Children's Crusade

Children's Crusade, 1209 - 1229

While there was no papal bull that called forth the Children's Crusade, it was nevertheless the result of the widespread enthusiasm and fervor that previous papal crusades had aroused. It is one of the most tragic of tales. In 1212 a twelve year old French shepherd boy named Stephen evidently claimed to have had a vision in which Christ appeared to him as a pilgrim and called for the rescue of the Holy Land. Eventually an army of thirty thousand children and adults gathered around Stephen. At about the same time, a ten year old German boy named Nicholas, and a second whose name has been lost, gathered similar groups of an estimated twenty thousand children and adults to go to the Holy Land. While some of these eventually returned to their homes, many died of hunger and of the rigors of the travel. Unscrupulous slave traders promised a large number free passage to the Holy Land 'for God'. Seven ships departed. Two were shipwrecked, and the others were taken to Africa and their passengers sold into slavery.

... At the same time there occurred outbursts of mystical emotion similar to those which had preceded the first crusade. In 1212 a young shepherd of Vendôme and a youth from Cologne gathered thousands of children whom they proposed to lead to the conquest of Palestine. The movement spread through France and Italy. This "Children's Crusade" at length reached Brindisi, where merchants sold a number of the children as slaves to the Moors, while nearly all the rest died of hunger and exhaustion....
New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, Crusades, V. The Crusade Against Constantinople (1204), ¶ 2

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