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Did The Children's Crusade Of 1212 Really Consist Of Children?
Problems Of Writing Childhood History

By: Raffael Scheck
Special Issue "On Writing Childhood History"
The Journal of Psychohistory 16 (2) Fall 1988

I want to begin with a practical problem: scholarly interest and fairness require that the historian gives room to the self-testimonies of the group about which he/she is writing. The problem for the childhood historian is that there are almost no self-testimonies of children in the past. (The few diaries of children must be considered with extreme cau-tion: most of the examples I know were inspired and controlled by the parents or tutors.[1]) If we want to have a description of childhood in history, we have to rely on reports written by adults. Even the most intimate source of childhood history, autobiography-as far as it treats childhood-is an account of an adult about himself as a child. The autobiographer usually has to bridge over a distance of several decades, when he describes his childhood, and his account is always influenced by his own concepts of childhood and childrearing and by his actual self-image.[2] Diaries of parents, educators or pedagogues who watch and document the development of children may report direct expressions of the child, but these sources must be read very carefully. The describing adults always have unspoken prejudices about children and childhood. A striking example of this fact has always been to me the description of 15 month old Louis XIII by his private tutor Heroard.[3] This source shows the dauphin as the author of a very complex activity for his age: he goes after a court lady, he makes "his women" come and dance, kisses, embraces and throws down a girl, imitates sexual intercourse with her, etc. The scene remains impossible to understand if we do not consider that the use of leading strings for children was very widespread at that time. Most probably, little Louis XIII was manipulated like a marionette by one of the servants or courtiers.

This shows that extensive discussion of the sources and particularly of the specific way the describing adults perceive children is essential-the more so, the further back we go in history. This is a difficult but fascinating challenge. It leads to the researcher's individual notion of childhood. The fact that-based on the same sources - different researchers come to contradictory results has often troubled my students and interlocutors. The difference between the conclusions of Aries and deMause, for instance, is caused partly by the different ideas they have of what a child needs. Aries' [4] stresses the importance of freedom and unrestraint for the child. Therefore, the shift towards a more controlled and guarded childhood during the 18th century is negative in his eyes. Ants' view is backed up by critical theories of the civilization process.[5] Lloyd deMause,[6] instead, stresses the ratio of projections to empathy in adult-child relations. In his view premodern "free" childrearing appears to be more projective than does intrusive childrearing from the 18th century on. So, the children's "freedom" often turns out to be the effect of severe neglect.[7]

If we are working with older sources, the problem gains a new dimension: other eras (and other cultures, too) have a different notion of the child and childhood (although there are always certain conformities). We can try to circumvent this problem by defining a certain age group (people from birth to age 14, for example) to whom we dedicate our inquiry. But this doesn't help us much face to face with the sources because they do not always give the age of the persons they speak about. I want to il-lustrate this problem with the discussion about the Children's Crusade of 1212: until recently, most historians believed that two big groups of children from the German Rhine valley and from North France started in 1212 to liberate the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The image of innocent children trying to redeem the corrupted idea of the crusade was so attrac-tive [or a long time that only recent articles evaluated the sources critical-ly.[8] They pointed out that the term ''Children's Crusade'' became common in the sources not before the last third of the 13th century and that it was not mentioned in the most reliable contemporary sources. These sources described the participants of the migration as people of all ages (from sucklings to aged persons), not only as 'pueri" and ''puellae.'' Some historians even deny that children (under age 14) made up a prevalent part of these migrations.[9] The doubts were intensified by a terminological problem: the Latin word "puer'' which means in most medieval age classifications a boy between 7 and 14 years old,[10] apparently also had a social shading of meaning. Georges Duby suggests that ''puer" often meant poor farm-laborers, people who could not inherit land during the economical crisis of the 12th arid 13th centurics and became dependent wage workers who usually could not marry. [11] Peter Raedis therefore classcs the ''Children's Crusade'' with the widespread movement of the People's Crusades-migrations of very poor, landless men and women whose last hope was to reach Jerusalem which was for them rather the celestial Jerusalem of the Apocalypse than the earthly city in Palestine.[12]

The point which Raedts did not consider enough is that many landless farm-laborers in those times actually were very young (age 7 to 14). In the rural society of the 13th century children left the house of their parents very early, usually when they were able to work (at about age 7). This is particularly true for poor families.[13] Therefore, the evidence that poor farm-workers of both sexes made up a big part of the so-called "Children's Crusade'' does not disprove the notion that the movement included a noticeable, even prevalent, group of very young people (under age 14).[14] We have similar problems concerning many other, sometimes mysterious, migrations under the probable participation of children in the Middle Ages, for instance the crusades of the pastors in France in 1251 and 1320.[15]

These examples shed light on the difficulties we encounter when we write about childhood in early modern or medieval times. We always have to consider the ideological notion of the word ''child'' (for instance as an equivalent of innocent and poor people, without dominant age specification) and the social reality of children, and we should not confound them.

There are various approaches to the history of childhood: social history, the history of thought, folklore and ethnology as well as psychohistory provide important contributions to our knowledge of child life in the past.

Relying on my own work with a Psychohistorical approach, I want to discuss some objections I often hear. The core of the critique is that psychohistorians do not consider childhood in relation to [5 "real" historical context. The critics argue that a) we interpret child life in the past with our sensitivity of today, b) we assume that children in the past reacted to certain situations the same way they would react today, c) cruelty and beating against children meant something very different at times when much more direct violence reigned in many human relationships and d) we apply modern psychology (which is based on a relatively new childrearing mode and family structure which evolved out of bourgeois childrearing in the 18th century[16]) to people whose psyches ''work'' differently from ours.

To point a): It is a legitimate procedure in history to consider the sources with our sensitivity of today (provided that we do not overlook the differences between us and the time we are considering). A social historical approach is also guided by contemporary interests, views and statements of the questions. Whether we declare it or not, our own way of thinking and feeling provides the starting point for a comparative perception of the characteristics of another epoch.

The other points concern a Psychohistorical childhood history more directly. It actually is very difficult to prove exactly how children were affected by their treatment. This is a basic problem of psychohistory research in genera!: "As for thoughts and feelings, they never register verifiably like words or acts.''[17] Up to now, I do not know a better method than a consequent hermeneutic proceeding. We need not only to summon individual empathy towards the children we are writing about, but also towards the time, class and region in which they lived. What possibilities and alternatives did they and their parents have? We have to ask not only: What did a certain event mean individually to a child? but also: What did it mean in the context of its environment? When parents sent away a journey-man from home at a very young age, this meant something else at a time when society had a more hospitable mentality towards wandering youngsters and provided a more or less sufficient unofficial infra-structure for them. We cannot simply analogize this to the fantasy of how it would have affected ourselves, had we been sent away from home at age 10 to 14. Another example, though it does not concern children, may show how strongly certain influences (which we can hardly understand and therefore easily overlook) could affect the motivations of people in the past. The philosopher Ernst Bloch once mentioned in a speech an event of the early 18th century: In a North German city a robber was sentenced to death on the wheel, but the local authorities gave him a chance to save himself. It was shortly before the ''Walpurgisnacht," the night in which the devil and the witches are said to have their meeting on the Brocken mountain. The delinquent would have been released with a pension if he ascended the Brocken mountain during the "Walpurgisnacht'' and reported afterwards what he had seen. The robber rejected the offer. He preferred the extremely terrible death on the wheel (people often lived up to nine days after the execution) to the possibility (or certainty in his eyes) that he would meet the devil and fall into eternal damnation after death. Such motivations which are very strange to us shape-though less noticeably-the behavior of children in the past.[18]

Beating a child surely meant something else at another time, or in a culture with very violent manners, or to the adults. But did it also to the child? A very young child cannot consider his parents' beating in a broad cultural and social context - its one and only standard of comparison is made up of different behavioral structures or parents and surrogates. If beating is closely interrelated with care and feeding - as an alternative to total neglect - it means something else to the child than if it is connected with isolation - in the context of an intensive, loving care with beating as an exceptional act of punishment. But nevertheless I want to warn urgently of a too far-stretched historical relativism. Beatings always hurt and terrorize children in any historical context. Although I agree that we must be very careful when we apply today's child psychology children in the past I want to point out that the extreme dependency and neediness of a newborn human being is a biological, thus metahistorical, fact. [19] Every child absolutely needs a minimum of care to survive and, therefore, the basic question of childhood history is for me: what price does a child have to pay in every historical context for getting the most essential things it needs to survive, and how does this price affect its later life?

Finally! want to write some remarks on the public interest in historical childhood research. Many pedagogical norms have become questionable in our days. I often meet parents, kindergartners, teachers, therapists and others who have a lively interest in my research because they look for alternative behavioral standards face to face with children. They want to know how children were raised in the past, what they experienced and how I think about it. This interest is legitimate, if we agree with Nietz-sche: "we need [history) for life and action, not for indolent turning away from lifeand action. . . . We want to serve history only as far as history serves life."[20] For me, this public interest implies a feeling of responsibility for modern children, too. Responsibility not in the role of a moralizer, but of a discussion partner (or everybody who is interested in the various aspects of childhood in the past and the present.

Raffael Scheck is Director of the Gesellschaft fuer Psychohistorrsche Furschung in dir Sehweiz and is presently studying at Brandeis University.

Special Issue "On Writing Childhood History"
The Journal of Psychohistory 16 (2) Fall 1988

REFERENCES
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1. See for instance Irene Hardach-Pinke: Kinderalltag. Aspekie von Kontinuitaet und Wandel der Kinciheit in autobiographischen Zeugnissen 1700 bis 1900. Frankfurt/New York 1981, pp. 10-Il. Many other fields 0f history, too, have to deal with the problern that the group in which tltey are interested left (at best) only very scarce written documents. This is (rue especially for the history of women and of sup-pressed, marginalized groups in general-at least until the late 19th century.
2. I have considered these questions in: Raffael Scheck, Childhood in German Autobiographical Writings 1740-1820, The Jotirnat of Psychohistory 15(1) (Sumner 1987), 391422.
3. The scene is quoted in: Lloyd deMause, Foundations of Psychohistory. New York 1982, p.25.
4. Philippe Arts, L'enfant of (a viefarnihale 50145 ('ancien regime. Paris, 1960.
5. In particular: Norbert Elias, Ueber den Prozess der Zivihsation. SOVogenehsche and psychogenetkche Untersuchungen, 2 vols. Frankfurt ant Main 1976.
6. L.loyd deMause. "The Evolution of Childhood," and "The Psychogenic Theory of History." Both in: deMause, Foundations of Psychohistory.
7 I have made the experience that Aries' views are more popular in Central Europe than deMause's. Many students, for instance, reject deMause's view with the argument, "If I were a child, I would not want store enipathic parents; they would know even better what is goittg on in me and control Ire evet more.'' They identify empathy with intrusiveness.
8. In the first line: Peter Raedts, The Children's Crusade of 1212. Journal of Medic vat ilisiory 3(1977), 279-324. Critical is also: Vlrich Gaebler, Der "Kinderkreuzzug" vom Jabre 1212. In: Schweizerischc Zeitschrjt fuer Geschtchte 28, Heft 1/2 (1978), S. 1-14. Doubts whether the participants of the Children's Crusade were really children appear already in: Giovanni Miccoli, La "crociata dci fanciulli" del 1212. In: Stud! Medieval! II. 3a serie (1961), 407-443, and also in: Paul Alphandery. La crdtientd et l'iddo do croisade. Recoinmencements necessairer. Paris 1959, 115-148.
9. Especially Gaebler and, the best founded, Raedts, eq,. cit
10. Klaus Arnold, Kind und Oeselischaft in Mittelatter und Renaissance! Reitraege und Texte zur Oeschichte der Kindheit. Paderborn und Muenchen, 1982, 18-27.
II Georges Duby, "Les pauvres des canipagnes dans I'occident medieval jusqu'au XIIle si&le," Revue de ('histotre de ('egUse de France 52 (1966), pp.25-32 and: Georges Duby, Medieval Agriculture 900-1500 Fontana Econonik History. ed. CM. Cipolla, Nr. I. London 1972, 175-220. Raedts also refers to Aries, op. cit., 14-15.
12. The terminological confusion even increases if we consider that contemporary Oplositional theologists up valued the poor and uneducated and counted them for innocent beings like children: therefore the meaning of "pueri/puellac" and "pauperes" or "stulti" are often merged. See Raedis, op. cit., and Aiphandery, op. cit., 140.
13. Klaus Arnold, op. cit., 20.
14. This opinion is held also by Hans Eberhard Mayer in: Geschichte der Kreuzzuege, Stuttgart 1986 (6th edition), 274 (note 109). it is beyond d~bt, though, that also people of other age groups participated in the crusade.
I5. "Pastor" can mean generally the profession, but it can also mean a boy-pastor. See: Jean Delalande, Los extraordina!res croisados d'enfanrs et de pasioreaux au tnoyen ige, los po'ton'nages d'enfanis an Mont Saint-Michet. Paris, 1962.
16. Juergen Schlumbohm (ed.), Kinderstuben. ifie Kinder zu flanern. Ruergern, Aristokraten wurden ~7~~~lSso. Muenchen. 1983.
17. Rudolph Binion, After Christianity. Christ!on Survivals in Post-Christian Cutture. Durango, Colorado 1986, p.21.

Special Issue "On Writing Childhood History"
The Journal of Psychohistory 16 (2) Fall 1988

Digital Archive of PSYCHOHISTORY Articles & Texts [Books texts] [Journal Articles] [Charts] [Prenatal] [Trauma Model] [Cultic] [Web links] [Cartoons] [Other]

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