Editing Order of Saint Lazarus (section)

===Crusades===
The [[Military order (religious society)|military order]] of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem originated in a leper hospital founded in the twelfth century by crusaders of the Latin Kingdom. There had been earlier leper hospitals in the East, of which the Knights of St. Lazarus claimed to be the continuation, in order to have the appearance of remote antiquity and to pass as the oldest of all orders. According to Charles Moeller, "this pretension is apocryphal";<ref name=Moeller>[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09096b.htm Moeller, Charles. "Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem." The Catholic Encyclopedia] Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 22 Jun. 2015</ref> but documentary evidence does confirm that the edifice was a functioning concern in 1073.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Charles |last=Savona-Ventura |title=A Hospitalis infirmorium Sancti Lazari de Jerusalem before the First Crusade |journal=Acta Historiae Sancti Lazari Ordinis |date=October 2018 |volume=2 |pages=13–26 }}</ref> 

The Order of St. Lazarus was purely an order of hospitallers in the beginning, and adopted the hospital Rule of St. Augustine in use in the West. It has been claimed that the Order assumed a military role in the 12th century, but this date may not be supported by verifiable evidence.<ref name=Wise/> The monastic order was most likely founded in the 1130s, though the earliest military action that involved Lazarist knights did not occur until the 1230s.{{sfn|Barber|1994|p=38}} The Lazarists wore a green cross upon their [[Mantle (monastic vesture)|mantle]].<ref name=Porter>{{cite book |last=Porter |first=Whitworth |title=Malta and Its Knights |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_oW1BAAAAYAAJ |date=1871 |publisher=Pardon and Son |page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_oW1BAAAAYAAJ/page/n22 14] |language=en}}</ref><ref name=Blackwood>{{cite book |title=Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume CXV |date=1874 |publisher=The Leonard Scott Publishing Company |page=494 |language=en |quote=There were four of each : the Hospitallers, the Templars, the Teutonic Knights, and the Lazarists in Palestine; and the brotherhoods of Calatrava, Santiago, Alcantara, and Avis in the Peninsula. All these fraternities were established in order to help the weak and fight the Saracen; yet, nothwithstanding this general similarity of object, each of them had a special character of its own which distinguished it from the others.}}</ref>

Hospitals dependent on the Jerusalem leprosarium were eventually established in other towns in the Holy Land, notably in [[Acre, Israel|Acre]], and in various countries in Europe particularly in Southern Italy ([[Capua]]), Hungary, Switzerland, France (Boigny), and England ([[Burton Lazars]]).{{sfn|Marcombe|2003|page= }} [[Louis VII of France]], on his return from the [[Second Crusade]], gave it the Château of Boigny, near Orléans in 1154. This example was followed by [[Henry II of England]], and by [[Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor|Emperor Frederick II]].<ref name=Moeller/>

In 1154, King [[Louis VII of France]] granted the Order of Saint Lazarus a property at [[Boigny-sur-Bionne|Boigny]] near Orléans which was to become the headquarters of the order outside of the Holy Land. Later, after the [[Siege of Acre (1291)|fall of Acre in 1291]] the Knights of St. Lazarus left the Holy Land and moved first to Cyprus, then Sicily and finally back to Boigny, which had been raised to a barony in 1288.

The Order remained primarily a hospitaller order. They did take part in a number of battles, but there is no evidence for this prior to the fall of Jerusalem (1244). After the fall of Jerusalem in July 1244 and the subsequent [[Battle of La Forbie]] the following October, the Order of St. Lazarus, although still called "of Jerusalem", transferred to Acre, where it had been ceded territory by the Templars in 1240. The ''Ordinis Fratrum & Militum Hospitalis Leprosorum S. Lazari Hierosolymitani'' under Augustinian Rule was confirmed by [[Papal Bull]] ''[[Cum a Nobis Petitur]]'' of [[Pope Alexander IV]] in April 1255. In 1262 [[Pope Urban IV]] assured it the same immunities as were granted to the monastic orders.