Louis there were eight hundred in France alone. From the time of the crusades, with the spread of leprosy, leper hospitals became very numerous throughout Europe, so that at the death of St. The Middle Ages surrounded with a touching pity these the greatest of all unfortunates, these miselli, as they were called. It is not proved, though it has been asserted, that this was the case at Jerusalem. In some leper hospitals of the Middle Ages even the master had to be chosen from among the lepers. In return they were regarded as brothers or sisters of the house which sheltered them, and they obeyed the common rule which united them with their religious guardians. Lazarus on the contrary were condemned to perpetual seclusion. John were merely visitors, and changed constantly the lepers of St. Because of its special aim, it had quite a different organization. John, but without encroaching on the field of the latter. The Order of Saint Lazarus was indeed purely an order of hospitaller monks from the beginning, as was that of St. Basil, while that of Jerusalem adopted the hospital Rule of St. These eastern leper hospitals followed the Rule of St. Lazarus claimed to be the continuation, in order to have the appearance of remote antiquity and to pass as the oldest of all orders. Because of this experience, the European Community commissioned the Order to transport more than one and a half billion dollars in food to the hungry in Russia, resulting in new laurels for the Lazarus volunteers.Įven before the twelfth century there were leper hospitals in the Near East, of which the Knights of St. Millions of dollars worth of food, clothing, medical equipment and supplies have been distributed in Poland, Hungary, Romania and Croatia. Today, a modern self-styled revival of the Order has been engaged in a major program to revive Christianity in Eastern Europe. It was originally set up to treat virulent diseases such as leprosy. Lazarus of Jerusalem originated in a leper hospital run by hospitaller brothers founded in the twelfth century by the crusaders of the Latin Kingdom. The book uses both documentary and archaeological evidence to provide the first ever account of this little-understood crusading order.ĭAVID MARCOMBE is Director of the Centre for LocalHistory, University of Nottingham.We apologized for the uncompleteness of our pages, The modern refoundation of the order, a charitable institution, dates from 1962. Though these late medieval knights were very different from their twelfth-century predecessors, some ideologies lingered on, though subtly readapted to the requirements of a new age, until the order was finally suppressed by Henry VIII in 1544. Time proved the English Lazarites to be both tough and tenacious, if not always preoccupied with the care of lepers: following the fall of Acre in 1291 they endured a period of bitter internal conflict, only to emerge reformed and reinvigorated in the fifteenth century. This book explores the important contribution of the English branch of the order, which by 1300 managed a considerable estate from its chief preceptory at Burton Lazars in Leicestershire. The Order ofSt Lazarus, which saw the idea become a reality, founded establishments across Western Europe to provide essential support for its hospitaller and military vocations. One of the most unusual contributions to the crusading era was the idea of the leper knight - a response to the scourge of leprosy and the shortage of fighting men which beset the Latin kingdom in the twelfth century. An illustrated history of the English branch of the Order of St Lazarus, founded to care for lepers and send leper knights to the Crusades.
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