The Origins of Leprosy as a Physical Disease and Social Condition in Medieval Western Europe

The construction of certain individuals and groups as “other” delineates the boundaries of society. The modern portrayal of the medieval leper as ubiquitous, deeply feared, and always “cast outside the camp” has hampered understanding of the complex ways in which social exclusion occurs. Recent research by social and religious historians questions whether medieval European reactions to leprosy were really uniformly hostile. Similarly, paleopathological studies (which employ scientific methods to study human remains) show that Hansen’s disease (the biological cause of leprosy) was more widespread in medieval European populations than previously suspected. We propose to synthesize the paleopathological/microbiological and historical narratives to examine how understandings of leprosy were formulated in medieval Western Europe, both in terms of explaining it as a physical disease and in developing social mechanisms to deal with it. In doing so, our project will illuminate the origins of social stigma, especially in relation to disease.