In two of Hartmann von Aue’s courtly epics, the Arme Heinrich and Iwein, medicine plays an important role. The focus is not, however, as one might expect, on injuries received in tournament or battle, but on internal disorders that afflict the knightly protagonists and lead to their inner conversion: Heinrich suffers from leprosy, and Iwein descends into temporary madness. The two epics were written in close proximity to one another, and share more than the author's strong interest in illness. Susan Clark, for instance, points to numerous parallels in language and plot: both protagonists are described as examples of knightly virtue; they withdraw from society when they fall ill, establish symbiotic relationships with simple folk — Iwein with a hermit, Heinrich with a peasant family — and both undergo a mental transformation at the sight of female nudity (130–33, 153–54). On the level of language, the most striking parallel is perhaps the use of the word wunschleben for the chivalric life both protagonists initially strive for (138), and from which, ironically, they are “cured” by their respective illness. Leprosy and madness were also dealt with in the medical literature of the time, which constituted by far the biggest body of medieval technical writing or Fachliteratur. In what follows, the ideas surrounding leprosy and madness contained in medical literature will be compared with Hartmann's treatment of the subject, and the question how knowledgeable Hartmann really was in the theory and practice of medieval medicine will be explored.

Leprosy, a common disease in medieval Europe, stigmatized its sufferers in a similar fashion as AIDS did in the late twentieth century. Today we know that leprosy is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae,which is related to tuberculosis bacteria (Richards, xv–xvi; Brody, 22–34). Symptomatic leprosy has an incubation period of several years, and manifests itself in a variety of ways ranging from nerve damage that can lead to paralysis of fingers and toes, to skin lesions that can scale and turn into discharging sores, throat infections resulting in hoarseness of the voice, eye damage that can ultimately cause blindness, as well as erosion of nasal cartilages and bone necrosis, and loss of hair. Modern medicine is capable of curing leprosy with drugs, provided that it is diagnosed early and treated promptly.