“Visi sunt præterea venire in civitatem viri duo leprosi. Qui præ sumptuosum æstimantes cum lepræ contagio scabiem tangere, quasi delonge poscunt auxilium. Accedentes autem ad fontem, et sanctum arbitrantes quidquid sanctus contigerat Ninianus, lavacio illo se abluendos putarunt.... Mundantur leprosi tactu lavacio, sed meritis Niniani.”—(Vit. S. Niniani, cap. xi. § 4; Pinkert. Vit. Antiq. SS. Scot., pp. 22, 23.)
All these writers—St. Aelred of Rievaux, Joceline of Furnes, and the compiler of the Aberdeen Breviary—wrote so long after the Saints whose miracles they commemorate, that their testimony cannot avail as proof in itself of the existence of leprosy in Scotland in the seventh and eighth centuries. Besides, they speak only in general terms—“leprosos mundabat,”—which may be little or nothing more than a rhetorical flourish. But the passages which have been quoted are at least sufficient to demonstrate that in the twelfth century the existence of leprosy in Scotland from a remote age was a matter of unquestioned belief. Of the general prevalence of the disease on this side of the Tweed in that and the subsequent age, there is abundant evidence elsewhere in the Leges Burgorum and other ancient capitularies of Scotch law.
The canon of the Scotch Church, “De monitionem faciendo leprosis,” printed in the Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, vol. ii. p. 32, and elsewhere, belongs to the thirteenth century, probably to the latter part of that century. If, as seems to be the case, it be merely a diocesan statute, and not a statute for the whole of Scotland, it will only show more forcibly the general prevalence of the disease. The diocese for which it was enacted was apparently Aberdeen, containing at that time about eighty parishes, and the number of lepers must have been great before it could be found necessary to guard against the injury done to the parochial clergy by the withdrawal of the dues and oblations of the inmates of the leper hospitals.
Leprosy in Wales.
The Venedotian Code (the Laws of the Women)—
“Should her husband be leprous, or have fetid breath, or be incapable of marital duties; if on account of one of these three things she leave her husband, she is to have the whole of her property.”—(Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, p. 39. Lond. 1841.)
The Dimetian Code (of Women)—
“For three causes, if a woman desert her husband, she is not to lose her agweddi [dowry]; for leprosy, want of connection, and bad breath.”—(Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, p. 255.)
The Laws of Howel Dda, according to the Gwentian Code (of Women)—
“For three causes a woman loses not her agweddi, although she may leave her husband; to wit, on account of leprosy, bad breath, and default of connection.”—(Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, p. 365.)