2. PUBLIC OPINION
These noble pioneers were doubtless important factors in moulding public opinion. They may often have outstepped the bounds of prudence, but, as one has observed, “an evil is removed only by putting it for a time into strong relief, when it comes to be rightly dealt with and so is gradually checked.” As long as possible the world ignored the existence of leprosy. The thing was so dreadful that men shut their eyes to it, until they were shamed into action by those who dared to face the evil. The Canon of the Lateran Council of 1179 acknowledged that unchristian selfishness had hitherto possessed men with regard to lepers. We need not suppose that the heroism of those who ministered to lepers was that which boldly faces a terrible risk, but it was rather that which overcomes the strongest repulsion for hideous and noisome objects. There is no hint in the language of the chroniclers of encountering danger, but rather, expressions of horror that any should hold intercourse with such loathsome creatures. The remonstrances of Prince David and of William de Monte were not primarily on account of contagion.—“What is it that thou doest, O my lady? p052 surely if the King knew this, he would not deign to kiss with his lips your mouth thus polluted with the feet of lepers!” “When I saw Bishop Hugh touch the livid face of the lepers, kiss their sightless eyes or eyeless sockets, I shuddered with disgust.”—If St. Francis raised an objection to inmates wandering outside their precincts, it was because people could not endure the sight of them. The popular opinion regarding the contagious nature of the disease developed strongly, however, towards the close of the twelfth century. The Canon De Leprosis (Rome, 1179; Westminster, 1200) declares emphatically that lepers cannot dwell with healthy men. Englishmen begin to act consistently with this conviction. The Prior of Taunton (1174–85) separates a monk from the company of the brethren “in fear of the danger of this illness”; and the Durham chronicler mentions an infirmary for those “stricken with the contagion of leprosy.”