“That nane of the lepperis cry or ask for alms, utherways then be thair clapper; and that every ane of thame, his day about, sitt at the dore of the said hospitall to that effect, the rest allwayes remaining within the samyn, and that thay distribute equallie amongs thame quhatsoever money they purches be thair said begging, and gif the just declaration thairof to the visitour appoynted everie Setterday, under sic payne as the counsill shall injoyne unto thame.” LEPERS REGARDED AS DEAD PERSONS BY THE CIVIL LAW. According to the tenor of various old civil codes and local enactments, when a person became affected with leprosy he was looked upon as legally and politically dead, and lost the privileges belonging to his right of citizenship. By the law of England lepers were classed with idiots, madmen, outlaws, etc., as incapable of being heirs; and a leper removed by a writ _de leproso amovendo_ could not be a guardian in socage.[359] Rotharis, king of Lombardy, as early as the eleventh century, decreed that when any one became affected with leprosy, and the fact was known to the judge or people, so that the leper was expelled from society and dwelt in seclusion, he had no power to alienate his effects or dispose of them to any one (_non sit illi licentia res suas alienare aut thingare cuilibet personæ_). For, it is added, from the very day on which he is expelled from his home, he is to be regarded as dead (_tanquam mortuus habetur_).[360] The same was the law of Normandy, according to Dufresne[361] and Delamarré;[362] and Lobineau, in his history of Brittany,[363] speaks of it being formerly in accordance with the rituals of various churches. The leper was not looked upon in the eye of the law alone as defunct, for the Church also took the same view, and performed the solemn ceremonials of the burial of the dead over him on the day on which he was separated from his fellow-creatures and consigned to a lazar-house. He was from that moment regarded as a man dead amongst the living, and legally buried, though still breathing and alive. The ritual of the French church retained till a late period the various forms and ceremonies to which the leper was subjected on this day of his living funeral. Ogée[364] and Pluquet[365] have both described them.