The evidence, however, left us by the older authorities and physicians on this point, is an evidence of opinion rather than of facts. They have bequeathed to us merely their own dogmatic inferences, without vouchsafing to state any of the individual data upon which their general deductions were founded. As far, however, as we may judge by a few loose fragments which we may still gather up from amid the imperfect and scattered records of the disease, the European leprosy, if it were contagious, when epidemic in the middle ages, was at least less so than the combined medical and popular belief of those times would seem to represent it. In the Edinburgh hospital in 1590, two of the lepers’ wives lived uninfected with their husbands; and a few of the English leper hospitals, as those of Ripon, St. Magdalene, Exeter, and St. Bartholomew, near Oxford, were endowed for the purpose of serving as retreats at one and the same time both for the merely poor and the truly leprous.
Individuals stricken with leprosy were sometimes looked upon by the superstitious spirit of the age as persons directly smitten by the hand of God; and we find in history traces of rich and noble, and even of royal devotees, endeavouring to expiate their sins and propitiate the good will of Heaven, by occasionally devoting themselves, and that with perfect impunity, to such duties to the sick as offered the most certain means of calling down the disease upon their own bodies, provided it had been at all so contagious as was generally supposed. Saint Louis (Louis IX.) of France visited the leper hospitals every third month, personally rendered the most abject services to their inmates, fed them, and bathed their sores with his own hands.[318] Henry III. of England is reported to have annually, on Shrove Tuesday, engaged in the same duties.[319] Robert II., the son of Hugh Capet, enacted the devotee in the same manner, imprinting kisses with his lips on the hands of the lepers (ore proprio figens leprosorum manibus oscula, in omnibus Deum collaudabat).[320] The old English historian, Matthew Paris, relates, in his usual quaint and gossiping style, an anecdote illustrative of a similar degree of charitable penance and defiance of contagion being practised by the Scottish Princess Matilda, the queen of Henry I. of England. Speaking of some transactions in the year 1105, he observes—
“At the same time David (King of Scotland), the brother of Matilda, Queen of the English, came to England to visit his sister, and when, on a certain evening, he came by her invitation to her chamber, he found the house filled with lepers (domum invenit Leprosis plenam), and the Queen standing in the midst, having laid aside her cloak, she with both hands girded herself with a towel, and water being placed in readiness, she began to wash their feet, and wipe them with the towel, and embracing them with both hands, kissed them with the utmost devotion. Upon which her brother addressed her thus; ‘What is this which you are doing, my Lady? in truth if the King knew this, he would never deign to kiss with his lips your mouth, contaminated by the pollution of the lepers’ feet!’ and she, smiling, replied, ‘Who knows not that the feet of an Eternal King are to be preferred to the lips of an earthly king? Behold it was for this that I invited you, dearest brother—that you might learn by my example to perform similar actions. Do, I beseech you, that which you see me doing.’ And when her brother had made answer that he would by no means do such things, as she persevered in her employment David with a smile withdrew.”[321]
In quoting, against the alleged strong contagion of the olden leprosy, the preceding instances of complete exposure to the infection of the disease, and yet, at the same time, of complete escape from it in some well-known historical personages, let it not be inferred that the victims of the malady were usually looked upon by the general community with feelings of devotion and pious commiseration. On the contrary, the subjects of this “foedissimus omnium morborum” were, as a body, regarded alike by the church and by the people as objects of disgust. The Council of Ancyrus decreed that lepers were only to be allowed to worship amongst the Hyemantes, or those public penitents who, on account of the enormity and turpitude of some of their sins, were obliged to stand in the open air, and not even allowed to come under the porch of the church.[322] The Council of Worms granted to lepers a liberty of receiving the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, but not with those in perfect health.[323] Guido de Monte Rocher, in his Manual for Curates, states, that to some lepers the sacrament cannot be given, because “non possunt corpus Dominicum sic recipere et tractare in ore suo, quin rejicerent ipsum, sic multi, quibus reciderunt labia et dentes et sunt totaliter corrosi usque ad guttur.”[324]
The preamble to the laws of the hospital of St. Julian’s, drawn up by Abbot Michael, asserts, that “amongst all infirmities the disease of leprosy may be considered the most loathsome, and those who are smitten with it ought at all times, and in all places, and as well in their conduct as in their dress, to bear themselves as more to be despised and as more humble than all other men.” The canons of the Church of Scotland, as drawn up in the thirteenth century, deal with the unfortunate lepers more humanely than most other ecclesiastical judicatories; for after recommending them to be admonished to respect the churches of their districts, it is added that, if they cannot be induced to do so, let no coercion be employed, seeing that affliction should not be accumulated upon the afflicted, but rather their miseries commiserated (cum afflictis addi non debeat afflictio, sed ipsorum, miseriis sit potius miserandum.)[325] But the contempt displayed towards them seems to have been almost proverbial as late as the age of Elizabeth. Thus Shakespeare makes Margaret of Anjou exclaim to the afflicted and suspicious Henry VI., after the murder of his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester,
Why dost thou turn away and hide thy face?
I am no loathsome leper, look on me.[326]
Maundrell, one of our early English travellers in Palestine, alludes to some cases of leprosy in terms portraying simply but strongly the fearful effects and character of the disease. After speaking of some cases of leprosy that he met with in his journey, he states (to quote his own words), “At Sichem, near Naplous, there were not less than ten lepers,—the same number that was cleansed by our Saviour not far from the same place, that came a-begging to us at one time. Their manner is to come with small buckets in their hands to receive the alms of the charitable, their touch being still held infectious, or at least unclean. Their whole distemper was so noisome that it might (he adds) well pass for the utmost corruption of the human body on this side the grave.”[327]
Various authors have alleged that the institution of leper hospitals, and laws for the separation and seclusion of the infected, were formed more from imitation of the Levitical institutions regarding the leprosy than from direct observation and proofs of the contagious character of the disease. The avoidance, however, and separation of the sick, have been recommended and followed by authors and by communities over whom the Levitical laws could have exercised no influence, direct or indirect, and to whom, indeed, these laws were in all probability totally unknown.
After describing the horrors and course of elephantiasis or tubercular leprosy, the old Roman physician, Aretæus, adds, “seeing the infected with this disease are such, who would not fly them? (aufugiat), or who would not turn aside from a leper, even although he were a son, or a father, or a brother, since there is fear lest the disease should be communicated? (quum metus est ne morbus communicaretur). Hence, many have banished those that were dearest to them into solitudes and mountains.”[328]