Michael T.Davis
[See also: PILGRIMAGE]
Benoist, Luc. Notre-Dame-de-l’Épine. Paris: Laurens, 1933.
Prache, Anne. “Un maître maçon du XVe siècle: Florent Bleuet.” Gazette des beaux arts, 6th ser.
111 (1988):21–26.
Puiseux, Abbé. Notre-Dame-de-l’Épine, son histoire, son pèlerinage. 2nd ed. Châlons-sur-Marne:
Imprimerie Martin, 1910.
Villes, Alain. “Notre-Dame-de-l’Épine, sa façade occidentale.” Congrès archéologique 135
(1977):779–862.
LEPROSY
. Paradox marks the subject of leprosy in medieval France. Though the object of universal
dread, the disease was not as widespread as modern images suggest. The symptoms and
causes were moralized not only by preachers but also by poets from Béroul to Rutebeuf
and in such romances as Ami et Amile; yet they were also discussed in rational and
scientific terms by medical authors. Physicians urged and applied caution in diagnosis,
even if their belief in contagion perpetuated unnecessary fears.
Confirmed patients, officially cast out with funerary rituals and barred from towns,
nevertheless roamed the streets freely until they became too numerous or unruly. Lepers
were legally “dead to the world” according to a sweeping principle in the Beauvaisis, but
local regulations on their property and marital rights varied widely. Deeds of charity,
from the foundation of lazar houses to the saintly heroics of Louis IX, contrast with
outbursts of popular intolerance. Accused of poisoning wells, lepers at large were
attacked by mobs during plagues and sheltered ones were burned under Philip V, who
seized their communal assets for his depleted treasury.
Leprosy peaked in France in the 13th century; in the early 1200s, Jehan Bodel and
Baude Fastoul poetically bewailed their exile from Arras, where several maladreries
could have housed them by the end of the century. After 1350, the disease declined
markedly for reasons that are not yet fully clear but that included improved diet and
hygiene, mortality in epidemics, isolation, and more accurate identification—in which
physicians played an increasing role.
Luke Demaitre
[See also: CONGÉ; DISEASES; HEALTH CARE; HOSPITALS; MEDICAL
PRACTICE AND PRACTITIONERS]
Barber, Malcolm. “Lepers, Jews and Moslems: The Plot to Overthrow Christendom in 1321.”
History 66 (1981):1–17.
Bourgeois, Albert. Lépreux et maladreries du Pas-de-Calais (X-XVIIe siècles): psychologie
collective et institutions charitables. Arras: Commission Départementale des Monuments
Historiques du Pas-de-Calais, 1972.
Cougoul, Jacques. La lépre dans l’ancienne France. Bordeaux: Delmar, 1943.
Demaitre, Luke. “The Description and Diagnosis of Leprosy by Fourteenth-Century Physicians.”
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 59 (1985):327–44.
The Encyclopedia 1023