entrusted him with letters for the king.
Stephen led a procession from Chartres to Saint-Denis, the abbey near Paris where French kings were buried. Their destination was the court of Philip II Augustus. The shepherd had no intention of going to Jerusalem.
The king made his decision quickly: he ordered the "boys" to return home. The chronicler says nothing whatsoever about Marseille.
The promise of a dry passage
In Germany, the Crusade had its own leader – a boy named Nicholas of Cologne. The Annals of Scheftlarn record his promise that the sea would open a dry passage for the pilgrims, just as it had once done for the people of Israel.
These people saw themselves as a new Israel. They recalled the events of the Exodus. They believed that if God had once led His people through the waters, He would do so again.
They entered Genoa carrying crosses, staffs, and traveling bags. These were the belongings of pilgrims, not the equipment of soldiers setting out for war.
The Genoese annals were kept by Ogerio Pane, a contemporary of the events. He recorded that in late August 1212, more than seven thousand men, women, boys, and girls arrived in the city. He attributed the figure to "the estimate of a trustworthy man." The chronicler had not counted the crowd himself and was careful to make that clear.
But the sea did not part.
Beyond this point, the early sources fall silent. The Cologne chronicle reports that some pilgrims were turned back at Piacenza, while others made it as far as Rome before being sent home. Of the many thousands who had set out, very few returned. What happened to the rest was unknown to their contemporaries, who made no attempt to invent an explanation.
Twenty years later, merchants and ships filled that historical void. Thirty years later came the pope's lament, and still later, a villain from the East. The story became increasingly coherent, while its protagonists grew ever younger.
Yet the outcome remained the same: thousands of poor people believed that the miracle of the Exodus would be repeated for them. They reached the shore, only to find that no dry passage awaited them.
Thus ended the sorrowful story of the "Children's Crusade."
