Women and Children of the Crusades Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Women and Children of the Crusades - Essay Example The movement, nevertheless, is documented to happen sometime between Easter and the Pentecost and spread across northern France, Flanders, and Western Germany.1 As for women, their roles in the crusades are often not well-documented, most likely because of their gender, although some scholars have started to examine the chronicles and annals more closely to examine women’s participation in the crusades.2 Sources note that women played diverse roles during the crusades and that their home based functions should not be overlooked at all, since they kept the household and businesses alive, while their male family members were away, or died in the crusades.3 The Children’s Crusade is an effort to reclaim the Holy Land from the infidels, while the women played diverse direct and indirect roles in the military, spiritual, and financial aspect of the Crusades. The Children’s Crusade has been argued as a reaction of the disappointed youth with the crusaders, because they have not yet reclaimed Jerusalem from the infidels. They were made of children and other adolescents, who aimed to reach the Holy Land and retrieve it from the Muslims. Madden calls the Children’s Crusade as not a real crusade, but more of a collection of uprisings and processions, where the core medieval belief is that poverty will help them achieve their holy goals.4 This can be rooted that Jesus favored the poor over the rich, and so they must have believed that if the poor led the crusades, their victory will also be assured by Jesus Christ.5 Since this crusade by the children was a popular movement, its origins and developments are difficult to trace. None of the participants wrote about the event in a firsthand manner, for instance, as in the more official forms of crusades.6 In â€Å"The Children’s Crusade,† Munro reviews the veracity of the chronicles regarding the Children’s Crusade. She notes that for accounts regarding the French children, the most reliable sources are the unspecified chroniclers of Laon, Mortemer, Jumieges, and Andres.7 She notes that these writers markedly illustrated the same movement, but few facts are presented except for one of them. She provides brief accounts from each, where the story of the holy shepherd boy called Stephen can be narrated. On June, 1212, Stephen from the village of Cloyes, near Vendome, declared that the Lord had appeared to him, dressed as a poor pilgrim, had taken bread from him, and had provided him a letter to bring to the King of France.8 He travelled to S. Denis with shepherds of his own age and there the Lord performed numerous miracles through him, as many have witnessed.9 There were also many other boys who went with him and performed miracles. Numerous children joined them, as if they were to be long-term followers of the holy boy Stephen whom they all perceived as their master and prince.10 The bands, made of girls, boys, adolescents and several older persons, parade d through the cities, castles, towns, and villages, holding banners, candles, and crosses, and censers, singing in their language, â€Å"Lord God, exalt Christianity! Lord God, restore to us the true cross.†11 They sang these words and many more, which attracted more followers to the procession. When the children were asked by their parents or others where they would go, they would shout in unison: â€Å"To God.†12 The children could not be stopped initially, but based on the records of Jumieges, they went home when they got hungry.13 The Laon chronicle stated that the king, upon consultation with the masters of the University of Paris about this matter, finally ordered the children to go back home.14 The other two chroniclers do not provide any ending to this procession. As for the prevalence of the movement, one

Hype or reality Health and wellness Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Hype or reality Health and wellness - Essay Example ). The fact that competition has increased, is not only because of the desires of businesses to grow larger and better but also because of the ever growing unique needs and wants of consumers. These unique needs are a result of high level of awareness amongst consumers, which in turn is because of immense media proliferation, through internet, social networking sites, television, radio, print media, telephones etc (Top Ten Trends for Healthcare & Wellness in 2012 | HealthFlock). An aware consumer comprehends his needs better, identifies what is his requirement, and marketers or on large businesses, face the challenge to get into that consumer’s mind identify his needs and come up with such a combination of products and services as to satisfy that particular segment of large target market and sustain their aggressive approach towards understanding consumer needs (Top Ten Trends for Healthcare & Wellness in 2012 | HealthFlock). ... ellness is different in a way that it almost created a new canvas for itself to inflate in the industry that was a part of cosmetic beauty and medicine industry yet very different because of the amalgamation of ideas being brought together to generate the need in the minds of consumers (Market Trends Project More Growth for Wellness Industry | Company News | Wellsource). This was not an easy task to generate a need for a product or service which has many indirect competitors coming from several other fields of life and business, besides that the product offered was not a commodity but a luxury availed by the elites of societies, who had reserves of unlimited disposable income available to them all the time. A swift transition can strengthen the base of industry. Transition of health and wellness services to be perceived as an essential commodity for personal care, from the establishment time concept of it being a luxury item made for the entertainment of elitist classes of societies. Before moving on a few fact and figures related to industry, one must not forget to mention about the logic of ‘The Wellness Guru’, Paul Zane Pilzer, in his book ‘The Next Trillion’ claims that ‘more than half of the US population is unhealthy and overweight’ because of the health and wellness industry and the exponential growth in food industry (The Wellness Revolution). According to Paul Zane Pilzers’ ‘The Wellness Revolution’ $1.5 trillion of the US economy today is emerging from the wellness sector of the nation (The Wellness Revolution), while the Guru also extrapolates these figures to generate an estimated amount of $1 trillion additional to be invested in the sector by the end of year 2010, with the motive of ensuring a healthier, prettier and long lasting fresh