Other Child-pilgrimages.
"Still much more obscure is a child-pilgrimage of 1458, of which the motives were quite clearly religious. It is probably, at present, almost impossible to trace the chain of ideas which occasioned it; it is enough that it was in honor of the Archangel Michael. More than 100 children from Hall, in Suabia, set out, against the will of their parents, for Mont St. Michel in Normandy. They could not by any means be restrained, and if force was employed, they fell severely ill, and some even died. The mayor, unable to prevent the journey, kindly furnished them a guide for the long journey, and an ass to carry their luggage. They are said to have actually reached the then world-renowned Abbey, and to have performed their devotions there. We have absolutely no other information of them, and it appears that this child-pilgrimage, which falls to the time when chorea was very frequent and widely spread in Germany, has excited even much less attention than the migration of the children of Erfurt in the year 1237."[220]