Women and Children of the Crusades - Case Study Example

WOMEN AND CHILDREN OF THE CRUSADES April 20, The year 1212 has been marked as one of the most remarkable of all crusades, because it was the year of the Children’s Crusade. Munro and Hansbery complain about the lack of resources with credibility on this particular crusade. The movement, nevertheless, is documented to happen sometime between Easter and the Pentecost and spread across northern France, Flanders, and Western Germany.1 As for women, their roles in the crusades are often not well-documented, most likely because of their gender, although some scholars have started to examine the chronicles and annals more closely to examine women’s participation in the crusades.2 Sources note that women played diverse roles during the crusades and that their home based functions should not be overlooked at all, since they kept the household and businesses alive, while their male family members were away, or died in the crusades.3 The Children’s Crusade is an effort to reclaim the Holy Land from the infidels, while the women played diverse direct and indirect roles in the military, spiritual, and financial aspect of the Crusades. The Children’s Crusade has been argued as a reaction of the disappointed youth with the crusaders, because they have not yet reclaimed Jerusalem from the infidels. They were made of children and other adolescents, who aimed to reach the Holy Land and retrieve it from the Muslims. Madden calls the Children’s Crusade as not a real crusade, but more of a collection of uprisings and processions, where the core medieval belief is that poverty will help them achieve their holy goals.4 This can be rooted that Jesus favored the poor over the rich, and so they must have believed that if the poor led the crusades, their victory will also be assured by Jesus Christ.5 Since this crusade by the children was a popular movement, its origins and developments are difficult to trace. None of the participants wrote about the event in a firsthand manner, for instance, as in the more official forms of crusades.6 In “The Children’s Crusade,” Munro reviews the veracity of the chronicles regarding the Children’s Crusade. She notes that for accounts regarding the French children, the most reliable sources are the unspecified chroniclers of Laon, Mortemer, Jumièges, and Andres.7 She notes that these writers markedly illustrated the same movement, but few facts are presented except for one of them. She provides brief accounts from each, where the story of the holy shepherd boy called Stephen can be narrated. On June, 1212, Stephen from the village of Cloyes, near Vendôme, declared that the Lord had appeared to him, dressed as a poor pilgrim, had taken bread from him, and had provided him a letter to bring to the King of France.8 He travelled to S. Denis with shepherds of his own age and there the Lord performed numerous miracles through him, as many have witnessed.9 There were also many other boys who went with him and performed miracles. Numerous children joined them, as if they were to be long-term followers of the holy boy Stephen whom they all perceived as their master and prince.10 The bands, made of girls, boys, adolescents and several older persons, paraded through the cities, castles, towns, and villages, holding banners, candles, and crosses, and censers, singing in their language, “Lord God, exalt Christianity! Lord God, restore to us the true cross.”11 They sang these words and many more, which attracted more followers to the procession. When the children were asked by their parents or others where they would go, they would shout in unison: “To God.”12 The children could not be stopped initially, but based on the records of Jumièges, they went home when they got hungry.13 The Laon chronicle stated that the king, upon consultation with the masters of the University of Paris about this matter, finally ordered the children to go back home.14 The other two chroniclers do not provide any ending to this procession. As for the prevalence of the movement, one declares that the children came from different areas of Gaul; another, that the movement affected almost all of Gaul; a third points out that it was concentrated in the Kingdom of the French; while the fourth says that the children walked from different cities, castles, towns, and villages.15 Munro states that Jumièges and Mortemer are near Rouen, and Andres near Calais. Furthermore, the places where the children’s crusade occurred includes Paris, Laon, Calais, and Rouen, where it is possible that the movement started from Vendôme and may have reached other places.16 The four sources suggest that the participants were plentiful; where Laon stresses that the number with Stephen reaches 30,000.17 Munro stresses that only one of these sources talks about Stephen or declares that the movement had any harmony or purpose, except going “to God.”18 These sources did not mention any reference to pilgrimage or the Crusades. Only later sources indicate that these movements can possibly be related to the Crusades. The Annals of Soissons assert that the infants and children said they were traveling across the sea to look for the holy cross; and the Chronicle of Barnwell depicts that the children, when asked what they wanted to do, said that they were about to take back the cross of Christ.19 The opinion soon became prevalent that the French children planned a crusade, and soon writers provided more details. For instance, an unnamed author adds to the chronicle of Matthew of Paris a story about the children’s march towards the Mediterranean.20 The leader led a chariot with armed soldiers surrounding him and was known to be so sacred that anyone would be called fortunate if he had a piece of his hair.21 These are only some of the accounts, which had scarce details. Another story is about Nicholas from Cologne who either started or rapidly became the focus of the popular movement in Rhineland.22 Nicholas is believed to have planned to go to Jerusalem and save it from Muslims.23 By the 10th of August, he and his band had reached Piacenza and by next Saturday, they arrived at Genoa.24 Since the crusade was not planned in any systematic way, defections were widespread. When the children arrived at Mainz, many already left and went home.25 Many of those who persevered died from hunger, hear, or thirst, before they even reached Italy.26 Those who did arrive at Genoa faced a huge problem, because the Genoese asked them to leave, since at that time, they supported the cause of the Pope against the Emperor. The children’s crusade also disintegrated, because the children saw that the sea did not part, like it once did for the Israelites, so that they could march directly to Jerusalem.27 Some decided to serve as slaves in Genoa, because of the fear of not surviving the trip back, while the rest maintained their determination and used ships to cross the sea. Others went home with jeers surrounding them.28 Some of them are believed to have reached Brindisi, but the bishop dissuaded them from proceeding to Jerusalem because of their youth.29 In Rome, the Pope dismissed them and asked them to take part in the crusades at the right age, along with the elderly who came with them.30 A number of the children, nevertheless, still reached Marseilles, but were believed to have perished in the seas that tried to bring them to Jerusalem.31 A few years later, Pope Gregory IX established the Church of the New Innocents to commemorate those who died in the Children’s Crusade.32 Hence, these chronicles show that the Children’s crusade ended with tragedy, since the children had no real guidance and support from adults, and were too young to be integrated into the crusades of the adults. Women are also chronicled to provide various supportive functions to the crusades, including the military front. Some extremely wealthy women took the cross to be with their husbands, although there were very few of them.33 They were Eleanor of Aquitaine during the Second Crusade and Marie of Flanders during the Third Crusade.34 Allen and Amt report of chronicles that women also fought side-by-side male crusaders, although the accounts are few, while others contributed in other ways that were not expected of women during that time.35 The Annals of Niketas Choniates narrates how females fought with the German crusaders in the Second Crusade, “riding horseback in the manner of men, not in coverlets sidesaddle but unashamedly astride, and bearing lances and weapons as men do.”36 One of them stood out and was compared to Penthesilea, a mythical queen of the Amazons, and with the embroidered gold that adorned the hem and fringes of her garments, she was called Goldfoot.37 This is an example of stories that respected the active role of women in the military front of the crusades. The Memoirs of Ramon Muntaner speaks of the courage and strength of a woman at Perelada, who was called Marcadera because she sold goods. She dressed as a knight and attacked a French soldier.38 She asked this man to yield, which he did, because he and his horse were already wounded. She brought this man to the king and queen who accepted her and her prisoner with merriment.39 These examples highlighted the bravery and courage of women as crusaders in their own right. Other women supported the work of the crusaders by doing several chores, such as cooking, mending clothing, and other activities.40 These functions may be minor, but they supported the logistical needs of the crusades. Women, as far as the crusades were concerned, were not allowed to actively participate in anyway, although later on, they were hired to be prayer warriors and provide financial support to the crusades.41 Pope Innocent III was believed to have been the first to maximize the powers of women in improving the resources for the crusades. Women who could not participate in the crusades prayed, fasted, or made monetary donations.42 They served as the prayer warriors of the crusades, where they prayed for the success and safety of their men. Pope Innocent also removed the traditional rights of women to stop their husbands from joining the crusades. Apparently, during this time, men could only say that they could not join the crusades, because their wives have not permitted them, which was acceptable then because of women’s conjugal rights.43 During the Third Crusade, however, numerous men had abused this right, so Innocent decided to remove that loophole. Furthermore, Innocent also allowed those who cannot serve the war to pay for the expenses of one crusader, as a form of indulgence.44 Innocent’s predecessors expanded this practice, especially Gregory IX. Popes encouraged all Christians, male or female alike, to take the cross. After that, the vow could be “redeemed” the day after it was made through donating money.45 Men could not redeem their vows, only women could. As a result, they actively financed the crusades too. Furthermore, women also acted as heirs and managers of the land left by their male family members. For example, sometime between 1060 and 1080, in the Vendômois in Northern France, the Lady Hersendis had to assume responsibility for her familys fortunes, since her husband went to Jerusalem for the crusades.46 The history of women in southern France also provided examples of women who became economic entrepreneurs after their men were gone. Raymond Donat had three sons and two daughters.47 One of the sons and the heir of a second participated in the crusade, and mortgaged or sold their land to their sister Saura.48 Saura took the land and turned it into a productive venture. These women then supported the crusades too through surviving the lands given to them. Without their indirect participation in the crusades as home and business managers, the crusaders’ lands and businesses would have perished. Children and women participated in similar and different ways to support the crusades. Children, who participated through forming a crusade of their own, wanted to actively support the crusades, with the belief that their processions were blessed by God. They somehow intended to directly replace the adult crusaders and to retrieve Jerusalem, a feat that previous crusaders had failed to achieve. However, because of their youth, they failed and many died or became slaves along the way. Women, on the other hand, contributed directly at the military front, or indirectly as managers of the lands and household that their men left behind. Furthermore, they also participated by providing supporting work during the crusades, such as sewing and cooking for soldiers. Hence, these women and children were not invisible during the crusades. Instead, they were actively involved in carrying the cross through different functions, in order to achieve a single mission- to retrieve the Hold Land in the name of the Christian God. Bibliography Allen, S.J. and Emilie Amt (eds.). Crusades: A Reader. Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Gerish, Deborah. “Gender Theory.” In The Crusades edited by Nicholson, Helen. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. Hansbery, Joseph E. “The Childrens Crusade.” The Catholic Historical Review 24, no. 1 (Apr. 1938): 30-38. Herlihy, David. “Land, Family and Women in Continental Europe, 701-1200.” Traditio 18 (1962): 89-120. Madden, Thomas F. The New Concise History of the Crusades. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005. Munro, Dana C. “The Childrens Crusade.” The American Historical Review 19, no. 3 (1914): 516-524. Read More