The Adventures of the Leper Knight: Notes
The armored man rode toward the little man, and kicked him violently in the head.
Throwing open the visor of his helmet, he exposed a rotting face, with no nose. “I’m Sir Guillaume, of the Order of St. Lazarus, and I probably fucked your mother when I burnt your city to the ground. Now stay out of my way.”
Thus Guillaume, the Grand Master of the Damned Redeemed, returned to the Holy City.
In particular, tinea capitis (fungal scalp infection) and related infections on other body parts caused by the dermatophyte fungus Trichophyton violaceum are abundant throughout the Middle East and North Africa today and might also have been common in biblical times. Similarly, the related agent of the disfiguring skin disease favus, Trichophyton schoenleinii, appears to have been common throughout Eurasia and Africa before the advent of modern medicine. Persons with severe favus and similar fungal diseases (and potentially also with severe psoriasis and other diseases not caused by microorganisms) tended to be classed as having leprosy as late as the 17th century in Europe.[47] This is clearly shown in the painting Governors of the Home for Lepers at Haarlem 1667 by Jan de Bray (Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, the Netherlands), where a young Dutch man with a vivid scalp infection, almost certainly caused by a fungus, is shown being cared for by three officials of a charitable home intended for leprosy sufferers. The use of the word “leprosy” before the mid-19th century, when microscopic examination of skin for medical diagnosis was first developed, can seldom be correlated reliably with Hansen’s disease as we understand it today.
After sustaining severe losses in many engagements, most of the leper knights of the Order were slain in the Battle of Gaza in 1244.
He was known in his own time as Stupor mundi (“wonder of the world”) and was said to speak six languages: Latin, Sicilian, German, French, Greek and Arabic.
[From Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]
The question remains, how and at what time the Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem became a military order. This is not know exactly; and, moreover, the historians of the order have done much to obscure the question by entangling it with gratuitous pretensions and suspicious documents.
[From Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem - Wikisource]
Furthermore, they were the only element of the army to successfully defend part of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. Of the role of the guard, then composed of the English and Danes, it is said that “the fighting was very violent and there was hand to hand fight with axes and swords, the assailants mounted the walls and prisoners were taken on both sides”.[3] Although the Guard was apparently disbanded after the city’s capture in 1204, there are some indications that it was revived either by the Empire of Nicaea or by the Palaeologid emperors themselves, though it is not likely that they lasted long after Michael VIII.
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