With a love stronger than this living death, lepers were followed into banishment from the haunts of men by their faithful wives. Readers of Sir J. Stephen’s Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography will recollect the description of the founder of the Franciscan order, how, controlling his involuntary disgust, St. Francis of Assisi washed the feet and dressed the sores of the lepers, once at least reverently applying his lips to their wounds.—Boucher-James].

This ceremony of quasi-burial varied considerably at different times and in different places. In some cases a grave was dug, and the leper’s face was often covered during the service.