Lepers were among the wretched outcasts of the early Christian world. They continued to be marginalized despite the fact that Jesus had healed lepers during his ministry, restoring them to a privileged place in the eschatological hierarchy. Chapter 2 examines the literary imagery and rhetorical techniques that Gregory Nazianzen used to persuade his listeners that the lepers were valued members of the Christian community. They were the perfect embodiment of our dual nature of body and soul, and their suffering was a graphic representation of our own potential for death and decay. Because they had suffered like Christ, they had earned their membership in the body of Christ. As such a member, the lepers’ suffering impacted the welfare of the community. The same people who had turned away from the lepers in disgust were to use their capacity for compassion to feel what the lepers felt and to suffer what they had suffered. Gregory of Nyssa relied on medical science to convince his listeners that leprosy was a pathological disease that afflicted those whose humoral mixture made them susceptible. It was a particular kind of physiological response to infection. Their sickness was neither a crime nor a moral condemnation.