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  • Leper Hospitals in Medieval Ireland, with a Short Account of the Military and Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem
  • Luke Demaitre
Gerard A. Lee. Leper Hospitals in Medieval Ireland, with a Short Account of the Military and Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996. 72 pp. £7.95.

The research for this book, obviously less a scholarly pursuit than a labor of love, was inspired by the author’s interest in the knightly Order of St. Lazarus. Ironically, this Hospitaller order may not have reached Ireland in the Middle Ages, and it was totally eclipsed by religious associations such as the Augustinians and the Antonines, but above all by the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (after 1530, of Malta), with their Irish grand priory in Kilmainham. The modern Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem, headquartered in Paris since 1956, inaugurated the Bailiwick of Ireland at Dunsany castle (County Meath) in 1962. Its chief objective still embraces assistance to lepers, research on leprosy, and the combating of skin diseases in general—as well as bringing “such relief as may be possible in connection with thermo-nuclear wounds” (p. 71).

Guided by the belief that there must have been some link between the Knights of St. Lazarus and Irish lazar-houses, Gerard A. Lee casts the widest possible net for clues, gathering the data with limited attention to their inherent significance and historical background. As a result, he has ignored current literature on leprosy, hospitals, and medieval medicine. More unfortunately, he leaves the reader suspended by quoting no documents and supplying minimal references. The student of hospital history will wish to know the content and context of bequests for “poor leprous people” (pp. 17 and 51), which were expressions of charity and social order rather than medical measures. The historian of leprosy, on the other hand, will look for precise documentation in an inventory of leprosaria because the indeterminate character of many charitable foundations is compounded by the stretchable meaning of the term lepra. The tally of Leper Hospitals in Medieval Ireland is broadly inclusive, accepting locations with “palmer” (pilgrim) as denoting the presence of a “hospital,” and those with “spital” or “spittle” as pointing to a leper colony rather than merely to a shelter for the indigent or itinerant infirm.

Mr. Lee lists more than one hundred sites where “leper hospitals” may have existed, but fewer than half of these seem probable, and not even one-tenth are recorded in archives. Nevertheless, his evidence is illuminating, at least indirectly. Physical clues include the “leper squint,” a small opening in a church wall allowing outcasts to follow the mass. Written sources, at least as mentioned here, suggest that “leprosy” held sway in Ireland considerably longer than in most of Europe: It was noted well before the ninth century, in hagiographies of Saints Patrick and Brigid and in chronicles beginning with the Annals of Innisfallen, which in 546 recorded the death of “Nessan a leper” (p. 15). At the other end, long after lazarettos on the Continent had become plague hospitals or fallen into ruins, Joan Murphy was denied release from the Waterford lazar-house in 1650; in the same city, individuals were still “certified” as lepers in 1713 and 1723, and the general infirmary remained known as “the Leper House” until 1896 (pp. 43–45). [End Page 537]

The broadest implications are raised by the toponymical evidence inferred from the Gaelic word for leper, lobhar. A “field of lepers (Goutnalour)” or “meadow of lepers (Cloonalour),” as a granted “townland,” suggests the existence of an endowed institution. More ambiguously, a ridge (Drumalour) may have been a dwelling place, perhaps as sequestered as a designated well or watering hole (Tobar na Lobhar, Poulnalour). Larger communities are evoked by names such as “leper town (Ballynalour)” or, more ominously, “lepers’ fort (Rathnalour).” Locales were renamed in the nineteenth century, from “Lepers’ Hill (Knockalour)” to Flower Hill (in four counties) and, most notably, from “Leperstown” to Leopardstown (near Dublin). The introduction of these euphemisms must have a history of its own. Meanwhile, this little book reveals a great deal, not so much about the development...

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