Sidrak and Bokkus

Sidrak and Bokkus is an encyclopaedia in a question and answer format. One of the questions is How can a man get leprosy? In a wonderful example of just how much most medieval writers were afraid of the opposite sex the answer is, of course, from a woman. The text then quite tactfully and poetically explains that if a man finds her flowers (a rather pretty way of saying Aunt Flo is in town!) and still has sex with her then he will “be missel” (be a leper). Also any child born of this union will be a leper as well! The text explains this in plainer terms ending with the warning that it is folly to deal with women when the menstrum is around! This is an interesting concoction of medieval medicine and moral scare-mongering. Medieval medicine did give this as one cause of leprosy but in Sidrak and Bokkus it is presented as THE cause of leprosy. What seems more likely than the author actually believing this is that the medieval fears of things they do not understand rose to the surface and the author thought great I can scare my audience into a more moral existence with the fear of leprosy!

I Love Lydgate

Sorry this blog has nothing to do with leprosy. I have officially had enough of the Lydgate haters. I like John Lydgate, but every time I read some Lydgate and like it I fell like I should apologise for it, like it is a dirty habit. I find his writing perhaps lacks the flair of Chaucer, but because of that most medievalists seem happy to dismiss him altogether...should all music from the 60s thats not The Beatles be dismissed, left unlistened to on a shelf? Should all romantic poetry thats not Wordsworth not be bothered with? Don't get me wrong I love Chaucer and shall forever be in his debt as the Book of the Duchess was my first introduction to Medieval poetry. But if people are allowed a love of Shelley or The Kinks why is it so awful that I love Lydgate? I can only assume it is a snobbery about his style of writing, and his habit for very long books. I think the issue here is how people read him...you wouldn't attempt to read the Bible in one go so why would you try to read the Fall of Princes in one go? Also why only read the Fall of Princes...yes its Lydgate's best known work but since when does fame make a work the best? So in conclusion I love Lydgate and I don't care who knows it!

Jacob's Well

Jacob's Well is another religious manual...that currently holds the title for most disgusting story involving leprosy in Middle English.

A bishop meets a leper on a road. The leper asks the bishop to lick the bogey out of his nose as his nose is too tender to be wiped with a cloth. The bishop does lick the nose and as he does so a gem stone falls out of the leper's nose, it is the stone of grace...a gift from God for the bishop's humility...still gross though! Naturally the leper disappears having given the bishop this wonderful gift!

Constantine

The Roman Emperor Constantine is held up in the medieval period as an example of charitable behaviour. He was a leper, and was told by his doctors that to cure his leprosy he needed to bathe in the blood of children. Now all commentators stress that Constantine doesn't bathe in infants blood and having converted to Christianity he is cured of his leprosy. Based on this I always thought of Constantine as a good man, who was horrified at the mere thought of killing innocent children just to help himself. So this week I read the version of this story from Gower's Confessio Amantis and Constantine is quite happy to kill all the children, its only when he hears all the mmothers wailing that he reconsiders. He then goes into this quite hypocritical speech about right and wrong and the rights of the poor...but two minutes earlier he was quite happy to murder a load of poor children on order to cure himself! Its quite creepy to read and reminds me of Herod's slaughter of the innocents. So Constantine's great act of charity is simply scaring the hell out a group of kids and their mums and then really generously not murdering them for his own ends! Is that charity? Strange....