People familiar with the film "The Kingdom of Heaven" know that King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem suffered from Leprosy, but few realize either how common the disease was in the Holy Land nor how it was viewed by contemporaries. Dr. Schrader provides a brief overview of "The Holy Disease" below.
The Mask of Baldwin IV 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 the fact that he could be a leper and remain a respected and effective
king. How was that possible?
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 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. This gradual decay of the body led observers to compare lepers 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 20th 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 12th century. By this time, Christianity had come to view
leprosy not as a curse, not as an outward expression of sin, not as a form of divine
punishment nor even something unclean, but rather 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.
By the 4th
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.”
A monk treats a child with leprosy; a sign of charity. |
Furthermore,
early Christian advocates of leprosy as 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. 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. 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 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.
Significantly,
however, it was in Jerusalem that a leper hospital grew into an 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 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 13th 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:
Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.
She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.
She
is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction
and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total
of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the
founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at:
http://crusaderkingdoms.com
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