Defending the Crusader Kingdoms: Leprosy

Showing posts with label Leprosy. Show all posts

Saturday, July 19, 2025

Leprosy in Crusader Times

King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem was a leper. This was so exceptional in the history of Western monarchies that he has gone down in history simply as “the Leper King.” Most people know nothing else about him, not even his Christian name. Yet not only was he a king, he was an effective, respected and beloved king -- as I described last week. Today I want to look more closely at how it was possible for him to become king at all.

The Mask of Baldwin IV in the Hollywood Film "The Kingdom of Heaven"

Without doubt, leprosy is one of the most appalling diseases known to man. Victims of the disease suffer from symptoms including a loss of feeling in their affected limbs, a discoloring and hardening of the skin, disfiguring growths or nodules that deform the face, hands and legs, open ulcers, particularly on the soles of the feet, and, in its most virulent form, the disease can deform even the skeleton and skull, while progressively triggering a deterioration of control over one’s limbs, leading finally to the loss of toes, fingers, ears, noses, and eyesight. Because of this gradual decay of the body lepers were sometimes referred to the “living dead” or “walking corpses.”

Medieval carving showing a leper

Leprosy is a global phenomenon, present today on every continent. While some scientists suggest it originated in East Africa (along with mankind and horses), the oldest anthropological evidence of the disease is a nearly 3,000 year old skeleton found in India. Certainly it was known in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient China, and is recorded in the Old Testiment as well.

In Western medical texts, Hippocrates described symptoms that match leprosy as early as 460 BC, but no cure was found for leprosy until the 20^th century. Furthermore, modern medical research shows that as much as 30% of a population may become infected during an epidemic, yet once endemic, only 5% of any given population is likely to contract the disease. Yet that research was not available until the last century.

Throughout most of human history, the leprosy was believed to be not only incurable but also highly contagious. At the extreme, some medical tracts (including Arab ones) suggested that just breathing the same air as lepers could result in infection. It was this terror of catching such a horrible and incurable disease that led many societies to ostracize lepers, notably the Jews and the Germanic tribes of northeastern Europe, both of which expelled lepers from their societies.

So how could a leper become a king?

Because he lived in a Near Eastern, Christian monarch in the twelfth century. By this time Eastern Christianity had come to view leprosy not as a curse nor as an outward expression of sin nor a form of divine punishment nor even something unclean. Rather it viewed leprosy as a symbol of divine grace.

According to the gospels, Christ cured a leper following the Sermon on the Mount, and in the gospel of Luke (16:19-31) a poor beggar “covered with soars” called Lazarus is scorned by a rich man but finds favor with God. In the Medieval tradition, this man was a leper and Lazarus became the patron saint of lepers. The significance of lepers in the New Testament is twofold. First, leprosy was at the time incurable, so that healing a leper could only be a miracle, a divine act, and Christ demonstrates his divinity by curing the leper. Second, and often overlooked today, lepers were outcasts in Jewish society, prohibited from entering the Temple, so in curing the leper Christ was extending his grace even to outcasts.

The argument went farther: Disease humbled even the proudest and wealthiest, bringing them closer to God, and no disease did that more thoroughly than leprosy. Far from being a punishment for sin, therefore, leprosy was the ultimate test of righteousness. While the victims were, it was argued, already marked by God for salvation, those willing to show them Christian love and charity would also win the favor of God. Legends started to evolve in which Christ appeared on earth as a leper, and the disease started to be referred to as “the Holy Disease.”

A monk treats a child with leprosy; a sign of charity.

Furthermore, the lives of saints often highlight acts of charity or kindness toward lepers, including kissing them. Likewise, from this period onward, we can trace the development and spread of hospitals especially established for the care of lepers, particularly in the Byzantine Empire. They are recorded in Constantinople itself and all the way to Alexandria. Notably, there was an important leper hospital in Jerusalem as well.

The Leper Hospital at Jerusalem no longer exists; this is the Hospitaller HQ at Acre

The establishment of leper hospitals enabled the removal of lepers from homes, markets, and work-places and so to a degree isolated lepers from mainstream society. No matter what the Church preached about the Christ-like nature of loving lepers, most ordinary humans preferred not to undergo the ultimate test of holiness by suffering such a debilitating and humiliating disease! A degree of segregation was therefore both rational and understandable. However, these new establishments were not isolated and cut off from society, nor were they places of detention or characterized by horrible living conditions. On the contrary, they were large complexes with their own churches, dormitories, kitchens, water reservoirs, orchards and land. People, whether the wealthy relatives of victims of the disease, or men and women anxious to gain credit in heaven were willing to endow leper hospitals or make charitable gifts to them in coin or kind.

Furthermore, leper hospitals were not prisons, in which lepers were incarcerated against their will. The lepers could come and go as they pleased, and if they remained it was because they benefited from the charity and care they received rather than from compulsion. Furthermore, the lepers in these hospitals largely governed their own affairs, electing their own officials, who they then obeyed as in the monastic tradition. Likewise, they had chapter meetings, like monks, and female lepers appear to have had the same rights as their male counterparts. In at least one case a woman is recorded as a “commander” of a leper hospital.

A "Chapter House" where collective decisions would have been made.

Significantly, however, it was in Jerusalem that a leper hospital grew into a religious order in its own right, the Order of St. Lazarus. The leper hospital had been established during Byzantine rule of the Holy City but after the establishment of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, it was taken over by the Knights Hospitaller. By in 1147, the leper hospital had broken away from the Hospitallers and was recognized as a religious order in its own right. Initially referred to as the Leper Brothers of Jerusalem, the members of this new religious order soon came to be called the Knights of St. Lazarus, and adopted a green cross as their symbol. (Note: the Templars wore red crosses on white, the Hospitaller at this time white crosses on black, and the Teutonic Knights adopted a black cross on white.)

Membership in the Order of St. Lazarus was mandatory for knights of the other militant orders who developed leprosy after taking holy vows, and for members of the nobility of Outremer, who came down with the disease, but was not confined to these individuals. Any leper, of course, could join the community, and healthy individuals, intent on showing Christian love and charity, could do so by joining the order and serving the lepers. Enough healthy knights belonged to the Order by the 13^th century for knights to have fought at the Battle of Gaza in 1244, the Battle of Ramla in 1253, and during the defense of Acre in 1291. They may also have fought at Hattin in 1187.

All the above battles post-date the death of Baldwin IV and while that may be pure chance, it seems more likely that it was Baldwin IV’s steadfast service to his kingdom on the battlefield that inspired knights to join the Order of St. Lazarus and encouraged the Order itself to take on a more militant role. Baldwin initially led his armies on horseback, despite being unable to use his hands, and later led from a litter. A greater example of courage from a man suffering from such a debilitating disease can hardly be imagined.

King Baldwin IV leads his army on horseback in the film "The Kingdom of Heaven"

But it is equally significant that his powerful barons, their knights, and all the free burghers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were willing to do homage to and obey a leper. Baldwin IV could not have defeated Saladin repeatedly (as he did!), if he had not commanded the undivided and unquestioning loyalty of his subjects. This fact, more than his own actions, tells us that leprosy in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem was indeed recognized as a “holy disease.” Baldwin IV’s leprosy, far from evoking contempt or even revulsion, as Hollywood and many modern writers would have us believe, inspired awe among his contemporaries.

Contemporary attitudes toward leprosy in the Kingdom of Jerusalem are reflected in Schrader's award-winning Jerusalem Trilogy, particularly the first and second books in which Baldwin IV is an important character:

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"The Tale of the English Templar" is a fictional work that depicts the destruction of the Knight's Templar.

An escaped Templar, an intrepid, old crusader, and a discarded bride

embark on a quest for justice in the face of tyranny.

Find out more at: https://helenapschrader.net/the-english-templar/

"St. Louis Knight" is a novel set against the backdrop of the Seventh Crusade and St. Louis' sojourn in the Holy Land. A Templar novice and King Louis are the central characters.

It is now available in audiobook as well as paperback and ebook.

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A crusader in search of faith --
A lame lady in search of revenge --
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St. Louis' Knight takes you to the Holy Land in the 13th century, and a world filled with knights, nobles, prophets -- and assassins.

(Available in Audiobook)

Thursday, June 1, 2017

The Knights of St. Lazarus

The most famous of the “fighting orders” or militant orders were of course the Knights Templar, and the Knights Hospitaller (Knights of St. John), two orders founded in the Holy Land and, for their age, truly international in character. Although not powerful and largely forgotten, there was a third military order also founded in the Holy Land, the Order of St. Lazarus.

The Order of St. Lazarus evolved from a leper hospital that had existed in Jerusalem prior to the First Crusade. After the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem was established, it became part of the Hospitaller network of hospitals, but by 1142 the Order of St. Lazarus broke away, and by 1147 it was known as the Leper Brothers of Jerusalem. The Leper Pool and the foundations of the leper hospital run by the Knights of St. Lazarus have been located just beyond the norther wall of Jerusalem.

Critical to understanding the Knights of St. Lazarus is the fact that leprosy was far more common in the East than in Western Europe and the influence of Greek Orthodox ideology on the territories of the crusader states. By the end of the 10th century, the Byzantine clergy had come to see leprosy as a "holy disease" -- its victims were not seen as particularly vile sinner but rather as men and women marked by God's favor. A number of Greek Orthodox legends entailed Christ appearing as a leper. Caring for lepers was therefore seen as an act of great charity that would gain a person credit in heaven.

It is probably not surprising, therefore, that the Order of St. Lazarus grew rapidly in the mid-12th century, eventually having houses in Tiberias, Ascalon, Acre, Caesarea, Beirut, and possibly other cities as well. More surprising, however, is the fact that it began to have military brethren.

It appears that initially, the role of these armed monks was primarily the defense of the leper hospitals. Some of these military men were undoubtedly former Templars and Hospitallers who had contracted leprosy, because we know that both the Templar and Hospitaller Rules required members with leprosy to join the Order of St. Lazarus. However, secular knights of the crusader kingdoms who contracted the desease were also expected to join the Knights of St. Lazarus.

Knights already afflicted with disease would have been facing a steady deterioration of their fighting capabilities, however, and it appears that just as some healthy monks and nuns devoted themselves to the care of the sick in the habit of the Knights of St. Lazarus, some healthy fighting men likewise chose to join the Knights of St. Lazarus rather than the more powerful (and arrogant) military orders of the Templars and Hospitallers. This supposition is supported by the fact that there are recorded incidents of the Order of St. Lazarus taking part in military operations – possibly at the Battle of Hattin, and certainly at the Battle of Gaza in 1244, at Ramla in 1253, and during the defense of Acre in 1291.

Meanwhile, in 1265 Pope Clement IV issued a papal bull that commanded all the prelates of the church to assist in transferring the care of all lepers -- male and female -- to leprosariums run by the Knights of St. Lazarus. Pope Clement had taken a strong interest in the care of lepers before he became pope, and had written a set of regulations for leprosariums while still Bishop of Le Puy that included such remarkable features as the right of lepers to elect their own superiors from among their members. As pope, however, he seems to have been most concerned with ensuring that lepers remained segretrated from the rest of society by putting them under the control of the Knights of St. Lazarus.

Thus after the fall of Acre, the Order of St. Lazarus moved its headquarters to Cyprus, abandoned all military activities, and thereafter concentrated on its mission of providing comfort and care for the victims of leprosy until the mid-14th century. Of all the so-called militant orders, arguably this was the "most Christian."

Find more about life in the crusader states in The Jerusalem Trilogy:

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Friday, December 18, 2015

“The Holy Disease” — Leprosy in the Crusader Kingdoms

Baldwin IV as depicted in the Hollywood Film "The Kingdom of Heaven"

King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem was a leper. This fact is so shocking and so exceptional in the history of Western monarchies that Baldwin has gone down in history as “the Leper King.” Most people know nothing else about him, not even his Christian name. Portrayals of Baldwin in literature and art nowadays use his leprosy mostly for sensationalist effect. Thus in the Hollywood film “The Kingdom of Heaven” he was given a mask to disguise his face, which is only revealed after his death. In Cecilia Holland’s “Jerusalem” men quail at the sight of him, but she utterly ignores the devastating impact on Baldwin’s mobility and eyesight and shows no understanding whatever of the real impact and progress of the disease. Yet what is significant about Baldwin IV’s leprosy is not the disfigurement it caused but rather the fact that he could be a leper and remain a respected and effective king. How was that possible?

Baldwin IV shown leading the Army of Jerusalem in "The Kingdom of Heaven"

Without doubt, leprosy is one of the most appalling diseases known to man. Victims of the disease suffer from symptoms including a loss of feeling in their affected limbs, a discoloring and hardening of the skin, disfiguring growths or nodules that deform the face, hands and legs, open ulcers, particularly on the soles of the feet. In its most virulent form, the disease can deform even the skeleton and skull, while progressively triggering a deterioration of control over one’s limbs. Finally, in its advanced stages the victim loses toes, fingers, ears, nose, and eyesight. This gradual decay of the body led observers to compare lepers to the “living dead” or “walking corpses.”

A Medieval Carving which appears to show a Leper.

In Western medical texts, Hippocrates described symptoms that match leprosy as early as 460 BC, but no cure was found for leprosy until the 20^th century. Furthermore, while modern medical research shows that as much as 30% of a population may become infected during an epidemic, once endemic, only 5% of any given population is likely to contract the disease. However, that research was not available until the last century, and throughout most of human history the disease was believed to be not only incurable but highly contagious. At the extreme, some medical tracts (including Arab ones) suggested that just breathing the same air as lepers could result in infection. It was this terror of catching such a horrible and incurable disease that led many societies to ostracize lepers. Notably the Jews and the Germanic tribes of northeastern Europe excluded lepers from their societies.

So how could there be a leper king? The key is that he was king in Christian Jerusalem in the late 12^th century. By this time, Christianity had come to view leprosy not as a curse, an outward expression of sin, a form of divine punishment nor even something unclean, but rather as a symbol of divine grace.

By the 4^th century AD, Church leaders in both the East and the West had seized upon these biblical references to argue that the greatest Christian virtue was to demonstrate love and charity toward the outcasts of society — something best demonstrated by love for those most commonly rejected in heathen societies: lepers. Within a short space of time, the sufferings of Job were associated with leprosy, and leading theologians reminded the Christian community that each leper (no less than any other man) had been made in God’s image and been redeemed by Christ. The argument went farther: Disease humbled even the proudest and wealthiest, bringing them closer to God, and no disease did that more thoroughly than leprosy. Far from being a punishment for sin, therefore, leprosy was the ultimate test of righteousness. While the victims were, it was argued, already marked by God for salvation, those willing to show them Christian love and charity would also win the favor of God. Legends started to evolve in which Christ appeared on earth as a leper, and the disease started to be referred to as “the Holy Disease.”

Furthermore, early Christian advocates of leprosy being a sign of divine grace did more than preach; they led by example. The lives of saints often highlight acts of charity or kindness toward lepers, including kissing them. Likewise, from this period onward, we can trace the development and spread of hospitals especially established for the care of lepers, particularly in the Byzantine Empire. Here they are recorded in Constantinople itself and all the way to Alexandria. Notably, there was an important leper hospital in Jerusalem as well.

The Leper Hospital at Jerusalem no longer exists. This is the hospital of St. John, also from the crusader period.

The establishment of leper hospitals enabled the removal of lepers from homes, markets, and work-places and so to a degree isolated lepers from mainstream society. No matter what the Church preached about the Christ-like nature of loving lepers, most ordinary humans preferred not to undergo the ultimate test of holiness by suffering such a debilitating and humiliating disease! A degree of segregation was therefore both rational and understandable. It is also notable, that many of these establishments were large complexes with their own churches, dormitories, kitchens, water reservoirs, orchards and land. People, whether the wealthy relatives of victims of the disease, or men and women anxious to gain credit in heaven were willing to endow leper hospitals or make charitable gifts to them in coin or kind.

Leper hospitals were not prisons, however, in which lepers were incarcerated against their will. On the contrary, the evidence suggests lepers could come and go as they pleased, and if they remained it was because they benefited from the charity and care they received rather than from compulsion. Furthermore, the lepers in these hospitals largely governed their own affairs, electing their own officials, who they then obeyed in the monastic tradition. Likewise, they had chapter meetings, like monks, and female lepers appear to have had the same rights as their male counterparts. In at least one case a woman is recorded as a “commander” of a leper hospital.

A Medieval Chapter House where the Members of a Community Met

Significantly, however, it was in Jerusalem that a leper hospital grew into a religious order in its own right, the Order of St. Lazarus. The leper hospital had been established during Byzantine rule of the Holy City, but after the establishment of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, it was taken over by the Knights Hospitaller. By in 1147, however, the leper hospital had broken away from the Hospitallers and was recognized as a religious order in its own right. Initially referred to as the Leper Brothers of Jerusalem, the members of this new religious order soon came to be called the Knights of St. Lazarus, and adopted a green cross as their symbol. (Note: the Templars wore red crosses on white, the Hospitallers at this time white crosses on black, and the Teutonic Knights adopted a black cross on white.) By the time the Knights of St. Lazarus were expelled from the Holy Land in 1291, it had expanded across the Christian world. There were large hospitals not only in Tiberias, Nablus, Ascalon, Caesarea and Acre, but also in Armenia, Italy, Central Europe, France and England.

Baldwin IV is a major character in my novels Knight of Jerusalem and Defender of Jerusalem.

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Friday, December 26, 2014

The Forgotten Order - The Knights of St. Lazarus

The Knights of St. Lazarus play a minor role in my three part biography of Balian d'Ibelin:

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Thursday, December 4, 2014

The Victor of Montgisard - The Leper King

Last week, I described the dramatic Christian victory at Montgisard. I'd now like to take a closer look at the the life and reign of the man who won the battle: Baldwin IV of Jerusalem.

Baldwin IV as depicted in Ridley Scott's film "The Kingdom of Heaven"

Baldwin was born in 1161, the second child of Amalric of Jerusalem and Amalric's first wife, Agnes de Courtney. At the time of his birth, his father was the younger brother and heir apparent to the childless King Baldwin III of Jerusalem.

Just two years latter, Baldwin III died and Amalric ascended the throne -- but only on the condition that he set aside Agnes de Courtney. Agnes was duly disposed of, but Amalric's children of his marriage, two-year-old Baldwin and his year-older sister Sibylla, were explicitly recognized as legitimate. They remained at court with their father. In 1167, Amalric remarried, this time to the Byzantine Princess Maria Comnena.

At about this same time, Baldwin was diagnosed with leprosy by his tutor William, later Archbishop of Tyre. According to Tyre, the leprosy first manifested itself as a lack of feeling in Baldwin’s right hand. However, initially, Baldwin retained the use of his other limbs and did not suffer from noticable disfigurement. His illness was kept quiet.

In 1174, Baldwin's father died unexpectedly of dysentery on his way back from a campaign against Nur ad-Din, the Sultan of Damascus. Baldwin was elected King by the High Court of Jerusalem despite the fact that other crown vassals afflicted with leprosy were required to join the Knights of St. Lazarus. Being still a minor (13) at the time of his father's death, the Kingdom was placed in the care of a regent, Raymond of Tripoli, himself a descendent of Baldwin II and one of the most powerful barons in the crusader states. Notably, at this time Baldwin could still move and above all ride without apparent impediment.

In the summer of 1176, Baldwin turned 15 and so attained his majority. He took the reins of government for himself and signalled this by calling his mother back to court and placing his maternal uncle, Joscelyn of Edessa, into the powerful position of Seneschal of Jerusalem. Tripoi appears to have been sidelined, but not in anyway humiliated.

Baldwin IV in "Kingdom of Jerusalem"

Given his illness, however, and the certainty that he would not sire a successor, the most pressing business of the Kingdom was the marriage of Baldwin's heir, his older sister Sibylla. In fact, Tripoli had already arranged a marriage for her with William de Montferrat, a man from a powerful north Italian family. Unfortunately, William died in the summer of 1177, leaving Sibylla pregnant at 17.

Meanwhile, the enemies of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were getting stronger. The Kurdish general Salah-ad-Din had first murdered the Vizier in Cairo and then, on the death of the Fatimid Caliph, declared Egypt Sunni. The death of the Sultan of Damascus in 1174 opened the way for Salah-ad-Din to seize control of Damascus as well, with Nur-ad-Din's legal heir fleeing to Aleppo. Although Salah-ad-Din would need almost ten more years to consolidate his position and eliminate all his rivals, he had effectively united Shiia Egypt and Sunni Syria under his rule by 1177 -- and to bolster his own legitimacy he declared jihad against the Christian states in the Holy Land.

Baldwin IV sought to counter the rise of Salah-ad-Din by following his father's policy of alliance with the Byzantine Empire and attacking Cairo. He hoped to capitalize on disaffection among Salah-ad-Din's Shiia, Arab subjects and their resentment of a Kurdish, Sunni usurper. Unfortunately, the Count of Flanders, who had arrived from the West with a large contingent of knights, thought he should be made King of Egypt if he helped conquer it, and the coalition fell apart. The Byzantine fleet withdrew and Flanders went off to campaign against Syria, taking many of the barons and knights of Jerusalem with him.

Salah-ad-Din had assembled his forces to meet the expected invasion and recognized that the Kingdom of Jerusalem was practically defenseless before him. He invaded, sacking and plundering as he advanced north, leaving well defended positions like the Templar castle at Gaza untouched until he came to Ascalon. Ascalon had been in Egyptian hands until 1153 and was considered a key strategic position for the defense of Egypt -- or the attack on Jerusalem. Saladin prepared to besiege the city.

As described in my previous entry, in a dramatic move Baldwin IV rode to the rescue of Ascalon with just 367 knight, reaching the city shortly before the Sultan's army enveloped it. But now Baldwin was trapped inside and Jerusalem was practically defenseless, so Salah-ad-Din decided to strike for the greatest prize of all: Jerusalem. Salah-ad-Din had such overwhelming superiority of force and so little respect for a leper youth of 16 that he allowed his troops to continue plundering along the way rather than concentrating on his goal.

He had miscalculated. Baldwin sallied out of Ascalon, called up the feudal levies and fell on Salah-ad-Din from the rear, winning a stunning and complete victory at Montgisard on November 25, 1177. (See my entry from that date.)

A modern depiction of the Battle of Montgisard (copyright Talento)

But the consequences for Baldwin personally were also devastating. Based on the historical descriptions of Baldwin’s initial illness, which state he had lost the feeling in his arm but that there were no other symptoms such as discoloration or ulcers, modern experts in the disease believe that Baldwin IV initially had primary polyneuritic tuberculoid leprosy, which deteriorated into lepromatous leprosy during puberty. There was, according to Piers D. Mitchell ("An Evaluation of the Leprosy of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem in the Context of the Medieval World," in Bernard Hamilton's The Leper King and His Heirs, Cambridge University Press, 2000), nothing inevitable about this deterioration. However, puberty itself can induce the deterioration as can untended wounds (that go unnoticed due to loss of feeling) which cause ulcers to break out.

When Baldwin led his daring campaign against Salah-ad-Din that led to the surprise victory at Montgisard he was in puberty, just 16 years old. It is probable that it was in part because of this campaign — which required camping out in the field and going without the usual bathing of his feet and hands — that caused Baldwin's leprosy to take a turn for the worse. According to Mitchell, children who develop lepromatous leprosy are likely to die prematurely, and so once Baldwin’s leprosy had become lepromatous it inevitably took its course through the gruesome stages of increasing incapacitation to a an early death.

But Baldwin wasn't dead yet. In 1180, he allowed his sister Sibylla to marry a young adventurer from the West, Guy de Lusignan. According to one contemporary chronicler, Sibylla was seduced by Guy (and she would not have been the first princess in Outremer to be seduced by a young adventurer!), and Baldwin first threatened to hang Guy for "debauching" an princess, but then gave in to his sister and mother's pleadings to let his sister marry "the man she loved." Other sources suggest that Baldwin feared the Count of Tripoli was planning to depose him by arranging a marriage between Sibylla and Baldwin d'Ibelin, the Baron of Ramla and Mirabel. Whatever the reason, with Sibylla's marriage to Guy the succession appeared secure again.

A Royal Marriage

The succession might have been secure, but the Kingdom was not. Salah-ad-Din had invaded a second time in 1179 and Baldwin had been unhorsed in the engagement, an indication of his deteriorating condition. When Salah-ad-Din invaded a third time in 1182, Baldwin could no longer ride and commanded his army from a litter -- but still fought the Saracens to a stand-still, forcing them to withdraw. The following year, however, he was seized with fever and believing he was on his death-bed made his brother-in-law Guy de Lusignan regent. Thus when Salah-ad-Din invaded a fourth time in 1183, it was Guy de Lusignan who led the Christian armies to face him.

The results were not good. While the Saracens eventually withdrew, they had managed to do considerable damage and the barons of Jerusalem returned in a rebellious mood. The news that the key castle of Kerak was under siege (with both Princess of Jerusalem, the Queen Mother and the Dowager Queen all trapped inside for a wedding) should have triggered the immediate dispatch of a major relief force. Instead, the High Court (allegedly unanimously) refused to follow Guy de Lusignan anywhere. He was dismissed as regent, and Baldwin IV had to drag is disintegrating body halfway across the kingdom at the head of his army. The mere approach of the Leper King, however, was enough to convince Salah-ad-Din to withdraw.

The Castle of Kerak, now in Jordan

By now Baldwin IV knew he did not have much time left to him. He had his nephew, Sibylla's son by her first husband William de Montferrat crowned as a co-monarch, and asked his bishops to find a way to dissolve Sibylla's marriage to Guy in the hope that another husband, more congenial to his barons, could be found for her. In the latter he failed, and hence when he died just short of his 24th birthday in the spring of 1185, he was succeeded by his nephew Baldwin V, and -- at the latter's death a year latter -- by Guy de Lusignan.

Baldwin IV ruled for less than ten years and throughout his reign he was handicapped by a progressively debilitating and disfiguring disease. Yet he retained the loyalty of his subjects to the very end and on no less than five occasions prevented Salah-ad-Din's vastly superior forces from over-running his fragile kingdom. For that he should be revered and respected.

Baldwin IV plays a major role in the first two volumes of my three part biography of Balian d'Ibelin:

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