353 Raimbaut of Vaqueiras, The Poems of the Troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, ed. and trans. J. Liniskill (The Hague: 1964), 218–220, in Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, 88.
354 Spoken to the Crusaders upon arrival in Constantinople. Geoffrey of Villehardouin, “The Conquest of Constantinople,” Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. M.R.B. Shaw (London: 1963), 59, in Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, 159.
355 Albigensianism, or Cartharism, was a heresy that erupted in the south of France in the early part of the eleventh century. Migrating from the East, the heresy was a new manifestation of the ancient Gnostic and Manichaean heresies that infected the early Church. Pope Innocent III tried to stop the heresy by reforming the clergy in southern France, sending missionaries and urging secular rulers to intervene but to no avail. Frustrated by the lack of success and concerned with the growth of the pernicious heresy, Innocent called a Crusade in 1209. The Crusade, which was really a civil war, lasted twenty years and was exceptionally bloody. It achieved mixed results in combating the heresy, which was eventually eradicated through a new papal creation: the inquisitors.
356 R. Bartlett, Medieval Panorama (London: 2001), 12–13, and Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, xiv.
357 Innocent III, Solitae, in A.J. Andrea, The Medieval Record: Sources of Medieval History (Boston: 1997), 9, n.4, in Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, 5.
358 Innocent III, Die Register Innocenz’ III, ed. Othmar Hageneder and Anton Haidacher (Graz-Cologne: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., 1964), I:II, 18–20, in Donald E. Queller and Thomas F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade—The Conquest of Constantinople, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 1.
359 Tyerman, God’s War, 480.
360 His first Crusade (the Fourth) was called less than six months into his pontificate. He called his last Crusade at Perugia in the rain less than ten weeks before his death. (Dickson, The Children’s Crusade, 30.) Among the Crusades called by Innocent are the major campaigns known as the Fourth and Fifth Crusades as well as the Albigensian Crusade.
361 Riley-Smith, The Crusades, 148–149.
362 This was instituted during the Albigensian Crusade and led to great difficulty in the prosecution of the campaign for the commanders of the Crusade, as manpower constantly fluctuated based on time rather than mission requirements.
363 Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, xiii.
364 Ibid., 47
365 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 10.
366 On the life expectancy of the Dandolo family see Thomas Madden, “Enrico Dandolo: His Life, His Family, and His Venice before the Fourth Crusade” (Ph.D diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993), 63–65, in Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 9. Mariano Sanudo, a sixteenth-century Venetian chronicler indicates Dandolo was eighty-five when elected doge.Marino Sanudo, Vitae ducum venetorum, ed. Lodovico Antonio Muratori, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores (Milan: 1733), vol. 22, col. 527, in Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 9.
367 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 12.
368 Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, 66. What the Crusaders were asking was daunting: ships for an army of almost 35,000 men. The Crusaders also proposed an installment plan of 15,000 marks due on August 1, 1201; 10,000 marks due on November 1, 1201; 10,000 marks due on February 2, 1202 and the balance of 50,000 marks due at the end of April 1202. The ambassadors paid 5,000 marks up front in order to begin construction of the fleet immediately.
369 Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, 61.
370 Ibid.
371 Ibid., 65.
372 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 17.
373 Robert of Clari, La conquête de Constantinople, English trans. Edgar H. McNeal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), sec. 7, 8, and sec. 11, 9-10, in Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 17.
374 Tyerman, God’s War, 513.
375 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 19.
376 Ibid., 23.
377 Villehardouin, Conquête de Constantinople, sec. 56, I: 58. In Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 48.
378 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 49.
379 Ibid., 51.
380 Vitaliano Brunelli, Storia della città di Zara (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Arti Grafiche, 1913) 361, in Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 56.
381 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 57.
382 Ibid., 74.
383 Villehardouin, Conquête de Constantinople, sec. 83, I: 82–84. In Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 75.
384 Ibid.
385 Peter of Les Vaux-de-Cernay, The History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. W.A. and M.D. Sibly (Woodbridge: 1998), 58, in Tyerman, God’s War, 529.
386 Innocent III, Register, 5:160 (161), 316, in Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 77.
387 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 77.
388 Innocent III, Contemporary Sources for the Fourth Crusade, trans. A.J. Andrea (Leiden: 2000), 41, in Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, 124.
389 Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, 196.
390 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 90.
391 Ibid., 89.
392 Tyerman, God’s War, 532.
393 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 102.
394 Ibid.
395 Innocent III, letter to Crusade leaders in Chronicles of the Crusades, ed. Hallam, 211.
396 Tyerman, God’s War, 543.
397 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 108.
398 France, Western Warfare, 107.
399 Villehardouin, “Conquest,” Chronicles of the Crusades, 64, in Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, 164.
400 Robert of Clari, The Conquest of Constantinople, trans. E.H. McNeal (New York: 1966), 67, in Tyerman, God’s War, 544.
401 Villehardouin, Conquête de Constantinople, sec. 165, I:166, in Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 122.
402 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 123.
403 For the number of acres destroyed see Tyerman, God’s War, 546. For the number of homeless see Thomas F. Madden, “The Fires of the Fourth Crusade in Constantinople, 1203–1204: A Damage Assessment,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 84/85 (1992): 73–74, 88. In Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 125.
404 Tyerman, God’s War, 546.
405 David Nicolle, The Fourth Crusade 1202–1204—The Betrayal of Byzantium (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2011), 64.
406 Casualty figures from Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 146, and Nicolle, The Fourth Crusade, 64.
407 Tyerman, God’s War, 549.
408 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 151.
409 According to Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 179, the Crusaders suffered 100 killed in action and presumably many wounded.
410 Robert of Clari in Nicolle, The Fourth Crusade, 70.
411 Robert of Clari, Conquest, 97, in Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, 251.
412 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 183.
413 Ibid.
414 Ibid.
415 Nicolle, The Fourth Crusade, 76.
416 Ibid.
417 Geoffrey of Villehardouin, The Conquest of Constantinople, trans. M.R.B. Shaw (London: 1963), 93, in Tyerman, God’s War, 501.
418 Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, 258.
419 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 195.
420 Nicetas Choniates, Historia, 573. In Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 194.
421 Geoffrey of Villehardouin, La Conquête de Constantinople, ed. and French trans. E. Faral, 2 vols. (Paris: 1973), English trans. M.R.B. Shaw as Joinville & Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades (Harmondsworth: 1963), ch. 250, tr. 92, in Housley, Fighting for the Cross, 165.
422 The estimate is Villehardouin’s in Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 200.
423 Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades, 118.
424 Horace K. Mann, The Lives of the Popes of the Middle Ages, vol. XII (London: 1925–1932), 266–267; Mary Purcell, St. Anthony and His Times (Dublin: 1960
), 26, in Carroll, The Glory of Christendom, 158.
425 Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, iii (Cambridge: 1951–1953), 130, in Tyerman, God’s War, 495.
426 Tyerman, God’s War, 553.
427 Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, 311.
428 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 198.
429 John Paul II, “Welcome Address to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I,” 3. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_
ii/speeches/2004/june/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20040629_bartholomew-i_en.html. Accessed November 1, 2013.
430 Ibid.
431 1 Cor 4:5.
432 John Paul II, “Welcome Address to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I,” 3. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_
ii/speeches/2004/june/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20040629_bartholomew-i_en.html. Accessed November 1, 2013.
7
A Saint and a Sinner
He [St. Francis of Assisi] fought in the Crusade, in which he and he alone emerged the victor”
Arnaldo Fortini433
His [Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II] conversation reveals that he does not believe in the Christian religion. When he spoke of it, it was to ridicule it.
Ibn al-Djusi434
In early thirteenth-century Italy, the political environment among the various towns and cities was delicate and tense. When this situation turned into open warfare between the cities of Perugia and Assisi, many young men on both sides rushed to arms. The Battle of Collestrada ended in disaster for the smaller city of Assisi, with most of its forces captured by the Perugians. Among the captives was a twenty-year-old man from a wealthy Assisi family who had joined the fight with dreams of glory and honor. His name was Giovanni di Bernardone, called “Francesco” (Francis) by his father.435
Francis suffered for a long year in a Perugian prison until he was finally released when his father paid a significant ransom. Several years later, Francis was traveling through the countryside near Assisi when he came upon an abandoned, dilapidated old church dedicated to the great eleventh-century saint Peter Damien. The young soldier knelt before the large painted crucifix to pray. During his prayer, Francis witnessed a miracle as the image of Christ came to life and instructed him, “Go, repair my house, which, as you see, is falling completely to ruin.”436
Initially Francis believed the imperative from Christ concerned the specific church of Peter Damien, but the Lord’s plan was much greater. Francis spent time in prayer and finally came to the decision to renounce his family wealth in order to serve Christ completely by begging alms for his existence. This radical approach to holiness soon attracted others, and within five short years of his dramatic encounter in San Damiano, Pope Innocent III recognized his followers in a religious order known as the Order of Friars Minor, or the “Franciscans.”
St. Francis saw the need to evangelize those arrayed against Christendom, especially Muslims. Only two years after the papal approval of his religious order, the holy friar and several companions decided to risk martyrdom by preaching the gospel to Muslims in the Holy Land. However, their ship ran into bad weather, and they were forced to return home. Undaunted by this setback, Francis once more planned an expedition to North Africa. This time he walked to Spain in the hopes of seeking transport, but became ill and once more was forced to cancel his plans. It would take several more years before the holy friar from Assisi could fulfill his desire to preach the gospel to the adherents of Islam, and it was the occasion of another major Crusade that provided the opportunity.
The “Children’s Crusade”
The same century that witnessed the arrival of the holy man of Assisi and his brown-robed companions also gave birth to another movement motivated by deep piety. What history records as the “Children’s Crusade” occurred “at a time when Crusading fervor gripped every level of European society … [it] sprang to life in an era of extraordinary religious creativity.”437 Often cited by critics to invalidate the Crusades, the so-called Children’s Crusade evokes images of toddlers and small children leaving their homes enthralled with the misguided and almost perverse prospect of participating in the grand adventure of military campaigns to the Holy Land. In a sense, the episode of the Children’s Crusade serves as an icon of modern reactions toward the entire Crusading movement. Today’s understanding of the Children’s Crusade and the Crusades in general is guided more by “mythistory” than actual history.
The term itself is a misnomer, for the event involved neither an army of children nor a Crusade. In essence the Children’s Crusade was an urban migration of young people who came from among the poor of society. Their poverty was not the reason for their migration;438 rather, it came about through their adherence to the mainstream and popular acceptance of the Crusading movement. The participants of the Children’s Crusade were “shepherds, ploughmen, carters, agricultural workers, rural artisans [who were] without a settled stake in the land or community, rootless and mobile.”439 Although young people were the primary (though not sole) participants, they were not children but rather teenagers and young adults. The movement was neither an armed pilgrimage (the participants carried no weapons) nor sanctioned by the Church, so it was not properly a Crusade. The Church showed little interest either positively or negatively in this youth movement. There were no condemnations, but no public pronouncements of support either.
What is known for certain about the misnamed Children’s Crusade is that between Easter and Pentecost of 1212 young people in the Chartrain region of France (part of the Ile-de-France area near Paris), motivated by religious fervor, took the cross. The specific birthplace of the movement can be traced to the town of Chartres, which was an important religious and educational center in the thirteenth century. Chartres was not only a center of religious devotion but was also an area that specially embraced the Crusading movement. The Chartrain was a major recruiting area for the First Crusade and many of its famous citizens participated in that inaugural event, including Count Stephen of Blois and Fulcher, the First Crusade chronicler. Another reason for the launch of the Children’s Crusade may have centered on the failure of the nobility to achieve Crusade objectives, leading people to believe that the “failure of the experienced, rich and proud was to be redeemed by the innocent, pure and humble.”440
The Leader
Motivated by the general Crusading fervor present in their region, young people and some older men of Chartres began their “itinerant processional” in the spring of 1212.441 The group carried the typical items of religious processions: banners, candles, crosses, and censers, singing songs with Crusading themes, specifically asking the Lord God to “raise up Christendom!” and to “return to us the True Cross!”442 The movement grew in strength and numbers when a charismatic youth from Cloyes, a town thirty-five miles south of Chartres, became the de facto leader of the movement.
Stephen of Cloyes was a shepherd, a profession that medieval spirituality saw as pure and innocent. Stephen believed the Lord Jesus had appeared to him, giving him letters to be delivered to King Philip II Augustus. His divine mission became the specific objective of the youth in the Children’s Crusade and attracted more followers, perhaps as many as 30,000.443 Stephen and his merry band eventually reached Paris, ninety miles away from Chartres. There they made known their desire to see King Philip to deliver the letters allegedly given to Stephen by the Lord.
The king did not meet the enthusiastic group of young people, but on June 24, 1212, he made known through his officials his command for them to return home to their families. With this kingly imperative, the story of Stephen of Cloyes and the Children’s Crusade in France comes to an end. Though disappointed by the king’s response, many of the French youth complied, but others ignored the command and continued their procession eastward toward the Rhineland.
The remnant of the French youth movement crossed the Rhine and gathered new members from among the German youth of the Rhineland. Unlike the French movement, which mostly contained young
adults, the Rhineland expedition included a wide cross-section of society from urban workers to the elderly to mothers and infants and even entire families. What linked both the French and German movements was the complete absence of armed warriors or clergy. The Rhineland movement, just like the French one, began in a city well known as a pilgrimage site: Cologne, the largest and wealthiest German city in the thirteenth century, and one of four major pilgrimage destinations in Christendom.
Nicholas of Cologne
Just as the French element of the “Children’s Crusade” grew in numbers due to the charismatic leadership of Stephen of Cloyes, so too did the Rhineland movement from the leadership of Nicholas of Cologne. There is nothing known for certain about Nicholas’s background or motivations for leading the Rhineland element of the Children’s Crusade, but it is well accepted that he was a pious man who attracted thousands of people, perhaps as many as 7,000, to join him in taking the cross on an expedition to liberate Jerusalem.444 Nicholas’s objective was to march to the sea to find transport to the Holy Land, and so he led the youth of the Rhineland across the Alps and into Italy in late July 1212.
Once in Italy, initial enthusiasm waned with the weariness of travel and the recognition of reality. As a result, many of Nicholas’s followers decided to end their participation by settling in Genoa, while others immigrated to Pisa. Still others, perhaps the remaining French element, left Italy for Marseilles where they hoped to find transport to the Holy Land. Instead, immoral merchants duped them into boarding ships bound for Alexandria where some were drowned in shipwrecks and others were sold into slavery.445 The remaining youth went to Rome where they asked Innocent III to release them from their Crusade vow. Those younger than fourteen and the elderly were granted their request, but participants not in those categories were still held to their vow.446 Nicholas was last sighted in Brindisi looking for transport to the Holy Land. It is possible that he fulfilled his Crusade vow by joining the Fifth Crusade and fighting in the Egyptian campaign of 1218–1221.447
The Legacy of the Children’s Crusade
The Glory of the Crusades Page 18