Timesuck with Dan Cummins - Short Suck 63: The Children's Crusade: Faith, Folly, and 30,000 Kids

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

In 1212, thousands of children set out across Europe believing God would part the Mediterranean and lead them peacefully to Jerusalem. (Spoiler alert: God didn't.) Their impossible journey became one of the strangest and most hotly debated events of the Middle Ages, blurring the line between history, myth, religious fervor, and mass delusion. It's also wildly entertaining.  For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to another edition of Time Suck Short Sucks. I'm Dan Cummins, and today, dear God, do I have quite the tale for you? In May of 1212, C.E., a group of European crusaders set their sights, like many crusaders had before them, on the Middle East. Their goal was lofty, but the plan was pretty simple. They were just going to walk from France, walk through Germany, walk down into the Alps, into Italy, gather up new converts to their cause, as they inevitably lost some to a good. exhaustion, home sickness or a general, what the hell have I gotten myself into vibe? In Italy, they would then proceed to Genoa, where their leader, Nicholas, would raise his iron

tau as one does, a Greek symbol, looks like a tea, and the waters of the Mediterranean Sea would, of course, part before them, obviously, allowing the crusaders to walk quite a ways on foot to Jerusalem, after walking quite a bit, where they would then recapture the city without even having to fight along with. with Jesus' tomb and the prize of all prizes, the Holy Cross. Like I said, pretty simple plan. Super straightforward. But I did forget to mention something about it. These crusaders were not battle-scarred veterans.

They were not aristocratic Europeans who had trained as swordsmen and royally outfitted armories either. They didn't even have the Pope's approval to launch this crusade because there was no way the Pope, Innocent the Third, would ever give his approval to something that would so obviously fail. And why would it so obviously fail? Oh, because these crusaders were not adults. They were children. Words and ideas can change the world. I hated her, but I wanted to love my mother. I have a dream. I'll plead not guilty right now. Your only chance is to leave with us. A brief note before we get into today's information. Two, actually. One, I did touch on this crusade in the Times.

episode about the Crusades, episode 353 that came out way back in, I guess, wasn't that long ago, June 19th, 2023, but I just barely touched on this. And two, almost all of the available accounts of the Children's Crusade, meaning, you know, what was written about it at the time is pretty dense, vague, and frequently contradictory. It's been a notoriously difficult topic for historians to separate fact from mythology to figure out what is mythical about this tale. versus what is truly historical. The best source we found for this episode was a 2008 book by historian Gary Dixon. Yes, his name is a combination of

Dick and son, and he's sick of being teased about it, okay? Okay? And the book titled The Children's Crusade, Medieval History, Modern Myth Story, which also happens to be incredibly academic and somewhat hard to analyze,

you know, is a little tricky, but we've done our best to piece together what seems like the likeliest timeline from both contemporary and modern sources and not boggy down with a bunch of extra, you know, details that would cause me if I was listening to lose focus. I just wanted to preface this one with the knowledge that, as with many other medieval events, it's not quite clear what happened, how it happened, and especially why it happened, with 100% certainty. But some version of this crazy shit did happen. And that was enough for me to want to share it. Now that I've qualified this all, allow me to actually share the fucking wild story of the Children's Crusade. What a world.

It's hard to overstate just how much spring, as in the season of spring, mattered back in 13th century Europe. For most medieval people whose lives fucking sucked. That is the peasantry. Spring was important because it meant that the annual agrarian cycle had restarted. In every spring, these poor peasants never far removed from the threat of starvation were busy tending to their farms and trying to to grow enough food to hopefully live another year or more optimistically, maybe even be able to stock a bit away for a year when the harvest was not so good. But mostly, these peasants were focused on survival, not on thriving. Being outside also meant that the average person got to pick up

their social life again, at least a little bit. Some of the best sources we have about how the medieval peasants enjoyed themselves or lyrics from songs and romance plays, which often reflected the possibility of love, seeming much closer in the spring. Love was probably more attainable at that time because there were more opportunities to be outside and meet people, you know, at games, tournaments, and festivals. Spring also meant that the few roads that exist were actually usable again, which made military campaigns possible, and the Easter season meant that pilgrims and crusaders were now able to board the ships of the Italian maritime cities for their regular Easter passage to the Levant, aka the Middle East, aka the Holy Land. A lot of excitement in the spring. and it would be during this time of excitement that the children's crusade was born. According to a contemporary German chronicler,

between Easter and Pentecost, many thousands of Puyeri, the Latin word for children, from all of Germany and France, abandoned their rural labors and took up the cross. What? The kids did what? Who were these kids specifically? How old were they? What were they trying to accomplish?

Let's begin with that German chronicler's description, in particular, his use of. the word pueri, though most scholars accept that it refers to children, and actually boys specifically, not everybody agrees that that's what this writer meant in this context. In 1977, the Dutch historian Peter Reitz argued that the Latin term pueri referred not only to those who were children, but also to people who were socially small. Oh, language. How fun. It's constantly changing, which is why there's so much debate, particularly within religious scholars and historical scholars, you know, studying early civilizations about whether or not ancient texts mean what

they think we mean, since we weren't around to know what, you know, kind of slang, for example, is being tossed around at that exact time and place and, you know, that the shit was being studying and written. And we also don't know, you know, any of these authors personally, obviously, or in many, if not most cases, even know what their contemporaries thought about them. We don't know how well they were masters of their own languages. We don't know how credible they were. Are we read in an ancient version of some celebrated, you know, equivalent of a modern, celebrated historian like Ron Chernow, or of a prolific, you know, word salad conspiracies like David Ike? We don't know. In this case, Pueri could be peasants of different ages who belong to the lowest echelon of society, and several sources specifically mentioned that some adult men and women, including some elderly members, did take part in the events of 1212.

However, the word infantes also appears in the sources describing participants in the crusade, and that term does refer unequivocally at this time to only children. Well, actually, at any time. Going back to that point about men and women being involved, it's also important to note that back in medieval Europe, childhood didn't have the same boundaries, as it does today, wasn't bounded by the legal age of 18. Instead, childhood generally ended between the ages of 12 and 14, marking the transition into legal, social, and physical adulthood.

What a different world. I'm still helping to give my 20-year-old son a soft launch into adulthood. Happy to do so. He's a great kid, you know, an adult, technically, but in so many ways, still a kid at 20. And I know so many other people around that age that are technically adults, legally adults,

but also could they survive on their own? I think most of them would figure it out if they had to, but I also think it would be quite a struggle. And that's 20. And I know that plenty of 20-year-olds do survive 100% on their own. Some are even raising children. But 12, do you know any 12-year-olds out there complaining about how hard it is to cover their rent or how much of a dick their bosses? Well, fucking help them if you do.

Good God. Why are you commiserating about adult problems with the 12-year-old? But age 12 was broadly recognized as the end of early childhood for girls who under the church canon law could now legally marry at 12. that's horrific. 14, on the other hand, applied to boys, these fucking old men, 14, was the age they could reasonably give testimony, take on criminal responsibility,

commit themselves to marriage. So it's possible that the quote, unquote, adult men and women who are mentioned in other sources maybe not that much older than the kids they were traveling with since these adults, you know, might have been like the age of a sixth grader

or seventh or eighth grader. Next, where in Germany? Germany and France did all these kids come from. In France, they mostly came from the city of Chartres. A lot of popular YouTubers and supposed experts for shows on networks like Nat Geo, travel experts, pronounced a city in a variety of ways, by the way, surprised by how many he say shart, as in he thought it was just going to be a fart, but then he sharded and he humiliated himself.

Even famed, famed, respected travel guy, Rick Steves, seems to prefer the word shart. Is the city of shart? Here. The city of Shart. Let's hear that again. Is the city of Shart. The city of Shart. Oh.

I'm going to try not to follow your lead, Rick. Correct or not? I don't want to be, you know, sharting up here today. At the time, Chartres was an Episcopal city, the center of a region known as the Chartrain. And the Chartrain was part of the Ilde France, the top region of France, whose leading city Paris

Paris was beginning to emerge as the capital of the Capitian kingdom whose dynasty had ruled France from 987 CE the glory days of Chartres

once famous school were behind it though and now the University of Paris put every other educational institution in France to shame but Chartres not Sharts had other things

going for it Chartres' location on the western edge of the fertile booze plain made it a very prosperous city By exporting cereal grains grown in the booze, Chartres merchants made themselves a lot of money. All of this farming required, of course, a lot of bodies, a lot of peasants,

and the peasant population of the Chartran increased through the 12th century, peaking in the 1250s. In addition to being a commercial hub, Chartres was also an important shrine city, drawing in pilgrims from all over the region. This was especially true for major church festivals and processions which famous religious relics were displayed throughout the city. the pride of Charterre's relic collection

was the Saint-Chemise, said to be the tunic, which the Virgin Mary was wearing when she gave birth to the baby Jesus. Uh-huh. Relics and the cities that had them were very important to medieval Europe. To the medieval mind, relics didn't move

unless God willed them to move, which gave the cities where they resided a certain, you know, holy status, a holiness quotient. God clearly loves, obviously. some cities more than others, just like you like some sports teams more than others, right? And if God loves your city more, do you get more food, less disease, bigger, harder dicks, tighter, wetter, or pusses?

No, you fucking don't, but you do get some sweet-ass relics, which were arguably cooler. So don't complain. Be happy with your relics. Having the top-tier relic of the Saint-Chamees, even though there is zero-proof that Barry ever wore it, just like there's zero-proof, other than people we don't know saying that it happened, that she actually gave birth to a virgin, or as a virgin, made Chartres a lot of money on tourism. Knights believed that if they touched this tunic,

they would be unscathed, unscard, unwounded in battle. So they made sure to make a stop in Chartres before heading off to the next war. Statistically speaking, a lot of those dudes who touched it, almost certainly, got super fucked up in battles. Most of the pilgrims who came to see the magic tunic, however, were there for a different reason, a miracle cure.

Cool, cool. Mary in particular was known to heal her worshippers at this time in France. I mean, she for sure wasn't. She was not dishing out miracle cures because, you know, if she was, well, why the fuck did she stop? Right? Why isn't she still doing it? Come on.

Why aren't you still doing it, Mary, in a time when we can verify the potency, of your supposed miracles. But anyway, they felt that touching her shirt, her supposed shirt, felt like a sure bet that some divine healing was heading their way. Because illness affects those across all social classes, that meant a lot of different kinds of people were mixing in Chartres, not the city of Sharding, all the time. There were nobles and peasants, the rich and the poor, male and female, old, and of course, young.

Indeed, the young played important roles in Chartres' methods of religious worship. Fifty years before the Children's Crusade, roughly, teams of peasants had come together in Chartres to raise the towers of the new Romanesque cathedral. Covered in sweat, they dragged cartloads, breaking their... backs of heavy building materials from outlying areas to the construction sites, including stones, wooden beams, lime to bind the whole thing together as well as preparing food for the laborers employed on the job. An eyewitness named Hameau, who was the abbot of Sa Pierre Suvdiv, at the time, would write about this event saying that in addition to adult enthusiasts,

children and very young children, oh, cool, toiled just as hard as their elders as they struggled and strained to pull the cumbersome wagons. Oh, that's fun. Super young kids doing that labor. Some of these kids took it further than acting as what sounds like human mules being exploited, pulling wagons. They had themselves flogged, check this out, had themselves flogged by weeping priests, not just any old priest, a weeping priest, as the priest prayed to the Virgin Mary that

everyone would be healed from their afflictions. Oh, will I ever cease to be left in awe and dumbfounded when it comes to the dumbfuckery that so many my fellow humans think God actually expects of them. I don't think so. Probably not. I know I've rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, making fun of religion over the years, but come on!

The jokes I've made, they've been earned. Shit like this has earned them. This is cartoonishly ridiculous. I'm not saying that believing that your God, you know, want you to weep while praying to him, while also flogging some little kids who are being exploited, you know, labor-wise,

so that he can heal you, makes you an idiot or insane or an insane idiot. but I am saying that it probably does. Like if you believe that the creator of the universe, the master of the universe is out there somewhere thinking, I ain't healed no one, no time, unless they show me some of them tears while praying, while whipping them kids.

I mean, you are an idiot, right? Aren't you? They're fucking nuts. I mean, is it possible to be sane and intelligent and believe something that fucking absurd? After the cathedral was built, and then a few decades later, patched up after a fire destroyed someone,

of it, God failed to protect the work of all those fucking whipped children. How are people supposed to show their devotion to their petulant, whimsical, mentally ill skydady? By crusading, of course. Because Sharded was a shrine city. There was basically a crusade culture that everybody was steeped in.

Crusade enthusiasm had spread to the Chartran almost as soon as the first crusade was launched at Clermont, November 27th, 1095 C.E. And why call for a crusade? to begin with. I'll tell you after today's first to two mid-show sponsor breaks,

if you don't want to hear these ads, please sign up to be a space lizard on Patreon, get the catalog ad-free, get these episodes early and more. Thanks for listening those ads, and now, so why call for a crusade to begin with? Well, for the past couple of centuries,

Islam had spread far and wide to formerly Christian lands in the Near East and North Africa in the 7th century, and to the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily over the end of the first millennium. And for some reason, even though the Christian god is all powerful and definitely likes Christianity more than Islam, he didn't do anything to stop it spread. He dodged another draft, didn't show up in one single battle, didn't smite one motherfucker.

Interestingly, Allah also didn't do shit. Made his believers do all the fighting on his behalf. Never picked up a single sword and tried to chop even one head off. Crazy how these super powerful gods seemed to never do anything that would make their existence obvious to us. such sneaky little game players. Oh, it's just rascals, these gods, such teases. For a long time, Europe stuck in the dark ages, couldn't really do anything about Islam spread.

By the late 11th century, though, Europe was enjoying a period of economic strength. And economic strength almost always leads to military strength, because if you have money to buy food for everyone and still left over after you've done that, well, then you got money to buy weapons and soldiers who can take more food from your enemies, buoyed by a resurgence and pilgrimages,

Europe, the Catholic Church wanted to expand its empire and make no mistake. At this point, in history, Europe belonged to the Catholic Church for the most part. The church wanted to shore up its influence and get devout but territorial European knights to stop fighting each other in Christian versus Christian battles that sometimes weaken the church's coffers, since it's hard to keep tithing somebody if they're dead, and it was much more potentially profitable to fight somebody else. There's a lot more that went into why the Crusades happened, but that's the raw, not whitewashed gist of it. The blessing of Pope Urban

2nd in 1095 launched the First Crusade galvanizing Europeans to help the Byzantine Empire fight the Seljuk Turks and to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land for Christianity. And in return for doing this, Pope Urban promises crusaders something called plenary indulgence, aka

the complete remission of temporal punishment for confessed sins. A.k.a. Free ticket to heaven! Kind of. It's preposterously convoluted to explain all of it because it's a bunch of magical thinking stacked upon more magical thinking some stacked upon like you know

contradictory magical thinking but basically confession forgives the guilt of sin while in indulgence wipes away the remaining temporal penalty or spiritual scar left behind you know because spirits get scars meaning in the Catholic beliefs of this time that a person who dies after receiving one of these

things skiffs purgatory and they get to go straight to heaven it's the spiritual equivalent of getting TSA pre-check or better yet clear when you travel or maybe getting like a fast pass at Disneyland you know you just jump to the head of the line if I can walk right in

you know or it's nothing or it's a bunch of made up you know nonsense by guys who you know thought that not coming and wearing a funny hat would help you gain more of God's favor and some of those guys convinced a bunch of scared peasants that they had the celestial equivalent of a monopoly get out of jail free card but really even better

like a live and free parking forever card anyway the very next year the crusade would come to sharts charretres to sharded in early 1096 stephen old steve count of sharts and bluea took the cross and headed east and they would carry a cross not necessarily stephen personally but you know his army uh they would carry a true cross relic as a sacred rallying standard a portable wooden frame chest or crucifix structure typically measuring about three to four feet high with proportionate transverse arms light enough for a cleric or a knight to carry on a pole uh most likely going crusading was not stephen's idea. Historians think he was urged to do so by his domineering but dearly loved wife, Adele, who was the formidable daughter of the formidable William the Conqueror. Her husband would have to kick ass like her daddy if he wanted to keep getting a taste of that warrior puss, okay? Okay. One Stephen became a crusader. The Chartron's ruling aristocracy

followed him, since they didn't want to be seen as less devoted to Christianity. And when the lords vowed to go on the crusade, well, then their men, knights squire. sergeants and foot soldiers also step forward to take the crusader's oath. I'm guessing some of them weren't happy about it. Just, ah, fuck. It's going to be a nice summer. Now I have to go fight the Muslims.

You know they're like really good at fighting, don't you? Like, their swords are sharp as fuck. You also know we don't have any first aid kits, like, at all, so I'm as good as dead. As a result of all of this, sharded France. Completely sharded France. Fucking ruined their pants, sharded France. Emerged as a major recruitment center for the first crusade. Against all tactical odds, the first crusade, which would last from 1096 to 1099,

did succeed in capturing Jerusalem. Maybe God off his godbut and lent them a hand because this crusade had no unified leader. Their supply lines were non-existent, and they had to march thousands of miles through hostile territory. That's a lot of marching. But thanks to a perfect storm of regional chaos in the form of a Muslim civil war, sheer luck and fanatical determination, and maybe some smiting that we just did. don't have records of. They pulled it off, capturing ASEA in 1097, Antioch in 1098 in Jerusalem in 1099.

But now before Stephen made a little blunder. Everyone makes mistakes. He panicked. Panicking during the grueling eight-month siege of Antioch in 1098, Stephen abandoned his post and fled home only for his fellow crusaders to capture the city the very next day. Oh, gosh, dang it. He was so close. Upon Stephen's return to France, he was excommunicated because he was a naughty boy.

you just wouldn't go peeping the potty. As were several other crusades found guilty of our crusaders, found guilty of betraying their comrades and breaking their vows, stigmatized as a contemptible, renegate, and hated by everyone, including his beloved Adele.

Stephen had only one course of action opened him if he didn't want to definitely forever burn in hell, forever and always, on fire for eternity. Which honestly, kind of sounds like the kind of juvenile punishment a six-year-old would come up with when you really think about it, doesn't it?

And uh, you have to. Give my ball back. You don't give my ball back right now. I'm going to say you on file. I'm going to say you on file forever. You want to guess what he did? He went on another crusade, of course. In this cyclical way, Sharts, Chartrez, became a crusade town, full of reminders.

I'm going to say Sharts a lot. And rituals around the bravery and sacrifices that Crusaders made to follow their God into the Holy Land. Even if the reason those crusaders were headed off to fight was more likely to maintain social cohesion amongst the aristocracy or to redeem themselves from scandal. Back and guess who sharded, I mean, Chartres, aristocratic, excuse me, families routinely remembered their kinfolk who journeyed to the Holy Land through annual recitations in the cathedral or monasteries,

which were funded by these very same families. But if Crusades were primarily for the elite, why did Crusader become a big piece of medieval pop culture for everybody? Well, for one thing, crusading served people's needs for a more immediate connection to biblical figures. In a time when most people could read, and when they wouldn't have been given direct access to the Bible anyway, because Catholic hierarchy meant the priests were the ones

who acted as intermediaries between God and regular people, solid business power move, the Bible constantly felt a little inaccessible, or very inaccessible. If you had a good local priest, he might give you lengthy lectures on biblical tales, but then it was on you to remember all the details. And if you had a bad one,

you might get like a mumbled, hungover, perhaps not even an accurate story before it was time to head back to work and toil and manual labor until you died. Sometimes, probably young. Sometimes if your church was a real dump, the priests themselves didn't even know how to read. So they were basically relying on whatever they'd heard other priests say.

And the messages often got lost in a game of telephone, you know, translation, garbled, simply felt stale after decades and decades of hearing the same old fucking gunboat tales. Crusader stories, on the other hand, oh, those were exciting. They passed from family to family, person to person, along with, you know, all the irresistible, you know, cinematic details, which were then incorporated into epic medieval poems,

all of it in the common vernacular, not stuffy Latin. And, of course, Crusading offered a very real incentive for a city whose main appeal was its holy relics, its artifacts. If you went to the Middle East and you got yourself a new artifact and you brought it back, holy social cachet, baby, that would go in the vault and Chartres, increasing the city's esteem and its holiness quotient, and you would be a local hero,

even if you've been born a lowly peasant. So would Stephen bring back a holy artifact on his second try? No, during the crusade of 1101, he was captured by the Egyptians and fucking murdered. But totally worth it. Because now he's up in heaven, taking heart blessings right now at this moment.

But now that the fire had been lit, there was always a chance that someone could succeed where Stephen had failed. No need to get into the subsequent crusades in detail, the second and third. What's important to know for our purposes here, is that the second crusade launched in 1147 would be a complete disaster

and the third crusade wouldn't be much better. Even though Europe sent its best, including Richard the Lionheart of England and Philip Augustus of France, it basically ended in a draw. The only big positive was that the 1192 Treaty of Jaffa guaranteed that Christian pilgrims could visit the holy site

safely and unarmed and the coastal crusader states were saved but the ultimate prize, control of Jerusalem, remained in Muslim hands. the Fourth Crusade would not change that. It would be even worse, especially for the Pope. A series of misadventures involving a prince who claimed to have access to vast reserves of money, but actually didn't,

basically sent the Crusaders on a wild goose chase that ended in them storming Constantinople, setting fire to the metropolis and embarking on a horrific multi-day rampage of looting, rape, and murder. While the average European likely felt that the Fourth Crusade was a miracle, a sign that God loved Europeans better than anybody else, this created a lot of chaos in the high seats of religious authority. When the Pope, Innocent I first heard about the brutal details of the sacking of Constantinople, he was horrified. He wrote scathing letters to the crusaders, to their leaders, accusing them of prioritizing money over God and warning that the Greek Orthodox Church, whose headquarters the Hyasafia had been destroyed, would now rightfully view Western

Europeans as fucking savage devils. However, as the dust settled, Innocent the Third realized a Latin emperor now sat on the throne of Constantinople, and that was a good thing for him. Could this fourth crusade actually have been a success? No. Within a few years, the Latin Empire proved weak, corrupt, and incapable of actually launching a crusade to Jerusalem, and Pope Innocent realized the entire expedition had been one big disaster. It was time to stop the random crusading once and for all, but that would prove easier said than done. Generations had now grown up believing that marching off to fight for their god in the Middle East was the ultimate, most heroic thing a human being could ever possibly do.

They had listened to epic songs for heroic deeds sung by traveling troubadours. They'd walk past the graves of their uncles and grandfathers who had died in the Levant and listened as those names were read off in church services. And they had seen the physical hall the crusaders had brought back, including exotic relics, silks and treasures housed in their local cathedral's vault. They couldn't not, you know, be part of another crusade. because growing on a crusade had become the ultimate cultural fantasy. And this atmosphere had made its way to people who were considered crazy, even by medieval

standards. A bunch of charismatic self-proclaimed prophets, often poor peasants or wandering preachers who were mentally ill, I'm guessing, or grifters or both, started picking up on this, claiming that they had received direct visions from God, you know, direct visions from Jesus. Those visions involved instructions for going to the Holy Land. For Pope's Innocent III, this was nothing short of a cultural disaster. disaster. In the medieval hierarchy, the Pope was supposed to be the ultimate gatekeeper. He alone was supposed to have the authority to declare a holy war, distribute the cross,

and grant the forgiveness for sins. If people were now launching crusades all willy-nilly, this whole system could come crumbling down and they lose all their power and money. To satisfy everybody's bloodlust for crusading in 1209, Pope's Innocent the Third, called for the beginning of the Albigensian crusade against the Catharie, a religious movement, movement based in southern France and the Roman Catholic Church, one that they had branded heretical. He called for another one in 1212 against the Moors of Spain. And these were kind of like crusade lights, like the Mickelope Ultras of Crusades, regional crusades. Once again, the town of Sharded, Chartrez, was swept up in a crusade mania.

As usual, this involved a lot of processions, parades in Chartres that riled everybody up and got them nice and ready for the long journey to the east. Everybody, including children. According to the Flemish chronicler, John Le Long, this was how the children's crusade began on May 20th, 1212. When at that time, processions were being made throughout France to plead for God's grace against the infidels, the Moors of Spain, it came into the mind of a shepherd of the diocese of Chartres that he would go to the procession and he went.

This young shepherd, like all children, had a special place in the procession. Children came forth in line for the march behind the secular clergy, clergy who were called the regulars, monks and canons, and the nuns, but ahead of laymen over 25 years, widows, and married couples. And why did they get a special place? Well, this went back to how children were seen as innocent. Position between the celibate clerics presumed to be sexually inactive, even if we know,

that doesn't usually work out well, and the sexually active or potentially active, normal peasants, the pueri, they were perceived to be sexual innocence, blank slates, who had not yet been corrupted by the ways of the world, sexy little twinklings for the priest to try and impregnate and bring a new race of holy butt babies unto our world. Wait, what? Forget I said that. For this boy in particular, Stephen of Claw, his status as a shepherd, was just as important as his status as a child. In the medieval mind, being a shepherd was not a dirty, low-status job. It was a highly sacred calling with a line. to stretch back to the shepherds who were the first ones to see baby Jesus.

Too about a group of like sex positive nudists. You know, early dancers, exotic dancers, weren't the first to see baby Jesus. That would be more fun, right, if that calling was considered sacred. But these nudists, I mean these shepherds, they even had their own patron saint to look up to. Saint Drago, that fucking mean Russian guy who Rocky defeated in the fourth movie, but only after Drago beat Apollo, his best friend, to death. I cannot be defeated. Somebody get a doctor in there!

Soon. All one will know my name. Drago. Drago. Drago! Wait, that can't be right, timeline-wise. No, St. Drogo. Oh, St. Okay.

St. Drogo, so I'm supposed to be talking about. A 12th century Flemish saint. And I'll tell you a bit more about him right after today's second of two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors. Now let's talk St. Drogo, not Drago. I am Drago. He'd been born into a noble family, but renounced his possessions at 20 years old. After visiting a couple of holy places, Drogo was hired as a shepherd by a wealthy woman named Elizabeth Hare. And he was apparently very good at it. He knew how to read the weather, cure his animals, illnesses, you know, miraculously. He was even rumored to have the gift of biolocation. Being able to be in two different places at the exact same. same time, which gave rise to a turn of phrase amongst the peasantry whenever they had too many

demands on their plates simultaneously. I'm not St. Drogo. I mean, drogo. I can't ring the church bell for math and be in the procession. How many times? I mean, right? We've all heard that. So he was a superhero who could have used his powers of biolocation to assassinate wicked tyrants or something really cool, but chose to, you know, keep working as a shepherd. That makes sense. For the young shepherd, 1212, whenever they felt down and out, whenever one of the many misfortunes of medieval life struck them, They likely comforted themselves with the idea that being a shepherd was proof that God chose the poorest, most innocent, best people to do his most important work. And perhaps that was what gave these young shepherds. Stephen in particular, some kind of superiority complex.

And now, with all of that context, back to May 20th, 12, 12, 12, on that day, Stephen followed the procession to the cathedral where he stood with the other youngsters and listened to an hours-long sermon that pumped him up given by Bishop Reginald of Barr. the bishop went on for hours extolling God to protect the crusaders on their journey and then Stephen all fucking pumped up went home and then something strange happened when he tried to work again the way John Lalong recounted it

returning to his home in the Chartran he found his sheep almost consuming the grain and when he wanted to drive them away they kneeled to him as if begging pardon when news of this reached the common people he was honored excessively what that fuck just happened

I don't know just a few weeks later in June Stephen would start telling people that God had appeared to him in the form of a poor pilgrim and those people he was telling and should have been like shut the fuck up and get back to work but they didn't he said Stephen gave God some bread but then God gave him some letters to the king of France

and said because that's how God gets news out I love this God's gonna come down to earth but then instead of coming down to the person he wants to talk to he goes to this kid. He's like, hey, I just wrote this letter up in heaven. I need you to fucking send it. I can't go over there.

It's too much to explain. It's a lot of weird physics. And I can appear here. But we're having, listen, I'm having some internet problems. I can't download myself to that part of the world. But I can talk to you. So just stop asking questions. Just take my letter.

Anyway, God gave him these letters to the king of France and said that he, you know, God, wanted Stephen to deliver them to the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Denie just to the north of the city of Paris. And then things got weirder still. As he traveled to meet the king, Stephen soon amassed a group of boys around him. Some sources say quite a few boys, about 30,000. Not all of them kids, but most of them kids. Another guesstimate, numbers wise, is time from a contemporary English chronicler, reckoned that an estimated 15,000, Pueyri, came, quote,

streaming together to the cities of France, to the great wonder of the spectators. So 15,000, 30,000 is a lot. To get where they were going, these young shepherds had to hike over 90 miles to start with, once they made it to Saint Denis. Things got kind of crazier. While he stayed at Saint-Denie,

the Lord worked many miracles through him, as many have witness, claimed the anonymous of lawn, some universal chronicle, written by an English-born cleric. There were also other boys, Pueri, who were held in great venerable, by the common multitude in many localities

because they were also believed to work miracles to whom a multitude of boys came together wishing to proceed to the holy boy Stephen under their guidance, all recognized him as a master and prince over them. Man, how can we don't have legions of miracle boys running around anymore? Helping everybody out. That sucks.

Stephen also got lucky with his timing. His group's arrival in Saint Denis coincided with the annual Laundee Fair, which was attended by merchants from all over Europe. At this time of year, Paris saw a great influx of pilgrims to the Abbey of Saint-Denie, which gave him a bigger audience

and more opportunities to convert people to his cause. All of this to put it mildly was worrying for the ruling elite, especially Philip, king of France. What was he going to do about this? This army of miracle boys. And reach...

I don't know why that phrase strikes me funny. I don't even know what I picture. It's a funny phrase, the Army of Miracle Boys. I got kind of mayonnaise stuck in my head for some reason, like Miracle Whip. In reaching his decision about the worrying large assembly of peasant youths on his doorstep, King Philip II consulted the Paris Masters.

Yes, the Paris Masters have entered the chat. In 1212, the Parisian Masters, they were already recognized as a supergroup. They were recognized as a prestigious academic body within the University of Paris, which was at the time Europe's most established university. And with the Paris Master's help, Philip II, and decided on a simple solution. Just send the boys home.

Great job, Paris Masters think tank. Way to put your powerful minds together, the most powerful that all of Europe and problem solve. Unfortunately, that wouldn't really work. At some point, during his stay in Saint-Denie, possibly egged on by all those pilgrims who were eager to see a miracle, Stephen decided that his ultimate mission

lay beyond France. According to yet another source, the 13th century Barnwell Chronicle, written in England, the children had their sights set higher. Then the Crusade lights that were happening in Spain and in the Cathars. They said they needed to go to the Holy Land and recover the true cross, meaning the cross that Jesus was allegedly crucified upon. Uh-huh.

They were doing a full scale. Fucking balls to the wall. Balls deep on this crusade. They're going to get Jesus' cross. I had to still be laying around somewhere, you know, after a thousand years or so, right? Or they were going to die trying. And the true cross was the biggest possible goal to set their sights on. Probably on August 5th, 1099, the next.

newly elected Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Arnulf of shock, Arnolf of shock, had allegedly unearthed this true cross in the compound of the holy sepulchre. Supposedly finding the true cross so soon, after the first Crusades reconquest of Jerusalem on July 15th, seemed to validate the crusader's victory,

demonstrating that God had indeed willed it, set in precious metals, then encased in a large wooden cross, the small fragment of wood from the true cross, was quickly elevated to the role of the Holy Land's most sacred relic and it would play an important role in many battles to come.

And how do we know that this wood came from the true cross? Well, we definitely fucking don't. But let me tell you a story. One of many competing and often contradictory legends. Back on September 14th, 326C.E. Emperor Constantine's mother, St. Helena. She just found it. When she was visiting the holy places in Palestine,

she was guided to the site of the crucifixion by a quote, aged Jew, who had inherited traditional knowledge as to its divine location. After the ground had been dug to a considerable depth, I don't know why it was buried deeply for whatever reason, three crosses were found as well as the superscription placed above the Savior's head on the cross, and the nails, which he had been crucified with, okay, they just left all that there in the dirt, okay. The cross of the Lord was distinguished from the other two crosses laying there, because they touched a dead youth to it.

They put a... They somehow like, I don't know, it just says there's a dead youth. They just laid out a dead youth. They just had a dead kid laying around. And they put him on that third cross. And wouldn't you know it? He was resurrected

by the touch of the third cross. Holy fuck, that definitely never happened. And then in the Children's Crusade were telling this old wooden cross wizard necromancer staff thing that could bring people back to life, the most powerful object in the fucking world by far.

well it got lost for a while for centuries and then i don't know somebody buried it or something and now this uh arnulf of shock dingleberry he found it again it's like they weren't even fucking trying with these stories it's like they weren't even trying to make the shit believable whew oh my god what's happening fuck my face anyway refocusing during the course of its military career in the kingdom of jerusalem i keep on to say jerusalem I don't know why. The True Cross served in no fewer than 31 campaigns from 1099 CE until its final engagement at the Battle of Fatine and 1187 CE in which Muslim forces captured. How could an opposing army capture this? How could any opposing army stop you if you had a big magical resurrection necromancer stick?

I think it would be a happier person if I had a less logical brain. A Muslim chronicler knew just how important the True Cross was to the Crusader's cause, writing, this was one of the heaviest blows that could be inflicted upon them and made their death and destruction certain. All right? Seemed like Stephen and his followers were now positioning themselves as the ones who would finish the mission that the first crusade had started. And before anybody could stop them, these crazy kids got going. From Sandini, they marched for a hundred or so miles to Rakhour, a small village near the town of San Quentin. but unlike in Sondonni or in sharts, who sharded, people in Rakhour,

were not happy to see them. Actually, the ruling elite were not happy to see them. Other people were. The young crusaders' presence immediately sparked a massive, violent uprising when the local townspeople who were swept up in the religious hysteria rioted against the rich clergy who would not give the kids charity or travel funds, led by their own mayor, angry citizens. I love it. Attacked the clergy and looted their property.

And it seems gave something to the kids. kids whose only means of survival was the kindness of strangers. From Rakhour, he was now on to the next stop. Lij in present-day Belgium, about 150 miles away, where they arrived sometime in early to mid-July, and seen a mass of super religious kids descend on a town was even at that time an unusual sight. One writer, a Benedictine monk named Rogné, Oliage, would write that he saw a wondrous movement of children as well from the French as from the German kingdom and chiefly of shepherds, both of the male and female sex. Apparently, some of the kids in L'Iage wanted to go with them and were bitterly disappointed when their parents didn't allow them.

Ragné would write, But those whose fathers and mothers would not permit to go away wept most profusely. But it was their intention to cross the sea. And what the powerful and kings had not done recover the sepulchre of Christ, the heat was extremely great in the first 15 days. days of July. The Holy Sepulchre of Jesus is a fancy term for Jesus' tomb, which is empty because he came back to life, which is located inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the old city of Jerusalem, enclosed by a shrine called the Adelquil. And if Ragné was right about that being the kids' intended destination, then they were almost certainly trying to take over Jerusalem. Insane.

From there, it was on to Cologne, Germany. But not everything went well. It was a long walk, for starters. Also, not everybody, especially not the more practically-minded peasants trying to provide for themselves and their families enjoyed it. What a bunch of poy, a bunch of poor, excuse me, stinky kids arrived on their doorsteps begging for food. The kids almost certainly faced a lot of abuse, either verbal or physical, and many contemporary writers would describe how individual kids peeled off and went home or tried to and, I don't know, maybe died in the way because it's a long way to get home now. And, you know, after they'd gotten too hungry or tired to continue, then new kids from villages across Europe would take their place. Indeed, as they got further into Belgium In Germany, they started picking up more German-speaking kids Adding them to the ranks, as one writer put it,

as the kids made their way into Cologne, many thousands of children from six years old Up to the age of manhood, abandoned the plows or wackens they drove Or the cattle they herded and suddenly ran One after the other and signed themselves with crosses. God, that sounds like something from that badass horror movie, weapons. Also, how many families were just fucked over?

How many parents died when their crops failed because now their kids weren't around to help them, you know, harvest them. While they were preparing the next stage of their arduous pilgrimage, the Children's Crusade faced another setback. The monk of Saint Pantilion would recount how some evil men infiltrated the movement under false pretenses drawn to it by the scent of alms. In other words, they wanted to go take the kids shit, like their food and maybe their clothes, money, whatever they had. Fertively and wickedly, these bad guys stole items which the pueri brought with them along with gifts the faithful were daily contributing to their cause

the thieves then ran off clutching their stolen goods one of the robbers was apprehended soon afterwards and hanged not sure if he was hanged by the authorities or by the kids themselves in the horror movie version by the kids in any case the boys did not let this let this slow them down when the time came to depart in groups of 20 50 or 100 with their banners raised they began heading for Jerusalem according to that monk their next stop was Maintz. After roughly four or five days on the road,

they reached the German city where some of the pueri, perhaps already dog tired or discouraged, turned back, while another group headed back east to Trier, but there were always plenty of others to take their place. And one of those other kids who joined up was named Nicholas. Like Stephen, we don't know a lot about him, other than he was a major player in this fucking crusade. At some point when the crusaders were making their way through Germany,

Nicholas emerged as one of the leaders. and Stephen of Klau went missing from the historical record. Maybe there was a mutiny amongst these Lord of the Flies crusaders. By the time his group reached Trier around, excuse me, July 22nd, Nicholas was seemingly in charge. He supposedly held a cross in the shape of the Greek letter Tau, which one chronicler took as a sign of his sanctity and miracle working powers. Uh-huh, totally.

That's all the evidence that that chronicler needed. The Tao would supposedly part the Mediterranean Sea so these kids could walk across it instead of having to pay for expensive passage on ships. This is a great plan. Very good, guys. What could go wrong? Following the Rhine, Nicholas of Cologne and his travel-weary crusaders probably passed not too far from the Augustinian abbey of Marbank located near Colmar in Al-Azzas.

There, a hostile Mar-Bock writer recorded his disdain for this, quote, stupid multitude in no uncertain terms, writing at the same time, 12-12, there occurred a futile expedition as children and foolish men took the sign of the cross without any discretion. People of both sexes, boys and girls,

not only minors, but also adults, married women with virgins, not only through all Germany, but also through parts of France and Burgundy everywhere in the villages and fields. They left their tools and whatever they had in the hand at the time, in hand at the time, excuse me,

and joined the bands as they passed by. And just as we are often a crowd credulous in the face of such novelties, many thought this happened not through lightheadedness, but by divine inspiration and a kind of piety. Nonetheless, the Children's Crusade, now led by Nicholas, would make it to Piacenza, Piacenza, Italy, Pichenza, Italy,

Mazarari Bulgari, August 20th. On that day, the town chronicler, John Caudanielo, witnessed their arrival when Nicholas, together with, quote, a great and countless multitude of German pueri infants at the breast, women and girls, first appeared in Pietenza, then hastening to cross the sea, they went right on through town. Next, they came to Genoa, the thriving port city on the Ligurian coast of the Mediterranean

by around 1,300 C.E. It would count among the most densely populated Italian cities, boasts in a citizenry of 100,000 roughly. Unsurprisingly, for a prosperous port city, maritime commerce was its lifeblood. And, seemingly this aptitude for business made its way into the personality of the city record keeper. Odreo! Odreo! Penel! Who jotted down the essential points about the sudden influx of kids into his prosperous city. In terse, no-nonsense prose. Pane! wrote like he was recording answers to a checklist of questions.

When did they arrive? Saturday on August 25th. Who was a leader named? Some German boy, named a Nikolese. What was the purpose? Pilgrimager. How do you know? they were carrying crusaders,

crosses, and pilgrims, or steves, and wallets? How many of them were there? There were men and women and boys and girls and more than seven thousand of them. What they became of them? Sunday the following day, they left a city, August 26. All over them?

Many men, women and boys and girls that number remained than Genoa. Again, who knows how many of the people? He was calling men and women were actually teenagers, but what actually happened was much more dramatic than Pane said in his account, from the city of Genoa, the masses of kids descended

towards the Mediterranean Sea, right? They've been fucking building towards this. Can apart that motherfucking sea? They assembled and hushed silence along the coast as Nicholas of a Cologne held his towel high and then delicately, dramatically, expectantly, he dipped his toes into the waves.

Apart for me! I don't know what he said. But he waited for the ocean depart. And you are not going to believe this. But fucking nothing happened. Absolutely shit happened. nothing undoubtedly many the kids were you know disappointed by this they'd walked a long ways to see this and they were upset and they went home they took their things and they went home they packed up their stuff

according to some accounts some of the kids simply wouldn't accept the idea that the sea wasn't going to split before them so they just sat down and you know and they probably cried they were probably hungry nicholas not going to give up after hearing their ship was due to depart from genoa toward the end of september Nicholas, or maybe a trusted lieutenant, contacted the Genoese captain and begged him to transport the entire troop of the Poiré to the east, or at least until the sea party. Just get us a head start.

Just get us moving. But that cost money. And these homeless young weirdos didn't have any money. So the captain turned them down. By this point, some of the more stubborn kids were now starting to see the writing on the wall, they also began to head home.

Others, however, stayed in Genoa where there was actually a good chance of employment. There's a lot going on there. Probably better chance than in their hometowns. They found jobs in various households, small workshops, shipyards, price sold in the slavery. Other kids seem to have simply liked pilgrim life, and they kept heading to different European pilgrimage sites like Marseille France. Some historians think this is actually where Stephen of Klau ended up. I mean, after all, if it's medieval times and you don't have much going on, you know, at home, living outside isn't that different from living inside of a house.

Occasion, you get some money or supplies from religious people. Well, what's so bad about hitting some more sites? apparently though some got tired of it eventually right at every stop along the way including the stop in rome some kids left never to be heard from again others reached marseilles but whether they crossed the sea or what became of them is uncertain wrote one rider for some of them given up on the crusade simply was not an option they felt like they had made a holy vow indeed the same vow that adult crusaders made and having signed that contract with god they were now obligated to find a way to get to the holy land or risk god's wrath be seen smite it. These kids left Genoa and headed towards Pisa, the leading seaport in Tuscany, and an aggressive commercial rival to Genoa in Venice. They got to Pisa somewhere around August 30th, a chronicler, so many chroniclers, Ricker of Sinones, would remark that in Genoa and Pisa and the other cities situated on the coast, they thought that they would find ships to make the crossing, and they did not find any. To judge from their behavior in

Genoa, a proportion of the pueri, perhaps a pretty big percentage, decided to make their homes in Pisa. But not Nicholas. Uh-uh. He would continue on to Brindisi, at the very tip of Italy's boot, and 640 miles from Genoa. He just kept on walking. He had some good shoes. And now the record gets shakier. According to some legends, Nicholas met with Pope Innocent the Third himself,

who told the boy in no uncertain terms, get the fuck out of here. Go home, you weirdo. Knock it off. Probably wasn't the Pope himself, who said that. No one said that, but you know, I gave him that message, probably more likely a bishop. Then pretty unclear what happened to Nicholas. Some say he died on his way back to the Alps. That makes sense.

Some say his dad, who lived back in Cologne, was hanged by a mob of angry parents who had lost their kids to the children's crusade. Some scholars think that this was the result of getting the end of the story crossed with the story about the wicked men who had stolen the kid's stuff at the beginning of the journey. Maybe Nicholas didn't die in the Alps. maybe he continued on with his mission, according to the Austrian chronicler of Admont Abbey, Nicholas, a certain Pouier of Cologne, enrolled in another crusade.

Nicholas himself probably did not think of it as a new crusade if this happened. To him, it would have been a continuation of what he'd already started. But this time, things are going to be different if this happened, because Nicholas's new crusade was papily sanctioned. Indeed, it was only six months

after the children's crusade that Pope and isn't the third announced a new crusade, new crusade to the Holy Land. Now for the first time, all the faithful, not just aristocratic adult men and their employees, excuse me, were encouraged to step forward and take the cross. And this fundamental shift in papal recruitment policy was probably a direct result of the children's crusade. Thanks to the pueri, Pope Innocent III was aware of continuing, deep-rooted populist crusading sentiment,

and he finally figured that he should probably, you know, mobilize it instead of trying to keep lit on it. And the Pope probably took direct inspiration from Nicholas. on November 11th, 1215, in his celebrated opening sermon to the fourth Lateran council in Rome, and as in the third even invoked the mystic power of the Tao, the same symbol that Nicholas supposedly carried. The Supreme Pontiff declared that he would place the sign of the Tao on the foreheads of the men who weep and lament over the abominations, which are performed in the midst of the church. Okay. So in this story, what happened, Nicholas?

Well, this new crusade would get started officially in 1217, after Innocent III died because God started to hate him. According to the Admont chronicler, Nicholas at Acre, and then at the siege of Damietta, he suggests that Nicholas was probably in Damieta for several years until it was around, you know, until around the time it was surrendered to the Egyptians in 1221. It's not clear what happened to Nicholas at that point.

The surrender of Damietta did include something important, the promise of the return of the true cross to Europe wouldn't actually ever be recovered though the Sultan lied about having it and it also doesn't exist there's that but that promise meant that Nicholas actually somewhat accomplished the goal of the Children's Crusade

but not all the kids who followed Stephen and Nicholas wanted to live the life of a crusader I'll talk about that before we end eight years after the Children's Crusade disbanded on August 19th 1220 a letter was sent to the patriarch of Aquilea the letter was an official response

to the petition of a young scholar named Otto one of the crusading kids now grown up who pleaded for a person who pleaded for a papal dispensation from his crusade vow. In essence, Otto wanted to cancel out the promise he had made as a kid to God. Apparently, the idea that he had made and then broken a promise to God, even if he had made it as a little kid had haunted him. Otto's situation was serious.

Dispensation for the non-fulfillment of a crusader's vow was a matter reserved exclusively for the Pope, and by that time, with the Fifth Crusade heating up, didn't seem likely the Pope was going to let it slide. But luckily for him, Otto's petition was granted. The church definitively recognized that any promise he had made to God when he was barely sentient was not legitimate. So this, you know, this boated well for all the kids who had made similar vows. His soul was not in peril. I mean, it was.

He still was. He still had to fear hell 24-7 like everybody else. But it was in more peril than normal. According to the papal's letter, when Otto took the cross along, quote, with a multitude of other pueri, he was acting imprudently. Otto was okay. But some other children's crusaders maybe didn't fare as well. Albarique de Trois Fontaines, a French monk with too many names, too long of a name, would write a lengthy chronicle between 1227 and 1241 that featured an entry on the Children's Crusade and what he wrote was not pretty. According to Albaric, a group of Puerre, perhaps Stephen of Clause group, reached Marseille when they were still around 30,000 strong.

Stephen attempted to negotiate with two French merchants, Hugh the Iron, and William of Paskier for passage to the Middle East. and these two men agreed to take them for a very small fee. Oh, how nice, but not really, of course. Apparently, these two French merchants took some of the kids to Tunisia, sold them into slavery. Fuck yeah. Another boat of theirs sank in a storm near Sardinia, killing everybody on board. A lot of kids died. According to Albrecque, Pope Gregory the 9th was later so moved by the event, these events,

that he ordered a new church called the Church of the New Innocence to be erected on San Pietro, an island, some four miles southwest of Sardinia, where the door. drowned children had washed ashore and were carried into a local church. Maybe, or maybe none of that slavery and shipwreck stuff actually happened. Historians have searched for any documentation about these ships or the church. Nothing has ever showed up. Probably the kids who made it to Marseille either returned home or found jobs in the area like many of their counterparts did in Genoa, Rome, or other small towns.

But that's not as exciting, is it? Meanwhile, by the mid-12-100s Crusade fever was on the decline. as Pope after Pope attempted to consolidate their hold over Europe by directing Europeans to fight for Christianity, many increasingly viewed the papacy as greedy, war-mongering, and tyrannical. What? Dangly the promise of heaven to get others to do the Pope's dirty work. When Acre, the last major Latin stronghold in the Holy Land fell to the Mamluks in 1291, crusade fever was effectively dead.

Within just a few centuries, Protestant reformers like Martin Luther would forcefully reject crusading for good, declaring that papal indulgences were useless and the papacy itself was a peddler of backwards fanaticism. And then so many of his theological descendants would later do so much equally if not more insane shit. But judging by the children's crusade, Martin Luther was probably right on at least that front. And that's it for this edition of Time Sucks Short Sucks. What a crazy fucking world we live in. There's no shortage of just the wildest like what, why would you ever? ever do that stories. If you enjoyed this story, check out the rest of the bad magic catalog,

beef your episodes of Time suck Mondays on noon Pacific time. New episodes of the now long-running paranormal podcast, scared to death, Tuesdays at midnight, two episodes of nightmare fuel, fictional horror that I write and do the voiceover for. Logan does the scoring thrown into the mix each month. Thank you to Sophie Evans for the initial research. Thank you to Logan Keith, polishing up the sound today's episode. Please go to bad magic productions.com for all your bad magic needs and have yourself a great weekend.