The Medieval crusades have been seen as something
very brave, courageous and honourable. Also, we tend to forget that we
(the Christian part of the world) didn't come out victorious. No, far
from it ...
One of the episodes that is impossible to forget even
today is the two Children's Crusades in 1212. The first one was
instigated by a 12 year old shepherd-boy called Stephen (or Etienne).
He approached the French king Philip and handed him "a letter from
Jesus" who he said had appeared to him while he was tending the sheep.
Presumably Jesus had ordered him to go and preach the Crusades to the
public. Now, the king didn't believe him or wasn't too impressed by him,
but he himself was undismayed by this fact and started to preach wherever he had a chance to bring out the message to someone.
Actually,
he seems to have been an oral genius who caught the attention of a lot
of people - and circa 20-30,000 thousand children who wanted to follow
him. Some of these children were of noble birth and they had eloped
their wealthy homes to join his "army". At Marseilles two merchants,
Hugh the Iron and William the Pig, offered them ships, free of charge -
and from then on nobody knew anything about them: They disappeared and
were not to be seen or heard of for 18 years.
However, in Germany a
boy by the name of Nicholas entered on the same course. He and his
cohorts - also many girls - set out on their way to Palestine, but the
losses were heavy, due to starvation and other hardships. When many of
them gave up their plans to go to Palestine they were too exhausted to
go back home, but decided to stay where they were, i.e. in Italy. Some
of the dead children's parents were so enraged by Nicholas, who by this
time had disappeared, that they took his aged father and hanged him.
As
to Stephen's company who had set out in three ships then two of these
vessels were shipwrecked and all aboard drowned. This they learned when
a young priest returned home to Europe after 18 years of captivity in a
Muslim country.
He told that those on the third ship were taken to Muslim slave markets
and they learnt the hard way that those two merchants who had proposed
to help them actually had set them up for sale. They were betrayed by
them, but some years later they in their turn were hanged for
attempting to kidnap the Emperor Frederick. Some of the sold Christian
children were killed for not being willing to accept Islam, but others
were lucky enough to be bought by the governor of Egypt, al-Kamil, who
treated them very kindly and who set them to work as interpreters,
teachers, etc. without demanding that they became Muslims.
All in
all these sad stories of committed, but betrayed children should be
better investigated than they are. Most of them are mere myths, but
it's a historical fact that these groups of children set out as
crusaders just as did the grown-ups ...
e.g.: Wikipedia
http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/children.html
Originally Posted On Site: 2009-06-03 11:29:50
Last Login: 05.22.12
Visits as of 12-12-07: 116
Comments:
|
|||
|
|||
