Disability in Medieval Europe : Physical Impairment in the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–c. 1400

Abstract

Advertised as ‘the first thorough examination of all aspects of physical impairment and disability in medieval Europe’, Irina Metzler's study begins by laying out definitions of ‘impairment’ (the physical condition of not having full use of a bodily part or function) and ‘disability’ (the social condition of being limited by that impairment). Metzler then devotes a chapter to modern sociological and anthropological theories of disability and impairment and why work in this newly emerging field has either ignored or significantly misrepresented the medieval period. In the next chapter, Metzler examines religious ideas of impairment and whether (as is often assumed by modern theorists) there was a universal belief that impairment was due to sin. Importantly and crucially, Metzler finds that associations with sin, although common in the Bible, became less frequent as time went on and by the twelfth century were largely limited to blaming some congenital defects on the sexual misconduct of parents. Following the work of Caroline Byrum, it is argued that physical impairment was not integral to one's identity according to Christian logic; whereas one's gender would be maintained after the Resurrection, all physical impairment would be erased. It would have been interesting if Metzler had pursued this analysis of identity by looking at naming practices; a study of notarial documents in Marseille showed that people were invariably identified by where they lived, not by their physical characteristics. In the fourth chapter Metzler examines medical views about the causes of impairment and, in the fifth, she turns to her chief body of evidence, a group of healing miracles recounted in several saints' lives or canonisation proceedings. Overall, she concludes that while there is ample evidence for impairment in the Middle Ages ‘there were very few medieval disabled people’ (p. 190).