ABSTRACT
In the mid-thirteenth century, the Cistercian chronicler Gilles of Orval recorded an episode of charitable endeavour on behalf of people with leprosy that renders a dramatic scene of organised lay piety in action. 1 Recounting traditions observed on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Lambert, the patron of Gilles’s home diocese of Liège, Gilles described annual celebrations at a church dedicated to Lambert in Würzburg. Here, he wrote, assembled parishioners ‘are eager devotedly to offer worldly things to support the spiritual souls of the leprosi, and, as for their bodies, they very frequently rejoice to bring back from that place medicines’. 2 The scene in Würzburg speaks of institutionalisation. Some group of people with leprosy knew, it suggests, to arrive at the church on a certain day. A group of pious well-wishers knew to bring medicines and other goods for them. Their exchange took place as part of a public celebration on the liturgical calendar, no doubt under the eyes of ecclesiastical authorities. The scene also speaks to an emphasis on the immediate needs of the body. The pious parishioners had concern for the immortal souls of the leprosi and leprosae, but their support was material. They did not expect Lambert to perform miracle cures for these sufferers as he was once thought to have done; they brought medicine.
