On the Margins of a Minority: Leprosy, Madness, and Disability among the Jews of Medieval Europe

On the Margins of a Minority

LEPROSY, MADNESS, AND DISABILITY AMONG THE JEWS OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE

Ephraim Shoham-Steiner

Translated by Haim Watzman

WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

DETROIT

English-language edition published 2014 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013951088

ISBN: 978-0-8143-3931-2 (jacketed cloth):

English translation published by arrangement with the Zalman Shazar Center.

This book was published with the support of the Israel Science Foundation.

ISBN: 978-0-8143-3932-9 (ebook)

Simply because this is life’s way: once you belong to a certain group, you belong, however different you are.

S. Y. Agnon

In memory of Professor Michael Heyd (1943–2014), a teacher, a mentor, and, above all, a noble man.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Leprosy as a Concept

2. Social Attitudes toward Lepers

3. What Is Madness?

4. Social Attitudes toward the Insane

5. The Physically Impaired

6. Disability in Sacred and Private Space

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface

On one winter day in 1995 I found myself participating in the daily afternoon prayer service at one of the tiny synagogues that dot the Mahaneh Yehuda open-air market in Jerusalem. The synagogue’s gabbai (sexton of synagogue affairs) had flagged me down and asked me to come help form the minyan (the requisite quorum of ten men). When I entered, I quickly counted the gathered worshipers so that I could estimate how long I would have to wait before the quorum was present and the prayers would begin. To my surprise, I counted nine others, but the gabbai remained outside trying to convince another passerby to enter. I stepped out and told him that we were already ten. He replied that one of the men inside could not be counted in the quorum because he’s not entirely okay. At that moment another man, number eleven, walked in. We were thus ten male adults, the required quorum to perform the service, actually ten normal male adults and one who was different.

The service began immediately, and I had no opportunity to ask the gabbai to explain his diagnosis. I did not know which of the men in the room was exceptional, and during the portion of the service during which each devotee recites the amidah prayer silently, I tried to figure out who the gabbai had not seen fit to count. Only by looking closely was I able to discern that one of the devotees was behaving unusually. Had I not been alerted by the gabbai, though, I probably would not have noticed anything out of the ordinary about him. As the leader of the service repeated the amidah prayer out loud, I stole another look at the man, who was still engaged in his silent prayer. I saw that he followed the words in his prayer book with his finger as he read. When he completed his personal devotion, much later than the rest of us, he listened to the remainder of the leader’s repetition and uttered the appropriate responses. The only facet of his behavior that indicated anything out of the ordinary was his voice, which was louder than that of the other worshipers. He stressed the words sharply and repeated the responsive phrases several times.

Why did the gabbai think this man could not be included in the quorum? Ostensibly, he met all the criteria for active participation in the religious ritual of the afternoon prayer service. But apparently something else, concealed behind the formal requirements, bound the quorum together and made distinctions between who could and could not be included within it. This event is not the reason I chose to study marginal individuals in medieval European Jewish society, but it helped sharpen my feeling that my subject was as relevant to modern society as to past ones. It should also be noted that medieval rabbinic law and tradition continue to resonate in present day orthodox Judaism, and thus the matters that will be discussed in this book share a contemporary relevance alongside the historical ones.

I will not enumerate here all the reasons that led me to devote myself to this issue, but I am honor-bound to name two works that inspired me to delve into the subject. The first is a short book by Shulamit Shahar on marginal groups in the Middle Ages, and it immediately caught my eye.¹ In reading it, I learned that while there had been extensive research on the Jews as a marginal group, this was hardly the case when it came to Jewish society’s collective attitudes to the marginal individuals within it. A bibliographical survey provided further confirmation. Furthermore, in light of the Jewish community’s position at the margins of European society, the questions Shahar posed seemed even more acute with regard to marginal individuals in the Jewish community itself.

Another work that encouraged me to pursue the subject was an article by Bronislaw Geremek, a medievalist who became Poland’s foreign minister after the fall of Communism. Geremek contributed an in-depth discussion of marginal individuals in medieval European society to a collection edited by the late French historian Jacques Le Goff.² I conjectured that, given the small size of the Jewish community in medieval Europe, I would have difficulty investigating marginal groups within it, and that my study would need to focus not on collectives but rather on individuals who for one reason or another found themselves on its margins. These people would ostensibly be on the margins of the margin—at the fringe of a society that was itself on the fringe.

All arguments in this book are mine, and all translations those of the English translator unless otherwise noted.

Notes

1. Shahar, Marginal Groups.

2. Geremek, Marginal Man.

Acknowledgments

During the years that I labored on this study—first as my PhD dissertation, then on revising and expanding that work for publication in book form, and finally in adapting the book to English—I benefited greatly from the advice, support, encouragement, and criticism of many wonderful people. I cannot possibly name them all, but neither do I want to evade this pleasant duty.

First, I wish to express my gratitude to my teacher and mentor Avraham Grossman, who oversaw my work from the beginning through its various incarnations, starting with a research paper that was written under his guidance for a master’s-degree seminar in the Department of History of the Jewish People at Hebrew University back in 1997 and ending with this book. This work could not have been completed and published without the benefit of his open door, cogent counsel, wisdom, knowledge, and attentive ear.

I am especially pleased to be able to thank several of the teachers I have studied under. Michael Heyd of the History Department at Hebrew University was one of my early professors, and from our first acquaintance he believed in my ability, supported me, and followed my progress. It was thus natural that I would ask him to be a member of the academic committee that oversaw this research project. His advice, encouragement, and critical reading sharpened central points in this work and lie at the foundation of many of its conclusions. Michael’s untimely passing in February 2014 left his students and colleagues with a tremendous sense of loss. I dedicate this book to his memory as a token of my deepest appreciation to him as a scholar, mentor, and as a "mentsch." Another member of the committee was the late Israel Moshe Ta-Shma, of blessed memory, who, despite his mortal illness, asked to read a draft manuscript of the work on which this book is based and to offer his comments. From his final sickbed he sent this study on its way with his blessing.

In the mid 1990s Menahem Ben-Sasson brought me into his suckers’ seminar—a wonderful group that met at his home. We earned the epithet suckers because at first we earned no academic credit for the seminar. In addition to the sharp analytical tools he bestowed on us, which remain in my kit to this day, he treated us both paternally and affably. I owe much to the discussions held in that forum. Many friends from that circle and outside read sections of this work, offering their comments and critiques and helping me repair many flaws. I owe a debt of gratitude to Scott Uri, Alek Isaacs, Amos Geula, Yehudah Galinsky, Roni Weinstein, Yochi Fisher, Ted Fram, Rami Reiner, Iris Shagrir, Yael Shenkar, and Adiel Schremer.

Special thanks are due to Ora Limor, Israel Jacob Yuval, and Simcha Emanuel, who helped me in their areas of expertise and showed me how to reach the destinations that I sought. Ron Barkai invited me to participate in an advanced graduate seminar on the history of medicine at Tel Aviv University in 1999, thereby opening a door for me into the world of medieval medicine and the extensive research literature in this field.

I also wish to thank the staff of the Israeli National Library in Givat Ram, Jerusalem. Its reading rooms, especially the Judaica Reading Room, became a second home to me from the time I wrote my dissertation, and in many ways still is. The former director of the reading room, Ms. Elona Avinezer, and her team of librarians were always happy to help me, as was Mr. Shlomo Goldberg, director of the Loans and Circulation Department. I received special assistance from the Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, in particular from Ms. Yael Okun, whose help, advice, and broad knowledge enriched this study. My friends Yitzhak Chiko Gila and Noa Shashar read the entire Hebrew manuscript and trimmed away the excess. Zvi Yekutiel, general director of the Zalman Shazar Center, faithfully and with paternal fondness saw me through all the stages of designing and publishing the Hebrew version of this book, even when I was overseas. I was also assisted by Yehezkel Hovav, whose sharp eye and discernment helped me weed out errors; by Ma’ayan Avineri-Rebhun, who chaperoned me through the process of producing the book; and by Lilach Chlenov, who worked on the preparation of the Hebrew manuscript and edited it precisely, faithfully, and sensitively.

Many of my friends in the United States encouraged me to revise the book and translate it into English. This was no easy undertaking and I especially thank Ephraim Kanarfogel of Yeshiva University and Elisheva Carlebach of Columbia University for encouraging me to do so. Ephraim Kanarfogel and Guy Miron facilitated in making Wayne State University Press the vehicle of this endeavor and in procuring the generous aid of the Israel Science Foundation, whose Humanities Publication Grant financially enabled this endeavor. My Jerusalem neighbor Haim Watzman carefully translated this book and helped me present my ideas adequately to a broader community of scholars. Daniel Tabak from New York City and Jason Rogoff from Jerusalem read the final English manuscript. Their wise and subtle counsel, piercing critiques, and insightful comments made me rethink some of the ideas in this book and produce an updated and better product. Finally, I wish to thank the dedicated staff of Wayne State University Press, and especially editor-in-chief Kathy Wildfong, for walking me through the process of the current book’s production.

My family is my constant pillar of support. My parents, Jacob and Ziona Steiner, supported, encouraged, assisted, and followed with great anticipation every stage of my research, writing, publishing, and translating. My five sons—Shahar, Adi, Yuval, Be’eri, and Sha’qued—give their love and have patience with my professional obsession, granting me mental and spiritual tranquility, the kind of support that every scholar needs in order to bring his work to a successful conclusion. Finally, I am ever grateful to my wife, Oshrat, without whom this book would not have seen the light of day. I cannot possibly express the love and appreciation I feel for her. I echo Rabbi Akiva in saying that all I have, comes ultimately from her.

Several institutions provided me with material support while I wrote my dissertation and then turned it into a book. For three out of the four years I spent working on the dissertation, I was aided by a Rotenstreich fellowship for outstanding PhD candidates from the Israeli Council for Higher Education. During my work I also received support from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. I was able to turn the dissertation into a book thanks to the generous Kreitman Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev from 2002 to 2004. I spent the 2005–6 academic year as a research fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies. I wish to express my gratitude to the center’s director at the time, Jay Harris, and to my companion Harry Starr fellows for creating a pleasant atmosphere that allowed me to bring my Hebrew book to its conclusion. The assistance I received from the Leslie & Vera Keller Fund for the Advancement and Promotion of Jewish Heritage provided the final financial push. My heartfelt thanks go to all of the above for their confidence in this study. The English version of the book was supported by a special grant from the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF) grant no. 02/2013, as well as by the discretionary fund of David Newman, dean of humanities and social sciences at Ben-Gurion University, and Zui Hachohen, rector of the university.

This book is dedicated to the memory of two of my students, Eran Yohanan Picard and Asher Baruch Marcus, graduates of Himmelfarb High School—where I taught for many years—who lost their lives in a terrorist attack in the study hall of The Otzem Pre-Military Torah Academy at Atzmona. They were murdered on the same night—23 Adar 5762 (March 7, 2002)—that I completed the dissertation on which this book is based.

Introduction

Writing at the end of the nineteenth century, French scholar Julius Robert reported that the legend inscribed over the gate to the medieval Les Innocents cemetery in Paris read: Beware the company of the madman, the Jew, and the leper. While this is merely an anecdote, it is nevertheless a telling one. Jews, lepers, and madmen were among the disvalued people in the medieval Western European society that Robert was investigating.¹ This mindset, which says much about the way in which madmen and lepers were perceived in society at large, sharpens the need for us to understand attitudes toward them within a society that was itself a marginal group in medieval Europe: the Jewish community.

In medieval Europe, individuals belonging to the Jewish faith were considered Other, an abstract entity against which society defines itself by negation. Every society examines the Other within it as it considers the real or imagined elements of its own identity. The study of attitudes toward what sociologists have termed involuntary marginals and their placement within the mentality of past societies has flourished in recent years. The sense is that investigating those at the margins of historical inquiry can provide the observer with tools for understanding the cultural mentality and atmosphere of societies.²

Thus, the present study takes as its subject men and women within the Jewish minority in medieval Europe who found themselves, to their detriment, in situations in which they were tagged and classified as different, whether because of their physical or mental condition. Although the issues to be discussed in this book apply to societies of all periods, they will be investigated within the temporal boundaries of the European Middle Ages and the geographical and cultural borders of the region that Jews called Ashkenaz.

It is imperative to state at this early stage that the use of the word marginal for individuals with challenging mental and physical situations refers to the medieval designation; it is in no way meant to reflect a contemporary categorization of individuals with disabilities. For the purposes of this study, I have chosen to focus on three categories of extreme marginality: individuals with degenerative diseases such as leprosy, persons deemed mad or insane, and those with visible physical deformities that rendered them dysfunctional.

Irene Metzler writes in Disability in Medieval Europe the following about the use of terms: Some terminological tolerance, however, is needed by the modern reader, in that since I am dealing with a historical topic, I perforce have to quote historical words, labels and terms. Hence I will use the now archaic, abusive or politically incorrect terms ‘cripple,’ ‘dumb,’ ‘mute,’ and such like without in future placing them in quotes.³ Like Metzler, I too will be using terms that to the modern reader may seem archaic and to some even abusive. Indeed, the terms used in this book refer to the way the individuals who are at the center of this book were identified, labeled, and referred to in the European Middle Ages, and these identifications and labels in turn led to the activation of a social system of explicit and implicit rules of behavior toward them. In contrast with cultural, national, religious, ideological, and social Others, whose perceived marginal statuses derive from their departure from standards set by a particular group, class, political elite, or society, the Others that this study addresses were marginal by more universal human criteria.⁴ Physical deformity, disability, and disease, as well as mental instability, are first and foremost involuntary conditions juxtaposed on the men and woman who bear them without the ability to reject them. Nevertheless, these are phenomena found in every society, from the most simple hunter-gatherer bands to complex modern and postindustrial societies. Feelings like dread of disease, of misshapen bodies, and of warped personalities are universal, and some responses to individuals who are in these situations display similarities among societies distant from one another in time and place. Whatever the differences between nations, religions, and societies, disease (especially salient and disfiguring disease, such as leprosy), insanity, and obvious disability are a challenge to those who suffer from them and elicit reactions from those around them. Liminal states of this sort have always presented a challenge to society as a whole, and in particular to social institutions such as the nuclear family, extended family, and community. Marginal physical and mental states challenge the perceived proper order and confidence in human capacity, and such confidence is a key factor in coping with the world.⁵

Why the Margins?

Studies examining societal attitudes toward disabled and marginal individuals constitute a relatively new scholarly field, one that owes its development to a general academic reorientation that began in response to the appearance of political movements advocating equal rights for women and for racial and ethnic minorities. The growing depiction of these groups in historical and social research was a consequence of their influence on Western society over the previous 150 years. As their influence grew, so did scholarly interest in people who had previously been considered marginal.⁶

Two fundamental assumptions lie at the basis of this study. The first is that a society’s attitude toward its marginal members is not only determined by the objective state of the individual, but is also derived from a much broader cultural-mental context. Mental and mentality require a brief clarification. In this study, it will be used in the sense offered by Shulamit Shahar: "Mentality (mentalité) means the inexplicit world view held in common by a large number of people in a given culture; it refers to values, beliefs, positions, and things taken for granted by those who share that worldview, which changes only through a very slow and gradual process. Mentality is not identical to a learned world view or to cultural norms, though these play a part in shaping it."⁷

Aron Gurevich, a member of the Annales school of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, defined history from the perspective of the study of mentality in the following way: The historians of this approach are interested in people’s views about themselves and about their human and natural environment, in the particularities of their worldview, and in the ways in which they sensually and conceptually comprehend reality, because they want to understand social relations as thoroughly and in as great detail as possible.⁸

These two definitions show that an examination of a society’s attitude toward marginal individuals can serve not only as a window into the mores of that society, through which we can gain a sense of what takes place on the level of praxis, but it also enables us to track the mindset that shapes the society’s attitudes toward marginal individuals. This examination makes it possible to discern templates and patterns of thinking characteristic of the society that, when laid bare, help us understand the constituent elements of the sum total of behaviors that we call social attitudes. While the study of disability and the issue of social attitudes toward the disabled and individuals with special needs is a relatively young yet rapidly growing field, in the social sciences one can already discern scholarly maturity. In the field of history, and medieval studies in particular, recent years have seen a steady growth and rising interest in this subject.⁹ Historical study of disabled and marginal individuals faces, like all sociohistorical research, problems that are by no means easy to resolve. The historian, after all, cannot conduct observations of the society he studies as social scientists can, and scholars who have undertaken such projects are not unaware of these methodological difficulties. The researcher who chooses to work in the field of medieval Jewish social history faces fewer methodological problems than his or her predecessors did a decade or so ago. Earlier writers have forged a path that combines general history, Jewish history, and the social sciences. This book has been influenced by studies of medievalists and historians of medieval and early modern Jewry that have combined methods used in history and the social sciences, thus laying a general and stable theoretical foundation for the composition of social history. Even if the path followed here is relatively new, it falls within the boundaries of a map whose borders and limits have already been drawn by others with great expertise.¹⁰

Nevertheless, there are quite a few methodological difficulties impeding a study such as the one presented here. Many of the sources that underpin this study were not written by the individuals under investigation but rather by external observers who mentioned the mad, the lepers, and the disabled in their accounts, at times voicing their plight by proxy. In this respect this study shares characteristics similar to studies of the role of woman, children, and the poor in medieval society in general, and medieval Jewish society in particular. Furthermore, with the absence of a proper demographical database we are faced with some fundamental questions that may never be answered, such as percentage of these marginalized people in the general population.

The methodological difficulties are indeed limiting, but they can also serve as a springboard for a refreshing change in the approach to the sources that are of primary interest to this study. The point of view proposed here—examining the marginal individual in order to learn about him or her and the society in which he or she lived—can help the scholar, especially one who studies a society like that of the Jews in medieval Christian Europe, to delve deeper into questions of the definition of collective identity and of the bounds of the collective—who is included, who is excluded, and who stands on the margins. Those on the margins have been excluded from one collective yet have also not been included in any other. This raises a number of questions: Are those who find themselves in such a liminal state treated differently by the group than are its other members? If so, what is the nature of this treatment? What shapes it and assists in its construction? To what extent are such distinctions unambiguous and irreversible? All of these issues will be discussed in this book.

In the research for this book I focused on collecting, as systematically as possible, information about the men and women who are the subject of my study, until I reached a critical mass of material that could, in my evaluation, enable me to not only make specific comments about certain phenomena but also general ones about processes and trends. This task, which I first perceived as one of collection, turned out to be anything but simple. I discovered that the lexicon of terms describing marginal individuals is rich and varied. The terms in this lexicon are derived in many cases—but not all—from Talmudic literature and biblical allusions that formed the linguistic and cultural background of the learned Jewish elite. In parallel with the collection of this material and its literary and philological analysis, I scrutinized the social attitudes toward these individuals and groups as reflected in these texts. These attitudes are expressed both in reports about these people and in their own attitudes toward those around them.

This critical mass makes it possible for me to weigh evidence from the Jewish arena, as little and as limited as it may be at times, against phenomena that occurred in the area closest to that of medieval European Jewry—that is, in contemporary Western European Christian society. This comparative dimension is of critical importance for a number of reasons.

For one, the Jews of medieval Western Europe were part and parcel of the society around them. They usually spoke its languages, lived in its climate and under similar conditions, and were tied to it in a myriad of economic and social ways. We might expect, then, to see similarities in their responses to identical human phenomena. Contemporary writers shared this belief and asserted that the Jews were affected by their surroundings, despite cultural differences and religious confrontation. The author of Sefer Hasidim, for example, states specifically in one passage that the conduct of the surrounding non-Jewish society greatly influenced the lifestyle of local Jews: In most places, the Jews in each and every city follow the customs of the non-Jews.¹¹

In addition, medieval Christian society in Western Europe has been the subject of a growing scholarly literature. The Other within this society as well as marginal individuals and marginal groups have been discussed since the 1990s. In recent decades there has also been a growing scholarly interest in the nexus between disability studies and medieval studies. The models developed therein can be applied to the study of medieval European Jewish society as well.

This study has been conducted with special attention to the non-Jewish environment. Where possible, I have made an effort to cast light on points of tangency, similarity, and difference, as well as on the implicit and explicit polemics conducted by the two societies regarding these issues. My emphasis on the comparative dimension constitutes an additional, overlying layer to the core study of processes of continuity and change in Jewish society’s attitudes toward marginal individuals and my attempt to explain them.

Time and Space

The literature on marginal groups influenced by the Annales school in social history indicates that changes (if they occur) can be discerned and understood more deeply when a given study covers a long period of time.¹² This study addresses a premodern society governed by tradition, and it is perhaps safe to assume that whatever changes took place were not revolutionary in character. That being the case, it becomes easier to delineate and follow such phenomena and processes over a lengthy period. I have chosen to focus this study on the acme of Jewish life in the geocultural space called Ashkenaz from the eleventh century to the beginning of the fifteenth century.

In terms of space, and geographical scope this book focuses on the geocultural sphere of northwestern Europe. The Jews called this area Ashkenaz, and in this book the term will be used in its broad sense. The scope of this work is thus not restricted to Germany itself (as the term is sometimes understood) but rather includes the eastern periphery of present-day Germany on the one side, and, on the other, northern France and its northwestern periphery—that is, England. The peripheral regions of England and the central European lands were greatly influenced by events in Germany and France, and in many cases it is precisely in these areas that events occurred that left valuable sources of information in their wake.

It seems Jews first settled in communal form in the north of the Alps—in the German river valleys and in what is now northern France—in the ninth century.¹³ We, however, only have written evidence of the existence of Jewish communal life from the tenth century onward. The earliest material I have found relating to marginal individuals comes only from the late tenth century. The end of the period that this book addresses is the beginning of the fifteenth century, at which time a number of processes led to a decline of Jewish settlement in the area. During the fifteenth century this decline grew sharper as Jews migrated eastward to Poland and southward to Italy. While Ashkenazi Jews preserved their special character in their new homes, they were exposed to new influences, and the cultural atmosphere around them changed.

Even though these changes took place over a long period of time, we can point to some significant turning points at the close of four centuries of medieval Jewish life in Ashkenaz. Two of these deserve special notice for the current study. One important change in the attitude toward lepers took place at the beginning of the thirteenth century. At this time, a new view of leprosy spread throughout Europe: it ceased to be viewed as a spiritual malady and came to be understood and treated as an infectious disease.¹⁴ A second change relates to the insane. Regarding the insane, the critical turning point seems to have been during the course of the fourteenth century. This was noted by James Brodman: People whose behavior we would now characterize as disturbed were not differentiated from the run of beggars until the fourteenth century when society began to sort the poor into various categories.¹⁵

In the past, scholars tended to view the entire Ashkenazi geocultural space as being cut from one cloth, making no distinctions among areas within it. More recently, a number of writers have pointed out that there were significant discrepancies among different regions of this vast space, which manifested themselves in any number of planes of life. Scholars of medieval Jewish intellectual history have pointed to differences in the content and methods of study, educational models, customs, and legal rulings, as well as differences in liturgical rites. All these variations break the Ashkenazi monolith into a variegated mosaic.¹⁶ Nevertheless, without dismissing the uniqueness of each of these subregions, in many ways Ashkenaz was a single cultural unit that distinguished itself from Jewish society and culture on the Iberian Peninsula.¹⁷

In studies of marginal groups and marginal individuals, medieval Western Europe has been treated many times as a single unit. At the basis of the claim that Latin Christendom was a single cultural unit is the similarity between the area’s political units and forms of government, its sociopolitical organization, material culture, high culture, and cultural-religious underpinnings.¹⁸ The Jews of medieval Western Europe were for the most part members of the population’s urban component, and, as such, they had much in common despite their geographic dispersion.¹⁹ Of special interest in this context is that the Jews of medieval Europe were perceived in the collective consciousness of the Christian culture as a minority and marginal group.²⁰ Given the different character of the Jewish community of Iberia—its distinct historical background and the effect of long-term Islamic influences—it seems logical that this area needs to be discussed separately, and that it lies outside the framework of this book.²¹

A Minority within a Minority

Medieval European Jewish communities lived under the sway of a dominant society, that of Western European Christianity. There is nothing new in this statement, but it is all the more significant when the subjects under study are those who, because of a physical or mental condition, were pushed into the margins of the minority group itself. Of course, physical and mental impairments also bore layers of meaning in the majority Christian society, which possessed an ideal of bodily wholeness and health with roots in Hellenistic and Roman values. But another ideal persisted alongside this classical one. Christians believed in an ideal of potential redemption that lay within the broken, shattered body of Jesus. They also believed that the suffering and death of Jesus had brought salvation to all of mankind. During the Middle Ages, belief in Jesus focused on his body, its symbolism, and the agony of his death, a belief Christians viewed as the only path to true redemption.²² In the name of this ideal, zealous believers who directly or indirectly afflicted their bodies were admired as followers of the principle of imitatio Christi (the imitation of Christ), who expressed their complete identification with the God who had become flesh and who in that form had suffered the mutilation of his body and death.²³

Furthermore, during the formative years of the Christian ethos in the early centuries of the Common Era, Christianity made exemplars out of martyrs and saints who endured physical suffering in life or on their way to death. In its view, such suffering granted atonement for sins and was a standard to be aspired to, at least ideally.²⁴ At the same time, the Christian worldview stressed the importance of charity and loving kindness (caritas)—that is, aid and succor to the unfortunate. Lepers and cripples were perceived as being worthy of compassion, and those who saw to their needs in this world were promised reward in the world to come. The Church also viewed acts of charity as emulation of Christ’s deeds, since he too, according to the Gospels, engaged in such acts, offering aid and healing to the ill, lepers, the deranged, and the paralyzed.²⁵ Beginning in the eleventh century, many European monasteries opened their sickrooms and hospitals not only to their own monks and those of their order, but also to the public, which included lepers, cripples, the paralyzed, and the deformed.²⁶ From the thirteenth century onward, municipal authorities, royal courts, and wealthy individuals competed to construct shelters for the sick and unfortunate and to fund the upkeep of such institutions. Michel Mollat has examined this process in his book on the medieval poor.²⁷ He notes that many of the deprived in the Middle Ages suffered from some deformity, deriving from a lack of treatment of injuries and illnesses, substandard living conditions, poor nutrition, exposure to the elements and the constant long-distance walking necessary to subsist on alms begging. Poverty was also often correlated with madness, deformities, and disease, on the one hand magnifying the negative image of both these groups, but on the other hand making a response to their needs more urgent. The conduct and value system of the surrounding society must be taken into account in considering Jewish treatment of marginal individuals and the deformed. The beliefs and attitudes surveyed here, among them the surrounding society’s ambivalent view of the ill, must also be addressed when evaluating the behavior of Jews toward the unfortunate among them.

Terms of Reference: Involuntary Deviants or Marginal Individuals

In recent years a change has occurred in the study of marginal individuals within society, especially those who do not belong to the social category of voluntary marginal individuals. Social research has been greatly influenced by ideas from the philosophies of literature and language that stress the importance of terms of discussion, modes of discourse, and construction of consciousness by terminology. Language, as pointed out in the teachings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, reflects consciousness, but it also constructs it and can thus affect social attitudes toward these populations.²⁸

When I began this study, I made frequent use of a term common in the social science scholarship of the 1970s: involuntary deviant. But the term deviant is extremely problematic. Recent authors have made use of alternative terms, among them different, special, handicapped, or marginal.²⁹ At present, marginal individual, along with disvalued individual or disenfranchised person, is gaining currency.³⁰ This change of terminology reflects the desire of contemporary Western society and of