Middle Ages and Disease as a Standpoint between the Commiseration and Rejection

Abstract

The Middle Ages conceived disease and the sick in an ambivalent way. Diseases, recurrent calamities, cause in men multiple symptoms, that produce compassion as they evoke the suffering Christ but also rejection because they are understood as manifestations of the impure and the sinful that is visible in the monstrous. These interpretations attract different views that draw, in turn, different attitudes that account for mental structures that permeates the political, legal, social and economic spheres. Our proposal seeks to accurately raise the issue, presenting a disease, leprosy, which is immediately associated with the period and putting into focus the monstrous traits it produces in men at the organic level and the “monstrosities” of the soul.