CHAPTER V THE LEPER IN ENGLAND
“From the benefactions and possessions charitably bestowed upon the hospital, the hunger, thirst and nakedness of those lepers, and other wants and miseries with which they are incessantly afflicted . . . may be relieved.”
(Foundation Charter of Sherburn.)
WE now turn from leper-asylums to consider the leper himself—a sadly familiar figure to the wayfaring man in the Middle Ages. He wears a sombre gown and cape, tightly closed; a hood conceals his want of hair, which is, however, betrayed by the absence of eyebrows and lashes; his limbs are maimed and stunted so that he can but hobble or crawl; his features are ulcerated and sunken; his staring eyes are unseeing or unsightly; his wasted lips part, and a husky voice entreats help as he “extends supplicating lazar arms with bell and clap-dish.”
At the outset it is necessary to state that inmates of lazar-houses were not all true lepers. Persons termed leprosi, infirmi, elefantuosi, languidi, frères malades, meselles, do not necessarily signify lepers in a strict sense. Gervase of Canterbury, writing about 1200, speaks of St. Oswald’s, Worcester, as intended for “Infirmi, item leprosi”; and these words are used synonymously in Pipe Rolls, charters, seals, etc. “Leprosy” was an elastic term as commonly used. In the statutes of one hospital, p049 the patriarch Job was claimed as a fellow-sufferer—“who was so smitten with the leprosy, that from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no soundness in him.” A lazar was one “full of sores,” and any person having an inveterate and loathsome skin-eruption might be considered infected. Disfiguring and malignant disorders were common. Victims of scrofula, lepra, lupus, tuberculosis, erysipelas (or “St. Anthony’s fire”) and persons who had contracted disease as the baneful result of a life stained with sin, would sometimes take advantage of the provision made for lepers, for in extremity of destitution this questionable benefit was not to be despised. In foreign lands to-day, some are found not unwilling to join the infected for the sake of food and shelter; we are told, for example, that the Hawaiian Government provides so well for lepers that a difficulty arises in preventing healthy people from taking up their abode in the hospitals. On the other hand, it often happens that those who are actually leprous refuse to join a segregation-camp.
No one, however, can deny that leprosy was once exceedingly prevalent, and after weighing all that might be said to the contrary, Sir J. Y. Simpson and Dr. George Newman were convinced that the disease existent in England was for the most part true leprosy (elephantiasis Græcorum).
1. PIONEERS OF CHARITY
One practical outcome of the religious revival of the twelfth century was a movement of charity towards the outcast. The Lazarus whom Jesus loved became linked in pious minds with that p050 Lazarus ulceribus plenus neglected by men, but now “in Abraham’s bosom,” and the thought took a firm hold of the heart and imagination. Abandoned by relatives, loathed by neighbours, the famished leper was now literally fed with crumbs of comfort from the rich man’s table.
The work of providing for “Christ’s poor,” begun by the great churchmen Lanfranc and Gundulf, was carried into the realm of personal service by Queen Maud (about 1101), the Abbot of Battle (before 1171) and Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln (about 1186). Queen Maud is the brightest ornament of the new movement. Like St. Francis of Assisi a century later, she “adopted those means for grappling with the evil that none but an enthusiast and a visionary would have taken.” Aelred of Rievaulx relates how Prince David visited her and found the house full of lepers, in the midst of whom stood the queen. She washed, dried and even kissed their feet, telling her brother that in so doing she was kissing the feet of the Eternal King. When she begged him to follow her example, he withdrew smiling, afterwards confessing to Aelred:—“I was sore afraid and answered that I could on no account endure it, for as yet I did not know the Lord, nor had His spirit been revealed to me.” Of Walter de Lucy, the chronicler of Battle Abbey writes:—
“He especially compassionated the forlorn condition of those afflicted with leprosy and elephantiasis, whom he was so far from shunning, that he frequently waited upon them in person, washing their hands and feet, and, with the utmost cordiality, imprinting upon them the soothing kisses of love and piety.”
St. Hugh used to visit in certain hospitals, possibly those at Peterborough and Newark connected with the p051 See or the Mallardry at Lincoln.[33] He would even dwell among the lepers, eating with them and ministering to them, saying that he was inspired by the example of the Saviour and by His teaching concerning the beggar Lazarus. On one occasion, in reply to a remonstrance from his Chancellor, he said that these afflicted ones were the flowers of Paradise, pearls in the coronet of the Eternal King.[34]