The idea, the spirit of the Crusades dominates and penetrates everywhere and everything. In the castles the children and young people are told with enthusiasm of the grand expedition of Peter the Hermit, fighting so bravely with an axe; and the recital which appeals so directly and forcibly to the youthful auditory is the episode of the famous nineteenth battalion—of that battalion of priests which was perceived beneath the walls of Jerusalem at the great attack.
“They were all clothed in white, with a red cross on the breast, unarmed, each one carrying a consecrated wafer, all intoning the litany and blessing the army with one voice.” Ah! Such action as this caused one to forget all the failings of the clergy, and this was also the catechism of the child of the feudal age.
León Gautier, Chivalry, trans. Henry Frith (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1891), 108–9.
Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 692
