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 audiences 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 idealistic, rebellious against their elders, dreaming of impossible goals—yet ultimately admirable in their single-mindedness, courage, and nonviolence. (The pueri did not use weapons, which could use more reflection than Dickson gives it.) It is in looking backward rather than forward, however, that Dickson is most helpful: seeing the unbroken century or more of crusades preaching that had kept much of Europe inflamed with religious fervor, he calls northern France and the Rhineland (the locus of both youth movements) “burned-over districts” (42). By borrowing this nineteenth-century description of western New York State, he shows how an entire area can experience intense spiritual revivals. Pointing out that early thirteenth-century France and Germany were being stirred by calls to join crusades against the Albigensian heretics and the Almohad Moors, and that even members of religions other than Christianity or Islam were responding to a crisis call (three hundred western European rabbis set out on pilgrimage to Jerusalem just months before the children began their march), Dickson notes the ecstatic quality of all of these ventures: the fanaticism of the Moorish warriors; the singing, dancing, weeping, and even flagellation of the Christian popular groups. Dickson has the unusual gift of taking possession religion seriously and seeing the power in prophetic enthusiasm. By the time he finishes his description of grassroots lay religion at the time of Innocent III, one is ready to ask, how could there not have been a crusading response from the children?

Dickson does not succeed in convincing on every point. He spends far too long arguing the remote possibility that French young people started the German movement yet never makes it seem possible that, having gathered near Paris, the French then headed northeast to Cologne when their direct route to Jerusalem lay due south, to Marseilles. Besides, he never tells us what difference it would make if the French origins were proven. Nor is he convincing that it was the children who inspired Innocent to preach the Fifth Crusade as a popular crusade, open to all; surely what drove the pope's action was the opportunity to sell more crusade indulgences. Nor does he persuade that the pueri inspired Francis of Assisi to set out on his first, abortive attempt at crusade. A further lack is the absence of gender analysis; the fact that many of the accounts mention “boys and girls, men and women” as marching together requires that this not be a story of men only.

And Dickson has a gripe against mythistory. Even while admitting the role of mythistoricizing in keeping this story alive, he bludgeons its current practitioners as “well-paid blenders of stingy portions of historical fact and generous, tasty dollops of mythistorical fiction [who] regularly offer us factoid films, docudramas, and ‘live’ re-enactments of medieval battles. It is enough to make poorly paid historians, mere purveyors of truth, burst a blood vessel” (132). This is an unfair dismissal of the field of historical fiction and the role of the media in popularizing the past.

Yet overall this is an extraordinary study, original, delightful to read. Considering that there has not been a book-length study of the pueri in English since 1870, we can be grateful for Dickson's attention to them. His work opens many avenues for thinking about popular, ecstatic religion and about how these events are remembered; by tracing the influence of the pueri over time he argues that the myths that develop around the founding event become part of its history and enable it to live on, even without an institutional structure. One hopes this study will be widely read and emulated.