Editing Children's Crusade (section)

===Historical studies===
Prior to Raedts's study of 1977, there had only been a few historical publications researching the Children's Crusade. The earliest were by the Frenchman G. de Janssens (1891) and the German [[Reinhold Röhricht]] (1876). They analyzed the sources but did not analyze the story. American medievalist [[Dana Carleton Munro]] (1913–14), according to Raedts, provided the best analysis of the sources to date and was the first to significantly provide a convincingly sober account of the Crusade stripped of legends.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://archive.org/details/jstor-1835076/mode/2up |title=The Children's Crusade |journal=[[American Historical Review]] |last=Munro |first=D. C. |date=1914 |volume=19 |issue=3 |pages=516–524|doi=10.1086/ahr/19.3.516 }}</ref> Later, J. E. Hansbery (1938–9) published a correction of Munro's work, but it has since been discredited as based on an unreliable source.<ref name="Raedts"/> German psychiatrist [[Justus Hecker]] (1865) did give an original interpretation of the crusade, but it was a polemic about "diseased religious emotionalism" that has since been discredited.<ref name="Raedts"/>

P. Alphandery (1916) first published his ideas about the crusade in 1916 in an article which was later published in book form in 1959. He considered the story of the crusade to be an expression of the medieval cult of the Innocents, as a sort of sacrificial rite in which the Innocents gave themselves up for the good of [[Christendom]]; however, he based his ideas on some of the most untrustworthy sources.<ref>Alphandery, P. (1954). ''La Chrétienté et l'idée de croisade''. 2 vols.</ref>

Adolf Waas (1956) saw the Children's Crusade as a manifestation of chivalric piety and as a protest against the glorification of the holy war.<ref>Waas, A. (1956). ''Geschichte der Kreuzzüge''</ref> H. E. Mayer (1960) further developed Alphandery's ideas of the Innocents, saying children were the chosen people of God because they were the poorest; recognizing the cult of poverty, he said that "the Children's Crusade marked both the triumph and the failure of the idea of poverty."<ref>Mayer, H.E. (1972). ''The Crusades''</ref> Giovanni Miccoli (1961) was the first to note that the contemporary sources did not portray the participants as children. It was this recognition that undermined all other interpretations,<ref>Miccoli, G. (1961). "La crociata dei fancifulli". ''Studi medievali''. Third Series, 2:407–43</ref> except perhaps that of [[Norman Cohn]] (1957) who saw it as a [[chiliastic]] movement in which the poor tried to escape the misery of their everyday lives.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/pursuitofmillenn0000cohn |title=The Pursuit of the Millennium |publisher=Essential Books |author=Norman Cohen |year=1957 |location=New Jersey}}</ref> In his book ''Children's Crusade: Medieval History, Modern Mythistory'' (2008), Gary Dickson discusses the growing number of "impossibilist" movements across Western Europe at the time. Infamous for their shunning of any form of wealth and refusing to join a monastery, they would travel in groups and rely upon small donations or meals from those who listened to their sermons to survive. [[Excommunication|Excommunicated]] by the Pope, they were forced to wander and likely made up a large portion of what is called the "Children's Crusade". After the crusade failed, the Pope stated that the devotees of Nicholas and Stephen had shamed all of the Christian leaders.<ref name="Dickson">{{cite book |title=Children's Crusade: Medieval History, Modern Mythistory |first=Gary |last=Dickson |year=2008 }}</ref>

Historians have put the crusade in the context of the role of teenage boys in medieval warfare.<ref>Kelly DeVries, "Teenagers at War During the Middle Ages" in ''The Premodern Teenager: Youth in Society, 1150–1650'' (2002) ed by Konrad Eisenbichler pp 207–223.</ref> Literary scholars have explored its role in the evolution of the tale of the [[Pied Piper of Hamelin|Pied Piper]].<ref>Bernard Queenan, "The Evolution of the Pied Piper," ''Children's Literature'' (1978) 7#1 pp: 104–114.</ref>