Quote:
Originally Posted by Maggy J
Well it's apparently a misunderstanding over the word used to describe children in the original crusade..it may not have meant children but the poor that wandered nomadically through Europe at the time...So no parental permission needed...  |
I think you are confusing that with Peter the Hermit because there is historical record that:
Towards the end of June the children massed at Vendôme. Awed contemporaries spoke of thirty thousand, not one over twelve years of age. There were certainly several thousand of them, collected from all parts of the country, some of them simple peasants, whose parents in many cases had willingly let them go on their great mission. But there were also boys of noble birth who had slipped away from home to join Stephen and his following of "minor prophets" as the chroniclers called them. There were also girls amongst them, a few young priests, and a few older pilgrims, some drawn by piety, others, perhaps, from pity, and others, certainly, to share in the gifts that were showered upon them all. The bands came crowding into the town, each with a leader carrying a copy of the Oriflamme, which Stephen took as the device of the Crusade. The town could not contain them all, and they encamped in the fields outside.