After the conquest of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, a Christian kingdom was established in the Mediterranean Levant, within Muslim territory, which would survive for two centuries, until the fall of Saint John of Acre. After Godfrey of Bouillón take the title of Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri , "Protector of the Holy Sepulcher", and was crowned in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (crowned is a saying, since he did not accept any crown) twenty-three Christian kings sat on the Jerusalem throne. And of all of them, the best, the most loved and respected both by his Christian subjects and by Muslims, the one who won the most notorious victories against the sultan Saladin and the one who most sought peace between Christians and Muslims was Balduino IV . And, curiously, at the time he was known as the pig king .
Baldwin IV – Still from the film “The Kingdom of Heaven”
The court of Jerusalem
Baldwin was, as the son of a king, raised to wear the crown, which at the twelfth-century court in Jerusalem meant leading crusaders in battle, building fortresses, resisting sieges, and engaging in political intrigue. Well thought out, not that different than it was in any European kingdom at the time. Jerusalem was not exactly a kingdom at peace, even more so after the campaigns of his father Amalric I against the Arab leader Nur al-Din in Damascus and against the Fatimids for control of Egypt. Crusader historian and later Archbishop of Tire and Chancellor of Jerusalem, William of Tyre , was in charge of his education. And it was precisely he, before the court doctors, who discovered his illness when he was still a nine-year-old boy:little Baldwin was a leper.
The Curse of the Heir
At the end of the 20th century, the cure for this disease was discovered, but in the 12th century, a leper was doomed to die soon. And not only that, in addition to a disease of the body, leprosy was considered a disease of the soul, a sign of evil and a divine punishment for sins (own or parents). In Balduino's case, it was, of course, blamed on the cruel and amoral expansionist policy of his father and his grandfather. The latter, Baldwin III , had attacked Damascus even though it was an allied city of the kingdom of Jerusalem. So the future king was not only sentenced to death, but also could not have offspring, given the contagiousness of his disease. It was his nephew, son of his sister Sibila , who would succeed him as Balduino V . However short his reign would be, Baldwin IV, the Leper King , left a deep mark on his kingdom, both in subjects and enemies. Something that none of his successors would get.
The Leper King
His father Amalric died when little Baldwin was only thirteen, becoming, under regency, the sixth king of Jerusalem. No one was betting on a long permanence of that leper on the throne; In fact, the court thought that he would not even reach the age of majority, so the courtiers dedicated themselves to influencing the candidates for the succession, his sister Sibila and his half-sister Isabel of Jerusalem, fruit of the second marriage of Amalric. They were wrong:Baldwin came of age two years later and took over the government.
The hero of Christianity
And not only was the court wrong, but also Saladin, the great sultan who would end up conquering Jerusalem twenty years later, thus giving rise to the Third Crusade, made the mistake of underestimating it. Believing that he was entering a kingdom on the verge of misrule and without defenses, he invaded Jerusalem at the head of 27,000 Mamluks. However, that young sixteen-year-old king, sick and with little support at court, gathered all the knights he could and took charge of them. Three hundred and seventy-five Crusaders, including eighty Templar Knights, plus a hastily conscripted infantry of fewer than four thousand men.
Battle of Montgisard
Thus, King Baldwin, at the head of such an army, carried out the greatest deed that the Kingdom of Jerusalem saw. He attacked Saladin from the rear and defeated his army to the point that the sultan was only able to save his life thanks to the self-sacrifice of the mamluks of his personal guard, who gave his life protecting the flee from him. And it was the adolescent leper's courage in battle that gave his dwindling troops the courage to win that day at Montgisard. . Baldwin had saved Jerusalem, and Saladin would have to wait twenty more years, once the leper king was dead, before he could conquer it.
The Pig King
But Baldwin IV was not a warrior king, but an integrating king. The Andalusian geographer and traveler (Valencian for more details) Ibn Yubair , who traveled throughout the Arab world and also through the Christian kingdoms of the Holy Land, recounts in the list of his travels, the Rihla , how the Muslims lived safely and in peace under the Christian domination and the government of that king, whom his co-religionists called the pig king due to the appearance of him, far from the injustices and abuses they had to suffer in the Ayyubid kingdoms. The nickname was not accidental. Over the years, illness had taken its toll on Baldwin. When he was barely twenty years old, leprosy had disfigured his face, and the young king began to use a silver mask to cover his face. Blind and with mutilated hands and feet, Baldwin died at the age of twenty-four.
And that leper, of whom no one believed that he would come to govern, had managed in his nine years of government to be admired and respected not only by his subjects, but also by his enemies. As the best epitaph, the words dedicated to him by a Muslim, the Imam of Isapahán :
That young leper made his authority respected in the manner of great princes like David or Solomon.