Medieval leprosy reconsidered

Historians recognize that during the High Middle Ages--from shortly after 1000 to 1300 A.D.--Western Europe experienced a period of unparalleled extension Populations tripled; first schools and then universities flourished; of recent origin cathedrals rose up in many cities; and, dealing and manufacturing had been revitalized upon the Italian peninsula and gradually spread over Western Europe. Ironically, this period also witnessed an unprecedent outbreak of leprosy in the region, a disease that could be horribly disfiguring, on the other hand fortunately did not have a significant impact upon demographic growth.

This leprosy "epidemic" and the attempts of Latin Christian society (Roman Catholic Europe) to deal with the health question at issues it created have attracted the attention of adroits in the history of medicine and cultural historians. (1) Unfortunately, a certain quantity of of these scholars have failed to read the medieval sources in their individual contexts, sources that describe the pair the outbreak of leprosy and the organization of leprosaria, the medieval hospices designed to care for victims of the disease. This has caused a certain number of of them to misrepresent medieval Christianity's replication to leprosy as an attempt to punish victims of the disease rather than to assist them in their suffering.

greatest in quantity studies published in English during the past thirty years have focused upon evidence from Latin Europe during the time of the leprosy epidemic beginning ca. 1100 A.D. To understand the Latin sources of the High Middle Ages fitly one must study them together with the grecian sources of the patristic age (300 to 500 A.D.), a period during which the Early Byzantine Empire experienced an outbreak of leprosy similar to that which occurr in England, France, Italy, and Germany in the sum of two units centuries following the First Crusade (1099) Accordingly, this close attention will first describe what present medical science has discovered concerning leprosy It will then review a certain quantity of of the opinions historians have squeeze outed regarding how medieval society viewed leprosy and treated its victims. Lastly, it will examine primary sources and reinterpret the evidence they not absent in the wider context of Christian society as a whole.

In 1873 the Norwegian scientist, Armauer Hansen, correctly identified Mycobacterium leprae as the bacterium which causes leprosy Although Mycobacterium leprae exists in sole one strain, leprosy can appear in several forms depending on how effectively the human hosts' biological defense combat the infection. In its greatest in quantity extreme form, leprosy causes skin lesions and raised tumors, disfigurement of the face, and plane loss of fingers and toes. These horrific symptoms doubtless explain wherefore ancient and medieval societies oftentimes forced lepers to live in isolation from communities. In its les strait-laced manifestations, however, leprosy can be confused with other skin diseases. In fact, the leprosy of ancient Israel, described in the way that vividly in the Old Testament, was certainly not the disfiguring disease caused by means of Mycobacterium leprae, but a milder form of skin allment. actual leprosy seems to have first appeared in the Mediterranean basin during the Hellenistic period and to have become especially well-established in Egypt by the agency of the time of the famous grecian physician Galen (129-200 A.D.). recent science also has proven that leprosy is contagious as ancient and medieval societies suspected. greatest in quantity people, however, possess a natural immunity to the disease. Thus, leprosy does not sweep end a society killing millions in a not many months. It affects only a small number of race (five to ten percent of the population) whose bodies cannot resist Mycobacterium leprae. (2)

Several novel influential books have reexamined medieval leprosy Each of these studies emphasize that Christian Europe's rejoinder to lepers reflected a more general program to identify and isolate alien uncompounded bodys in society. In his popular history of medicine, Roy Porter briefly discusses the leprosy epidemic of the High Middle Ages. He claims that the medieval house of god excluded lepers from society by dint of imprisoning them in leprosaria and then justified this harsh treatment by dint of depicting leprosy as punishment for one's sins. Porter also emphasizes in what manner ecclesiastical leaders portrayed leprosy as a living death and smooth developed a special religious service for leper that simulated a funeral mass. The victims of leprosy were dead to the world, and in their seclusion they should remain as separate from the healthy as the deceased were from the living. (3)

In a fascinating monograph upon epidemic diseases, Sheldon Watts, another historian of medicine, examines the political, cultural, and economic implications of disease. In his chapter upon leprosy, Watts interprets the medieval sources abundant as Porter does. (4) Watts begins by means of identifying the ancient Greek physician, Aretaios of Cappadocia, a contemporary of Galen, as the first writer to provide an accurate description of authentic leprosy. Subsequently, Christian Western Europe not to be found the enlightened tradition of grecian physicians such as Aretaios whose writings and scientific watch managed to survive only among Muslim physicians. According to Watts, the Latin Christian world be pendented on the Jewish Old Testament for its understanding of leprosy The Law of Mose exclud leper from the camp of Israel because of their impurity. As Watts ends "On this foundation (the Christian exegesis of the Mosaic Law) would be built the conviction that leprosy was God's punishment for sin and that leper must be driven without of the camp." (5)