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Historian Adrian J. Boas, the President of the Society for the Study of the Crusades in the Latin East, has been producing a wonderful series of brief blog posts about various topics related to the crusader states.
"One of the more perplexing ideas of the crusader period, a period that was fertile soil in which not a few strange concepts took root, was that lepers could form a fighting force, a military order. There is no record of anything similar anywhere else, and it is h...ard to come to terms with the idea that these unfortunate people that we tend to think of as walking around with their fingers and noses dropping off at unexpected intervals, could carry out any sort of military activity, let alone, become warrior knights.
But they did precisely that. The Order of St Lazarus was first recorded in a document dating to between 1128 and 1137. Arising from a long-established leper hospital, the new military order was under the patronage of Saint Lazarus ("a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores" - Luke 16:19-31). It was located outside the walls of Jerusalem, and was headed by a magister (le maister de Saint Ladre des Mesiaux). The brothers wore a green cross on their mantles and followed the Rule of St Augustine. Like the Templars and the Hospitallers, the Leper Knights of St Lazarus began acquiring properties and took on a military role, though we only hear of this in 1244, when the brothers fought at the Battle of La Forbie. Six years later they took part in the campaign of Louis IX in Egypt."
https://www.adrianjboas.com/blog/on-a-remarkable-foundation…
This is a brief blog post that is essentially adapted from a lengthy footnote in an essay I am working on.
https://apholt.com/…/counting-religious-wars-in-the-encycl…/
