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Readers of medieval hagiography are unlikely to be surpriscd by the image of a saint kissing or embracing a leper, as these were among the ultimate acts of charity and bodily mortification that a person could perform.1 But while the impetus for a saint to caress a leper might be easy to grasp, the layers of meaning that contribute to the significance of the leprosy topos in hagiography and literature require more reflection. This is largely because the leper as a recognizable construct within the medieval imagry is itself difficult to reduce to a simple, static archetype.
From the dehumanized, hyper-sexualized masculine menace deployed as a plot device in medieval romance, to the leper-asChrist, leprosy-as-holiness analogue, lepers find a fluctuating and often ambiguous place in the annals of medieval literature, and one that is significantly influenced by the characters with whom they interact. This essay focuses on how leprosy tropes are deployed in the vitae of a series of chaste holy women. The lives of Catherine of Siena, Margery Kempe, and Alice of Schaerbeek all dramatize the resonance between performing chastity and performing charity when faced with leprous bodies.
In analyzing how saintly women embody and embrace this tension, the study will consider how sexuality, and especially chastity, finds itself at the intersection of conceptions of the holy and the transgressive in constructions of leprosy. These miraculous interactions center on bodily disease and holy charity; yet the specters of moral leprosy and dangerous sexuality are not entirely absent. Through analysis of these sources, it will be argued that the desires of the flesh are constantly implied by the presence of leprosy, illuminating the virginal chastity of the saint through stark contrast, and emphasizing her erotic love for her Bridegroom all the more sharply. The intimate moments of contact and exchange highlighted in these texts intensify and complicate expressions of gender, sexuality, and piety, providing a unique look at saints and lepers both as symbols and as performing subjects.
Modem scholars have broadly explored and complicated the relationship between leprosy and sexual transgression in medieval texts. Saul Brody's formative 1974 study, The Disease of the Soul, foregrounds the primacy of literary traditions that center leprosy as a bodily manifestation of sin, and especially sexual sin.2 This...