Shepherds' Crusade
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The Shepherds' Crusade refers to separate events from the 13th and 14th century. The first took place in 1251 during the Seventh Crusade; the second occurred in 1320.
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[edit] Shepherds' Crusade, 1251
In 1249, Saint Louis IX of France was away on crusade, and had been defeated and captured at Cairo in Egypt. When news of this reached France the next year, both nobles and peasants were deeply distressed; the king was well-loved and it was inconceivable to them that such a pious man could be defeated by "heathens". One of the outpourings of support took the form of a peasant movement in northern France, led by a man known only as "Le Maître de Hongrie," "the Master of Hungary." He was apparently a very old Hungarian monk living in France.
The Master claimed to have been visited by the Virgin Mary, who instructed him to lead the shepherds, or pastoreaux as they were called in French, of France to the Holy Land to rescue Louis. His followers, said to number 60 000, were mostly young peasants, men, women, and children, from Brabant, Hainaut, Flanders, and Picardy. They followed him to Paris in May, where the Master met with Blanche of Castile, Louis IX's mother, who was acting as regent during his absence. Matthew Paris thought he was an imposter, and that he was actually one of the leaders of the Children's Crusade from earlier in the century. Their movement in the city was restricted; they were not allowed to cross to the Left Bank, where the University of Paris was located, as Blanche perhaps feared another disturbance related to the University of Paris strike of 1229.
In any case, the crowd of shepherds split up after leaving the city. Some of them went to Rouen, where they expelled the archbishop and threw some priests into the Seine river. In Tours they attacked monasteries. The others under the Master arrived in Orléans on June 11. Here they were denounced by the bishop, whom they also attacked, along with other clerics, including Franciscans and Dominicans. They fought with the university students in the city as well, as Blanche might have feared would happen in Paris. Moving on to Amiens, and then Bourges, they also began to attack Jews.
Blanche responded by ordering the crowds to be rounded up and excommunicated. This was done rather easily as they were simply wandering, directionless, around northern France, but the group led by the Master resisted outside Bourges, and the Master himself was killed in the ensuing skirmish.
The crusade seems to have been more of a revolt against the French church and nobility, who were thought to have abandoned Louis; the shepherds, of course, had no idea what happened to Louis, or the logistics involved in undertaking a crusade to rescue him. After being dispersed, some of the participants travelled to Aquitaine and England, where they were forbidden to preach. Others took a true crusade vow and may have actually gone on crusade.
[edit] Shepherd's Crusade, 1320
A separate movement occurred in May 1320 in Normandy, when a teenage shepherd claimed to have been visited by the Holy Spirit, which instructed him to fight the Moors in Spain. Similar to the 1251 crusade, this movement included mostly young men, women, and children. They marched to Paris to ask Philip V to lead them, but he refused to meet with them at all.
Instead they marched south to Aquitaine, attacking castles, royal officials, priests, and lepers along the way. Their usual targets, however, were Jews, whom they attacked at Saintes, Verdun, Cahors, Albi, and Toulouse, which they reached on June 12. Pope John XXII, in Avignon, gave orders to stop them. When they eventually crossed into Spain, their attacks on the Jews were well-known, and James II of Aragon vowed to protect his citizens. At first they were prohibited from entering the kingdom at all, but when they did enter in July, James warned all his nobles to make sure the Jews were kept safe.
As expected the shepherds did attack some Jews, especially at the fortress of Montclus, where over 300 Jews were killed. James's son Alfonso was sent out to bring them under control. Those responsible for the massacre at Montclus were arrested and executed. There were no further incidents and the crusade dispersed.
This "crusade" is seen as a revolt against the French monarchy, somewhat like the first Shepherds Crusade. Jews were seen as a symbol of royal power, as they more than any other population relied on the personal protection of the king both in France and in Aragon, and were often a symbol of the royal economy as well, hated by poor and heavily taxed peasants. Only a few years previously, the Jews had been allowed to return to France, after being expelled in 1306. Any debts owed to the Jews were collected by the monarchy after their expulsion, which probably also contributed to the peasant connection of the Jews with the king.
In 1321, King Philip fined those communities in which Jews had been killed. This led to a second revolt, this time among the urban population, although later chroniclers invented the idea of a "cowherds' crusade," a second wave of the Shepherds' Crusade. Although this never occurred, there were, however, more attacks on Jews as a result of the fines.
[edit] Sources
[edit] 1251
- Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora
- Margaret Wade Labarge, Saint Louis: The Life of Louis IX of France. London, 1968.
- Ernest Lavisse, Histoire de France, Tome Troisième, II. Paris, 1901.
- Régine Pernoud, La Reine Blanche. Paris, 1972.
[edit] 1320
- David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages. Princeton, 1996.
- Malcolm Barber, "The Pastoureaux of 1320," in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 20.
