Propter Deformitatem: Towards a Concept of Disability in Medieval Canon Law

Abstract

Disability Studies has its roots in the increased awareness of the rights for those with disabilities and the movement for the greater actualization of those rights in the 1970s and 1980s. As part of this campaign, activists and advocacy groups tried to reframe disability as a constructed concept. They rejected the notion of disability as a static historical constant, and instead emphasized the ways in which the norms, laws, and assumptions of society “disabled” individuals. Scholars, particularly historians, soon seized on this approach and began working to show in detail the historical variability of disability and how modern notions came into being. The political background of Disability Studies has meant that many of these studies have focused on the near- history of disability and its impact on the present day. More recently, however, scholars have increasingly turned to the more distant past.