132 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
pOpES, ‘pOpULAr’ CrUSAdES, ANd JEwS
In the thirteenth century a general weariness with the failures of the highly organ-
ized nobility-led crusades encouraged spontaneous, ‘popular’ crusades such as the
Children’s Crusade of 1212, and the Shepherds’ Crusade of 1251.167 These cru-
sades involved groups of rural poor from the borders between France and the
german Empire, lasted only a few months, and never reached the Near East; but
they often led to mob attacks on Jewish communities. As spin-offs from the much
larger ‘official’ crusading movements, popular preaching for the Albigensian Crusade
authorized by Innocent III against the Cathars prepared the ground for the
Children’s Crusade,168 while during the pontificate of Innocent Iv the Shepherds’
Crusade (the ‘Crusade of the pastoureaux’) of 1251 followed hard on Louis IX’s
disastrous campaign in Egypt.169
Since the participants left no records, it is certain that these ‘people’s’ ventures had
no papal authorization and it seems that even most of the local clergy were against
them. In each case they arose from popular enthusiasm and demagogic propaganda.
Hence, according to vulgar mythology, the leader of the Children’s Crusade of 1212
was a boy prophet who promised to lead hordes of children from France and
germany to Jerusalem to convert the Muslims; in fact it led to their shipwreck on
the way to the Holy Land and their being sold into slavery. Actually, in 1212 there
seems to have been at least two movements: the first, a german enterprise led by a
boy from Cologne named Nicholas which made its way up the rhine and crossed
the Alps into Lombardy on its way to genoa, after which it dispersed in various
directions.170 The second, a French enterprise, supposedly led by a shepherd boy
named Stephen of Cloyes from a village in northern France who claimed he pos-
sessed a letter from Jesus Christ for philip Augustus and who purportedly worked
miracles, but seems to have had no real intention to go to Jerusalem.171
probably most of those participating in both movements were not children but
men and women from the marginal classes of rural society—including shepherds,
younger sons, labourers, wage earners, and drifters—fired by ideas of apostolic
poverty—increasingly fashionable in the thirteenth century—and the preaching of
the Albigensian Crusade and reacting to the disastrous results of the crusades of
Louis IX.172 Yet, unlike the Crusade of peter the Hermit or the later Shepherds’
Crusades, the Children’s Crusade did not generate attacks on Jews, even though
the pueri passed through Chartres, Saint-denis, paris, and Saint-Quentin in picardy,
all of which housed Jewish communities.173
167 gary dickson, The Children’s Crusade: Medieval History, Modern Mythistory (Basingstoke,
2008), passim; gary dickson, ‘The Advent of the pastores’, in Religious Enthusiasm in the Medieval
West, ed. g. dickson (Aldershot, 2000), vI, pp.249–67.
168 gary dickson, ‘The genesis of the Children’s Crusade (1212)’, in Religious Enthusiasm in the
Medieval West, ed. g. dickson (Aldershot, 2000), Iv, p.25.
169 dickson, ‘The Advent of the pastores’, vI, p.258.
170 dickson, The Children’s Crusade, p.76.
171 dickson, The Children’s Crusade, pp.66–77.
172 The Atlas of the Crusades, ed. J. S. C. riley-Smith (London, 1991), p.82.
173 dickson, The Children’s Crusade, pp.78–9.