Sunday, March 28, 2010

Children's Crusade

I was looking up some more information on the Childrens Crusade and instead of taking it all for face-value, I tried looking up some information against it. Turns out there was a study in 1977 by Raedts called "The Children's Crusade of 1213". He argued that the army was not made up of primarily children, but of the 'wandering poor'. The traditional view of the crusade was that it began with a little boy claiming that he had been told to lead a crusade to the holy land by Jesus himself. He was supposed to peacefully convert Muslims to Christianity. He gained as many as 30,000 children but before making it to Jerusalem, most either died or were tricked into slavery. Modern views have claimed this story to be fake. Recent historians claim that there were actually two movements of people (of all ages, really). Mistakes in the interpretation of pueri, meaning boys, arose when past historians thought it to literally mean children where they probably actually meant country boys.

1 comment:

  1. It is kind of funny that the leader of the Crusade believed that he can perform Mose's miracle. When he failed to do so, most of the followers went back to their home, found other ways to get to Jerusalem, and were tricked into slavery . .

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