The order quickly abandoned their military activities after the fall of Acre in 1291 and the dissolution of the Knights Templar due to their relative poverty. The leper knights were protected by a number of able-bodied knights but in times of crisis the leper knights themselves would take up arms. The order remained primarily a hospitaller order but it did take part in a number of battles, including the Battle of La Forbie on 17 October 1244 (where all of the Lazar brethren who fought died) and the Battle of Al Mansurah on 8–11 February 1250. This is believed to have given rise to the use of a green cross as a symbol by pharmacies worldwide. The symbol of the Order of St Lazarus is the eight-pointed green Maltese cross. The order established “Lazar houses” across Europe to care for lepers, and was well supported by other military orders which compelled brethren in their rule to join the order on contracting leprosy. Lazari Hierosolymitani under the Augustinian Rule was confirmed by the Papal Bull Cum a nobis petitur of Pope Alexander IV in April 1255. The Ordinis Fratrum & Militum Hospitalis Leprosorum S. Definite evidence of the Order’s active participation in military campaigns is only documented in 1234 when Pope Gregory IX made a general appeal for aid to the Order to clear debts contracted in the defence of the Holy Land. It was probably by the end of the twelfth-century that the Order had become a military order, and the four classes of members – brothers, knights, clerics and donors – were acknowledged in a Bull of Pope Gregory IX of 1227. King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, who was a leper, may have been a knight of the Order or received assistance from it. The founding knights were themselves lepers, and they devoted their order to the treatment of those with the disease. At some time after 1098, the crusaders at the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem founded this order of chivalry at a leper hospital. Lazarus of Jerusalem looks back to an ancient origin. The present-day Military and Hospitaller Order of St.
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