ABSTRACT
Seven years after the coronation of the leper Baldwin IV as King of Jerusalem (1174), Pope Alexander III asserted in his crusade encyclical, Cor nostrum (1181), that the failures of Christian crusaders to protect the Holy Land were due to the disharmony that was caused by the leper body of the king. Between these two events took place the Third Lateran Council (1179), which was the most important council of the period as regards the treatment of lepers. This article focuses mainly on a central question: what is the correlation between the discourse on leprosy and lepers of the Lateran Council and the declaration of Baldwin’s sinful status that occurred two years later?
