The Roots of Persecution: a comparison of leprosy and madness in late medieval thought and society

Abstract

This thesis compares madness and leprosy in the late Middle Ages. The first two chapters explore the conceptualization of madness and leprosy, finding that both were similarly moralized and associated with sin and spiritual degeneration. The third chapter examines the leper and the mad person as social identities and finds that, although leprosy and madness, as concepts, were treated very similarly, lepers and the mad received nearly opposite social treatment. Lepers were collectively excluded and institutionalized, while the mad were assessed and treated individually, and remained within their family and community networks. The exclusionary and marginalizing treatment of lepers culminated, in 1321, in two outbreaks of persecutory violence in France and Aragon, and in lesser but more frequent expulsions through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The mad were not subject to comparable, collective violence. In light of the similar moral and spiritual content of leprosy and madness as concepts, this comparison indicates that a morally condemned or stigmatized condition was not sufficient to generate persecution, or to produce a persecuted social identity. It was the structure of the concept leprosy that produced a collective social identity available to the persecuting apparatus of late medieval society, while the fluid concept of madness produced the more individual identity of the mad person, which was less susceptible to the collective actions of persecution.