(d) Worship and Burial of Lepers.—To lepers both chapel and graveyard were willingly granted. This was an early custom in England, as the Norman architecture of several chapels shows (e.g. Rochester, circa 1100). The p200 Gloucester lazars were granted burial rights before 1160, when they already possessed a chapel, the chancel of which still stands; the bishop’s licence made the usual stipulation that none but lepers should be interred.[123] A fresh impetus was given to spiritual provision for outcasts by the Lateran Council of 1179. Pope Alexander III decreed as follows:—
“Seeing that it is very remote from Christian piety that those who seek their own and not the things of Jesus Christ do not permit lepers . . . to have churches or burial places of their own, nor to be assisted by the ministry of a priest of their own, we ordain that these lepers be permitted to have the same without any contradiction.”
This privilege, it was declared, must not be prejudicial to the rights of ancient churches.
Digressing from the immediate subject of spiritual provision for the outcast, one point must be made clear. It is sometimes thought that the strict parochial discipline of mediæval England would insist upon the attendance of the leper at his parish church on certain occasions; others on the contrary suppose that the leper was excommunicate. The popular belief is that the Church provided for his worship the so-called “leper’s window,” frequently shown in old edifices. The existence of low-side-windows at such places as Bridgnorth and Spondon, where there were leper-colonies, is considered circumstantial evidence of their origin and purpose. But name and idea alike are of entirely modern growth, arising from a misinterpretation of a wall-painting at Windsor, which Mr. Street took to represent the p201 communicating of a leper through an aperture. Administration would have been both difficult and irreverent; the opening, moreover, is often so situated that any such act would be physically impossible. A manuscript chronicle, indeed, records how Blase Tupton, who was dwelling near St. Chad’s, Shrewsbury, about the year 1409, had a gallery made so that she might join in public worship:—
“Blase . . . cam by chance to be a leeper, and made the oryell which goythe allong the west side of the churche-yarde, throughe which she cam aloft to heare serveys throughe a doore made in the churche wale, and so passyd usually uppon the leades unto a glasse wyndowe, throughe which she dayly sawe and hard dayly serveys as longe as shee lyvyd.”[124]
Now Blase was doubtless a privileged person, being the daughter of the well-known townsman who had founded the almshouse adjoining St. Chad’s; and though now and again a lazar might make his way to a churchyard to gaze upon the holy mysteries, it is certain that only those living in a community with a chapel and priest could be confessed and receive the Blessed Sacrament. Most antiquaries are of opinion that the popular theory of the object of lowside-windows is untenable.
Careful provision was made for the religious observances of the untainted inmates of a hospital as well as for the leprous. They might use the chapel except on the greater festivals when they were required to attend the parish church and make oblations there. At St. Mary Magdalene’s, Bristol, the infected confessed to their chaplain, but the rest to the parish priest. No parishioner of Bedminster might attend the chapel on Sundays or p202 festivals to receive the blessed bread and holy water, the distribution of which to other than inmates would infringe parochial rights.[125] It was provided by the founder’s statutes at Sherburn that on Sundays the lepers should receive “the sprinkling of holy water, blessed bread, and other things which are fitting.”
(e) Free Chapels.—These were “places of worship exempted from all relation to the mother church and also from episcopal jurisdiction, an exemption which was an equivocal privilege, obtained immediately from the Crown, or appended to ancient manors originally belonging to the Crown.”[126] St. John’s, Oxford, was a privileged proprietary chapel. The king withheld the right of visitation from the bishop of the diocese, who, in turn, seems to have refused to sanction and consecrate a graveyard. Henry III called in the Roman Pontiff to arbitrate; whereupon “the pope at the instance of the king commanded the Bishop of Lincoln to provide a burial ground for the hospital of Oxford, for the brethren of the hospital and for the poor dying therein, the indemnity of the mother church and of the king as patron being provided for.”[127] The kings contrived to evade the Bishop of Lincoln’s rightful authority. Edward I wrote to request Bishop Giffard of Worcester to confer holy orders upon a brother “because the same hospital is the king’s free chapel where the diocesan ought to exercise no jurisdiction.” The Close Roll of 1304 emphasizes the fact that the house was wholly independent and therefore “quit of payments, procurations and other exactions of the ordinary.”[128] p203
A few royal hospitals were subordinate to the Crown and the papal see. That of Basingstoke, with its “free chapel of the king”, was granted immunity from episcopal control by Cardinal Ottobon (1268). The Maison Dieu, Dover, was taken under immediate papal protection by a bull of Nicholas III (1277). A unique case occurs where the lay founder of an almshouse at Nottingham gained for it freedom from the jurisdiction of the ordinary or judges, and subjection alone “to St. Peter and the Apostolic See” (1402).[129]
(f) “The Cure of Souls.”—Whereas the “free chapel” had no parochial obligations, there were hospital churches to which full parochial rights were attached. How or why such houses as St. Paul’s, Norwich, and Armiston came to possess “the cure of souls” is uncertain; the little chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, Durham (now a ruin), was also a rectorial parish church. More curious is the fact that several leper-hospitals acquired this peculiar advantage. Thus in Northampton, although St. John’s was “no parish church, but only for the company there inhabiting,” St. Leonard’s was a “liberty” having parochial rights, not only of burial, but of Baptism. St. Nicholas’, York, required as master, “a fit clerk who shall be able to answer for the cure of souls belonging to the parish church of that hospital.” The Lincoln leper-house had similar rights.