The hospital family varied widely in size and in the arrangement of its component parts, but this chapter, like the preceding, is concerned chiefly with the type of institution which had a definite organization. The establishments for infected persons will first be considered. (i) THE LEPER HOUSEHOLD (a) _The Master._—“The guidance of souls is the art of arts,” says St. Gregory: particularly difficult is the guidance of souls in ailing bodies. Lanfranc realized that men of special gifts should be selected for the care of his Harbledown lepers. He not only arranged to supply all they might need on account of the nature of their illness, but appointed men to fulfil this work “of whose skill, gentleness and patience no one could have any doubt.” The Oxford statutes ordained that the master be “a compassionate priest of good life and conversation, who shall reside personally and shall celebrate mass daily, humbly and devoutly.” He was required to visit the infirm, to console them as far as possible, and confer upon them the Sacraments of the Church.[88] The priest [p144] serving lepers was permitted to dispense rites which did not pertain to other unbeneficed clergy; thus the Bishop of London commanded the lepers’ chaplain at Ilford to hear their confessions, to absolve the contrite, to administer the Eucharist and Extreme Unction. The ideal man to fill the unpleasant post of lepers’ guardian as pictured in foundation deeds and statutes was hard to find: men of the type of St. Hugh and Father Damien—separated indeed by seven centuries, but alike in devotion—are rare. Two Archbishops of Canterbury witness to the scarcity in a deed referring to Harbledown (1371, 1402). After stating that clergy are required to celebrate the divine offices in St. Nicholas’ Church, the document declares:— “It may be at present, and very likely will be in future, difficult to find suitable stipendiary priests who shall be willing to have intercourse in this way with the poor people, especially as some of these poor are infected with leprosy; and this hospital was founded especially for sick persons of this sort.” The master might himself be a leper. An inquisition of 1223 showed that at St. Leonard’s, Lancaster, it had formerly been customary for the brethren to elect one of the lepers as master.[89] In 1342 the prior of St. Bartholomew’s, Rochester, was a leper. The regulations at Ilford provided for a leper-master and secular master, but those of Dover merely said that the master may be a leper. Although the law offered privileges to communities governed by a leper-warden (see p. 196), it does not appear to have been a common custom to appoint one. In hospitals dependent upon a monastery, some monk was selected to superintend the lazar-house.