Legal Authorities and their Legislative Priorities: The Treatment of Leprosy in the Sources of Canon Law

Abstract

Abstract This essay considers medieval leprosy in ecclesiastical legislation through the lens of legal pluralism, that is the range of normative orders that are independent from the “state” as a monolithic entity. It focuses on the period between the mid-eleventh and the turn of the fourteenth century marked by efforts at church reform, by the proliferation of leprosaria, and by canonical interest in matrimonial law. It argues that the environment in which various legal authorities worked influenced how they engaged with leprosy. The policies they enacted resulted from a negotiation of their circumstances and needs, which were not necessarily the same. The result was a rich and overlapping legal tradition that, over time, coalesced into a comprehensive legislative policy that both protected the rights of the afflicted as well as the safety of the healthy. The first section of this essay sets forth research on leprosy and the arguments to be pursued. The second section argues that the “old law” in canonical collections used leprosy as an allegory for sin and as a metaphor for simony in pursuit of personal reform and renewal. The third section focuses on the proliferation of leprosaria and argues that the challenge of arranging for pastoral care fell on the shoulders of councils and prelates making policy at the regional or local level. The fourth section argues that the papacy and jurists worked parallel to other legislative bodies. Yet it would be the requests to which the papacy responded and the importance of juridical commentary as a source clarifying the legal ambiguities in these responses that would provide the inroad for the papacy, acting similar to the proverbial “state”, to normalize ecclesiastical life and Christian society.