The Mass of Separation

The mass, spoken by a priest, was performed at the site of the leper's hut. The whole parish accompanied a newly idenitfied leper to his/her new home as the priest performed the mass.

I forbid you to ever enter a church, a monastery, a fair, a mill, a market or an assembly of people. I forbid you to leave your house unless dressed in you recognizable garb and also shod. I forbid you to wash your hands or to launder anything or to drink at any stream or fountain, unless using your own barrel or dipper. I forbid you to touch anything you buy or barter for, until it becomes your own. I forbid you to enter any tavern; and if you wish for wine, whether you buy it or it is given to you, have it funneled into your keg. I forbid you to share house with any woman but your wife. I command you, if accosted by anyone while travelling on a road, to set yourself down-wind of them before you answer. I forbid you to enter any narrow passage, lest a passerby bump into you. I forbid you, wherever you go, to touch the rim or the rope of a well without donning your gloves. I forbid you to touch any child or give them anything. I forbid you to drink or eat from any vessel but your own.
----Martene's De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus, "Ordo I", qtd. in Martinus Cawley, "The Life of Alice the Leper and the Silver Age of Villers," Cistercian Scholars Quarterly


A slightly different version of the mass:

I forbid you to enter the church or monastery, fair, mill, market-place, or company of persons...ever to leave your hourse without your leper's costume...to wash your hands or anything about you in the stream or fountain. I forbid you to enter a tavern...I forbid you, if you go on the road and you meet some person who speaks to you, to fail to put yourself downwind before you answer...I forbid you to go into a narrow lane so that if you should meet anyone he might catch the affliction from you...I forbid you ever to touch children or give them anything. I forbid you to eat or drink from any dishes but your own. I forbid you to eat or drink in company, unless with lepers.
----Brody, Disease of the Soul,pp. 66-7, qtd. in Moore, R.I. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1990.

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