Leprosy

Christian writers stressed that “leprosy could be interpreted as a trial to perfect good people rather than as punishment meted out to sinners” (T. Miller & Nesbitt, 41). In his Oration XIV on behalf of the poo, Gregory of Nazianzos argued lepers were blessed by God rather than cursed because of sin: “Leprosy was preparing its victims for paradise, while good health and beauty might be leading those it favored to eternal damnation” (42). For Gregory, leprosy was the ”Holy Disease” that marked those destined for heaven rather than those stained with sin”(41, 104). His oration contributed to basic change in popular response to leprosy, as “no Byzantine intellectual, ecclesiastic, or political figure thereafter ever suggested that Christians should ban the victims of leprosy from churches, cities, or public places” (43). “In both the Byzantine East and the Latin West, leprosy had this strange, ambivalent connotation: it might represent sin, or punishment, or even the devil, but it might also symbolize virtue and the divine” (106).