Now that this story is out, what other incidents involving Father Daniel’s flock will come to light?
I wonder how many teenaged boys showing up for services with acne, have been turned out on the public roads wearing a leper’s bell, forced to cry “Unclean!” when passersby approach.*
*It is estimated that of the millions cast out of society in the Middle Ages for having leprosy, most had other, comparatively minor skin conditions. The schizophrenics probably didn’t fare too well either.
Ah! I’d always wondered why leprosy was apparently so much more prevalent then. Now it all makes sense.
Thank you, I learned something today.
Hmmm…interesting.
Can you recommend a book title on the subject?
There’s a good account of leprosy a.k.a. Hansen’s disease in one of Berton Roueche’s books (it may have been in The Medical Detectives or Annals of Epidemiology). He wrote many great stories about solutions to medical mysteries.
One scary thing about medieval leprosy was that priests and “concerned citizens” were variably responsible for determining if you had leprosy. The doctors of the time were no great shakes either, so determining the extent of whatever epidemic there may have been isn’t easy (the disease can be tough to diagnose even now). People have actually gone back and found evidence of leprosy in medieval remains with the help of DNA sequencing, but I don’t know of any wide-scale studies to estimate incidence.
From the Telegraph:
So not only did he kill her, but he gets to perform the funeral too?
[Yakoff Smirnoff] What a country! [/Yakoff Smirnoff]
Apparently the monastery was never legitimate to begin with (link in Romanian). It was founded without the blessing of the local bishop, and when the bishop went there to discipline the priest he was beaten by the nuns. Looks like this was just a group of kooks who got out of control.
Nun beating goes to a new level.
Jack is absolutely right about leprosy in the Middle Ages. Leprosy was essentially a residual diagnosis for any skin condition. An entertaining book on the subject with an entire chapter on lepers is The Medieval Underworld by Andrew McCall. It is a little dated and its author wins no awards for style, it is well worth reading. When you’re done reading about lepers, you can read about pims, whores, brigands, and heretics.