Insane Innocents: Mad Children in Benedict of Peterborough’S Miracula Sancti Thomae Cantuariensis 1

Abstract

Imperfection was, in Middle Ages as it is today, a difficult concept to define. In terms of the human body, perfection and imperfection were understood differently depending on whether they were viewed from a medical, theological or legal standpoint. This article examines the influence of these theories on cases of mental illness recorded in the twelfth-century miracles of Thomas becket at Canterbury. It focuses specifically on miracles involving children in order to explore how the child was represented in sickness and in health and how this related to physical, mental and spiritual imperfection.The article concentrates on the language used to describe mentally ill children, examining how it differed from that used to describe insane adults and contrasting it with the portrayal of those healthy children who appear in the miracle texts. It also considers the differences between physical and mental illness, looking at how sickness affected the body and mind and whether certain illnesses made a sufferer more or less perfect than others. A particularly common characteristic in miracles of mental illness was demonic possession, which was often linked to sin on the part of the sufferer in instances of adult insanity. This was not always the case with mentally ill children who, whilst they could be affected by demonic possession, were not described as sinful in the same way. This provides a good framework from which to explore the relationship between demons and children and to compare the spiritual perfections and imperfections of children to those of adults. Was it possible to maintain the perfect innocence of childhood whilst suffering the physical and mental imperfections of insanity? Finally, it is important to acknowledge that the sickness of a child was often distressing for parents regardless of the condition and this article explores the reaction of parents, neighbours and communities to mentally ill children in order to gauge the acceptance of mental imperfections within medieval society. This exploration offers an innovative approach to the subject of the sick child in medieval society, moving beyond medical, theoretical and legal treatises to study their application in everyday life and in individual cases of mental illness.