|
Darrera modificació: 2021-04-26
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Barnhouse, Lucy, "Good People, Poor Sick: The Social Identities of Lepers in the Late Medieval Rhineland", dins: Brenner, Elma - Touati, François-Olivier (eds.), Leprosy and Identity in the Middle Ages: from England to the Mediterranean, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2021, ***.
- Resum
- Leprosy, I argue, did not erase previous social identities, as has sometimes been claimed. Rather, medieval lepers also derived their identity from where they lived, and from the communities of which they were part. The vocabulary used for lepers reveals not only a variety of responses to them, but a variety of ways in which those designated as lepers could choose to live. In addition to examining leper hospitals, which conferred religious status on their residents, I look at informal communities of lepers, often located near crossroads. Due to the paucity of sources, such groups have not yet been the subject of in-depth analysis, but an examination of the distinctive vocabulary applied to such communities has allowed me to draw some conclusions about how they lived and were perceived. Drawing on multiple source types allows me to see more clearly where the rhetoric or priorities of a genre of writing may distort our picture of medieval lepers and leprosy. Both in formal and informal communities, I argue, lepers remained semi-integrated in social and economic networks.
- Matèries
- Hospitals
Història de la medicina
Medicina - Pesta i altres malalties
|