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doi: 10.1017/S0009640709000171 The Children's Crusade: Medieval History, Modern Mythistory. By Gary Dickson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. xviii + 247 pp. $35.00 cloth.
Gary Dickson asks how a minor thirteenth-century event, which left no institutional legacy, was poorly recorded, and has not been written about much by historians since, could nonetheless become "part of the collective memory of western society" (195). Today, playwrights, novelists, librettists, and no doubt preachers can assume that their authences will recognize a reference to the pueri. By a close analysis of the texts, brief and conflicting as they are, and by carefully placing the events of 1212 in a context of revivalistic religion, Dickson gives us a breakthrough interpretation of the Children's Crusade. Although the Crusade was unofficial, neither led by clergy nor sanctioned by the papacy, Dickson convinces that it must be taken seriously and has much to teach us about medieval popular religion. His study touches on issues of lay leadership, attitudes toward children, charismatic authority, mythistory, and crowd psychology, and is enlightening on them all.
Wanting us to see the pueri as part of an important tradition of religious enthusiasm, Dickson compares them to our young people of the 1960s; both were...