ABSTRACT
Focusing on France, this chapter explores the identity of leprosy and lepers in Western Europe between 1100 and 1500, paying particular attention to the issues of narrative and language. It begins by considering how contemporaries identified the disease through examination and diagnostic procedures, the records of which also focuses on how lepers themselves were perceived. The chapter focuses on to survey the language associated with lepers and leprosy, and how such language changed over time. It aims to deepen our understanding of the complex identities of leprosy sufferers in the Middle Ages, and to encourage further cross-disciplinary research on the topic of leprosy. In fifteenth-century Cologne, Germany, many examinations took place at the city's chief leper house, Melaten, despite the fact that the medical faculty of the University of Cologne was also involved in leprosy diagnoses. Discerning the identities of lepers in the central and later Middle Ages, as well as how leprosy itself was identified, is a difficult process.
