Der Kinderkreuzzug

Whether it ever happened as the chroniclers report is a matter of disagreement among historians. However, about two dozen reliable sources speak of various groups of thousands of children, adolescents, and adults from mostly impoverished backgrounds who set out in the spring of 1212 from the Rhineland and Lower Lorraine, as well as the Chartres region, unarmed and under the leadership of charismatic youths—such as Stefan of Cloyes and Nicholas of Cologne—to Jerusalem "to free the holy grave from the Saracens." After a costly crossing of the Alps, only a few participants managed to reach the Mediterranean, and those who survived were sold as slaves in Pisa or Marseille. Marcel Schwob's approach to these events is unique in the literature of the Fin de Siècle: through a multiperspective method, eight individuals—both historical and fictional—speak monologically: a Goliard, a leper, Popes Innocent III and Gregory IX, a devout Muslim, and the children themselves, who describe the events from their respective viewpoints and embed them in philosophical-theological excursions. When asked who bears the actual responsibility for the catastrophe, the answers vary widely.