Why do people follow a man like this?

Anyway read all about Brother X11 ( sometimes called Brother Twelve)

http://dyingwords.net/brother-xii-devil-de-courcy-island/

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-happened-to-this-cult-leaders-lost-treasure

https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1960/4/23/the-weird-and-savage-cult-of-brother-12



Dirk

Who knows, Dirk?  Maybe cult leaders such as the one cited in your post had a presence or charisma in real life that doesn't come over off the dry page. Then, why do some people succumb to scams (one might think of people who fall for the "we're going to turn your broadband off") scam and people who claim to have invented "free energy"). When I lived in London I sometimes listened to the late Martin Fido's Murder After Midnight broadcasts on LBC (London Broadcasting Company) - with them being on a Friday night/early Saturday morning I didn't have to be up and out of bed as early as I did on weekday workdays so I could stay awake a bit later.  They were true crime stories.  I recently found out that some of them at least have been uploaded to YouTube.  One series he did was about "Cults that Kill" but the introductory broadcast was called "What is a Cult".  I'll link the clip (audio only - it was on a radio station) in case anyone wants to listen (around 7 minutes in he mentions that there was something of a cult about the early Christian church).  It was interesting to me (although they are obviously the broadcaster's ideas) as a study of the development of cults and why some ideas last and some die out.   https://youtu.be/66B_OQPKwP8

I'm wary about typing making any comment about cults at present but here goes...did the leader of the Children's Crusade have something of a cult leader about him?  Although all did not end well for the Children's Crusade.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I'm wary about typing making any comment about cults at present but here goes...did the leader of the Children's Crusade have something of a cult leader about him?  Although all did not end well for the Children's Crusade.

Lady,

I think you can be right that the two peasant leaders, one in Germany and one in France, were a kind of Cult Leaders. But I suppose one has to make a difference between two kind of leaders: the exalted ones, who really believe in their mission and the ones, making a cult not out of belief, but only to enrich themselves? Examples of the preachers in the US? Scientology Church? And perhaps a lot in between.

When one read then about the real Children's Crusade, one can be disappointed about the reality, perhaps even not children..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Crusade
The Dutch historian Peter Raedts, in a study published in 1977, was the first to cast doubt on the traditional narrative of these events. Many historians came to believe that they were not (or not primarily) children, but multiple bands of "wandering poor" in Germany and France. This comes in large part from the words "parvuli" or "infantes" found in two accounts of the event from William of Andres and Alberic of Troisfontaines. No other accounts from the time period suggest an age at all, but the connotation with the two words give an entirely separate meaning. Medieval writers often split up a life into four major parts with a variety of age ranges associated to them. The Church then co opted this classification to a societal coding, with the expression referring to wage workers or labourers who were young and had no inheritance. The "Chronica Regiae Coloniensis", written in 1213, (a year after the crusade was said to have taken place) refers to crusaders having “left the plows or carts which they were driving, [and] the flocks which they were pasturing”, adding to the idea of it being not "puerti" the age, but "puerti" the societal moniker. A number of them tried to reach the Holy Land but others never intended to do so. Early accounts of events, of which there are many variations told over the centuries, are, according to this theory, largely apocryphal.^{[clarification needed][2][1]}
"not "puerti" the age, but "puerti" the societal moniker"

Sorry, LiR, if I have broken now the myth and the glamour of the story;

Kind regards from Paul.