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I forbid you to ever enter a church, a monastery, a fair, a mill, a market or an assembly of people. I forbid you to leave your house unless dressed in your recognisable garb and also shod.
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Transcript [pdf, 17kb]
Leprosy was one of the most feared diseases of medieval Europe. It was believed to be highly infectious and sufferers were condemned to a grim fate.
Social rejection and separation
Leprosy sufferers were rejected as unclean and forced to wear distinctive clothes and ring bells or wooden clappers when in towns or villages.
Their illness was seen as a mark of sinfulness and God's disfavour. This belief is echoed in the fifteenth century poem 'The Testament of Cresseid' written by Robert Henryson.
Along with laws being passed against lepers, the church had a ritual known as the Mass of Separation that symbolically declared lepers to be dead.
Some accounts of this ritual describe lepers standing in open graves wearing shrouds and having spadefuls of earth thrown over them.
Help for lepers
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The church had hospitals for lepers where
Lepers who were fit enough could tend animals or the hospital’s gardens or, if given permission, could beg in nearby towns. Such a hospital existed at St Nicholas Farm near St Andrews, on the east coast of Scotland. Archaeological excavations of the site in 1986 and 1987 provide a glimpse of life in a medieval leper colony. |