Leper Knights - (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion) by David Marcombe (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. The modern refoundation of the order, a charitable institution, dates from 1962. The book uses both documentary and archaeological evidence to provide the first ever account of this little-understood crusading order.

DAVID MARCOMBE is Director of the Centre for LocalHistory, University of Nottingham.

Review Quotes

A long-awaited and detailed study.-- "HISTORY"

A pioneering study.-- "NORTHERN HISTORY"

A very thorough investigation.-- "JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY"

A well-researched [and] valuable contribution.-- "AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW"

He is to be congratulated on having so thoroughly reconstructed the history of the English province of the order... It makes an important contribution to our understanding of English rural society in the period 1140-1540... The work...is of high scholarly calibre and I recommend it unreservedly.--Bernard Hamilton "EAST MIDLAND HISTORIAN"

The book succeeds in presenting the Lazarites as an example of the continuing importance of 'passive crusading'.-- "CRUSADES"