Walking Corpses : : Leprosy in Byzantium and the Medieval West / / John W. Nesbitt, Timothy S. Miller.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
• VerfasserIn: Miller, Timothy S.,; Nesbitt, John W.,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Edition: with a new preface
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (282 p.) :; 5 b&w halftones, 1 map

In Walking Corpses, Timothy W. Miller and John S. 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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface to the Paperback Edition -- Illustrations -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 The Ancient World -- Chapter 2 Leprosy in the Byzantine Empire -- Chapter 3 Byzantine Medicine -- Chapter 4 Byzantine Leprosariums -- Chapter 5 Leprosy in the Latin West -- Chapter 6 Leprosariums in the Latin West -- Chapter 7 The Knights of Lazarus -- Conclusion -- Appendixes -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index