Pergamon PII: S0304-4181 (97)00011-0 Journal ~?fMedieval Histo O. Vol. 23, No. 4. pp. 317 334, 1997 © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights re~erve~ Printed in The Netherlands 0304-4181/q7 $17.t)0 + 0.0() A leper in purple: the coronation of Baldwin IV of Jerusalem ~ Stephen Lay Department of History, Australian National University Canberra. ACT 0200. Australia Abstract Baldwin IV, the leper king of Jerusalem, was one of history's more startling monarchs. His coronation in 1174 has been interpreted as anomalous or, alternatively, as evidence of unique cultural and political trends within the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Inherent in all these evaluations, however, is the unquestioned acceptance that Baldwin was known to be leprous at the time of his coronation. This is an assumption that is supported by neither medical understandings of the disease, nor by a consideration of the evidence that survives from the period. Though clearly suffering from advanced leprosy at the time of his death, there is nothing to suggest that Baldwin's disease could have been diagnosed prior to his taking the throne and so there is no need to consider his coronation as anything other than a conventional one. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved 'It lies like a leper in purple. It sits like a dead thing smeared with gold. It is all wrong, all wrong.' Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde's analogy for a dysfunctional society was the paradoxical figure of a leper enthroned. Interestingly, such a monarch is known to history: Baldwin IV, who ruled the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem from his coronation on 15 July 1174 until the debilitating effects of advanced leprosy forced his abdication in 1185. A fearful twelfth-century Europe imposed severe policies of exclusion on lepers, and if the symptoms of Baldwin's disease were identifiable in 1174 his coronation would constitute a glaring anomaly. Encouraged, perhaps, by the startling image of a leper king, historians have assumed that this was the case. Like Wilde, they have linked the elevation of a leper to abnormal social circumstances and explanations of Baldwin's coronation are primarily based on a unique cultural and political climate in the crusaders' states of Palestine. Yet there exists a simpler possibility: that at the time of coronation the prince's symptoms were not yet apparent, or at least not yet unmistakably those of leprosy. While the disease became increasingly obvious as Baldwin's reign progressed, it is unlikely that a conclusive diagnosis of his condition could have been STEPHEN LAY has recently completed a Master of Letters in History at the Australian National University. ~I am indebted to both W. G. Craven and J. H. Pryor for valuable advice and criticism during the preparation of this article.