While the youthfulness of many of those who took part was noted by chroniclers, some historians have recently suggested that “pueri” could have been a social designation for poor, landless peasants and that their movement may have been notable for the large number of poor, peasant youths. Existing sources have scant details, so it is not possible to establish the exact ages of all the pueri. The appearance of this word in the sources led to the popular name of the Children’s Crusade, but historians are unsure that all the participants were literal children. Pueri is a Latin term that can mean children generally or boys specifically. ( Meet the mysterious enemies of the crusaders: the Alamut, or "Assassins.") Thirteenth-century chroniclers called them pueri. But a new group of people willing to fight for God started to emerge, volunteers who were neither mercenaries or warriors. The Children’s Crusade began in spring 1212 as the church sought recruits to fight Muslim Spain and the Cathars. Both these local and distant holy wars stirred up religious fervor among commoners in Europe, in turn sparking a series of “popular” crusades. In the early 1200s, Pope Innocent III proclaimed two “local” European crusades: One was the struggle against Almohad Muslim rulers in Spain the other was the campaign to destroy Catharism, a Christian heresy popular in southern France. The most well known Crusades were these large expeditions to the Holy Land, but there were other military missions in Europe that roused the faithful. Muslim retaliation would prove too strong, however, and the last European crusader stronghold would fall to the Mamluks in 1291. Over the next two centuries, seven crusades followed in an attempt to retain control in the Holy Land. The Christian alliance took Jerusalem from the Fatimid Muslims in 1099 and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem. ( The Knights Templar got their start-and lots of money-during the Crusades.) The blessing of Pope Urban II in 1095 launched the First Crusade, a bid to retake the Holy Land, the following summer. Buoyed by a resurgence in pilgrimage across Europe, the Catholic Church wanted to expand. By the late 11th century, Europe was enjoying a period of economic strength, and the papacy had asserted its power following a series of important reforms.
Islam had spread far and wide to formerly Christian lands in the Near East and North Africa in the seventh century, and to the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth.
Official papal crusades began in the 11th century.
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