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Walking Corpses
Leprosy in Byzantium and the Medieval West
Timothy S. Miller (Author), John W. Nesbitt (Author)
9781501770838
Paperback / softback, published 15 May 2023
282 pages, 5 b&w halftones, 1 map - 5 Halftones, black and white - 1 Maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.454 kg
A very readable introduction to a fascinating subject and a valuable example of the importance of studying the Byzantine origins of medieval institutions. This is a compact, accessible study, which delivers on its promise to bring the insights provided by studies of late antique Greek leprosy to bear on medieval Latin ones. A welcome resource for the teaching of medieval leprosy, a fraught and fascinating topic in undergraduate classrooms. Walking Corpses both expands the field of study and shows directions in which this necessary endeavor can be continued.
In Walking Corpses, Timothy S. Miller and John W. Nesbitt contextualize reactions to leprosy in medieval Western Europe by tracing its history in Late Antique Byzantium, which had been confronting leprosy and its effects for centuries. Integrating developments in both the Latin West and the Greek East, Walking Corpses challenges a number of misperceptions about attitudes toward the disease, including that theologians branded leprosy as punishment for sin (rather, it was seen as a mark of God's favor); that Christian teaching encouraged bans on the afflicted from society (in actuality, it was Germanic customary law); or that leprosariums were prisons (instead, they were centers of care, many of them self-governing). Informed by extensive archival research and recent bioarchaeology, Walking Corpses also includes new translations of three Greek texts regarding leprosy, while a new preface to the paperback edition updates the historiography on medieval perceptions and treatments of leprosy.