Philip V had the idea, repugnant to the spirit of the time, of undertaking a crusade to wrest the Holy Land, after so many vain attempts, from the hands of the infidels. This enterprise appeared so foolish to the discerning, that even Pope John XXII, the second of the popes that resided in Avignon instead of at Rome, dissuaded him from it. Nevertheless, the fancy, as soon as it was known, inflamed the minds of the rude populace. A young man of excited imagination gave out that a dove had settled at one time on his head, at another, on his shoulder, and when he had sought to seize it, it had transformed itself into a beautiful woman, who urged him to gather a troop of crusaders, assuring him of victory. His utterances found credulous hearers, and the lower people, children, and swine-herds attached themselves to him. A wicked priest and an unfrocked Benedictine monk used the opportunity to force their way to the front, and thus arose in northern France (1320) a numerous horde of forty thousand shepherds (Pastoureaux, Pastorelli, Roïm), who moved in procession from town to town carrying banners, and announced their intention of journeying across the sea to deliver the so-called holy sepulcher. Their attention was immediately turned to the Jews, possibly because they wanted to raise money for the purchase of weapons by robbing the Jews of their possessions, or a Jew, as is related, had made sport of their childish heroism. The massacre of the Jews by the shepherds (Gesereth-ha-Roïm) is another bloody page in Jewish history.
Nearly all the crusading enterprises had commenced with the murder of Jews; so this time. The shepherd-gangs which had collected near the town of Agen (on the Garonne) cut down all the Jews they met on their march from this place to Toulouse, if they refused to be baptized. About five hundred Jews had found refuge in the fortress of Verdun (on the Garonne), the commandant having placed a strong tower at their disposal. The shepherds took it by storm, and a desperate battle took place. As the Jews had no hopes of rescue, they had recourse in their despair to self-destruction. The unhappy people selected the oldest and most respected man of their number to slay them one after the other. The old man picked out a muscular young assistant in this ghastly business, and both went to work to rid their fellow-sufferers of their miserable lives. When at last the young man, after slaying his aged partner, was left alone, the desire of life came strong upon him; he declared to the besieging shepherds that he was ready to go over to them, and asked to be baptized. The latter were just or cruel enough to refuse the request, and tore the renegade to pieces. The Jewish children found in the tower were baptized by force. The governor of Toulouse zealously espoused the cause of the Jews, and summoned the knights to take the approaching shepherds prisoners. Thus many of them were brought in chains to the capital, and thrown into prison. But the mob, which sympathized with them, banded together, and set them at liberty, the result being that the greater part of the congregation of Toulouse was destroyed. A few seceded to Christianity. On the capture of the shepherds near Toulouse, the Jews in the neighborhood, who had been granted shelter in Castel-Narbonnais, thought that they were now free of all danger, and left their place of refuge. They were surprised by the rabble, and annihilated. Thus perished almost all the Jews in the neighborhood of Bordeaux, Gascogne, Toulouse, Albi, and other towns of southern France. Altogether, more than 120 Jewish congregations in France and northern Spain were blotted out through the rising of the Shepherds, and the survivors were so impoverished by spoliation that they were dependent upon the succor of their brethren in other parts, which flowed to them in abundance even from Germany.