Olivia Coolidge’s Tales of the Crusades follows events occuring along seven crusades, spanning over 300 years. It depicts the happenings of the world from 1094-1464, displaying many aspects of life in that time period. The first event in the book follows the soldiers along the First Crusade, with the second scene coming years later, entailing King Baldwin IV’s rule and loss of Jerusalem to Saladin. Next, Coolidge details the planning of the Third Crusade and The execution and failure of the Children’s Crusade. Lastly, the book covers the Knight’s Templar and their doubt in the holiness of the Crusades, along with the final attempt to recapture constantinople, executed by Pius II. Throughout the novel, Coolidge displays many social aspects contained …show more content…
He fell ill to leprosy, and was even known as the Leper King. When he was a kid, he displayed symptoms of leprosy, and Coolidge narrates a conversation between Baldwin as a child and Archdeacon William, writing, “He took the arm gently and peeled back the sleeve, exposing a roughening in circular spots where the color of the skin was whiter than normal. He put out a finger and touched one of the spots, pressing on it. ‘Don’t you feel that?’ The boy shook his head” (Coolidge 87). In this scene, Baldwin was involved in a competition with a few other younger boys, seeing who could withstand the most amount of pain, delivered through pinching. Baldwin easily won, much to the astonishment of his peers and elders. When he was asked for his secret to winning, he revealed his spots, saying that he felt no pain in certain areas, so he could win. Leprosy has a very negative stigma surrounding it, and entire communities of lepers were created in order to keep them shunned from society. For a young Prince with leprosy, the burden was not as great because they would still inherit the throne, but he was still looked down upon by his healthier piers. This displays two symptoms of leprosy, rough white patches on the skin and general numbness. Lata Cherath and Rebecca J. Frey, two authors of an article on leprosy in the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, write about the symptoms of leprosy, saying that early symptoms of leprosy include a lost sense of touch, pain and pressure (Cherath). This supports the accuracy of the novel because it goes along with one of the symptoms shown by Baldwin, loss of any feeling and overall