Who Heals and Who Cares: Medieval Women, Gender and the Holy Treatment of Leprosy

Medieval saints were the consummate healers. Their shrines offered round-the-clock care to the sick and disabled, and miraculous healing was a more trusted and cost-effective source of treatment than that available from the local physician. Saints could heal blindness, maimed limbs, infertility, and even heal the dead. No disease or impairment was beyond the scope of a saint’s healing ability. Moreover, female practitioners were as successful and respected as their male counterparts.

            Leprosy, however, posed a complicated challenge to holy healing. In miracle tales and saints’ lives, leprous pilgrims and petitioners primarily received palliative care, not miraculous healing.  The presence of a leper in the narrative of a miracle typically offered the saint an opportunity to show mercy, humility, and charity: saints fed and bathed lepers, rubbed them with unguents and oils, offered them shelter or clothes from the saint’s own wardrobe or back. Devotion to this type of care is most typically associated with the lives and miracles of female saints such as Radegund, Catherine of Siena, Angela of Foligno. There are, however, examples of saints who did heal leprosy, but these cases are rare and the healings typically, if not exclusively, performed by male saints, such as Francis, Thomas Becket, William of York. 

            This paper will consider why leprosy challenged saints’ supposedly limitless healing abilities, causing such a focus on palliative care. I will examine why female saints were limited to caring for lepers, while male saints performed healing miracles that cured.