Mediæval poems tell of solitary or wandering lepers as well as of those residing in communities. In the romance Amis and Amiloun, the gentle knight is stricken with p105 leprosy. His lady fair and bright expels him from his own chamber. He eats at the far end of the high table until the lady refuses to feed a mesel at her board—“he is so foule a thing.” His presence becoming intolerable, a little lodge is built half a mile from the gate. The child Owen alone is found to serve Sir Amiloun, fetching food for his master until he is denied succour and driven away. Knight and page betake themselves to a shelter near a neighbouring market-town, and depend for a time upon the alms of passers-by. The next stage is that of wandering beggars.[72]

In the Testament of Cresseid the leper-heroine begged to go in secret wise to the hospital, where, being of noble kin, they took her in with the better will. She was conveyed thither by her father, who daily sent her part of his alms. But Cresseid could not be resigned to her affliction, and in a dark corner of the house alone, weeping, she made her moan. A leper-lady, an old inmate, tries in vain to reconcile her to her fate—it is useless to spurn herself against the wall, and tears do but double her woe—but in vain:—

“Thus chiding with her drerie destenye,

Weiping scho woik the nicht fra end to end.”

This “Complaynt of Cresseid” is affecting in its description of the lamentable lot of a woman whose high estate is turned into dour darkness: for her bower a leper-lodge; for her bed a bunch of straw; for wine and meat mouldy bread and sour cider. Her beautiful face is deformed, and her carolling voice, hideous as a rook’s. Under these sad conditions, Cresseid dwells for the rest of her life in the spital.[73]

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CHAPTER VIII HOSPITAL DWELLINGS

“He” [Lanfranc] “built a fair and large house of stone, and added to it several habitations for the various needs and convenience of the men, together with an ample plot of ground.” (Eadmer’s History.)

THE Canterbury monk mentions the foundation of Archbishop Lanfranc’s two hospitals. The lepers’ dwellings on the hill-side at Harbledown were merely wooden houses. The architecture of St. John’s was more striking: lapideam domum decentem et amplam construxit. The edifice (palatium) was divided in two parts, to accommodate men and women. As Eadmer was living until 1124, he saw the hospital shortly after its erection. He may even have watched the Norman masons complete it, and the first infirm occupants take up their abode.

Before considering the plan of hospital buildings, it will be of interest to learn how they impressed men of those days. The twelfth-century writer of the Book of the Foundation betrays his unfeigned admiration of St. Bartholomew’s. The hospital house was at a little distance from the church, which was “made of cumly stoonewerke tabylwyse.” The traditional commencement of the work was that Rahere playfully acted the fool, and thus drew to himself a good-natured company of children and servants: “with ther use and helpe stonys and othir thynges profitable to the bylynge, lightly he gaderyd to p107 gedyr,” until at length “he reysid uppe a grete frame.” When all was finished and he had set up the sign of the cross “who shulde not be astonyd, ther to se, constructe and bylyd thonorable byldynge of pite.”