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LEPROSY IN
MEDIEVAL EUROPE

WHEN AND WHERE

The disease called leprosy was very widespread in medieval Europe, especially
(but not only) between about 1000 and about 1350. In those years a large num-
ber of institutions for the isolation of lepers were created. The incidence of lep-
rosy (as it was then understood) apparently began to decline in the years after
about 1250; by about 1350 many of the institutions devoted to it had shrunk in
size or even closed. By about 1500 leprosy was unusual in Europe, except in iso-
lated portions of Scandinavia. No reliable estimate of the number of sufferers,
or of mortality rates, is possible, but the number of leprosaria, as the institu-
tions were called, may have been in the thousands.
The victims of the disease suffered gradually worsening lesions of the skin,
sometimes leading to bone damage, deformations, and loss of extremities. The
repellant appearance of the sufferers certainly contributed to the horror the dis-
ease inspired, and to the social stigmatization of its victims.

SIGNIFICANCE
Medieval leprosy affords perhaps the Western world’s clearest and most dra-
matic example of the relationships between disease, social stigmatization, and
theological interpretations. Fear of lepers became very deeply rooted in Western
society; the word leper ultimately acquired (in English) a more general and sym-
bolic meaning: “a person who is shunned, especially on moral grounds,” says
the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which quotes the [London] Sunday
Express by way of illustration: “There are lepers in every prison—child mo-
lesters, rapists.”

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