The major goal of this study, which is addressed to a broad audience, is to address the overlooked role of Byzantium in the history of leprosy, and to offer a comparison with the medieval Latin west. More controversially, the authors argue that victims faced more persecution in the west than in Byzantium. The major issues in leprosy research are considered: exclusion from society; medical theories of contagion; leper hospitals, and theological views of causation for the disease. The work is organized topically rather than chronologically, with a section on Byzantium followed by a comparison with the Latin west and appended translations of three important documents.
A useful introductory chapter presents a brief early history of the disease and introduces classical medical theories inherited by medieval physicians, contrasting the dominant humoral theory of Galen, who believed that leprosy was caused by bodily imbalance and non-contagious, with that of the lesser known Greek “pneumatist” Aretaios, who saw it as contagious and spread through the air. An analysis of biblical texts and terminology drawn on by medieval Christians follows.
Miller and Nesbitt's opening section on leprosy in Byzantium provides a valuable portrait of the late ancient origins of medieval institutions and attitudes toward leprosy. The authors' central argument is that the fourth century church fathers Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea and John Chrysostom created a Christian imperative to care for lepers that lasted throughout Byzantine history and passed to the Latin west. They attribute to the vivid rhetoric of the two Gregorys a theology that leprosy was not punishment for bodily sins requiring victims to remain “outside the camp,” as commanded in Leviticus, but a “Holy Disease” like the suffering of Lazarus, that would result in salvation. Basil of Caesarea is shown as a model for personally caring for victims and kissing them—a practice later attributed to many saints—and founding one of the first leper hospitals outside his city. The authors present interesting evidence for the expansion of leprosariums and charity for lepers throughout the eastern provinces of the empire in late antiquity, and also show that the Byzantine model expanded to the early medieval Latin west where hospitals were established in Italy and Gaul, bishops agreed to provide food and clothing for lepers in each diocese, and holy men personally attended victims. Claims that the expansion centered on the church fathers and addressed an epidemic are controversial; it also may be seen as a broader effort of bishops to promote their role as dispensers of charity. That late ancient society, like medieval Europe, saw leprosy as both punishment for sin and a sign of salvation, is shown in widely circulated miracle stories and sermons from Byzantium and the west. Popular fear of contagion also existed in Byzantium: leper hospitals were located outside city walls near sources of water for treatment that involved bathing and anointing sores, but also as a way of distancing victims from the population. Sources for Byzantine leprosy after the seventh century are extremely sparse, mostly limited to references to the imperial patronage of the leprosarium of St. Zotikos in Constantinople and the foundation of two provincial hospitals. Accounts of a royal Serbian foundation, a twelfth century seal of the “brothers of St. Zotikos,” and a joint leprosarium in Venetian Crete all suggest that the organization of Byzantine leprosariums may have been similar to those in the Latin west, where new scholarship has shown that they were not prisons, but quasi-monastic institutions where patients wore habits, followed monastic discipline under the direction of a master and participated in governance, but too little is known to make generalizations about leprosy in late Byzantium with any confidence.
Miller and Nesbitt's second section, arguing that exclusion of lepers was greater in the Latin west than in Byzantium, is more problematic. The authors use a leper massacre of 1321, described in recent studies as a short-lived outcome of regional stresses, as central evidence for an ongoing pattern of exclusion and persecution in the west that had no counterpart in Byzantium and would have “profoundly violated the ethical principles enunciated by the fourth century Greek fathers” (98)—an argument that relies on silence in the sources and fourth century words. The heritage of harsh Germanic law and the adoption of medical theories of contagion are proposed as underlying causes of isolation of lepers in the west, issues that will certainly create debate. The authors do not fully incorporate new, archivally based scholarship that revises old stereotypes of exclusion with regional studies demonstrating the complex connections of lepers and their communities and warning against generic characterizations of a society's attitudes to the disease. A chronological organization of the text would avoid the distortions of citing examples centuries apart and lessen overgeneralization. The authors rightly emphasize the necessity of further research in regional archives and publication of source materials from both Byzantium, where a large body of unstudied medical materials exists, and the Latin West. Despite problems cited here, Walking Corpses offers the non-specialist audience a very readable introduction to a fascinating subject and a valuable example of the importance of studying the Byzantine origins of medieval institutions.
