The Impact of the Crusades 133
These popular movements never had official papal backing and many of the
clergy were strongly opposed to what they saw as uncontrolled mass hysteria. Later
enterprises such as that of the Crusade of the Shepherds in 1251 were similarly
fired by ideas of the power of the poor, the pure, and the young, but ended with
pogroms against Jewish communities. during the Seventh Crusade, a certain Master
of Hungary, an old Hungarian monk, claimed that the virgin Mary had given him
a letter promising that the innocent and humble, not the rich and pious, would be
the ones to retake Jerusalem and that he should lead the shepherds of France to
rescue Louis IX who in 1249 had been defeated and captured in Egypt. On arrival
in paris he met Louis’s mother, Blanche of Castile, who was acting as regent. The
chronicler Matthew paris emphasized in his Chronica majora that the Shepherds’
Crusade of 1251 had no papal authorization:
There was a 60-year-old Hungarian... this imposter, who could speak French, german
and Latin, wandered about everywhere preaching without papal authority or the
license of any prelate, falsely claiming that he had received an order from Blessed Mary,
the mother of the Lord, to summon shepherds and herdsmen... He said that heaven
had granted them in their humility and simplicity the privilege of recovering the Holy
Land... 174After leaving paris the enthusiasts split up and created disturbances in rouen,
tours, and Orleans, while in Amiens and Bourges, they attacked Jews but were
dealt with severely—and excommunicated—by the local authorities and clergy.
Again there is no doubt that the papacy strongly disapproved of this crusade.
How do such enterprises compare with later movements in the early fourteenth
century? By contrast we know much more about the latter. The popular Crusade
of 1309 seems to have been unwittingly sparked by Clement v who in 1308 issued
‘Exurgat deus’ to the Knights Hospitallers in which he appealed to the whole of
Christian Europe to organize yet another crusade for the redemption of the Holy
Land.175 It seems that the grandmaster of the Hospitallers had advised him on
how to organize it and suggested that Jews should contribute at least a tenth of
their property—indeed that it might even be fitting to confiscate all of it. This re-
sulted in pogroms against Jews by bands of unorganized crusaders who, having
arrived in the cities along the rhine and the Netherlands made their way to
Avignon attacking and killing Jews en route. Some of those killed may have been
exiles from England and France, others of german origin, under the protection of
duke Jean II of Brabant who eventually came to their aid and drove the crusaders
away. In 1310, from Avignon, Clement v ordered them to disperse.
The Shepherds’ Crusade of 1320 also produced violence against Jews. Although
by the early fourteenth century the days of crusades to the Holy Land on a large
174 Matthew paris, Chronica majora 5, ed. H. r. Luard, rolls Series (London, 1857) (Kraus reprint,
1964), pp.246–7: ‘Quidam natione Hungarus... aetate sexagenarius... Impostor igitur memoratus, qui
linguam gallicam et germanicam (et) Latinam noverat, sine papali auctoritate aut alicujus praelati
patrocinio huc illucque praedicans vagabatur, mentiens se tale praeceptum a beata Maria matre
domini suscepisse, ut videlicet pastores ovium et aliorum animalium convocaret, quibus caelitus, ut
aiebat, concessum fuit, terram Sanctam in sua humilitate et simplicitate... adquirere... ’.
175 Clement v, ‘Exurgat deus’ (11 August 1308), Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.214–16; Simonsohn, p.291.