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478 Where this disease was especially dominant, the charity of the neighbourhood frequently erected a hospital, or lazarhouse, and in it, after the observation of the usual forms, the unfortunate being was located. We may state, at this point, that during the time of which we are now speaking, the term leprosy was used in a very comprehensive sense. It seems to have comprised all the disorders of the skin, and thus the Lazarus of Our Lord’s parable—the beggar that lay at Dives’ door, his body covered with sores—was regarded as a sufferer from it; and hence this Lazarus was adopted to be the leper’s patron saint, and the lepers’ hospital was termed a lazar-house. The order of St. Lazarus, which, having existed at Jerusalem from an early period of the Christian era, was revived at the time of the crusades, consisted of knights devoted to the leper’s service. It is St. Lazarus who occasionally in the legends appears personally to thank those that have befriended the leper.

The number of the lazarhouses in Europe about the time of the thirteenth century, was almost beyond calculation. In our own country it was very great. Were the history of them minutely investigated, many curious facts respecting the leper’s life might be brought to light. There were six of these hospitals in London alone. There were five in Norwich—one at each gate of the city. The most extensive one was in Leicestershire, at Burton-Lazars—the name, it may be noticed, appropriating the place to the leper’s saint. The heads of all the other English leper hospitals were under the authority of the head of Burton-Lazars. The precise date of its foundation is uncertain. It owed its endowments chiefly to Roger de Mowbray, a native of Burton. A copy of his deed of gift is still in preservation. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost he greets all his kinsmen and friends, both in England and France, and entreats them to take note that by this his document he bestows upon God and St. Mary and the lepers of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem, two carucates of land in Burton, and one messuage hard by the river of the same town, and the site on which stands a certain mill, with a view to the salvation of his soul and his father’s soul and his mother’s soul and his ancestors’ souls; and that these his presents are to be employed for charitable uses, free from any secular service.

Sir Roger’s biography would be worth the perusal had we leisure for it. But to return to the lazarhouses. There were hospitals at Plymouth, Cambridge, Bodmin, Launceston, Carlisle, Derby, Gloucester, Southampton, Hereford, Baldock, Canterbury, Chatham, Dover, Rochester, Lancaster, Peterborough, Taunton, Bristol, Warwick, Ipswich, Pontefract, and very many other places. Hutchinson, the historian of the county of Durham, informs us that at one period half the existing hospitals of the county were for the benefit of the lepers.

The lepers had, therefore, no ground for complaining of eleemosynary neglect. On this point Michaud aptly observes that “the spirit of devotion richly endowed lepers without doing anything for their cure. Isolation appears to have been the only curative or preservative means known for their malady.”

Some few other privileges were granted them. By the Council of Lateran, in 1179, it is ordained, that “whereas numbers of people were gathered together in community, they shall be permitted to enjoy to themselves a church, a churchyard, and a priest of their own; but they must take care that this be no way injurious or prejudicial to the rights of parish churches; yet shall not the leprous or lazarhouses be compelled to pay tithes for the increase of their own proper cattle.”

They seem, moreover, to have been allowed at two seasons of the year to enter the town or city, outside the gates of which stood their huts or hospital (as the case might be), namely, during the fifteen days immediately preceding Good-Friday, and the eight days preceding Christmas.

The other restrictions to which they were subjected, remained for a long period in force. They were disabled from suing in any action, real or personal. “It is meet,” says an old jurist, “that the right of legal action should be denied in the case of leprosy: for instance, if the plaintiff is a leper, and so unsightly as to deserve exclusion from all communion with the world: for such a disease excludes the suitor from suing.”

There can be no doubt, that, in spite of the many hospitals established for him, the leper was regarded with eyes of aversion. He was an abject and odious spectacle, and for the most part the charity of that day could not abide him in its sight. He represented humanity in its most fallen and revolting state. The primeval curse wrought in him in its extremest virulence. It was believed that no power of pharmacy could heal him, that his distemper baffled mortal skill, that there was a divine judgment in it. Possibly this belief cast a passing shadow over the stricken man’s character; and Gehazi’s livery may have been, insensibly, associated with Gehazi’s guilt. At any rate, lepers do not seem to have been held-in any very high estimation. On one occasion, for example, we find a very hideous charge preferred against them: “And in this same yere,” writes Capgrave, in his Chronicle of England, meaning the year 1318, “the mysseles (i. e. lepers) thorow oute Cristendam were slaundered that thei had mad covenaunt with Sarasines for to poison alle Cristen men, to put venym in wellis, and alle maner vesseles that long to mannes use; of which malice mony of hem were convicte and brent, and many Jews that gave hem councel and coumfort.”

With regard to the word myssel used in this passage, it may be stated that it is identical with the word mezellus, which in medieval Latin is synonymous with leprosus, being but another form of misellus, and denoting, therefore, how hopeless and miserable the leper’s life was deemed to be. “In his tyme,” writes Capgrave, in another place, referring to Heraclius, Emperor of the East, 610, “were sevene Popes. The first hite Deus Dedit [Deodatus is the Pontiff here alluded to], III. yere. He kissed a mysel, and sodeynly the mysel was hol.”

Certainly on one score the chroniclers of the middle ages, and indeed the whole Roman Catholic Church, were under immense obligation to these