Editing Children's Crusade (section)

===Revisionism===
The Dutch historian Peter Raedts, in a study published in 1977, was the first to cast doubt on the traditional narrative of these events. Many historians came to believe that they were not (or not primarily) children, but multiple bands of "wandering poor" in Germany and France. This comes in large part from the words "parvuli" or "infantes" found in two accounts of the event from [[William of Andres]] and [[Alberic of Troisfontaines]]. No other accounts from the time period suggest an age at all, but the connotation with the two words give an entirely separate meaning. Medieval writers often split up a life into four major parts with a variety of age ranges associated to them. The Church then co-opted this classification to a societal coding, with the expression referring to wage workers or labourers who were young and had no inheritance. The ''[[Chronica regia Coloniensis]]'', written in 1213 (a year after the crusade was said to have taken place), refers to crusaders having "left the plows or carts which they were driving, [and] the flocks which they were pasturing", adding to the idea of it being not "puerti" the age, but "puerti" the societal moniker. Another spelling, ''pueri'', translates precisely into children, but indirectly means "the powerless". A number of them tried to reach the Holy Land but others never intended to do so. Early accounts of events, of which there are many variations told over the centuries, are, according to this theory, largely [[apocryphal]].{{clarify|date=October 2012|reason=See talk page}}<ref name="Raedts">{{cite journal | last = Raedts | first = Peter | title = The Children's Crusade of 1213 | journal = Journal of Medieval History | volume = 3 | issue = 4 | year = 1977 |doi=10.1016/0304-4181(77)90026-4 | pages=279–323}}</ref><ref name="Russell">{{cite book |title=[[Dictionary of the Middle Ages]] |volume=4 |chapter=Children's Crusade |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |location=New York |last=Russell |first=Frederick H. |year=1989 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofmidd0000unse/page/14 |pages=14–15 |editor-first=Joseph R. |editor-last=Strayer }}</ref>

Raedts "wandering poor" without children account was revised in 2008 by Gary Dickson who maintained that while it was not made up entirely of actual children, they did exist and played a key role.<ref name="Dickson"/><ref>{{cite book |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=O8ubDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA149 149] |title=The World of the Crusades: A Daily Life Encyclopedia |volume=1 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |author=Andrew Holt |year=2019 }}</ref>

Further theories by other historians suggest that the fixations on children within the traditional narrative of these events are to corroborate with perceptions of the Crusades during certain periods of time. First by sources in the Medieval era to portray such religious movements with the innocent and pure nature often affiliated with children in. Then by sources in more contemporary times to either slander or propel established beliefs of the Crusades and Christianity.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.medievalists.net/2024/06/childrens-crusade-interpretation/ |title=The Children's Crusade: A Change of Interpretation Over Time |journal=[[Medievalists.net]] |last=Athas |first=Liam |date=2024 }}</ref>