12 - The Mythical Outcast Medieval Leper: Perceptions of Leper and Anchorite Squints

Summary

When giving public talks about the archaeology of anchorite cells, I often receive questions from the audience about the distinction between leper and anchorite squints, since both are small windows usually located in the chancel wall of the church, offering a view to the altar. This chapter has developed out of answering these queries, which involves exploring the impact of physical and theoretical reconstructions of the medieval material past. The context that gave meaning to unexplained windows located low in parish church walls, which antiquarians, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century researchers, called low side windows, is now lost, either through the erasure of other archaeological remains (such as the fragmentary survival of anchorite cells) or through the loss of local memory or church documents that explained the presence and use of windows that now seem arbitrary. Interpreting these features involves a consideration of both lost architecture and lost practices. Antiquarians developed various theories to explain these windows, most of which are now discredited – however, the leper and anchorite squint theories are still popular today and are the only antiquarian theories for low side windows that remain well known, especially in non-academic contexts. This has resulted in re-imaginings of squints as access points for ostracised medieval lepers, and physical reconstructions of anchorite cells that include fabricated squints. Answering questions about anchorite and leper squints involves considering not only medieval responses to lepers, but also modern responses both to the medieval past, and to the diseased and/or marginalised in the present. When confronted with a fragmentary medieval past, antiquarian scholars attempted to fill in the gaps with theories rooted in nineteenth-century concerns, and today we continue to reconstruct – physically and theoretically – the leper squint, resulting in real consequences in our present-day world.

This chapter will first describe the leper's squint theory and place it into its antiquarian and early twentieth century context. Next, an evaluation of the historiography of medieval leprosy will show that the leper's squint theory is not based on medieval evidence, but on antiquarian assumptions and fears. The following sections will show how leper and anchorite squints are still relevant in current non-academic discourse, even though they are ignored within archaeology and other branches of medieval studies.