For eighteen years Europe did not learn the fate of these children, not until a priest who had accompanied them returned. Of all who embarked at Marseille he alone came back to say what happened. West of Sardinia rises a deserted islet, Accipitrum, referring to falcons that nest among the cliffs. Three days out from Marseille a furious storm drove two vessels against this rocky islet. All aboard were lost. The remaining vessels bore south to Africa and the slave market at Bujeiah. Here the Frankish children were sold. Some vanished in Bujeiah. Others went to Alexandria where the governor, Maschemuth, put them to work cultivating his fields. Sultan Malek Kamel bought seven hundred. Some few did set foot in the Holy Land but were carried away to Damascus or Baghdad where they were decapitated or drowned or shot by archers if they would not renounce our Lord.
Was this done by instinct of the devil? Cloyed with the blood of martyred men, did Satan in his blackness desire a cordial of childish blood to slake his thirst? Gregory, who was pontiff in those days, groaned with despair when he learned how these children suffered and died. Have they not put us to shame? he wondered aloud. Have not these innocents perished while we slept?
He thought to raise a monument in their honor. That islet called Accipitrum where two ships foundered was deemed appropriate. Many small corpses had washed ashore during the storm and fishermen who sometimes visited the place had buried them. His Holiness directed that a church should be constructed, the bodies of these children exhumed and reburied within. If they were found wondrously uncorrupted or not has long been argued. The church is named Ecclesia Novorum Innocentium, which recalls the murdered children of Bethlehem, and was so endowed that twelve prebends live nearby, praying incessantly. All things flow constantly from God as water flows from a spring, tending ever to return.
Belgicum, Albericus, Thomas de Champré, and others make some mention of these innocents, none at length. The foolish little army had quickly come and gone. Besides, in those days the Church was bent on purifying Languedoc.
What of Stephen? An English monk, Thomas of Sherborne, while traveling through France long after the children vanished was held captive for eight days by a militant host of shepherds. This monk spoke of an old man commanding the shepherds who had been a slave in Egypt and promised the sultan he would lead an army of Christians into bondage just as he had led Frankish children into slavery when he was a child. So he journeyed here or there preaching with no authority or license, claiming Our Lady had empowered him to conscript herdsmen and ploughmen by virtue of their simplicity to recover the Holy Land, claiming to hold a mandate from the Virgin in his clenched fist, braying that the Lord was not pleased with Frankish pride in arms. Country folk left their flocks and herds to follow this old man. For, said they, God Almighty hath chosen the weak to confound the strong. And they cut themselves banners whose insignia was a lamb bearing a flag in token of humility. Exiles, thieves, rogues, excommunicates, all came swarming. Spears, axes, knives, and poniards they carried. And whoever challenged their passage they would attack. And when their master preached, what did he do but condemn various orders, calling Franciscans and Dominicans hypocrites, calling Cistercians greedy, Benedictines gluttonous. He preached unspeakable filth about the Roman curia. He raved, cursed, deviated madly from acknowledged tenets of Christian faith. People who heard such things spoken in hatred applauded loudly.
To the city of Orléans did he lead his flock, whereupon the bishop forbade clerics to listen or consort with them since it was the devil’s snare. But the citizens would hear what was preached. And the old man blasphemed, hurled insults, at which a scholar strode up close, denouncing him as a liar, heretic, enemy of truth. So a shepherd with a pointed axe split the scholar’s head to silence him. Then this army went about smashing doors, pillaging, murdering, burning books, and drowned priests in the Loire while terrified citizens pretended not to see. Next to Bourges. A curious throng assembled when this old man announced he would preach and perform miracles. But his assertions the crowd perceived as foolish, his miracles fraudulent. Some butcher cleaved his skull with a hatchet, after which they dragged his carcass to the crossroads for animals to eat. So the wicked army flew apart, each loutish soldier anxious to save his nuts. Most were caught, slain like dogs that foam at the mouth. All this did Thomas of Sherborne set down in writing after he escaped these pastouraux who got no closer to Jerusalem than Bourges.
If the furious old man who led them was Stephen of Cloyes has been much debated. Myself, I think not. If he surrendered the ghost in boiling surf at Accipitrum, lost his head at Damascus, mayhap lived out his years in Muslim slavery, or if he declined to board the Judas ships and turned back to Cloyes, who shall decide? He with all who followed him had put their trust in Almighty God, expecting to win by faith what mounted knights could not through force of arms. They had gone armed with belief in lieu of steel. For love of our Lord they undertook the voyage,
