Crusade of Tears: A Novel of the Children's Crusade by C. D. Baker Page A
Authors: C. D. Baker
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adept with the crossbow, lance, and flail.
Pieter’s first encounters with the horror of battle had proven him to be a loyal and courageous soldier, cunning and fierce, but with a ready heart of mercy and compassion. His broad shoulders and sinewy arms bore well his chain mail shirt and leather vest. Long, brown curls draped below the turned edges of his steel helmet, and his large hands gripped the fearsome flail he faithfully carried. Friederich loved him as a son and described him as having “the heart of a lion but the disposition of a court puppy.”
His valor in the bloody battle at Tortona was chronicled by Friederich’s secretary and read ceremoniously to the court of Barbarossa himself; for it was none other than the stouthearted Pieter who had rallied his troop of footmen to rescue a battered unit of mounted knights from their encircling enemies. The Lombardian duces of Milan had all but closed their fist around Friederich and his beleaguered Saxons when the full fury of Pieter’s charge crashed against the enemy’s flank. A savage butchery released the Germans from the snare, and the day was won, though at a terrible cost.
So, before the assembled host of his knights, a grateful Friederich the Fat intended to knight Pieter and grant him a large tilled and pastured fief in Saxony. But on that glorious morning the young man looked up from bended knee and humbly declined the generous offer. He was heard to whisper, “Forgive me, my lord, but there is no necessity of reward for duty done, nor am I able to pleasure in any such token of slaughter.” Pieter had lost his lust for battle—and he was relieved for it.
Young Pieter, ever purposed, returned to a more ordinary life to re-enlist his quest for the understanding of the worlds within himself and without. He had little passion for the material interests of the growing merchant class or the political pursuits of his own titled family. His soul yearned for peace, and he yielded his life to the service of the Church of Rome.
It was behind the arched glass of cathedrals and the high walls of monasteries that he spent the next three decades. Ever the quick learner, he rapidly advanced from a simple parish priest to the clerk of the influential Archbishop Chandeleux. But as the years began to gray his thinning, brown hair and strip his limbs of earlier bulk, his merciless pursuit of understanding drove him deeper into himself and into the mysteries of his faith. Frustrated and searching, Pieter eventually resigned his position to enter a foreboding Carthusian monastery in distant Neumark. What better way, he pondered, to learn of God’s ways than to spend my life with feather in hand and eyes on His Word? So he lived by quill and candle, a copyist, vowed to scratch the Holy Script into yellow parchment on a small, well-worn, wooden table.
During those silent, monotonous years Brother Pieter again learned much. And in his learning he grew restless, for the Word he read seemed contrary to his training. Always wishing to be respectful, yet compelled by conscience, the monk strained to endure the apparent conflict. At last, no longer able to restrain his spirit, he endeavored to engage his fellow brothers, his prior, and finally his abbot. His superiors responded to his appeals with obstinance and rebuke, ultimately spawning a rebellion within Pieter that expressed itself with increasing abrasiveness and a broadening hostility toward the practice, doctrine, and authority of his Church. Even five years of exile to an order laboring within the bleak marshes of Silesia could not silence the persistent man.
In the end, his refusal to repent of his gross insubordination warranted banishment under papal anathema. Though stripped of vocation, title, and inheritance, Pieter’s hardy spirit was strangely enlivened, not quenched. He defiantly left his vows behind and wandered the Rhineland and the Alps as a self-declared “beggar priest,” serving the spiritual needs
Pieter’s first encounters with the horror of battle had proven him to be a loyal and courageous soldier, cunning and fierce, but with a ready heart of mercy and compassion. His broad shoulders and sinewy arms bore well his chain mail shirt and leather vest. Long, brown curls draped below the turned edges of his steel helmet, and his large hands gripped the fearsome flail he faithfully carried. Friederich loved him as a son and described him as having “the heart of a lion but the disposition of a court puppy.”
His valor in the bloody battle at Tortona was chronicled by Friederich’s secretary and read ceremoniously to the court of Barbarossa himself; for it was none other than the stouthearted Pieter who had rallied his troop of footmen to rescue a battered unit of mounted knights from their encircling enemies. The Lombardian duces of Milan had all but closed their fist around Friederich and his beleaguered Saxons when the full fury of Pieter’s charge crashed against the enemy’s flank. A savage butchery released the Germans from the snare, and the day was won, though at a terrible cost.
So, before the assembled host of his knights, a grateful Friederich the Fat intended to knight Pieter and grant him a large tilled and pastured fief in Saxony. But on that glorious morning the young man looked up from bended knee and humbly declined the generous offer. He was heard to whisper, “Forgive me, my lord, but there is no necessity of reward for duty done, nor am I able to pleasure in any such token of slaughter.” Pieter had lost his lust for battle—and he was relieved for it.
Young Pieter, ever purposed, returned to a more ordinary life to re-enlist his quest for the understanding of the worlds within himself and without. He had little passion for the material interests of the growing merchant class or the political pursuits of his own titled family. His soul yearned for peace, and he yielded his life to the service of the Church of Rome.
It was behind the arched glass of cathedrals and the high walls of monasteries that he spent the next three decades. Ever the quick learner, he rapidly advanced from a simple parish priest to the clerk of the influential Archbishop Chandeleux. But as the years began to gray his thinning, brown hair and strip his limbs of earlier bulk, his merciless pursuit of understanding drove him deeper into himself and into the mysteries of his faith. Frustrated and searching, Pieter eventually resigned his position to enter a foreboding Carthusian monastery in distant Neumark. What better way, he pondered, to learn of God’s ways than to spend my life with feather in hand and eyes on His Word? So he lived by quill and candle, a copyist, vowed to scratch the Holy Script into yellow parchment on a small, well-worn, wooden table.
During those silent, monotonous years Brother Pieter again learned much. And in his learning he grew restless, for the Word he read seemed contrary to his training. Always wishing to be respectful, yet compelled by conscience, the monk strained to endure the apparent conflict. At last, no longer able to restrain his spirit, he endeavored to engage his fellow brothers, his prior, and finally his abbot. His superiors responded to his appeals with obstinance and rebuke, ultimately spawning a rebellion within Pieter that expressed itself with increasing abrasiveness and a broadening hostility toward the practice, doctrine, and authority of his Church. Even five years of exile to an order laboring within the bleak marshes of Silesia could not silence the persistent man.
In the end, his refusal to repent of his gross insubordination warranted banishment under papal anathema. Though stripped of vocation, title, and inheritance, Pieter’s hardy spirit was strangely enlivened, not quenched. He defiantly left his vows behind and wandered the Rhineland and the Alps as a self-declared “beggar priest,” serving the spiritual needs
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