earticle

영어

The lepers are the group that represented the contradictory and hesitant attitude of the people of middle age like did the vagabonds, the beggars and the mad men. While the vagabonds and the baggers kept an important position in the "economy of salvation“ with the image of Jesus Christ, the mad men were often considered as messenger of the God. In addition, the lepers were the object of Christ's love and compassion as well as the symbol of Christ's miracle. On the other hand, they were the threats to society with their habit of laziness, imposture, gambling, or being obstacle to worship. Nonetheless, these contradictory attitude changed decisively around 16th-17th centuries. The vagabonds and the baggers became the object of oppression with the ideology of value of labour whereas the mad men became the object of imprisonment with the background of dichotomy of 'reason' and 'un-reason". However, in this kind of social changes at the beginning of the Modern age, it's difficult to observe the similar changes in attitude towards the lepers. That's because the lepers had disappeared rapidly before the advent of the modern age. This is the difference between the lepers and the other marginal men of medieval society. The lepers could obtain full-qualified membership of the society around the transition period from the medieval to modern eras. It was due to the accumulation of medical knowledges and the improvement of standard of life. With the disease disappearing, they could recover easily their social status as the normal member of the society. Accordingly the analysis on the lepers has the periodic limits such as being confined to the medieval era. Then what was the difference between the lepers and the other marginal men in medieval times? It's not so difficult to guess it. The lepers were the object attracting the most attention among the social marginal men because of their high 'possibility of contagion'. This reason led naturally to their separation from the society. Of course, the attitude towards the lepers were often contradictory, but dominated by negative image, which made the leprosery a positive place protecting the society from the leprosy. In fact, the leprosy is considered as the image of the sin of temptation and heresy and as the object of the oppression. But the leprosery has the aspect of exalted spiritual salvation and the virtue of seclusion. Focusing on this point, this paper examined the dual attitude of medieval people towards the lepers as well as the establishment and operation of the leprosery. Through these analyses, we can conclude that the leprosery had a different image from concentration camp of the poor or madmen prison, a somber place of modern times. Around the late middle age, the number of the leprosery started to shrink in numbers drastically because of the reduction of the lepers. The poor, the vagabond and the madmen have gradually replaced the leper in the society but in the involuntary way. This phenomenon means that the disease and sexual desire gave up their place to the idleness and un-reason. But there is a big difference in the social attitude to the lepers between the middle age and the modern age. That is to say, the medieval society was hesitant about the leprosy so that the lepers could have a room for breathing to a certain extent while the modern age has negative opinion, dominantly oppressing, towards poverty and mental disease.