Abstract
William of Auvergne, writing in De Legibus—a long treatise on the non-moral laws of ancient Judaism and related matters—identifies six kinds of leprosy according to appearance, six kinds according to the site of infection, and six kinds according to color. William’s concern with leprosy is very much a concern with matter—the bodies, the clothing, the buildings that contract leprosy. He theorizes about the causes of leprosy, about its diagnosis, about its treatment, extending his analysis even to the proper definition of the term. And his concern with leprosy is also very much a concern with the spirit. He suspects, for example, ancient inducements to idolatry in the treatment of leprous clothes and houses, and finds a divinely mandated need for ritual correction of such idolatry. We could perhaps call leprosy of the body a matter of natural science, leprosy of the spirit a matter of theology, but William would not. That distinction, reasonable as it seems, fails to capture William’s point of view, according to which the material and spiritual are composite elements in a single conceptualization. We have long recognized that medieval commentaries on certain topics—the days of creation, for example—are a potential locus of combined scientific and theological analysis; something comparable can perhaps be seen in medieval treatments of ancient concerns with ritual purity, impurity, and purification.
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Notes
- 1.
Precise references to all matters mentioned in this introduction are provided in the notes that follow. The only biography of William of Auvergne is Valois (1880). A recent biographical sketch can be found in Murphy (2012). On William and his works, also see Morenzoni and Tilliette (2005). The De legibus is the second and much longer section of a single treatise, De fide et legibus. 1674. The only printed edition is in Guilielmus Alvernus (Guilielmus 1963). (The treatise has never been translated.)
- 2.
That ‘leprosy’ is an inadequate and potentially misleading translation of the Hebrew term, ‘tsar‘at’ has been widely noted. (William himself makes the point, as discussed below, that the term ‘leprosy’ is not used properly across Lev. 13–14.) For one concise, recent statement of the problem, see Coogan (2001) where the translators recommend ‘surface affliction’ as a better English translation of ‘tsar‘at.’ For a more developed, though essentially compatible, discussion, see Milgrom (1991); here, the term ‘scale disease’ is preferred. The history of the translation of the Hebrew term into Greek, from Greek into Latin, and from Latin into English is well summarized in Rawcliffe (2006).
- 3.
All translations of De legibus are my own.
- 4.
On this last point, William is likely referring to the non-leprous members of leprosaria, that is, of European institutions for lepers (religious houses, hospitals, etc.) established in significant numbers from the early twelfth century onward. For recent research on medieval leprosaria, as well as the diagnosis of leprosy, both medical and para-medical (see Touati 1998; Rawcliffe 2006; Demaitre 2007).
- 5.
William first mentions leprosy—this in Chap. 10—in relation to the sacrifice of the red calf, where he compares the parallel elements in these two separate rites of purification. At the start of the next chapter, however, he returns to leprosy and introduces the topic as if speaking about it for the first time.
- 6.
This repeats the point already made by William at 42.1. ‘Therefore, it was suggested, according to the letter, by these four things that, from whatever of the four elements leprosy had been contracted, the very author of the elements, through a sprinkling of this kind and those other things which were added to it, cleansed the leprosy […].’
- 7.
- 8.
Bibliorum Sacrorum Glossa Ordinaria, Venice (1603). Some representative examples of the commentary on Leviticus 13–14: the ‘wound of leprosy’ is ‘transgression of the Law,’ which makes the ‘leper’ guilty of violating all of the Law if he violates it in one respect (13:2); ‘leprosy is false teaching, lepers heretics’ (Isidore on 13:2); the ‘whitened hairs’ of leprosy are the ‘open thought of sin’ or the ‘conscience of the heretics’ (13:3); ‘leprosy’ is ‘sin’ and ‘iniquity’ (13:5–6); the cleansing of the leper is ‘baptism or penance’ (13:6); ‘an inveterate leprosy’ is said of one who has ‘grown old in sin’ (13:11); ‘leprosy’ is ‘a violation of the law’ (13:12); the ‘white or red color in the bald head or bald forehead’ is what is done ‘against the rule of the Law or against the Gospel’ (13:42); ‘all the time that he is a leper and unclean’ is when the leper is ‘not yet perfected by penitence’ (13:46); the ‘two living sparrows’ are an ‘incorrupt mind and a firm faith’ (14:4); the ‘cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop’ are the ‘prayers of the saints’ (14:4).
- 9.
For Ralph’s concern about ‘Jewish’ tendencies in Christian interpretation of Leviticus, see p. 48. His commentary on Lev. 13–14 is at pp. 130–150 in the 1677 edition. Ralph’s introduction to Lev. 13, at p. 130, amply captures the aim of the twenty pages that follow: ‘Leprosos itaque lex nominat, non eos qui peccaverunt, sed qui peccati sui poenitudinem nullam gerunt.’
- 10.
There is some orientation to commentaries on Leviticus to c. 1250, including a very brief mention of leprosy in Smalley (1974).
- 11.
The condemnation begins at 48.2, where William treats his ‘fourth kind of signification,’ that is, of a likeness between two or more things, none of which was intended to signify the other(s). A sample from 48.2: ‘If the divine expositors and doctors spoke in this way about their allegorical and tropological interpretations, as well as their anagogical interpretations, and the Scriptures were satisfactory [in this respect], they would not have offended the understanding of their listeners or readers. But because it is said that such a thing signifies such a thing, and is a figure or prophecy or parable of such a thing, when it seems that the one is not done or said in order to signify the other, they seriously offend their listeners.’ On William’s theory of biblical interpretation (see Smalley 1974; Smith 2005); on theory and practice (see Dahan 2005).
- 12.
In William’s numbered list of six reasons for the commands about menstrual impurity in Leviticus, the second is that sexual intercourse during menstruation causes the corruption of the offspring conceived during the act; the sixth is the generally corrupting effects of menstrual blood. See De legibus 36.2. This is discussed in Murphy (2013).
- 13.
See, for example, De legibus 31.1 and 35.1.
- 14.
Neumich is mentioned at De legibus 43.2. For a summary list of the ‘books of the sorcerers’ mentioned by William and the contexts in which they occur (see Murphy 2014).
- 15.
‘However, in this case, they are used whole and uninjured, whereas in the other case, that is, in the above named sacrifice, they are burned up: either for this reason—so that the uncleanness of sins, which is spiritual, is shown to be greater than the uncleanness of leprosy, which is corporeal; or for this reason—so that the three elements polluted through the sins of human beings are shown, in the end, to be purified with fire, and, for that reason, the twice-dyed scarlet, which in every case is the color of fire, is added, so that it suggests that the final purification must be done through fire. [….] Furthermore, these four materials are used so that the leper realizes that the uncleanness of his leprosy is less corrupting to the three elements, [and] will truly realize how much less important is the uncleanness of bodily leprosy than the uncleanness of spiritual leprosy, and learn how much easier its purification is—while this one is seen to be purified by the sprinkling of the priest, that one is purified only by a powerful fire.’
- 16.
‘Consider, also, that three liquids were used in this rite: obviously, the living water, that is, bubbling and flowing water, which is of greater purity than standing or dead water—this therefore was used for the washing because leprosy is unclean; oil for cleansing because leprosy is dead; and blood for atonement, because sometimes thediseaseofleprosy was inflicted forsinby the wrath of God, or because leprosy is mainly from a corruption of the blood, such that by the blood of clean animals the corruption and infection of blood was cleansed.’ (Emphasis added.)
- 17.
William’s relationship to Maimonides is briefly investigated in Smalley (1974). There is a fuller treatment of the same in Guttmann (1889). Further details of William’s debt to Maimonides, in general, and with respect to menstrual impurity are noted in Murphy (2013). For a partial account of the conduit of text and translation by which Maimonides, in Latin, shaped William’s own approach to the Law of Moses, see Freudenthal (1988).
- 18.
- 19.
The Mishneh Torah, Maimonides’ comprehensive summary of the Law, both written and oral, in fourteen books, provides, in Book 9, a detailed description of the purification of the leper, with consequences for a variety of mistakes possible in that ritual, but no rationale for the purification or the materials involved (see Maimonides 1950, 1954). Treatise 3 reviews Leviticus 13–14 in far greater detail than William does, but only with the practical purpose of explaining the correct implementation of the rules, not, again, with any apparent interest in exploring the rationale for leprosy-related impurity and purification.
- 20.
- 21.
On John of La Rochelle’s authorship of this section of the Summa of Alexander of Hales, and on John’s use of and critical response to William, see Smalley (1974).
- 22.
James McEvoy (2000), describes William as ‘Grosseteste’s friend,’ but without citing this letter or any other evidence.
- 23.
There is a brief consideration of De cessatione legalium in Murphy (2007).
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Murphy, S. (2016). The Corruption of the Elements: The Science of Ritual Impurity in the Early Thirteenth Century. In: Cunningham, J.P., Hocknull, M. (eds) Robert Grosseteste and the pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33468-4_6
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