The Leper’s plot of 1321 – evidence of a nation-wide leprosaria network in 14th century France

Abstract

The turn of the fourteenth century was to find the rural population in France ready for a general uprising with a strong desire to set out on a crusade to fight the Moorish threat in the Iberian Peninsula. This uprising was to see a transference of attention towards the Jewish and leper communities in France and Aragon giving rise to the Shepherds’ Crusade and allegations of a nationwide Lepers’ Plot where allegedly leper and Jewish communities together with the Sultan of Granada had plotted to poison the wells of France and thus kill the healthy communities or infect them with leprosy. The following Inquisitional Trials suggest that the care of lepers in France was based on a nationwide coherent group of interrelated leprosaria falling under one central organization that adhered to a specific chain of command structure rather than to a system of isolated establishment run by local municipal or ecclesiastical authorities. It is therefore suggested from the evidence that the Lepers’ Plot was particularly attributed to the fratres Sancti Lazari who in 1265 had been made responsible for all leper-houses in Christian Europe by Pope Clement IV.