Childhood Disability and Social Integration in the Middle Ages: Constructions of Impairments in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Canonization ... in the History of Daily Life (800-1600)) 9782503551852, 2503551858

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Childhood Disability and Social Integration in the Middle Ages

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF DAILY LIFE (800–1600) Editorial Board Gerhard Jaritz, Central European University David Austin, University of Wales Lampeter Claude Gauvard, Université Paris 1 Christian Krötzl, University of Tampere Svetlana Luchitskaya, Russian Academy of Sciences Daniel Smail, Harvard University

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Volume 4

Childhood Disability and Social Integration in the Middle Ages Constructions of Impairments in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes by

Jenni Kuuliala

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

© 2016, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2016/0095/39 ISBN: 978-2-503-55185-2 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-55833-2 DOI: 10.1484/M.HDL-EB.5.106072 Printed on acid-free paper

Contents

Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations and Key to Processes by Saints’ Names

xi

Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Family and the Conceptions of Impairment

29

Chapter 2. Community and the Impaired Child

149

Chapter 3. Reconstructing Lived Experience

243

Chapter 4. Conclusions: Impairment and Social Inclusion

325

Works Cited

337

Index 373

Contents

vi

Tables Table 1, p. 18: Childhood Impairments Referred to in Canonization Hearings Table 2, p. 33: Vocabulary Used to Describe Mobility Impairments Table 3, p. 34: Medical Conditions Causing Mobility Impairments Table 4, p. 38: Medical Conditions Causing Complete or Partial Blindness Table 5, p. 206: Numbers and Percentages of Children Who Accessed Medical Consultation or Treatment

Acknowledgements

This book grew out of my doctoral thesis, a project during which I had the chance to work at several institutions and to receive help, feedback, and encouragement from a great number of people, whom I would very much like to thank here. My supervisors Christian Krötzl and Sari Katajala-Peltomaa at the Univer­ sity of Tampere have been mentoring me for years. They have provided support and encouragement when most needed, answered what must have seemed to them an endless number of questions, been critical when appropriate, and brought the best out of me. I do not think any doctoral student could ask for more. Thank you both for everything — this book would not have come into being without you. I wish to express my great gratitude to Gábor Klaniczay, who agreed to act as one of the prereviewers of my thesis, and then as the opponent in my public defence of it. During my stay at the Central European University (Budapest), he invested a huge amount of time and effort in helping me to turn my thesis into a book. If it has turned out to be a good book, this is due in no small measure to his assistance, and I am truly grateful for his interest in my work. I also want to thank my other prereviewer Cordula Nolte for her insightful comments on my work, as well as for her invaluable support when I was doing the final edits of this book while working at the University of Bremen. A large part of this work was conducted while I was working at Tampere on an Academy of Finland research project, ‘Religion and Childhood’, led by Katariina Mustakallio; and being a member of her research group at the Finnish Institute in Rome was also crucial for finishing the study. Thank you, Katariina, for giving me these wonderful opportunities, and for believing in my work, and in me! I owe a great deal to Jussi Hanska, who first introduced me to the world of medieval studies and to using canonization processes as source material. His

viii

Acknowledgements

interesting courses during my master’s studies and his supervision when writing my master’s thesis laid the groundwork for this book as well. Jussi also read large parts of this book in its earlier stages — thank you Jussi, for all the comments and insight! I am also grateful to Kirsi Salonen, who has helped me with doing research in Rome and who later read through my manuscript. She was a great support during my various ‘cold feet’ phases. As well, I wish to thank Christian Laes and Ville Vuolanto, who have both commented on my work and provided much-appreciated parallels with childhood and disability in the ancient world. Philip Line carried out the language check with meticulousness and vision, and he has been wonderfully flexible with my wishes and often chaotic timetables, for which I am extremely grateful — the remaining mistakes are, naturally, my own. Most of this work was written at the University of Tampere, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, where the staff members of the discipline of history have been great friends and smart colleagues; the peer support I received from them was exceptional. During my time at the Finnish Institute in Rome, the researchers and other residents of Villa Lante were also the best working community one could hope for. I want to thank the staff of the institute, especially intendant Simo Örmä, for making it such an inspiring working environment. The six months I spent at the Department of Medieval Studies in the Central European University were crucial for turning my thesis into a book, and I am extremely grateful to the staff of the institute for making me feel welcome. The final edits were made while I was working at the University of Bremen as a member of the creative unit ‘Homo Debilis. Dis/ability in der Vormoderne’. I would like to extend my gratitude to all my colleagues there. Throughout my work, several people have commented on parts and drafts of this book, answered my numerous questions or just been of great help, companionship, and support whenever needed. I therefore wish to express my special thanks to Daniel Blackie, Jan Ulrich Büttner, Ildikó Csepregi, Bianca Frohne, Cristian-Nicolae Gaşpar, Ottó Gecser, Miia Ijäs, Sanna Joska, Hanna Karti, Pia Koivunen, Heikki Kokko, Mari Kulmanen, Stanislava Kuzmova, Irina Metzler, Susanna Niiranen, Maija Ojala, Salla Palmi-Felin, Mikko Pentti, Elina Pyy, Jussi Rantala, Marika Räsänen, Outi Sihvonen, Sonia Taiarol, Miikka Tamminen, Wendy Turner, Lauri Uusitalo, Tanja Vahtikari, Mari Välimäki, and Reima Välimäki. This work would not have been possible without the financial support of the Academy of Finland (the ‘Religion and Childhood’ research project and a mobility grant to Budapest), the Niilo Helander Foundation, and the University of Tampere Foundation. The final edits were made with funding

Acknowledgements

ix

from the University of Bremen and the European Commission 7th Framework Programme. The Finnish Doctoral School of History has funded my conference and archival trips. I also greatly appreciated the help and services of the librarians and archivists of the Vatican Library and the Vatican Secret Archive, as well as that of the staff of the CEU‒ELTE Medieval Library (Budapest). In addition, I am indebted to the board of the Studies in the History of Daily Life series, especially Gerhard Jaritz, and to the editorial staff of Brepols for all their assistance, suggestions, and comments. And last but not least, I want to thank those closest to me. Thank you, Bernhard Schirg, for being there for me and for sharing my passion in history and writing! Thank you, mom, dad, and Vilma for all your support. A large part of my work involves researching families, and it is a great blessing to have one that shares and understands my passions. I thus dedicate this book to my late grandfather, who also loved the wonders of history. Jenni Kuuliala

Abbreviations and Key to Processes by Saints’ Names

AASS Oct. VIII

Vita S. Hedwigis viduae, ed. by Jean Bolland and others, in Acta sanctorum, Octobris, VIII (Paris: Victor Palmé, 1870), pp. 224–65

AASS Oct. IX

Processus apostolici, de B. Joanne Buono, ed. by Jean Bolland and others, in Acta sanctorum, Octobris, IX (Paris: Victor Palmé, 1869), pp. 771–886

AASS Nov. IV

Processus canonizacionis b. Ambrosii Massani, ed. by Jean Bolland and others, in Acta sanctorum, Novembris, IV (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1925), pp. 571‒886

ASV

Archivio Segreto Vaticano

BAV

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

Bernardino of Siena

Il processo di canonizzazione di Bernardino da Siena (1445– 1450), ed. by Letizia Pellegrini, Analecta Franciscana, 16. Nova series, Docu­menta et studia, 4 (Grottaferrata: Frati editori di Quaracchi, 2009)

Birgitta of Vadstena

Acta et processus canonizacionis beate Birgitte, ed. by Isaac Collijn (Uppsala: Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskrift, 1924‒30)

BNF

Bibliothèque nationale de France

xii

abbreviations

Bracton

Henrici de Bracton, De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliæ, ed. by George Woodbine, 4 vols (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922–42)

Clare of Assisi

Santa Chiara di Assisi. I primi documenti ufficiali: lettera di annun­­zio della sua morte, processo e bolla di canonizzazione, ed. by Giovanni Boccali (Santa Maria degli Angeli: Edizioni porziuncola, 2002)

Clare of Montefalco

Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco, ed. by Enrico Menestò, Quaderni del Centro per il collegamento degli studi medievali e umanistici nell’Università di Perugia (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1984)

Cod.

Codex Justinianus in Corpus iuris civilis, ed. by T. P. Momm­ sen, and T. P. Kreuger (Berlin: Weidmann, 1954)

CPR

Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1272–1582. 68 vols (London, 1893–2002)

Dauphine of Puimichel

Enquête pour le procès de canonisation de Dauphine de Puimichel Comtesse d’Ariano, Apt et Avignon, 14 mai–30 octobre 1363. Édition critique, ed. by Jacques Cambell (Turino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1978)

Dig.

Digesta in Corpus iuris civilis, ed. by T. P. Mommsen (Berlin: Krüger, R. Schöll, 1954)

Dorothea of Montau

Die Akten des Kanonisationsprozess Dorotheas von Montau, ed. by Richard Stachnik with Anneliese Triller and Hans Westpfal (Wien: Böh­lau, 1978)

Elizabeth of Hungary

Quellenstudien zur Geschichte der hl. Elisabeth, Landgräfin von Thür­ingen, ed. by Albert Huyskens (Marburg: Elwert, 1908)

Frances of Rome I Processi inediti per Francesca Bussa dei Ponziani (Santa Francesca Romana) 1440–1453, , ed. by Placido Tommaso Lugano, Studi e testi, 120 (Città del Vaticana: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1945)

abbreviations

xiii

Fragments

Fragments de l’enquête faite à Saint-Denis en 1282 en vue de la canoni­­sation de Saint Louis, ed. by H.-François Dela­ borde, Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris de l’Ilede-France, 23 (Paris: 1896), 1–71

Les Miracles de Saint Louis

Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, Les Miracles de Saint Louis, ed. by Percival B. Fay (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Cham­pion, 1931)

Louis of Toulouse

Processus canonizationis S.  Ludovici ep. Tolosani, in Ana­ lecta Fran­­ciscana sive chronica aliaque varia documenta, Tomus VII: processus canonizationis et legendae variae Sancti Ludovici O.  F. M.  Episcopi Tolosani, ed. by Collegio  S. Bonaventura (Firenze: Ad Claras Aquas, 1951), pp. 1–269

Margaret of Hungary

Inquisitio super vita, conversatione et miraculis beatae Mar­ ga­rethae virginis Belae IV Hungarorum regis filiae, sanctimonialis monasterii virginis gloriosae de insula Danubii, ordinis praedicatorum, Vesprimiensis diocesis, in Monumenta Romana episcopatus Vesprimi­ensis, ed. by Vilmos Fráknói and others, 4 vols (Budapest: Collegium Historicorum Hun­ garorum Romanum, 1896), i, 1103–1276, pp. 163–383

Nicholas of Tolentino

Il processo per la canonizzazione di S. Nicola da Tolentino, ed. by Nicola Occhioni, Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome, 74 (Roma: École Française de Rome, 1984)

Peter of Morrone

Die Akten des Kanonisationsprozess in dem Codex zu Sul­ mona, in Monumenta Coelestiniana: Quellen zur Ge­schichte des Papstes Coelestin V, ed. by Franz Xaver Seppelt, Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiete der Geschichte, Bd. 19 (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1921), pp. 211–331

Stanislaus of Cracow

Miracula Sancti Stanislai, ed. by Wojciech Kętrzyński, in Monumenta Poloniae Historica IV (Lwów: Nakł. Akademii Umiejętności, 1884), pp. 238‒318

Thomas Aquinas I

Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis 1–4. Fasciculus IV, Processus canoni­­z ationis S.  Thomae, Neapoli, ed. by M.-H.  Laurent (Saint-Maxi­min: Revue Thomiste, 1911)

xiv

abbreviations

Thomas Aquinas II

Processus canonizationis beati Thomae, peractus Fossanovae, iuxta exemplar asservatum in Tabulario S. Rituum Con­gre­ gationis, ed. by J. Rius Serra, Analecta sacri ordinis fratrum prae­di­catorum, 22 (1936), 509–29, 576–631

Urban V

Actes anciens et documents concernant le Bienheureux Urbain  V pape, ed. by Joseph Hyacinthe Albanès, and Ulysses Chevalier (Paris: Picard, 1897)

Yves of Tréguier

Processus de vita et miraculis Sancti Yvonis, in Monuments originaux de l’histoire de Saint Yves, ed. by A. de La Borderie and others (Saint-Brieuc: Imprimerie  L. Prud’homme, 1887), pp. 1–299

Introduction

I

n the early 1290s, a boy was born to the Marseillean family of Iacobus and Iohanna Deodatus. The child, named Iacobus after his father, was otherwise beautiful and healthy, but his legs were so deformed that he was only able to walk on the sides of his feet, limping badly. When the boy was around seven years old, his mother was moved by a sermon on the virtues of Louis, the late bishop of Toulouse, to ask him to cure her son. Later the family discussed the incident and Iohanna told Iacobus to say Ave Maria in honour of the saintly bishop. After this the boy went out to play with other children, and when he returned his legs were fully cured. Iacobus lived for five more years and the infirmity never returned. In 1308, some years after Iacobus’s death, seven people were interrogated about his cure at the canonization hearing for Louis of Toulouse, held at the Church of Notre Dame de Marseille. In addition to Iohanna, six people gave witness accounts. In their testimonies two women neighbours spoke about the congenital nature of Iacobus’s impairment, two noblemen informed the interrogators of how the origins and type of the leg malformations had been widely known in the neighbourhood, and Iacobus’s former nurse related that she had been so upset by the incurability of the condition that she felt like quitting her job. Alongside that of the mother, their testimonies portray physical impairment as an unwanted, communally discussed problem for which all wanted a solution. The local notary, on the other hand, testified that he had taught Iacobus since the age of four which, combined with the boy’s activities with other children and his own role in invoking the saint, indicates that the condition did not significantly affect his everyday life.1 1 

The testimonies regarding the cure of Iacobus Deodatus are in Processus canoniza-

2

Introduction

In Search of Medieval Childhood Disabilities Children like Iacobus Deodatus — those either born with a physical impairment or acquiring one in childhood — are the focus of this study. According to a recent report of the World Health Organization, about 15 per cent of the world’s population has some kind of a disability.2 Although such figures can only be suggestive when it comes to the later Middle Ages, and although in the modern world the great majority (80 per cent) of disabilities are diagnosed in adulthood,3 the number of medieval children who had impairments must have been significant. However, they rarely make an appearance in medieval texts. Most writings discussing medieval impairments were theoretical by nature and /or belonged to learned discourse, while some were in the form of prose or poetry. Physical anomalies aroused some interest among theologians, philosophers, and medical professionals, who attempted to explain the existence of deviance and deformations.4 In literature, impairments could be used as allegories of negative characteristics and lack of faith, but were not always associated with such traits.5 When chronicles and encyclopaedic works of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries mention physical disabilities, these are often classed as extraordinary events, like the births of conjoined twins, which are sometimes interpreted as portents.6 In addition to the more educated conceptions of impairment, there are legal texts and guild regulations giving insight

tionis S. Ludovici ep. Tolosani, ed. by Collegio S. Bonaventura (hereafter Louis of Toulouse), pp. 176–80. On Louis’s canonization process and cult, see Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 52–54 and Toynbee, St Louis of Toulouse and the Process of Canonisation, pp. 146–232. 2  WHO  World report on disability. [accessed 10 January 2015]. 3  See also Harlow and Laurence, ‘Age, Agency and Disability’. See also p. 216, n. 297. 4  Within this discussion, the relationship between impairments and sin in particular has aroused scholarly interest, as this particular aspect of the problem certainly had an impact on the experience of impaired people and their families. See esp. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, esp. pp. 65–125. The matter will be further addressed in Chapter 2.3. 5  See Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, esp. pp.  63–154. On the portrayal of various impairments in literary works, see Delony, ‘Alisoun’s Aging, Hearing-Impaired Female Body’; Sayers, ‘Experience, Authority, and the Mediation of Deafness’; Tovey, ‘Kingly Impairments in Anglo-Saxon Literature’; Tracy, ‘Representations of Disability’. 6  See Newman-Stille, ‘Morality and Monstrous Disability’; Watkins, History and the Supernatural, pp. 61–67.

Introduction

3

into the economic aspects of impairments and coping strategies of those with chronic ill health.7 While these types of texts all reveal important aspects of the medieval attitude to impairments, and also impaired children, they tend either to portray the ideas of the educated as expressed in their discourses, or they are normative sources which only occasionally touch on the everyday experience of individuals.8 Hagiographic sources, and among them especially the miracle testimonies included in canonization processes, form an exception in that they frequently portray the views and experiences of the often uneducated laity, which is precisely what the commissioners were interested in.9 Having their basis in the Bible, and performed by saints throughout the Middle Ages, healing miracles were miracles of a fundamental type. 10 Because a significant proportion of recorded miracles involved the healing of physical childhood impairments, they provide a valuable and exceptional window onto the views and experiences of people from different social backgrounds concerning physical anomalies and 7  See for example, Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 95–96; Karras, From Boys to Men, pp. 116–29; McRee, ‘Charity and Gild Solidarity’; Metzler, A Social History of Disability. The regulations of law collections concerning the mentally ill have recently aroused scholarly interest as well. On the formation of the legal codes and their treatment of the mentally ill especially, see Turner, Care and Custody, and the articles in the compilation Madness in Medieval Law and Custom edited by Wendy J. Turner, as well as Aleksandra Pfau’s article ‘Protecting or Restraining?’. 8  A selection of these regulations, however, provide an illuminating source for the study of the social history of physical and mental impairment. See especially Mellyn, Mad Tuscans; Metzler, A Social History of Disability; Turner, Care and Custody; Turner, ed., Madness in Medieval Law and Custom. 9  Irina Metzler makes a similar remark concerning the legal documents in her book, writing that ‘[n]ormative texts, such as the natural-philosophical, medical, theological and hagiographical [sic] material, may provide the intellectual theory and tell us how non-disabled people thought about the disabled, but the economic, social and even the legal texts […] go some way further in presenting a picture of what challenges a medieval disabled person may have encountered’. Metzler, A Social History of Disability, p. 1. While it is obvious that the normative and intellectual ideas strongly influenced hagiographic texts, the miracle depositions in canonization records were intended to record the views and everyday experiences of the laity. It is true that they rarely touch certain aspects of disability, such as its economic consequences, but at the same time they shed light on different features of physical difference. The source-critical aspects of canonization documents and their usage for social history will be further discussed below. 10  On biblical miracles and as the model for medieval conceptions of a miracle, see Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 49–50; Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 8–12; Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 134–36; Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, pp. 20–24.

Introduction

4

their personal consequences. Although the miracle testimonies recorded in the canonization dossiers are religious and juridical by nature, the conceptions and memories of people who had experienced or witnessed a healing miracle were at the core of them.11 They are thus of major importance for the study of disability in the Middle Ages, and indispensable for a study on the experiences and conceptions of impaired children, their families, and their communities.12 The canonization records only include cases that resulted in a miraculous cure and only a fraction of the miracles people believed they had experienced was recorded. Nevertheless, interaction with saints, as well as miraculous healings or the possibility of them, were an essential element of medieval everyday life. Although many theologians of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were quite sceptical about miracles and tended to emphasize the virtuous lives of the saints, for ordinary people miracles remained the most visible and essential aspect of sainthood.13 There is therefore a very close connection between medieval disability and sainthood. Although we have no way of knowing the proportion of those with impairments who received saintly assistance, let alone sought it, miracle stories about the actions of saints on human bodies were culturally internalized and established phenomena. Concentrating on the canonization dossiers from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, this study discusses how physical impairments acquired in childhood were reconstructed in miracle depositions. How was physical differ11 

The testimonies of canonization processes have, for the past few decades, provided an important source for medievalists. The ground-breaking study on them was André Vauchez’s La Sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge. Later on, scholars like Sofia Boesch Gajano, Michael Goodich, Gábor Klaniczay, Christian Krötzl, Laura A. Smoller, and Thomas Wetzstein have continued the study on canonization processes, their ideals and practicalities. Many related topics are covered in the article compilation Procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge. Aspects juridiques et religieux edited by Klaniczay. In addition to being a self-explanatory material for the study of the inquisitiones in partibus, the processes have provided a valuable window into the history of family, children, and everyday life. For a comprehensive historiographical analysis of canonization processes, see Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Recent Trends in the Study of Medieval Canonizations’ and for the historiography also Bailey, ‘Peter Brown and Victor Turner Revisited’. On the importance of miracles for the study of medieval health and medicine, see also McCleery, ‘“Christ More Powerful than Galen”?’ 12  The situation differs significantly in the later Middle Ages and Early Modern era, as a wider selection of personal letters, family papers, and autobiographical material have survived from these periods. For illness and impairment in them, see Frohne, Leben mit ‘kranckhait’. 13  Goodich, ‘Vita perfecta’, pp. 3–7; Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 43–48. This does not mean, however, that there were no voices of doubt or even disbelief among the laity. See Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 47–68.

Introduction

5

ence delineated and defined, and what role did impaired children’s social integration have in those (re)constructions?14 Since understanding of the miraculous and its connection with children’s physical defects is essential to the discussion, the role of children’s impairments in the shaping of communal memories of the miraculous and, conversely, how beliefs about sainthood and miraculous cures shaped the conceptions of an impaired body, are important themes. It is reasonable to ask what we are talking about when we discuss medieval disability, whether it was miraculously cured or not. In fact, there was no one miraculously cured physical impairment but a wide spectrum of them, just as there was a wide spectrum of miracle beneficiaries. I have chosen to define ‘physical impairment’ in terms of mobility and sensory impairment as well as speech defects, because this allows us not only to scrutinize medieval ideas of impairment but also to compare them with certain medical conditions that do not fit modern conceptions of (physical) disability.15 As will be discussed later, the distinction between illness and impairment in medieval sources is in many 14 

Here integration means a child’s development, growth, and upbringing leading to a social role equal to those of his or her age, status and gender within the community. On the definitions of (social) integration in sociological studies, see for example, Flynn and Lemay, A QuarterCentury of Normalization, pp. 286–87. The counterpoint for integration, marginalization, is also an essential concept for our current topic. It is a social process by which a person becomes, or is either actively / consciously or because of attitudes and conceptions, placed at the borders of the society. The concept of marginalization is frequently used in disability studies. See e.g. Gleeson, Geographies of Disability, pp. 1–2, 112; Linton, Claiming Disability, pp. 92–93, 132–133; Shakespeare, Disability Rights and Wrongs, pp. 114, 195. 15  I am following the same starting point as Irina Metzler in her prominent study Disability in Medieval Europe, see pp. 5–6. Leprosy and mental disturbations, although essential for the discussion of social consequences of impairing conditions, are excluded as special, cultural categories. Moreover, leprosy miracles are extremely rare in the canonization documents. In the sources of this study, only two children were cured of the illness. See ASV, MS A.A., Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 4r; Peter of Morrone, Die Akten des Kanonisationsprozess, pp. 228–30. Even in the first of these cases there remained some doubts whether the condition actually was lepra or a form of gutta. On leprosy, see e.g. Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine; Orme and Webster, ‘Leprosy and Its Consequences’; Peyroux, The Leper’s Kiss; Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England; Tabuteau, ‘Historical Research Developments on Leprosy’; Touati, Maladie et société au Moyen Âge. On the historiography of madness in the Middle Ages, see Turner, ‘Introduction’, pp. 2–11. For recent contributions, see Huot, Madness in Medieval French Literature; Mellyn, Mad Tuscans; Pfau, ‘Protecting or Restraining?’; Turner, Care and Custody; Turner, ed., Madness in Medieval Law and Custom. For demonic possession, see Caciola, Discerning Spirits; KatajalaPeltomaa, ‘Demonic Possession as Physical and Mental Disturbance’; Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘A Good Wife?’; Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Socialization Gone Astray?’, and for mental wellbeing, Katajala-Peltomaa and Niiranen, eds, Mental (Dis)order in Late Medieval Europe.

Introduction

6

instances uncertain. Nevertheless, the classic physical impairments or conditions leading to them are usually distinguishable from other types of illnesses, even if these two categories occasionally overlap.16 Canonization processes show us a broad selection of conditions leading to physical impairment that the beneficiaries or their families sought to alleviate, but it is virtually certain that they attached cultural, social, and medical meanings to them that were different from our own. The terms ‘physical impairment’ and ‘disability’, are modern ones, and ambiguous even in our society.17 Strongly influenced by the ‘social model of disability’, they also include the causality that a bodily impairment leads to disability — that is, economical, cultural, and social marginalization.18 This model has been criticized by scholars of modern disability and disability historians alike, who see it as too restrictive and disregarding of the idea that corporeality and impairment are culturally defined.19 For the purposes of this study, which largely discusses the (socially) 16 

A rare exception is found in Clare of Montefalco’s canonization hearing. It portrays the cure of a child suffering from a rupture, who was also reportedly unable to walk. Clare of Montefalco, p. 418: ‘fuit infirmus rupture partium inferiorum et habebat inflationem quasi unius ovi in parte illa inferiori, ita quod sine pena multa incedere non poterat’. For childhood rupture in miracles, see Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 63–64. 17  The World Health Organization defines disability as ‘an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. Disability is thus not just a health problem. It is a complex phenomenon, reflecting the interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives’. WHO | Disabilities. [accessed 10 January 2015]. 18  According to this theory, impairment means a factual physical state, which exists regardless of the society and its norms and conceptions. ‘Disability’, on the other hand, is the creation of a given society and its norms, conceptions and restrictive practices. In other words, while impairment is a biological or physical ‘fact’, the degree of disability varies depending on the society in question. See Linton, Claiming Disability, pp. 11–12. On the usage of the terminology deriving from the social model in medieval studies, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 2; Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 4–5. 19  Christian Laes, C. F. Goodey, and Martha Lynn Rose rightly point out that very recently non-European appearance was (and often still is) a ‘disability’ in a western society, as was being openly homosexual — or even being a woman. Laes, Goodey, and Rose, ‘Approaching Disabilities a capite ad calcem’, p. 6. Some scholars have suggested that we should use the ‘cultural model’. It does not exclude or hide the social or corporeal restrictions, but suggests that the differences influence the ways disabled people experience both their bodies and their environment. Eyler, ‘Introduction’, p. 8. Perhaps the most prominent critique of the social model, also arousing

Introduction

7

disabling effects of impairment, I nevertheless find separating the concepts ‘physi­cal impairment’ and ‘disability’ useful. This is, however, a largely conceptual framework. The impaired body is not omitted from the analysis, but considered as something which greatly defined the experience of the beneficiaries.20 The social expectations placed on children varied significantly depending on their gender, and the effect impairment might have on the child’s future and the everyday life of his or her family, according to its wealth and social position. 21 Moreover, the conditions the miraculées were cured of varied from mild to severe: from loss of the use of one limb, a speech defect, or an ailing eye, to total immo­­bility, complete blindness, or total inability to speak. Similarly, the duration of the conditions cured by saints could be anything from a few moments to decades. These three aspects will be taken into consideration in the analysis. Medieval disability history is a relatively new new branch of research, although various disabilities have been occasionally referred to in studies of medi­­eval social history.22 The topic has also been addressed in several books on the history of medicine and sociology, albeit often coloured by a questionably negative view of the treatment of disabled people in the past.23 The first study concentrating exten­­sively on disability in the Middle Ages was Irina Metzler’s ground-breakseveral counterarguments and objections, has been proposed by Tom Shakespeare in Disability Rights and Wrongs, esp. pp. 29–53. See also Singer, ‘Playing by Ear’, p. 40. Wendy J. Turner has recently suggested that perhaps we should turn the whole starting point inside out, and instead of trying to define what ‘impairment’ or ‘disability’ mean in (medieval) society, concentrate on which aspects in a given social sphere (household, family, public life, etc.) disable a person. Here I refer especially to her keynote lecture in the workshop ‘Dis/ability and Law in Pre-Modern Societies. Schnittfelder von Rechtsgeschichte und Dis/ability’ (Bremen, 31. January, 2014). 20  For the importance of the body for disability studies, and the phenomenological approach, see Hughes and Patersson, ‘The Social Model of Disability and the Disappearing Body’. 21  By ‘social sphere’ I mean, as defined by Ding-Tzsann Lii, a societal organization which creates ‘a common cultural landscape on which various forms of performance and public drama are staged, and through which a social bond among strangers is created’. Lii, ‘Social Spheres and Public Life’. It partly overlaps with ‘community’, meaning a group of people, a group of groups, or a geographically distinct, local community. On these definitions, see e.g. Atal, Sociology, pp. 110–41. When it comes to the cultural creation of various practicalities and mentalities, I usually find that ‘social sphere’ more accurately represents my intended meaning in the current analysis. 22  See esp. Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris; Finucane’s The Rescue of the Innocents; Lett, L’Enfant des miracles; Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages. 23  For a comprehensive historiography of disability till the 2000s, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 11–20. For an analysis of the recent situation in the field, see Nolte, ‘“Behindert”, beeinträchtigt, “bresthafftigen leibs” im Mittelalter’.

8

Introduction

ing Disability in Medieval Europe, published in 2006, which quickly became a sort of a standard textbook for those exploring the subject. In her study Metzler discusses medieval perspectives on physical impairments, covering a wide range of medicinal, theological, and philosophical texts. Since then, an increasing number of books on medieval disabilities have been published. To name but a few, Edward Wheatley’s Stumbling Blocks before the Blind examines the cultural constructions of blindness in France and England, largely drawing from literature, but also examining the institutionalized side of blindness, namely in the context of the hospital of Quinze-Vingts. The articles published in the compilation Disability in the Middle Ages (2010), edited by Joshua R. Eyler, further address the theoretical problems of medieval disability studies while covering a wide range of themes and source types relevant to the topic. The two collections of essays edited by Cordula Nolte, Homo debilis. Behinderte — Kranke — Versehrte in der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters (2009) and Phänomene der ‘Behinderung’ im Alltag (2014), as well as The Treatment of Disabled Persons in Medieval Europe (2010) edited by Wendy J. Turner and Tory Vandeventer Pearman, take a wider geographical and temporal perspective to the discussion of mental impairments and illnesses. 24 Metzler has proceeded with her inquiries in her monograph A Social History of Disability (2013). Furthermore, Bianca Frohne’s Leben mit ‘kranckhait’ (2014) discusses the topic of dis/ability and illness within families in early modern Germany. Various studies on mental disabilities and illnesses have further analysed and conceptualized medieval mindsets on the topic.25 As a young branch of historical studies, medieval disability history takes up a position at the crossroads of the social history of medicine, the history of mentalities, the history of marginality and minorities, and the history of everyday life. One of the goals of disability historians is to establish dis/ability as an analysis category equal to gender, race, social status, and life cycle, all of which

24  For studies on high and early medieval Europe, see also Crawford and Lee, eds, Social Dimen­sions of Medieval Disease and Disability. The history of disabilities in other periods has equally aroused growing scholarly interest, the number of recent studies being too large to list here. The books edited by Cordula Nolte also cover some topics related to the early modern period. As for Antiquity, the website ‘Disability History and Ancient World’ [accessed 15 March 2015] maintains an up-to-date bibliography. Equally, Tory Vandeventer Pearman’s Women and Disability in Medieval Literature further explores the connection of literary texts and gender from the perspective of medieval disability. 25  See n. 15 above.

Introduction

9

are now well-established in historical studies.26 The conceptions of ‘health’ or ‘normality’ and what constitutes the lack of them, are essential characteristics of any given society, and studying them provides tools for wide-reaching analyses of the structures of power and authority, ideas of corporality, as well for inves­ tigating the stigmatization of deviance.27 At the same time, analysing disability as a separate category allows us to trace the patterns and processes that have led to the disablement of impaired or ill people throughout the course of history, until the present day. The current study is the first that analyses medieval disability exclusively in the context of canonization,28 thus placing the miraculous and sainthood at the core of this field of research. Veneration of saints was an essential aspect of medieval everyday life and physical impairment was intimately connected with sainthood and the miraculous. It is my aim to shed more light on this interconnection, taking children as the the subjects of my analysis. I hope to illustrate how disability can function as an analysis category for a more ‘traditional’ field of social history. The study is divided into three main chapters, each of which has a different perspective on the topic: firstly, that of the child’s parents and members of the immediate family; secondly that of the wider community; and thirdly that of the children who benefitted from a miraculous cure of their impairments. After 26 

Longmore and Umansky, ‘Introduction’, already wrote in 2001 that ‘like gender, like race, disability must become a standard analytical tool in the historian’s tool chest’. See also Bösl, Klein, and Waldschmidt, ‘Grundlagen der Disability History’. See also Vandeventer Pearman, Women and Disability in Medieval Literature, esp. pp. 12–18, on gender as an approach for medieval disability studies. 27  See also Turner, ‘Introduction: Approaching anomalous bodies’. 28  Miracles, especially those recorded in earlier collections, have been used for medieval dis/ ability history earlier as well. In the last chapter of Disability in Medieval Europe, Irina Metzler examines numerous miracle accounts from the seventh to the very late twelfth century, as well as the canonisation testimonies of St Elizabeth of Hungary from 1232–34. Louise Wilson examines the twelfth-century miracle collection of St Friedswide in her essay ‘Hagiographical Interpretations of Disability’. Many of Sharon Farmer’s works discuss physical impairment in the context of work, gender, and poverty in the miracles of St Louis IX of France. Hannah Skoda, ‘Representations of Disability’, also analyses the said collection in the context of disability history. Disability in high medieval miracles has also been studied, for example, in Horn, ‘Überleben in der Familie’ and Frohne and Horn, ‘On the “fluidity” of disability’. For physical impairment in ancient and early medieval miracles, see Horn, ‘A Nexus of Disability’ and Laes, ‘Disabled Children in Gregory of Tours’. Moreover, Didier Lett’s L’Enfant des miracles and Ronald Finucane’s The Rescue of the Innocents discuss, among other things, miracles relating to physically impaired children, but disability itself is not a central theme in them.

Introduction

10

the Introduction, the second chapter untangles the vocabulary, explanations, and descriptions of both the impairment and the miraculous cure, asking how physical difference was considered within the familial sphere. Here the focus is primarily on the witness accounts given by parents and other members of the miracle beneficiary’s immediate family. In the third chapter, community reactions towards impaired children are analysed, examining the influence of disability on a child’s socialization. How were childhood impairments viewed and treated within the medieval social sphere, and what were the roles of various community members in both constructing and delineating the condition and searching for a cure? In the fourth chapter the testimonies of those impaired in childhood will be discussed as we assess how physical impairment affected the development of the child’s identity and self-image. How did those with childhood impairments experience and later recall their bodily difference, and how did communal constructions of impairment affect this process — can something called ‘lived experience’ be detected in the testimonies? This structure chosen reflects how the depositions of miraculous cures of childhood impairments were recorded and arranged. Parents and occasionally other members of the immediate family were the most usual persons to testify about miracles of this kind.29 In most cases it was they who gave primary witness accounts, providing the most detailed and comprehensive descriptions of the matter. Indeed, it is likely that the primary knowledge of events would have come from those who had known the child the longest.30 Other community members often gave secondary testimonies; in some of the processes their role was mainly to confirm the testimonies of parents and family members. The one regular exception to this practice occurred in testimonies regarding the cures of poor orphans; in those cases wealthier community members acted as primary witnesses. For these reasons, community members’ testimonies have to be compared with those of the immediate family. Since family members also provided information on the reactions and opinions of community members, and vice versa, both kinds of depositions will be used for the analysis in these two chapters. The last chapter traces the beneficiaries’ own voices and experiences and also draws from themes discussed in the two previous chapters, shifting the

29 

See e.g. Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 139–44. Especially in the case of small children, this also includes wet nurses and nurses, in addition to the immediate family. Wet nurses were, however, rather rare witnesses to childhood impairments, and their testimonies will be discussed together with parents. 30 

Introduction

11

emphasis to the point of view of the child. The testimonies of child protagonists are then compared with those of others, to conclude the study.

Impaired Children in Canonization Hearings The primary source material for this book consists of the canonization proces­­ ses of twenty-one saints from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in which the testimonies regarding the putative saint’s miracles have survived.31 Geo­gra­ phically, the emphasis is on Southern Europe, because most of the canonization processes used in the study were carried out there, but the corpus also includes processes from Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe. The processes included in the corpus are those of St Elizabeth of Hungary (and Thuringia)32 (Marburg, 1235), Ambrose of Massa33 (Orvieto, 1240–41), Lawrence of Subiaco34 (Subiaco, 1244), John Buoni35 (Cesena and Mantua,

31 

For a complete list of the medieval canonization processes, see Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 655–64. 32  St  Elizabeth’s process is edited in Quellenstudien zur Geschichte der hl. Elisabeth, Land­­gräfin von Thüringen, ed. by Albert Huyskens (Marburg: Elwert, 1908) (= Elizabeth of Hungary). On the practicalities of the process, see Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 72–77; Klaniczay, ‘Proving Sanctity’, pp. 121–35; Klaniczay, ‘Speaking about Miracles’, pp. 372–76; Krafft, Papsturkunde und Heiligsprechung, pp. 385–415. On Elizabeth’s cult and memory, see Falvay, ‘Memory and Hagiography’; Wolf, The Life and Afterlife of St Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 3–82. Wolf has translated Elizabeth’s canonization documents in The Life and Afterlife of St Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 83–216. The social and medical background of St Elizabeth’s miracles has also been studied in Wendel-Widmer, Wunderheilungen am Grabe der Heiligen Elisabeth. 33  The inquiry has been edited by by Jean Bolland and others in Processus canonizacionis b. Ambrosii Massani, in Acta sanctorum, Novembris, IV (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1925), pp. 571–886 (=AASS Nov. IV). For information on the cult and the process, see Lansing, Power & Purity, pp. 129–31; Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 584–86. 34  There are two editions of his canonization process, but both are incomplete. Thus I have consulted the Vatican Secret Archive manuscript Archivum Arcis, Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, Processus Canonizationis B. Laurentii Sublacensis, eum copia eiusdem et reliquis ut in Inventaris. On the canonization process, see Goodich, Vita perfecta, pp. 40, 132. 35  The documents of the hearing have been edited by Jean Bolland and others as Processus Apos­­tolici, de B. Joanne Buono, in Acta sanctorum, Octobris, IX (Paris: Victor Palmé, 1869), pp. 771–886 (=AASS Oct. IX). On the process, see Golinelli, ‘Social Aspects in Some Italian Canonization Trials’, pp. 171–73 and on the miracles also Piatti, ‘Infermità e malattie domestiche’, pp. 321–24.

12

Introduction

1251–54), St Clare of Assisi36 (Assisi, 1253), St Stanislaus of Cracow37 (Cracow, 1253), Philip of Bourges 38 (Bourges, Beaugency, and Orleans, 1265/66), St  Margaret of Hungary 39 (Isle of the Danube, 1271–76), St  Louis  IX of France40 (Saint-Denis, 1282–83), St Peter of Morrone (later Pope Celestine V)41 36  The process has been edited in Santa Chiara di Assisi. I primi documenti ufficiali: Lettera di annunzio della sua morte, processo e bolla di canonizzazione, ed. by Giovanni Boccali (Santa Maria degli Angeli: Edizioni porziuncola, 2002) (= Clare of Assisi). On the process and the sources, see Boccali, ‘Introduzione al Processo di canonizzazione di s. Chiara’. 37  The depositions have been edited in Miracula Sancti Stanislai, in Monumenta Poloniae Historica IV, ed. by Wojciech Kętrzyński (Lwów: Nakł. Akademii Umiejętności, 1884), pp. 238–318 (= Stanislaus of Cracow). On the process, see Krafft, Papsturkunde und Heiligsprechung, pp. 500–17; Witkowska, ‘The Thirteenth-Century miracula of St. Stanislaus’. 38  Philip’s process survives in the Vatican Library manuscript Vat. lat. 4019, Testes super uita et conuersatione Philippi quondam Bituricensis archiepiscopo, which is a copy of the original dossier. The miracles are also found in Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 5373A. On practicalities and the importance of the process, see Goodich, ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis’, pp. 152–54; Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 78–80; Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 73–74 n. 6. 39  The remaining testimonies have been edited in Inquisitio super vita, conversatione et miraculis beatae Margarethae virginis Belae IV Hungarorum regis filiae, sanctimoni­alis monasterii virginis gloriosae de insula Danubii, ordinis Praedicatorum, Vesprimiensis dio­­cesis, in Monumenta Romana episcopatus Vesprimiensis, ed. by Vilmos Fráknói (Budapest: Collegium Historicorum Hungarorum Romanum, 1896), i, 163–383 (= Margaret of Hungary). On the cult and the process, see Klaniczay, ‘Proving Sanctity’, pp. 135–47; Klaniczay, ‘Speaking about Miracles’. On Margaret’s cult, see also Falvay, ‘Memory and Hagiography’. 40  The situation regarding the sources of Louis IX’s canonization is rather unusual. The records have been lost, except for the testimonies of three miracles which are edited in Fragments de l’enquête faite à Saint-Denis en 1282 en vue de la canonisation de Saint Louis, ed. by Delaborde, Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris de l’Ile-de-France, 23 (1896), 1–71 (= Fragments). However, in c. 1303 the Franciscan brother Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, who was the confessor of Louis IX’s widow queen Margaret of Provence and their daughter Blanche, wrote a miracle collection based on the canonization documents. The collection contains lengthy and detailed summaries of sixty-five miracles, originally written in Latin but translated into French. The comparisons between the fragments of the process and Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s compilation, as well as his own description of the writing process, show that he followed the original documents rather faithfully. The collection has been edited in Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, Les Miracles de Saint Louis, ed. by Percival B. Fay (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1931) (= Les Miracles de Saint Louis). I have also consulted the Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Fr. 5716 and found the edition very accurate. On the sources, see Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 7–10; Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis, pp. 36–40. On Louis IX’s cult and canonization, see Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis; Goodich, Vita perfecta, pp. 186–91. 41  The testimonies are edited in Die Akten des Kanonisationsprozess in dem Codex zu

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13

(Sulmona, 1306), St  Thomas Cantilupe 42 (London and Hereford, 1307), St Louis of Toulouse43 (Marseille, 1308), St Clare of Montefalco44 (Montefalco, 1318–19), St Thomas Aquinas45 (Naples and Fossanova, 1319/21), St Nicholas of Tolentino46 (Tolentino and various towns in Marches, 1325), St Yves of Tréguier47 Sulmona, in Monumenta Coelestiniana: Quellen zur Geschichte des Papstes Coelestin V, ed. by Franz Xaver Seppelt, Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiete der Geschichte, Bd. 19 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1921), pp. 211–331 (= Peter of Morrone). For a summary of Peter’s life, based on his autobiography, see Brentano, ‘Sulmona Society and the Miracles of Peter of Morrone’, pp. 79–90. On the inquiry, see Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 82–84; Golinelli, ‘Social Aspects in Some Italian Canonization Trials’, pp. 173–75; Krafft, Papsturkunde und Heiligsprechung, pp. 679–701; Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 563–69. 42  The canonization process survives in a Vatican Library manuscript, MS Vat. lat. 4015, Inquisitio de fide, vita et moribus et fama et miraculis recolende memorie domine Thome de Cantilupo quondam episcope dicte ecclesie Herefordensis. On the practicalities of Thomas Cantilupe’s process, see Bartlett, The Hanged Man, pp. 11–21; Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 173–90; Krötzl, ‘Prokuratoren, Notare und Dolmetscher’, 126–28; Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 569–81. 43  For the edition of Louis’s process, see n. 1. For Louis’s life, cult and the hearing, see Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 52–54 and Toynbee, St Louis of Toulouse and the Process of Canonisation. 44  The records are edited in Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco, ed. by Enrico Menestò, Quaderni del Centro per il collegamento degli studi medievali e umanistici nell’Università di Perugia (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1984) (= Clare of Montefalco). On Clare’s canonization and the preserved documents, see Barone, ‘Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco’; Menestò, ‘The Apostolic Canonization Proceedings of Clare of Montefalco’. 45  The edition of the Naples process of 1319 that I have used is Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis 1–4. Fasciculus IV, Processus canonizationis S. Thomae, Neapoli, ed. by M.-H. Laurent (Saint-Maximin: Revue Thomiste, 1911) (= Thomas Aquinas I), and the Fossanova process is edited in ‘Processus canonizationis beati Thomae, peractus Fossanovae, iuxta exemplar asservatum in Tabulario S. Rituum Congregationis’, ed. by J. Rius Serra, Analecta sacri ordinis fratrum praedicatorum, 22 (1936), pp. 509–29, 576–631. (= Thomas Aquinas II). Of the Fossanova process there exist two editions based on two different manuscripts, the chronological order of which has caused some dispute. See Räsänen, ‘Making a Saint for the Monastery of Fossanova’, p. 111. For the canonization process, see Gigon, ‘Histoire de la canonisation de s. Thomas d’Aquin’. 46  The process is edited in Il processo per la canonizzazione di S. Nicola da Tolentino, ed. by Nicola Occhioni, Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome, 74 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1984) (= Nicholas of Tolentino). The social aspects of the process have been extensively analysed in Lett, Un procès de canonisation. See also Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, esp. pp. 8–9, 26–30. 47  The edition of the hearing is in Processus de vita et miraculis Sancti Yvonis, in Monuments originaux de l’histoire de Saint Yves, ed. by A. de La Borderie and others (Saint-Brieuc: Imprimerie L. Prud’homme, 1887), pp. 1–299 (= Yves of Tréguier). For Yves’s biography, see

14

Introduction

(Tréguier, 1331), Dauphine of Puimichel48 (Apt and Avignon, 1363), Charles of Blois49 (Angers, 1371), St Birgitta (or St Bridget) of Vadstena50 (Vadstena, Spoleto, Naples, and Rome, 1376–80), Urban V51 (Avignon, 1376–79, 1390), and Dorothea of Montau52 (Marienwerder, 1404–06). Cassard, Saint Yves de Tréguier. For the practicalities of the inquiry, see Goodich, ‘The Criteria for the Proof and Credibility of Miracles’, pp. 186–89; Krafft, Papsturkunde und Heiligsprechung, pp. 795–835. 48  The records have been edited in Enquête pour le procès de canonisation de Dauphine de Puimichel Comtesse d’Ariano, Apt et Avignon, 14 mai–30 octobre 1363. Édition critique, ed. by Jacques Cambell (Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1978) (= Dauphine of Puimichel). On Dauphine’s life and her marriage to St Elzéar de Sabran, see Elliot, Spiritual Marriage, pp. 216–20. On the process and her cult, see Sigal, ‘Les Témoins et les témoignages au procès du Canonisation de Dauphine de Puimichel (1363)’, and also Archambeau, ‘Healing Options during the Plague’; Archambeau, ‘Tempted to Kill’, pp. 51–54. 49  The records have been edited in Monuments du procès de canonisation du Bienheureux Charles de Blois, duc de Bretagne, 1320–1364, ed. by François Plaine and A. de Serent (SaintBrieuc: Imprimerie L. Prud’homme, 1921), but due to their occasional impreciseness I have chosen to consult the Vatican Library manuscript MS Vat. lat. 4025, Liber canonizationis dominis Karoli ducis Bretanie. For Charles’s biography, see Cassard, Charles de Blois. For an analysis of his fama and the political situation, see Jones, ‘Politics, Sanctity and the Breton State’, and for the documents concerning his canonization, Vauchez, ‘Canonisation et politique au xive siècle’. 50  I have chosen to include in my corpus all the miracles in the documents included in the edition Acta et processus canonizacionis beate Birgitte, ed. by Isaac Collijn (Uppsala: Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskrift, 1924–30) (= Birgitta of Vadstena), which include not only the official canonization hearing but also the collections of miracles collected during the transport of her earthly remains from Rome to Sweden and after her burial at Vadstena. The miracle accounts outside the canonization inquiry are rather summary and lack several details, but I find them practical for the geographic comparison as well as for getting a fuller picture of what kinds of children’s cures were associated with St Birgitta. On Birgitta’s canonization, see Nyberg, ‘The Canonization Process of St. Birgitta of Sweden’ and Fröjmark, Mirakler och helgonkult. 51  Of Urban V’s hearing, although the full articles on the basis of which the witnesses were thought to be interrogated have survived, it is not known whether the canonization hearing took place. In this study both the local enquiry into his miracles (Avignon 1376­–79), as well as the articles compiled between 1382–90, edited in Actes anciens et documents concernant le Bienheureux Urbain V pape, ed. by Joseph Hyacinthe Albanès and Ulysses Chevalier (Paris: Picard, 1897) (= Urban V) are used. See Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 369–72, 660. 52  The edition of the documents is Die Akten des Kanonisationsprozess Dorotheas von Montau, ed. by Richard Stachnik and others (Köln: Böhlau, 1978) (= Dorothea of Montau). Although Dorothea’s process is from the early fifteenth century, most of her miracles in the documents occurred in the late fourteenth century. On the attempts to canonize Dorothea, see Stargardt, ‘The Political and Social Backgrounds of the Canonization of Dorothea of Montau’. On Dorothea’s life, see Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power, pp. 193–210. In the acta

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15

The inquisitio in partibus of St Elizabeth of Hungary is chosen as the earliest process, because it is the first extant case where the formula interrogatorii is visible and the testimonies of deponents are recorded, and in which it is possible to compare the testimonies of more than one witness for the same miracle.53 Most of the elements visible in later, fuller canonization hearings, such as the geographic location of the witness, as well as the time when the miracle had occurred and who had witnessed it, are already present, although certain elements, such as statements about the profession or status of witnesses, are still absent. 54 Because one of my aims is to study the long-term effects of disability and its possible effects on children’s socialization, I have included not only the cures of children but also the cures of those who acquired an impairment in childhood and were cured in their late teens or adulthood.55 Socialization refers to of Dorothea’s process there are a few articles about the cures of childhood impairments, which have no recorded witness depositions in the hearing. These cases have been left out of this study. 53  Golinelli, ‘Social Aspects in Some Italian Canonization Trials’, p. 169; Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 72–73; Goodich, Vita perfecta, p. 29; Klaniczay, ‘Proving sanctity’, pp. 128–29; Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, p. 538. During the earlier informal hearings held under episcopal auspices, the interest had mostly been on the miracles the putative saint had performed, but in them the testimonies of second-hand witnesses had been accepted more willingly. Goodich, Vita perfecta, p. 31. In other respects, the hearing of Philip of Bourges from 1265/66 is the first one having the ‘classic’ form that continued throughout the Middle Ages. Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 58. 54  Goodich, ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis’, pp. 139–40. The lack of information on the socioeconomic background of the witnesses is not total, however. Of 129 beneficiaries, ten have been given the precise social identification, and of more than 700 witnesses, the social and professional status of sixty-four is given. Klaniczay, ‘Speaking about Miracles’, p. 380. For a list of the mentioned professions and positions, see Wendel-Widmer, Die Wunderheilungen, pp. 8–9. At the same time, it should be noted that the background of protagonists is not always mentioned in later processes either. 55  Although there are a few cases in which the protagonist acquired the impairment in his or her childhood and was cured in his / her early twenties, miracles where childhood impairment would have been miraculously healed after thirty or more years are next to non-existent. The only such case among the sources of this study is a miracle in Charles of Blois’s inquiry on BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fols 177r–178v. Additionally, the fifteenth-century canonization process of St Bernardino of Siena records an account of a married woman who had been claudicante since birth. Bernardino of Siena, pp. 45–47. The narratives of three miracles of St Louis IX hint at one reason why such cures may have been so rare. A forty-four-year-old woman called Tyfania was cured of an illness causing severe trembling, which she acquired at the age of sixteen. When Tyfania was on her way to St Louis’s shrine, another woman said that it was useless because Tyfania was too old to be cured. Gilbert de Sens, a man of sixty or more, as well as a woman called Avice, who was more than sixty years old, received similar comments — Avice even from the guardians of the shrine. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 17, 31, 105.

Introduction

16

an active process in which the child becomes a full member of his or her community through the transmission of various practices, skills, rites, and customs which are essential for participating in society. This is not a one-way process, but children have an active role in it, also forming their own peer culture. The process lasts throughout a person’s life, and whenever a person becomes a member of a group or community they will become socialized into its customs and conventions.56 ‘Childhood’ is here defined as the period from birth to fourteen years. This definition comprises the first two stages of childhood by medieval standards: infantia and pueritia,57 although it is evident that the limits were not so strict in medieval thinking and girls were thought to reach the age of discretion at the age of twelve.58 Although the beneficiary’s age was usually carefully recorded, we also have examples in which the person is simply referred to as puella or puer, or it is stated that the condition started in someone’s pueritia.59 In these cases I have included the miracle in my corpus if other aspects of the testimony indicate that the protagonist was under the age of fourteen when the impairment was acquired. Similarly, there are cases in which it is unclear whether the protagonist acquired the condition at the age of fourteen or later, but if, based on the testimonies, it seems likely that he or she was close to that age I have included the case.60 The definitions of time were, after all, often quite vague in the miracle depositions, and adult witnesses also tended to state their ages in round numbers or multiples of five.61 In order to label the cases, my starting point has been to select the cases in which the beneficiary has been cured of a condition affecting their mobility, use 56 

On socialization and the history of childhood, see Katajala-Peltomaa and Vuolanto, ‘Children and Agency’. 57  Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 26–27. 58  For the society at large the defining point in ending childhood / youth was when the young person married and began his or her life as a husband and a wife, maintaining their own household. Fleming, Family and Household in Medieval England, p. 59. For a more extensive discussion on definitions and cultural ideas about childhood and youth, see Gaffney, Constructions of Childhood and Youth, pp. 23–34. 59  See e.g. AASS Oct. IX, p. 803; Dorothea of Montau, p. 446; Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 293. 60  As an example, in Yves of Tréguier’s inquiry there are testimonies regarding the cure of a disabled girl, Katherina. In her testimony it is stated that she was etatis quadraginta annorum et ultra and that she had been cured about twenty-six years earlier of a condition that had lasted for more than a year. Yves of Tréguier, pp. 236–37. 61  See Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 19–21; Goodich, ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis’, p. 142; Hanska, ‘The Hanging of William Cragh’, pp. 134–35.

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17

of limbs, eyesight, or hearing and/or speaking. Both long- and short-term con­­ ditions are included, but those cases in which the primary concern is the child’s life are excluded from the corpus, even if their symptoms included difficulties in moving, speaking, or the use of the senses. Fear for someone’s life is taken as a clear indication that the condition was considered fatal, and in those cases any associated physical limitations are not usually mentioned as worrying the witnesses.62 As stated earlier, the definition of ‘physical impairment’ is, in the first place, a modern one. Thus it is questionable whether mobility and sensory impairments were grouped together in the Middle Ages, while other types of physical conditions such as dropsy, hernia, and genital problems, which commonly appear in canonization testimonies, could undoubtedly disable their victims func­­tionally or even socially.63 Although the starting point in the selection of sources has been the modern concept, for the purpose of comparison I will occa­­sionally discuss testimonies regarding miraculous cures of other types of con­­ditions when appropriate. In the sources of this study there are 231 miracles that meet the definition of a cure of a physical impairment acquired in childhood. Of them, ninetyeight (42 per cent) involved girls and 133 (58 per cent) boys.64 The numbers and approximate proportions of different types of impairments among these are represented in the table below: 62 

A rare exception is the testimony of Guillermus Justi in the canonization process of Charles of Blois. Guillermus’s eight-year-old daughter Iohanna was afflicted by a sudden, grave infirmity, so that the parents wished for her death rather than that she should live with such suffering. In his testimony the father stated that the illness made them fear for the child’s life, and later that when the girl was cured, with the help of Charles, she walked well. That the girl could walk well after the cure would not have been mentioned if she had been walking normally during her illness, and such mentions are typical of the cases where a child has been cured of a condition affecting mobility: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 131v. 63  For examples of this kind of conditions in children, see Finucane, The Rescue of the Inno­ cents, pp. 62–68. 64  The sex ratio here differs from the common one of c. 70 per cent male and 30 per cent female beneficiaries. See Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 41–42. The difference in numbers of girls and boys as beneficiaries is partly explained by the general sex ratio which, though varying between ethnic groups and depending on, for example, the age of parents, favours boys. It is also possible that the difference between miracles curing childhood impairments and all miracles in the sex ratio is partly explained by the large number of resurrection miracles, most of which were performed on boys, who were more prone to accidents. See Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 142–46.

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Table 1: Childhood Impairments Referred to in Canonization Hearings   Mobility impairments

Number of cures

Percentage

124

54%

Eye problems

70

30%

Ear afflictions

3

1%

14

6%

2

1%

18

8%

231

100%

Speech disorders Deaf-muteness Multiple impairments Total

The testimonies usually label the miraculously cured conditions sufficiently clearly, but there are occasional inconsistencies: for example, one case in the pro­­ cess of John Buoni has been labelled as a cure for epilepsy in the edition of Acta sanctorum, although the parents name the impairment as paralysis, since the symptoms matched symptoms usually associated with ‘falling sickness’.65 In such situations I have chosen to remain faithful to the witnesses’ conception of the type of condition, and thus the above-mentioned case is included in the group of ‘mobility impairments’. The group also includes cases in which the child injured a hand or leg, even if the injury was only short-term or did not severely restrict the use of the limb.66 Cures of all childhood conditions affecting eyes and ears are included in the corpus, although in some of them it remains unclear whether the child was in danger of losing the sense of sight or hearing. Although aural and speech impediments are often lumped together in medieval writings, 67 here they are treated together only when the witness accounts clearly state that the child was both deaf and mute. As is clear from the table, these types of miraculously cured impairments are the rarest among our sources;68 a pattern following the 65  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 879–80. Paralysis was sometimes used as a definition of epilepsy-like conditions also elsewhere. In Lawrence of Subiaco’s process there is a case in which a woman was described as paralytic and foaming at mouth in the same manner as Vigilius, also losing her memory for a while. ASV, MS A.A., Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 3r. 66  Conditions affecting only the upper limbs are rare, as there are only eight such cases in the sources of this study. See Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 186, 257–58, 258–59, 260; AASS Oct. IX, p. 797; AASS Nov. IV, p. 606; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 147–50; Urban V, p. 317. 67  See Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 78. 68  One reason for the rarity of children’s aural and speech impairments may be that congenital deafness has always been rare, as it is also in modern society. According to the United

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tradition of earlier miracles recorded at shrines.69 The section ‘multiple impairments’ includes all cases in which the child was reported as having either motor and sensory impairments, or sensory impairments affecting both eyesight and hearing. It also includes one miracle account where the child was described as unable to see, hear, speak, or walk.70 The proportions presented in Table 1 are in accordance with the findings of other scholars, who have found similar incidence patterns of mobility impairments and eye afflictions compared to other sensory impairments when including healing miracles of both adults and children.71 However, as noted by André Vauchez, the proportion of those cured of mobility problems decreased significantly during the fourteenth century.72 In these sources there is also a decline in the number of conditions causing mobility problems in the fourteenth century, as eighty of the cures are from thirteenth-century processes and forty-four from fourteenth-century processes. However, for other types of impairments there is no such trend. Nations estimations, one child in 1000 is born deaf. Laes, ‘Silent Witnesses’, p. 453. Irina Metzler suggests the possibility that in the Middle Ages congenital deafness was even more uncommon than now, as a consequence of the infanticide of ‘defective’ children in classical antiquity, and perhaps because few congenitally deaf people married and passed on their genes. Metzler, ‘Perceptions of Deafness in the Central Middle Ages’, p. 80 n. 5. Christian Laes has a different opinion: according to him, at least in the ancient world, living in small communities was more likely to result in genetic peculiarities: Laes, ‘Silent Witnesses’, p. 453. 69  See Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, p. 233. 70  These kinds of cases are most common in the process of St Elizabeth, in which there are five such children. Peter of Morrone’s process contains descriptions of three children with multiple impairments and Ambrose of Massa’s and St Yves of Tréguier’s processes have one each. See Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 178–79, 196, 210–11, 219, 226, 229–30; AASS Nov. IV, p. 590; Peter of Morrone, pp. 263–65, 280–81, 301–02, 308–10, 315–17; Yves of Tréguier, p. 290. 71  See Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p.  97; Krötzl, Pilger, Mirakel und Alltag, pp. 188–89; Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 130–31; Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, p. 256; Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 547; Wittmer-Butsch and Rendtel, Miracula: Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter, pp. 101, 111, 113. There are some differences in the methods of categorizing the cures; for example Vauchez has counted fractures and other such accidents as a separate group. This does not, however, significantly alter the proportions. For a discussion on whether the figures represent the ‘reality’ or follow the literary patterns of a miraculous cure, see Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, pp. 256–58. 72  Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 549. For the various explanations for this phenomenon, see pp. 318–19. Christian Krötzl has discovered that in Scandinavian miracles the proportion of conditions affecting mobility declined in 1350–1500, but at the same time the cures of blindness increased, while the cures of aural and speech impediments remained almost the same. Krötzl, Pilger, Mirakel und Alltag, p. 189.

20

Introduction

The proportion of miracles involving healings of impairments acquired in childhood varies significantly between different canonization inquiries, but there are also certain problems in counting the exact numbers.73 Generally, children’s physical impairments tend to appear less often in the inquiries than those of adults, possibly a result of what was considered trustworthy. Resurrections from death, which form the largest proportion of children’s miracles in many processes, were dramatic events that attracted a lot of public attention, and thus also had several witnesses.74 Moreover, the personal experience of the beneficiary was valued, but, at the same time, children under the age of fourteen were not allowed to testify according to the Decretum of Gratian,75 which could have an effect on whether children’s cures were selected for the processes.76 In most of the inquiries the incidence of childhood impairments in the mira­­culously cured conditions falls somewhere between five and twenty-five per cent. In addition to the number of such testimonies, the level of informativeness of the inquiries for the current study varies, depending on the way the text was compiled. The most useful processes in this respect are the miracle 73  Frequently the number of miracles in a given process remains inexact. One problem in counting the total number of miracles arises from the way miracles were reported, especially by witnesses who gave information on the saint’s vita. In some processes there were witnesses who recounted a huge number of cures they had witnessed without giving specific information on them, and many of these miracles are not included in the official listings of the miracles. Difficulties are also faced when identifying the witnesses, due to inconsistencies in orthography and the details that were given of the witness: Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, p. 8 n. 18. Similarly, because many of the canonization processes have only survived partially, counting the exact proportions of cures of childhood conditions is often impossible. Among those surviving only partially is the process of Clare of Montefalco, of which we have only 201 of the 486 witness accounts: Menestò, ‘The Apostolic Canonization Proceedings of Clare of Montefalco’, p. 107. Likewise, of the 322 witness accounts given in Peter of Morrone’s hearing, 162 have survived, and the testimonies of the hearing regarding the sanctity of St Margaret of Hungary have also been only partially preserved: Klaniczay, ‘Proving Sanctity’, p. 138 n. 87; Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 659. 74  Such miracles are more common than the miraculous cures of impaired children in some inquiries. For example, in St Thomas Cantilupe’s process, eleven miracles out of thirty-eight are resurrections of children, and in St Yves of Tréguier’s inquiry there are sixteen resurrections of children, of which eight are recoveries from drowning. However, in St Louis of Toulouse’s inquiry there are ten cures of childhood impairments and one cure of a deformed nose, while there are eleven cases in which children are saved from imminent death. 75  Decretum Gratiani, in Corpus juris canonici, ed. by Friedberg, C. 4 q 2 c. 13; Krötzl, ‘Prokuratoren, Notare und Dolmetscher’, p. 122; Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, p. 65. 76  Then again, many beneficiaries of miraculous cures of childhood impairments witnessed in their late teens or early twenties. For further discussion, see Chapter 4.

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21

collection of St Louis IX of France,77 and the inquiries of St Louis of Toulouse, St  Thomas Cantilupe, St Peter of Morrone, St  Yves of Tréguier, and John Buoni. Les Miracles de Saint Louis contains sixty-five miracles altogether, of which fifteen, or 23 per cent, describe cures of childhood impairments.78 The corresponding numbers of childhood impairment cures in the canonization processes of St Louis of Toulouse and John Buoni are ten miracles (13 per cent) out of seventy-five and eighteen (21 per cent) of eighty-five, respectively. In the canonization process of St Thomas Cantilupe of Hereford thirty-eight miracles were specifically investigated as miracula of St Thomas.79 Of these miracles five, or 13 per cent, are cures of impairments acquired in childhood, but among the depositions primarily testifying about St Thomas’s vita there are also miracle testimonies, and altogether the process contains six miracles concerning childhood impairments.80 Of the 100 miracles in St Yves of Tréguier’s process, nine fall in our category.81 The testimonies of Peter of Morrone’s inquiry have survived only partially.82 Among the preserved miracles, there are thirteen cures of childhood impairments. The types of miracles — among them cures of childhood impairments — that were chosen for the processes, and the people selected to testify about them, were first and foremost determined by the priorities of the procurators and commissioners, the theology of miracles,83 and the common characteris77 

Sharon Farmer goes as far as to propose that ‘Guillaume’s narrative gives us more detail about poor people’s strategies for surviving long-term disability than any other source yet to be exploited by a medieval historian’. Farmer, ‘Manual Labor, Begging, and Conflicting’, p. 266. 78  This number includes two cases, in which the beneficiary had a condition affecting their lower limb since birth but the cure occurred after the condition worsened in their adulthood. See pp. 45–47. 79  For a list of the miracles, see Vauchez, La Saintetè, pp. 571–72. 80  In addition to the thirty-eight investigated miracles, the Cantilupe process also contains two long lists of miracles recorded at the shrine. The total number of miracles is 470. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 178. The registers of miracles are in BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 267r–310v. 81  The relatio of St Yves’s process is in Yves of Tréguier, pp. 301–35. 82  Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 659. 83  The miracles Jesus performed were the basis for all later miracles, and the examples in the gospel were later used to judge and prove miracles reported in canonization inquiries. For the theology of miracles, see Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 8–28. For an example of the use of biblical references in judging a miracle, see the summarium of St Thomas Cantilupe’s process, in which reference is made to the gospel (Matthew 9.32 and Mark 7.37) describing Christ curing the mute. Edited in Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 646–47.

Introduction

22

tics of canonization inquiries.84 However, the way in which the putative saints’ reputations and cults had developed obviously had a big effect on the kinds of miracles reported before the official canonization inquiry. These, combined with the saint’s vita, were the basis both for creating the documents that aimed at acquiring papal consent for starting the process and for the articuli interrogatorii used by commissioners of some of the processes.85 The miracles thus reflect the environment of the cult as well as the attitudes of the officials of the hearings.86 As an example, in St Elizabeth of Hungary’s process about two-thirds of all cured people were children under the age of fifteen. This probably reflects Elizabeth’s charitable actions in her lifetime, as she was known to give a lot of attention to afflicted children,87 an image that was also strengthened during the process. St Yves of Tréguier’s cult, on the other hand, flourished in Brittany, which was and is an area where maritime professions are common. Hence, rescues from shipwrecks and ships in distress occur more frequently in the documents of his process.88 Similarly, the epidemics of Black Death are prominent in Urban V’s miracles; the miracle depositions recorded in the 1370s describe several cases in which children were cured of ‘epidemic fever’, 89 although in gen­­eral miracles curing people of pestilence are rare.90 84 

An illuminating example of the kinds of differences there may have been between the reported miracles and those chosen to be investigated in the official inquiry shows up in the lists of miracles of St Thomas Cantilupe and St Louis of Toulouse. Although in both cases the listed miracles outside the canonization process mostly follow the typical pattern of describing cures of acute and chronic conditions, as well as rescues from mortal danger, they both contain several rescues and cures of animals. No such miracles ended up being investigated in their canonization inquiries. See e.g. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 272v, 269r; Louis of Toulouse, pp. 277, 289, 292, 293, 300, 307, 309, 324, 328. 85  The lack of articuli interrogatorii was not, however, exceptional for thirteenth- and fourteenth-century hearings. See Vauchez, La Sainteté, esp. pp. 54–55 and also Hanska, ‘From Historical Event to Didactic Story’. 86  The ability to answer the needs of the lay public was essential for the Church in order to retain its power. Webb, ‘Friends of the Family’, p. 188. 87  Klaniczay, ‘Proving Sanctity’, p. 134. For the ages of children in Elizabeth’s process, see Wendel-Widmer, Die Wunderheilungen, p. 10. 88  The commissioners reported that they saw approximately twenty-seven silver ships hanging above the shrine as well as more than ninety wax ships: Yves of Tréguier, p. 5. 89  For examples of cures of children with the plague, see Urban V, pp. 143–44, 154–55, 183–84, 187–88, 189–90, 221, 255–56, 265–66, 266–67, 308, 474–75. On the spread of the Black Death in France, see Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346–1353, pp. 96–109; Gottfried, The Black Death. Natural and Human Disaster, pp. 49–50. 90  Archambeau, ‘Healing Options during the Plague’, esp. pp.  534–35. On saints and

Introduction

23

The selection of witnesses also influenced which types of miracles were recorded.91 Some of the inquiries, like that of Clare of Assisi, focused on the monastic setting of their protagonist. In her process there are twenty witnesses, of whom only five were laymen. 92 Although the sisters of Clare’s monastery testified occasionally about children’s miracles, most of the information given was related to her life or miracles that had occurred in the monastic setting. Similarly, most of the witnesses in the Naples process of St Thomas Aquinas were clerics, monks, or friars. The records of the inquiry contain thirty-seven testimonies, of which twenty-five were given by men with a religious vocation, and the rest by lay nobles or educated men. Again we have occasional testimonies about children or women’s ailments,93 but the witness accounts mainly concentrate on miracles that happened in the vicinity of Fossanova Abbey, either to monks or laymen. No women were interrogated, perhaps partly because women were forbidden to enter the abbey.94 The shrine was therefore inaccessible to them and cures of women were therefore rarer. Regarding the socioeconomic status of the protagonists, the poor are underrepresented among both child and adult beneficiaries.95 The wealthy were seen as more reliable witnesses and thus their testimonies and miracles were valued more.96 The process which had most poor beneficiaries or witnesses was the plague, see Goodich, Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century, pp. 117–20. 91  The selection of witnesses for particular processes has been studied in Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 50–55; Golinelli, ‘Social Aspects in Some Italian Canonization Trials’; Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 23–70; Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 139–44; Lett, Un procès de canonisation, pp. 140–60. The backgrounds of witnesses in the processes of St Elizabeth of Hungary and St Margaret of Hungary are analysed in Klaniczay, ‘Speaking about Miracles’, pp. 380–84. 92  Clare of Assisi, pp. 207–10, 211–14, 215–17, 219–20, 221–25. 93  Thomas Aquinas I, pp. 309, 340–41. 94  For example Thomas Aquinas I, p. 340; Thomas Aquinas II, p. 610. On the other hand, similar rules pertained to those wishing to meet Peter of Morrone, who determinedly wanted to avoid women, and yet one third of the witnesses in his process are women: See Goodich, ‘The Politics of Canonization’, p. 181. 95  See especially pp. 151–75 for further discussion. 96  The preference given to wealthy witnesses was ordered in the decretals of Gregory IX. Krötzl, ‘Prokuratoren, Notare und Dolmetscher’, pp.  122–23. See also Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, p. 82. In his discussion on Louis IX’s miracle curing a poor woman Amelota de Chambli, Cardinal Pietro Colonna also took this into account, but did not consider the beneficiary’s or the witnesses’ poverty an obstacle. Carolus-Barre, ‘Consultation sur le IIe miracle de Saint Louis’, p. 60.

Introduction

24

canonization hearing of St Louis IX of France, but even in his miracles the status of only sixteen of the fifty-two miraculées can be defined as poor, whether beggars or working people.97 Because the poor were considered less reliable, the miracles involving them that were selected for the testimonies were cures of prolonged conditions that occurred at shrines, for in those cases there were more witnesses. Probably the poor were also less confident in reporting their experiences of miraculous cures of short-time illnesses,98 as well as less able to express themselves in a way acceptable to the interrogators. Finally, it is necessary to discuss briefly some source-critical aspects of the testimonies. Canonization testimonies, although providing us with a rich window into medieval mentalities and everyday life, do not replicate the actual course of events, nor even how people remembered them or reported them when giving their depositions. Rather, the extant written documents are filtered through the practicalities of the procedure as well as various internalized mental and emotional conceptions of the miraculous. First, the above-mentioned formulae interrogatorii strongly influenced what was being asked and responded to during the canonization hearings. When opening the canonization process of St Elizabeth in 1232, Pope Gregory IX wrote a letter in which he charged the archbishop of Mainz, Abbot Raimund of Eberbach, and Elisabeth’s confessor, Conrad of Marburg, with the task of carrying out the investigation. In this letter the pope began by giving instructions on the parameters for the interrogation of the witnesses. The text was subsequently added to every bull that initiated a canonization process, and became known as testes legitimi. It continued to be used in later canonization inquiries, and the surviving questionnaires of their processes show their continuing interest in detail.99 97 

Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 51–52. Louis’s charitable character was one of the ways in which he was memorialized in the court, and is an essential aspect of the medieval image of Capetian kingship, in which piety and religiosity were essential elements. For example, in his death announcement, Philip III the Bold described Louis as the father of the poor and the solace of the oppressed. This image of Louis was repeated in the hagiography and iconography portraying his life. Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis, pp. 6, 26, 34–35, 44, 201–04, 212–13. 98  Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 50–56. 99  Klaniczay, ‘Proving Sanctity’, pp. 123–24; Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 58–59; Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, pp. 538–39. During early thirteenth-century inquiries, held before that of St Elizabeth of Hungary, Popes Honorius III (d. 1227) and Gregory IX (d. 1241) had expressed their discontent about the methods used, and the principles had been foreshadowed already in the earlier processes: Golinelli, ‘Social Aspects in Some Italian Canonization Trials’, p. 169;

Introduction

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It was considered essential that the witnesses were fully aware of the contents of the formula: the interrogators had to carefully translate it and explain what was being said.100 The aspects emphasized were those most essential for the miraculous, as well as the fama of the putative saint, and the information on everyday experiences both before and after the cure was always secondary to them. Moreover, what was finally written down could be a rather summarized version of what had been said.101 Thus the processes differ in how freely the witnesses were allowed to narrate their experiences, and how much their testimonies were summarized. Language could also alter or distort the depositions. While many educated and clerical witnesses gave their testimonies in Latin, laypeople commonly used their vernacular language. Often an interpreter was needed, and all deposi­tions given in languages other than Latin were translated as they were written down.102 When investigating the wordings of the witnesses, the possible alteration of the meaning of their words as a result of the translation, as well as the reformu­lating of the depositions, must be borne in mind, although there is no way of knowing how accurately the witnesses’ depositions were written down. 103 Although it seems obvious that some summarizing was done, at the same time it was imporGoodich, ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis’, pp. 139–40. For example, in Philip of Bourges’s canonization hearing, the formula interrogatorii asks how the person knew about the miracle, at what time, month and day it occurred, who was present, where it happened, who made the votum, what words were used, among whom the miracle was known, if the witness knew the person beforehand, how long he had been infirm and how long the witness had seen him in a healthy state: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fol. 9r–v. St Thomas Cantilupe’s canonization process also includes a very extensive and detailed questionnaire, which includes questions about whether the person stayed healthy after the miracle, and whether herbs, incantations or demonic intervention were used to obtain the cure: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 4v–5r; Krötzl, ‘Prokuratoren, Notare und Dolmetscher’, p. 128. 100  Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, p. 45. 101  The Dominican brother and inquisitor Bernard Gui (1261/61–1331) wrote in his Manuel de l’Inquisiteur that if too many questions and answers were raised, the truth would be distorted and destroyed because of the diversity of events and persons involved. Thus only those questions and answers should be recorded which touched the essence of the event and appeared to express the truth. Gui’s opinion is relevant to both canonization and heresy trials, as he played an active role in the development of both procedures, which developed in tandem: Goodich, ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis’, pp. 135–36. See also Klaniczay, ‘Ritual and Narrative’, p. 210. 102  Krötzl, ‘Prokuratoren, Notare und Dolmetscher’, p. 127, 132–36. 103  Smoller, ‘Miracle, Memory, and Meaning’, pp. 430–31. On the dangers in the study of trans­lated depositions and especially taking them literally, see Boyle, ‘Montaillou Revisited’.

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26

tant that the testimonies were recorded accurately and they were read out to the witnesses so that possible mistakes could be corrected.104 Thus, the language of the accounts belonged to the notaries, writing for other civil servants, but the message delivered was that of the witnesses.105 Besides the practicalities of the canonization inquiries, one of the foremost challenges of using canonization hearings as primary source material is to distinguish those expressions that belong to the topoi of the genre, or those which are influenced by communal memories and tales that circulated at the time. Earlier miracle stories transmitted orally in everyday conversation, sermons, and exempla established the grounds for laypeople’s conceptions of the miraculous.106 The miraculous events were discussed communally, and often there were years or even decades between the miracle and the canonization inquiry; hence the information given is based on people’s memories.107 Furthermore, people who were from the same location often travelled together to the hearing. Discussions related to the miracles and held during the journey are likely to have strengthened certain recollections at the expense of others, and may even have led witnesses to ‘recall’ events at the canonization hearing that they had heard of only recently. In addition, the proctors who prepared witnesses for 104 

Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, p. 45. According to André Vauchez, the number of processes rejected at the curia because of too much alteration to the witnesses’ depositions declined after 1250, possibly because the demand of accuracy was then taken more seriously: Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 60–64. 105  Smoller, ‘Miracle, Memory, and Meaning’, pp. 430–31. See also Goodich, ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis’, pp. 143–44 on finding the witnesses’ voices in the testimonies, and Lett, Un procès de canonisation, pp. 258–70, on the language of the testimonies. 106  See Smoller, Miracle, Memory, and Meaning, p. 433. Directly or indirectly inspired by Vladimir Propp’s morphological analysis of the folk tale, the narrative structure of a miracle account has been studied by Stanko Andrić and Gábor Klaniczay, who conclude that each miracle story has a limited number of constituents. See Andrić, The Miracles of St. John Capistran, pp. 225–57; Klaniczay, ‘Miracoli di punizione e maleficia’; Klaniczay, ‘Narrative and Ritual’, pp. 212–14; Moore, ‘Between Sanctity and Superstition’, pp. 57–58. In most cases this also holds for what witnesses testified about the lives of the saints: See Falvay, ‘Memory and Hagiography’, p. 355. Not all canonization processes were as univocal in this sense, however. For example, the process of St Thomas Cantilupe includes sceptical voices: Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 176. 107  Irene Bueno has concluded that in inquisition trials, memories were regarded as reliable, especially when they fitted to the pre-defined model of heretical dissent: Bueno, ‘Dixit quod non recordatur’, p. 381. This was apparently the case also in the canonization inquests, although the commissioners usually sought confirmation from several witnesses. The official, juridical meaning of memory was thus strengthened by repetition.

Introduction

27

the hearing could influence their way of reporting the events. 108 Thus in miracle narratives the experiences of impairment in everyday life are always looked back on through the lens of saintly intervention, and the expressions used to describe the injuries or impairments, as well as rituals and requests for help, are strongly coloured by the genre. Taking the above-mentioned practicalities into account, the methodology of this study is primarily qualitative, while the points of comparison are diverse and multiple. Witness depositions about the same miracle will be compared, as will accounts between miracles, taking into account the characteristics of different processes and witnesses. Although there are significant differences between the processes, especially in the form of the written records, their background and context are so uniform that a comparative approach can be justified. After all, the practicalities of inquisitiones in partibus were decreed in canon law,109 and the processes went through the papal hierarchy according to a strict set of rules, providing a necessary framework for making observations and comparisons. Quantitative analysis of the depositions will occasionally be used as a tool to illustrate the frequency of certain phenomena, but because my primary interest lies in mentalities, this will be subordinate to a close reading of the sources. Occasionally, comparisons between the conceptions of laypeople, churchmen, and medical authorities are essential, and the canonization depositions will be compared to miracle collections, clerical manuals, exempla and sermons. These documents were created for a range of purposes and some are less important for the current study than others, but the comparison exercise is important for investigating whether the views expressed in those texts are in congruence with canonization testimonies, and how this reflects the conceptions of the laity. Finally, a few words on orthography and vocabulary are necessary. For the sake of uniformity, I have chosen to use the English versions of the saints’ names. In the names of the witnesses and other people mentioned in the testimonies, however, I have used the forms of their names as they were written in the original Latin or French documents. While some names would be relatively 108  See Goodich, ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctus Suis’, pp. 143–44; Hanska, ‘The Hanging of William Cragh’, p. 137; Smoller, ‘Miracle, Memory, and Meaning’, p. 433. Laura A. Smoller has also convincingly demonstrated that the canonization hearing itself was one of the means by which laypeople were educated on what was expected from a proper miracle narrative: Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’. 109  For example, Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 71–72; Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, pp. 65–66. On the development of the legal system concerning canonization, see Kleinberg, ‘Canonization without a Canon’; Krötzl, ‘Prokuratoren, Notare und Dolmetscher’; Paciocco, Canonizzazioni e culto dei santi nella christianitas, pp. 55–134; Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 39–98.

28

Introduction

easy to translate into their original language, in most cases there can be no certainty as to the original form of the name or sometimes even to the original language of the witness. On the other hand, place names are given in their modern forms whenever possible. When referring to the original sources, I have no choice but to occasionally use vocabulary that would nowadays be considered politically incorrect or even derogatory, such as ‘cripple’. These words are direct translations from the ori­ ginal Latin and French texts. At the time the sources were written they did not have the same cultural connotations that they do now, and to modernize the vocabulary would be anachronistic.

Chapter 1

Family and the Conceptions of Impairment

P

arents were by far the most common witnesses for their children’s miraculous cures and of those mothers testified more often than fathers: in our sources, one hundred and eleven mothers, seventy-seven fathers and three step-parents are named as witnesses in cases involving childhood impairments.1 This is exceptional when looking at the canonization processes as a whole, for the Decretum of Gratian (c. 1140) forbids women from testifying, and thus gender was ‘an essential aspect in validating the witnesses’.2 However, although the tendency was to favour men,3 there are processes in which the 1 

The numbers exclude the cases in which the witnesses have not been specified, such as Les Miracles de Saint Louis, even if it is likely that one or two parents were among them. The numbers for other immediate family members giving testimonies are: thirteen brothers, six sisters, nine uncles, eight aunts, nine grandmothers and one grandfather. Here again the numbers do not include the cases in which the witness is not identified, although in St Louis IX’s miracles it is likely that in two cases the beneficiary’s sister was among the witnesses. See Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 32–34, 144–47. There are also twenty-eight miracles in which there was no parent mentioned as a witness, but in the majority of these cases the beneficiary and/or other close family members testified. Most of these examples can be explained by the long time span between the miracle and the inquiry, for in many cases it is possible that family members had died and thus could not testify. There are also a few miracles in which all the witnesses had seen the miracle only at a shrine, without knowing the beneficiary beforehand. 2  Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, p. 29. 3  In Thomas Cantilupe’s process 78.5 per cent of the witnesses were men. Favouring of men

30

Chapter 1

proportion of female witnesses is actually higher than the proportion of males.4 When it comes to childhood impairments, the large proportion of female witnesses is explainable by the type of miracles under investigation. Especially in the case of male saints, men were more often interrogated about their lives and deeds, whereas women were called upon to give evidence of miracles they had witnessed or experienced.5 Therefore women from outside the (immediate) family were also considered as important witnesses for cures of childhood impair­­ments.6 The witnesses’ gender often demonstrates, among other things, the responsibilities and duties within a family. It has, for example, been suggested that ill or disabled children were exclusively or especially the preserve of their mothers.7 The noteworthy number of fathers testifying about their children’s cures or taking part in invoking a saint shows that fathers too were responsible for seeking treatment, although cases in which the father takes the sole responsibility of making a vow and /or taking the child on a pilgrimage are rare.8 is less apparent in the hearing of Nicholas of Tolentino, in which the corresponding percentage is 53.1: Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 29–30. 4  Golinelli, ‘Social Aspects in Some Italian Canonziation Trials’, pp. 170–71; Goodich, ‘The Politics of Canonization’, p. 177. The process of Clare of Assisi is among those in which the proportion of female witnesses is extremely high, most of them being sisters of her monastery. In Clare of Montefalco’s process — a part of which is missing — there were more women witnesses, as in the restored list of 417 witnesses, 242 were women: Menestò, ‘Introduzione’, pp. xxi–lxix. In these cases the large proportion of female witnesses is largely explicable as a consequence of the putative saints’ way of life as cloistered nuns. Nuns also had a better reputation than lay women, who were easily suspected of having loose sexual morals. Also KatajalaPeltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 34–35, concludes that gender ‘may have been important in categorizing the witnesses, yet it was not an insuperable obstacle’. 5  Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, p. 36. Women were thought to hold essential information about their children, such as their ages, as they were more often than men the keepers of family memories. Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, p. 32. 6  As an example, in the ten miraculous cures of childhood impairments in Louis of Toulouse’s process, there were thirty-two witnesses, including relatives, neighbours and other com­munity members. Eighteen of them were women. In John Buoni’s hearing, there are twenty miraculous cures of childhood impairments. Of the fifty-three witnesses, thirty-one were women. Having eye-witnesses was apparently more important than avoiding women as witnesses, but it would also seem that in matters pertaining to children’s cures, women other than mothers were often considered to give more trustworthy or useful information than men. However, this depended on the process in question. 7  See Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, p. 91. 8  In Didier Lett’s material, the father took sole responsibility in a quarter of the miracles, Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, p. 141, and in Ronald Finucane’s material in approximately one third

Family and the Conceptions of Impairment

31

As well as appearing more frequently as witnesses, parents commonly gave their testimony first in the hearings. Since the first witness usually held the highest social status in other legal procedures, in canonization depositions the first informant was considered the most important.9 In the sources of this study, this person was usually a mother or a father and, especially in St Louis of Toulouse’s process, also the beneficiary.10 Parents were seen as those providing the most trustworthy and detailed information, and it is reasonable to assume that parents and other members of the immediate family had most influence on the way a child’s impairment was discussed and dealt with within the domestic set­­ting and presumably also in the wider social sphere. In this chapter the conceptions of children’s impairments, as well as the vocabu­­lary used, will be explored. For reasons explained above, the emphasis is on the testimonies of family members. However, to separate family testimonies entirely from those of other community members would be contrived, and so for the sake of the overall picture, definitions given by other witnesses will also be considered. The aim is first to find out which aspects of impairment were considered most important for the canonization inquest, and second to of the cases: Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 99–100. There appear to have been differences according to the geographic area, however. Northern European fathers typically played more active roles than Italian ones. See Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, esp. pp. 115–20; Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Parental Roles in the Canonisation Processes’, pp. 145–55. On fathers’ nurturing roles in Scandinavian examples, see Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Fatherhood, Masculinity and Lived Religion’. In the sources of this study, the proportions vary. For example, in the southern French hearing of Louis of Toulouse, the father made the vow for an impaired child in only one of the ten such miracles. Of the seven miraculous cures of childhood impairments in the Italian hearing of Clare of Montefalco, the parents took the child to the shrine together in one case. In other cases the visit or the vow was made by the mother or another female relative. However, eight of the twelve miraculous cures of childhood impairments by the merits of Urban V were a result of a vow or a pilgrimage made by the child’s father, which is in concordance with the absence of mothers witnessing in these cases. It is nevertheless worth pointing out that in many instances a child lost a parent at quite a young age, which could transfer the parental responsibilities to the remaining parent, step-parent, or other relative: See Clare of Montefalco, pp. 356–57 for a stepmother making a vow, and AASS Oct. IX, pp. 825–26 for an uncle acting as a father-figure. 9  Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 56–57. 10  Six out of ten beneficiaries of miraculous cures of childhood impairments included gave their testimonies. Of the remaining four beneficiaries one (the aforementioned Iacobus Deodatus) was dead by the time of the hearing and one was less than two years old. The commissioners of this process seem to have favoured beneficiaries as witnesses in other cases as well, their depositions were recorded first, even in the case of children.

32

Chapter 1

discuss what the testimonies and expressions used reveal about different ideas and perceptions of various ailments. In modern thinking it has been proposed that the vocabulary actually constructs our notion of disability, and the disabled are verbally categorized on the basis of their physical or mental differences or depersonalized by the use of medical terminology.11 Could such a view be applicable to the medieval world? Moreover, the emotions and reactions the family members reported will be scrutinized, asking what these descriptions reveal about attitudes towards impaired children, and what role was played by emotions in the testimonies. As mothers’ and fathers’ ideas on the matter appear most often in the sources, it is also reasonable to look closely at the cases where their testimonies differed.

The Vocabulary of Impairment The symptoms of childhood impairments as described in the testimonies can be divided roughly into two categories: the outer and /or pathological symptoms, and the disabling effects of the condition. Although these two aspects often go hand-in-hand, as will be demonstrated below, their separation in the following analysis will be useful for scrutinizing which of them were emphasized in the testimonies. It also allows us to discuss whether the distinction between ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ is obvious in the depositions, and whether the bod­­ily aspects of impairment can be separated from functional and social restrictions. The severity and the type of the child’s physical condition needed to be described in a way that made the miraculous power of the saint obvious. How elaborately or analytically this was recorded varies depending on the hearing in question, but within each process there are also differences both between individual miracles and between individual depositions. The differences between various processes are a result of the commissioners’ preferences as well as the level of detail in the recording of the depositions. However, the witnesses also had different ways of talking about impairments. This could be caused by individual and communal preferences and conceptions, as well as the possible consultation of medical professionals.12 Medieval vocabulary concerning what out modern society labels as ‘disability’ or ‘impairment’ was notably vague. A general term, perhaps most close to 11  Bursztyn, ‘Parents, Children with Disabilities, and Social Integration’, pp. 1–2; Rose, ‘Gender, Generation, Aging, and Disability’, pp. 178–79. 12  Medical professionals will be further discussed on pp. 198–220.

Family and the Conceptions of Impairment

33

Table 2: Vocabulary Used to Describe Mobility Impairments contractus (crippled, lame)

38

impotens (powerless, weak, incapable of something)

15

morbus (sickness, illness, weakness)

14

claudus (crippled, lame, limping)

18

debilis / debilitates (weak, crippled)

8

paraliticus (paralyzed)

9

modern concept of ‘impairment’ used in the testimonies is infirma / infirmitas, also commonly used in other types of texts than hagiography.13 It was not, however, limited only to physically impairing conditions, as different kinds of physical and mental illnesses could be labelled as infirmitas. When it comes to terms that were more specific, with mobility impairments the common one is contractus, which basically means ‘crippled’;14 in Nicholas of Tolentino’s process protractus is also used.15 Other general terms used are claudus, which also translates as ‘limping’ or ‘lame’, 16 impotens which means ‘powerless’ or ‘incapable (of something)’,17 debilis or debilitates, also translatable as ‘crippled’, ‘weak’, or ‘incapable’,18 or morbus, which can include all sorts of impairments and illnesses.19 13 

In Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 37, 46, 96, the word used is either enferme or enfermeté. See also Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 4–5. 14  A literal translation would be ‘restricted’, ‘pinching’, or ‘causing one to draw oneself together’. Oxford Latin Dictionary, p. 434. Based on modern medical literature, these kinds of conditions supposedly were often caused by severe systemic diseases such as stroke, bone tuberculosis, or polio, although making such diagnoses retrospectively is often hazardous. See Wittmer-Butsch and Rendtel, Miracula: Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter, p. 98. In Les Miracles de Saint Louis the corresponding word is contrete. See Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 25, 46. 15  Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 185, 293, 365. 16  Oxford Latin Dictionary, p. 334. 17  Oxford Latin Dictionary, p. 850. 18  In addition to ‘traditional’ physical impairments, the word debilis was also attached to leprosy and insanity, as well as general weaknesses, various illnesses such as fever, birth deformities and decrepitude, covering a large variety of bodily and mental afflictions belonging to the natural human lifecourse. Goetz, ‘Vorstellungen von menschlicher Gebrechlichkeit’, pp. 32–33, 46. 19  See also Goetz, ‘Vorstellungen von menschlicher Gebrechlichkeit’, pp. 26–42. Morbus can also refer to the fairly weak concept of mala complexio, which could then be given a proper name defining its particular symptoms (such as gout or leprosy). See Wallis, ‘Medicine, Theoretical’, p. 338.

Chapter 1

34

Table 3: Medical Conditions Causing Mobility Impairments Diagnosis

Number of cases

fistulae / foraminis / apostemata / cancer

24

gutta

7

gibbi

6

contractione or debilitates nervorum

2

scabie et bognonis

2

inflatura

2

bubo

1

ignis beati Anthonii

1

mengassa

1

scrofula

1

variola

1

A seventh such term, which can also be interpreted as a medical one, is paraliticus, ‘paralyzed’.20 It seems these terms were used quite freely, but usually only one or two of them were attached to any one condition. Contractus and claudus appear to have been used as synonyms, while impotens more often refers to the disabling effects of the condition and the inability to do something (e.g. impotens ad eundum, impotens ad ambulandum).21 In addition to being a common term for a condition impairing mobility, paraliticus was also used to refer to impairments that prevented the child from moving, 22 or to refer to functional disability 20 

On these terms in St  Elizabeth of Hungary’s hearing, see Wendel-Widmer, Die Wunderheilungen, p. 39. 21  See Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 178–79; Clare of Montefalco, pp. 308–09, 348, 427; Louis of Toulouse, pp. 174–75; Yves of Tréguier, p. 221. 22  The mother of Mauhauta described the child as paralitica, specifying that she could not make use of her left side: Yves of Tréguier, p. 210. The symptoms of paralysis were not uniform, however. One child in John Buoni’s hearing suffered from an epilepsy-like condition, but according to his parents and other witnesses, doctors had named the condition as paralysis: AASS Oct. IX, pp. 679–80. On a somewhat similar condition, see Clare of Montefalco, pp. 323–24. When frater Petrus de Mundis was asked how he knew a boy cured by St Thomas Aquinas was paraliticus, he replied that when the boy’s father had carried him to the shrine, he had witnessed

Family and the Conceptions of Impairment

35

caused by another condition, such as gutta.23 The interpreter and the notary had a significant role in choosing the term for a particular situation, possibly picking vocabulary rooted in the medical knowledge of the time, 24 as is also shown by the occasional differences in various processes (the above-mentioned proctractus in Nicholas of Tolentino’s hearing being one example). It is impossible to trace the original, vernacular wording used by the witnesses, and even the sole source written in French — the miracle collection of Louis IX — was originally written in Latin. Perhaps the translations were closer to the original wordings when the witness spoke a Romance language, but we have no evidence of this. In any case, despite the minor differences, there is a strong consistency in terminology regardless of where the inquest was held. In addition to using the above-mentioned, more general terms to label a child’s con­­dition as mobility impairment, parents and other witnesses occasionally gave them more specific diagnoses. Alongside paralysis, the specified conditions seen as causes of children’s physical impairments are fistulae, foraminis, cancer, and apostemata (twenty-four cases),25 occasionally overlapping and therefore given here as a singular category;26 gutta (seven cases);27 contraction or weakness of the nerves his limbs trembling and that he could not stand without support: Thomas Aquinas I, p. 310. Alicia de Lonesdale, on the other hand was paralitica, and she stated that she had been unable to walk and unable to feel anything: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 67r. 23  As an example, Adelicia Alani Thome was made paralitica and contracta by gutta: Yves of Tréguier, p. 245. 24  On interpreters, see Krötzl, ‘Prokuratoren, Notare und Dolmetscher’, pp. 127, 132–36; Richter, ‘Collecting Miracles’, pp.  53–54, 58. For the usage of medical terminology when recording miracles at shrines, see Wilson, ‘Conceptions of the Miraculous’. 25  AASS Oct.  IX, pp.  786, 791, 811, 825, 873; ASV, MS  A.A.  Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 3r; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fol. 88v; Dauphine of Puimichel, pp. 436–37, 503; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 169, 186, 219–20; Peter of Morrone, pp. 247, 251–52. In modern medical terminology these conditions would translate as fissures or fistulas; typically they are ulcers and abscesses of different kinds, which either caused mobility problems in the first place or were among the symptoms of an otherwise impairing condition. On fistulas, see Demaitre, Medieval Medicine, pp. 95–96; McVaugh, ‘Fistulas, the Knee and the “‘Three-Dimensional’ Body”’. 26  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 825, 873. On cancer in medieval medicine, see Demaitre, ‘Medieval Notions of Cancer’. 27  AASS Nov.  IV, pp.  583–84; Louis of Toulouse, pp.  187, 195; Yves of Tréguier, pp. 151–53, 212, 236–38, 245–46. Although it would be tempting to translate the illness as gout, the impairments for which such a term was used covered a wide range of impairing conditions. Medieval medical writers distinguished different types of the illness. In c. 1270 Gilbertus Anglicus described arthetica as a disease of the bones and joints, which could affect other parts of the body as well. When affecting the ligaments which unite the spine with the

36

Chapter 1

(two cases);28 scabies (two cases);29 and bubo,30 ignis beati Anthonii,31 scrofula,32 hip it was called sciatica, when affecting hands, cyragra, when affecting the feet, podagra and when affecting the head, cephalea, emigranea, or monopagia. When some humour ran down (reumatizat) into the chest, it could spread to the nerves of the vertebrae and the chest. For this reason the disease had the general name gout (gutta), as it resembles a drop (also gutta in Latin) that flows over the weaker organs receiving the humour: Gilbertus Anglicus, Medicine of the Thirteenth Century, pp. 44–45. Similarly, John of Gaddesden (d. 1361) divided the symptoms into three types. Sciatica affected the hip area, podagra the feet, and cheiragra hands and fingers. According to Guy de Chauliac (c. 1300–68), gutta was synonymous with arthritis (arthetica) and podagra: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 75. On the cultural history of gutta, see Porter and Rousseau, Gout: The Patrician Malady. Canonization processes mostly use the term gutta with few exceptions that refer to podagra in the case of adult beneficiaries. See Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 171, 616; Thomas Aquinas I, pp. 282, 284, 288, 311, 315. The only case I have found where someone was reportedly cured of gutta in other part of the body than limbs is recorded in Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 167, portraying a boy cured of the illness in his face. 28  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 166; AASS Oct. IX, pp. 827–28; Thomas Aquinas I, p. 310. In Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 32–33, the term used is ners retrez. When describing the cure of his son, one man in St Elizabeth’s hearing also stated that the nerves started to loosen: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 219. How the witnesses understood the nervous system is not revealed by the depositions, and it is also possible that by using the word nervi they meant sinews or muscles which are alternative translations for the word. Many medieval medical writers pondered the working and dysfunction of nerves especially when discussing various forms of paralysis. See Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 74–76. 29  Margaret of Hungary, p. 342. The child also had other infirmities, so that in the end he was completely contractus in his right knee. See also Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 542. In medieval medicine, scabies was considered a troublesome skin infection usually affecting the extremities. It could also develop into lepra: Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine, pp. 89, 191–92, 218; Demaitre, Medieval Medicine, pp. 108–09. 30  Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 172–73. At first the girl had cramps and was crippled so that she was only able to lie in bed, but subsequently the disease called bubo occurred under her armpits, which became swollen and made her condition even worse. Bubo most likely refers to swollen lymph glands, which were later commonly associated with bubonic plague. 31  St  Anthony’s fire is an old term for ergotism, the illness caused by long-term ergot poisoning , but presumably it was also used of other conditions such as erysipelas, an acute streptococcus bacterial infection. St  Anthony’s Order had the privilege to look after patients suffering from it. See Kupfer, The Art of Healing, pp.  49–53; Rose, Neurology of the Arts, pp. 50–52. A girl called Xanctia was treated in such a house in Marseille for a while as a young child. Although the fire ceased, she remained unable to walk until cured after a votum: Louis of Toulouse, pp.  173–75. On disability as a result of St Anthony’s fire, see also Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 71. 32  Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 590. Scrofula was a term used to describe characteristics typical of what was later understood as tuberculosis of the bones and lymphatic glands. In the canoniza-

Family and the Conceptions of Impairment

37

mengassa,33 and variola34 (each one of these diagnoses given to one child). In six cases, unspecified conditions caused protuberances or humps (gibbi) and other conditions of that kind,35 but sometimes they were reported as having resulted from gutta.36 In three cases an unspecified infirmity resulted in widespread swelling, thus causing mobility problems.37 Children who had conditions affecting their vision were commonly called caecus, that is, blind. In Nicholas of Tolentino’s process the word adnocula is also used. However, the depositions make a distinction between complete blindness and the loss of vision in one eye, as the children called caecus were more or less unable to see. If the condition only affected one eye, the word caecus was not used, or it was specified that one eye was blind.38 Thus, at least in the context of canonization hearings, the word caecus — and presumably its vernacular versions — seems unequivocally to refer to more or less total blindness. It is possible that this was first and foremost a result of the demands for accuracy in the testimonies.39 However, the difference was undoubtedly also

tion records the term appears most commonly when describing conditions that affected chests and throats, causing significant swelling. See Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 59–60. 33  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 226–27. The illness the girl named Ricardeta had caused scores of festering and painful fissures in her legs, reminiscent of the typical symptoms of cancer or scabies. Ricardeta herself was the only witness to call the condition mengassa; her mother merely described the symptoms. The term is most likely a latinized version of the Occitan term for ‘mange’, or mangeue, for which Greimas, Grand dictionnaire, p. 365, gives the meaning démangeaison. For this reference I owe my thanks to Timo Korkiakangas. 34  The child was left apostemata as an aftermath of the illness: Clare of Montefalco, pp. 356–57. The symptoms remind the modern reader of smallpox, but, as pointed out also by Luke Demaitre, one must be cautious not to intrpret all such descriptions as referring to what is now known as smallpox. See Demaitre, Medieval Medicine, p. 34, and pp. 85–89 on medieval ideas about the illness. 35  Dauphine of Puimichel, p. 503; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 66, 180–81, 202, 210–11, 214–15, 219, 222, 229–30, 231–32, 239; Louis of Toulouse, p. 169; Margaret of Hungary, p. 305; Urban V, p. 31. In one case the word tumor is, however, used of a condition that made the child’s skin exceptionally sore, causing lesions when touched: Thomas Aquinas II, pp. 609–11. 36  Yves of Tréguier, pp. 212, 245–46. 37  AASS Nov. IV, pp. 608; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 226–27; Peter of Morrone, p. 291. 38  See Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 169, 185; Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 199. 39  Nevertheless, at least in one testimony the witnesses specify that the condition made the person almost unable to see, while the commissioners used the word ceca: AASS Oct. IX, p. 804. The matter will be further discussed on pp. 258–60.

Chapter 1

38

Table 4: Medical Conditions Causing Complete or Partial Blindness macula

7

foramina / apostema

4

albugines

3

infirmitas reumatis

1

vayrolhe (variola)

1

exbruncios

1

important in everyday language and experience, although the extent of the loss of vision may still have varied among those labelled as (completely) blind.40 The conditions named as the causes of children’s blindness are less varied than the causes of mobility problems. In addition to the large number of cases where no reason or condition is named, a common cause for blindness appears to have been macula in one or two eyes (seven cases),41 foramina or apostema (four cases),42 as well as albugines (three cases).43 One child had exbruncios,44 one vay40 

Even in the modern world, blindness is legally defined in distinct ways in different countries, and covers significantly reduced vision in addition to complete blindness: See Pereira and Conti-Ramsden, Language Development and Social Interaction in Blind Children, p. 3. It is conceivable that in the Middle Ages, a large part of population had reduced eyesight, one reason being the condition we know as xerophthalmia, caused by vitamin A deficiency: Scott, Miracle Cures, p. 11. Moreover, severe short- or long-sightedness undoubtedly caused problems with vision in an era when it could not be corrected by glasses. In one of St Elizabeth’s miracles it appears evident that the child in question still had some vision left, although she was excecata. The father of the girl stated that she could hardly see where she was going: Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 228–29. 41  Dorothea of Montau, pp. 225, 447–48; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 227–28; Yves of Tréguier, pp. 168, 210, Urban V, p. 178. In one of the miracles in Elizabeth’s process, the mother testifies that the girl had apostema (abscess or ulcer) on her eye, while another witness, Gerdrut, calls it a macula. Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 185. Macula as a term, referring to spots and blemishes, could also be used of conditions elsewhere in the body, as one of the witnesses for Iacobus Deodatus’s cure stated that after the miracle there were no sorde vel macula: Louis of Toulouse, p. 177. 42  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 185; Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 558; Urban V, p. 314. 43  AASS Nov. IV, pp. 583–84, 601; Dorothea of Montau, p. 71. Both maculae and albugines were used of spots, coverings and blemishes of the eyes. 44  Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 164. Ronald C. Finucane interprets the condition as conjunctivitis, which would be the modern translation of the word: Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p. 78.

Family and the Conceptions of Impairment

39

rolhe (or variola),45 and one a rheumatic condition.46 In one case the blindness was a result of the child’s eyes popping out from their sockets,47 in another one the eyes popping out was not referred to by the parents but by a third witness,48 and one girl’s blindness was caused by worms in her eyes.49 Children could also have conditions which made their eyes painful and running, sometimes preventing them from opening them.50 As stated in the Introduction, aural and speech impediments are the rarest group of impairments among the sources of this study. The common term used for deafness, surditas, appears in three cases involving a hearing impediment, and the French word sord is used of a French boy, Loÿs, the narrative defining him as totally unable to hear anything,51 and an Italian boy, Frederico Francisci, was also completely deaf.52 Another boy was described as quasi surdus, meaning that some hearing remained.53 The most ambiguous case is that of a noble girl, Rixenda de Fayensa, who lost her hearing as an infant. In her testimony she said that during her surditas she had still heard something, but reported that as she grew up the surditas had increased.54 Her father stated that when Rixenda was 45 

According to her father, dominus Petrus de Lamur, the macula (a spot or a blemish) in the eye of his daughter was caused by a fever, which then developed into an illness called vayrolhe, after which she acquired the said macula: Yves of Tréguier, p. 210. See also p. 37, n. 34. 46  The girl who was blinded by infirmitas reumatis also had swelling on her face. Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 364. The diagnosis of the illness, rare in the canonization documents, is also included as a specific category in the relatio of the process: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4027, fol. 46r. 47  Clare of Montefalco, pp. 307–08. 48  Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 109, 275, 433. 49  Stanislaus of Cracow, p. 314. Worms were a common cause of death in children, but based on the sources of this study, rarely caused impairment: See Haas, The Renaissance Man and His Children, pp. 163–64. 50  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 190; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 72r–73v, 264r; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fol. 59r; Stanislaus of Cracow, p. 301; Yves of Tréguier, p. 150. 51  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 50–51. 52  Peter of Morrone, p. 220. 53  Clare of Montefalco, pp. 373. 54  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 153–55. Rixenda’s experience and the level of her deafness are further discussed below, see esp. pp. 253–54. The usage of the term surda in the depositions does not differ significantly from the ways in which the word ‘deaf ’ is used nowadays. ‘Deafness’ is still used to mean people who either are totally deaf or who have a significant hearing loss. However, in modern vocabulary terms such as ‘hard of hearing’ or ‘hearing-impaired’ are also used, usually when referring to people who have acquired the impairment later in life. ‘Deaf ’ or ‘Deafness’ with a capital D are used to mean the deaf culture: See Ladd, Understanding Deaf Culture, pp. 32–35.

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two, he and her mother had realized that she did not hear anything, but still concluded that the surditas increased as she grew up.55 Her brothers, on the other hand, simply stated that she was surda.56 In this case the words surda and surditas seem to indicate a severe hearing impediment rather than a complete lack of hearing, although it is possible that eventually Rixenda could not hear anything. In the testimonies describing cures of reduced hearing, there are no specified conditions mentioned as there are with conditions causing mobility impairments or blindness. The one exception is a testimony in Clare of Assisi’s hearing, given by a nun of her order. She described the case of a boy who had a spot or blotch (macchia) in his ear.57 One boy who had a tinnitus-like condition had acquired it as a result of falling into boiling water.58 The terms and expressions used of speech impediments in the sources are mutus, impeditus in loquela, amissus loquelam, and similar. Only very seldom was muteness specifically connected with the loss of hearing, the above-mentioned Loÿs and Frederico being the two exceptions.59 The word mutus, which would translate as ‘mute’, was used frequently, but not invariably. In at least one case the word mutus was used to refer to a child who could talk but only in a very unclear manner;60 however, it seems that most often the word mutus referred just to those who were completely unable to speak.61 55 

Louis of Toulouse, p. 154: ‘et cum pervenisset dicta filia ad etatem duorum annorum vel circa perceperunt ipse pater et mater sua quod dicta filia nichil audiebat, et quod, ea crescente, surditas eciam crescebat in ea’. 56  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 154–55. 57  Clare of Assisi, p. 132. 58  Clare of Montefalco, p. 379. 59  One of the witnesses in the latter case stated that in addition to being surdus, the boy had had linguam impeditam since birth: Peter of Morrone, p. 221. This seems to be a continuum of the ancient concept of an obstruction of the mouth resulting in inability to speak, although not invariably connected with deafness: See Laes, ‘Silent Witnesses’, p. 456. The rarity of miracle cases connecting children’s deafness and muteness in canonization documents suggests that Irina Metzler’s remark that deafness and muteness were usually discussed together in medieval writings indeed pertains mostly to medical discourse: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 78. 60  One father reported that for four years his son had been mutus, not speaking at all except in a babbling manner: Urban V, p. 465. 61  There are two children with speech impediments in St Louis IX’s miracles. One, a boy, was called muet as he was completely unable to speak. The other was a girl who was able to say only ‘de par Dé’ and ‘de par No Dam’, and yet the word muet is never used in the narrative regarding her cure: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 50–57, 108–12. Similarly, a noble boy called Ludovicus was reported as having been unable to speak in an understandable way (non

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As regards use of medical terms to define muteness, especially when it was the only impairment the child had, the situation is similar to that of hearing impediments, in the sense that no specific medical conditions were named. A high proportion of the cases recorded were either caused by other conditions,62 or the child was reported as having been mute or deaf and mute since birth without any further explanation.63 Three of these children had been born without a tongue.64 One interesting aspect of the definitions of various conditions is the difference in the medical precision of family members’ conceptions and how it was affected by the availability of ‘official’ medical help. The process of Nicholas of Tolentino is one of the most detailed in this sense, as besides the more common def­initions, many of the references to less commonly mentioned conditions listed in the table above come from that source;65 and indeed about a quarter of the children mentioned in it were visited by a medical professional.66 A specific example of doctors taking a role in naming the condition was given by magister Iacobus Gentilis Gaydani, who was a medicus himself. He testified that according to the physicians’ judgement, his son’s eyes were swollen and apostematic.67 However, the influence of physicians in this sense must not be exaggerated, for even if there were doctors treating a child, the family members did not nec-

potuit loqui nec locutus fuerat […], in modum quod intelligeretur), but the word mutus was not recorded: Dauphine of Puimichel, pp. 90–91, 477–78. There are discrepancies between the article, which states (possibly based on a report given by the boy’s mother) that the muteness lasted for six years, and the testimony of the boy’s father’s vassal magister Michael Engelberti de Podino Pio, who said he had known the boy since his birth and that he had been mute for two years after the age when he should have started to speak. 62  Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 178–79, 196, 226, 229–30; AASS Nov. IV, p. 590; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 108–12; Yves of Tréguier, p. 290; Peter of Morrone, pp. 154–55, 280–81, 301–02, 308–10; Urban V, p. 447; Birgitta of Vadstena, p. 301. 63  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 50–55; Peter of Morrone, pp. 220–21, 298, 324; Urban V, p. 465; Birgitta of Vadstena, p. 278; Dorothea of Montau, pp. 123, 451. 64  The testimonies regarding these three boys are in BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 90r–v, 105r–v, r 186 –88r, 204r–09v, 241v–42r. For further discussion on their identities, see pp. 154–55. 65  Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 164, 364, 590. 66  These figures will be further discussed on pp. 198–220. 67  Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 598: ‘Quod oculi erant ita tumefacti et apostemati, secundum iudicium medicorum, prout dixit, et quod sanguis et stercus exiebat corruptum de dictis oculis cum magna effusione.’

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essarily name the condition.68 Moreover, in some processes where the presence of doctors is hardly visible or rarely recorded in relation to impaired children, there is some use of medical terminology; for example, the above-mentioned cases from Louis of Toulouse’s hearing.69 Whether or not the conditions were specifiable in the first place also depends on the selection of the miracles. For instance, in the process of Thomas Cantilupe, there were seven impaired children. One of them was paralyzed as a result of an accident, three were lacking a tongue, and three were blind.70 Of these, only the conditions causing blindness could be given a more specific definition or diagnosis, and it often happened that family members or other witnesses mentioned none.71 The later Middle Ages saw a development which has been described as per­­ ceptible medicalization; this saw various forms of human deviance being classed as medical conditions, and also coincided with the spread of medical edu­­cation and knowledge.72 It is, however, reasonable to ask whether much of the terminology described as ‘medical’, excluding very specific ones like exbruncios, was used solely or largely by the medical profession and thus the extent to which laypeople’s conceptions of physical impairment were being ‘medicalized’. Presu­­ mably the most common terms, such as gutta or its vernacular forms, were used by all social groups, even though the symptoms attached to them varied. It seems that there were also geographical differences that depended on the cult of the saint and its promoters and investigators. As an example, the term gutta appears often in St Yves’s process, in which four of the five children with mobil-

68  As an example, in Nicholas of Tolentino’s process the mother and aunt of a girl called Cathalina testified about her cure of a blinding condition in one eye. They mentioned that doctors, who were their relatives, had treated the girl, but still they did not give any name or definition to the condition: Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 311. Similarly, only the physician treating a girl called Sophia stated that her severely apostematic condition was a result of variola, whereas the family members gave no such diagnosis: Clare of Montefalco, pp. 356–57, 383–84, 482. 69  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 187, 195, 226–27. 70  BAV, MS  Vat. lat. 4015, fols  64v–71r, 71v–73r, 90r, 186v–209v, 204r–09v, 234r–37r, 242r–42v. 71  Geographical location may have had an influence here as well, for in northern Europe there were significantly fewer trained physicians available: for further discussion, see pp. 205–09. 72  McCleery, ‘Christ More Powerful Than Galen?’, pp. 128–29; Singer, ‘Playing by Ear’, pp. 40–41. On the ‘medicalization’ of miracles in the late twelfth century, see Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate, pp. 183–87.

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ity impairments were reported as having suffered from it (the other child had paralysis).73 It also seems that the commissioners or notaries of processes had different views regarding the importance of defining the conditions to be cured. In Yves of Tréguier’s hearing the question about the nature of the condition or illness was frequently recorded, which may have affected the given definitions.74 Then again, the investigators of Yves’s sainthood also inquired of the witnesses how they knew that a child had been blind,75 but only one of them was asked what had caused the macula in the girl’s eye: consequently he named the illness as vayrolhe.76 One mother stated — possibly as a reply to a commissioner’s question — that her daughter lost her vision propter infirmitatem quam habuerat,77 and no further requests for more specific information on the nature of the said infirmitas were recorded. It seems that for laypeople a precise diagnosis in medical terms was not essential for proving the miracle true.78 Moreover, it is presumable that few witnesses were able or expected to be able to give more precise definitions, and thus they were not necessarily inquired about or the answers recorded. At the 73 

Yves of Tréguier, pp. 151–52, 211–12, 245–46, 236–38, 290. See Yves of Tréguier, p. 212: ‘Interrogatus quando sibi venit dicta infirmitas, dixit quod gutta ipsum primo arripuit in cruribus et circa lumbos, et deinde succesive in genibus et in dorso, et deinde infirmitas venit supradicta’; and p. 237: ‘Interrogata unde sibi evenerat dicta infirmitas, dixit quod ex gutta et aliis infirmitatibus que sibi acciderant’. One reason for the frequency of such questions may be that apparently no articuli or capituli interrogatorii were used in the hearing, and so information on the diagnosis was not gathered beforehand but had to be inquired from the witnesses during the hearing. See also Toynbee, S. Louis of Toulouse and the Process of Canonisation, pp. 166–68. There are similar notions in John Buoni’s hearing: See AASS Oct. IX, p. 828: ‘Quae panis (?) sive infirmitas quo nomine vocaretur, interrogatus dictus testis se nescire’. The word panis as well as the question mark are written into the text by the editor. The actual word in the original manuscript is more likely to have been poenis. See also AASS Oct. IX, p. 864 for an example of parents’ unawareness of the name of the condition. 75  See Yves of Tréguier, pp. 150, 224. 76  Yves of Tréguier, p. 210. 77  Yves of Tréguier, p. 269. A man called Bede was asked if he knew the reason for his daughter’s blindness. He replied that the girl had had healthy eyes for two years, after they had hurt for three years, and then she was blind for one year: Margaret of Hungary, p. 355. Similarly, when Irmendrudis de Eschershusen was asked why her grandson had been unable to walk, she replied that she did not know, but believed it was because of an infirmity, since the boy had beautiful limbs: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 209. 78  The scientific background was often provided by medical professionals: Ziegler, ‘Practi­ tioners and Saints’. 74 

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beginning of the records of Thomas Cantilupe’s hearing, it is even stated that the witnesses should only be asked those questions they could be expected to know the answer to, and that asking all the questions of every witness was a waste of time and parchment.79 The occasional references to specific names of various conditions suggest that in some cases there existed an agreement about the name of the child’s impairment or illness, but, at the same time, that such names were not regarded by the witnesses as vitally important to recall.80 As pointed out in the Introduction, the usage of modern terminology of ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ in the medieval context has been much discussed in recent studies. In part this discussion arises from the lack of an umbrella term like ‘disability’ in the medieval texts. In the sources for this study, the words infirmus or infirmare, as well as morbus, were all commonly used as general terms for physical and sensory impairments that could either have been congenital or have been acquired later by the child.81 As an example of the loose terminology for describing ‘illness’ and ‘impairment’, in the process of John Buoni, Thomasina suffered so severely that she could not eat or drink, and it appeared that she had no bones. Both parents testified that she was infirma, but they could not name the condition, even though the commissioners apparently asked the mother its name.82 In the same process, Agnese was cured of a similar condition: she was unable to eat or drink anything except milk and had been unable to move at all since birth. The mother testified that she had nervos contractos et retractos,83 and the brother that she was contracta,84 which 79 

Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles and Daily Life, p. 39; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 3v–4r. Parents could also express their uncertainty about the common opinion of the illness; Petronilla Albanella testified that her daughter had gutta, as other people said, yet she herself did not know what the illness was: Louis of Toulouse, p. 195. 81  For example, Ricardeta Bruna had had an unnamed illness (morbus) since her birth, which affected her legs and feet: Louis of Toulouse, p. 226. See also Louis of Toulouse, pp. 224–25, for Ganthelma, who had ‘gravem morbum in crure sinistro’ for about one-and-a-half years. There are also differences in the usage of terms in different processes, as in the inquiry of St Elizabeth of Hungary, the verb egrotare appears occasionally as a synonym of infirmare in descriptions of children’s short- and long-term physical ailments. This contradicts Irina Metzler’s argument that the word egroti meant ‘sick’ as opposed to ‘chronically ill’: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 5. See also BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 68r, 72v, in which the word was used to refer to a paralyzing, long-term condition as well as a shorter affliction of a child’s eyes. 82  AASS Oct. IX, p. 864: ‘quae erat ita infirma quod non poterat comedere, neque bibere, nec lac sugere: et dixit dicta testis quod nesciebat quo nomine dicere infirmitatem illam’. 83  AASS Oct. IX, p. 827. 84  AASS Oct. IX, p. 828. 80 

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translates as a crippling impairment rather than an illness. However, apparently in response to a commissioner’s question, the brother also declared that he did not know the name of the infirmitas. Moreover, in several testimonies the child was simply recorded as blind, crippled, and so on, and specific explications were neither given nor asked for — or at least, if they were, the inquiries were not recorded. Just as with earlier hagiographers, precise categorization of illnesses appears to have been of little importance to those conducting the hearings.85 In contrast to modern ideas, ‘illness’ and ‘impairment’ were not distinguished in the testimonies, and there were no differences in the terminology used for children’s long- or short-term conditions.86 Although medicalization is discernible in some testimonies that included professional medical opinions, it must be clearly distinguished from modern conceptions of the medicalization of disability. Although the writers use medical terminology to describe bodily conditions, in the Middle Ages medicalization did not mean pathologization.87 Another illuminating example of the vagueness of terminology is found in Les Miracles de Saint Louis, although this is a French translation of a Latin text based on the depositions. Describing the condition of a woman called Hodierne, the text reads as follows: En l’an Nostre Seigneur mil IIc IIIIxx et II eu mois de setembre ot dis anz passez et plus que une enfermeté prist Hodierne, une femme de Vileteigneuse de quarante anz, et estoit boiteuse de sa nativité, mere Renout des Plastrieres, si que ele ne se pooit soustenir seur ses piez se ele ne s’apuiast a paroi ou a banc ou a autre chose ou alast en trainant soi par terre aus mains ou as piez. Et en tel estat ele fu par deus anz ou environ. Et devant cel tens la dite Hodierne avoit esté saine femme et hetie, et aloit a Paris et revenoit et ailleurs par soi sanz baston et sanz ayde, et fesoit ses autres besoignes ausi comme une autre saine femme, et nonpourquant ele clochoit de nature.88 (In the year of Our Lord 1282, in the month of September, ten years and more has passed since an infirmity attacked Hodierne, a woman of forty years from Ville85 

According to Pierre-André Sigal, this was partly caused by the lack of medical knowledge. See Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, p. 248 and also Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, pp. 86–87. 86  Hans-Werner Goetz’s findings on the usage of debilis further support the notion that terminology-wise, there was no need to distinguish what we understand as ‘disability’ from ‘illness’. See Goetz, ‘Vorstellungen von menschlicher Gebrechlichkeit’, pp. 45–47. 87  See Singer, ‘Playing by Ear’, pp. 40–41. 88  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 96–97. Translations are my own, unless stated otherwise. I have attempted a fairly exact translation of the Latin with some concessions for the sake of readability.

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taneuse, [who was] the mother of Renout des Plastrieres, and she was limping from her birth, so that she could not remain on her feet if she did not get support from a wall or a bench or another thing, or dragged herself on the ground on her hands or her legs. And she was in such a state for two years or thereabouts. And before that time the said Hodierne had been a healthy woman, and came and went in Paris and elsewhere on her own without a cane and without an aid, and did her other tasks like any other healthy woman, although she limped by nature.)

Later on, after making a pilgrimage to St  Louis IX’s shrine, Hodierne was cured, which in her case meant more or less returning to her original ‘limping’ state. In this particular case the protagonist was, at the same time, both impaired — at least according to our modern definition — and healthy, and the temporary worsening of her condition, eventually cured by the merits of St Louis IX, was a malady. There is another similar case in Louis IX’s miracles concerning a woman called Marguerite, suer de la meson des Filles Dieu, who had also been ‘naturally’ (naturelment) boisteuse but who was then struck by a malady that impaired her hand and leg. The text specifies that she had been making silk pur­­ses and walked well and freely, and although she was limping on her left side, she had been able to put her left foot on the ground. In this case both her handi­­craft skills and the ability to put her foot on the ground are taken as signs of her being healthy. After making a pilgrimage to St Louis IX’s shrine in Saint-Denis, she was again able to do her tasks and walk without the cane with her foot on the ground, although she was still limping.89 It has been suggested that in early modern thinking ‘healthy’ implied having a functional body,90 and it does indeed seem that because the limp did not restrict Hodierne or Marguerite from functioning in the manner they were supposed to, they were considered healthy. Although the final wording of the records of Hodierne’s case come from the pen of Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, the case also supports Miri Rubin’s warning of the dangers of using binary classifications such as health–sickness or sanity–madness when discussing medieval bodies.91

89  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 101–04. Sharon Farmer points out that most of those living in the convent were repentant prostitutes, and writes that Guillaume thus stressed Marguerite’s manual labour to distinguish her from the other inhabitants, who actually begged for support of the community. Marguerite, on the other hand, had entered the Filles Dieu as a virgin: Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, p. 129. 90  Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy, pp. 185–86. 91  Rubin, ‘The Person in the Form’, p. 115.

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It is possible that cases like Hodierne’s were more common than one would think on reading medieval miracle narratives. The descriptions of cures in Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s collection are exceptionally full. However, in the other, much less detailed record of Louis’s miracles compiled at the royal court in order to promote his canonization, Hodierne’s original or residual limp is not mentioned.92 Admittedly, Guillaume de Chartres’s work precedes the canonization hearing and it is therefore possible that no detailed information on Hodierne’s original limp was available.93 Furthermore, a fifteenth-century version of Louis IX’s miracles records both Hodierne’s and Marguerite’s cures but omits the references to their ‘natural’ limping.94 It is thus possible that at least occasionally, when a miracle story was stripped to its barest essentials, the original condition or even the partial nature of the cure were not regarded as crucial.95 They did not, after all, serve the purpose of proving miraculous powers. The disabling effects of a given condition, as well as the varying definitions of a cure, are discussed later in this book, and will further demonstrate this ambi­­guity. Although the witnesses were occasionally asked if they knew the name of a particular condition, defining whether the impairment was caused by an illness or something else was rarely necessary for the procedure; for example, references to humoural theory are virtually absent from the testimonies. Thus the definitions ‘illness’, ‘disability’, or ‘impairment’ have more to do with our conceptions than with those of medieval people. The apparent lack of interest in pathology or aetiology may be a continuation of an earlier tradition of describing miraculously cured conditions. On the other hand, in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the scientific background for miracles became more important, resulting in the appearance of trained physicians as witnesses;96 the lack of interest in aetiology when interrogating laypeople was 92 

Guillaume de Chartres, De vita et actibus inclytatae recordationis regis Francorum, ed. by Bouquet, p. 40: ‘Item, eodem anno, feria IV post festum praedictorum martyrum, quaedam mulier de Villa-tignosa, nomine Hodierna, sic afflicta erat corporis sui infirmitate gravissima per XI annos […].Haec veniens ad dictum sepulchrum, fusa oratione, recepit sanitatem corporis sui per merita dicti regis: ita quod sine aliquot adjutorio poterat ire ab ipsa die et deinceps, sanitati pristinae restituta.’ 93  On the document, see Gaposchkin and Field, ‘Introduction’, pp. 26–31. 94  BNF, MS Fr. 2829, fols 95r, 120r–v. 95  See also Hanska, ‘From Historical Event to Didactic Story’. Sometimes the hagiographers, however, added details not mentioned in the original witness accounts, if that served their purposes: Klaniczay, ‘Ritual and Narrative’, pp. 221–23. 96  Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 549.

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also due to an understanding that such specific information was only requested of people who were considered able to give it. Presumably the physical symptoms and everyday hindrances caused by the impairment or (chronic) illness were the significant factors in witnesses’ experiences and memories.

Physical Limitations and Pain The disabling consequences of the condition in question were often inherent in the terms used to refer to it. This is most obvious in the word impotens, which in most cases refers to the inability to do something — usually to walk or move in general.97 Even in earlier miracle accounts the focus was usually on the consequences of the malady or infirmity rather than on their other characteristics.98 In the canonization testimonies mobility problems, complete or partial blindness, and inability to hear or speak are stated facts, whose incapacitating effects were described in various ways — in some testimonies the descriptions are very detailed, while in others a more straightforward statement was thought sufficient. I now propose to examine these statements and analyse how they constructed the disabilities of medieval children. In testimonies dealing with mobility impairments, walking problems and their nature were recorded in nearly all cases. Whether the child was completely unable to walk or needed aids was always specified. As an example, a seven-yearold boy cured by Urban V was reported by his father as having been ‘unable to walk, either with sticks or without them’,99 while some children were reported as having needed a stick or crutches. 100 Similarly, the way a child walked and 97 

See Clare of Montefalco, pp. 308, 348; Louis of Toulouse, pp. 162–64, 169, 174–75; Urban V, p. 463; Yves of Tréguier, p. 221. 98  Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, p. 228. Medical writers of the era were, to some extent, interested in the aetiology of various conditions, but compared to many acute illnesses, impairing conditions attracted relatively little attention from writers, which may derive from their idea of the incurability of various impairments. See Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, esp. p. 68. This viewpoint has its dangers, though, as the distinction between ‘illness’ and ‘impairment’ is largely a modern one, congenital conditions and those acquired as a result of an accident perhaps being exceptions. 99  Urban V, pp. 301–02: ‘Nullo modo posset ambulari, nec cum baculis nec sine baculis’. See also Margaret of Hungary, p. 305: ‘[…] ita contractus fuit in toto corpore, quod dorsum eius exiverat ad modum gibbi, ut non poterat ire cum scabellis, nec cum baculo, et ita stetit usque ad carnisprivium predictum’. 100  Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 166, 219–20; Clare of Montefalco, pp. 308–09.

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the difficulties they had in using their legs were described.101 For the sake of the process outcome, testimonies naturally emphasize these aspects. Occasionally, however, we find traces of how children got accustomed to their disability, as in the case of Eidelot, whose other leg was toute seche. The narrative states how she was used to being on her feet and walking, holding someone’s hand,102 and another French girl, Mabileta, reportedly moved in the house by crawling or shuffling on her buttocks.103 Despite this attention to detail, in some cases it remains unclear exactly what made the beneficiary unable to walk. One such case is recorded in St Margaret of Hungary’s hearing, in which a boy called Leo was contractus in one knee, and yet, instead of using sticks or crutches, he was completely unable to walk and was carried everywhere. According to the mother, the boy had ‘just about every infirmity’,104 which may have made him totally incapacitated — unless it was simply a rhetorical way of highlighting the message. In two instances the beneficiary’s opinion seems to differ slightly from that of witnesses. A boy called Ceptus Sperançe de Montefalco stated that he had been unable to walk, whereas one witness said that he walked on crutches and that he was unable to walk, and another said that he walked very badly.105 In this case the long time span of ten years between the cure and the inquiry may have influenced the witnesses’ views, but it also appears that for some of the witnesses, not being able to walk meant not being able to walk without aids. In another case a boy called Amadorinus suffered from fistulas and was in danger of having his foot amputated. The boy himself was the only one who referred to his inability to walk, 101 

When testifying on the illness of a girl called Negrina, her father stated that the infirmity made her retracta, so that she could only walk bent down, so that her left hand touched her left knee. See AASS Oct. IX, pp. 808–09. Similarly, a boy called Michelet le Sauvage and a girl called Perrete were reported as having walked bent, the former for eight years. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 144, 169. As another example, in Louis of Toulouse’s process, several witnesses testified that Iacobus Deodatus walked on the sides of his feet: Louis of Toulouse, pp. 176, 180, 181. 102  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 34–35. This did not, however, lessen the wishes to get her cured. Eidelot is one of the few children reported to have been taken to various shrines by her mother before the successful pilgrimage. 103  Fragments, p. 47. 104  Margaret of Hungary, p. 342: ‘Habeo quemdam puerum meum, qui per septem annos fuit infirmus de scabie et bognonis, et quasi de omni infirmitate, ad finem ita fuit contractus in genu dextro quod nullo modo poterat ire, et portabam eum foris pro necessitate temporis in brachiis meis’. 105  Clare of Montefalco, pp. 308, 348–493, 427. See also Clare of Montefalco, pp. 504–07.

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whereas the other witnesses — his uncle and two brothers — spoke only about the other symptoms.106 Apparently the threat of amputation was the strongest memory and was what defined the case in their minds. Mobility problems are recorded in virtually all miracle accounts dealing with conditions affecting children’s legs, and not mentioning a reduced ability to move was the exception. In the process of Dauphine of Puimichel there are three children who had problems with their legs, but mobility problems are not mentioned in any of the testimonies about them. Because all of these conditions may refer to something that affects the surface of the skin, but not necessarily the bones, muscles or nerves, it is possible that these beneficiaries did not have problems with walking.107 This is further indicated by the testimonies concerning the adult contracti in the same hearing. They were all recorded as having difficulty walking, which shows that leaving the mobility issues unaddressed was not a typicality of this particular inquest. 108 The testimonies in Nicholas of Tolentino’s process also support the view that the inability to walk was mentioned without exception whenever this was the case, and that conditions which mainly affected the skin were usually those that did not cause immobility. There are ten children with conditions affecting their legs in that process, of whom only one was not mentioned as having mobility problems; the boy had an illness that caused itching and sores. 109 There were several other beneficiaries suffering from skin conditions and not mentioned as having walking problems, but most of them did have mobility problems.110 It thus seems that whenever the child’s legs or nervous system were affected, it was mentioned if there were physically disabling consequences.111 Whether 106 

AASS Oct. IX, p. 825. Dauphine of Puimichel, pp. 380–81, 436–37, 503–04. One of these children suffered from the illness of St Menna. The witness, who was a relative of the cured boy, did not describe its symptoms, but in the same process another man with the same infirmity was reported as having tumours or ulcers: Dauphine of Puimichel, pp. 309, 389. 108  See Dauphine of Puimichel, pp. 64–65, 75, 157. In Dauphine’s process there are no adults with fistulas on their feet, so comparisons with those cases cannot be made. 109  Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 542. 110  See AASS Nov.  IV, p.  591; ASV, MS  A.A, Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol.  3 r, and BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fols 88v–89r for skin diseases without walking problems, and Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 219–20, 230–31 and Louis of Toulouse, pp. 226–27 for such conditions impairing leg movement. 111  The one exception is the testimony of a man called Gaufridus Bartholomey de Coreis in Urban V’s hearing about his inborn impairment, which was cured when he was twenty-five. He gave a detailed description of the deformity of his leg and also said it was debilis. After the cure 107 

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or not those few cases where no such reports were recorded count as ‘mobility impairment’, let alone ‘mobility disability’, is therefore a question of definitions. If we take the modern definition given by the World Health Organization as a starting point and define disability as covering impairment as a problem of body structure or function, activity limitation, and/or participation restriction,112 it can be seen to fit these cases as well. The word patere, ‘suffer’, was recorded in several of these cases, apparently referring to pain,113 but perhaps also to the other consequences. In one case a man called Petrus Sulpicii testified that he had had a ‘severe infirmity’ in his right leg since childhood, causing deep, suppurating wounds. He also reported that after the cure he no longer felt any pain.114 A rather extreme description of the severe consequences of fistulas was recorded in the hearing of St Elizabeth. The woman who nursed her niece, Hadewig, testified that the pus discharging from the abscesses in the girl’s skin made her clothes wet and dogs used to pull at her garments and lick them.115 As was also the case in earlier miracle collections, a majority of mobility impairments recorded were cures of conditions that affected legs, while reports of incapacities that caused mobility impairments other than walking problems are less common.116 Conditions affecting only children’s hands rarely occur in our sources, but as in cases affecting legs, the limitation on the use of the limb was similarly referred to.117 Again, fistulas were the exception. Bengeven, the daughter of dominus Barbazanus, had them in her right hand, arm, and breast, but it was not reported whether the usage of the hand was affected. The condition was nevertheless incapacitating, and she called it horrible.118 he was able to stand the leg firmly on the ground: Urban V, pp. 430–31. 112  WHO | Disabilities: [accessed 10 Janu­ ary 2015]. 113  ASV, MS A.A, Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 3r; Dauphine of Puimichel, p. 436; Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 542. 114  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fol. 88v. 115  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 170: ‘[…] ita sanie perfunderentur, quod canes, vestes eius trahentes, saniem lambebant.’ 116  See Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, p. 241. 117  A girl called Verderosa fell from a window, and as a result her shoulder was broken and the arm was twisted back for twenty days: AASS Nov. IV, p. 605. See also AASS Nov. IV, p. 606; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 257–58, 258–59, 260. 118  AASS Oct. IX, p. 811: ‘[…] passa est incurabilem et horribilem infirmitate fistulae in manu dextera et brachio et mamilla’. According to Bengeven’s mother, she was agitated (turbaretur) by them: AASS Oct. IX, p. 812.

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In addition to the conditions causing difficulties in walking or of hand use, some of the children were completely unable to move, and the witnesses seem to have made an effort to ensure that the severity of their mobility problems was understood by the commissioners.119 The usual way of describing such incapacitating effects was to state that the child could not get up at all, or not without help, that they were bedridden,120 or had to move by crawling.121 Another method of describing severely debilitating conditions was to report that the child in question had been unable to eat with their own hands, or had hardly been able to eat.122 As eating and drinking are vital human functions, describing these problems was certainly an efficient way of underlining the severity of the situation, which presumably also had a big impact on the everyday lives of the families of these children.123 Just as problems in the use of legs were explained with reference to walking or getting out of bed, so reference was made to the 119 

See for example, Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 163; Louis of Toulouse, pp. 174–75; Peter of Morrone, p. 262. A woman called Cecilia Helziarsse, who testified about the case of Beatrix de Sancta Cruce, who was her neighbour, said that even if the house was on fire, the girl could not have come out: Louis of Toulouse, p. 164. Beatrix’s mother did not use such an eloquent metaphor, but reported that she had to carry the girl. 120  Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 172–73, 222–23, 232, 239; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 144; Louis of Toulouse, p. 225; Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 332; Peter of Morrone, pp. 308–09; Yves of Tréguier, p. 212; Urban V, pp. 172–73. 121  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 65r–70v. Irina Metzler writes that such remarks are quite common in miracle narratives recorded at shrines, and reasonably suggests that mentions of crawling do not derive from negative attitudes towards it, but rather from the technical limitations of the period and the lack of proper mobility aids: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 174–76. 122  AASS Nov. IV, p. 601: ‘et ex propriis manibus vix recipere poterat ullum cibum’; Louis of Toulouse, p. 162: ‘non poterat se manibus pascere seu iuvare nec pedibus ambulare’; ‘quod manibus se pascere seu iuvare non poterat nec pedibus propriis ambulare’; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fol. 96v: ‘non poterat se mouere nec sustinere et erat totum rigidis, nec os poterat aperire et vix poterat comedere et loqui’. See also AASS Oct. IX, pp. 827–28, 864; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 222, 258; Stanislaus of Cracow, p. 307. The results of the inability to eat were not, however, limited only to the reports of cures of impairments, but also appear to have been relatively common in descriptions of fever: Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 68, 71. 123  Occasionally children also suffered from conditions that did not necessarily physically prevent them from eating, but otherwise changed their eating habits. In St Elizabeth’s process a girl Juta was reported as having eaten earth and charcoal and only small amounts of bread: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 213. In one of Nicholas of Tolentino’s miracles a child suffered from infirmitas reumatis for three days, during which she did not eat: Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 364.

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inability to carry out a primary function, such as eating or drinking, when describing hand impairments.124 In their emphasis on walking difficulties, on the whole these descriptions of children’s mobility impairments follow the narrative pattern established for all age groups in earlier miracle collections.125 This is partly explained by the continuity in conceptions of the miraculous in the minds of both those conducting the hearings and also witnesses — all parties had internalized the patterns and demands of a proper way of relating miracle stories from repeated exposure to them. Their tales were made more credible through their conformity to previous miracle narratives.126 It is, however, possible that here again the functionality of the body defines the memories and constructs a child’s ‘disability’. Although problems in walking, let alone in getting up or eating, brought other problems, in this case reduced mobility, the level of walking difficulties appears to be the primary delineator of the situation. Presumably the references to inability to eat also derived from parental worry about the proper nurturing of their children, which was considered their responsibility.127 Only infrequently do we find references to other types of functional disabilities, and here the detail of the records plays an important role. Yfamia, the mother of the French girl Mabileta, testified that the girl wet herself and did other necessities ‘in such a manner’ and stank as a result. Yfamia also added 124 

In St Elizabeth’s miracles a boy fell from a horse. When describing the cure, the mother reported that he had regained the use of the hand for eating: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 258. 125  For examples, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 158–61 and also Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, pp. 239–41. 126  Laura A. Smoller has shown that this conception was emphasized by the very process of inquisitiones in partibus: Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’. According to Michael Goodich, only the introduction of papal canonization and the survival of the protocols allows us to trace the ‘raw data’ of witness testimonies and compare it with the earlier patterns. See Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 4–6. 127  The nurturing of children was primarily women’s responsibility, starting from childbirth. Religious iconography also emphasized Mary’s nurturing role, which was strongly highlighted and compared to the role of Joseph. See for example, Hanawalt, ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’, pp. 164–65. However, childbirth did become more of a concern for male members of the household when something went wrong, although they were expected to be nearby in any case. See Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 112–13. According to Ronald Finucane, mothers and also other women of the family and community were more often responsible for taking care of sick children, which is emphasized in miracle narratives: Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p. 85. Louis Haas, on the other hand, writes that the responsibility for finding treatment was that of both parents. Haas, The Renaissance Man and his Children, p. 162.

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that this was not the case when she was present, as she used to carry her and help her so that she did not make herself filthy. 128 The reference to the problems in bladder and bowel control was not, however, recorded by Guillaume de Saint-Pathus in his otherwise very detailed account of the case.129 Yfamia also coloured her narrative by describing how Mabileta used to play with her legs as if they were ‘two sticks used to tread grain’, and how she used to place her right tibia on top of her left shoulder and vice versa, so that it appeared as if the tibia were only connected to her knees by skin, similar to how the carcasses of chickens appear when they are killed by breaking their necks with the skin remaining intact.130 This testimony is a fine example of Michael Goodich’s observation that the deviations in the pattern enable us to trace the witnesses’ voices.131 In descriptions of eye afflictions the lack of eyesight in one or both eyes is, naturally, the most common consequence, although occasionally the witnesses also stressed their fear that the child would literally lose his or her eyes.132 References to the inability of children to see light characterized the loss of eyesight, and loss of light and caecitas could be used as synonyms. 133 Possibly the 128 

Fragments, p. 47. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 126–30. 130  Fragments, p. 47: ‘ludebat cum tibiis suis ac si essent duo baculi cum quibus bladum teritur, ponendo etiam tibiam dextram super humerum sinistrum et sinistram super dextrum, quia non videbatur quod genua sua essent ligata nisi per pellem que erat circa ea, quemadmodum quando gallina occiditur et rompitur collum ejus, pelle integra remanente’. Raymunda Clemensana likewise testified that in the third year of his condition, her son Iohannetus used to play with his legs. In his very short testimony the boy himself mentioned this too. Similarly, Guarssias the nurse said that Iacobus Deodatus used to put his legs behind his neck. Louis of Toulouse, pp. 169–70, 178. 131  Goodich, ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctis Suis’, pp. 143–44. 132  In Nicholas of Tolentino’s process, a boy called Zuccius had a condition afflicting his eyes. According to the father and the mother, his eyes were indiscernible, which made the mother cry, fearing the boy would go blind. Their neighbour Nina, however, testified that the eyes popped out from their sockets: Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 109, 433. Ronald Finucane interprets the mother’s fear and sorrow as overreaction, possibly heightened by the presence of her husband and mother-in-law. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 79–80. It is possible that the mother’s anxiety was caused by her fear that the child’s condition was caused by her own disbelief in the powers of St Nicholas. For further discussion, see pp. 82–83. 133  Mention of ‘loss of light’ is fairly common. As an example, the uncle of a blind boy in John Buoni’s process said that the child lost the light of his right eye completely, while the mothers of the blind girl Benasciuta and the blind boy Octobellus, as well as the father of the blind boy, Thomasinus, all testified that their children could not see any light at all: AASS Oct. IX, pp. 795, 857, 872, 876. Similar statements were given in other hearings as well. See AASS 129 

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expression was also used because of its association with the loss of divine light, the restoration of which was an evident manifestation of the putative saint’s power.134 Blindness was also used as an allegory for Jews, who lacked Christian faith, as well as false Christians or pagans.135 This does not signify that blind children were considered as lacking faith, but it is possible that the connotations of blindness and its use in religious discourse caused it to be seen as more than a physical disability. As noted, the word caecitas was used to refer to complete lack of vision, whether or not that was the result of the condition specified by the witnesses. In cases where the condition only affected one eye, the reduced ability to see with that eye was still occasionally described in detail.136 However, the ‘diagnosis’ of the situation with eye conditions usually included the conception of inability — or disability. The canonization testimonies occasionally exhibit the conception that blind­­ ness was not as self-evident a condition as the mobility impairments, presum­­ ably because it was not necessarily visible or evident from the child’s appearance, and thus there are reports of children’s blindness being tested by showing them objects.137 In addition to the tests, witnesses also gave more practical examples of the disabling consequences of conditions causing blindness. For example, the mother of Elisabeth, who was ceca, reported that when her daughter was sitting at the table she could not distinguish the saucer in front of her, Nov. IV, 575; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 234v; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 228–29; Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 199, 311, 364, 433; Peter of Morrone, pp. 270, 297. 134  See Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England, p. 184. 135  Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, pp. 63–72, 76–89. This idea was also expressed by the Benedictine Engelbert Poetsch, abbot of Admont (c. 1250–1331), who sought to combine Scripture with Aristotelian natural philosophy: Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 22–25. 136  See Urban V, pp. 178–79: ‘interrogatus qualiter hod scit, dixit quod sepe et sepius claudebat sibi oculum bonum, et tunc nichil de alio videre poterat, et una dierum claudens sibi oculum bonum, fuit aportatum quoddam vas vitreum sive veyriale sic appellatum, ante dictum puerum, et ipsum vas nullatenus videre potuit neque discernere, credens ex tunc quod numquam videre posset de illo occulo’. 137  The grandmother of a blind boy, Octobellus, testified that people showed him things which he could not see: AASS Oct. IX, p. 857. In their testimonies regarding the blind girl Agnesina in the same process, the family members did not mention having tested her blindness. However, a man called Marcus stated that he called the girl and tested whether she saw where he was. Another witness, domina Maria, said that she often showed the girl her key, which she could not distinguish: AASS Oct. IX, p. 804. Also Margeria de Kylpek reported that she frequently showed things to her blind son Adam: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 234v.

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and according to the girl’s aunt, she could not find her way to the front door.138 These references do not demonstrate absolute lack of sight, but apparently that was not fundamental to its definition, as the disabling effects were severe enough to label it as blindness. Because of the need to prove blindness, in some of these witness accounts both the tests and difficulties the blindness caused in normal everyday situations were described in response to the commissioners’ questions. The case of the above-mentioned Elisabeth is a good example. After the mother had explained the girl’s inability to distinguish the saucer, the commissioners asked how she knew about this. The mother asked how she could not know, as the girl was her daughter and she was used to seeing her. 139 In general, the need to be led by another person seems to have been the factor that defined severely reduced eyesight as blindness.140 This had also been the usual way of describing the consequences of conditions causing blindness and the consequent need to rely on other people’s assistance in earlier miracle narratives,141 and presumably functioned as an ‘allegory’ for blindness in people’s minds. Once again, the proofs of children’s blindness and the disabling consequences of lack of vision seem to have derived from the need to specify the level of the problem as well as the everyday experience of the families. Although cures of lack of vision in one eye were commonly reported in canonization hearings, conditions affecting both eyes were the ones causing physically disa-

138 

Margaret of Hungary, pp. 297–98. See also Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 199: ‘Hadewigis de Alhardeshusin, […] dixit, quod filia sua Berta […] ceca fuit […] et oportuit, quod duceretur de loco ad locum, quia nec lucem diei discernere potuit’. 139  Margaret of Hungary, p. 297: ‘Interrogata, quomodo scit, quod dicta filia sua erat tam ceca, quod non videbat scutellam, sed palpabat, ut dixit, respondit: “Quomodo non possum scire quia filia mea est et ipsam videbam?”’ Elisabeth’s sister gave a response in a similar tone in Margaret of Hungary, p. 298: ‘Interrogata, quomodo scit, quod dicta sua soror ita erat ceca, ut dixit, respondit: “Nonne debeo (scire), quia soror mea est, et mecum stat et vadit?”’ Here the testimonies further reveal the role of women in nurturing ill or impaired children, in this case not only the mother but also the sister. On sisters’ roles in miracle narratives, see Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 190–92. As another example, a man called Derianus Caeremieyr was interrogated in the hearing of Yves of Tréguier about how he knew that his daughter could not see, to which he replied that he saw and tested it, and the daughter said she could not see, so that it was necessary to guide her by hand. Yves of Tréguier, p. 150. 140  See ASV, MS A.A, Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 6r; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 178v; Yves of Tréguier, p. 224. 141  Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 175–76.

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bling effects.142 Inability to see light and the consequent need to be led by others is portrayed as preventing children from acting in a manner typical for those of their age. It is possible that in some instances communality and the mutual nature of children’s play made their lives easier, but in general it appears that those with severe visual impairments were more reliant on other people’s assistance than those with milder mobility impairments.143 As has been discussed above, cases where a child had a severe hearing impediment are rare, and there are differences in the use of the word surditas as it was attributed to both those who had no hearing at all and occasionally to those with a significant hearing loss. In addition to the problems in hearing, communication difficulties were frequently described. The noble girl Rixenda de Fayensa testified that she had been unable to understand what was being said, probably why her condition was defined as surditas in the first place.144 In addition to the testimonies about Rixenda’s cure, the narrative regarding the deafmute Loÿs in St Louis IX’s miracles emphasizes the lack of ability to hear and speak and, as a result, his inability to understand religion.145 In a case where a condition affecting the child’s ears did not necessarily make them severely hard of hearing, other consequences were described.146 Communication problems were also the reported consequence when a child had a severe speech impediment. In the case of Loÿs, his muteness is emphasized by a detailed description of the severe, even violent, tests he was given by the master and children of his foster home, who noticed that he still did not speak, but only used the signs of the mute.147 As mentioned above, in theoreti142 

This does not exclude the possibility that blindness in one eye could be a socially disabling condition, as suggested by the testimony of one mother, who said she would rather that her daughter were dead than impaired in such a manner: Yves of Tréguier, pp. 168, 210. The use of ‘better dead than…’ in witness narratives is further discussed on pp. 124–30. 143  Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 176. 144  Louis of Toulouse, p. 153. The lack of ability to understand others was also mentioned as a result of deafness in another miracle of the same hearing, in which a grown man was cured: Louis of Toulouse, p. 155: ‘ita quod penitus intellectum perdidit et auditum’. 145  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 50–54. Loÿs’s lack of understanding of religion is more thoroughly discussed on pp. 255–58. 146  A boy called Vannectus had ear problems as a result of falling into boiling water. The mother, as well as a local woman, described his symptoms as a tinnitus-like condition, similar to having a bird in his ear: Clare of Montefalco, pp. 379–80, 382. 147  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 50–51. The muteness of the boy Johannes, born without a tongue, was also tested by somewhat similar means. See BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 205r. The tests are further discussed on pp. 156–62. In St Bernardino of Siena’s canonization inquiry from

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cal and medical writings the mute and congenitally deaf were lumped together, following Aristotle and Pliny the Elder, according to whom the congenitally deaf are always mute.148 Neither Rixenda de Fayensa nor her family specified whether she was able to speak.149 One can, however, assume that Rixenda was able to talk in some manner, because muteness is not mentioned at all in the testimonies, which otherwise discuss and describe her condition in a detailed manner. This is also supported by Irina Metzler’s finding that in medieval discourse surditas usually referred to deafness of people who had acquired the condition as a result of an accident and retained their ability to speak.150 On the other hand, Loÿs was clearly defined as a deaf-mute (sourt et muet, presumably translated from surdus et mutus), and the narrative makes it clear that he had never heard nor learned to speak.151 On the basis of the sources of this study, it seems that in everyday life deaf-muteness meant pre-lingual deafness, since it prevented the child from learning to speak. In other words, it is possible that post-lingual deafness was viewed as a different condition, because in that case the person could talk and communicate with others.152 the 1440s there are descriptions of three boys cured from inborn deaf-muteness. The witnesses testifying about two of them mentioned their communication with signs as one proof of their muteness: Bernardino of Siena, pp. 82–87, 94–95. Signs as a communication method are further discussed on pp. 274–80. 148  Metzler, ‘Preceptions of Deafness’, p. 80. 149  Louis of Toulouse, p. 153. 150  Metzler, ‘Perceptions of Deafness’, p. 81. 151  In this respect I tend to disagree with Sharon Farmer, who suspects that Loÿs was not congenitally deaf, because he learned to speak after regaining his hearing. See Farmer, Surviving Poverty, p. 77. I suggest that if he had indeed learned to speak at some point, he would not have been so clearly labelled as a deaf-mute person. Moreover, the miracle narratives often portray sudden cures, which are not ‘possible’ according to modern science. For example, cures resulting in quick recovery of the ability to walk by those with long-time paralyzing conditions would be impossible, due to atrophy of the muscles. It is even mentioned — presumably summarizing Loÿs’s own testimony — that the reason he was shocked when he began to hear was that he could not understand the voices, as he had never heard such a thing before: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 53. Maria Wittmer-Butsch and Constanze Rendtel have more doubts about the congenitality of Loÿs impairment, arguing that it cannot be known whether he had acquired it at birth or as a result of a physical trauma or injury caused by a childhood infection: WittmerButsch and Rendtel, Miracula: Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter, p. 272. 152  The connection between congenital deafness and the inability to speak was also recognized by ancient writers, and it appears that the consequent ability or inability to speak were definitive factors in the attitudes towards and experiences of deafness / deaf-muteness in the ancient world: Laes, ‘Silent Witnesses’, esp. pp. 460–73.

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In cases of speech impediments, when the child was not completely unable to speak, communication problems presumably had even more weight in the testimonies, because they provided the proof that the condition was indeed a severe one. The father of a boy called Privatus testified that he had been mute since birth and did not speak except tantum balbuciendo, so that nobody could understand him,153 and a noble boy Ludovicus, the son and heir of Elzearius de Sabrano, the lord of Tour-d’Aigues, was similarly unable to speak intelligibly but started to speak in a clear manner after the cure.154 Likewise, the cure of the once deaf-mute Frederico Francisci was defined by him being able to speak in a comprehensible manner.155 In addition to these communication issues, two witnesses who testified in Thomas Cantilupe’s hearing about the cures of Johannes and Philippus, born without tongues, also described their difficulties in eating. According to the depositions, both these boys had to push the food down their throats with their fingers.156 In Johannes’ case this seems not to have been among the strongest mem­­ories people had of the case as only one witness in ten mentioned it. In Philippus’s case there was only one witness in the first place. Nevertheless, eating problems, already discussed above with reference to conditions leading to dif­­fi cult mobility impairments, again appear as a severe consequence. An aspect closely connected to both the functionally and the socially disabling consequences of physical impairments are the descriptions of children’s pain. Physical pain has already been briefly referred to in the discussion about 153 

Urban V, p. 465: ‘stetit a nativitate mutus, per quatuor annos non loquens nisi tantum balbuciendo, taliter quod nullus eum poterat inteligere’. 154  Dauphine of Puimichel, pp. 90–91. Ludovicus, cured in 1352, is a rare example of a noble child whose father’s socioeconomic situation is defined. I have found a genealogic study of the family published already in 1870, which mentions a man called Eléazar IV de Sabran from La Tour-d’Aigues. He is recorded to have had three children, none of them named Louis. However, the book mentions that his son Guillaume VI de Sabran had only one son called Louis de Sabran et de La Tour-d’Aigues, who reportedly makes an appearance in sources in 1396. Charvet, La Première Maison d’Uzes, p. 96. After this the family branch becomes extinct. It is thus possible that, given that there is a mistake in the canonization record, our Ludovicus is the same man, and the editor of Dauphine’s process also tentatively identifies the boy as ‘forsan Ludovico deputato statibus Provinciae anno 1396’. Dauphine of Puimichel, p. 90, n. 6. Dauphine of Puimichel’s husband, St Elzéar of Sabran, belonged to the same family, though a different branch, which presumably had an influence on their choice to ask for Dauphine’s help. On the categories of nobility in canonization processes, see Lett, Un procès de canonisation, pp. 203–05. 155  Peter of Morrone, p. 220. 156  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 90v, 207r.

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fistulas and other skin conditions, which did not necessarily limit children’s mobility. Every now and then pain also appears in family members’ testimonies in other cases. As a strongly subjective aspect of disability, the experience of pain from children’s point of view will be further discussed below (see pp. 264–73). Here I will explore its role in defining impairing conditions and their severity in the testimonies in a more general way. Expressions in the depositions that can be interpreted in terms of pain vary from dolor and poena to the usage of vexare or disturbare. All of these terms have other possible meanings than (physical) pain or suffering, referring also to mental or emotional distress. The double meaning of poena, which also means ‘punishment’, further demonstrates the richness of medieval discourse concerning pain. In this, physiological and mental pain are generally nearly indistinguishable, as it was believed such sensation belonged in the realm of the soul. Therefore, the term dolor, which usually referred to the pain of the soul, was often used in relation to physiological pain as well. At the same time, some medieval texts distinguish between dolor and dolor animi, which shows that the distinction interested medical professionals.157 In canonization testimonies the distinction is hardly discernible, most likely because it was not perceived as relevant in the context. Severe pain, whether ‘purely’ physical or also physiological, served the same purpose of highlighting the cured condition. In addition to the above-mentioned fistulae, pain was most commonly mentioned in depositions regarding mobility impairments. 158 In some of the most serious cases, in which the child was reported having been completely unable to move or even to eat, the word suffer (pati) was recorded, without specifying physical pain as one of the symptoms. An example was Agnese, who could not move, eat or drink, and was reported by her mother and brother as having suffered in such a way since birth.159 Conditions in the eyes were occasionally reported as having caused pain as well, although more 157 

On the concepts of physical and mental pain in medieval discourse, see Cohen-Hanegbi, ‘Pain as Emotion’. There is no evidence that the usage of poena in this context would imply blaming the sufferer for bringing the illness or impairment upon themselves. If there was a connection between pain and punishment, it appears to have been more figurative. 158  AASS Oct. IX, p. 803; ASV, MS A.A., Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 4r; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 234r; Birgitta of Vadstena, p. 133; Clare of Montefalco, p. 503; Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 164; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 24, 47, 144–45; Louis of Toulouse, pp. 224–25, 226; Margaret of Hungary, p. 305; Thomas Aquinas II, pp. 522–23, 610; Urban V, pp. 172–73; Yves of Tréguier, pp. 151–52, 245. 159  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 827–28.

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rarely.160 In some cases the family members are unequivocal in their descriptions of pain. Alberta, the mother of a blind boy called Octobellus, testified that she cried because of the poena that the child suffered.161 She did not, however, describe any other symptoms of the boy’s condition apart from his inability to see. Also, the child told his mother not to cry, because as a result of the vow he had started to see.162 Thus it is quite possible that Alberta referred to the emotional pain of not seeing rather than physical pain. The word pati was frequently recorded in connection with eye conditions, especially in Nicholas of Tolentino’s hearing, but its precise meaning was not always clarified.163 It therefore appears that pain often was an integral part of the witnesses’ conception and memory of the childhood impairments they had witnessed. On the other hand, it does not appear to have been emphasized, nor was it nearly as important as the inability to move, see, hear, or speak for the purpose of defining and proving the condition genuine, even though pain can be severely debilitating in itself. One example in St Elizabeth’s hearing suggests that pain sometimes occurred but was left unreported. A girl called Beatrix de Bütingen had a severely debilitating condition, which caused her to suffer from humps, goitre, and overall deformity. Her mother, who gave the primary testimony, only stated that the infirmity vexed the girl when describing the symptoms. However, when describing Beatrix’s cure, she said that it happened after the girl cried from physical pain and fell asleep, thus making a rare specific allusion to the nature of her pain. Other children in St Elizabeth’s process had similar conditions, but the testimonies make no explicit references to pain.164

160  Margaret of Hungary, p. 335; Birgitta of Vadstena, p. 131; Dorothea of Montau, pp. 71, 102, 443. 161  AASS Oct. IX, p. 857: ‘et cum ipsa Alberta ploraret de dolore quem habebat et poena quam patiebatur filius ejus Octobellus’. 162  AASS Oct. IX, p. 857: ‘Mater, noli plorare, quia ego video bene lumen’. 163  A girl called Cathalina was reported as having suffered in her left eye, but it was not clarified whether that simply referred to loss of eyesight or physical pain in the eye. The same verb pati is used of the eye condition of Cischus, but this time it is likely that the condition indeed caused physical pain, as it was named as fistula and caused a wound in his eye. According to his parents, a boy called Montius suffered from a severe infirmity (patiebatur maximam infirmitatem) in his eyes, so that they were swollen and filled with ulcers. This time the word pati presumably referred to physical pain as well as impairment, but this was not further clarified: Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 311, 558, 598, 600. 164  Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 166–67, 175–76, 180, 249–50.

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The irregularity of references to pain derives in part from the nature of the impairments the children had, as not all of the conditions caused noteworthy pain even if they made the child severely disabled.165 However, it is also plausible that the commissioners did not see (physical) pain as a particularly strong indicator of a grave medical condition, or that it was considered hard to verify, although there seems to have been differences between various processes.166 It is also possible that pain did not remain as a strong memory among most witnesses, as the child beneficiaries who did suffer pain rarely testified about their own cures. In modern studies it has been discovered that people generally lack the language to describe physical pain.167 Except for the testimonies regarding the cure of Ceptus Sperançe de Montefalco,168 and one testimony in the Fossa Nova hearing of Thomas Aquinas,169 all depositions in which the occurrence of pain was specified with the use of the word dolor were given either by the beneficiary or by his or her parents. Although this hardly qualifies as an accurate statistical method, it strengthens the assumption that personal experience is the important element regarding at least physical pain. Another reason why expressions of pain may be under-represented in the depositions is the medieval theological conception of physical pain and its purpose, for it was not simply a negative thing to be avoided. On the contrary, pain was closely associated with the experience of saints, martyrs, and mystics, many of whom, indeed, practised the self-infliction of pain,170 and the suffering of pain, including that resulting from an illness or impairment, could also be an imitation of Christ’s sufferings.171 Stanko Andrić has noted that in St John Capistrano’s miracles there are occasional references to the seeming contradic165 

As an example, Alicia de Lonesdale, who could only move by crawling, reported that she did not feel anything in the afflicted parts of her body: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 67r. 166  Les Miracles de Saint Louis is one of those with frequent mentions of pain before the miracle cures of both adults’ and children’s impairments. The problem is that we cannot be sure who gave the original witness account, or that it was not Guillaume de Saint Pathus who chose to add or emphasize this aspect when summarizing the depositions. See Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 24, 47, 58, 81, 101, 104–05, 132, 134, 144–45. 167  See for example, Scarry, The Body in Pain, p. 12. 168  Clare of Montefalco, p. 427. 169  In it a boy testified about an accident his companion had experienced. Although he was not present at the time of the incident, he had been in the beneficiary’s company just before: Thomas Aquinas II, p. 523. 170  Cohen, The Modulated Scream, pp. 26–28. 171  Andrić, The Miracles of St John Capistran, p. 242; Cohen, The Modulated Scream, p. 28.

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tion that asking to be cured from bodily suffering was to fall short of Christian perfection; thus some beneficiaries, when making the vow, explained their wish to be cured by citing their problems in living as good Christians because of their pain.172 I have not found such expressions in the vows made for the curing of children, but the lack of emphasis on pain as opposed to other aspects of a child’s impairment may reflect this idea. Then again, as the person making the votum was most often a parent, the person communicating with the saint was not asking for their own release from physical or emotional suffering.

Inability to Work Especially in the case of poorer families, a child’s inability to work must have been a strong definer of their lived experience and, thus, their memory of the child’s impairment.173 After all, work was an act of great importance, in both the theological sense of the word (‘work of God’ or opus Dei) or in the material sense.174 Yet reference to this as a consequence seems to be the exception, although occasionally the inability to work appears in the witness accounts as a proof of the impairment. As an example, the mother of Petronilla Albanella testified that before falling ill with gutta, her then five-year-old daughter had been able to walk and work in a manner appropriate for her age. 175 The testimony does not touch on the matter again, but apparently the ability to work acted here as an indicator of the girl’s previous good health and what could be expected from a child of her age. Petronilla’s daughter was, however, exceptionally young among those repor­ ted as being unable to work. Usually these references pertained to miraculées in

172 

Andrić, The Miracles of St John Capistran, pp. 242–43. On illness as a blessing, see Cohen, The Modulated Scream, pp. 32–37. 173  Children, for example, helped with seasonal tasks such as weeding and reaping, fishing, minding livestock and poultry, and watering horses, as well as with milking and dairying. Similarly, collecting firewood, nuts and berries may have been considered suitable tasks for younger children, who are also known to have helped their mother in working with pots and drawing water. Girls also helped to take care of younger children, but even they spent most part of their day outdoors: Goldberg, ‘Space and Gender’, pp. 214–15; Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound, pp. 156–61. 174  Metzler, A Social History of Disability, p. 43. 175  Louis of Toulouse, p. 195: ‘dixit quod dicta filia sua dum erat etatis v annorum, licet prius esset sana et potens secundum suam etatem ad eundum et ad laborandum’.

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their teens,176 for whom preparation for future paid work was a significant part of their social integration;177 by this age they were considered old enough to be responsible for earning some income. The miracle collection of St Louis IX is exceptional in its portrayal of cures of several people belonging to the class of the ‘working poor’.178 One of these narratives portrays a twelve-year-old orphan boy called Thoumas de Voudai, who earned his living by watching other people’s pigs and doing some other tasks, until at the age of twelve he became completely blind for a year. As a result, he became impoverished and had to start begging for alms in the village.179 Here the text makes it clear that it was precisely the blindness that made him unable to continue in his work, and his eventual pauperization.180 Consequently, in his case poverty added to his impairment, as the two conditions went hand-in-hand. The case of Guillot dit le Potencier, in the same collection,181 is another where the (in)ability to work is used to construct the severity of a young 176 

When testifying about his own cure, the sixteen-year old Heinricus de Roden reported that he was debilitatus in his whole body for seven years, and due to this, he had not been able to complete any work: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 230. A boy in the process of Lawrence of Subiaco was contractus in legs and hands, and this reportedly made him unable to perform any tasks: ASV, MS A.A. Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 3r. In Gilbert of Sempringham’s miracles a boy called William was reported as having become disabled while he was in service. The narrative states that he lay immobile for two years, never getting up from bed without other people’s help, so his master sent him back home: The Book of St Gilbert, ed. by Foreville and Geir, pp. 328–31. 177  Although children could work as servants and apprentices from an early age on, the typical age for migration was the late teens. See Goldberg, ‘Migration, Youth and Gender’, pp. 86–87; Hanawalt, Growing up in Medieval London, pp. 63, 114; Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 30–32. Those who were sent to school also commonly moved away from their paternal homes in their teens: Hanawalt, Growing up in Medieval London, pp. 83–84. 178  See Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 50–55. 179  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 27: ‘Et einsi fu il avugle et du tout en tount neent voiant par un an et plus en la vile de Voudai. Et en cel tens il estoit povre et mendiant et queroit son pain en la dite vile du Voudai’. Maria Wittmer-Butsch and Constanze Rendtel speculate that Thomas may have suffered from a form of meningitis, known as Schweinehüterkrankheit in German, transmitted from the swines he was herding. Wittmer-Butsch and Rendtel, Miracula: Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter, pp. 148–49. 180  Thoumas was supposedly quite poor even before his blindness. Interestingly enough, the text uses the word povre only when attaching it to his begging, thus illuminating the ambiguity of the conception of ‘poverty’. From this it might be presumed that Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, but possibly also some of the witnesses, defined begging as the manifestation of poverty. 181  The epitaph derives from the condition he had, as les potences translates as crutches.

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per­son’s disability, although Guillot did not necessarily belong to the ‘working poor’ as did Thoumas.182 He worked for a cloth-fuller, Robert Reboule, from the age of twelve, apparently first as an apprentice and later as a journeyman. When Guillot had been in Robert’s service for eighteen months his leg became impaired. Guillot continued in his work, but as he got older the condition worsened, at some point making Guillot completely unable to work, and even­­tually his leg also stank so much that other people could not bear to be near him. Guillot was attended by two medical practitioners and made two futile pilgrimages to the shrine of St Eloy.183 Robert then suggested that the leg should be cut off and replaced with a wooden leg, which would allow Guillot to earn his own bread again.184 In Guillot’s case the attempts to cure him started about a year and a half after he first acquired the condition, and the narrative gives an impression of a gradually worsening impairment leading to both physical and social disability, which drove both Guillot and his master to seek for a solution. The text illustrates the severity of Guillot’s impairment by describing the unsuccessful medical treatments and pilgrimages, the pain and the discharge, but his inability to work and Robert’s hopes of getting him back to work are constant themes in the narrative, thus constructing Guillot’s impairment through these two interdependent aspects.185 The impairment did not, however, prevent Guillot’s social Guillot was originally from the village of Varenguebec: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 23. On the onomastics of disability in the Middle Ages, see Metzler, ‘What’s in a name’. For further discussion on such epitaphs, see pp. 311–12. 182  Apprentices usually came from the same social class as their masters, hence Guillot’s father may also have been a skilled artisan. On the other hand, many towns paid masters to take orphans as apprentices, and given that Guillot’s biological family is never mentioned in the narrative, it is possible that he did not have one. See Karras, From Boys to Men, pp. 116–19. 183  St Eloy was considered a healer of legs and fistulous conditions. In addition to Guillot, a boy called Moriset de Ranton, as well as Raou le Çavetier, Robert du Puis, and Jehan du Gué all attempted pilgrimages to his shrine or to his church in Ferrières before being cured by the merits of Louis IX. Tumours and scrofula could also be attributed to St Eloy as le mal saint Eloy, and so two children with tumours on their face or upper body were first taken to Noyon: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 47, 100, 138, 143, 174. Willelmus de Lonesdale also vowed his daughter Alicia to St Eloy in case Thomas Cantilupe would not heal her: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4050, fol. 64v. See also Barlow, The Norman Conquest and Beyond, pp. 30–32. The famous French surgeon, Henri de Mondeville, lamented people’s misplaced faith in St  Eloy. See Macdougall, ‘The Surgeon and the Saints’. 184  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 23–25. 185  According to the guild records, craftsmen were supposed to provide for their apprentices,

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integration until it got to the point that the smell drove other people away, and even then he apparently continued to remain in his master’s workshop. Among the poorest families, as well as most poor orphan children, the child’s inability to work would have resulted in their need to beg, as the case of Thoumas de Voudai demonstrates. References to begging were closely connected to the communal knowledge of a child’s impairment, especially in the case of orphan children, something which will be discussed later on. However, in addition to Thoumas, there are other occasional references to beggar children where begging is used as an indicator either of the disability itself or the common knowledge of it. Willelmus, the father of Alicia de Lonesdale, who was paralyzed after falling on a road at the age of five while the two were on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, reported that he carried her on his back, begging.186 Amicia la Rysslwyk testified that Willelmus asked her and others for alms so he could take the girl to Hereford.187 Cecilia de Sancta Cruce who lived in the diocese of Riez, in a village now called Sainte-Croix-du-Verdon, also testified that she carried her daughter Beatrix on her back asking for alms.188 These last two accounts underline not so much the child’s inability to work as their inability to walk, which led to the parent’s need to carry the child usually also taking care of them when they were ill. However, the sources give contradictory information, as this did not apply in all guild regulations. Moreover, little is known about how long an apprentice could rely on the support of the master during an illness. Some contracts limit the time period to one month, while some add that if the master takes care of the apprentice for a longer period of time, he is entitled to demand additional time at the end of the apprenticeship. Parents or other guardians were supposed to pay the bills of doctors and keep the apprentices during illness, but most regulations do not specify the matter at all. It is impossible to know how much aid guilds provided for the sick, but it is possible that the fullers’ guild helped Robert Reboule financially by taking care of Guillot: Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 95–96; Karras, From Boys to Men, pp. 116–29; Orme, Medieval Childhood, pp. 311–13; Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, p. 234; Wissel, Des Alten Handwerks Recht, pp. 451–55. On disability and guilds more specifically, see Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 62–73. 186  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 65r: ‘Post ista dictus testis baiulabat ad collum dictam filiam suam petendo elemosinam et mendicando cum eam’. Alicia herself also mentioned this, testifying that when she was unable to walk, her father carried her, asking for alms: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 66v. 187  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 69r. The worthy cause undoubtedly helped in persuading people to open their purses. Willelmus got them a small litter in which he pushed Alicia all the way from London to Hereford. Travelling in a litter to a shrine seems to have been quite common. In Hereford one could even hire them for a penny to transport people from nearby villages to the shrine of Thomas Cantilupe. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 86. 188  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 162–63.

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while begging. A different emphasis is found in the testimony of Sophia, who reported that after the condition struck her, her daughter Beatrix walked bent and slowly through her village, asking for alms.189 That the child did it without a parent reflects the need for Beatrix to add to the family’s income. In the sources for this study these three are the only references to begging stated by a member of the beggar’s own family. In the remaining three cases the witness who mentioned begging was a community member outside the immediate family, and although the begging is portrayed as an indicator of the impairment, it is of secondary importance in the construction of the condition.190 An interesting aspect of the inability to work is its connection to the child’s gender. In her analysis of St Louis IX’s miracles, Sharon Farmer found that men’s work is mentioned much more often than women’s. She also suggests that disabled boys were expected to follow the same life course as healthy ones, including working or becoming an apprentice at the age of about eight, and that this would have made disability a heavier burden for them than for girls.191 Among the canonization processes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, references to boys begging are indeed more common than girls: ten boys192 and three girls193 were reported as either having been unable to work or having been beggars at some point of their impairment. However, the view that male 189 

Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 163: ‘et incurvata est ita, ut se sursum erigere non posset, et manibus super genua sua positis corpus suum ita brachiis sustentando, inclinata deorsum, lente gradiebatur, in villa sua hostiatim mendicando’. 190  A woman called Petronilla Alani Fabri was asked how she knew that a boy called Guido had been blind, to which she replied that among other things, she saw him asking for bread: Yves of Tréguier, p. 224. A man called Iohannes le Maignen had been blind in one eye from the age of eight or nine to the age of twenty-five, after which he also lost the sight of the other eye. Only one of the seven witnesses for his cure at the age of about thirty-two (including the beneficiary himself ) mentioned that he had seen him asking for alms. Hence this remark refers to Iohannes’s adulthood rather than his childhood years, but still provides an example of asking for alms as a proof of disability: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 177v. Also Andirolus Benvengnatis, who had known Ceptus de Montefalco since childhood, said that he had always ‘walked bent and crippled’ and begged on the ground: Clare of Montefalco, p. 503. 191  Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 30–32, 78, 118–19. 192  ASV, MS A.A. Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 3r; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 105r–v, 168r–88r, r 204 –09v; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 177v; Clare of Montefalco, pp. 308–09, 348–49, 427–28, 503–07; Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 230; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 23–26, 27–30, 45–50, 50–55; Yves of Tréguier, pp. 213, 224–28. 193  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, ff 64v–71v; Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 163; Louis of Toulouse, p. 195.

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and female work differed to a significant degree has recently been criticized, because girls also worked outside the home and migrated to find work. 194 It is possible that the more frequent references to boys’ work derived from the learned discourse on the male body and the greater emphasis on men’s earning capacity,195 which made the commissioners more likely to focus on boys in their inquiries, or to include those kinds of reports in the written record. As for Alicia de Lonesdale, the emphasis on the father’s role probably reflected a sense of parental responsibility. It is also possible that in the cases concerning girls, and especially girls with parents, any reference to them begging would be suppressed by their families, who would be aware of beggars’ reputation for loose morals, in sexual and other matters.196 The narrative about Thoumas de Voudai indicates that for a child who was poor to start with, impairment could create major obstacles to earning a living. Given this (rather obvious) note, it seems somewhat surprising that work and begging are not mentioned more often. The inability to work is also rarely mentioned in canonization testimonies handling adults’ miraculous cures, except for the miracles of St Louis IX.197 Nevertheless, on a general level work and the inability to work were not important aspects in constructing or specifying childhood impairments in canonization records. Work is not a prominent component of the genre or miracle stories in general; indeed, the inability to earn a living as a result of physical impairment is a relatively rare theme in ear-

194 

P. J. P. Goldberg writes that although women perhaps spent more time inside than men, in peasant households at least, women and girls also helped with seasonal tasks such as harvesting and collecting fruits, berries, and nuts: Goldberg, ‘Space and Gender’, pp. 214–15. Also migration was typical of girls as well as boys: Goldberg, ‘Migration, Youth and Gender’, p. 86. Sharon Farmer has also questioned the division to some extent; especially in discussions concerning women’s penitentiary labour, clerics were of the opinion that women should engage in manual labour, as begging was considered tainted work: Farmer, ‘Manual Labor, Begging, and Conflicting Gender Expectations’, pp. 266–69. 195  See Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 39–45. 196  Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 42–49; Fradenburg, ‘Needful Things’, pp. 54–57. Beggars were also linked to prostitution: Karras, Common Women, p. 84. 197  As an example, a man called Hugo Gregorii de Bahugolis became blind and, according to his own testimony, could not work, earn his bread or do other tasks because of the condition: Louis of Toulouse, pp. 150–151. Another man in the same process, Ferrarius Salvani, reported that because of a horrible infirmity in his legs he could not work as he had been accustomed to, since his legs would not support him: Louis of Toulouse, p. 227. In St Elizabeth’s process a man was reported as starting work after his cure, instead of begging: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 196.

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lier miracle collections as well.198 The lack of capacity to work was not seen as a standard way to illustrate impairment — presumably impairment affected people in many different ways, and so work was rarely asked about specifically by the commissioners. Moreover, if a person was completely unable to move, the condition obviously implied inability to do any physical work. The selection of witnesses must have had its consequences as well. Poor families, for whom a child’s inability to work would be more crucial, are underrepresented among witnesses and beneficiaries,199 whereas for those from better-off families a reduced work capacity would not have led to dire poverty.200 On the other hand, the witness accounts do not always clarify the family’s economic situation, even when the child’s inability to work was mentioned.201 Moreover, poor people’s testimonies were usually accepted in the canonization records only if the illness or impairment was really severe or long-lasting,202 198 

Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 165–67. This, presumably, was also the case with earlier miracle stories, in which the cures and testimonies of the wealthy were appreciated more as well. Barbara Ruth Wendel-Widmer, however, is of the opinion that in the miracles of St Elizabeth of Hungary, a larger proportion of the beneficiaries belonged to the poor, and that this was so evident in their circumstances that the poverty was only mentioned when there was something striking about it. She even goes as far as to state that ‘illness was synonymous with being poor’ (Kranksein war somit gleichbedeutend mit Armsein): Wendel-Widmer, Die Wunderheilungen, pp. 7–8. This statement, however, reflects rather outdated ideas (the book was published in 1987) about the self-explanatory link between disability and poverty in premodern societies and ignores the relativity and variability of the concepts of illness and poverty. 200  As an example, Richart de Briqueville became impaired so that he could only walk on crutches. However, he continued in his work, and he also had an inheritance which supported him. Thus he never ended up begging, nor did he need to rely on the economic assistance of his family, although he resided in the household of his sister and brother-in-law for a while: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 81–83. 201  The mother of Petronilla Albanella (mentioned above) is defined in the beginning of the canonization process of Louis of Toulouse as civis Valentinensis, suggesting that the family belonged to the town’s citizenry. This does not necessarily mean that they were wealthy, especially as there is reason to suspect that Petronilla and her brother were born out of wedlock. Petronilla’s mother, whose name was also Petronilla, is only defined as civis Valentinensis, and her son Stephanus Albanelli as civis Valentinensis, filius dicte Petronille, although women were usually called someone’s wife or widow if they were married, and children born in wedlock were identified as their father’s offspring. The testimonies are in Louis of Toulouse, pp. 195–96. On citizens, see for example, Lord Smail, Imaginary Cartographies, esp. pp. 7–8. 202  Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 52–53; Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 100–02. 199 

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and so we have little evidence about children with less severe impairments from poorer families. It must also be taken into account that not all impairments prevented a person from working.203 Many common handicrafts, such as sewing, weaving, or spinning would have been possible jobs for both children and adults who had aural, speech, or (mild) mobility impairments.204 The deaf-mute boy Loÿs was educated by a smith called Gauchier in whose household he lived, and later worked in the kitchen of a château.205 As stated above, Guillot dit le Potencier worked for Robert Reboule after his leg became impaired, apparently being promoted from apprentice to journeyman,206 and only stopped when he 203  For a long time the perception was that most, if not all, disabled people in premodern societies were beggars. As Brendan Gleeson puts it, this approach has ‘silen[ced] history, projecting disabled people’s relatively recent experience of service dependency and marginalization through the entirety of past social formations’, and further that it has naturalized ‘the relationship between impairment and social dependency that has existed to varying degrees in capitalist societies’: Gleeson, Geographies of Disability, p. 64. As well as lumping all disabled people into one marginalized group, this approach bypasses the lived realities of the poor and their individual experiences. Moreover, due to the lack of empirical historical studies, the notion of the high unemployment rates of the disabled in modern Western society cannot be seen to hold true for pre-industrialized society. For further discussion, see Blackie, Disabled Revolutionary War Veterans, pp. 138–40. 204  Irina Metzler has noted that in traditional societies — in this case in late medieval Europe — there was a wider range of economic activities available, even for those with limited physical capability. The idea that all impaired people in the past would have been disabled, useless, and segregated from the rest of the society is a result of modern prejudices and internalized stereotypes. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 25–26. See also Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 71–85 on labour, productivity, and disability. Richart de Briqueville, mentioned above, was able to continue his work as a vallet costurier after his legs were paralyzed. Similarly, in the Naples process of St Thomas Aquinas there are depositions of the cure of Raynaldus, medicus cirurgicus, who walked on crutches. His legs were eventually cured at the grave of St Thomas, which he visited while attending a sick monk at Fossanova Abbey: Thomas Aquinas I, pp. 281–85, 292–93, 311–12. 205  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 52–54. See also Metzler, A Social History of Disability, p. 200, who writes that the narrative about how Gauchier taught Loÿs is ‘especially illuminating with regard to perceptions of the working in/ability of disabled persons, both medieval and modern’. 206  When Guillot was cured by the merits of Louis IX, he had already been in Robert Reboule’s service for more than twelve years and his illness had lasted for eleven years. Thus it is probable that when Guillot’s condition got to the point when he was no longer able to work, he had already reached the status of a journeyman, whose status was usually higher than apprentices. Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, p. 101; Wissel, Des Alten Handwerks Recht,

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became too disabled to work. Robert later suggested the amputation precisely because Guillot would then be able to work again, although he would still have been regarded as an impaired person, at least from our modern viewpoint. The case of Alicia de Lonesdale further illustrates this, as after the miracle she walked with a limp or used a cane. Alicia herself is the only witness who mentioned that she was working at the time of the investigation, although all the witnesses were still in touch with her. However, even Alicia did not make much of her ability to work, merely referring to it briefly when replying to the commissioners’ question about her activities after the miracle. 207 By contrast with the witnesses for Thoumas de Voudai, it appears that for those testifying about Alicia’s case, her father included, the girl’s change of status from beggar to a person living by the work of her own hands was not a manifestation of the cure. It is clear that inability to work and lack of social integration were not always seen as closely linked to impairment, and that poverty and lack of work were used to construct an image of childhood impairment only in specific cases.

Twisted Limbs and Hunched Backs When considering the functionally and socially disabling consequences of physical impairment, change in appearance must be taken into consideration. The deformations of a child’s body were in many cases both a result of the condition and a reason for debilitation. They were stressed in the depositions as manifestations of the condition’s unwanted consequences, underlining the severity of the impairment and the powers of the saint who alleviated them. The process of St Elizabeth provides particularly graphic descriptions of children’s bodily deformations. Many of the beneficiaries had humps and twisted limbs, or were described as withered, boneless, or lacking flesh. As an example, one testimony reports: Fridericus de Geilenhusen, Mogantine dyocesis, iuratus dixit, quod filius suus duodennis dorso quasi fracto, gipposus et collo mirabiliter contra gippum retorto, ita, pp. 451–55. Masters did not, however, always honour their agreements to provide for journeymen, and thus in Germany they started to form their own association in the later thirteenth century: Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 64–66. 207  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 68r: ‘Item interrogata in quo est ipsa ratione dicti miraculi facta deuotio; Respondit quod dicit in mane cum surgit, Credo in deum et quinques orationem dominicam et Ave Maria, quod ante dictam curationem non faciebat. Ieiunat insuper sextis feriis et viuit de labore suo’.

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quod ipse illum aliquotiens reputavit et abhorruit, quasi monstrum. Pedes habuit distortos, intantum, quod verse erant pedice versus plantam. Manus similiter contractas habuit; omnia sibi data ore gestabat, repens manibus et se portans crura contracta habuit et quasi concreta natibus. Genua vero ventri adherebant, oculum unum nimis erectum, alium enormiter depressum habuit. Similiter et partes oris abhominabiliter distortas habuit, fistulosus in pedibus, in femore et in cruribus, ita, quod in XXXIIII locis eruperat ille morbus.208 (Fridericus de Geilenhausen, from the diocese of Mainz, has said under oath that his twelve-year-old son, who had an almost broken back with a hump and a neck that was wondrously contorted towards the hump in such a way that several times, when he thought about it, he shrank back as if from a monster. He had twisted feet so that his ankles were turned in towards the soles of his feet. His hands were similarly crippled. Everything people gave him to eat he carried with him in his mouth, crawling along on his hands, since his shins were also crippled, as though fused together with his posterior. His knees were attached to his stomach, and one of his eyes was pulled up too much while the other one was pushed down excessively. Similarly, parts of his mouth were misshapen in a horrifying way and he had fistulas on his feet, in the thighs and in the shins. The illness appeared in thirty-four places.)

In later sources the tone of the descriptions of bodily malformations usually seems less extreme, but they can sometimes be quite detailed. Stanko Andrić has made an observation that in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Capistran miracles such descriptions are quite common and that deformities are presented as ‘horrid spectacles’.209 This would suggest that the tendency to give graphic and detailed descriptions did not necessarily weaken with the process of time, although it is possible that hagiographers continued to use such expressions to underscore the miraculous powers of the putative saint, while the witnesses of canonization inquiries provided more mundane descriptions, or at least their depositions were recorded in such a way. The descriptions witnesses gave of children’s bodily malformations varied depending on the type of impairment, but there are some common patterns. Those testifying about cures of impaired legs often gave more elaborate descrip-

208 

Elizabeth of Hungary, pp.  222–23. See also Elizabeth of Hungary, pp.  214–15 for another detailed description, this time given by a child’s mother. Legs which were twisted in such a manner that they touched the person’s buttocks are also portrayed in medieval iconography: Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, pp. 240–41. 209  Andrić, The Miracles of St John Capistran, pp. 307–08.

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tions of their appearance.210 A few witnesses described a child’s appearance, or the appearance of his or her members, as dried up (desiccatus, siccus, or aridus in Latin or seche in French).211 This is probably a means of referring to the lack of strength in the child’s limbs and also of implying the opposite of healthy. One of these children, for example, was said to have become pinguissima (very fat or plump) after the cure.212 ‘Dried up’ may also have implied stiffness, as one child was reported as both stiff and dried up.213 When comparing Elizabeth of Hungary’s process to the later ones, the usage of the word deformis can be seen as one indicator of a difference in emphasis. Apart from the six cases in St Elizabeth’s hearing, 214 the witnesses of only three miracles described the condition as a deformity. Those were the cure of Iacobus Deodatus, in which case the word was not used by the mother,215 and two children in Urban V’s hearing. 216 When the problem was not a socalled traditional, physical impairment, but a condition distorting the child’s face, the word deformis or deformitatis appears in the testimonies of other processes too.217 The scarcity of such expressions in regard to classic impairments 210 

For example, AASS Nov. IV, p. 601: ‘genua eius infixa ventri et pectori tenebat, ita quod inguina eius videri non poterant ulo modo nec tangi’; Clare of Montefalco, p. 356: ‘habebat plura apostemata in utroque bracchio et utroque humero et utraque tibia, et erant apostemata predicta, precipue que erant in humeris, fracta, ita quod ossa videbantur nuda’; Urban V, pp. 301–02: ‘invenit se contractum et inpotentem penitus de tibiis, de genibus, de pedibus, habens dicta membra curva, plicata et retroversa, in juncturis ossium tibiarum et pedum, in maxima difformitate’. 211  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 797, 864; AASS Nov. IV, p. 601; Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 166; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 33, 34; Louis of Toulouse, p. 195; Peter of Morrone, pp. 306–07; Urban V, p. 430. 212  AASS Oct. IX, p. 864. Thinness as a manifestation of illness is also recorded in Étienne de Bourbon’s exemplum, in which women took their sick and thin children to a greyhound’s shrine, asking that they be returned to a fat and healthy condition: Étienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes historiques, ed. by de la Marche, pp. 325–28. This text is further discussed on pp. 100–01. 213  Louis of Toulouse, p. 195: ‘aspina dorssi et crura, genua, tybie et pedes erant ita rigida et ita desiccata membra sua’. 214  Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 163, 166, 210, 215, 231, 239. 215  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 177–81. 216  Urban V, pp.  270–71: ‘et sic erat in maxima difformitate illius manus’; Urban V, pp. 301–02: ‘habens dicta membra curva, plicata et retroversa, in juncturis ossium tibiarum et pedum, in maxima difformitate’. 217  For example, Louis of Toulouse, p. 245; Dauphine of Puimichel, p. 66. There are illustrious examples of this in St Elizabeth’s process as well. A widow suffered from morbo polipi

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is somewhat surprising, given that deformity was used in other types of texts frequently, occasionally even synonymously with physical impairment.218 Then again, the witnesses to mobility impairments could also emphasize their message by careful descriptions of bodily features, even if they did not use such vocabulary. The testimonies concerning the feet of Iacobus Deodatus are one example, and in Yves of Tréguier’s hearing, for example, there are several witness accounts describing the twistedness of the beneficiary’s limbs.219 Among the most extreme cases in our sources is one from the miracles of Urban V. The text states that Ysabel, the wife of a goldsmith, gave birth to a boy who appeared half-dead. The child had no ‘human figure’ (figura humana), and his head, shoulders, and other members were joined together. The child did not move, and on his head there were three wounds, but nobody knew what had caused them although they looked like a result of violence. What is particularly interesting about this case is that when the father made the vow, he prayed to the saint to revive the boy so that he could be baptized without saying anything about his malformations.220 It is revealing that here the parent’s main concern is the child’s life and soul, not the possibility that he might remain disabled — although the saint did heal him after the vow. Presumably the physical aspects tended to be underlined when they were exceptional, and such descriptions could be used as a powerful rhetorical tool. On the other hand, as in all societies, in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe there must have been a point when a change in appearance was so severe that it became noteworthy and possibly resulted in marginalization. One form of description of children’s physical anomalies is reference to the monstrous. Although such remarks are relatively rare, they interlink closely with medieval notions of the limits of bodily ‘normality’, and provide a window to a very pronounced way of constructing children’s extreme physical malformation. for twelve years, which made her nose so deformed that her son did not want her to stay in his house. Also a boy called Angelius had, according to his mother, a ‘horrible deformity’ in his nose: Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 174–75, 216–17. A woman cured by the merits of Thomas Aquinas had suffered from a scrofulous illness in her throat since childhood, which reportedly made her look deformed: Thomas Aquinas I, p. 340. 218  For examples, see e.g. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 54, 80, 87–88, 92, 122. 219  As an example, four witnesses for the cure of Katherina testified that she kept her arms involuntarily one on top of the other, hands closed, tibias joined, and feet one on top of the other in the form of a cross: Yves of Tréguier, pp. 236, 238, 242–43. For similar remarks, also concerning adults, see Yves of Tréguier, pp. 229–30, 230–31, 277, 281, 247–50. 220  Urban V, pp. 452–53.

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In our sources, seven physically impaired children are connected with the idea of monsters, five of them in a deposition given by a member of their immediate family. Two of these five children were beneficiaries in the process of St Elizabeth of Hungary, and three in the process of John Buoni. The two boys in St Elizabeth’s hearing had conditions which severely disabled and also caused deformities all over their bodies. In one case the mother said that the child lay immobile like a monster,221 and in the other (the case cited in the beginning of this chapter) the father shrank back from the child ‘as if from a monster’. Two of the three ‘monstrous’ children in John Buoni’s hearing were girls suffering from conditions that entirely prevented them from moving or even eating. The brother of Agnese reported that everyone who saw her lying on the ground like a monster hoped she would die.222 In the second case the mother reported that her daughter Thomasina was like a monster,223 and the father that she did not look like God’s creation.224 Thomasina’s parents had obviously discussed the girl’s appearance with each other and had formed the idea of the monstrous as something apart from God’s creation, although most theologians and philosophers of the period argued that monsters were part of God’s creation.225 Lastly, a boy called Vigilius suffered from an epilepsy-like paralysis. His father Bartholomaeus testified that when the boy was shaken by the illness, he foamed at the mouth and looked like a monster.226 The boy’s mother Honesta, however, made no reference to monsters.227

221 

Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 239: ‘et sic anno et tribus septimanis iacuit quasi monstrum’. AASS Oct. IX, p. 827: ‘quia videbatur dicta Agnese quoddam monstrum super terram’. 223  AASS Oct. IX, p. 864: ‘et res videbatur pessima, scilicet quoddam monstrum in terra’. 224  AASS Oct. IX, p. 864: ‘qua infirmitate dicta sua filia effecta ita magra et arida, quod non erant in ea nisi ossa, nec apparebat creatura Dei’. 225  For example, in his City of God Augustine stated that children born with birth defects such as one eye in the middle of a forehead, or who are conjoined twins, remain rational and descendants of one ancestor, therefore being human. Thomas Aquinas is worth mentioning separately here, because unlike other writers, he actually discusses the issue of deformities. He says that ‘there are two kinds of deformity in the human body. In one there is a defect in some limb, so that we call mutilated people ugly. What is missing in them is a due proportion to the whole’: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 49–51; Resnick, ‘Conjoined Twins’, pp. 343–45. 226  AASS Oct. IX, p. 879: ‘et quando vexabatur ab illo morbo, emittebat spumam et erat tunc quoddam monstrum ad videndum’. 227  AASS Oct. IX, p. 880. 222 

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In the two remaining accounts where the term monstrum is used, it does not appear in a directly recorded testimony. The first example again comes from St Elizabeth’s process, in which a thirteen-year-old boy, Cünradus, became severely deformed. His mother Adelheidis de Alesvelt gave lengthy testimony about his changed appearance, but it is clear that the mother was not the person who used the term ‘monster’. It was others who were recorded as having seen the boy deformed in a monstrous, horrible way. 228 The record does not specify what these particular witnesses said, so it is possible that monstruose is a term added by the commissioners or notaries of the said hearing. If they did this, it would explain why the use of it is more common in Elizabeth’s process than in most of the others. Iohannetus, who was contractus, is also described as monstruosus, but this is from the description added by the author of Louis of Toulouse’s Vita,229 not directly from the canonization hearing. In addition to the above-mentioned physically impaired children, I have found four other references to ‘monstrous’ children. Katherineta, a girl who had an overgrown nose and was also cured by the merits of St Louis of Toulouse, was described looking monstruosa, again in the Vita rather than the parents’ testimonies.230 Further, in St Hedwig of Silesia’s Vita, based on the now lost canonization records from the 1260s, there is an account of a girl who had some kind of a mental condition, and according to the text, many people said she looked like a monstrum.231 This case is exceptional because no physical symptoms are 228 

Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 215: ‘Irmendudis, uxor magistri hospitalis, Irmengardis, custos sepulcri, Waltherus lapicida, Hermannus, magister hospitalis, et Crafto, sacerdos hospitalis, iurati dixerunt, quod viderunt iuvenem sic monstruose et horribiliter deformem et in loco hospitalis sanatum’. 229  Vita S. Ludovici Episcopi Tolosani, ed. by Collegio S. Bonaventura, pp. 370–71: ‘sicque erat in eo tibia revoluta quod in loco posterioris partis erat pars anterior situata, dorsum quoque monstruose reversatum habebat pariter et gibbosum; inter aures etiam in posteriore parte capitis erat absque ossibus caro sola. Puer igitur sic monstruosus, tibiis impotens et deformis, magna erat doloris materia et causa moestitiae matri suae’. 230  Vita S. Ludovici Episcopi Tolosani, ed. by Collegio S. Bonaventura, p. 373. The parents testify on Louis of Toulouse, pp. 244–46. Interestingly enough, despite the emphasized marginalization, in the Vita it is specified that the father held the girl very dear (quia ipsam tanquam unicam diligebat), while in the canonization testimony he reported the mockery of others and how he did not let anyone see the child: Louis of Toulouse, pp. 244–45. 231  AASS Oct. VIII, p. 257: ‘Adelheydis, privigna uxoris Hildebrandi, mente capta, vix etiam reclusa poterat detineri et multa dicebat se monstra videre’. On the vita and its relation to the canonization records, see Goodich, ‘The Politics of Canonization’, p. 173. In addition to these, in a late fifteenth-century miracula of King Henry VI there is a report of an infant

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described, and it appears that it was principally the girl’s behaviour that made her look monstrous. As we lack the original depositions, the details of the girl’s condition as well as her age remain unknown. In the miracles of St Francis of Assisi, written by Tommaso de Celano, there is also a narrative regarding a child born strikingly deformed and looking like a monster rather than a human; in him ‘the order of nature was askew’.232 Medieval learned discourses on monstra were of various types, including theological discussions on their place in God’s creation,233 chroniclers’ records of strikingly abnormal births, often interpreted as divine portents,234 and records of monsters as foreign races, living outside or on the borders of Christian society.235 The subject and its connection with physical impairments is still poorly born prematurely as a result of her mother’s accident, and she is described as both deformed and monstrous. The said document does not directly cite the witnesses, although it mentions their names. However, at least in this particular case, a premature birth is seen as an obvious reason for the baby’s monstrous appearance, as it is asked how a fetus could grow naturally when violence instead of nature caused it to exit from the womb: Henrici VI Angliae Regis Miracula Postuma, ed. by Grosjean, pp. 223–24. Similarly, in the articuli of the third investigation to Bernardino of Siena’s miracles there is an article describing a monstrous child who suffered from fever and overgrown testicles. However, no witnesses were interrogated regarding the case, so it provides no evidence as to whether laypeople referred to the child as of monstrous appearance: Bernardino of Siena, p. 404. 232  Tractatus de Miraculis S. Francisci Assisiensis, ed. by Collegio S. Bonaventura, p. 320: ‘Non enim homo, sed monstrum quoddam potius videbatur, cum, perverso naturae ordine’. For the concept of ‘natural’, see pp. 134–36. 233  The definitive Christian doctrine of monsters as portents was established by Augustine, according to whom the freakish births of animals are portentous events, but to try to predict the future involves trafficking with demons. The matter was further elaborated by Isidore of Seville, as well as several other philosophers, some of whom interpreted monsters as portents. Yet, simultaneously, ‘monsters’ were also thought to be a part of God’s beautiful creation, thus having their place in the universe. For some writers, like the eleventh-century bishop and chronicler Otto von Freising (d. 1158), the group of monsters included beings with all kinds of physical defects, while others included only very striking and extraordinary deformations in the group. For a summary of the discussion, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 50–57. See also Smith, ‘Portent Lore and Medieval Popular Culture’, pp. 19–20. 234  Bartlett, The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages, p. 70; Friedman, The Monstrous Races, p. 108; Given-Wilson, Chronicles, pp. 23–28; Lecouteux, Les Monstres dans la pensée médiévale Européenne, pp. 76–77; Short, ‘Literary Culture at the Court of Henry II’, pp. 335–36. 235  Starting from the 1980s, there has been a growing amount of research on the monstrous races. See for example. Bartlett, The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages, pp. 71–110; Bildhauer and Mills, eds, The Monstrous Middle Ages; Cohen, Of Giants: Sex,

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researched, but the references in the canonization documents indicate that there was a mental connection between the two concepts.236 In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, before the growing interest in mon­­­­strous and abnormal births, monstra as foreign races did not belong to people’s everyday experience. The term was nevertheless used to describe human anomalies. Regardless of their origins, monsters were seen as wondrous and astonishing — consequently marginal and ‘other’. Norman R. Smith writes that despite the frequency with which monsters are represented in literature and maps, the existence of a popular monster lore has not been demonstrated. Teratology was a privilege of the learned classes, who read encyclopaedias and works by Vincent de Beauvais and his kind.237 However, as ‘popular culture’ was by no means totally distinct from ‘learned culture’, influences were necessarily transmitted from one group to the other.238 It thus seems likely that the practice of describing certain types of impairments as ‘monstrous’ derived from ordinary people and their ideas of monstra, but also from the educated commissioners or notaries of certain processes. We can find references to monstrous children in only three processes, but such references do exist in the vitae based on canonization hearings, even if the witnesses had not used the term. As the witnesses spoke their native language, the precise meaning or connotations of their term may have been different from the Latin term discussed by Augustine and his successors. Nevertheless, cultural influences did move back and forth, and as monster lore per se was not fixed or unambiguous, each person may have had their own image of what constituted a ‘monster’. Nevertheless, the most obvious function of such terminology in both canonization hearings and vitae was to stress the severity of physical anomalies or incapability, and to construct these children’s impairments as something that distinguished and separated them from other people, even shifting them to the very borders of humanity.239 As Alex N. Sharpe writes, ‘deformity marks the Monsters and the Middle Ages; Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought; Jones and Sprunger, eds, Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations; Williams, Deformed Discourse. 236  See also Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 280, n. 168. For one of the recent attempts to combine the two in research, see Newman-Stille, ‘Morality and Monstrous Disability’. See also Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, pp. 178–96. 237  Smith, ‘Portent Lore and Medieval Popular Culture’, p. 16. 238  See Watkins, ‘“Folklore’ and ‘Popular Religion’’’. 239  Especially monsters with two heads could both reinforce and question the one-to-one body-and-soul relationship. Bildhauer and Mills, ‘Introduction’, p. 14.

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limits of human being’.240 All of the children described as monstrous in the canonization hearings had rather extreme conditions. They were not able to perform even the most vital tasks, such as eating by themselves. Thomasina could not even suckle a breast — something a small child certainly needed to be able to do in order to survive — which may well have been one motivation for her father’s remark that she was unlike God’s creations. From this point of view, comparisons to the monstrous could derive from the family members’ incapacity to explain a situation that was beyond their understanding,241 and they therefore used the term in order to express that.242 It is important to note that in none of these cases is it stated that the child was a monstrum, but they all resembled monsters (quasi monstrum) or the monstrous (monstruosus). This is noteworthy for understanding contemporary ideas about various impairments, but it also had its practical side, because the phenomenon of monstra was discussed by medieval lawyers from the point of view of inheritance and civil liberty, and canonists were concerned about the baptism of monsters — especially those with two heads — usually concluding that such children were human and should be baptized. Discussing the views of Justinian’s Digest, several legal writers tried to define the kind of newborn child that would be described as monstrum. The views varied, but, for example, the most important English law collection of the time, De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliæ, also known as Bracton, drew a line between deformity/humanity and monstrosity by stating that an extra or missing limb, or a failure in the use of them, did not make a child a monster.243 Morover, a celebrated jurist Baldo Ubaldi (1319–1400) wrote that those who have any kind of human form — even if defective — retain their civil liberty. In priests’ manuals the baptism of those born monstrous was also widely discussed, although usually concerning those with two heads.244 Thus most of these discussions pertained to strikingly 240 

Sharpe, Foucault’s Monsters and the Challenge of Law, p. 63. According to David Williams, the monstrous developed into a symbolic language, which ‘expressed the inadequacy of human cognition in containing the limitlessness of the real’. Williams, Deformed Discourse, p. 6. 242  On the various cultural functions of monsters, see Cohen, ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’. 243  Bracton, ii, 31, 204; iv, 361–62. 244  For example, the Franciscan John Peckham concluded that if a monster is born with two heads, necks, and hearts, then there are also two rational souls, which should be baptized separately. For a discussion on the baptism of conjoined twins, as well as the location of a human soul, see Resnick, ‘Conjoined Twins’, pp. 347–48, 356–67. 241 

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deviant births, such as conjoined twins,245 and presumably had little practical importance. Comparisons between physical defects and monsters seem to have been primarily used when talking about children, as there is only one instance in the sources of this study where an adult is mentioned as quasi monstrum. This comes from the fragments of the canonization process of St Louis IX of France, in which one witness describes a crooked woman called Amelota de Chambli as looking like a monster;246 however, while such remarks regarding adults occasionally appear in miracle collections,247 in the canonization processes the epithet ‘monster’ relates mostly to children. In the process of John Buoni this can be partly explained by the types of adult impairments mentioned — even though there are a few with severe disabilities, none are so extreme as to be unable to eat or drink. In St Elizabeth’s process there are more miracles dealing with children’s mobility impairments than with adults’, and as references to monsters are generally rare, that also reduces the likelihood of such a description occurring. Because in all processes where such remarks are used we see the same tendency to attach it to children, it does appear that adults were less easily associated with monsters. With newborn children, or small children who have been seriously impaired since birth, the idea of portentous births as well as the legal discussions concerning inheritance might explain why references to monsters mainly pertain to them. Sometimes medical writers of the era searched to explain monstrous births (especially conjoined twins) by the mother’s inappropriate movements and excitement during intercourse.248 However, in my sources, of the ‘mon245  Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, pp. 179–83. See also Resnick, ‘Conjoined Twins’, p. 347; Sharpe, Foucault’s Monsters and the Challenge of Law, pp. 61–62. 246  Fragments, p. 31. The reference to the woman’s monstrous appearance — which, as it happens, was mentioned by only one witness out of six — also found its way into Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 18. Guillaume’s choice to quote this particular witness’s mention that Amelota (or Amelot as she is called in this version) sembloit un mostre, as well as children being afraid of her, shows how he wished to stress the severity of the deformation, and hence the powers of St Louis IX. 247  Thomas of Monmouth describes two cases where an adult’s appearance becomes monstrous. In one a woman became so inflated that she no longer resembled a human but her figure was that of a prodigious monster. Similarly, a man is described becoming so swollen that he looked like a monstrous animal. Thomas of Monmouth, The Life and Miracles of William of Norwich, ed. and trans. by Jessop and James, pp. 248, 290. 248  Resnick, ‘Conjoined Twins’, pp. 350–53, 356.

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strous’ children described, only Thomasina in the process of John Buoni had had her condition since birth, whereas the others either became infirm later, or there was no mention of whether or not the condition was congenital. The processes reveal no other overarching characteristics which would distinguish these particular children from other beneficiaries with very severe impairments or malformations. We can say that each child, as well as the woman Amelota, was severely impaired, and apparently in an exceptional and noticeable way. That the nasal deformation of Katherineta was also described as making the girl look monstruosa supports the view that an exceptional appearance was precisely what led to such remarks.249 Hence the tendency to attach the idea of monstrous impairments primarily to children must have its basis in medieval ideas of childhood and youth. Several previous studies have shown that in medieval times childhood and youth were recognized as distinct life stages, and that children were generally loved by their parents. Children and youth were also considered to be different from adults; for example, they could not achieve the same level of human intelligence as adult males. Children were portrayed as unstable and dominated by a certain heat and moisture, which dried up as they matured. The fourteenth-century French physician Bernard de Gordon even compares children to beasts, saying that they are dominated by bodily desires. Children’s irrationality was explained by the theory of the four humours, and an over-supply of blood in their brains.250 Perhaps children were thus more easily associated with the ‘other’, and so calling them ‘monstrous’ in the canonization inquests was deemed more appropriate than attaching such a term to adults. The hierarchies of such vocabularies may also appear in the testimony about Amelota de Chambli. She was, after all, a pauper, and the witness making the connection a cleric with much higher social standing. It must, however, be stressed that there is no evidence that impaired children were commonly associated with monsters. It was more a rhetorical tool used in certain contexts to demonstrate the extreme nature of some particularly severe physical conditions.

249  It must be noted, though, that children with striking facial deformations were not commonly compared to monsters either. 250  Dzon, ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, pp. 190–94.

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Sin, Demons, and Accidents More than anything else, medieval explanations of physical difference have probably led to earlier conceptions of the Middle Ages as a notably cruel era for the physically impaired. Among these conceptions the most prevalent one has been the alleged link between sin and impairment, but it has also been claimed that belief in demonic intervention had a role in this. In modern clinical psychology it has been discovered that parents tend to blame themselves for the birth of a disabled child.251 In the medieval setting, this could have involved the belief that sin was the reason for a child’s impairments but also that parental negligence had resulted in an accident, or that the child had been nursed incor­­rectly. Thus, if children’s physical differences were commonly defined in terms of parental sin or other erroneous actions, it would strongly colour medieval conceptions of impairment. Below I will analyse the explanations given for children’s impairments, focusing on laypeople’s views in the canonization testimonies and comparing them to other writings of the time. In the sources of this study, the parents of only four children mention their misdeeds as a reason for their child’s impairment, and in all cases the mis­­deed in question is failing to properly honour the saint; the parents were either guilty of blasphemy or of not fulfilling a vow. 252 The first witness reporting such behaviour is a woman called domina Thomassa in the process of Nicholas of Tolentino. Her son Zuccius had an eye condition and, according to the mother, this happened because of her disbelief in the saint’s powers. When bells had been rung in honour of a miracle performed by Nicholas, Thomassa thought that the brothers of Nicholas’s order, the Augustinians, had done this deceit-

251  See Berns, Child, Family, School, Community. Socialization and Support, p.  136; Seligman and Darling, Ordinary Families, Special Children, p. 327. 252  These are, generally, the most typical categories of punishment miracles. See e.g. Klaniczay, ‘Miracoli di Punizione e maleficia’, esp. pp. 114–20; Krötzl, ‘“Crudeliter afflicta”’, pp. 124–28; Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, pp. 276–82; Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’, pp. 355–56. See also Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 530–31. Although the veneration of saints had penetrated the society and miracles were an essential part of the lived realities of the laity, there were always voices of doubt as well. Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, p. 47. It is not presumable, however, that all people expressing their misbelief would have been thus punished and converted. Moreover, although especially in canonization documents the unbelief is usually expressed towards a certain saint, there undoubtedly were those whose scepticism was more general and not necessarily limited only to the miraculous but also towards theology in a wider sense. See Arnold, Belief and Unbelief, pp. 222–31.

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fully to gain profit.253 When the boy’s eyes became afflicted, it dawned on Thomassa that her unbelief had been the reason, and she cried and vowed the child to St Nicholas in a state of great devotion. Interestingly enough, Zuccius’s father, dominus Franciscus Adinolfi, did not make any mention of his wife’s decrying of the saint, even though he had been present at the time of the miracle;254 had he mentioned it, that would presumably have been recorded in his deposition as well. The third witness, domina Nina, stated that both parents had expressed their unbelief.255 The testimonies also differ in their accounts of which people were present at the time. Franciscus said that he, the boy’s grandmother, Sophia, and Thomassa were there, Thomassa reported that in addition to herself, Sophia, and Franciscus there were others as well whose names she did not remember; according to Nina, those present were Thomassa, Sophia, Franciscus, and Nina herself. Perhaps Franciscus did not wish to admit or remember his unbelief,256 or perhaps Nina remembered the statements of the parents wrongly — she was, after all, testifying twenty years after the miracle had occurred.257 253  Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 433­–34: ‘et videbatur ipsi testi quod dictus eius filius careret luce dictorum oculorum, pro eo quod non habebat ipsa testis tunc fidem in dicto beato Nicolao, quia, dum pulsabantur campane dicte ecclesie Sancti Augustini, quando miracula referebantur ibidem ad dictam ecclesiam et ymagines ibi supra archam dicti sancti ponebantur, videbatur ipsi testi quod fratres de dicto ordine id dolose faceret et fieri facerent causa lucre et ad ut gentes ibi devotionem et fidem haberent; et propterea dicta die subito supervenit infirmitas predicta in oculis dicti eius filii’. 254  Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 109–10. 255  Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 276: ‘et dictus dominus Franciscus […] audiendo dictas campanas pulsare dixit: Quid faciunt isti bacalarii fratres heremite, quia ips iponunt ymagines supra archam fratris Nicholai et sonant campanas et dicunt quod sunt miracula que facit frater Nicholaus, et non est verum. Et dicta domina Thomassa uxor eius dixit et respondit: Certe quod est verum quod ipsi ponunt ipsas ymagines, et non sunt miracula que faciat ipse frater Nicholaus’. 256  In the inquisition trials the wordings dixit quod non recordatur are typically found in cases where the accused tried to avoid answering a difficult or embarrassing question. Bueno, ‘Dixit quod non recordatur’, p. 384. The situation in miracle testimonies is rather the contrary, as the witnesses’ illicit or sinful actions were not under scrutiny. 257  According to Nina, Thomassa also promised never to wear gold, silver, silk, or any other ornaments in her clothes for the rest of her life, but Thomassa and Franciscus failed to mention this. Sari Katajala-Peltomaa speculates that in addition to Thomassa not mentioning this aspect for some reason, she may have attached her penitentiary promise to the narrative afterwards, after becoming convinced of Nicholas’s powers. Another possibility, of course, is that Nina had simply misunderstood something or added details of a promise, which could be seen as typi-

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The other such case in Nicholas of Tolentino’s inquiry shows an interesting dispute in the domestic sphere. The witness to the miracle is thirty-five-year-old domina Angelischa, the widow of magister Accaptus. When still a young girl of fifteen or sixteen years, Angelischa got married. The marriage was infertile for four years, after which she, and according to her testimony, also her husband, successfully prayed to Nicholas to give them a child. When the boy was four years old, Angelischa suffered from an infirmitas in her arm. Her testimony does not specify what the matter was, but presumably she had injured it, as she also referred to the condition as fractura. Whatever the reason, her husband was angry because of her injury. Angelischa then prayed to Nicholas in a loud voice, and her husband, in his anger, forbade her from asking help from Nicholas. As a result, the boy got contractus for five weeks. Angelischa remembered how she had prayed to the saint to take the child and sent her servant Francisca to carry him to Nicholas’s shrine.258 The testimony about the miracle leaves many questions open. Why was the husband angry at Angelischa, and especially, why did he not want her to ask help from Nicholas? Did the child have something to do with Angelischa’s injury and thus cause his father’s anger? As there are no more witnesses to the miracle, these questions are left unanswered. However, it is possible that there was a disagreement about the venerational practices within the family. At the time of the inquest Angelischa had the reputation of a holy woman, which was the reason why she was summoned to testify about the life of Nicholas.259 She also stated that when Nicholas was still alive she knew him and confessed her sins to him several times. Thus, Angelischa was a firm devotee of Nicholas, and there is a possibility that this caused friction between the couple. Angelischa also had personal experience of a punishment miracle. At the age of fifteen (the deposition does not reveal whether the couple was already married then), she had been cured of a blinding condition — which also lasted five weeks — by Nicholas, who was by then lying on his deathbed. After the holy man’s death the condition returned, which Angelischa interpreted as him being angry because she grieved when hearing a sermon in which her own miraculous cure

cal for women’s penance. See Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 224–25. Ronald Finucane has also taken note of the inconsistencies between the witnesses, but does not pay attention to the penitentiary practices. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 79–80. 258  Angelischa’s testimony is in Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 573–77. 259  Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 35–36; Lett, Un procès de canonisation, pp. 368–69.

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was recited, wishing it to remain a secret. Thus Angelischa’s interpretation of the events is strongly affected by her lifelong veneration of the saint. The third case in which a parent’s actions — this time a failure to fulfil a vow — was referred to comes from the process of Louis of Toulouse. A boy was cured of gutta after his mother Guillelma made a vow to the saint. How­ever, when the child was healthy again, she forgot her promise and the illness returned.260 And finally, in John Buoni’s inquiry domina Mantuana’s son Bonacursus suffered from a condition in a toe of his left foot. Mantuana vowed the boy to John Buoni, but when he was cured she did not fulfil the vow, thinking that the cure happened naturally and that other people were cured without any vows. The boy’s infirmity returned, gnawing at the whole leg, which made the physicians suggest amputation of the foot.261 This moved Mantuana to start the pilgrimage immediately, and when she reached the shrine she confessed her sins and disbelief, which finally cured the child.262 The other witnesses, domina Gratia and domina Berta, the family’s neighbours, did not mention the relapse or its reasons, but both stated that after the vow Bonacursus was fully recovered within eight days.263 Here it seems that Mantuana had not told her neighbours about failing to fulfil the vow — even though Berta reported that they were very good friends — and neither of them had been present at the time of the vow or Mantuana’s pilgrimage. It is also possible that Mantuana later interpreted her own hesitation in starting the pilgrimage as the reason why her son had suffered a relapse. The idea that parental misdeeds or sins could cause a child’s impairment appears every now and then in the early medieval miracle collections. The most famous such story is probably a miracle told by St Gregory of Tours (c. 538–594), in which a child conceived on a Sunday was born looking ‘monstrous’.264 Following the old tradition, the theme of impairment as a punish260 

Louis of Toulouse, pp. 187–88. AASS Oct. IX, pp. 873–74. 262  Undoubtedly Mantuana was aware of the relationship that was formed by making a vow to a saint, the breaking of which was a grave sin. This relationship was based on reciprocity, which was also a distinctive characteristic of feudal society. On the other hand, this reciprocity also obliged the saint. If he or she failed to help the petitioner, the petitioner did not need to fulfill the vow. See Gurevich, ‘A Gift as an Answer’, pp. 337–38; Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 72–73; Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, p. 79; Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 530–31. 263  AASS Oct. IX, p. 874. 264  Gregory goes on to say that there are enough days in the week to do other things, and 261 

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ment appears occasionally, albeit infrequently, in the major miracle collections of the eleventh and twelfth centuries as well.265 In these texts the sin or misdeed is most often the above-mentioned unbelief, and punishments appear as the saints’ — or the hagiographers’ — individual ways of teaching the devotees to believe.266 However, parental misdeeds are rarely given as a reason for children’s impairments. When sin is portrayed as the cause for an ailment, the ailment in question is most often leprosy.267 One rare example of a collection in which parental (sexual) sins are specifically, albeit occasionally, mentioned as a reason for children’s impairments is the miracula of St Thomas Becket from the 1170s. In the part written by William of Canterbury there are three cases in which a child’s impairment is attributed to their fathers’ priestly status,268 which reflects the then ongoing movement in favour of clerical celibacy.269 However, even in the Becket miracles not all children of priests had infirmities.270 that Sunday must be left undefiled and used for praising God. A child of parents who do not respect this rule can be crippled, epileptic, or leprous. Gregory of Tours, Liber II de virtutibus S. Martini, ed. by Arndt and Krusch, p. 617. On further discussion of punishment miracles in the text, see See Klaniczay, ‘Miracoli di punizione e maleficia’, pp. 115–16; Laes, ‘Disabled Children in Gregory of Tours’, pp. 44–46. 265  The idea of sin as a reason for illness originates in the Old Testament and is further repeated in the New Testament, although then also questioned. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 41–48. 266  See e.g. Klaniczay, ‘Miracoli di punizione e maleficia’, p. 117; Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, pp. 158–59. 267  Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 150–151. See also Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine, pp. 167–71. 268  Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. by Craigie Robertson, i, 202–03, 449–50, 526. 269  Even after the reform and the campaign of Gregory VII, priests continued to have partners. In the thirteenth and fourteenty centuries there were still clerics’ manuals and synodal texts forbidding clerical marriage, and even the late fifteenth-century canonization records occasionally portray married priests: d’Avray, Medieval Marriage, 89–91; Smoller, ‘Miracle, Memory, and Meaning’, p. 442; Powicke and Whitelock, eds, Councils and Synods II, p. 603; Robert of Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, ed. by Furnivall, pp. 252–57. On clerics’ children, see also Maddern, ‘“Oppressed by Utter Poverty”’, pp. 47–49. 270  The concubine of the dean of Lindsey was freed from delirium and the pain of childbirth, and the child was born alive and healthy. It is not clarified whether this illicit relationship resulted in the dangerous situation. Likewise, in one of the miracles the son of Ralph, priest of Standon, had a distorted foot, but William does not give any reason for the impairment. Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. by Craigie Robertson, i, 357–58, 504–05. Two impaired children in canonization processes used as the sources of this study had a cleric

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Despite being a sixth-century text, Gregory of Tours’s story of the ‘monstrous’ infant has in the past been used by some medievalists to argue that it was a common belief in the Middle Ages that sex during the forbidden periods would cause a child to be abnormal in some way.271 These notions are connected with the previously prevalent view that there was a direct link between sin and illness. This concept has been extensively discussed and criticized by Irina Metzler,272 but because of its significance for the current topic, it is pertinent to address it briefly here. The view that the connection between sin and illness was approved has commonly been based on Chapter XXII of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.273 The text begins with a statement that bodily infirmity is as a father. Presbyter Joannes de Cammorata testified about his son’s miracle in Lawrence of Subiaco’s hearing. ASV, MS A.A., Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 5r. The son of Roulandus Poncii, clericus, had a curved leg. Also his daughter was cured of a dangerous fever by the merits of Charles of Blois. Roulandus’s testimony makes no reference to his priesthood having anything to do with his children’s ailments: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 142v. Roulandus was married, but in some of the miracle depositions portraying priests’ children it is possible that the cleric in question had been a layman before taking orders. I have come across only one such account, and in that case the cleric in question was Pope Clement IV himself. His daughter was cured of blindness by the merits of St Hedwig of Silesia, and the text of Hedwig’s Vita specifies that the girl was Clement IV’s legitimate daughter, as the pope had been a married soldier and lawyer before giving up his secular life: AASS Oct. VIII, p. 263. 271  John Boswell even states that ‘thirteenth-century writers hastened to keep alive fears of the dire consequences of ill-timed passions’: Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, p. 338. See also Alexandre-Bidon and Lett, Les Enfants au Moyen Âge, p. 27. Robert A. Scott, Miraculous Cures, pp. 70–71, refers to several cases in which Gregory of Tours explained impairments by sins, stating that it was likely that common people shared these views. 272  See Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 8–9, 38–47, 67–68, 88–94. On the ambiguity of the connection between sin and illness, see also Farmer, ‘Manual Labor, Begging, and Confronting Gender Expectations’, pp. 272–73 and Frohne, Leben mit ‘kranckheit’, pp. 114–16. 273  Nilda Guglielmi interprets the statement, as well as many other medieval texts, as speaking of infirmity as a sin or a direct result of one: Guglielmi, Il Medioevo degli ultimi, p. 86. In his book from 1975 but republished in 2003, Jonathan Sumption writes that ‘[i]llness was brought on by sin’ and that from ‘the sixth century, diseases are inflicted in punishment for sin, and no sooner is the sin absolved but the symptoms pass away’: Sumption, The Age of Pilgrimage, pp. 105–06. Miri Rubin, on the other hand, writes that ‘Lateran IV decreed that sickness was a reflection of sin’, which is an important difference in tone. See Rubin, Charity and Community, p.  149. Maria Wittmer-Butsch and Constanze Rendtel (Miracula: Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter, pp. 183, 199), share the view that although the medieval understanding of illness was primarily secular, illness was nevertheless considered a result of sin. Surprisingly, the link between sin and infirmity has been emphasized in some relatively recent studies. Tory Vandeventer Pearman writes that ‘the Church defined a disabled person as one who must first

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sometimes caused by sin, and so doctors should ensure that a patient makes a confession before starting the treatment.274 It is easy to share Metzler’s doubts regarding the causal connection, because the chapter specifically states that sin is the cause of infirmity sometimes, but not invariably.275 Moreover, the chapter does not emphasize the link between sinfulness and sickness; it explains that it is included because in many cases when a doctor suggests that a sick person should attend confession the patient gives up all hope and yields more easily to death.276 The dangers of medical treatments were also recognized, and so the regular practice of confession during illness ruled out the possibility of the patient dying unconfessed. Chapter XXII of the Council, though vital to any general discussion about the causality between sin and illness, does not touch on the subject of congenital impairments, or parental sins as a cause for children’s impairments on a more general level. In non-hagiographic texts, the type of sin portrayed most often as a cause for a child being born defective is marital sex during certain forbidden times, already referred to in St Gregory of Tours’s miracle narrative. The concept appears especially in confessors’ manuals, a type of text which started to emerge after the decision of the Fourth Lateran Council that every Christian should confess at least once a year. Their writers drew heavily on earlier penicall upon the healer of souls before receiving treatment for bodily ills. In fact, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 directly linked the cause of bodily illness to sin, explicitly asserting that divine intervention was important in the treatment such ailments’: Vandeventer Pearman, ‘O Sweete Venym Queynte!’, p. 27. Robert A. Scott also writes that ‘sickness was diagnostic of sin’ and that ‘sin was at the root of all illness’: Scott, Miraculous Cures, p. 71. Citing John Friedman’s study on monstrous races, Suzannah Biernoff states that ‘physical deformities were widely thought to correspond to moral and intellectual degeneracy’: Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages, p. 19. 274  Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. by Mansi, xxii, col. 1010: ‘Cum infirmitas corporalis nonnumquam ex peccato proveniant’. Also the Statutes of Salisbury of 1217–19 and the Statutes of Worcester of 1229, which repeat the view and are clearly influenced by the Fourth Lateran Council, do not mention sin as a cause for illness, which suggests that this particular aspect was not of major importance, at least for those compiling them: Powicke and Whitelock, eds, Councils and Synods II, pp. 92, 173. 275  Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 67. 276  Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. by Mansi, xxii, col. 1010: ‘Hoc quidem inter alia huic causam dedit edicto, quod quidam in aegritudinis lecto jacentes, cum eis medicis suadetur ut de animarum salute disponant, in despoerationis articulum incident, unde facilius mortis periculum incurrunt’. This chapter caused concern among medical practitioners, who recognized the connection between the mental state of the patient and its effect on whether he or she would live or die. See McVaugh, Medicine before the Plague, pp. 170–71.

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tentials and circulated the ideas of the Church Fathers about the periods when a married couple should abstain from sex, 277 some of them stating that many children who are conceived during menstruation or pregnancy are leprous or physically impaired.278 However, there does not seem to have been any consensus on the importance of this matter, because there are also a large number of widely distributed manuals that do not mention it, do not ascribe children’s ailments to illicit marital sex, or else only mention leprosy as a possible result.279 Moreover, the sermons and exempla of the time rarely touch on the topic; for example, none of the five ad status sermons, though occasionally discussing forbidden marital sex, say anything about children’s impairments as a consequence 277 

Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, pp. 90–92, 155–58, 198–99, 242–42. Robert of Flamborough, Liber poenitentialis, ed. by Firth and Francis, pp. 197–98, 238, 243, 297; Dan Michel, Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. by Gradon, pp. 223–24. Irina Metzler writes that intercourse during menstruation was regarded as a mortal sin ‘precisely [my emphasis] for the reason that it was likely that “defective” children were begotten at that time’: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 87. The idea that a child conceived during menstruation would be leprous most likely originates from the general idea of the relationship between leprosy and sexual sin, especially because the disease was thought to be transmitted sexually. At the same time, the menstruating woman was thought to be unclean, which was the primarily reason for such notions. See for example, Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine, pp. 167–71; Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, pp. 200–01; Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England, p. 182. For earlier examples, see Skinner, Health and Medicine in Early Medieval Southern Italy, pp. 60–61. Pope Innocent III wrote in his treatise De contemptu mundi that menstrual blood is said to be so unclean that grains coming into contact with it do not sprout, bushes and plants will die and trees lose their fruits. If dogs eat it, they will go mad, and fetuses which are conceived during menstruation contract the defect of the seed so that they will be born leprous and elephantici: Innocent III, De contemptu mundi, ed. by Migne, col. 704. Pierre de Poitiers wrote that a menstruating woman could actually infect the man with whom she was having sexual relations: Murray, ‘Gendered Souls’, p. 88. See also Cadden, The Meanings of Sex Difference, p. 268. In the popular early modern records of monstrous births, conceiving the child during menstruation was considered a common cause for such anomalies. Niccoli, ‘“Menstruum quasi monstruum”’. 279  Fasciculus morum, ed. by Wenzel, an extensive treatise on the seven deadly sins, discusses other sins related to sex and marriage under De luxuria, such as adultery, fornication, and incest, but omits prohibited times for sex completely: Fasciculus morum, pp. 648–33. Likewise, Robert of Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne, written in 1303, discusses the seven forms of lechery, but makes no mention of marital sex; the only pointer to it is the forbidding of lechery in holy places, but no offspring are mentioned: Robert of Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, ed. by Furnivall, pp. 234–44, 282. See also Peyraut, Summa de vitiis et virtutibus, pp. 79–80; Alain de Lille, Liber poenitentialis, ed. by Longère, pp. 103–18; Thomas of Chobham, Summa confessorum, ed. by Broomfield, pp. 337–38. The belief that intercourse during pregnancy could result in miscarriage and the death of an unbaptized child was frequently repeated in the manuals. See John of Wales, Communiloquium, 2.4.5; Summa de casibus conscientiae, fol. 44r. 278 

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of it.280 Also, most of the Nuptiae factae sunt sermons do not discuss the subject of illicit marital sex, 281 and for many sermon writers of the time it does not appear to have been a topic of great importance.282 If we consider which teachings made a connection between parental sins or misdeeds and children’s impairments, it appears that besides everyday discus­ sions, confessions and sermons were the most probable influences on the laity. The concept of illicit marital sex as a reason for impairment does not show up at all in the canonization testimonies — rather, as stated above, among the few references to parental misdeeds, the prevalent type of wrong reported was disbelief in the saint’s powers, or failure to fulfil a vow.283 The textual genre undoubtedly has significance here. Because the type of misdeed belonging to the topoi of hagiographic texts was commonly disbelief or failing to fulfil a promise, it is only natural that these types of misdeeds were also mentioned by the witnesses of miracle testimonies. In miracle collections that were not the direct results of canonization inquiries, the concept of parental misdeeds was used precisely for the purpose of highlighting the saint’s powers. As an example, in a miracle of St Peter of Verona, an inquisitor murdered in 1252 and also known as St Peter the Martyr, a woman asked for the help of the saint after giving birth to four sons who all died in infancy. She changed her mind about fulfilling her promise to the saint to give her son to his order three times, and after each time the child was afflicted by dropsy.284 This particular miracle belongs to a collection recorded by friars in 1314, as a result of the general chapters’ instructions to report any new miracles performed by St Peter.285 While it is possible that the person originally report280 

Honorius Augustodunensis, Opera omnia, ed. by Migne, col. 867; Alain de Lille, Opera omnia, ed. by Migne, col. 193; d’Avray and Tausche, ‘Marriage Sermons in ad status Collections’, pp. 89–92, 111–12. 281  For marriage sermons, see d’Avray, Medieval Marriage and Medieval Marriage Sermons. 282  Various ailments and illnesses were, however, a topic quite frequently portrayed in the exempla. A thorough study of illness, impairment, and mendicant preaching is currently being conducted by Christoph Wieselhuber at the University of Bremen. 283  In miracle testimonies, in which a child was a victim of demonic possession, the concep­ tion appears every now and then. For examples, see Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Socialization Gone Astray?’. In exempla the concept of a parent who donates a child to the Devil appears frequently. These stories are usually based on an exemplum written by St Augustine in his De civitate Dei: Tubach, Index exemplorum, p. 130. 284  Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor, pp. 237–38. 285  Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution, p. 259, n. 3.

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ing the case believed in Peter’s vengeance, publicizing this kind of miracle was the cult promoters’ method of demonstrating the consequences of underrating the cult and the saint’s power. Miracles in which a sceptic is punished were seen as effective tools in fighting disbelief and heresy, but, as stated by Donald Prudlo, by concentrating on this type of miracle instead of everyday healings and rescues, the miracula of Berengar and Pietro Calo turn Peter’s cult image into a caricature, and make him seem very different from his thirteenth-century forebear.286 It is not surprising that parental misdeeds are rarely mentioned in the canonization depositions, given that previous findings indicate a decrease in the popularity of punishment miracles during the High Middle Ages.287 Moreover, when it comes to children’s own wrongdoings as reasons for their sufferings, the primary sources of this study are entirely silent. However, in the twelfthcentury miracles of St Thomas Becket, and in the fifteenth-century miracles of John Capistran, there are two such accounts. In the Becket miracle a boy refused to stay at the shrine with his blind father and consequently became blind himself,288 and in John Capistran’s miracle a boy fell seriously ill because he refused to accompany his father to the shrine.289 In both cases the child’s misdeed was directed against both a parent and a saint,290 and the notion behind 286 

Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor, p.  147. See also Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 47–52; Klaniczay, ‘Healing with Certain Conditions’, pp. 244–45. For a more extensive discussion on saints and heresies, see Elliott, Proving Woman, pp. 85–117, 119–79. 287  See Klaniczay, ‘Miracoli di punizione e maleficia’, pp.  117–18. In the miracles of St Birgitta, the number of punishment miracles is, nevertheless, relatively high. See Fröjmark, ‘Demons in the Miracula’, p. 283. However, in the cases of physically impaired children no such reasons were given. 288  Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. by Craigie Robertson, ii, 35. See also Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, p. 120. 289  Andrić, The Miracles of St John Capistran, pp. 255–56. According to Gábor Klaniczay, towards the end of the Middle Ages the concept of punishment miracles started to regain its popularity. Klaniczay, ‘Miracoli di punizione e maleficia’, pp. 117–18. For more examples of punishment miracles in fifteenth-century sources, see Andrić, The Miracles of St. John Capistran, pp. 198–203. In these miracles children who suffer for their parents’ misdeeds are nevertheless also rare. One example cited by Andrić is a case where the future saint himself entered a monastery, whilst trying to persuade his wife to follow his example by similarly taking the vow of chastity. She refused to follow his advice, re-married and had a daughter, who died very young and was soon followed by her mother, who died of grief: Andrić, The Miracles of St. John Capistran, p. 199. 290  On children accompanying their parents to shrines, see Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 119–20.

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the examples might suggest that children were even held responsible for the salvation of their parents.291 Thus children could also be regarded as under threat of punishment for disrespect towards saints, even if less so than their parents. Finally, it is worth pointing out that the canonization testimonies as such were not meant for public reading ; thus moral or didactic tones are usually absent from their texts, although miracles recorded in the processes were an important aspect of fighting heresy and disbelief, and strengthening faith.292 For example, a priest could testify about his child’s miracle, and no questions about his conduct were recorded.293 Presumably people only testified about the sins they themselves saw as causes of their children’s ailments and as essential for the investigated miracle,294 but it is also possible that in some instances they simply did not want to admit their misdeeds.295 One possible explanation for the lack of sins in the depositions is that the Church’s teachings had had their effect, so that people followed the regulations regarding proper sexual and devotional behaviour, and another, more convincing one, that the matter was not considered very important by either papal commissioners or laymen. When it comes to sexual sins specifically, it is likely that most of the forbidden periods were known to be infertile ones.296 291 

See Garver, ‘The Influence of Monastic Ideals on Carolingian Conceptions of Childhood’, pp. 84–85. 292  Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 8–10. Barbara Wendel-Widmer has come to a similar conclusion about St Elizabeth’s miracles: Wendel-Widmer, Die Wunderheilungen, p. 12. In the case of Margaret of Hungary, Pope Innocent V even specifically ordered that the inquisitors should look for signs and prodigies, which would strengthen the faith and confound heretics: Goodich, ‘The Politics of Canonization’, p. 182. 293  See for example, ASV, MS A.A., Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 5 r; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 142r–v. 294  According to Benedicta Ward, the lack of punishment in canonization processes is due to them being thought less edifying and harder to attest than the cures: Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, p. 191. This edifying aspect does not, however, appear evident in the depositions. 295  There is an interesting parallel with the late medieval and early modern German family books in which children’s fatal illnesses and also chronic conditions were occasionally interpreted both as punishments for parental sins and as the result of God’s will, albeit only when no treatment proved useful, and most notably spelled out only after the person in question had died. Yet, also in the case of these children, the parents sought to maintain an appearance of normality as far as possible. See Frohne, Leben mit ‘kranckhait’, pp. 115–23; Frohne and Horn, ‘On the Fluidity of “Disability”’, pp. 36–37. It is possible that similar patterns of thought play a part in the background of some miracle testimonies. 296  That the birth of ‘defective’ childen was not used as a way to threaten people except in

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The rarity of references in miracle testimonies to parental sins as the cause for children’s physical impairments does not mean that such a concept was com­­ pletely alien. However, even if laymen also thought that God or saints could punish a sinful person with a child’s impairment, it does not follow that they interpreted all childhood impairments as punishments. 297 The connection between sin and illness/impairment was vague, and did not follow logical causality, but was rather metaphoric. Sin was, after all, already an ‘illness’ and something that troubled the whole of mankind since the Fall.298 What is probably even more important for the construction of childhood impairments is that among the primary sources of this study, there is not one single case in which the child’s own misdeed was seen as causing them to be punished by a saint. Although such a conception was not totally alien to miracle narratives, it seems that children were thought to be less prone to such behaviour. This presumably derives from ideas that small children were incapable of distinguishing good from evil,299 but also pertains to pueritia. Just as parental devotion was the most sins related to marital sex suggests that the possible target of confessors who used this argument was to stop married couples from having sex ‘just for fun’: d’Avray and Tausche, ‘Marriage Sermons in ad status collections’, p. 87. For churchmen’s concern regarding use of contraceptive methods see Biller, ‘Birth-Control in the Medieval West’, pp. 24–25. Irina Metzler writes that ideas of birth defects being due the parents’ sexual behaviour is subsumed in the concept that all sexual activity [her emphasis] is sinful due to Original Sin: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 90. However, David d’Avray points out that there is no real reason to preserve the modern conception that the Church tolerated sex only as a lesser evil. Medieval writers did not accept sex when its motivation was pleasure, but pleasure as a secondary result of legitimate marital sex was approved. From Abelard on, authors moved away from Augustine’s idea that sexual pleasure did not exist before the Fall, and started to think that before Original Sin sex would have been pleasurable: d’Avray, Medieval Marriage, pp. 169–70. 297  That one’s virtues or ill deeds were not an essential part of medieval conceptions of impairment is also suggested by Caroline Walker Bynum. She writes that because one’s bodily perfection is restored at resurrection, bodily defects may be adventitious and have nothing to do with one’s guilt or merit: Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, pp. 265–66. For an important and insightful discussion on this concept’s significance for medieval disability, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 55–62. 298  See also Frohne, Leben mit ‘kranckheit’, pp. 114–15; Metzler, ‘Disabled Children’, pp. 179–80; I am also discussing this topic in my forthcoming article, ‘Infirmi in Monastic Rules’. 299  See Gaffney, Constructions of Childhood and Youth, pp. 35–36. Children’s innocence is referred to in Matthew 19. 14, Mark 10. 15, and Luke 18. 17, when Jesus says one has to be like a little child to enter Paradise. The educated discourse on children’s innocence increased from the late twelfth century onwards, when the connection between sin and responsibility was an important topic: Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 63–65.

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important method for obtaining the miraculous cure, it is also parental misdeeds, if anything, which caused the saint to make the child infirm. Children were thus instruments in the interaction of saints and adults, and their impairments and sufferings, as well as the resulting distortions in family life, were primarily a parental concern.300 In addition to (parental) sins, demonic intervention as a cause of illnesses and impairments has been another conception that appeared relatively frequently in earlier studies, although again the prevalence of such ideas in the Middle Ages has been questioned. 301 In discussions about children’s impairments, the idea of changelings — that is, that a supernatural being had stolen the healthy human child and left its own sickly one in its cradle — has often coloured the view of children’s impairments in premodern societies. In his famous yet controversial study on child abandonment, John Boswell interprets one short miracle account and the rites attached to the legend of Guinefort as a method of exposing deformed children.302 Similar views have been shared by others as well. It has been claimed that from antiquity to the Middle Ages, children with anomalies were invariably destroyed.303 For the medieval period, Göran Bäärnhielm and Janken Myrdal wrote in 2004 that ‘[n]ormally they were abandoned and left to die, but we find several cases of handicapped children who were healed and survived’.304 One of the most drastic claims about disabled children has been that changelings and impaired children were the result of demonic misconduct, argued by 300 

This presumably derives from the same idea as the exempla in which a parent is punished for his or her wrongdoings by a child’s death: Étienne de Besançon, An Alphabet of Tales, ed. by Macleod Banks, ii, 261–62, 264; Tubach, Index exemplorum, pp. 31, 117. Chroniclers also wrote about incidents in which a child ended up a victim because of parental sins. In Roger of Howden’s chronicle a woman gives birth to an illegitimate child, and after asking help from the Devil, he acts as a midwife and finally escapes with the child in his arms. Roger of Houden, Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houeden, ed. by Stubbs, pp. 302–03. 301  Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 72. For Nordic examples, see Fröjmark, ‘Demons in the miracula’, pp. 276–79. 302  Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, pp. 283–84. 303  Newman, ‘Background Forces in Policies’, p. 26. Stephen Hinshaw writes that ‘[i]nfanticide was also practiced in ancient Greece and Rome, particularly by families whose children showed mental or physical disabilities’. Hinshaw, The Mark of Shame, p. 69. For more recent studies of disability and disabled children in antiquity, see Laes, ‘Learning from Silence’; Laes, Goodey, and Rose, eds, Disabilities in Roman Antiquity; Southwell-Wright, ‘Perceptions of Infant Disability’. 304  Bäärnhielm and Myrdal, ‘Miracles and Medieval Life’, p. 109.

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Carl Haffter in 1968 and followed by many up to the present time.305 Howard Kessler’s The Cripple and the Disabled, written in the 1930s but republished as late as 1980s, went so far as to claim that ‘[i]gnorance and prejudice among poor and wealthy alike caused the deformed to be looked upon as works of the Devil, or bodies in league with the Devil, or as victims of the wrath of God. Such attitudes excluded all considerations of their care’.306 Similar views have been recently expressed by C. M. Woolgar, who writes based on miracle narratives, that those who had impairments affecting the senses were often seen as evil or as evidence of the Devil’s work, and adds that they even had evil powers. According to him, there was something shameful about disability and the moral counterpoint to these was the miraculous cure.307 Among the present canonization inquiries, in two testimonies a parent or parents state that the reason for their child’s impairment is of a supernatural, demonic origin. When a woman called Yfamia testified about about her daughter Mabileta’s disability in the canonization hearing of St Louis IX of France, she related the events before she discovered the girl’s infirmity.308 One night Yfamia’s husband was away, and while she was sleeping alone with the three-month-old baby’s cradle next to her bed, she suddenly realized that the cradle was moving. She entrusted the child to God, after which something struck her arm. Yfamia 305  Haffter also wrote that a disabled child was a stigma for the whole family and a reason for their isolation, exclusion, and even persecution: Haffter, ‘The Changeling’, pp. 57–58, 61. See also, Barnes and Mercer, Exploring Disability, pp. 15–16. Mark Priestley, though not criticizing Haffter, has taken a more moderate standpoint. Yet, he writes that ‘the construction of disabled children as unnatural and flawed remained deeply rooted’ in later Judeo-Christian cultures, thus implying that the pre-Christian belief in changelings had significantly affected the view of impaired children also in the medieval period’: Priestley, Disability, p. 69. Following in his footsteps, later studies have claimed, for example, that mothers of deformed infants could be burned at the stake for an assumed association with the Devil, or that in medieval Europe disabled people were thought to be possessed by demons and burned as witches. Covey, Social Perceptions, p. 238; Selway and Ashman, ‘Disability, Religion and Health’, p. 431. Also, in her book about the history of disability Deborah Marks writes in the short section about its modern perspectives that in the Middle Ages disability was thought to be a punishment for sin, and generally associated with witchcraft: Marks, Disability, p. 28. 306  Kessler, The Crippled and the Disabled, p. 19. The 1920s and 1930s were a significant era for the emergence of various books on the history of disability, in the aftermath of the First World War and the sudden, huge number of maimed soldiers returning from the front: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 12. 307  Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England, p. 10. 308  Mabileta’s miraculous cure is one of the three cases, of which the actual witness accounts have survived. See Fragments, pp. 39–54.

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told the being to disappear, and then fearfully covered herself with a rug. In the morning Yfamia bathed Mabileta and realized that the child was not well, for she threw up the milk she was fed, although Yfamia could not find any visible sign of injury on her body. However, when Mabileta reached the age when children usually start walking, she was unable to stay on her feet. She remained like that until the age of five, when she was cured at the shrine of Louis IX.309 It seems evident that the being that rocked the cradle and struck Yfamia’s arm was some kind of evil spirit. Didier Lett writes that Yfamia’s choice of words and quick actions were intended to prevent the child from being stolen or changed.310 We may be certain that she believed something could harm the girl, as she also investigated the child’s body for possible lesions in the morning. Different kinds of harmful nightly visits appear in several writings of the time,311 and in two of the miracles in the process of Ambrose of Massa parents testified about a child who somehow ended up out of his cradle.312 In these depositions the parents did not suggest any explanation for the danger their child was in, and it is thus possible that the child had simply fallen out of the cradle. Nevertheless, given the contemporary accounts of nightly visits, which result in the child being found elsewhere than in the cradle, it is possible that a supernatural visit was considered the reason for the danger.313 Moreover, a significant number of miracles from the sources of this study concern conditions that struck while the child was asleep.314 While there is no indicator in these 309 

Yfamia’s testimony is in Fragments, pp. 46–49. Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, p. 69. Lett uses Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s French miracle collection of Louis IX as his source instead of the witness account. This part of Yfamia’s testimony is almost identical in the later retelling of the miracle: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 126–27. 311  For instance, both Walter Map (d. 1208/10) and Étienne de Bourbon (d. 1261) write about a demonic creature in an old woman’s form that killed babies. In both accounts the demonic being is finally revealed just as it was about to kill yet another child, but we do not know what happened to these children afterwards. See Walter Map, De nugis curialium, ed. by Rhodes James, pp. 78–79 and Étienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes historiques, ed. by Lecoy de la Marche, pp. 319–21. The motif of a child-sucking strigae is ancient, already appearing for instance in Ovid’s Fasti. For strigae, see Cherubini, ‘Hungry Witches and Children’. 312  AASS Nov. IV, pp. 598, 599. In both miracles a parent saw a vision of the saint, who warned them about the danger the child was in. 313  See also Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, p. 70. 314  One example comes from the miracles of St Edmund of Abingdon. A boy was left to sleep in a field, and when he was awakened, he had lost the usage of his lower limbs, his stomach was swollen, his knees were twisted, and so on. Vita beati Edmundi Cantuariensis archi310 

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cases that a spirit of any kind might have been the cause of the misfortune, night was regarded as a dangerous time when such a thing could occur.315 In any case, Yfamia did not have a clear idea of the visitor. When the investigators asked who moved the cradle, she stated that she did not know who or what it was, because her brother, who was the only other person in the house, was sound asleep.316 There are five other witnesses for the miracle: Mabileta’s two godmothers, her father Herbertus, the family’s neighbour Ricardus, and a man who hosted them at Saint-Denis, but none of them made any remarks about the possible reasons for the girl’s impairment.317 That the father or the godmothers did not mention the nightly incident seems especially strange, especially as one of them specified that God did not want her to learn to walk. It is always possible that the notary left something out, but that seems unlikely when Yfamia’s testimony about the nightly intervention was recorded. That part of the miracle also found its way into Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s narrative.318 Presumably Yfamia had not shared her experience with other people, or her husband disagreed with her about the importance of the nightly incident. In any case, it seems the commissioners did not find this nightly incident essential for the miraculous cure itself. The only person Yfamia mentioned visiting her and the child shortly after that night is a vetula living nearby, but Yfamia only told her that the child was very sick, because, as she herself stated, she did not trust the old woman.319 Vetulae were, after all, typically associated with the practice of witchcraft, which may episcopi, ed. by Martène and Durand, col. 1888. See also e.g. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fols 96r– 97r; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 199–200; Louis of Toulouse, pp. 169, 224–25; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 27, 32, 78, 144, 147–48, 168; Urban V, p. 301. In the miracle of Edmund of Abingdon, sleeping on an open field could also be a reference to a folk motif. There are occasional other mentions of someone — either an adult or a child — being suddenly struck by a disabling condition while walking in the fields or other such areas. See e.g. Louis of Toulouse, p. 158; Yves of Tréguier, pp. 151. On demonic possession and entering uncultivated areas, see Caciola, Discerning Spirits, pp. 50–51; Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Demonic Possession as Physical and Mental Disturbation’. 315  Night was considered a dangerous time in general, when demons, evil spirits, ghosts, and other beings wandered. Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages, esp. pp. 177–78. 316  Fragments, p. 47: ‘dixit quod nescit quia nulli alii erant in domo, ut predixit, et frater suus predictus fortiter dormiebat’. 317  The testimonies are in Fragments, pp. 39–46, 49–54. 318  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 126–30. Interestingly, in a fifteenth-century re-telling of the same miracle, it is stated that wind struck the girl: BNF, MS Fr. 2829, fol. 126r. 319  Fragments, p. 47.

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explain Yfamia’s mistrust — perhaps she thought that the previous night’s incident was her doing. Some writers of the time also spoke of vetulae as evil spirits or demons of the night who masqueraded as old women.320 Whatever the primary reason for Yfamia’s concerns, her mistrust towards the vetula further advocates her explanation for the child’s condition. In addition to Yfamia, a woman called Sulmontina, the wife of Berardius Thodini, described her son Thomasius’s condition in Peter of Morrone’s hearing by recounting similar events. She reported that the boy had ‘accidentally been overshadowed by a diabolic spirit’ (esset casu fortuito diabolico spiritu obumbratus), and, as a result, the strength had drained from his body and he had also lost the power of speech. The boy remained in such a state for three months, while doctors and other ‘skilled men’ tried and failed to cure him.321 Accounts of children falling under the influence of demonic spirits are not exceptional in the canonization records,322 but what makes Thomasius’ and Mabileta’s cases special are their symptoms, which do not follow the most typical pattern of demonic possession.323 However, in Ambrose of Massa’s inquiry too there is an account of a boy who lost both senses and speech, and was tortured in his limbs like homo vexatus, although the witnesses seem to have concurred that he suffered from a more ‘earthly’ condition.324 Thus demons could be considered the 320 

See Goodich, ‘Miseries of Dulcia and Cristina’, p. 104. Peter of Morrone, pp. 315–16. 322  Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Socialization Gone Astray?’. 323  The possible symptoms of demonic possession vary. Nancy Caciola’s list of them includes rigid entrance, thrashing about, sudden muteness, prophetic gifts, extreme passivity or strength and aggressiveness. Caciola, Discerning Spirits, pp. 53–54. Other possible symptoms are fever, disorientation, stench, insomnia, trembling, catatonia, screaming fits accompanied by the grinding of teeth and uncontrollable crying. Goodich, Other Middle Ages, p. 153. See also Andrić, The Miracles of St. John Capistran, pp. 301–02. Sari Katajala-Peltomaa writes, however, that in the canonization records the possessed are usually described as raving mad, and that contemporaries often confused the mentally ill with demoniacs and sometimes even epileptics. Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 147–53. 324  AASS Nov. IV, pp. 590–91. There are also occasional references of adults in similar situations who lost their speech or bodily strength. Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 259–60; Thomas Aquinas I, pp. 294–98, 304–05. In St Elizabeth’s inquiry there is a case where a man woke up in the middle of the night, wanting to hit something he thought was a cat. As a result, his arm was impaired. There may be traces of some folk motif or bewitchment in the testimony. Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 254; Klaniczay, ‘Ritual and Narrative’, pp. 217–18; Klaniczay, ‘Speaking about Miracles’, p. 388. In Ambrose of Massa’s process a man called Ildrebandinus Rainerii testified that his arm dried up so that he was unable to use it as a result of a maleficium: AASS Nov. IV, 321 

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cause for common physical impairments or their symptoms, but this seems to have been rare.325 As mentioned above, one assumption in the historiography of disabled chil­­dren in the past has been the connection between children’s impairments and changelings; these were believed to be offspring of supernatural beings, such as fauns or demons, which were substituted for human children. 326 The first mention of a changeling in medieval literature comes from Vita fabulosa of St Stephen, in which the Devil steals the future saint from his cradle and replaces the child with a wooden statuette, and later similar tales were attached to the legends of St Lawrence and St Bartholomew.327 These texts — which were presumably transferred orally, given the fame and wide veneration of these saints — do not connect the changeling with a malformed child, but with the misdeeds of demons. The same holds true of Guillaume d’Auvergne (d. 1249), who describes changelings as demons’ unreal offspring, greedy for milk,328 and Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240), who mentions changelings in one of his exempla, comparing them to a certain type of Christian, and explaining that they are like the children the French call chamium, whose stomachs only harden and whose hunger is never satisfied.329

p. 604. Similarly, in Bernardino of Siena’s hearing a woman who reported that her physical illness was caused by sortilegia: Bernardino of Siena, p. 441. 325  Interestingly, in his study of French miracles from eleventh- and twelfth-century France, Pierre-André Sigal writes that demons were a common cause for deafness. Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, pp. 233–34. Because deafness is so rare in my sources, comparisons cannot be made. It is, however, suggestive that precisely deafness was one of Thomasius’s symptoms. 326  I have discussed the matter more thoroughly elsewhere. See Kuuliala, ‘Sons of Demons?’. 327  Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound, pp. 77–78, 194–95. The origins of the belief have been dated to pagan Celtic traditions regarding fairies, but we have no written proof of that, as the written texts pertaining to the topic are very fragmentary before the early modern era. The association of elves with changelings is only verifiable when they are associated with lamiae in the fifteenth century. Hall, Elves in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 117–18. John Boswell mentions a text from the Qur’an, where a stranger kills a troublesome youth so that the Lord could replace him with a better one, as a possible early version of the changeling idea. Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, p. 187. 328  Gillaume d’Auvergne, Opera omnia, p. 1666. In d’Auvergne’s thinking demons were unable to procreate, and he is thus indicating that changelings were not real. See Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition, pp. 282–83. 329  Jacques de Vitry, The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the ‘Sermones Vulgares’, ed. by Crane, p. 129. On these sources, see also Goodey, The History of Intelligence, pp. 262–67.

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There is, however, an obvious connection between physical ailments and changelings in the only miracle account in which the belief is mentioned. The text comes from the miracula of St Thomas Becket and portrays a priest’s sixmonth-old son, whose appearance started to change dramatically. He became thin and miserable, and the joints of his spine openly jutted out so that in the end only his upright head and wailing indicated that he was of human origin. According to William of Canterbury, that happened because of a disease known to doctors, as no sane person believes in the foolish fables of the common people (vulgi fabulosa) about children being transformed or substituted.330 Perhaps the most famous medieval text regarding changelings is the one regarding Guinefort the greyhound, written by the Dominican preacher and inquisitor Étienne de Bourbon (d. 1261).331 According to the text, in a village in the diocese of Lyon, people honoured a dead greyhound as a saint. Following the instructions of a vetula, the women of the village took their sick and feeble infants, believed by them to be offspring of fauns, to the dog’s grave. There they performed various rites, including, among others, leaving children in the forest for a night, in order to make the fauns feel sorry for their children and reverse the substitution.332 Étienne’s narrative, which is based on the material he collected when working as an inquisitor fighting heresies in the area of Rhône-Alps, connects the belief in changelings with children’s physical ailments. This time, however, the ailment is described as thinness rather than physical impairment as such. Although based on Étienne’s own experiences, the exemplum has a moral basis, demonstrating how the Devil makes people believe in his machinations and exhorting them to combat his misdeeds and to react against idolatry.333 Despite the moral overtones, Jean-Claude Schmitt has shown that the legend of Guinefort, and thus most likely also the rite, have peasant origins, perhaps resulting from a popularization of a learned narrative.334 Considering also 330 

Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. by Craigie Robertson, i, 202–03. Didier Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, p. 71, also connects the case with the belief in changelings. 331  That the exemplum has become so widely known is at least partly due to the extensive study of it: Schmtt, The Holy Greyhound. 332  Etienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes historiques, ed. by de la Marche, pp. 325–28. Various versions of the legend of Guinefort existed in several other countries, and in the international classification of motifs it is indexed as B524ff in Thompson, The Motif Index, p. 58. 333  Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound, pp. 14–24. 334  Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound, pp. 39–67. C. F. Goodey and Tim Stainton, ‘Intellectual Disability and the Myth of the Changeling Myth’, question whether the whole idea of change-

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William of Canterbury’s mention of stories of changelings being ‘fool fables of people’, it appears that the belief did indeed exist in peasant culture of the thirteenth century. Although both exempla and miracle narratives were widespread, all the examples other than the legends of St Stephen, St Lawrence, and St Bartholomew come from present-day England and France and are connected with the beliefs of certain areas. Given the amount of medieval literature about demons, if the belief in changelings, interpreted by theologians as demonic misdeeds or foolish tales, was particularly widespread, one would expect to find more mentions of it.335 Jacques de Vitry, Guillaume d’Auvergne, and Étienne de Bourbon were productive writers, and yet their references to such beliefs were only occasional. Thus, such references appear to be more important within the context of post-medieval changeling tales and less relevant to a study of medieval views on children’s disabilities.336 On the basis of two miracle testimonies in which demonic beings were claimed to influence children’s ailments, let alone the rare references to changelings, it is impossible to determine how often parents gave supernatural explanations for their child’s impairment. As Mabileta’s case shows, even if some family member believed or suspected something of the kind, it was not necessarily recorded in writing in the testimony. According to Nancy Caciola, popular culture and tales tended to regard possession by a demon as ‘bad luck’, rather than blaming the victims for their sinfulness.337 If we follow these notions, it seems lings originated in folk culture in the first place, because Labeo Notker (d. 1022) uses the term Wechselbalg when talking about Jews, and because the point of issue in both Guillaume d’Auvergne’s text and later writings is the way these children are conceived. Coodey and Stainton do not take Étienne de Bourbon’s text into account, though they strongly criticize Schmitt, nor do they mention the miracle in the Becket collection, which suggests that the belief was a part of the thinking of common people. Moreover, the miracle was recorded in the late twelfth century, when the texts by Guillaume d’Auvergne and Jacques de Vitry did not yet exist, therefore it obviously could not have been influenced by them. 335  It is no coincidence that the number of written accounts of changelings increases at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, when discussion about the procreation of demons also flourished and the boundaries of the natural in general were under discussion. Whether or not demons that seduced people were real also gave rise to discussion. Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine, pp. 163–66. 336  The meanings of a ‘changeling’ in the early modern era have been analysed in Goodey, The History of Intelligence, esp. pp. 267–72. A further and much needed study on medieval conceptions about the ‘changeling’ is being currently conducted by Rose Sawyer at the University of Leeds; the provisional title of her forthcoming PhD thesis is ‘Child Substitution: New Approaches to the Changeling Motif in Medieval European Culture’. 337  Caciola, Discerning Spirits, p. 50.

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that demonic influence was quite marginal in people’s conceptions regarding children’s sensory or mobility impairments, and therefore there is no reason to suspect that the attitudes towards physically impaired children were heavily influenced by ideas of demonic intervention. In addition to religious and supernatural reasons for children’s impairments, accidents would appear to be a common cause of disability. Indeed, accidental deaths of children are a frequent misfortune in medieval canonization records and other miracle narratives. Savings, especially from drowning, were recorded in the collections of all the saints, and as dramatic events that attracted public attention they were also relatively easy to prove. 338 From looking at these accounts, and given what we know of children’s lives in the medieval context, one would expect to find regular references to accidents in the testimonies about children’s physical impairments.339 There are eighteen miracle cases in these sources in which accidents were reported as having caused childhood impairment, affecting either limbs or the use of the senses. The most common accidents were being dropped or falling on a road, from a height, or from a horse,340 or being burned by fire or scalded by boiling water.341 An accident unusual to the hearings was reported in Peter of Morrone’s inquiry, in which a girl called Francesse’s leg became infistulata after a stone fell on it when she was playing with other children,342 and a boy called Angelus Iohannis’s leg was fractured in six parts,343 suggesting that the cause was an accident, although the witnesses did not specify that. The number of reported accidents is strikingly low, especially compared to the number of accidents leading to a child’s sudden death mentioned in canonization testimonies, and also given that we would expect everyday mishaps 338  For examples, see Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 101–35; Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, passim; Krötzl, ‘Parent-Child Relations’, pp. 35–36; Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 93–97. 339  On children’s fatal accidents, see Hanawalt, Growing up in Medieval London, pp. 63–67, 75. On accidents of adults leading to permanent injury and inability to work, see Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 47–48. 340  ASV, MS A.A., Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fols 3r, 4r; AASS Oct. IX, p. 804; AASS Nov. IV, p. 605; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 64v–71r; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 258–59; Louis of Toulouse, pp. 153–55; Thomas Aquinas II, pp. 522–23; Urban V, p. 453. 341  AASS Oct. IX, p. 881; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fols 93v–95v; Clare of Montefalco, pp. 379, 382; Dorothea of Montau, pp. 124, 334, 443; Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 585–86. 342  Peter of Morrone, pp. 246–54. 343  Peter of Morrone, pp. 306–07.

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to lead to permanent impairments much more frequently than nowadays. A badly healed bone fracture, for example, could easily result in walking problems.344 The nine (or 56 per cent) of the sixteen impaired children who were boys is a some­­what lower proportion than in accidents leading to a child’s death or mira­­culous recovery from death.345 However, the small number of testimonies where accidents are a stated reason for the child’s impairment cannot be used as a basis for statistical analysis of the gendered proclivity for accidents and the possible differences in their types. In addition to the straightforward accident, another type of mishap reported was caused by the action of a midwife. Domina Alifanda’s son Cola had been pulled by his toes during his birth, and as a result his toes were twisted.346 There is also one case in which a wet nurse testified about the impairment of a child in her care. The wet nurse in question was called Ghisla, and she reported that the girl Maria fell into a fireplace and hurt her face, also losing her sight. Ghisla’s primary reported emotion in this case was fear of retribution (from the girl’s father) for not fulfilling her duty in keeping the girl safe, and so she kept the incident secret.347 There is one other case in my sources in which a child suffers an impairment while in a wet nurse’s care. The girl, Amelia Girauda, got an infection in her eyes, after which the wet nurse, Agnesia Lageria, vowed her to Urban V. 348 Agnesia’s testimony indicates that she had the girl at her house, which is the probable reason that she made the votum. Perhaps she had similar anxieties to Ghisla, fearing that she would be blamed for the girl’s impairment. Besides these cases, I found no other such explanations for children’s conditions.349 This, too, 344 

This possibility was recognized also by medieval medical writers. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 108–11. For archaeological evidence, see e.g. Lewis, The Bioarchaeology of Children, pp. 171–72. 345  In Ronald Finucane’s material, 65 per cent of accident victims were boys. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p. 141. In Barbara Hanawalt’s study of Northamptonshire coroners’ rolls, 63 per cent of all accidental deaths of children were male. Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict, p. 156. See also Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, pp. 143–44. 346  Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 185–86. 347  AASS Oct. IX, p. 881: ‘et coepit habere maximum timorem de patre dictae puellae, et coepit hoc tenere secretum, ad hoc ut pater dictae puellae nesciret […] Et dicta bajula medicabatur eam in domo secrete propter timorem patris puellae’. 348  Urban V, p. 325. 349  A peculiar miracle in Dauphine of Puimichel’s hearing concerns a noblewoman whose daughter died while sleeping in the wet nurse’s bed. In her grief, the mother was tempted to kill the wet nurse and successfully sought consolation from the living saint: Dauphine of Puimichel,

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is somewhat surprising, especially given that midwives were held responsible for acting properly during childbirth and also for swaddling the infant in the correct manner to prevent the child from developing crooked limbs.350 In the testimonies regarding the impairments caused by accidents or midwives’ or nurses’ errors, parents or other family members did not use accusatory or reproachful words, nor did they express any shame. Ghisla’s testimony is the only one that expresses any fear of retribution. Unfortunately, we do not have the testimony of the nurse who dropped Rixenda de Fayensa and caused her deafness; in their testimonies the witnesses mentioned this aspect as a matter of fact, without specifically blaming her. Considering the family’s status and attitudes, it would have been interesting to find out how any feelings of guilt would have been expressed, or whether she had been dismissed from her work. Because cases in which the child was in wet nurse’s care are so rare, it is impossible to make conclusions about whether they were blamed more commonly than parents. That may, however, be the case. In his analysis of Florentine families, Louis Haas writes that parents visited their children who were with wet nurses often because they had to monitor that the children were being properly taken care of. It was also recommended that the wet nurse should be changed if she did not carry out her duties properly. There are records of some children having several different wet nurses.351 However, there seems to be a distinction between impairments and accidents leading to mortal danger. In some miracle accounts in which a child is in danger of dying due to an accident, parents expressed shame and self-accusation,352 and the records of coroners’ inquests pp. 458–59. The case and its connection with medieval conceptions about anger and sin is extensively analysed in Archambeau, ‘Tempted to Kill’. 350  The actions and characteristics of wet-nurses, as well as those of midwives, were known to be of importance regarding the child’s future health. See e.g. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 73, 93–94; Orme, Medieval Children, pp. 8–59; Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, p. 85. 351  Haas, The Renaissance Man and His Children, pp. 118–19. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber’s study shows that among the Florentine families, 17.4 per cent of the children placed in the care of a nurse died as a result of an accident or an illness. Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, pp. 145–46. 352  Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 124–26; Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 82–85. Here my findings differ from those of Diana Webb, who writes that women were reported to have been afraid of being blamed by their husbands if their child got ill or was injured in an accident. Webb, ‘Friends of the Family’, p. 191. Most of the miracle cases Webb cites are, however, accidents involving mortal danger, and they do not come from actual witness depositions but other miracle narratives.

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refer to censure of parents who left their children without proper oversight;353 in our sources similar censures were not recorded in relation to impairing accidents. The only possible exception is the cure of the French girl Mabileta, but even in this case the parents were only criticized for leaving their daughter alone at the shrine.354 As mentioned earlier, in modern, clinical practice it is well known that parents tend to feel guilt over their child’s disability, trying to understand it and what they might have done to make their child suffer, and there is no reason to suspect that medieval parents would have been any different. Yet, at least in the canonization testimonies, parental guilt did not appear to be an important factor in defining a child’s impairment. Indeed, the low number of accidents reportedly leading to childhood impairments suggests that the reason for the condition, whether spiritual or more mundane, was inconsequential to the witnesses and not something the commissioners were interested in investigating.355 Whether this was mainly a characteristic of the hagiographic genre or reflective of a more prevalent view in medieval society is not clear from the depositions, but it is possible that the causality of impairment was not a defining aspect of the social construction of childhood impairments. Rather, different kinds of impairing conditions simply ‘came upon’, ‘tormented’, or ‘burdened’ the future beneficiary — language which portrays the conditions themselves as active forces.356 At the same time, as worded by one witness in the hearing of St Louis IX of France, many impairments undoubtedly were simply considered to have occurred ‘by chance […] just as it pleases the Lord’.357

353 

Hanawalt, ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’, p. 163. Fragments, p. 49. According to the mother, the reason why the girl was left alone was that the father had to work and she had to put their infant son to bed. 355  The same holds true for the miracle testimonies concerning the plague, in which the witnesses did not explain or speculate about the reasons for the mortality. Archambeau, ‘Healing Options during the Plague’, p. 557. Rudolf Hiestand made a similar observation about the lack of explanations for illnesses in medieval miracles. Hiestand, ‘Kranker König — kranker Bauer’, pp. 76–77. 356  See Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy, p. 182. 357  Fragments, p. 32: ‘et quod accidit sibi a casu infirmitas supradicta sicut Domino placuerat’. Similar remark was given by, for example, Mabileta’s godmother (Fragments, pp. 50–51), and Roulandus Poncii concerning his son’s curved leg, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 142v. 354 

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Emotions and Future Although the descriptions of children’s symptoms were most important for defining the condition cured and proving the sanctity of the putative saint, the emotions, feelings, and reactions of family members frequently come up in the testimonies. ‘Emotion’ itself is a modern umbrella concept that came into use in the eighteenth century, and it never appears as such in the canonization testimonies. Moreover, even if many medieval terms for various emotions or feelings are basically translateable, such as verecundia, ‘shame’, which will be discussed below, they had a variety of meanings and connotations that only partly overlap with modern concepts.358 Being aware of these problems, in the context of this book, I use the term ‘emotions’ to refer both to the expressed sentiments and to behaviour that appears to reflect an inner feeling which often intermingled with religious and social behaviour as well as more spontaneous reactions. In her many studies on emotions in the Middle Ages, Barbara Rosenwein has established the concept of ‘emotional communities’; that is, communities where people value and devalue the same emotions and adhere to the same emotional experiences.359 This idea can be extended to cover not only the communities venerating the saints,360 but also the canonization inquests and those taking part in them. Certain expressions of a sentiment served certain purposes in this context, but they were by no means separate from the lived experiences of the partakers. Sorrow or grief is the most typical feeling described by parents of impaired children, although often expressed only by an action: parents frequently mentioned that they cried, wailed, or mourned their child’s situation. Undoubtedly, on many occasions grief over a child’s impairment was the primary reason for the shedding of tears. However, they were also shed in the ritual invocation of saints, which was an essential element in the devotion of saints and communication with them. Because parents were the most likely to make the vow

358 

See Archambeau, ‘Tempted to Kill’, pp. 48–49, and Rosenwein, Emotional Communities, pp. 3–4, on the problems in terminology related to emotions. On the study of emotions in history, see Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions’. On shame, honour, and the terminology, see Pitt-Rivers, ‘Honour and Social Status’. 359  Rosenwein, Emotional Communities, p. 2. 360  Recently Jonas Van Mulder has used this concept convincingly in a study of hagiographic material, concluding that the expressions of emotions expressed and moulded emotional communities. Van Mulder ‘Miracles and the Body Social’.

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for their children, their grief is emphasized.361 In some testimonies this way of thinking is evident; for example, Iohanna Deodata did not mention having mourned for her son Iacobus’s twisted feet, and the boy seems to have been living a life typical of boys of his status and age. She then testified about the events concerning making the votum as follows: Et in die anniversarii beati Ludovici mater testis que loquitur ivit ad ecclesiam beati Francisci, ubi beatus Ludovicus sepultus est, et ibi audivit fr. Raymundum de Ginhac Ordinis fratrum Minorum predicantem et multa bona dicentem de vita et sanctitate beati Ludovici, ita quod testis ista compuncta in corde incepit devote moveri ad implorandam et impetrandam graciam beati Ludovici pro sanitate et restitucione membrorum dicti filii sui, cum magno planctu et lacrimis […]. Post hec reversa ad domum suam ipsa testis posuit se ad mensam cum viro sua, quia erat hora prandii, et puer iste erat ibi, et testis que loquitur incepit narrare marito suo qualiter predictus Frater predicaverat et multa bona verba dixerat de bona vita et sanctitate beati Ludovici et quomodo ipsa devoverat filium suum Iacobum beato Ludovici; et maritus respondit, sicut homo devotus et cum lacrimis: ‘Bene haberemus quod regraciari Deo et beato Ludovico, si facere nobis istam graciam quod curare istum puerum’.362 (And on the anniversary of blessed Louis the mother who testifies went to the church of the blessed Franciscans, where blessed Louis is buried, and there she heard brother Raymundus de Ginhac from the Franciscan order preaching and saying many good things about the life and the sanctity of blessed Louis, so that the witness thus touched in her heart began to be moved to implore and request the grace of blessed Louis for the health and the rebuilding of the limbs of the said son of hers with great grieving and tears […]. Returning home after this, the witness sat herself at the table with her husband, because it was dinner time, and the son was there, and the witness who speaks started to narrate to her husband what the above-mentioned brother had preached and the many good words he had said about the good life and sanctity of blessed Louis, and how she herself vowed her son Iacobus to blessed Louis; and the husband replied, like a devoted man, and with tears: ‘We would do well to thank God and blessed Louis, if they gave us the grace to cure that boy’.)

In her testimony Iohanna thus expressed the humble devotion of herself and her husband, who was dead by the time of the investigation and so could not 361  Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, p. 88; Nagy, ‘Religious Weeping as Ritual’, p. 133. See also Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 151–54 and for Scandinavian examples, Krötzl, ‘Parent-Child Relations’, pp. 30–35. 362  Louis of Toulouse, p. 176.

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speak for himself.363 The tone of her deposition places the expression of emotion at an appropriate moment in the events leading to the successful vow, and emphasizes the parents’ veneration of the saint and good Catholicism, rather than showing grief because of their son’s impairment. Approaching saints in a humble manner was essential when interacting with them. Thus aspects commonly connected with masculinity — such as control or domination — should be downplayed while invoking a saint.364 Although the two do not exclude one another, in some depositions the expres­­sions of grief did not serve so much as part of the devotion as a report on the actual state of things, as parents testified about their sorrow before making their actual vow.365 In these depositions, the parents occasionally gave more specific reasons for their sorrow or distress. Doctors’ operations were one such reason. Three-year-old Vannectus Massioli’s eye was puffed up, and the physicians wanted to make a cut to remove the cause of the swelling. This made his mother very agitated (turbata), and she cried a lot for many days.366 A typical reason given for the tears was fear that the child would be left impaired. For example, dominus Franciscus testified that when his son Zuccius was an infant, his wife Thomassia came to him wailing, and said that the boy’s eyes were flowing out from his head and that she was afraid that the child would completely lose them. Thomassia’s testimony gives similar information about her fear.367 The 363  For humility and parental roles in invoking saints, see Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Fatherhood, Masculinity and Lived Religion’, pp. 229–30. 364  The idea of being a good Catholic was not necessarily very uniform nor based on theology, but rather meant following the social customs and norms. Intention was also important, but what one did was even more essential than what one thought. Arnold, Belief and Unbelief, esp. pp. 40, 221–22. In Iohanna’s testimony these two intermingle. On religion and social reputation, see Hanawalt, ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’, esp. pp. 70–75, 192, and on the importance of religious practices for the concept of premodern ‘religion’, Katajala-Peltomaa and Vuolanto, ‘Religious Practices’, pp. 13–14. 365  For example, Imelda, whose daughter Benvenuta was unable to use her hands, grieved for the girl daily and the mother of Benasciuta, who was blind, testified that she doleret a mortum. AASS Oct. IX, pp. 797, 877. 366  Clare of Montefalco, p. 458: ‘De quo ipsa mater eius valde turbata fuit et ploravit ex hoc multum et multis diebus et vicibus; et semper quando respiciebat ibi ad oculum quasi plorabat’. 367  Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 109: ‘quapropter ipsa mater tristis cepit lacrimari timens ipsum filium oculos perdidisse’. Similarly, in Dorothea of Montau’s process a mother testified about her daughter’s congenital mobility impairment. When the girl was six years old the mother, fearing that she would remain impaired for the rest of her life, vowed the girl to the saint. Dorothea of Montau, p. 453.

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mother and father of Nicolaus Iohannis Pilosi, who had not started to speak by the age of three, feared he would remain mute.368 Occasionally parents, like the mother of the blind Octobellus,369 also specified that they mourned because of the pain or suffering of the child, but statements of this kind are quite rare. Although the tears in these accounts are not a part of the votum, they serve as a means to make the difficulty of the child’s condition clear, but undoubtedly also often reflected the reality of the witnesses’ lives. Sometimes the general hopelessness of the situation was named as the reason for the grief. Guarssias, the nutrix of Iacobus Deodatus, was sure the boy could not be cured, and thus she often grieved and wished to abandon the task.370 The word Guarssias is reported to have used, dimittere, can be translated as ‘abandon’ or ‘send away’, but given the fact that she was staying at the house of the Deodatus family, the most credible interpretation is that she considered leaving their service because of the boy’s condition.371 Guarssias had not been present when Iacobus was born, but she was summoned to nurse him when he was one year old,372 and as a person living in the family and taking care of the child, she can be counted as a family member.

368 

Peter of Morrone, p. 298: ‘Ipsa autem testis mater et Iohannes Pilosus pater dicti pueri timentes ne semper futurus esset mutus posuerunt deuotionem ad sancta merita fratris Petri’. Also the father mentioned the fear. Peter of Morrone, p. 324. 369  AASS Oct. IX, p. 857: ‘Ploraret de dolore quem habebat et poena quam patiebatur filius ejus Octobellus’. Rixenda de Fayensa’s father also mourned because the girl was deaf. Louis of Toulouse, p. 154: ‘ipse testis dolens de ea, eo quod ita esset surda’. 370  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 178–79: ‘multum dolebat testis quo loquitur et frequenter volebat eum dimittere, quia nullo modo credebat quod posset curari vel reformari’. 371  The same verb is used again later, when Guarssias reports that when she left the service of the family, she left the boy in the same condition as earlier. Louis of Toulouse, p. 178. 372  It is not known if Iacobus had had a wet nurse at home before Guarssias, but that he was not sent off to a wet nurse may be an indication that his parents had no antipathies towards his disability — or at least that they did not use a wet nurse as an excuse to get rid of him. For example Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, p. 148, writes that ‘[i]n prosperous families, they [disabled children] were the first to be put out to nurse and then sent to monasteries’. The canonization records do not depict such cases, and based on our evidence, I find Shahar’s notion somewhat precipitate. According to Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 136, having a wet nurse in the house was expensive. In fifteenth-century Florence, a wet nurse who stayed at the house earned 18–20 fiorini per year, while a nurse taking care of children at her own house could hope to earn 9–15 fiorini a year. Quite probably the situation was similar in late thirteenth-century Marseille, which further suggests the willingness of the Deodatus family to invest in their son.

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It is interesting that, as already noted, in this particular case the parents did not express any sorrow over the child’s impairment and they even clearly invested in his future, as is shown by him being taught by a notary. We do not know, however, what discussions were going on in the family at the time Guarssias was present or whether her despair over the child’s condition was, in the beginning, shared by the parents. As an example of another type of situation, in John Buoni’s process a man lamented the hump his son had on his neck. According to the son’s testimony, his father wanted him to enter some religious order, because he did not think the boy would be able to live in the outside world.373 This is the only example among my sources where the possibility of sending a child suffering from a physical condition to a monastery was suggested.374 Nevertheless, that case implies that such an option for the future of nonhealthy children could be considered.375 The father’s remark can be interpreted 373 

AASS Oct. IX, p. 823: ‘Unde, cum pater dicti testis diceret ipsi testi quod volebat quod ipse assumeret sibi aliquem habitum religionis, quia non erat homo, qui in mundo vivere posset’. 374  Some scholars argue that a decline in oblation began in the twelfth century. Boynton and Cochelin, ‘The Sociomusical Role of Child Oblates’, p. 6. Although many monastic writers wrote about the great number of impaired among the oblates, it does not specifically imply that they were a majority among children given to monasteries. Physical defects are probably emphasized because they were very noticeable. In addition to purely religious motivations, economic ones — mainly estate division — were in all likelihood the most important reasons for oblation among the wealthy. See Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, pp. 299, 400. 375  Also in the later Middle Ages primogeniture caused a strain on families which had to plan the future of their younger sons, and the careers offered by the Church were one solution for supporting them. See McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage’, pp. 4–5, 8–9. In St Clare of Assisi’s process one nun had been deaf in one ear before entering the monastery, but the text does not indicate that the impairment would have been reason for her entering the order. Since the said sister was presumably still able to hear with the other ear, her impairment need not have been a serious disability: Clare of Assisi, p. 131. Perhaps the most famous severely impaired oblate was Bl. Hermann of Reichnau (1014–54), also known as Hermannus Contractus, who was the son of the Count of Vehringen. He was born with severe mobility and speech impairments, and placed in the monastery of Reichenau at the age of six. He became a prominent scholar, specialising in music theory, composing, mathematics, and astronomy, also gathering around him a large number of students: Lexikon des Mittelalters, ed. by Auty, pp. 2168–69. From the period of this study, there is a narrative of Bl. Margaret of Castello, who was born blind as well as small in size — apparently having restricted growth. Her parents took her on a pilgrimage to Castello to get her cured when she was still a child. When that proved unsuccessful, her parents abandoned her to the town, where she was first taken care of by ‘devoted persons’ and later taken into a monastery. Vita Margaritae de Città de Castello, ed. by Laurent, pp. 120–22. The narrative portrays Margaret’s parents’ actions as abandonment instead of oblation, which helped to emphasize her sanctity through her harsh experiences.

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as meaning that the hump and its disabling effects were indeed marginalizing, because they prevented his son from becoming a full member of lay society. At the same time, he probably saw the monastery as a shelter for the boy rather than as a way to get rid of him.376 Grief was regarded as an essential part of motherhood, as Mary’s pain and sorrow were understood as symbolic of the pain and sorrow thought to be characteristic of all maternity, and hagiography tends to present grief as a feminine emotion.377 But as the cases discussed above demonstrate, fathers’ tears were also commonly reported.378 In miracles where a child’s disability had lasted a long time, sorrow does not appear as deep or excessive as in cases where a child was in danger of dying,379 so parents could grieve privately, without contravening the norms of behaviour. In any case, sorrow over a child’s impairment does not appear to have been a particularly gen­­dered thing. Because we have more mothers as witnesses, their emotions are presented more frequently, but it seems that a child’s bad health and difficult situation caused equivalent grief in male family members. Reports of sorrow or tears were not, however, vital for the testimonies. Fur­­ thermore, if one parent referred to a mutual sorrow, the other one might leave it unmentioned.380 The frequency of such references, as well as the vocabulary used, also depended on the process in question. In the process of John Buoni,

376  In Carolingian writings from a time when oblation was more common than in this period, families oblating their children saw this as a beneficial thing for both the children and the families, which they could help with their prayers and by forming networks. Garver, ‘The Influence of Monastic Ideals on Carolingian Concepts of Childhood’, pp. 71–72. See also Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, p. 290, who writes that ‘L’oblation peut être interprétée comme un moyen de spiritualiser une famille en amputant un de ses membres au profit de l’Église’. Entering a monastic life could thus provide a rare opportunity given for children with severe impairments to be useful for their families. Here I also agree with John Boswell’s opinion, that oblation was a family strategy rather than just a socially and legally accepted form of abandonment. See Boswell, ‘The Abandonment of Children’, esp. pp. 254–55. 377  Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, p. 162; Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, p. 201. 378  See also Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Fatherhood, Masculinity, and Lived Religion’, pp. 228–29. 379  For examples, see Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 154–58; Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 85–86. 380  See AASS Oct. IX, pp. 872–73, in which the mother of a boy who had gone blind stated that she and her husband had grieved at the boy’s blindness a lot, but the father did not mention his sorrow. The child had previously been saved from mortal danger by the merits of the saint, an event which both parents described in a more detailed way. Also the boy’s grandmother, who made a pilgrimage to get his eyes cured, mentioned the parental sorrow.

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the expression doleret ad mortem is used in several depositions,381 but it is missing from the other processes. In this particular process the importance of grief in general is emphasized, as it appears in one way or another in nearly all miracles dealing with children’s impairments. In other processes, such as those of Elizabeth of Hungary, Ambrose of Massa, Lawrence of Subiaco, and Clare of Montefalco, parental sorrow or devotional tears appear much more infrequently. In addition to sorrow, some family members spoke of weariness, shame, or even abhorrence towards the impaired child, occasionally to the point that they wished the child dead. The family members giving their testimonies about the deaf girl, Rixenda de Fayensa, were her father, the miles Guillelmus de Fayensa, and her brothers, Blacacius and Guillelmus. During the procedure Blacacius was about twenty-four and Guillelmus eighteen years old, while Rixenda was twenty. Rixenda’s father simply testified that he mourned the girl’s deafness and made a vow to St Louis of Toulouse.382 According to Blacacius, the members of the household were sure she could not be cured, and were also ashamed of her deafness, thus wishing her dead rather than alive. 383 The other brother, Guillelmus, did not mention anyone having negative feelings about Rixenda’s deafness.384 Shame is very rarely expressed in the testimonies of miraculous cures of child­­ hood impairments, an interesting contrast to the resuscitation miracles, where a parent — usually a mother — is occasionally reported as having been ashamed of not fulfilling her parental role in supervising the child properly.385 Rixenda’s brother is the only family member in my sources whose testimony directly refers to it. In addition to him, in the miracle collection of St Louis IX a woman is reported as having hidden her son Jehennet whenever she could, as his condition made his limbs, head, and lips tremble, which made her feel ashamed. 386 Pre­­sumably she mentioned this in her original testimony. An Italian woman, Abbenante, gave birth to a boy whose right hand was deformed. The boy was cured after a vow to Ambrose of Massa when he was around two years old, but before that she did not show the baby to anyone outside the household, 381 

AASS Oct. IX, pp. 865, 873, 876, 881. The testimonies are in Louis of Toulouse, pp. 153–54. 383  Louis of Toulouse, p. 154: ‘et credebant quod nullo modo posset a dicta surdiatate curare, et verecundabantur quod ita erat surda, ita quod magis vellent mortem quam vitam eius’. 384  Louis of Toulouse, p. 155. 385  Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 82–83. 386  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 78–79: ‘le cela pour vergoigne quanque ele pot’. 382 

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because her grief over the child was too great.387 As the word used in the testi­ mony is dolore it is impossible to know if shame was a part of Abbenante’s feelings, but it seems likely that something of that kind lay behind her actions. Since the recorded testimony is much summarized, it is likely that she gave more information on her reasons for concealing the child’s impairment in her oral testimony. Shame is an emotion frequently associated with humiliation and disrepute, which may invite censure or reproach, a ‘social emotion’ that has different con­­ notations in different eras and societies. The social structure of medieval Europe was more sharply delineated than ours today, and it has been suggested that feelings such as those reported by Rixenda’s brother could derive from the family’s social status. In all varieties of sources, including miracle collections, it is rare to find reports of bodily impairments among those with very high social standing.388 Ronald C. Finucane’s explanation for this phenomenon is that the wealthier may have had better opportunities to solicit help from medici, but also that they may have wanted to disassociate themselves from ailments that commonly afflicted the peasantry. According to Finucane, for a nobleman to be ill meant admitting to weakness, which was considered a shameful imperfection, and sensitivity to shame was one of the nobility’s burdens.389 He concludes that shame or embarrassment could be linked to Italian city dwellers, who were somewhat well-to-do, but never to the nobility.390 Rudolf Hiestand, who has 387 

AASS Nov. IV, p. 606: ‘Interrogata quibus presentibus, respondit: eius viro et alia sua familia, quia non demonstraverat alicui puerum cum esset parvus et ex nimio dolore quem habebat de eo’. The child’s parents reported that he was born in February, and the vow was made at the time of Ambrose’s death, which was on April 17th. It is not recorded whether the boy’s father had similar feelings and did not want anyone to see the child, as he reports the infant’s impairment and the vow, and after that it is stated that ‘[d]e omnibus aliis interrogatus dixit ut uxor sua’. 388  See for example Antunes and Reich, ‘(De)formierte Körper’, pp.  9–30; Hiestand, ‘Kranker König’, p. 63; Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate, pp. 42, 176; Kuuliala, ‘Nobility, Com­ munity and Physical Impairment’; Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 36–41. 389  Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 149–50. Finucane uses a case of a knight being mira­­ culously cured of leprosy and then refusing to confirm the miracle because he was ashamed of his illness as a basis for his argument. Leprosy was, however, an illness to which several cultural and moral beliefs were attached, and as such it does not necessarily tell us much about the attitudes to other diseases or impairments. 390  Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 4. Then again, the whole concept of belonging to ‘Italian nobility’ appears wavering. In the thirteenth century, those calling themselves ‘noble’ could be powerful landowners from families holding distinguished titles such as count or

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studied illness of rulers especially in chronicles, writes that among royalty and nobility, there was a need to conceal physical imperfections; in particular, illness could be dangerous as it could lead to them losing power. According to Hiestand, for the elite, illnesses and impairments were a cause for marginalization among their peers while the attitudes of the lower classes, based on miracle accounts, expressed no such reservations.391 Hiestand, however, uses two completely different types of texts for his analysis, which must also have had an effect on the results,392 and recently several scholars have questioned the view that high social status would automatically be linked to shunning for physical infirmity.393 What, then, do the canonization testimonies reveal about attitudes towards bodily difference among the upper strata of medieval society? It could indeed be that the anticipation of not being able to fulfil future social expectations was a reason for emotions such as those expressed by Blacacius de Fayensa, especially as verecundia covers a wider range of meanings and sentiments than ‘shame’ and can also be defined as concern for reputation.394 It appears that he was the future head of the family and thus aware of his duties from an early age. The shame he expressed may be partly a gendered thing, as it has been noted that especially in Mediterranean culture, men were constantly forced to prove and assert themselves to their equals.395 At the time of the inquiry, the father of Blacacius and Rixenda was sixty years old, and considering that the miracle had taken place some six years earlier, he had already been quite old then by the standards of the time.396 Blacacius must have realized that, because marques, their vassals, little lords as well as poor nobles or serfs moving up in the world. Larner, Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch, p. 83. 391  Hiestand, ‘Kranker König’, pp.  65–68. See also Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 162–63. I am also discussing this matter more thoroughly in Kuuliala, ‘Nobility, Community, and Physical Impairment’. 392  See also Frohne and Horn, ‘On the fluidity of “disability’’’, pp. 27–28. 393  Gesine Jordan, for example, points out that at least in the Carolingian society, the inability to ride a horse in a battle defined whether an orthopaedic condition was a great impediment for a ruler. Jordan, ‘Hoffnungslos siech’, p. 251. See also Auge, ‘So solt er im namen gottes mit mir hinfahren’. 394  Pitt-Rivers, ‘Honour and Social Status’, pp. 41–42. 395  See Flannery, ‘The Shame of the Rose’, pp. 55–56; Skinner, ‘Gender and Memory in Medieval Italy’, pp. 36–37. Women’s honour was very much dependent on their reputation and chastity. Sari Katajala-Peltomaa’s findings in miracles where a child’s life is at stake, however, contradict this conception. Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 81–87. 396  Historians have concluded that estimating relative medieval life expectancy is difficult,

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of the incurability of Rixenda’s deafness, he might soon be responsible for a sister who was of the age to be married off,397 but who was not an attractive match because of her impairment. Considering Peter Fleming’s argument that childhood or youth ended in the social sense only when the young person married, Blacacius may have considered his sister as still less than an adult and also as not fulfilling her role in benefitting her family.398 The testimonies do not reveal whether the family was wealthy or impoverished. If, however, they were in a good financial situation, Rixenda’s potential husband would have had to come from the higher ranks of the society.399 Thomas Littleton’s Treatise on Tenures states that among disparagaments is the attempt to marry an heir ‘to one who hath but one foot, or but one hand, or who is deformed, or having a horrible disease, or else great and continual infirmity’.400 Littleton’s treatise deals with English heirs in wardship and was written as late as the fifteenth century, so it does not as such hold true for thirteenth-century France.401 It may, however, be a hint that that similar attitudes prevailed elsewhere as well. There are also other hagiographic texts pointing in the same direction. When domina Philippa’s daughter Chiara reached nuptial age, the swelling in her throat had grown to the size of an egg. Philippa was afraid no man would want and depended significantly on the person’s living conditions. See e.g. Garver, ‘Old Age and Women in the Carolingian World’, p. 126; Shahar, Growing Old in the Middle Ages, pp. 34–35. However, the canonization documents and other legal texts often portray witnesses from those in their sixties to hundred-year-olds. See Everard, ‘Sworn Testimony and Memory of the Past’, pp. 77–79; Krötzl, ‘Sexaginta vel circa’. 397  In Mediterranean cultures, among families of high social standing, girls were commonly in their late teens at the time of their first marriage, but could be married off as early as the age of twelve. Peasant girls were married off at a later age. See e.g. Herlihy, Medieval Households, pp. 103–07. 398  See Fleming, Family and Household in Medieval England, p. 59. 399  For militis in France, see Bouchard, Strong of Body, pp. 13–14. On the poverty of French nobility and their marriages, see for example, Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, pp. 42–44, and on the Northern-Italian situation Owen Hughes, ‘Domestic Ideals and Social Behaviour’, p. 127. 400  Thomas Lyttleton, Treatise of Tenures, ed. and trans. by Tomlins, p. 146. See also Orme, Medieval Children, p. 95. Disparagement refers here to the assertion — expressed in Magna Carta — that heirs who have inherited land while under age or unmarried should not be married by the lords to those of inferior social status. See McCarthy, Love Sex & Marriage in the Middle Ages, pp. 108–09. 401  On wardship, see e.g. Menuge, Medieval English Wardship in Romance and Law; Walker, ‘Widow and Ward’. On wardship and mental disability, see Turner, Care and Custody; Turner, ‘Town and Country’.

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to marry the girl.402 Presumably the mother of a small girl Ceccha, who also had a swelling in her throat, had similar worries. She was very agitated when the doctors wanted to cauterize it with a hot iron, saying that the girl would be left scarred, which would bring shame on her.403 In the Naples process of St Thomas Aquinas there is an account of Margareta de Piperno. She came to the gates of Fossanova Abbey to ask for help, again for a swelling in her throat, as women were not allowed to enter the monastery. Frater Petrus stated that Margareta was betrothed, but the deformity had caused her fiancé to reject her. The commissioners asked Petrus if Margareta was, after the cure, married to the man who had once refused her, and he replied that she was and that they had children.404 Thus, the fact that the man had eventually accepted her can be read as a proof of the cure, not only of the physical condition but of the social disability it brought with it. Morover, in the miracula of Thomas Becket, magister William had a daughter, who was of the optimal nuptial age when she suddenly lost the hearing in one of her ears. The scribe wrote that she could still keep up a conversation and tried to conceal her condition, because admitting it would have lessened her chances to marry.405 Also, there are two cases in which a father mentions being either ashamed of their daughter’s facial disfigurement or hiding the girl because of it and fear of the mockery of others.406 402 

Clare of Montefalco, pp. 480–81: ‘Et finaliter cum eam maritasset, crevit grossities sicut unum ovum. Unde ipsa, multum plorans dolens ne vir eam vilificaret et nollet eam recipere in uxorem, quia nondum eam trasduxerat, devovit eam Deo et beate Clare predicte’. Ronald Finucane reads these accounts as proofs of the anxiety of parents in the ‘frenetic marriage competition faced by many fourteenth-century Italian parents’. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p. 59. 403  Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 236: ‘Et dicti fratres iverunt ad dictam dominam et confortaverunt eam dicendo: Quare stas ita tristis et ploras ita fortiter? Et illa respondit dicens: Quia medici volunt incidere in gutture filiam meam; remanebit ita cicatrix ita quod erit vituperata’. See also Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 244. 404  Thomas Aquinas I, pp. 340–41. Frater Petrus de castro Montis Sancti-Iohannis also stated that Margareta’s infirmity had lasted for a long time and intermittently. Margareta’s brother, another frater by the name Petrus de Piperno, testified that his sister had had the illness since her childhood and also reported the engagement and the man’s refusal to marry Margareta. Thomas Aquinas I, pp. 342–43. However, the testimonies do not reveal how the engagement had happened in the first place, although, if Margareta’s infirmity only appeared in intervals, it is possible that the bethrothal had been fixed during a healthy period. 405  Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. by Craigie Robertson, i, 446–47: ‘Unde non admittebatur quivis ad colloquium ejus, ne minus peteretur ad nuptias si patesceret infirmitas’. 406  The father of a girl who had a swollen throat exclaimed that they were ashamed or

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How big a role future problems with marriage played in family members’ worry, sorrow, or even shame over their children’s disabilities is impossible to know, especially when there are so few references to it. A majority of the few mentions or hints regarding the matter pertain to girls who have either hearing impairments or facial disfigurations. Indeed, it seems that a facial disfigurement was more likely to cause shame or social hindrances for girls — or at least from how the severity of was expressed in the testimonies.407 The accounts directly referring to marital problems concern urban townspeople, largely because they appear as witnesses in large numbers, and thus they do not allow comparisons with noble families. As for nobility, there was an imbalance between sexes: far more noblewomen were looking for husbands than vice versa, and thus men or boys and their families had more freedom in their search for a potential spouse.408 This may well have reduced the marriage chances of those with impairments. In general, canonization testimonies are almost silent about marriages of people with physical impairments. In the sources of this study, one adult woman, who had been limping since birth, was reported as having a son,409 another woman, who suffered from an illness causing severe trembling, was a widow

disg­­raced (vituperati) because of her and he would rather she were dead than alive. Clare of Montefalco, p. 431. When the papal commissioners asked Guillelmus de Sellone who had known about his daughter Katharineta’s overgrown nose, he responded few people other than himself and his wife, for he had not allowed his daughter out in public because of it. Louis of Toulouse, pp. 244–45. 407  The Italian processes that provide the examples above also portray cures of boys — some of them belonging to an elite family — who have disfigurements on their face or neck, but even though the conditions were described as severe or even horrible, social stigma, shame, or marital problems are not mentioned. See e.g. Clare of Montefalco, pp. 362, 369, 370–71, 402. An interesting case is also recorded in the hearing of Peter of Morrone, where a boy’s scabies was described to have appeared quasi lepra. Peter of Morrone, p. 240. On the connection of scabies and lepra, see e.g. Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine, pp. 89, 191–92, 218. This does not mean, however, that disfigurement could not have been depicted as a serious social problem for men as well. As an example, St Peter of Verona reportedly cured a brother, who had a large tumour in his throat and because it deformed him so greatly, he was juged dangerous by many. Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor, p. 238. See also pp. 302–05 for a discussion on Ricardus de Insula, whose body was covered by warts. 408  Brittain Bouchard, Strong of Body, p. 90. 409  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 96. The narrative does not clarify the woman’s marital status, although her son has a different surname, but its also possible that he got it from the place where he was born and not from his father, or that his parents were not married but he was still named after his father.

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and had a son during her illness,410 and one man who was blind in one eye since infancy, had a wife.411 The scarcity of such examples mostly derives from the low number of beneficiaries who were impaired in childhood and cured in adulthood. However, the possibility that a congenitally deaf-mute — and weal­­ thy — person would be married appears occasionally in English legal texts. In the verdicts regarding Margaret, daughter and heir of Nicholas de Layburn, it is stated those into whose keeping she was committed would take care that ‘she be not married against her will’, and that they would ‘find sustenance for her according to her estate and will, and to the utmost of their power preserve her in safety and honour in case she be married, she shall not be disparaged’.412 The other example concerns the custody of the lands of a man called John de Orleton, who had been deaf and mute since birth and was thus incapable of taking care of his property. The patent ordains that his brother-in-law must keep the premises without dilapidation and out of its income/goods maintain John, his wife Isabel, and their children.413

410 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 15–18. Also in this case the marital status of the protagonist remains somewhat unclear during her illness, which lasted from the age of sixteen to the age of fourty-four. In the text she is named as Tyfania, jadis femme de Adam Rance de Chastelet. However, as her son is only called by his first name, it is not known whether he was her husband’s son, and whether Tyfania was married to Adam during her illness, of which she was cured some sixteen years before the inquiry. 411  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 178v. The man, Iohannes de Maignen, had lost the sight in his other eye around the age of twenty, but it is not revealed when he got married. 412  CPR, Edward III, xvi, 181, 284. The case was brought to the court twice. The first time Margaret was placed in the custody of Bishop Thomas of Carlisle, Roger of Clifford, William de Tunstalla, and her uncle Thomas de Layburn, of whom the bishop and Roger would be her keepers (interestingly, her deafness is not mentioned in the first patent). However, because the bishop and Roger were not in ordinance of the keeping, the case was re-examined by the king, who, at the suggestion of the council and Margaret’s friends, then placed her in the keeping of Christopher and Joan de Lancastre, by the mainprise of William de Stapelton, William Engayne, John de Appelby, and John de Kirkeby. The case is an example of the shift that took place in late medieval England. Before the 1250s, the custodians of mentally incapacitated heirs as well as the deaf-mute ones had been family members or representatives of their lords. Later, however, the control over these landholders and their inheritances was transferred to the king, and ultimately to guardians of his choosing. Turner, Care and Custody, pp. 100–18. 413  CPR, Edward II, vol. 5, pp. 62–63. The way the case is recorded in the edition would allow an interpretation that the brother-in-law was the deaf-mute person. However, as it is clearly ordained that the profit of the lands must be used to maintain John and his family, and not be dilapidated; it is much more plausible that it was indeed John who had the disability.

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These cases derive from the legal regulations concerning the inheritance and the deaf-mute person’s ability to stipulate and make legal contracts. Corpus iuris civilis, Gratian’s Decretals, and many local law collections following the Roman law state that those who are deaf or mute cannot make a promise by stipulation, but like those who were insane, fools, or prodigals, they had to be represented by curators.414 Later law codes often forbade inheritance to the deaf and the mute but usually specified that this only pertained to the completely deaf and mute, not those who were hard of hearing, and if a person gained his or her inheritance before becoming deaf and mute, they would not lose it; however, curators and tutors must be assigned.415 Henry of Bracton’s De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae specifies that stipulation can be done by nods and signs or by writing if agreed by both parties (which may explain how John de Orleton had been able to make the marital contract in the first place),416 but in another example Philippe de Beaumanoir’s Coutumes de Beauvaisis states that the contracts made by the deaf and the mute are invalid.417 Thus laws restricted the legal capacities of the congenitally deaf and mute but, it is worth pointing out, in most cases this was in the context of protecting them from lawsuits.418

414 

See Metzler, ‘Reflections on Disability’, p. 22 and Turner, Care and Custody, pp. 37–38, who writes that those born deaf and dumb were more likely skipped in the line of inheritance than the fools. 415  On guardians in Italy, see Mellyn, Mad Tuscans, pp. 24–57, and in England Turner, Care and Custody, pp. 24–25. For original texts concerning the inheritance of the deaf-mute, see Corpus Iuris Civilis, ed. by Mommsen and Krüger, Dig. 37,3,2; Dig. 45,1,1; Dig. 44,7,1; Cod. 6,22,10; Bracton Vol. 3, p. 300, Vol. 4, p. 178; Britton, ed. and trans. by Nichols, chapter 22, cap. 11 (p. 456); Fleta, vol. 4, ed. and trans. by Richardson and Sayles, book VI, cap. 40. On the legal restrictions of the deaf-mute in Antiquity, see Laes, ‘Silent Witnesses’, pp. 465–67. 416  Bracton, Vol 2, p. 286. The early commentators of Justinian’s Digest were of the opinion that the deaf, mute, or blind people could make a claim on the inheritance provided that they understood the transaction. Comprehension was thus more important than the ability to hear, speak, or read. The French thirteenth-century law collection Livre de jostice specifies that the deaf and the mute can marry if they can consent in signs: Pfau, Madness in the Realm, pp. 106–07, 117–18. According to Gratian’s Decretals, the mad cannot marry as they are lacking the understanding, but deafness and muteness are not mentioned. Corpus juris canonici, ed. by Friedberg and Richter, i, Decretum magistri grati, C. XXXII, q.VII, c. XXVI. See also Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, pp. 195, 201, 288, 559. 417  Philippe de Beaumanoir, Les coutumes du Beauvoisis, ed. by Beugnot, ii, chap. 34; Pfau, Madness in the Realm, p. 118. 418  Pfau, ‘Protecting or Restraining’, p. 97.

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There are also sporadic mentions in law collections restricting the inheritance of those with other types of physical impairments. In the the influential Der Sachsenspiegel inheritance was, as usual, forbidden from those born deaf and mute, fools, and lepers, but also from dwarfs, the crippled, the blind, the handless, and the legless. However, it states that the heir is responsible for their care. At least in part, such laws were created because a landowner had to be able to defend his property and dependents.419 Similar rules on inheritance were given in the widely-copied Consuetudines feudorom.420 As mentioned above, the question of monsters and physical malformations also appears in legal documents.421 The references in legal collections do not, however, yet tell us much about the everyday experiences of families with impaired heirs. These laws indicate that a child’s and the entire family’s future prospects and strategies might be changed because of the physical impairment of an heir — especially if there were no other heirs.422 However, further studies about how these regulations applied in different geographical areas and whether such law codes were actu-

419 

Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Cod. Guelf. 3.1 Aug. 2°, Art. 4, fol. 11 v: ‘Uf altvilen unde uf getwerge irstirbit noch len noch erbe noch uf kropilkint. Wer denne di erben sint unde ir nehisten mage, di suln si haldin mit phlage. Wirt ein kint geborn stum oder handelos oder vuoselos oder blint, das is wol erbe zu lantrechte unde nicht zcu lenrechte. Hat aber he len enphangin, ehe wurde alsus, di vorlusit he da mite nicht. Uffe den missilsuchtigen man irstirbit wider len noch erbe. Hat aber helen vor der suche enphangen unde wirt he sider sich, he vorlusit si da mite nicht’. As in Bracton, it is still specified that if a person acquired such impairment after receiving the inheritance, he would not lose it. See also Metzler, ‘Reflections on Disability’, p. 23. 420  Consuetudines feudorom, ed. by Lehmann, C. XXXVI. On the manuscripts, see Lehmann, ‘Die Handschriften’ and ‘Die Textentwicklung des Langobardischen Lehnrechts’. 421  See pp. 79–80 above. On monsters in Roman law, see Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, pp. 178–80; Sharpe, Foucault’s Monsters and the Challenge of Law, pp. 61–64. Sharpe suggests that the reason why the questions about inheritance and monstrosity / deformity became so important might be the relatively recently established laws on primogeniture. They had started to develop since the Norman Conquest, but by the time of Henry III (1216–72) — and therefore at the time Bracton wrote his collection — they had became entrenched. Sharpe, Foucault’s Monsters and the Challenge of Law, p. 63, n. 13. 422  Laws of the day were strictly gendered. As women had far fewer legal rights to lose, the regulations impacted disabled boys and men much more severely than impaired girls. In her study of mad Tuscans, Elizabeth W. Mellyn has discovered that only 16 per cent of the civil cases concerned mad women — not because they would have been much rarer than mad men, but because sex was already a limiting factor on a person’s legal status. Mellyn, Mad Tuscans, p. 20. See also Metzler, ‘Reflections on Disability’, pp. 24–25.

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ally put into practice would be needed before we can speculate about their actual impact. If these regulations in law collections had practical impact, they mostly con­­ cerned landowning families, especially in the case of congenital deaf-muteness.423 However, they make an appearance in hagiographic texts rarely, which just might be one indication that the problem was not very common. I have only come across one miracle testimony where the legal regulations are prominent and where a parent clearly expresses the reason for their worries about a son’s future because of his so-called ‘classic impairment’. In the articles of Dauphine of Puimichel’s hearing it is reported that Katherina Colina, the mother of Ludovicus de Sabrano, grieved for his muteness, especially because he was their only son and the sole heir to his father’s fortune, 424 but whether her worry specifically relates to inheritance or to some other problems is not revealed. Also, in a miracle of Thomas Becket, a young man called Henry de Deux-Jumeaux lost his feudal possessions because of his muteness. Henry could only utter words in an inarticulate blabber, and his landlord was able to transfer his proprietorship to another party because Henry could not mount any opposition.425 In Henry’s case the very practical consequences of his muteness are a clear indication of why the saint’s help was needed. As the English cases cited above show, laws regulated how the guardians were supposed to protect those in custody while also protecting them from possible exploitation by their families or, in the case of the feudal system, by their lords.426 For some impaired boys of the upper class, the law restricted their possible choices of future profession. Perhaps the best-known such regulation is that regarding priests. An impaired person who wanted to become a priest had to seek dispensation from the papal curia, but the rules were strict and an impair423 

Christian Laes suggests that in Antiquity, lack of hearing and speech were more severe disabilities for the elite, whereas in working class families deaf-mute children could more easily find manual tasks to perform. Laes, ‘Silent Witnesses’, p. 468. See also Southwell-Wright, ‘Perceptions of infant disability’, p. 126. 424  Dauphine of Puimichel, pp. 90–91: ‘Item, quod Ludovicus, filius quondam viri nobilis et potentes, Elziarii de Sabrano, condomini de Turre Ayguesii, non potuit loqui nec locutus fuerat de sex annis, in modum quod intelligeretur. De quo domina Katherina, eius mater, plurimum tristabatur, ex eo presertim quia unicus filius sibi erat et heres universalis dicti quodam patris sui’. See also p. 59, n. 154. 425  Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. by Craigie Robertson, i, 506–07: ‘Unde dominus tuus terram tuam tanquam non loquentis occupavit, pensionem vertens in proprietatem, nec formidans interpellationem’. 426  Turner, Care and Custody, p. 25; Turner, ‘Town and Country’.

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ment had to be such that it would not prevent the priest from performing his duties properly or cause a scandal among the parishioners if a dispensation were given. Thus most severe impairments excluded the chance to enter the priesthood.427 The law collections also forbade the deaf and dumb from acting as judges, and most of them also forbade them from acting as plaintiffs; 428 Les Coutumes du Beauvoisis added blindness to the list of obstacles.429 Shame and honour are both dependent on public opinion, for being of good repute meant living by community norms and according to one’s social sta­­tus.430 In some cases it was possible that children’s severe impairments (facial disfigurements included) could prevent their parents or siblings from fulfilling their duties in securing the future and name of the family. We also know that boys of noble origin were socialized into the need to fulfil expectations of manliness and worthiness for knighthood by skill and strength,431 which undoubtedly was a problem for many impaired elite boys, although the family’s wealth could otherwise protect them from the disadvantage caused by severe physical disabilities. Also, physical beauty was associated with virtuous and courageous noblemen, and later the wealthy bourgeoisie, as portrayed in medieval art and literature, and this mindset would influence how the disfigurements of the sons of upper classes were perceived.432 The rarity of shame as an expressed emotion nevertheless suggests that to have a child with a physical infirmity was not usually a cause for such feelings, even for those in the uppermost levels of society, or at least it was not a strong enough cause to be stressed in miracle testimonies. The cases we have demonstrate that the type of impairment and its connection with the family’s social roles were the most likely causes of such emotions. There is, however, the pos427  On rules concerning priesthood and physical imperfections, see Montford, Health, Sickness and the Friars, pp. 29–30; Salonen, The Penitentiary as a Well of Grace, pp. 156, 179–80, 341–43; Salonen and Hanska, Entering a Clerical Career, pp. 9, 12, 103, 115–17, 122–29. 428  Corpus iuris civilis, ed. by Mommsen and Krüger, Dig. 4,8,9; Britton, ed. and trans. by Nichols, p. 610; Mirror of Justices, ed. by Whittaker, Liber II, Chap. 2. 429  Philippe de Beaumanoir, Les Coutumes du Beauvoisis, ed. by Beugnot, Vol. 1, p. 37; Vol. 2, pp. 152–54. 430  See Hanawalt, ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’, pp. 1–3. For a further discussion on the need to fulfil one’s social roles, see Gurevich, Les Catégories de la culture médiévale, pp. 191–200. 431  See Karras, From Boys to Men, pp. 38–39. 432  Jaritz, ‘“Young, Rich, and Beautiful”’. Noblewomen’s primary bodily task was procreation and securing the continuation of the family line, but also they were associated with physical beauty. Brittain Bouchard, Strong of Body, pp. 131–32.

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sibility that the commissioners were not very interested in this negative aspect of childhood impairment, and also that shame was mentioned in the context of facial disfigurements when there were no other clearly disabling conditions. Besides Rixenda de Fayensa’s case, the testimonies we have about noble children’s or adults’ miraculous cures do not show signs of marginalization or more intense emotions than the depositions in general. 433 Most likely the reasons for the paucity of references to elite class illness and disability are much more multifaceted. For example, the narrative patterns concerning war and knightly actions focus on the protagonists’ life or death — permanent injuries served no purpose and so did not feature in the stories.434 As for canonization documents, the rarity of noble people’s reported longterm impairments can be explained by three factors. Firstly, there is the possibility that they reported such cures less often; their methods showing veneration may have differed, and could perhaps have been a more private aspect of their lives. It is also plausible that they did not want to be associated with the infirmities reported by the poor, as suggested by Ronald Finucane. Moreover, as Rachel Koopmans writes, concerning high medieval miracles, ‘social factors pressed people into the creation of certain types of stories’, and this is why they chose to report miracles about lawsuits, punished enemies, visions, or even cured falcons.435 Secondly, the patterns of hearings differed. If we look at all miracle beneficiaries, not just children, the hearings of Dauphine of Puimichel, Charles of Blois, and Urban V are among those in which the proportion of beneficiaries belonging to the nobility is high. And thirdly, although elite class witnesses were valued most, they only rarely testified about saints’ vitae or other people’s cures.436 Although canonization documents do not necessarily reflect demographics, it could in fact be said that, despite the rarity of noble benefi433 

See, for example, the narratives in Louis IX’s miracles concerning a knight and the queen’s lady-in-waiting in Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 171–72, 184–86, as well as a case concerning a woman in Queen Sancha of Majorca’s household in Dauphine of Puimichel, p. 308. For further discussion, see Kuuliala, ‘Nobility, Community, and Physical Impairment’. 434  Many other aspects of warfare were left untold in literature as well. Brittain Bouchard, Strong of Body, p. 117. 435  Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate, p. 42. 436  As an example, in Nicholas of Tolentino’s hearing there are 371 witnesses, of whom only seventeen can be defined as noble, and the lemma nobilis appears in the whole process only thirty-two times. Lett, Un procès de canonisation, p. 204. Here, too, different processes vary; for example Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. by Delaborde, includes several witnesses belonging to the high nobility.

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ciaries, the number of elite witnesses is excessive relative to their proportion of the whole population.437 More common than family members’ expressions of shame was the statement that they would rather see the impaired child dead than alive, which view was also expressed by Rixenda’s brother, who added that the whole household agreed with him. Bartholomeaus and Honesta, the parents of Vigilius, who suffered from an epilepsy-like paralysis, testified that they wished for the child’s death. However, the depositions give the impression that the underlying reasons for such a wish were different. Bartholomaeus was one of the parents describing his child as monstrous, and this made him hope that the boy would die.438 Their neighbour, dominus Lanfrancus, reported that he often heard Bartholomaeus say that the child was not worth more than one denar, and that he sincerely wished him dead.439 Honesta stated that when the paralysis vexed the child, it was too painful to look at. The illness sometimes attacked Vigilius once a day, sometimes more often, and she did not know what to do, but indeed wished that he would die rather than be so troubled.440 Thus it seems that while Bartholomaeus was repelled by his son’s condition, Honesta’s wish derived from her sorrow at seeing the child’s pain, and apparently she thought death would have been a better fate for him.441 A similar attitude was expressed by Benedictus Thomasii de Sulmona, who stated that his son Nicolaus looked so abominable that he wished him dead rather than living. 442 Also Raynerius, the brother of the severely impaired 437 

See also Hanska, ‘From Historical Event to Didactic Story’, p. 92. AASS Oct. IX, p. 879: ‘erat tunc quoddam monstrum ad videndum, ita quod ipse testis potius dilexisset illum filium suum mortuum quam vivum’. 439  AASS Oct. IX, p. 879: ‘ita quod pater dicti Vigilii pluries dixit, se teste audiente, quod non habebat carum dictum filium suum, quasi in valorem unius denarii, immo potius eum mortuum affectabat’. 440  AASS Oct. IX, p. 880: ‘et cum dicta testis nesciret, quid faceret de dicto filio suo, imo potius voluisset cum vidisse mortuum, quam sic tribulatum’. In the summarized narrative of Vigilius’s cure in the later Vita et miracula of John Buoni, these emotions of the father were not included: AASS Oct. IX, p. 766. 441  A man called Ugolinus had similar worries. His son suffered from a big hump, which caused him pain and anguish. This lasted for eight years, and according to his own testimony, Ugolinus wished that the boy would rather die than suffer it, and Ugolinus himself wanted to die. AASS Oct. IX, pp. 823–24: ‘Unde cum dictus testis potius affectaret dictum filium suum Dalborgum mortuum, quam sic tribulatum, et nesciret quid inde faceret, nisi quod ipse testis volebat ob nimium dolorem mori’. 442  Peter of Morrone, p. 262: ‘quod factus est ipsi testi dictus filius suus abhominabilis adeo, 438 

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Agnese, testified that he and his mother both desired her death, rather than that she should live like that, and went on to assert that this was the wish of everyone in the household.443 As in the case of Vigilius, the wish for the child’s death was expressed by the same person who described the child as ‘monstrous’. Based on these examples, one might be tempted to conclude that male family members were more likely to treat impaired children with scorn, or that fathers had colder attitudes. However, similar statements were also given by mothers. Agnese’s mother also stated she wished the girl was dead.444 In Yves of Tréguier’s process there were two girls who had eye problems and whose mothers wished that they would die.445 It is noteworthy that while in the examples from the processes of Peter of Morrone and John Buoni the parents wished for a child’s death but only asked the saint to cure them, in Yves of Tréguier’s process the mothers actually prayed that the child would either die or be cured. Such references were not, however, used only by parents. The phrasing ut liberetis eam aut per mortem aut per vitam in St Yves’s process is also used in a case, where a fourteen-year-old boy, Johannes Alani, was impaired from a sudden attack of gutta, making him only able to walk bent, and even that with difficulty. According to his own testimony, he went to church and asked St Yves to free him, either by death or in life.446 There are also two adult beneficiaries in whose cases such a wish was expressed; in one of them a paralyzed man’s quod pocius mortem quam uitam eius desiderabat’. 443  AASS Oct. IX, p. 828: ‘una cum matre sua scilicet D. Guilia praedicta, et potius affectarent eam mortuam quam sic vivam, imo mors ejus fuisset gaudium omnibus de domo’. 444  AASS Oct. IX, p. 827. 445  One girl’s case was reported by her wet nurse Mahauta and her father Petrus de Lamur, legum professor. According to Mahauta, the girl had a macula in one eye for seven days, after which her mother vowed her to St Yves, saying ‘Margilia, my daughter, I would prefer you dead than maculosa and vow you to St Yves, and I and your father carry your offering barefoot’. Yves of Tréguier, p. 168: ‘“Margilia, filia mea, prediligerem te mortuam quam maculosam; et voveo te sancto Yvoni, quia ego et pater tuus nudis pedibus defermus et oblacionem tuum.”’ The father, for his part, stated that the mother had prayed, saying: ‘We vow her to St Yves, because we hope that she would die rather than remain like this’. Yves of Tréguier, p. 210. Here the two testimonies differ slightly as regards the father’s role in the vow; according to Mahauta it was the mother who wished the girl dead, while the father testified that in her prayer the mother said that the girl’s death was what they both wanted. See also the prayer of the mother of a blind girl in Yves of Tréguier, p. 269: ‘“O sancte Yvo, vobis voveo filiam meam, ut liberetis eam aut per mortem aut per vitam”’. 446  Yves of Tréguier, pp. 151–52: ‘“Sancte Yvo impetretis mihi graciam a Deo, ut me liberet de ista infirmitate per mortem vel per vitam”’.

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mother asked the saint to restore her son, giving him either death or health,447 and an abbot named Andreas testified that when he suffered from a continuous and recurring fever, he would hope to die rather than to live.448 That a grown man may have prayed for his own death in preference to staying alive in ill health, or that an adult person testified that his mother prayed for his death, shows that a wish for an impaired person’s death was not necessarily a ‘negative emotion’ — nor was it only used concerning physical impairments.449 In addition to the canonization hearing of St Yves, such expressions are common in the process of Charles of Blois,450 as well as in the mid-fifteenth century hearing of St Vincent Ferrer. 451 As the three processes originate from Brittany, it is possible that such expressions were typical of the area, either in the prayers addressed to a saint or as a way to describe severe physical conditions. Interestingly, in many of these Breton cases, especially in the hearings of Charles of Blois and Vincent Ferrer, the verb used is sperare. In addition to ‘to hope’ or ‘to wish’, it can also be translated as ‘to believe’, ‘to expect’, or ‘to fear’.452 Although there is no way of knowing which meaning the witnesses ascribed to the term, it is plausible that witnesses used the term sperare with the latter less extreme meanings — even if we cannot exclude possible death wishes.453 447  Yves of Tréguier, pp. 247–48: ‘Et dicta mater testis loquentis ibidem existens subsequenter dixit: “Et ego rogo te, beate sancte Yvo, quod tu reddas michi filium meum ad sanitatem vel ad mortem.”’ 448  Yves of Tréguier, p. 271. 449  As for the personal wish, the references also have a connection with suicide, although they do not mean that the person in question would seriously have tried to commit such an action. Alexander Murray has noted that especially in legal documents, illness and disease as motivations for suicide were actually more common than miracles and other narrative sources would let us assume, although not prevalent unless connected with mental illness. According to him, the reason why miracles are relatively silent about suicide attempts by the sick is that it would have complicated the otherwise simple narrative by compromising the patient’s trust in the saint. Moreover, a helplessly infirm person — most typical of those expressing a death wish — presumably was not fit enough for a suicide attempt. Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages, pp. 24–25, 318–22, 403. Therefore, even if the miraculées mentioning their own death wish had not intended to commit suicide, the testimonies also show how the power of the saint can save people from this great danger. 450  See BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fols 122v, 131v, 142r, 142v, 159r, 174v, 175r, 177r. 451  See Procès de la canonisation de saint Vincent Ferrier, ed. by Fages, passim. On the process and Vincent’s cult, see Smoller, The Saint and the Chopped-Up Baby. 452  See du Cange and others, eds, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, vii, col. 552a–b. 453  A man called Guillermus Iusti, for example, testified about his daughter’s infirmity, say-

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To wish for a child’s death thus seems to be typical of the vocabulary and expressions used in the testimonies to emphasize the severity of the impairment, as well as (parental) sorrow or personal suffering.454 As has already been noted, these wishes were not connected only with physical impairments, but our sources also have examples of them in situations where the future beneficiary was seriously ill. The wish was expressed by mothers, fathers, and brothers alike, and the child’s gender appears to have made no difference. With sensory impairments it does not seem to have mattered whether the impairment was severe or milder, but with physical deficiencies the more serious ones seem to have inspired such remarks more often. Irina Metzler argues that in addition to physical disabilities, sensory impairments were also included in the class of severe defects and this is supported by my own findings.455 Based on the testimonies it is difficult to ascertain how genuine the wish for a child’s death was. In the cases when a child’s future must have seemed gloomy the parents may well have considered death as a better option, and it is also likely that the family’s socioeconomic situation played a part. In any case, these wishes had nothing to do with ill treatment of the children: it is clear that they were taken care of. Family members openly testified about their feelings in front of papal commissioners, 456 and parents are never reported as having

ing that ‘de morte ipsius magis sperabatur quam de vita’. He also told that at some point he went to fetch the girl’s mother, and told her that if she wanted to see the girl alive she should hurry, ‘quia de vita ipsius amplius non sperabat’. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 131v. In the fifteenthcentury process of St Frances of Rome, it is occasionally quite explicitly stated. As an example, the mother of a boy who had a severe infirmity in his neck testified that for that reason, ‘ipsius morte pocius quam de vita sperabatur, quia remedium medicorum nullatens sibi proficiebat’. Frances of Rome, p. 129. 454  Sometimes the testimonies have recorded such a statement in a way that makes it quite obvious. Domina Menamata testified about the cure of her daughter Matthiola’s spasms. She described the condition saying that Matthiola ‘pateretur spasmum ita quod plus sperabatur de morte quam de vita’. Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 583. 455  Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 166. 456  The Catholic Church, as well as secular legislation, strictly condemned infanticide on all occasions. In the studies regarding reasons for infanticide (or child abandonment), illegitimacy appears as by far the most common cause stated by mothers, while the child’s ill health is missing. See for example, Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, p. 91; Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, p. 263; Maddern, ‘“Oppressed by Utter Poverty”’, pp. 61–62; Sandidge, ‘Changing Contexts of Infanticide’, pp. 292–94. There is some very scattered evidence, however, that children born ‘monstrous’ (for example conjoined twins) may have been killed, even after a recommendation of a local priest. Some early modern authors were of the opinion that those monsters who could not

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said that they wished the child had never been born, even in the cases when the impairment was congenital.457 I have not come across a miracle testimony where a child in mortal danger was impaired to start with, which would allow an analysis of parental emotions in such cases.458 In Les Miracles de Saint Louis there is one reference to quite a different mode of thinking: this time the person expressing her views was Denisete, the sister of Michelet le Sauvage (whose miracle is portrayed on the cover of this book), who was only able to walk on crutches. When Michelet was sixteen, the two visited the grave of St Louis IX. During their stay Michelet suddenly fell on the ground. Denise or Denisete (the spelling varies) thought that he had died and exclaimed that she would rather have him ill than dead.459 Denisete substituted for their mother as the one taking the initiative in the search for saintly cure and was also the witness whose emotions are highlighted in the text.460 The statement of Riccardus Berardi, a Sulmontian man, illustrates the twofold nature of testimonies in which family members express their more negative sentiments. Riccardus had a ten-year-old daughter, Bartholomea, who had been totally unable to move or speak since birth. Contemplating the child’s sufferbe baptized and who had been born as a result of copulation between humans and beasts could be killed. Niccoli, ‘“Menstruum quasi monstrum”’, pp. 5–6; Resnick, ‘Conjoined Twins’, p. 347. 457  There was some discussion among theologians and medical writers about whether it was better to have a defective — that is, impaired — offspring or no offspring at all. In this kind of thinking, a male child was the best option and female one slightly defective. The third best option was to have an impaired child. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 87, 295 n. 143. 458  In Yves of Tréguier’s process there is one account, in which a blind man falls into a well and is in mortal danger, but he is already an adult and his parents were not present. Yves of Tréguier, pp. 235, 281–86. The case is further discussed on pp. 314–15. In most cases mentioning especially a milder physical impairment of such a child would most likely have served no purpose. 459  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 146: ‘et le touchoit et manioit la dit Denise, plorant et criant, que ele creoit que il estoit mort, et disoit que ele vosist miex que il fust vif einsi malade com il estoit devant que ce que il fust einsi mort’. Michelet was dead at the time of the investigation, so most of the information apparently came from Denisete. 460  See Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 190–92, who also writes that unlike other women playing significant roles in the miracle narratives of ailing children, elder sisters did not just assist their mothers, but tended to replace them. There are occasional records of brothers assisting their siblings as well. In Yves of Tréguier’s hearing it is reported that a severely impaired boy Johannes was taken to Tréguier by his brother Gaufridus. Johannes and his mother were, however, the ones making the vow. Yves of Tréguier, pp. 151–53. See also Peter of Morrone, pp. 316–17, in which Bartholomeus Berardi took his brother to the saint. In this case the mother would have been unable to do it, as women were not allowed to approach the living saint.

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ing, as well as the loss and exhaustion he had to endure in his house because of her, he set off to meet Peter of Morrone. Riccardus described his daughter’s affliction to the saint, as well as his own weariness and grief. After Riccardus gave the girl the bread Peter had given him, she started to eat and talk, and began to walk independently.461 The account shows that Riccardus was both weary and despairing of the situation. His daughter’s condition appears to have been a burden to him, which may partly have been caused by the expectations and customs that parents should be responsible for the treatment of their sick children.462 Riccardus’s testimony does not mean that he did not care for his suffering daughter, but his emotions were evidently conflicted. Even the vocabulary used in the testimony underlines this: the Latin noun tedium can be translated as weariness, loathing, or grief, and also as illness.463 Even though Riccardus most likely gave his testimony in local dialect, all three emotions seem to have been combined in his mind. The emotions and reactions described in this chapter are thus interlinked. A wish for a child’s death may appear to be a sign of revulsion towards the child. However, the feeling is closely linked to parents’ or other family members’ sorrow over a child’s fate, which could, in many respects, be a helpful thing, especially when connected to the vow made to the saint. As some of these children had been seriously disabled for years, and yet received enough care to have survived, it seems evident that the weariness or even disgust of family members had not caused them to neglect the child’s needs. Moreover, as parental grief is a frequent theme in miracle accounts, wishing that a child should die rather than live can also be interpreted as an extreme manifestation of sorrow.464 The 461 

Peter of Morrone, p. 309: ‘et in isto statu remansit per decem annos uitam penatam ducens, unde dictus testis uidens sic suam filiam tormentari et considerans dampna et tedia que tolerabat in domo propter dictam filiam suam, accessit ad dictum fratrem Petrum patrem sanctum et narrauit et exposuit ei uitam passionem et penam dicte filie sue et tedium atque dampnum quod inde habebat et recipiebat in domo. […] Pater rogo uos ut faciatis oraciones Deo ut Deus me consoletur de dicta filia mea quia valde tedet me’. 462  As Louis Haas writes, this strain could be alleviated if the family had servants to help with taking care of their ailing children, but Riccardus’s testimony does not reveal whether that was the situation in his family. See Haas, The Renaissance Man and His Children, p. 161. On the other hand, Riccardus’s emotions can be read as contradicting the above-mentioned idea that impaired and ill children were primarily their mothers’ concern. 463  See du Cange and others, eds, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, viii, col. 012a. 464  In research on modern families with disabled children, the emotions of parents are found to vary considerably. See e.g. Taylor, Parenting Skills and Collaborative Services, pp. 20–21.

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expression of these emotions also emphasized the severity of the case and thus highlighted the curative powers of the saint. A woman called Lavinia, who wished that her blind child would either be cured or die, makes this explicit. She specifically asked the saint to ‘liberate’ the child; in her mind, death would be a better option than life as a blind person.465

The Health of the Child, the Health of the Family? Due to the overall purpose of canonization records, they only contain descriptions of ailments that were eventually healed; the cure itself was the most important element in family members’ and other witnesses’ reported memories regarding children’s impairments. In several miracle depositions the description of a child’s cure forms part of the definition of the impairment itself, because the cure can thus be seen as the event which abolished or neutralized the unwanted physical condition. If we think of the physical faultlessness of the cured child as a counterpoint to the body of an impaired child, the descriptions of what creates a healthy or ‘normal’ body can inform us about things considered to be ‘abnormal’. Although the testimonies tend to be rather straightforward when giving descriptions of the effects of the cure, occasionally these descriptions exceeded the descriptions of impairment in their detail and thus add to our knowledge of the original condition. As an example, Iohanna Deodata gave a very detailed description of her son Iacobus’s cure. Iohanna, along with everyone else in the household, saw that the boy’s feet were ‘erect’. She took his shoes off, and washed the feet. Before the cure, Iacobus had walked on the tumours on his feet, which had become so hard that he did not feel pain. Now skin appeared in place of the tumours, which she removed without causing him pain. Underneath was revealed the most beautiful and healthy skin with no uncleanness or blemishes.466 Iohanna’s report of her son’s impairment before the cure is also detailed, but when she described the cure, she concentrated on the tumours and their disappearance. It is not made clear whether the tumours caused the deformation of the boy’s feet or vice versa, but the healing of the overgrowth underlined the dramatic effect of the miracle, and provided very visible proof of it.

465  466 

Yves of Tréguier, p. 269. Louis of Toulouse, p. 177.

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In Iacobus’s case the full picture of his impairment was given only after also the cure was described. The most dramatic descriptions of a miraculous cure depict the restoration process literally. Ceptus Sperançe de Montefalco was placed on top of Clare of Montefalco’s grave by his mother, and Petrus Andree reported some ten years after the events: [V]idit dictum Ceptum super pilo seu sepulcro dicte s. Clare quadam die in ecclesia dicti monasterii et vidit eum stantem per aliquam horam. Et surressit quidam rumor­magnus, et dicebatur unus pes ex suis erectus erat et reformatus ut debebat ad modum pedis hominis sani. Et ipse tunc traxit et fecit se ante et appropinquavit ipsi Cepto, et vidit pedem unum ex suis rectum et reductum at statum et ordinem debitum hominis sani in forma. Et tunc fuit possitus in ecclesia et depossitus de pilo ut gentes viderent eum et pedem ipsum ereptum, et miraculum quod Deus ostenderat in eo. Et postea vidit quod gentes pro devotione reposuerunt eumdem Ceptum super pilo, ad hoc ut Deus ostendered aliud miraculum in alio pede eius meritis beate Clare predicte.467 ([He] saw said Ceptus on top of the tomb of said St Clare one day in the church of the said monastery and [he] saw him staying there for some hours. And a certain great noise arose, and it was said one of his feet was straightened and restored as the feet of healthy men should be. And then he drew closer and approached Ceptus, and saw that one of his feet was straight and restored to the position and order appropriate for men who have healthy forms. And then [Ceptus] was placed in the church and taken down from the grave so that people saw him and his straightened foot, and the miracle that God exhibited in him. And later he saw that, for the devotion, people put Ceptus on the grave, so that God would reveal another miracle in another of his feet through the merits of abovementioned blessed Clare.)

Despite the importance of the cure, there are great differences between the processes as well as between individual testimonies in how elaborately the changed physical appearance was recorded.468 The noise or cracking of straightening bones are quite typical in miracle accounts, and this kind of drama appears 467 

Clare of Montefalco, pp. 308–09. Andirolus Bengvengnatis also reported that it was openly and publically seen that Ceptus’s feet straightened little by little to the correct shape. Clare of Montefalco, p. 504: ‘aperte et manifeste viderunt et videbant quod pedes eius erigebantur paulatim et dirigebantur ad statum debitum’. 468  For example, in Ambrose of Massa’s hearing it is usually only mentioned that after the vow of pilgrimage the child was cured or healthy. AASS Nov. IV, pp. 576, 584, 590–91, 601, 606.

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most notable in narratives about miracles that occurred at a shrine, where, as stated by Pierre-André Sigal, the pilgrims, the clerics, and the saints created a powerful dynamique miraculeuse.469 Typically detailed descriptions of cures followed the pattern of the description of the impairment, explaining how each aspect of it was dispelled. For example, Methildis de Berstat reported that during the cure her son Henricus, who had a contracted arm and leg, as well as a swelling in his chest, started to stretch out his arm, and eventually his legs and arms healed and the swelling disappeared.470 The same idea of nullifying the condition is visible also in testimonies in which the witnesses first described the symptoms and then the child’s ability to do what they had formerly been unable to do. Cecilia de Santa Cruce first reported how her daughter Beatrix had been contracta, unable to use her hands to eat or drink or to walk properly on her feet. After the cure she immediately saw that the girl’s tibias and feet had become erect, and when bread was brought to her, she ate it with her own hands. The similar wordings of the descriptions of the disability and its cure underscore this reversion.471 Giving Beatrix bread was undoubtedly a way of testing whether the cure was complete, and similar reports of the restored ability to eat were given by witnesses for some other cures.472 As discussed above, apparently Beatrix’s inability to use her hands for eating had been one of the clearest manifestations of her impairment, and thus its disappearance was also a powerful sign that the girl’s health was restored. Witness descriptions of blindness and its cures were less detailed, but the idea of nullifying the disabling aspects of the condition is also evident in them. Three witnesses for the cure of a youth named Guido reported that after the cure he walked without a guide, having previously described his blindness precisely by relating that he had needed one.473 Similarly, outward symptoms were nullified during the curative process. A boy called Henrico had had an 469 

Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, pp. 165–225. See also Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 90–91. 470  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 203. 471  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 162–63: ‘dixit quod dicta Beatrix filia sua quatuor annis et amplius fuit ita contracta et impotens quod manibus se pascere seu iuvare non poterat nec pedibus propriis ambulare. […] Et statim vidit manus, tybias et pedes erectos, et portatus fuit sibi panis et ipsa, que non consueverat se manibus pascere, per se ipsam posuit panem ad os et comedit elevando manus et deponendo sicut volebat, et eundo eciam iuxta sepulcrum et alibi postea sicut volebat’. Beatrix herself mentioned being given bread as well. 472  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 827–28, 864. 473  Yves of Tréguier, pp. 213, 224, 226.

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apostema in his eye, which was covered and, after a vow to St Elizabeth, the covering disappeared and the macula also vanished.474 There are reports of testing after blindness cures as well. For example, when the sight of eight-year-old Benasciuta had been restored, her stepfather Joanninus showed her a denar and asked what it was. Benasciuta immediately identified it as a denar.475 The restoration of children’s bodies is most clearly expressed in the depositions by describing them as looking like other children of their age or other humans after the cure. After travelling to the shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe, the mute boy, Philippus, got a new tongue, which was reported to have the usual form of people’s tongues,476 and, as reported by St Birgitta’s daughter Catherine, as a result of the miracle a boy mute since birth was talking ‘like other people’.477 After Ceptus Sperançe de Montefalco was cured, all five witnesses (including the boy himself ) stated that his feet became like the feet of other people who were healthy or had healthy feet, or who had no infirmities.478

474  Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 169–70: ‘apostema magnum excrevit super oculum eius sinistrum, quo cessante, vestigium ipsius apostematis remansit super pupillam ipsius oculi in modum pellicule […] Pellicula predicta per medium scissa est et cepit pupilla perevidenter apparere, et macula magis ac magis scissa cepit inminui’. See also Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 190–191. 475  AASS Oct. IX, p. 877. This happened regardless of the mother’s notion that she had lost her vision at the age of nine days. It is possible that her recognition of the denar — and possibly other objects as well — was a part of the miracle. She not only got her sight back, but also all the visual knowledge that she had missed. Another possibility is that the mother exaggerated either the severity of Benasciuta’s condition or the age and day at which it started (as the stepfather said the girl had lost her vision more than seven years ago), or her reaction to showing her the denar. The once blind Thoumas de Voudai was also shown a coin after returning from his pilgrimage to Saint-Denis. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 29. See also Clare of Montefalco, p. 308: ‘puer restitutus fuit usui oculorum suorum, per signa que ipse testis vidit, eo quod fuit sibi ostensum aliquid et petitum ab eo si videbat et ipsa respondebat quod sic’. 476  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 90v. The witnesses of the cure of Johannes, another boy without a tongue, made similar remarks. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 206r: ‘miraculose ad tumulum dicti sancti Thomae fuit ei data lingua perfecta pulcra et magna et longa, sicut habent ceteri homines’. See also BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, 208r. 477  Birgitta of Vadstena, p. 337: ‘recepit plene vsum loquendi et postea loquebatur sicut alij’. A presbyter testifying about the case similarly stated that the boy ‘plene vsum loquendi recepit et sicut alij loquentes clarissime loquebatur’: Birgitta of Vadstena, p. 278. Catherine of Vadstena (d. 1381) became a saint too, although the official canonization was left incomplete because of the Reformation. Her cult was, however, confirmed by Innocent III in 1484. 478  Clare of Montefalco, pp. 309, 349, 427, 504, 507.

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The commissioners also used similar phrasing, stating that they witnessed him walking without aid, like other people who had no infirmities.479 By implication these descriptions manifest impairment as a deviation from the way things commonly are, or even a reversal of the rightful — or natural — order of things.480 The commissioners also asked Ceptus if the sole of his foot returned to the place that was ‘proper according to the common course of nature’,481 and according to Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s narrative, Michelet le Sauvage’s back was restored to its natural form, as if there had been no hump.482 These kinds of statements derive from discussions about nature and the miraculous which was rooted in thirteenth-century scholastic thinking; miracles were primarily defined by their capacity to surpass the common course of nature, rather than by the awe, admiration, and wonder they caused. 483 The cures the saints made to nullify or remove impairment were therefore seen as something contrary to nature; that is, something that no earthly power could have brought about, just as God acted above and beyond nature.484 At the same time, impairment could be seen as either ‘contrary to nature’ or ‘caused by nature’ in the first place;485 for example, see the narratives about Hodierne and Marguerite discussed above (see pp. 45–47). Thus, the relationship between impairment, 479  Clare of Montefalco, p.  349: ‘Et viderunt prefati inquisitores dictum testem ire, recte ambulare et recedentem cum suis propriis pedibus et sine adminiculo cuiuscumque et quocumque, sicud alii homines infirmitem non habentes’. 480  See e.g. Skoda, ‘Representations of Disability’, p. 58. 481  Clare of Montefalco, p. 349: ‘Interrogatus si plante pedum que stabant desuper redierunt ad locum suum debitum secundum communem cursum nature’. 482  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 147. 483  Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’, p. 333. For further discussion on the nature and the miraculous, see Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 20–22; Wilson, Miracle and Medicine, pp. 64–67, 121–22. 484  Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 26–28; Wilson, ‘Conceptions of the Miraculous’. See also Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 136. 485  Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 154–55. The diversity of ideas is visible in the writings of medieval theologians and philosophers. In Thomas Aquinas’s thinking, all things must have the parts which belong to them, and thus a mutilated body is ugly. On the other hand, Alexander of Hales, who wrote in the thirteenth century, thought that there was a place for ugliness in the divine order. Ugliness was mitigated by the beauty of creation, and because nature as a whole is beautiful, everything within it is beautiful too. In this Alexander followed Augustine’s thinking, as he had written in City of God that even monsters are divine creatures and belong to the order of nature. For a summary of the discussion, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 49–51 and also Jaritz, ‘“Young, Rich, and Beautiful”’, pp. 61–63.

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‘natural’, and ‘unnatural’ in the medieval context is less straightforward than is sometimes portrayed.486 The vocabulary of the natural appears especially in miracle collections, whose writers were following scholastic thought, implying that illness and impairment were often deviations from a natural state of health.487 However, the witnesses in my sources used such terminology very infrequently, which is one indication of the problems of determining contemporary ‘popular’ concepts of the natural.488 The process of Thomas Cantilupe is one of the exceptions, with its frequent references to the concept of the natural, but this exceptionality derives from the questionnaire’s frequent references to it. 489 It is possible that the witnesses’ education had some impact on their choice of words: both Ancelmus Andree and Peregrinus Andree referred to this idea when testifying about the cure of Iacobus Deodatus, and both were milites.490 This was not the norm, however, as according to the deposition, Cecilia Helziarsse stated that she considered the cure of Beatrix de Sancta Cruce ‘above the nature’ (supra naturam).491 This may have been a response to the commissioners’ question. Most often the idea of the ‘natural’ appears in the discussion concerning the 486  For example, Derek Newman-Stille writes that the actions of people with disabilities are often constructed as ‘unnatural’, and thus disability is constructed as the opposite of normality. Newman-Stille, ‘Morality and Monstrous Disability’, p. 249. 487  Wilson, ‘Conceptions of the Miraculous’, p. 107. 488  See also Wilson, ‘Conceptions of the Miraculous’, p. 111. There has, for example, been discussion on the intellectuals’ tendency to interpret events primarily as ‘natural’ and the laypeople’s eagerness to do exactly the reverse. See Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’, pp. 334–35, who writes that this gap in views has been exaggerated. 489  The formula interrogatorii for example includes a question whether the miracle had occurred supra vel contra naturam (above or against nature), and if it was brought about by ‘natural means’ (res naturales), medicine, incantations, or other such means. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 4v. For further discussion, see Wilson, Miracle and Medicine, pp. 122–23. 490  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 181–82: ‘vidit dictum puerum calcantem et gradientem erectis pedibus et sine tortuositate et deformitate pedum in forma naturali, et miratus est valde sicut de re impossibili secundum naturam’; ‘ed meritis beati Ludovici ab illa tortuositate et et deformitate fuerat curatus et ad statum naturalem deductus’. It is illuminating that the writer of Louis’s vita repeated Peregrinus Andree’s testimony almost verbatim when recording the same miracle. Vita S. Ludovici Episcopi Tolosani, ed. by Collegio S. Bonaventura, p. 370: ‘omni deformitate et tortuositate remota, pedes ipsius pueri ad naturalem rectitudinem sunt reducti’. It is also not surprising that a brother testifying about his own cure in Thomas Aquinas’s process described the condition of his hand, caused by a demonic spirit, as being contra naturam: Thomas Aquinas I, p. 294. 491  Louis of Toulouse, p. 164.

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miracle itself and whether it could have been obtained by natural means, such as medical help.492 An examination of definitions of the ‘unimpaired’ child reveals that the con­cept of ‘healthy’ is more prevalent than the concepts of ‘normality’ or ‘ideal’. Those witnessing Ceptus’s cure compared his physical state after the miracle to that of other healthy people. Defining a cure by stating that the child became like other healthy children of his or her age is most common in the miracles of St Louis IX.493 Most of these children were very young when the condition struck, or had had it since infancy and had never learned to walk or speak properly, and thus the references to being ‘like other children’ described literally the nullification of their impairment. Although in Louis IX’s collection the wordings, in the form we have them, were chosen by Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, it seems from the fragmentary remains of the original record that in this respect he did follow it; however, the original references were made sometimes to other children and sometimes to other healthy children. For example, when Mabileta’s father and two neighbours testified about her miraculous cure, they stated that she walked without a cane or other aid, ‘like other children of her age’, 494 and this comment was also recorded by Guillaume.495 However, Mabileta’s mother Yfamia testified that after the cure she walked ‘well, straight, and freely like other healthy girls of her age’.496 These children were thus compared to those who were healthy, not to some concept of what was considered natural. In other words, based on these descriptions, disabled children were not seen as being ‘unnatural’ beings, but rather as belonging in the category of non-healthy. Interestingly, the idea of restoring someone’s health did not depend on whether the condition had been congenital or acquired later in life, but seems rather to refer to an ideal of the ‘perfect’ or ‘faultless’ body. Lennart J. Davies has argued that before the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of ‘normal’ did 492 

See pp. 193–228 for further discussion. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 37, 80, 111, 150. 494  Fragments, p. 41: ‘ambulavit ipsa Mabileta bene et recte et expedite, sine baculo et alio adjutorio, sicut puella sue etatis’; Fragments, p. 43: ‘et eam vidit stare super pedes suos erectam per se et euntem sine baculo et alio adjutorio, ante et retro, per vicum et domum, sicunt vadit parvi sue etatis’; Fragments, p. 53: ‘vidit eam euntem per se sine adjutorio bene, libere et expedite sicut alie puelle sui temporis vadunt’. 495  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 130: ‘ele ala bien et despeechieement sanz nule ayde et sanz baston, ausi com une autre pucele de son aage’. 496  Fragments, p. 49: ‘et per se stetit et ambulavit bene, recte et expedite, sicut alia puella sui temporis sana’. 493 

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not exist; the predominant paradigm was the concept of ‘ideal’. According to this thinking, no human being could ever reach the ‘ideal’ — we are all imperfect and somehow below standard.497 This is also supported by Jacalyn Duffin’s findings in modern canonization processes: in her sources the concept ‘normal’ appears for the first time in a deposition from 1834.498 It is also very likely that the long-term idea of bodily perfection in resurrection had significance here. No matter how deformed a person was, it was thought that eventually they would be restored to their most perfect — or ideal — form. Only saints and martyrs would preserve the wounds in their bodies.499 In the canonization testimonies the concept of what is considered ‘normal’ seems to exist beyond the descriptions of restoration, but it mostly revolves around what was considered ‘healthy’ and what not. In other words, impaired people were not so much ‘abnormal’ as ‘non-healthy’. The ambiguity of what constitutes a cured body is further illustrated by the cases of gradual or ‘partial’ cures. Even though healing miracles marked dramatic and sudden recoveries, there is also quite a large group of gradual miracles. They are most plentiful in the process of St Elizabeth of Hungary,500 but such testimonies are also found in other hearings.501 In gradual cures the most common recovery time was from a few days to a month. As an example, Brunoni, the son of Isendrudis de Zeppenvelt, was badly incapacitated by a condition, which made him completely unable to move and caused pus to discharge from his skin. The boy’s parents made a pilgrimage to the tomb of St Elizabeth. When they returned, they saw that the boy could walk with a stick, and he was cured gradually.502 It also seems that, on occasion at least, people even expected 497 

Davies, Bending over Backwards, p. 105. See also Wells, ‘The Exemplary Blindness of Francis of Assisi’, pp. 69–70. The word ‘normal’ in its modern sense did not exist in European languages before the early nineteenth century: Straus, Extraordinary Measures, p. 115. 498  Duffin, Medical Miracles, p. 125. According to Duffin, the usage of such an expression shows how numbers and measurements were turned into knowledge. 499  Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body.and also Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 55–62. 500  Irina Metzler has a similar notion about the process of St Elizabeth compared to earlier miracle collections: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 182–83. See also WendelWidmer, Die Wunderheilungen, p. 23. 501  Slow or gradual cures were also relatively common in earlier miracle collections. PierreAndré Sigal has calculated that in the earlier miracle collections, thirteen per cent of the beneficiaries acquired the full cure a week or more later. Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, p. 69. 502  Elizabeth of Hungary, pp.  194–95. For other examples, see Elizabeth of Hungary,

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that the healing could be gradual. When the father of Adelheidi, who had not learned to walk by the age of three and half, made his vow to St Elizabeth, her aunt gave her a walking stick and told her to anticipate a cure by the saint in the near future.503 When Herbertus de Fontaneto vowed his daughter Mabileta to St Louis IX of France, he promised that if the girl started walking properly in nine days, he would not drink wine on Fridays for the following seven years.504 The time span of nine days before the cure is frequent in the collection. Sudden, dramatic cures undoubtedly aroused most public interest and attention, and the authorities occasionally expressed scepticism towards slow cures, because these were more likely to have been bought about by medical means,505 or be less efficient proofs of a saint’s power. St Peter of Verona’s miracles portray an interesting contradiction of such ideas. A noblewoman was about to bathe her paralyzed son in herbs, but before this, she prayed to St Peter, asking him to cure the boy within a year. A man who stood nearby heard this and told her that she prayed unfaithfully and should trust that the saint could cure the child immediately — which, of course, then happened.506 Despite this, the conception that a miraculous cure could also take time seems to have been prevalent. Although a sudden cure could result from strong devotion, the papal curia also showed scepticism towards instantaneous cures.507 It appears that the suddenness or slowness of the cure was not actually a primary consideration in the selection of miracles — even slow cures were regarded as true miracles. The two cures of mute children in Louis IX’s miracles provide interesting information on the gradual nature of some miracles. Denisete was unable to walk as well as almost mute, and Loÿs was deaf-mute. Denisete started to walk again and learned to speak, and Loÿs suddenly started to hear when visiting Louis IX’s shrine. The narrative reports Denisete’s cure as follows: Et el jor ensivant, comme li diz Richarz ouvrist une huche et prist du pain, la dite Denisete dist a son pere: ‘Donnez moi du pain’, la quele chose ele n’avoit onques mes dit. Et des icele heure Emmeline sa mere la commenca a enseignier a parler pp. 215–16, 229, 226; Louis of Toulouse, pp. 153–55; Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 542, 590; Urban V, pp. 431, 465; Dorothea of Montau, p. 443. 503  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 208. Similarly, a small boy was given crutches before he was cured. Later he was able to cast them aside: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 210. 504  Fragments, p. 40. 505  Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, p. 84. 506  Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor, p. 253. 507  See Lappin, The Medieval Cult of Saint Dominic of Silos, p. 243.

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et a dire li comment ele demanderoit du pain et du vin et les autres choses qui li convenoient. Et des donques la dite Denisete parla miex de jour en jour et ala par soi sanz nule ayde bien et droit sus ses piez sanz baston a Seine querre de l’iaue.508 (And on the following day, when the said Richarz opened a bin and took some bread, the said Denisete said to her father: ‘Give me some bread’, a thing which she had never said before. And from that moment her mother Emmeline started to teach her to speak and instructed her how she should ask for bread and wine and other things that she wanted. And therefore the said Denisete spoke better from day to day and walked well on her own without any aid and on her own two feet without a cane to the Seine to seek for water.)

Denisete’s case differs from that of Loÿs in that she had been able to hear before the cure, which apparently speeded up the process of her learning to communicate. Loÿs, on the other hand, could not understand speech after his miracle, and for a while he communicated with signs. After returning to his foster family, he was being taught words.509 These two cases differ significantly from the one of the once blind Benasciuta, who immediately recognized a denar after her cure,510 as the saint gave them the physical ability to speak, but not the ‘mental’ ability that is learned in infancy. Yet they were still considered miraculous. Here it is precisely the regaining of a physical ability, which was seen to have come from the saint, while learning to use the new ability could be reinforced by humans. In addition to these gradual cures, there are also testimonies regarding partial ones. Again, the inquiry of St Elizabeth of Hungary has the greatest number of ‘partial’ cures, meaning a miraculous cure after which some milder symptoms or traces of the previous condition remained. As an example, the son of Sifridus, miles de Aldendorf, became unable to walk at the age of eight. After a vow to St Elizabeth, around midsummer 1232, he started to get better gradually. When the papal commissioners saw the boy three years later, he was still tottering like a child learning to walk.511 Miracles attributed to St Louis IX 508 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 111. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 54. 510  AASS Oct. IX, p. 877. 511  Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 205–06. Another boy, who had been impaired since birth, was cured so that in the end he was able to walk unaided on the flat and with a stick on sloping surfaces: Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 175–76. In one case the remaining impairment seemingly did not affect the child’s ability to function. The twelve-year-old son of Fridericus de Geilenhausen was unable to move, but was eventually cured except for a hunch on his back, which became smaller but remained: Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 222–23. 509 

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also often resulted in incomplete cures. Guillot dit le Potencier walked with a cane for about four months after the cure because of feebleness; the narrative does not tell us clearly whether he eventually got rid of his limp.512 We are told that Eidelot limped a bit after her cure, but still the narrative says that nothing remained of her malady, and she also was among those described being ‘like another healthy girl’.513 As discussed above (pp. 45–47), Hodierne and Marguerite, who were born boiteuse, and later cured of a disabling condition, were again walking without a stick after the cure and undertaking their tasks like other healthy women.514 Despite the occasional occurrence of partial or incomplete cures, it is unlikely that they were scrutinized in the canonization hearings as often as complete ones, probably being considered less efficient proofs of the candidate’s sainthood and more difficult to prove as miracles; possibly they were much more common in everyday life.515 Stanko Andrić places partial cures in the category of failed or ‘not-quite-successful’ miracles, but goes on to state that they are narrated ‘as plainly as the flawless ones, without any comment’.516 I would 512 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 26. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 37: ‘ele commença a aler par soi sanz baston et sanz ayde et sanz apuiail, saine et hetiee, ne puis de cele maladie riens ne senti, et aloit de ça et de la comme une autre saine pucele, et nonporquant ele clochoit un bien petitet’. Also Perrete, who was first totally unable to walk and later walked bent, was otherwise healed, but when she grew up she did not become as tall or strong as other women. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 168–71. 514  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 97–98, 101. 515  Those who have attempted to explain miraculous cures scientifically have used the selfalleviating nature of many illnesses as one explanation (in addition to placebo effect and the concept that people who were miraculously cured had conditions that were originally psychological instead of physical). See Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 54–65, 78; Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 6–7; Scott, Miraculous Cures, esp. 74–46, 122–27, 129–30, 146–48; Sumption, The Age of Pilgrimage, pp. 86–87, 120–21. I have consciously made the decision not to include this discussion in my consideration of the beneficiaries of childhood impairments, agreeing with, among others, Raymond Van Dam, who writes that biological explanations for miraculous cures in particular depreciate ‘people’s own experiences, as if they were consistently unable to cope with their times or their lives’: Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul, p. 84. See also Yarrow, Saints and Their Communities, pp. 10–11. For obvious reasons, the relapses are largely missing from canonization documents, punishment miracles excluded. A rare case is recorded in the process of St Nicholas of Tolentino, in which dominus Andreas Accursi, milex [sic!] et iuris professor, testified that he had experienced temporary help for his infirmity, after pleading for it from the saint: Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 606. For further discussion, see Kuuliala, ‘Heavenly Healing or Failure of Faith?’ 516  Andrić, The Miracles of St. John Capistran, p. 268. 513 

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explain this ‘plain’ style of narration, which included the personal experiences of both the protagonists and the relatives, agreeing with Ronald C. Finucane’s view that ‘even slight recovery must have been — subjectively — a tremendous relief ’.517 As Robert A. Scott writes, it is probable that for most medieval people the sense of complete physical wellbeing was rare. Instead, various illnesses and chronic diseases, many of which were a consequence of vitamin deficiencies and working conditions, were probably very common.518 Moreover, according to David Gentilcore, in the early modern era — presumably also applying to medieval times — a full recovery was not even necessarily the main wish or expectation of a sick person.519 In the hearing of St Nicholas of Tolentino, there is a case concerning a youth called Mathiolis Angeli, whose age is not defined, which gives a clear indication that complete restoration of health was not necessarily expected or even asked for. For two years he had to move on a small cart, asking for alms. According to his testimony, Iohannis Adambi de Tholentino once saw Mathiolis on his cart in front of the house of Pucius Iohannis. The two men discussed the possibility that St Nicholas might miraculously cure Mathiolis, to which Mathiolis reponded that he wished St Nicholas would give him ‘a great grace’ so that he could walk on his own on crutches. Iohannis and other men then helped Mathiolis to Pucius’s house, where they vowed him to St Nicholas, asking the saint to cure him so that he could walk on crutches, adding that he did not wish for a major grace — just that would suffice.520 Mathiolis’s wish was soon granted. Interestingly, when interrogating the witnesses about the stability of the cure, the commissioners used the words miraculum and sanus, ‘healthy’.521

517 

Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 75. On examples of partial cures in earlier miracle collections, see Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 75–78. The difference in personal experience is clearly visible in two of the miracles of Yves of Tréguier discussed above. In one the mother considered her daughter’s blindness in one eye a grave condition, praying that she die rather than live with it. Another woman had a daughter who suffered from total blindness and also wished for her death. This time the result of the vow was that the girl recovered vision in one eye: Yves of Tréguier, pp. 168, 210, 269–70. 518  Scott, Miraculous Cures, pp. 11–12. 519  Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy, p. 186. 520  Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 215. 521  Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 216: ‘Interrogatus quanto tempore post miraculum factum vidit eum sanum, dixit quod per duos menses et ultra ire cum croceis et non in carretta ut consueverat’.

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Mathiolis’s sister even replied that since that day she never saw him being protractus, but that he walked well or healthily on his own, although on crutches.522 It is possible that Mathiolis thought his vow might be fulfilled more easily if his request was a modest one, and apparently he and the others present made some distinction between the concepts of ‘grace’ and ‘miracle’, although at this point the division between the two was still somewhat hazy, starting to develop only in the sixteenth century.523 Nevertheless, in this case the impact of personal experience and the personal relief appear fundamental, while Mathiolis’s partial cure was also a miracle for those witnessing it — and apparently also for the commissioners of the hearing. The same holds true for Alicia de Lonesdale, who was miraculously cured ten years after the accident that impaired her, and who from then on walked with a stick or limped without one. The commissioners witnessed this: [E]t potenciam nature fuit in dicta Ecclesia Herefordiensi infra ebdomadam, inuocato nomine dicti sancti Thome, curata ab omnibus predictis infirmitatibus suis, et vulnera pedis fuerit clausa et penitus desiccate, ita quod ex tunc non emiserunt aliquam saniem, et fuit ita perfecte curata quod potuit propris pedibus ire, sicut modo vadit, et modo vadit et iuit coram dominis Episcopis, et coram nobis notariis cum baculo et sine baculo claudicando, quia nerui pedis sunt retracti, et cicatrices et concauitates magne apparent in pede dicte puelle, ex quibus concauitatibus exisse creduntur ossa predicta.524 (And by the power of nature, within a week, by an invocation to the said Saint Thomas, she was cured of all her aforementioned infirmities in the said church of Hereford, and the wound of the foot was closed and completely dried so that after that time it did not excrete any pus, and she was so perfectly cured, that she could walk on her own feet, as she soon walked, and she soon walked in the presence of the lord bishops, and in the presence of us notaries with a cane and without a cane, limping, because the nerves of her foot are withdrawn, and big scars and cavities are apparent on the foot of the said girl, from which cavity, we believe, the aforementioned bone became visible.)

522 

Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 271: ‘Interrogata quanto tempore post miraculum factum vidit eum sanum, dixit quod ab inde postea nunquam vidit eum protractum, immo per se ambulabat optime, licet cum crociis’. I discuss such ‘expected partial cures’ more thoroughly in my article ‘Heavenly Healing or Failure of Faith?’. 523  See Finucane, Contested Canonizations, p. 24, n. 31. 524  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 65r.

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Alicia’s father Willelmus was the only one reported as testifying that she was cured of all her impediments, while Alicia herself reported that after the miracle she limped or walked with a stick, and Amicia la Rysslwyk, Willelmus de Oxonis, Nicholas Chiket, and dominus Willelmus made similar comments.525 Yet all these witnesses were of the opinion that she was indeed miraculously cured, and the miracle was publicized in the church.526 The curialist of the process was sceptical about the miraculous nature of Alicia’s cure, describing it as alleviation rather than a cure, despite the vision.527 Maria Wittmer-Butsch and Constanze Rendtel use this example as an indication that partial cures were most often rejected, and that in such cases the word ‘miracle’ was rejected in favour of ‘healing’, which was no longer considered interesting.528 They are, however, ignoring the fact that although the miracle was indeed excluded from the summary,529 it was nevertheless recorded in the canonization bull and was apparently considered a powerful display of Thomas Cantilupe’s sainthood.530 Also, partial cures were certainly called ‘miracles’ by the witnesses — and in Alicia’s case even by the notaries. This shows that even if they were investigated more rarely than the complete ones, they were not necessarily considered unsuccessful, even from the theological point of view. Most likely for the person who experienced it, and possibly also in the eyes of the officials of canonization processes, the difference between the starting point and the situation after the miracle was crucial. Thus, the lack of comments on the unsuccessful nature of the miracle is presumably because these cures were indeed viewed as miraculous — often by those organizing the canonization hearings, and certainly by those experiencing them. In addition to reflecting the ambiguity of the original depositions, Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s narrative and wordings in St Louis IX’s miracles seem to indicate more complex attitudes. Guillaume wrote the miracle collection in order to promote the cult of the saintly king. Although he was faithful 525 

BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 65r–71r. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 67v. 527  Edited in Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 645. 528  Wittmer-Butsch and Rendtel, Miracula: Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter, p. 66. 529  Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 572. 530  AASS Oct. I, p. 597: ‘Quaedam insuper puella annorum quinque, quae pedem unum habebat annis pluribus quasi totum ex fistulis putrefactum, ita quod nec stare nec ire poterat, nisi se super femur trahendo per terram, portata ad dicti Sancti tumulum per patrem, fuit ibidem a dicta infirmitate curata’. 526 

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towards his original source, this purpose must have affected the way he compiled and summarized the accounts. If, indeed, the partial nature of some of these cures had lessened the powers of the saint, he probably would not have included so many in his text.531 A rare but intriguing case recorded in Dauphine of Puimichel’s hearing shows that attitudes towards partial cures did, however, also vary among the laity. A boy called Peyretus, the son of Anthonius Sicardi, had had fistulas in his foot and tibia for three years. After a vow to Dauphine, the boy was cured, except that one fistula remained. His mother Margarita then ‘ironically’ uttered: ‘Oh, saint lady countess, it doesn’t seem [possible] that you are in paradise and yet you could perfectly cure my son!’ This finally resulted in a full cure.532 The article states that after the vow a pilgrimage was made; if this refers to the original vow and not the later utterance,533 the witness clearly considered herself ‘betrayed’ by the saint, who had not kept her part of the bargain.534 People also seem to have put different emphases on the symptoms remaining after a miraculous cure. The case of Xanctia, disabled by St Anthony’s fire, is a peculiar example of this. A vow to St Louis of Toulouse cured her from her inability to walk. However, at the beginning of her own testimony Xanctia, who was then sixteen, stated that due to the damage done to her inner organs she was not suitable for the companionship of a man and she was a virgin.535 Her parents did not refer to this aspect of her childhood condition — whether or not this 531 

Hannah Skoda writes that the text uses disability as a ‘prosthetic’ to glorify Louis IX and underscore his sanctity. According to her, the impaired bodies in Guillaume’s text also represent the corruption of French society, for which they were allegories, and thus Louis’s role was to restore the health of both the country and the ailing individuals: Skoda, ‘Representations of Disability’, pp. 55, 57. While the way Louis’s cult was promoted highlighted these aspects, the text has an extremely close connection with the original canonization inquiries, and performing miracles was an essential aspect of sanctity. Thus I would interpret the miraculous healing of disabling conditions in this case in their hagiographic context, rather than as a literary tool. 532  Dauphine of Puimichel, pp. 503–04: ‘cum dicta testis loquens videret dictum filium suum adhuc non esse perfecte curatum, ipsa testis loquens yronice protulit hec verba: “A, sancta domina comitissa, non videtur quod habeas posse in paradise et quod filius meus possit perfecte curari!”’. 533  Dauphine of Puimichel, pp. 88–89. 534  On the reciprocity between saints and humans, see Arnold, Belief and Unbelief, pp. 87–89; Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?, pp. 103–12. 535  Louis of Toulouse, p. 173: ‘Et adhuc dixit quod in illo loco in quo fuit ignis seu cremacio non est caro, set ossa tantum et pellis, nec est apta ad viri consorcium, ut dixit; et adhuc dixit se esse virginem’.

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was a problem for the family is therefore not revealed. The case makes, however, an interesting parallel with those concerning girls with facial disfigurements discussed above. Finally, it is worth noting that there was a sliding scale between a ‘complete’ and an ‘incomplete’ cure. One of the children in St Elizabeth’s process was fully cured, except for a small hump that remained on her back. In addition, she also had scars as reminders of the condition.536 Rather than being a manifestation of an unsuccessful cure, these marks acted as a proof of the cured condition and could be pronounced as such by the commissioners.537 Minor signs of damage which did not significantly affect the child’s life could also be expected to remain after the miracle, as stated by the uncle and mother of Francesse.538 Johannes Nani and Adalicia Alani Thome were both cured of severely disabling conditions by the merits of St Yves de Tréguier. Both had humps on their bodies after the cure, and Adalicia’s head was inclined. As they had not had these symptoms earlier, they were clear proofs of miraculous events.539 These notions suggest that such outward marks had nothing to do with the completeness of the cure, which was regarded as performed when the person regained his or her ability to function.540 Although childhood impairments were mostly manifested in their disabling effects or bodily malformations, emotionally they were also impairments of the family, and especially of the parents. How, then, does this reveal itself in the nar­­ratives about the miraculous cure itself ? Were children’s healing miracles done primarily for the benefit of the parents? Not only were parents usually 536 

Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 222–23. See also Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 230–31. On above-mentioned Peyretus, see Dauphine of Puimichel, p. 504. See also Louis of Toulouse, p. 170, on Iohannetus: ‘ita quod infra dimidium annum incepit ire et tibia fuit iuncta cum genu et os ibi, et postea tumor sive gilbus remissus est et dorsum rectificatum et caput consolidatum, sicut hec omnia fuerunt ipsis dominis inquisitoribus [in] persona dicti filii exhibita per signa et vestigia aliqua que supererant manifeste ostensa’. See also Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 139–40. 538  Peter of Morrone, p. 247: ‘Et quod miraculosius est, ut Deus manifestaret sancta merita dicti fratris Petri in puella predicta, plage deformes que sine cicatricibus remanere non possunt, ita sunt consolidate in ipsa, ut cicatricem aliquam minime relinquerent in illa’. Peter of Morrone, p. 251: ‘Et quod miraculosus fuit et est, ut Deus manifestaret sancta merita dicti fratris Petri in puella predicta, plage deformes que sine cicatricibus remanere non possunt, consolidate in ipsa cicatricem aliquam minime reliquerunt in illa’. 539  Yves of Tréguier, pp. 211–12, 245–46. 540  For further discussion, see Kuuliala, ‘Heavenly Healing or Failure of Faith?’ 537 

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those who approached the saint, but the miracle cured their sorrow, worry, and suffering in addition to that of the child.541 The view concurs with that of David Gentilcore that the sick person was responsible for searching out treatment.542 When the ailing person was a child, this responsibility was primarily his or her parents’, and they too benefitted from the result. It is easy to find wording that supports this view in family members’ testi­ monies. To start with, parents were the ones to most often make the vow; hence it was primarily their devotion that brought the hoped-for result. The parents could also highlight the wish that their suffering would end, of which the witness account of Riccardus Berardi, discussed above, is one example. Riccardus specifically went to Peter of Morrone to describe his weariness and the difficulty caused by his daughter’s severe disability. Similarly, according to the articles of Dauphine of Puimichel’s process, Katherina Colina, the mother of Ludovicus de Sabrano, took the boy to the saint, and showed her the boy’s inability to speak in an understandable way, as well as the sorrow that was felt because of this,543 possibly referring to her own sentiments as well as those of the household. These cases portray a tangible dialogue between the grievous parent and the living saint,544 but the same idea is visible in the testimonies of many other parents discussed above, who expressed their great sorrow and occasionally wished for their child’s death. The father of Vigilius, the boy who suffered from epilepsy-like paralysis, thought his son quite worthless and thus hoped he would die, while the mother, Honesta, could not endure the sight of his suffering. The parents reportedly discussed what to do, and Honesta told her husband to make the vow to John Buoni.545 We can only guess what their 541 

p. 188. 542 

This has been proposed, for example, by Diana Webb: Webb, ‘Friends of the Family’,

Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy, p. 196. This also shows in the sixteenth-century German autobiographies, in which some of the ill or impaired writers recorded the pressure of the community to undergo medical treatment, even when it was painful: Frohne and Horn, ‘On the Fluidity of “Disability”’, pp. 37–38. 543  Dauphine of Puimichel, p. 91: ‘Et ob hoc una die venit dicta mater apud Caprerias ubi tunc temporis morabatur dicta domina comitissa, et portari feci eundem Ludovicum, ostendendo eidem domine comitisse quomodo loqui non poterat nec locutus fuerat quod intelligi poterat dicto tempore citra, et tristiciam qua propter ea affligebatur.’ 544  Dauphine’s process includes several witness account about the saint consoling the witnesses, also in the case of emotional turmoils. See Archambeau, ‘Healing Options during the Plague’; Archambeau, ‘Tempted to Kill’. 545  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 879–80.

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family life was like before the miraculous cure, and whether the parents shared each other’s feelings, but given the rather strong emotions they both expressed in their depositions, it is not far-fetched to conclude that they wanted the cure as much for themselves as for the boy. In some instances other authors of hagiographic texts based on canonization documents wished to emphasize this aspect. In the hearing of Louis of Toulouse, Reymunda Clemensana testified about the impairment of her son Iohannetus, which lasted for three years. When the condition struck the boy, Reymunda thought he would die, but she only mentioned her sorrow when describing how she turned to St Louis full of sadness and anguish, and how she made the vow in tears.546 This is not to deny that she probably did grieve for the child before praying to the saint, but clearly she wanted to emphasize her sorrow in connection to the vow. However, in Louis’s Vita the stress is on the mother’s grief. The text states that the boy, described as monstrous, was the cause for the great pain and sorrow of the mother, who, having given up hope of any human remedy, turned to St Louis.547 The miracles of St Hedwig of Silesia quote the words of a mother whose daughter was unable to walk or sit. In her vow to the saint, the mother asked her to return the girl to health, and save the mother herself from heavy physical work and anxiety of spirit, thus presenting both her emotional and physical concerns to the saint.548 It is, of course, possible that the vow was recorded as such in the original testimony as well. Nevertheless, the authors of such works probably wanted to convince their audience by portraying easily identifiable emotions. Perhaps the idea that the whole family was cured alongside the child is most applicable in the few cases in which the parents interpreted the child’s impairment or illness as a consequence of their own actions, such as unbelief in the saint’s powers, or, more commonly, when they thought that it was their own devotion that had effected the cure. That there was a connection between parents’ actions and the possibility of children’s cure was further implied by Verderosa, who had a broken arm. When visiting the shrine, she said in her 546 

Louis of Toulouse, p. 169. Vita S. Ludovici Episcopi Tolosani, ed. by Collegio S. Bonaventura, pp. 370–71: ‘Puer igitur sic monstruosus, tibiis impotens et deformis, magna erat doloris materia et causa moestitiae matri suae. Dolorosa itaque mater, de omni humano remedio desperata, ad Dei et sevi sui Ludovici suffragium totis praecordiis se convertit’. 548  AASS Oct. VIII, p. 253: ‘“Beata Hedwigis, se filiae me sanitatem impetraveris et me de tanto labore corporis et ab anxietate spiritus liberaveris, festivitatis tuae vigiliam, annis singulis, jejunabo, quamdiu eadem mea supervixerit filia.”’ 547 

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prayer that her mother appreciated Ambrose of Massa greatly and would never offend him in any way,549 thus pointing to the mother’s devoted actions and indicating that she showed no disbelief towards the saint, and that it was precisely the mother’s belief that guaranteed the successful pilgrimage. Similarly, when the fourteen-year-old Katherina, now the wife of Johannes le Gaven, had stayed at St Yves’s shrine for seven weeks in vain, she was upset that she had to return to her mother uncured.550 These girls’ words imply that they wanted to be cured, not only for their own sakes but for their mother’s as well. Although the grief and worry of family members is often emphasized in the testimonies, the matter must not be oversimplified. In some cases the cure was done for the whole family, and obviously the miracle changed the life of the parents and other family members for the better — or at least that is how a miracle narrative is supposed to describe the situation. Yet, especially after the cure took place, some testimonies concentrate on describing the regained health without further reference to parental emotions, except when referring to the communal rejoicing of a miracle typical of the narratives. Ultimately, while the child was the primary object of the miraculous cure, and their healed appearance and restored abilities were described in detail, the whole family benefitted from the saints’ manifestion of their powers.

549  550 

AASS Nov. IV, p. 605. Yves of Tréguier, p. 237. Katherina’s emotions are further discussed on pp. 296–98.

Chapter 2

Community and the Impaired Child

T

he experience of bodily difference is greatly influenced by interaction with one’s community and social sphere, which have the power to ‘disable’ or ‘enable’ their members socially, mentally, verbally, and physically. This aspect is obviously essential to the study of disability in late medieval Europe as well, as this was a distinctly communal society. Understanding and defining children’s bodily difference originated from social interaction in both the domestic setting and public spaces, where people were in daily contact not only with relatives and acquaintances but also with strangers. Communities, how­­ever, varied, nor were they uniform in terms of identity or mentality. On the contrary, throughout history, all communities must have negotiated difference.1 In bigger cities and market towns people more often met strangers, and it is likely that the children’s social sphere was wider than in remote countryside farms and villages. Thus, the conception of a ‘community’ must be understood in a relatively loose sense, meaning a person’s physical surroundings and the people they were in contact with. The communal aspects of physical impairment interlink with miraculous cures. Publicity is an essential characteristic of miracles, both because they often occurred in public spaces and were thus witnessed by many, and because the publicity itself was an important aspect of proving a miracle. Answers to commissioners’ questions regarding the communal knowledge of the miraculous 1 

Smith and Wells, ‘Introduction’, p. 13.

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cure, as well as the fama of the saint, appear frequently in the miracle testimonies.2 The formation of this communal memory was not, however, limited only to the social sphere at home. When people living in different locations came to testify in a canonization hearing, they had an opportunity to get to know each other and discuss the various miracles they had witnessed or heard about. Thus this community of the faithful not only strengthened the cult but also spread information about impairments and miracle cures connected with them.3 Communal memory is an obvious aspect of oral societies.4 In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries there was a growing interest in vernacular hagiography.5 The stories of saints and their miracles circulated orally, and the cures and events that preceded them were frequently discussed and negotiated, but also disputed and even ridiculed by both laypeople and clerics. It is likely that these tales also became mixed in the retelling. 6 Moreover, commu2 

On the publicity of a miracle, see e.g. Goodich, Violence and Miracle, pp. 14–15; KatajalaPeltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 103–05; Thompson, Cities of God, pp. 203–04. On fama in canonization processes, see e.g. Krötzl, ‘Fama sanctitatis’ and Lett, Un procès de canonisation, pp. 357–78, and on the significance of fama in medieval society, the article compilation ‘Fama’: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. by Fenster and Lord Smail. 3  See Goodich, ‘Miseries of Dulcia and Cristina’, p. 102. 4  An oral society is one where most communication occurs by the spoken word rather than written documents. Oral cultures depend on memory and value it highly. However, the idea that literacy and orality are incompatible, the spread of the former resulting in the devaluation of the importance of memory, has been questioned. Moreover, even the early Middle Ages was not a fully oral society, as written documents were an important aspect of communication. See Carruthers, The Book of Memory, pp. 12, 18–20. However, as regards the daily life of laity, most of whom were illiterate, it appears that information about everyday occurrences was mostly transferred orally, and this oral communication also had an important role in the delivery of the cult of saints, even if part of this process was done literally. This spread of information could later become a part of collective memory. See also Skinner, ‘Gender and Memory in Medieval Italy’, p. 37. 5  This also shows in the production of such manuscripts. As an example, as a result of this growing interest in saints and their deeds, the saints’ lives became the most popular narrative genre in medieval Germany and Flanders: approximately 3900 lives of saints in the vernacular have survived from there, including roughly 850 in manuscripts. Williams-Krapp, ‘Late Medieval German Manuscript Culture and Vernacular Hagiography’, pp. 344–45. 6  Smoller, ‘Miracle, Memory, and Meaning’, p. 433; Craig, Wandering Women, pp. 87–88. On the non-harmonious sides of cultic communities, see Bailey, ‘Peter Brown and Victor Turner Revisited’, pp. 22–24.The retelling of individual miracle stories and individual saints can be seen to belong to the communal memory, which constantly remakes itself, while the conceptions of what was essential to a miracle story belonged to cultural memory, which imposes more stable

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nal memories and conceptions of the deeds of certain saints were strengthened when their fama was outlined and institutionalized by liturgical offices, as well as in vernacular and Latin vitae and visual representations.7 Children’s physical impairments blended into these memories. The possibility of a miraculous cure was prevalent in medieval thinking, so it is reasonable to assume that conceptions of miraculously cured impairments affected the ways the communities viewed physical infirmity in general. Despite the importance of communal relationships, the miracle depositions of community members other than the immediate family are rarer and often also shorter and less detailed, as they were considered less important witnesses than those who had had very close contact with the beneficiary. This may result in these sources giving too uniform a picture of different kinds of communities. Nevertheless, the role of the community was significant in delineating the nature of the child’s condition and proving the miraculous cure. By studying the witness depositions of community members other than immediate family, as well as family members’ notions of communal attitudes and knowledge of the child’s condition, the next chapter will therefore consider the role the community played in various aspects of the lives and cures of physically impaired children and how members of the community participated in reconstructing the impairments for the canonization inquests.

Knowledge of Children’s Impairments in the Social Sphere Our discussion of community roles and attitudes will start by examining know­ ledge of the impairments of children outside their families, with a special focus on the impaired child’s socioeconomic status, because it is reasonable to assume that the social spheres and, consequently levels of privacy available were different for the very poor compared with those who were wealthier. Although publicity was an important aspect of all healing miracles, in the case of the poor it played an even more crucial role — indeed, public perceptions about their meanings and forms on experiences and expectations. On the differences between these two, see Welker, ‘Resurrection and Eternal Life’, pp. 284–85. It is worth noting that other types of folkloric tales were equally transmitted orally, and they were often mixed with the tales of the miraculous. These two story-telling types thus influenced each other, although the references to folk motifs are rare in miracle testimonies. See Klaniczay, ‘Ritual and Narrative’, p. 218. 7  Gaposchkin, ‘Louis IX and Liturgical Memory’; Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis, p. 15; Goodich, ‘The Use of Direct Quotation’, p. 179.

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impairments could be vital for their survival. However, even for the poor the miracle testimonies may shed light on the extent of physical privacy they had and the importance for communal knowledge and memory of passing on narratives of impairments and their cures. Children labelled as beggars or otherwise very poor rarely appear in the canonization processes, as a consequence of the way witnesses and miracles were selected. Among our sources, of all the protagonists of the miraculous cures of childhood impairments, only ten were reported to have been begging at some point in their lives;8 three were categorized as poor,9 and two reportedly lived in an institution.10 However, because the poor were considered less reliable witnesses, several people were usually summoned to give testimony of their miraculous cures and most of the accounts we have from them are quite elaborate.11 In the testimonies, details of beggar children’s conditions are commonly juxtaposed with some justification for their begging, because the ill and the impaired who were unable to work were regarded as the deserving poor and thus entitled to live by charity.12 In the case of Alicia de Lonesdale, who lived by 8  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 163; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 27–30, 50–55; Yves of Tréguier, p. 224; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 64v–71v, 90r–v, 105r–v, 186r–88r, 204r–09v; Louis of Toulouse, pp. 162–63; Clare of Montefalco, pp. 503–04; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 177v. 9  Margaret of Hungary, pp. 248, 352, 357. The level of poverty is not, however, revealed in these testimonies, and it was possible to be both nobilis and pauper, which was hardly a similar situation to those children who needed to beg for living. For further discussion on the case, see n. 744. For the complexity of the definitions of poverty, see Rubin, Charity and Community, pp. 6–9. 10  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 791–92; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 47–49. Also in the miracula of St Hedwig of Silesia, a blind youth and his father lived in a hospital because of their poverty: AASS Oct. VIII, p. 250. Additionally, Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 29, reports that Thoumas de Voudai spent a night in a hospital after his cure. 11  Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 50–56. 12  It was generally concluded that charity was love of God expressed on Earth. Nevertheless, the discussion on the justification of begging, charity, and poverty was vivid in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Partly this discourse pertained to voluntary and involuntary poverty, deriving from the foundation of the mendicant orders, which belonged to the former group. There were critical voices, especially among the secular clergy, towards those not choosing to work, while mendicancy was defended on the grounds that its practitioners were doing spiritual work, superior to corporeal work. The definition of ‘deserving poor’ was, at the same time, constantly changing. Due to the worsening of the economic situation in the late thirteenth century, the benefactors kept redefining and limiting those to whom they provided help, and after the Black Death and the resulting reduction in the work force, the rules and campaigns against vagrants began. See Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 44–50, 60–70; Geremek,

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begging with her father, four unrelated witnesses gave testimony about the case in addition to Alicia and her father.13 All four reported that they had seen the girl and the father regularly in London, and they gave similar, detailed descriptions of Alicia’s inability to walk or stand.14 Amicia la Rysslwyk, who was the only woman of these four, also stated: Cum autem quadam die dominica dicta Alicia peteret elemosinam in Ecclesia Sancti Martini in Vinetria Londinii, dum missarum sollempnia agebantur; dicta Amicia et alie mulieres volentes probare an dicta Alicia ratione questus fingeret se contractam, eleuauerunt vestes eius ut viderent et palparent tibias et coxas eiusdem et palpando ac uidendo predictas tibias et coxas predicte Alicie inuenerunt quod nervum erant adeo retracti in tibiis et coxis dicte Alicie quod nullo modo poterat extendere tibias nec poterat aliquo modo ire pedibus suus, et in pede dextro dicta Alicia habebat magnum malum et habebat ibi vulnera ex quibus fluebat putredo.15 (One Sunday when the said Alicia asked for alms at the church of St  Martin in Vintry in London while the sacred mass was conducted; the said Amicia and other women, wanting to examine, on account of complaints, if the said Alicia was pretending to be crippled, lifted her skirts in order to see and stroke her tibias and hips, and while stroking and seeing the above-mentioned tibias and hips of the said Alicia, they discovered that the nerves were withdrawn in such a way that she could in no way extend her tibias, nor could she walk in any manner on her feet, and on her right foot the said Alicia had a great injury and a wound, from which putrefication emanated.)

Amicia’s deposition gives an example of how a beggar child’s impairment, and whether his or her begging was justified as a consequence, could be tested and negotiated in the social sphere. Presumably people going to the said church and living nearby had expressed their doubts about Alicia and her father. Amicia was by no means a wealthy community member, but she was nevertheless higher on the social ladder than the beggar girl. Although the actions of Amicia and other women could be seen, from the modern perspective, as rather intrusive, they actually benefitted Alicia — as there were many people of the neighbourhood present, the women’s actions secured Alicia’s right to beg. The Margins, pp. 31–35; Rubin, Charity and Community, pp. 54–65. On charity towards the poor and disability, see Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 154–98. 13  The other witnesses were Amicia la Rysslwyk, Willelmus de Oxonia, who lived by the work of his own hands, Nicholas Chiket, a merchant, and dominus Willelmus, the perpetual chaplain of the Church of All Saints in London. 14  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 68v, 69v, 70v. 15  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 68v–69r.

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Despite the interaction between Alicia and the witnesses, both before and after her cure, only Alicia and her father reported the origins of her impairment, and no questions regarding the matter were recorded. Thus, despite the knowledge Amicia and other witnesses had of Alicia’s condition and its symptoms, the origins of the girl and her condition seem to have held little interest for them. On the other hand, it is also possible that this aspect was not inquired after because the likelihood of first-hand information was so low, or because that matter had already been made clear in the testimonies of Alicia and her father. The other poor, begging children in the records of Thomas Cantilupe’s process are Johannes de Burtone and Philippus, two boys who were mute because they had no tongue.16 In addition to them, the cure of a third tongueless boy, Hugo, is very briefly reported in the depositions.17 The information given about Hugo is very sparse, but we learn that both Philippus and Johannes begged for a living and travelled to St Thomas’s shrine in Hereford more than once, being taken there by the same man, and after acquiring a tongue, both started to speak English and Welsh. The strong similarities between the two cases make the modern reader suspect that they were the same boy — besides the obvious similarities, lack of a tongue is an extremely rare impairment in canonization processes.18 One of the witnesses reporting Hugo’s cure actually called him 16 

The witness accounts regarding Johannes are in BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 105r–v, 186 –88r, 204r–09v. A man called Johannes de Leoministeris was primarily summoned to testify about Thomas Cantilupe’s fama, but he also reported the cure of Philippus, giving the only witness account of the case. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 90r–v. 17  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 242r–v. 18  The only other narrative regarding such a cure that I have found is included in the miracula of St Francis of Assisi. Vita Prima S. Francisci Assisiensis, ed. by Collegio S. Bonaventura, pp. 113–14. In Urban V’s miracles there is also an account in which a nobleman called Jacobus de Farmentono was captured in war; his tongue was cut out and his eyes gouged out. He promised to build a chapel for the dead pope’s honour, and regained the ability to speak even though his tongue did not grow back. The narrative does not say anything further about his eyesight: Urban V, pp. 432–33. St Olav’s miracles also include a youth, whose tongue was injustly cut off and the saint extended the remaining part. Cited in Krötzl, ‘Saints, Healing and Communities’, p. 260. Moreover, Thomas Cantilupe’s miracula (Exeter College MS 158) describes the cure of a mute man, whose tongue had been torn out by thieves: Goodich, ‘Miseries of Dulcia and Cristina’, p. 111. The regrowth of missing body parts is, in general, extremely rare in hagiographic texts. St Peter Martyr’s miracles, however, include a rather fanciful group of miracles, in which a child born without an arm, without eyes, without a part of its head, or without any form similar ‘with any animal or man’ is restored by the merits of the saint: Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor, pp. 246–47. Undoubtedly, in this case the formation of the text as a means to promote the cult had a great effect on recording such narrations. r

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Johannes, which suggests that people’s memories about the events had perhaps become confused and distorted during the fifteen or twenty years between the miracles and the process. Moreover, Henricus de Furtone, the guardian of the London Franciscans, reported that he heard from some Hereford canons that a tongueless boy received a tongue at Thomas Cantilupe’s shrine, and then continued wandering around, pretending that he still had none, until he got caught by some who knew about the miracle. Henricus, however, did not remember the boy’s name.19 In any case, the inquiry of Thomas Cantilupe was done meticulously, and it might therefore by expected that the commissioners would have realized and further investigated the case if there was a reason to suspect that these two miracles were actually one and the same. Also, the list recorded at the shrine and provided by the Hereford proctors mentions two cures of adolescents born without a tongue: one being Johannes, cured at the age of sixteen in 1288, and the other a nameless youth, who probably was Philippus, cured at the age of twenty-six in 1293.20 The witnesses reported that Johannes de Burtone had been begging for years in the town of Ludlow near the Welsh border, and according to most of them, nothing was known about his origins except that he was from a village called Burton, which was located in Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire, and belonged to the Bishop of Hereford. Eventually, Johannes was taken to Thomas Cantilupe’s shrine by Hugo de Bromptonis, the guardian of the Hereford Franciscans, who had apparently known Johannes since birth, and he received a new tongue. Johannes then related that his father had been Johannes de Burtone, but that is everything we learn about his family.21

19 

BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 47v. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 274r, 291r. On the Hereford proctors’ list, see Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp.  177–78. The summarium of Cantilupe’s process only mentions Johannes’s cure. Supposedly, the evidence of the two other miracles was not sufficient: Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 646–47. 21  This was reported by Gilbertus, the former custodian of the shrine. The remark contradicts Ronald Finucane’s notion that Johannes ‘grew up knowing nothing about his parents’: Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p. 81. The choice of words and the past perfect tense in Gilbertus’s testimony indicate that the father had died, but none of the witnesses state clearly what had happened to the family. See BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 209r: ‘et idem Johannes dixit post miraculum quod contigit de eadem […] Quod Johannes de Burtone fuerat pater suus’. Michael Goodich suggests that Johannes might have been ‘one of the homeless victims of the war between English and Welsh’: Goodich, ‘Foreigner, Foe, and Neighbor’, p. 20. 20 

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The case of Johannes possibly aroused even more public attention than that of Alicia, as there were ten witnesses altogether for the miracle,22 some of whom had encountered Johannes in Ludlow, and some in Hereford. Several witnesses reported in the hearing that they had, literally, seen inside the mouth of Johannes and that he had no proper tongue. Some related that he could not say anything articulately, either in English or in Welsh.23 The witnesses were also in accord about the origins of Johannes’s impairment, which they frequently mentioned, unlike in the case of Alicia de Lonesdale. It seems to have been common knowledge that he had been born without a tongue.24 Yet none of the witnesses mentioning this appear to have known the boy before he arrived in Ludlow or Hereford, or to have known anything about his family. Unfortunately, Hugo de Bromptonis had died before the investigation, so we do not have his testimony.25 It is possible that Hugo was a frequent visitor to Ludlow, where reportedly he was at least once a guest of a Margeria de Aylinche. In that case he might have encountered Johannes there before taking him to Hereford and told the villagers what he knew about the boy. However, as the witnesses’ information about the boy’s origins was rather vague, it leads to the suspicion that Hugo may not have known the boy very well either. Although the witnesses frequently saw Johannes’s mouth, his lack of speech was also tested by beating him. Thomas Sandi, a man who encountered Johannes in Hereford, reported: ‘Et quia mendicando non proferebat vocem articulatam, sed emittebat quosdam rugitus, volens probare idem testis si fingeret se mutum et non esset, fecit eum in dicta ciuitate Herefordiensi prope ecclesiam sancti Nicholai bis vapulare per alios mendicantes cum baculo, quem ipse Johannes portabat, et non dedit aliquam uocem sed rugitum predictum ad instar latratus canum’.26 22 

Nine of the witnesses were specifically summoned to testify about Johannes’s cure. The tenth witness, Johannes Bute, Thomas Cantilupe’s pistor, testified about his vita and fama, also reporting the miracle. He did not remember Johannes’s name, but one may presume he was indeed talking about him, because his description of the boy’s age and origins is in accordance with that of the other witnesses: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 105r–v. Both Ronald Finucane and Michael Richter are of the opinion that there were nine witnesses for the miracle, ignoring Johannes Bute’s testimony: Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p. 81; Richter, ‘Collecting Miracles’, p. 54. 23  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 105r, 187v, 204r, 205v, 206r, 207r, 208v. 24  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 204r, 206r. This aspect was also mentioned in the register listing Johannes’s cure. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 274v. 25  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 187v. 26  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 205r.

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(And as when begging, he did not produce a distinct voice, but uttered a certain roaring sound; wanting to test if he was pretending to be mute although he was not, he [the witness] had him [ Johannes] beaten twice in the said city of Hereford near the church of St Nicholas by other beggars with a cane that Johannes himself carried, and he did not utter any sound but the above-mentioned roaring in the manner of dog’s barking.)

Johannes Alkyn testified further that the boy was frequently beaten by Thomas Sandi and Johannes de Akoruebury, subballivus, or under-bailiff.27 Besides the somewhat differing opinions on the frequency of the canings, the only difference between the testimonies regarding the matter is that Thomas stated that he got other beggars to do the beatings, while the two other men testified that it was Thomas Sandi himself and the under-bailiff who were beating Johannes.28 The third person who reported the beatings was Rogerus de Hamptonis, a cob­­bler from Hereford. He related that Johannes was frequently beaten up in his presence, but did not say anything articulate or distinct.29 The canons of Hereford Franciscans also made a habit of beating Johannes, as reported by Gilbertus, the custodian of Thomas Cantilupe’s shrine at that time.30 Notions of just and unjust violence were rooted in the perceptions of hierarchy and authority.31 Therefore, in addition to the lived realities of the poor, the depositions regarding the tests provide evidence of medieval social control. According to Miri Rubin, hierarchies were also validated by authoritative discourses and conceptions of the body through the binary classifications of man– woman, spirit–flesh, body–mind, health–sickness, and sanity–madness.32 This idea can be extended to cover also the practicalities of bodily tests carried out on beggars as well as the way the impairments of persons of lower status were constructed in miracle testimonies through depictions of begging and violence. 27 

BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 205v. Rogerus de Hamptonis did not name those who beat the boy, but the other testimonies indicate that Thomas Sandi was largely responsible for that. 29  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 206v: ‘Et illus temporibus dictus Johannes mendicando nec etiam cum frequenter presente ipso teste fuisset verberatus ullam reddebat vocem articulatam et distinctam’. 30  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 208v. 31  Müller, ‘Social Control and the Hue and Cry’, p. 30. On medieval conceptions of hierarchies and violence and the argument that their relationship with authority stemmed from God, see also Maddern, Violence and Social Order, pp. 84–97. On hierarchies and violence in the domestic setting, see Hanawalt, ‘Violence in the Domestic Milieu of Late Medieval England’. 32  Rubin, ‘The Person in the Form’, p. 115. 28 

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As beggars, both Alicia and Johannes were living at the mercy of other people. Although the impaired were among those entitled to live on charity and by begging, the deceitfulness and sinfulness of beggars were mentioned by several writers of the time, and they were easily suspected of feigning their ailments.33 These attitudes partly derived from economic realities. The economic situation of Europe had worsened in the late thirteenth century. It is possible that the place of residence of these children had an effect on how the community treated and perceived them, for especially bigger cities of the time had large numbers of very poor people and they struggled to feed them.34 The population growth resulted in a widening gap between demand and production, and eventually, a series of bad harvest years culminated in the great famine of Northern Europe of 1315–22.35 This trend was already visible in the 1280s, when Alicia and Johannes were begging, and it brought about stricter follow-up and control of beggars. Inspections like the ones described in the testimonies were common experiences for most impaired beggars, regardless of whether they were children or adults. Whether or not Johannes was beaten was presumably determined by the attitudes of those who came into contact with him. No beating was mentioned by the witnesses from Ludlow. It is possible that the people of the village, having known the boy for years, felt more sympathy towards him. Then again, his inability to speak was already proven there, and thus the absence of reports of the tests in Ludlow does not rule out the possibility that he had been beaten in the past. It is difficult to avoid thinking that a darker aspect of the beatings was sadistic pleasure, as suggested by Ronald Finucane,36 given that Thomas Sandi

33 

On the attitudes towards beggars, see Farmer, Surviving Poverty, pp. 60–70; Geremek, The Margins, pp. 32, 192–01. A literary topos highlighting this attitude is that of a lame person, usually a beggar, cured against their will: Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 192–93. 34  As an example, Paris had a huge population of very poor people; according to the tax assessments of 1292, less than 25 per cent of the households were mentioned as potential taxpayers. Among those who did not have to pay taxes were clerics, students, and nobles, but most of the families not included in the taxpayers belonged to the poor: Geremek, The Margins, p. 58; Farmer, Surviving Poverty, pp. 32–33. It is possible that such inspections became even more common in the later Middle Ages. At least in England, the shortage of labour after the Black Death made the king set new laws to forbid begging in ocio by prohibiting almsgiving to sturdy beggars. On beggars and the economic situation in England, see Rexroth, Deviance and Power, pp. 68–95. 35  Jordan, The Great Famine, pp. 7–23. 36  Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p. 82.

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and the bailiff were reported as having frequently beaten the boy, when surely once ought to have been sufficient to show that he certainly could not speak. Interestingly, the rules guaranteeing pilgrims’ inviolability did not seem to have any effect on how Johannes was being treated, even by those who must have been aware of the purpose of his journey.37 Then again, there are reports of him being a frequent visitor in the city.38 Beggars are also known to have been blamed for starting and shamming pilgrimages in order to elicit more sympathy for their begging, and possibly more generous donations,39 of which the testimony of Henricus de Furtone is one example. Johannes de Leoministeris reported that the tongueless Philippus had begged in Hereford for sixteen years.40 As there is a strong possibility that the memories of the two cases had become confused in the witnesses’ minds, it appears that at least one tongueless boy was considered as having begged in Hereford frequently and not necessarily only as a pilgrim. Although one case cannot be taken as typical, the treatment Johannes received may reflect the other side of the coin for those begging at popular pilgrimage sites. Perhaps communities which felt an even stronger moral duty to give alms were also more determined that someone who begged should be justified in their actions.41 The beatings Johannes experienced probably had something to do with the type of his impairment as well. The witnesses made no reports of him having 37  On the inviolability, see Webb, Pilgrimage in Medieval England, p. 219. At the time of Johannes’s cure in 1288, Cantilupe’s cult still flourished in Hereford, although there was already a decline in the number of miracles recorded. A year earlier 160 miracles are known to have occurred at his shrine, while the number in 1288 was thirty-four. In 1300 no more than nine miracles were written down: Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 183. 38  Johannes de Bute reported that he had seen him going to Cantilupe’s shrine for six months, and Rogerus de Hamptonis and Thomas Sandi stated they had also seen him frequently before the miracle, and probably also before his pilgrimages: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 105r, 205r, 206v. 39  Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages, p. 2. 40  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 90r. 41  In Bologna, through which a pilgrimage route ran, grain was given to poor pilgrims on their way to Compostela, and hospitals were built for pilgrims and others. However, the need to control the pilgrims’ begging activities shows in the regulations of the Compagnia di San Giacomo. It stated that begging on the pretext of pilgrimage was forbidden during Holy Week and Easter if the person had not previously received written permission from the said company. Furthermore, in 1378, at the behest of the Compagnia, the capitano of Bologna decreed penalties for anyone who falsely claimed to be on a pilgrimage: Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Medieval West, p. 89.

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any physical impairment other than the lack of a tongue, and as he was also capable of understanding what was being said to him, he was possibly considered physically fit for work. Whether he ever did any tasks for those supporting him is not revealed in the testimonies.42 As his condition did not have any outward signs, it is possible that he was considered as a less deserving beggar than those who were blind or had severe mobility impairments. Although the texts are somewhat later, there are indications of this kind of thinking in William Langland’s (d. c. 1386) Piers Plowman,43 and a Wycliffite reformer, William Taylor, also wrote in a sermon in 1406 that only the poor who are feeble, lame, or blind should be allowed to live on alms.44 A further explanation for attitudes towards Johannes’s impairment is that those encountering him associated it with tongue-cutting as a corporal punishment, as amputating a tongue was a relatively common penalty for slander and blasphemy; however, it is not known exactly how prevalent mutilation was as a punishment. A person who had suffered from such a ‘telling punishment’ was marked for life by his crime. It is possible that this was also one reason why the witnesses and commissioners found it important to note that Johannes’s condition was congenital.45 Then again, other types of corporal punishment were used as well and not everyone having an impairment resembling their effects was treated in the same manner. However, being without a tongue must have been a rare impediment, and thus it is possible that this connection was more striking. It is also likely that sensory impairments were generally considered easier to feign than mobility impairments, while twisted limbs and skin problems were more visible, as was the case with Alicia de Lonesdale. That it was common to test speech impediment by beating is suggested by the narrative regarding Loÿs, who lived in a smith’s household. His deafness and muteness was tested by yelling into his ear, beating him, and putting hot charcoals onto his stomach,46 42 

In St Francis of Assisi’s Vita there is an example of this kind of charity. The deaf-mute boy was given lodging for a night because the man owning the house was aware of his services: Vita Prima S. Francisci Assisiensis, ed. by Collegio S. Bonaventura, pp. 113–14. 43  Gianfalla, ‘“Ther is moore mysshapen amonges thise beggeres”’, p. 124. 44  Metzler, A Social History of Disability, p. 187. 45  Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 25–29, 11–35, 194. 46  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 50: ‘Et en ce meems tens l’en le poignoit et batoit griement pour ce que l’en esprouvast se il parleroit, et neporquant il ne disoit mot, ainçois faisoit tant seulement signes d’omme muet. Et les enfanz de Gauchier li getoient les charbons ardanz sus son ventre nu pour esprouver se il parleroit et se il estoit vraiement muet, et riens ne fesoit pour tout ce fors signes de muet et fors que jeter les charbons loing de lui’.

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even though he was not a beggar. The testimony of Gilbertus also refers to the general habit of beating the mute, for he stated that Johannes de Burtone emitted roars in the way that mutes usually did when being beaten.47 These remarks, again, must be seen in the context of a hierarchical society: it is difficult to believe that a mute youth with a higher social status would have faced similar treatment.48 As Michel Mollat writes, for those with official responsibilities, ‘poverty was an indignity if not a disability’.49 Thoumas de Voudai, who had to beg because of his blindness, was also occasionally beaten by three boys of his village.50 Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s text does not reveal their motives, or whether their actions had anything to do with testing Thoumas’s blindness or were just a way of tormenting the beggar boy. However, the narrative also reports that sometimes Thoumas walked alone and fell into the mud, and in another instance it is reported that one of those who had been beating him left him to walk alone, and as a result he almost fell into a ditch.51 Leaving him to walk alone was a more likely way to test his blindness than the beatings. On the other hand, Thoumas had resided in the same village all his life and can be seen as a closer member of the community than Johannes and Alicia. The boys who beat him thus knew him beforehand, and especially after the first encounters with him, probably had less reason to suspect him of feigning. Violence as a method of testing the genuineness of poor children’s and youths’ impairments is not, however, as straightforward a matter as it might appear to a modern reader of the sources, as charity and violence intermingle in the accounts. Thoumas de Voudai was taken to the shrine of St Louis IX by one of the boys who had been bullying him.52 Those who beat Johannes, or witnessed him being beaten, were also helping him. Rogerus de Hamptonis took him into his house every now and then, and because Johannes was beaten in the houses of the canons of the Hereford Franciscans, they seem to have provided him accommodation or nourishment as well,53 thus showing the charity that was expected of 47 

BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 209r: ‘non loquebatur sed emittebat quosdam mugitus sicut faciunt muti uniformes et unisonos quom verberabatur’. 48  In Bernardino of Siena’s canonization process, for example, the deaf-muteness of three beneficiaries was tested simply by talking to them in a loud voice and after the cure by testing whether they understood spoken words: Bernardino of Siena, pp. 82–87, 94–95, 148–49. 49  Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages, p. 71. 50  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 27. 51  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 27. 52  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 28. 53  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 206v, 208v–09r.

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clerics and others with higher social status.54 Just as in everyday life the tests of the genuineness of the impairment served to prove the condition real and the beggar entitled to live on alms, in canonization inquests the references to them served as a proof of the nature of the condition and, consequently, the genuineness of the miraculous cure. The depositions about Johannes, Alicia, and Thoumas are exceptional in their details about the living conditions of the protagonists. There are other testimonies about begging, impaired children among the sources of this study, but the witnesses did not reveal whether or not they were under suspicion of feigning their impairments. However, simply being beggars, as well as the way they begged, made their impairments notorious within the community. For example, Cecilia de Sancta Cruce referred to the common knowledge of her begging with her daughter Beatrix.55 Neither Beatrix nor their neighbour Cecilia Helziarsse mentioned the begging; when asked how she knew about Beatrix’s impairment, Cecilia Helziarsse related that they were neighbours and that she saw Cecilia carrying her daughter.56 Whether Cecilia and Beatrix were actually considered beggars is unclear, and begging and being a pauper did not necessarily go hand-in-hand either. In medieval discourse poverty was defined as a relative situation, which meant the lack of means that they could reasonably expect to have.57 It seems likely that Beatrix was an illegitimate child, given that the father or Cecilia’s husband is mentioned nowhere in the testimonies, and Beatrix is always defined as the daughter of her mother.58 Apparently, Cecilia and Beatrix were not homeless — it is even possible that they lived with one or 54 

See Brodman, Charity & Religion, pp. 81–85; Farmer, ‘A Deaf-Mute’s Story’, p. 206; Rubin, Charity and Community, pp. 59–60. 55  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 162–63: ‘Et hoc dixit esse publicum et notorium in loco predicto Sancte Crucis, et homines et mulieres dicti loci comuniter hoc sciunt, ut dixit. Et quod ipsa portabat eam ad collum suum pro querendis helemosinis per dictum locum’. Similarly, Sophia de Bütingen described her daughter’s walking problems, saying that she supported her daughter’s body with her hands and she walked slowly and bent, begging for alms: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 163. Because there are no other recorded witness accounts of the girl’s cure, it is not known whether other community members reported her begging. 56  Louis of Toulouse, p. 164. 57  Rubin, Charity and Community, pp. 6–7. 58  Cecilia Helziarsse called the mother Cecilia Viaziera, and Beatrix stated in her testimony that among those who knew about her disability were P(etrus) Vizei and Guillelmus Iohannis, her maternal uncles. Cecilia called them P(etrus) Iohannis and Guillelmus Iohannis. Louis of Toulouse, pp. 163–64. Vizei and Viaziera sound sufficiently alike to be the same name. There is also a suggestion in this that Cecilia was not married.

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both of Cecilia’s brothers.59 Presumably the mother and the girl were not primarily beggars in the eyes of their quite small community, although their lack of means must have been known. In the testimonies regarding the cure of Ceptus Sperançe de Montefalco, a man called Andriolus Benvengnatis stated that he begged on the ground. 60 Apparently Andirolus did not find it necessary to examine whether the boy’s impairment was genuine. Andirolus testified that he had known the boy a pueritia sua, which most likely had an impact.61 Three other witnesses to the miracle did not mention the begging, although they had known the boy for years.62 Ronald Finucane reads Andriolus Benvengnatis’s testimony as evidence of Ceptus ‘living as a beggar for several years’.63 However, as in the case of Cecilia and Beatrix de Sancta Cruce, the actual social standing of Ceptus is difficult to ascertain. Although he is reported as having begged, it seems that his family was not the poorest and that he had some kind of lodging, because Ceptus’s mother was able to put him on a donkey and take him to the baths.64 Perhaps Ceptus’s father had died during his childhood, which may have had a negative effect on the family’s economic welfare, forcing the boy to supplement its income by begging. If so, this makes him a possible example of the changing nature of medieval poverty.65 It is also worth noting that all of those with childhood impairments who had begged frequently and / or on their own were teenagers. Only in the case of Johannes de Burtone is it left vague whether he had begged alone since his early years.66 Teenagers or adolescents were expected 59 

On poverty and illegitimacy, see Maddern, ‘“Oppressed by Utter Poverty”’. Clare of Montefalco, p. 504. 61  Clare of Montefalco, p. 504. 62  Clare of Montefalco, pp. 308, 427, 505–06. The fourth witness, Macthiolus, only wit­ nessed Ceptus’s miraculous cure but did not know him beforehand: Clare of Montefalco, pp. 376–77. 63  Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p. 58. 64  Clare of Montefalco, p. 348. 65  See Rubin, Charity and Community, 7. 66  The definitions of time and age in miracle depositions must always be treated with caution, but based on the witness accounts, Johannes cannot have been older than four when he ended up in Ludlow. Johannes was sixteen at the time of his cure, and according to one witness he had been known in Ludlow for at least twelve years: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 204r. Ysolda Thorgryme stated that Johannes had been seen begging in Ludlow for twelve or fourteen years: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 186v. However, it is not known what happened to Johannes’s parents or how he ended up in the town in the first place, since his early life is left cloudy. Since it is unlikely that he travelled from Burton to Ludlow on his own at the age of 60 

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to work or start training for work, and they were placed somewhere between childhood and adulthood.67 It seems that the social sphere where the witnesses encountered the begging child influenced whether the begging remained in their memory and was later expressed as a proof of the disabling condition. The matter is viewed from a different angle in the process of St Yves of Tréguier. When Petronilla Alani Fabri was asked how she knew that a boy named Guido was blind, she replied, among other things, that she had seen him asking for bread in Tréguier.68 Thus it appears that at least in her mind, blindness and begging were connected. 69 four or even younger and was probably accompanied by an older person, he must have ended up alone later for some reason. 67  On the work of the youth in the Middle Ages, see Goldberg, ‘Migration, Youth and Gender’. 68  Yves of Tréguier, p. 223: ‘Interrogata quomodo scit quod esset cecus, dixit quod viderat eum querentem panem, et ducebatur tanquam cecus, et cecus ab omnibus qui ipsum videbant reputabatur’. 69  At least one other blind man in Yves of Tréguier’s process was reported as having been asking for alms, but in that case no witness mentioned the begging as a proof of his blindness. One reason for this may be that a dog guided the man, which was a more profound and unforgettable indicator of his blindness for the witnesses, who reported it as a proof of his lack of vision: Yves of Tréguier, p. 227: ‘et per unum canem se duci faciebat sicut cecus’; Yves of Tréguier, p. 284: ‘dixit pro eo quod cecus apparebat, et sicut cecus per canem se duci faciebat’. See also Yves of Tréguier, pp. 222–26, 277. There are some sporadic references to beggars’ ‘guide dogs’ in the late medieval period. Those who could afford it most likely preferred a human guide, and thus guide dogs would be used by paupers: Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 178–79. In Matthäus Merian’s copperplate copies of the Basel Totentanz fresco from the fifteenth century, published in 1625, there is an image of a blind man led by a dog. The verse accompanying the drawing, presenting the blind man’s response to Death, reads: Ein blinder Mann ein armer Mann / Sein Muß vnd Brot nicht g‘winnen kan / Kòndt nicht ein Tritt gehn ohn mein Hund: Gott sey g‘lobt / daß hie ist die Stund. For the verse, as well as Jacques-Anthony Chovin’s copy of Merian’s copperplates, see La Danse les morts, ed. by Rodolph, plate 68. On the Basel frescoes, see Wunderlich, Der Tanz in den Tod, p. 28. If the dog was included already in the original, now lost, fresco from 1440, it suggests that the image of dog leading the blind was common enough for a dog to be used as an attribute of a blind person. It is also noteworthy that the blind man laments his loss of eyesight and shows it as inability to walk without the help of his dog. In Hieroymus Bosch’s drawing ‘Beggars and Cripples’ one character is walking with a dog and supporting another, crippled man. The man with the dog is also holding a hurdy-gurdy. This suggests that he was a blind beggar, entertaining people with music, as the character does not seem to have any other physical defect, unlike all the other characters in the painting. For an overview of various paintings and lithographs from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries that portray a blind person with a dog, see Coon, A Brief History of Dog Guides for the Blind, passim.

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Guido was a pilgrim from the parish of Langoat, spent three weeks at the shrine, and those witnessing his cure did not know him beforehand. Petronilla was the only witness to report his begging, and Guido’s economic circumstances are not revealed in the testimonies. Nobilis vir Alanus de Kaerritraes stated that while Guido was staying on Yves’s shrine, there were many people present who told him that the boy had been blind for a long time.70 It is possible that some of them had accompanied him to Tréguier, and the witnesses also reported Guido as having had a guide before the cure.71 Then again, pilgrims are known to have helped each other on their journeys, even if they were strangers,72 and as Guido reportedly spent around three weeks at Tréguier before obtaining the cure, he could have made some acquaintances meanwhile. Presumably pilgrims’ begging was so common at Tréguier and other notable shrines that it simply failed to attract much attention from passers-by. Unfortunately, the witness accounts do not reveal if there were any suspicions about Guido’s blindness. Whether or not the children and their families were poor, with a permanent lodging or living on the streets, begging made these children’s impairments visible and observable in a very public way. However, their disability was also the prerequisite for their living by charity, and in this sense gave them an advantage over non-disabled, begging children and youths. Begging was also a possible premise for their miracle becoming recorded in the canonization documents.73 As an example, the ten witness accounts of the miracle show that Johannes de Burtone’s case had become an essential part of communal memory. Nineteen years had passed since the miracle, and similar aspects of the events were still reminisced about by the witnesses. The same memory, although with somewhat varying emphases, was shared by several wealthy and prestigious people.74 This must also have had its effect on the miracle being selected for the canonization hearing, ensuring that there were trustworthy witnesses for the 70 

Yves of Tréguier, p. 213. Yves of Tréguier, p. 226: ‘Interrogatus quare scit quod esset cecus, dixit quod per alium ducebatur, et videntibus eum apparebat quod cecus erat’. 72  Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 169–70, 175–76. Among our sources, Guillot le Potencier was reportedly helped by others on his journey when he could not walk on his own: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 24. In general, pilgrims often either started the journey in groups or formed them later: Craig, Wandering Women, pp. 151–52; Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, pp. 118–20. 73  This seems to separate the begging, disabled children from the poor who suffered from a short illness, as the latter group presumably suffered more privately than the propertied ones, since they lived in smaller households. Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 54–55. 74  See also Richter, ‘Collecting Miracles’, pp. 54–55. 71 

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miracle despite the beneficiary’s poverty or absence.75 The deaf-mute Loÿs’s case appears somewhat similar from this point of view. He first worked in the household of Count Jean I of Chalon-Auxerre (1243–1309) and Countess Alix of Burgundy-Auxerre (1251–90),76 and later became the carriage driver of Queen Margaret of Provence, the widow of St Louis IX.77 Although his case is unusual in many ways, being known by people of such standing undoubtedly helped it to become known. The situation of children from wealthier families, who did not need to participate in earning from an early age, was significantly different from similarly aged poor. They did not need to expose their impairments to the public in the same manner, and thus it is reasonable to ask whether there were differences between wealthy and poor children in how aware members of the community were of their symptoms, and whether the level of privacy allowed depended on the family’s social standing. 75  The miracle is recorded in the rubrics and the summarium of the process, but not in the canonization bull. Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 571. According to some witnesses, after Johannes had received a tongue, he made the vows of a crusader and set off to the Holy Land in the company of a presbyter, but nobody knew what had become of him since. There are some inconsistencies in the testimonies, though, because some said he took the vows on the same day as the miracle, while Johannes de Bromptonis said that he had seen Johannes in Ludlow after the cure but did not know what happened to him later: MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 204v, 205v, 206r, 206v, 208r, 209v. Moreover, Philippus was also reported to have travelled to the Holy Land a causa peregrinationis: MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 91r. This aspect of the cases is interesting, since there is one witness account about a boy who had received a tongue and yet continued wandering around and pretending that he had none: MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 46 v. Also Thoumas de Voudai was reported as having become a crusader: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 30. Additionally, two of the witnesses for the miracle of Ceptus de Montefalco reported that after his cure Ceptus stayed in Rome: Clare of Montefalco, pp. 428, 507. It is likely that Ceptus went to Rome as a pilgrim. Interestingly enough, all three of these cases portray boys or young men with no or loose family ties, which partly explains their actions. Nevertheless, these mentions connect crusades with penitentiary pilgrimages. After all, crusade and pilgrimage did overlap, and those taking the cross were well aware that they were pilgrims. Crusading could also be considered an alternative to adopting a religious life: Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, pp. 23–24; Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History, pp. 12–14. 76  On the genealogy, see for example, Martinière and Bruzen, Le Grand Dictionnaire géographique, historique et critique, p. 558. 77  In Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 50, Loÿs is defined as Loÿs, vallet du char la royne Marguerite, femme jadis du benoiet saint Loÿs. There was a connection between the Queen and the Count and Countess, which may explain how Loÿs ended up in the Queen’s service. For one thing, Alix’s sister, Yolande of Nevers, was married to John Tristan (1250–70), the son of Louis IX and Margaret: Hallam and Everard, Capetian France, p. 286.

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Regarding the question of privacy/publicity and its link to the family’s social status, the problem is that the information on the socioeconomic background and the living conditions of the beneficiaries is often quite vague. Beggar children were certainly defined as such, and when a child’s father was a knight or a nobleman, that was also mentioned, though usually without further specifying the family’s wealth or residential environment. The actual social status of most families, which fall somewhere in between the categories of the poor and the wealthy nobility or the rich, are harder to pin down, 78 and there are also significant differences between various processes in this respect. In this context, ‘wealthy children’ must be defined as including those who appear to have been ‘non-poor’ or not begging. As discussed earlier, impaired children of noble descent are rare beneficiaries in canonization hearings. Many of their cures are recorded in miracle depositions where the number of witnesses is low, their testimonies are sporadic, or only family members testified.79 This is rather typical for canonization records, as especially with prolonged impairments, the miraculous cures of the proper78 

As an example, in John Buoni’s process a majority of the lay witnesses were titled dominus or domina if they belonged to the townspeople of some social standing. However, their wealth is often hard to determine. For example, one domina Riccadonna testified about the illness of the family’s pig, about which she and her husband dominus Juncta grieved a lot because they were poor: AASS Oct. IX, p. 867. This is a clear difference compared to some other hearings, for example that of St Nicholas of Tolentino, where the term dominus commonly signals power and domination: Lett, Un procès de canonisation, p. 205. There is only one testimony among the sources of this study in which a noble person defined himself as a pauper. St Margaret’s canonization inquiry is the only one among my sources in which it was direcly asked whether the witness was dives vel pauper. A boy called Leo from a Veszprém village responded to the commissioners’ question that he was pauper, liber et nobilis. His mother, on the other hand, stated that she was not rich, but that she was free and noble: Margaret of Hungary, pp. 344, 352: ‘Interrogata, si est dives, vel pauper, respondit: “Non sum dives”. Interrogata, si est serva, vel libera, respondit: “Libera sum et nobilis”’. These varying descriptions of social status in St Margaret’s miracles are typical of the area at that time, and such variation can be seen in other testimonies as well. In thirteenthcentury Hungary there was a lot of social mobility, especially in the uppermost social layers, and the status of free man became a common goal. Those belonging to the lesser nobility could live in farms with no servants, yet they were free and had the possibility to make their financial situation better through their own work. Consequently, the term libertas was not distinctive enough, but the status had to be clarified by other means. Thus, the word nobilis in Leo’s and his mother’s testimonies does not signify the noble status of the fourteenth century but rather underscores their status as free people instead of serfs. On the social system of thirteenth-century Hungary, see Laszlovszky, ‘Fama sanctitatis and the Emergence of St Margaret’s Cult’, pp. 118–21. 79  See Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 205–06, 232–33; Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 164, 383–84; Urban V, pp. 172–73.

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tied rarely had witnesses outside the beneficiaries’ immediate families or households by comparison with those of the poor.80 Since the more prestigious were regarded as trustworthy witnesses, their miraculous cures did not need as much publicity. The differing attitudes are finely summarized by Sharon Farmer, who writes that ‘in the minds of the elites the poor could not be trusted, and thus they thought it important to scrutinize the bodies of the poor carefully, for the truth of their abilities and disabilities — and hence of their proper roles in society — lay in their bodies, not in their words’.81 The rarity of cures of noble children in inquisitiones in partibus does not mean that their impairments would not have been talked about, at least in their domestic sphere. The public concept of incurability will be discussed more thoroughly in a later chapter, but here it is sufficient to say that a noble child’s impairment did not remain a matter only for the immediate family.82 Vassals, household staff, and other employees were present in their everyday life, and whether or not a noble family had a great or small household, it generally included a group of servants and other followers or employees, who all lived under the same roof as the family. There are also references to discussions in a wider social sphere. Magister and notary Michael Engelberti de Podio Pino gave a detailed witness account about Ludovicus de Sabrano, whose father’s vassal he was. Michael had known the boy since birth, accompanied him and his mother when they went to ask for help from Dauphine of Puimichel, and he also came to the inquiry with him.83 In the testimonies about the cure of Bertrandeta, the daughter of nobilis Petrus de Alamanono, dominus de Vidalbane, the family’s servant (scutifer) Giletus de Sancto Dionisio gave his testimony. His description of the impairment was not recorded, but he reported having carried the girl to her bed.84 Elizabeth of Hungary’s hearing reports how the impairment and the possible cure of a son of a miles was discussed by the friends of the parents.85 The living conditions of noble children could vary significantly, as could the socioeconomic situation of their families. There was no typical household or residential environment of a noble child, which could have had an effect 80 

See also Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 53–55. Farmer, ‘The Beggar’s Body’, p. 171. 82  On the communal knowledge of noble adult’s disabilities in canonization testimonies, see Kuuliala, ‘Nobility, Community, and Physical Impairment’. 83  Dauphine of Puimichel, pp. 477–78. 84  Urban V, p. 173. Also the condition of Rixenda de Fayensa was, according to her brother, discussed among the members of the household: Louis of Toulouse, p. 154. 85  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 232. See also pp. 229–30. 81 

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on the communal knowledge or attitude towards their impairments. Similarly, some noble households employed dozens of people, while some were very modest,86 which naturally also had an impact on the size of the child’s immediate domestic sphere. The family of Iacobus Deodatus is one of those whose social status is not defined, but it is reasonable to assume that they were of a relatively high social standing, because Iacobus was being educated and had a nurse for three years at home.87 His mother also testified that when the boy came home cured, there were about twenty people present, and that both they and the members of the household rejoiced.88 Other witnesses described the outward appearance of the boy’s feet and the way he walked, but the depositions say nothing about the skin symptoms. The lack of detail in testimonies other than Iohanna’s can be explained by hers being the first, recorded in greatest detail and length, but it is also possible that others did not really know what Iacobus’s legs looked like immediately before he was cured. Generally, the views of community members on either the symptoms or the reasons for children’s impairments, even in families, which were wealthy or not defined as poor, do not differ visibly from the views of family members or the beneficiaries themselves. Often the wording is exactly the same.89 The reasons 86  Larner, Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch, pp. 83–84. On the living arrangements of noble families, see Given-Wilson, English Nobility in the Middle Ages, p. 87; Webb, Privacy and Solitude, pp. 97–104. 87  When writing about Florentine families, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber says that having a nurse at home was a luxury, and nurses that worked in homes demanded a higher salary than the peasant women living on their farms: Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 136. 88  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 176–77. 89  For example, in the case of a boy named Angelus, the mother testified that ‘auditum et loquelam et torquebat omnia membra tamquam homo vexatus’ and domina Giugla Accorinboni, who lived in the same neighbourhood, said that ‘visum amiserat et torquebat visum et omnia membra quasi homo vexatus’: AASS Nov. IV, p. 590. Similarly, in the case of a boy called Belbrunus, the mother said ‘et totus erat desiccatus, ita quod non remanserant nisi ossa’, domina Castellana ‘non poterant ullo modo et propriis manibus vix recipere poterat ullum cibum, et sic desiccatus erat quod de eo non remanserant nisi ossa’ and domina Scibana ‘vix recipere poterat ullum cibum et sic desiccatus erat quod de eo non remanserant nisi ossa’: AASS Nov. IV, p. 601. A woman called Katherina testified how the condition she was cured of in her youth had caused her to keep her arms on top of each other, hands closed, tibias joined together and feet on top of each other, and several other witnesses, who had known her during her disability, used similar expressions: Yves of Tréguier, p. 236: ‘et brachia habebat et tenebat unum supra aliud involuta et juncta, et manus clausas subtus patulas sive essellas, et tibias junctas, et pedes unum supra alium quasi ad modum crucis’; Yves of Tréguier, pp. 238, 242, 243. There were also six other witnesses

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for the uniformity of the depositions are multiple; it helped in proving the con­­dition true, and there is the possibility that the witnesses may have been instructed beforehand by the proctor,90 or that the notaries aimed at uniform lan­­g uage in their recordings. The witnesses were also aware that the uniformity of depo­­sitions was useful for proving their case. 91 However, the similar wordings also suggest that certain expressions were commonly used around certain types of impairments. The parents and occasionally the beneficiaries themselves had a big influence in this, and in some cases they were recorded as informing others about their children’s symptoms. For example, the origins of Iacobus Deodatus’s condition had been reported to the two testifying knights by his parents as well as neighbours. Iohanna’s mention of Iacobus playing on the streets with other children further shows that the malformation of his legs was publicly known in their neighbourhood.92 In many cases the neighbours would also have seen the afflicted limbs with their own eyes. To start with, childbirth was a relatively public event for women, and if the condition was congenital, it was witnessed by many then,

for her cure, but they had witnessed the miracle at Yves’s shrine and did not give detailed information on her condition: Yves of Tréguier, pp. 220–21, 239–41, 243–45. 90  Goodich, ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis’, pp. 143–44. On proctors, see also Krötzl, ‘Pro­ kuratoren, Notare und Dolmetscher’; Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, pp. 50–55. 91  Big differences in the descriptions or tests of the type of a person’s condition could be considered a problem for the veracity of the miracle, but not necessarily a fatal hindrance. For example, in his discussion of Louis IX’s miracles, Cardinal Pietro Colonna pondered a case where all witnesses had given different timings for the miracle and mentioned different details of how they had proved her infirmity. He, however, concluded that these differences did not yet mean that the miracle was a fraud, but he was of the opinion that the differences could be attributed to the lapse of memory. See Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 81–82 and CarolusBarré, ‘Consultation sur le IIe miracle de Saint Louis’, pp. 59–60. Hence it is possible that if the witnesses were aware of this aspect, for example having been informed about the need for uniformity by the proctor, they adjusted their accounts beforehand to meet these requirements. This idea does not necessarily mean, however, that the ways of describing certain impairments were not adjusted to conform already when people reminisced. On maximizing the points of agreement among witnesses, see also Goodich, ‘Miseries of Dulcia and Cristina’, p. 107. 92  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 181–82. Based on the testimonies, it is impossible to say how well the Deodatus family knew the two knights. It is also possible that they were just living nearby and were called to testify because of their high social status. Ancelmus Andree reported that he vidit quendam puerum filium Iohanne Deodate, quem credit esse vocatum Iacobum Deodati, tortum in pedibus, which allows us to assume that he was acquainted with Iohanna at some level, although he was not entirely sure of the child’s name.

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as was reported by the witnesses for Iacobus’s cure.93 Moreover, people were in close contact with their neighbours. For example, the Deodatus family was from Marseille, which, with an estimated 25,000 inhabitants, was the biggest city in Provence at that time and an important seaport. 94 It seems likely that Iacobus’s environment was socially diverse, especially compared to that of children living in smaller villages or towns95 and the countryside. Thus it is only natural that many people had some information about his condition, even without being told about it by his mother. Witnesses for other miracles also reported the information received in everyday communication. When domina Maridonna Rainerii was asked how she knew that her neighbour domina Amata’s son was crippled, she replied that she saw him every day.96 Richardus Vaudien gave a testimony in the canonization hearing of Louis IX of France on the cure of Mabileta who had not learned to walk. Their families belonged to the modest artisans, as Richardus was a tinctor pannorum just like Mabileta’s father Herbertus, and they lived close to each other in Paris. Richardus described the symptoms of Mabileta’s disability and how she was unable to stand or walk, after which the commissioners asked if he had seen the girl naked. He replied ‘yes’, and in answer to a further question, reported that the girl’s feet were straight, as well as ‘beautiful and fat’ (pulcra et pinguia), but that she was still unable to walk. 97 The same question was also asked of Adam de Fontaneto, who housed the family while they were staying at the grave. He replied that he had only seen the girl’s naked feet and tibiae, which were ‘fleshy, straight, and well arranged’, and that it was not easy to see where the infirmity was.98 The girl’s godmother also reported the healthy 93 

Louis of Toulouse, p. 180: ‘Raymunda Vivanda […] dixit quod ipsa fuit presens quando dictus Iacobus exivit de ventre matris sue, et vidit eum cum deformitate pedum et tortuositate’. Louis of Toulouse, pp. 177–78: ‘Maria Marcella […] dixit quod ipsa non fuit presens in nativitate ipsius, set audivit dici a vicinis et a mulieribus que fuerant in nativitate dicti pueri quod ita tortus in pedibus et tibiis natus fuerat et deformis’. On the various persons that could be present at childbirth, see Haas, The Renaissance Man and his Children, pp. 42–44; Orme, Medieval Children, pp. 18–21. 94  Lord Smail, Imaginary Cartographies, p. 43. 95  John Larner writes that it is presumable that in Italian towns, upper-class citizens were relatively closely interrelated: Larner, Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch, p. 61. 96  AASS Nov. IV, p. 606. Domina Clara gave a similar statement about her relations to the family. 97  Fragments, p. 42. 98  Fragments, p. 45.

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appearance of the legs. Interestingly, the commissioners apparently asked if she had any recollection of her putting her legs onto her shoulders (as testified by the mother), as she replied that she did not remember seeing it.99 The witnesses discussed above came from different communities and had different social connections and statuses; Maridonna and Amata lived in an Italian village, while Richardus and Herbertus lived in Paris, which had an estimated population of almost 200,000 inhabitants.100 Whether the nature of the community or the social status of the family influenced the type or extent of intimate information neighbours may have had about children’s conditions cannot be deduced from these testimonies. After all, the persons interrogated were usually those who had known the beneficiary well, been present during the miracle, or were considered important witnesses because of their social status. Moreover, the testimonies were formulated in a relatively uniform way, which may give a false image of the uniformity of the communal relations. The precise domicile of the witnesses was very rarely recorded, usually only the diocese being mentioned. In those cases where testimonies provide exact knowledge of witnesses’ residences, they are invariably French, Italian, or English cities, towns, and villages, and thus the most detailed information about community roles relates to witnesses who lived in urban or fairly densely populated areas.101 Another intriguing aspect of the role of the community would be the differences between southern and northern or northwestern Europe, especially from the point of view of the so-called ‘nuclear-hardship hypothesis’ famously 99 

Fragments, p. 50. Roux, Paris in the Middle Ages, p. 208, n. 3. 101  The miracle narratives in the processes of St Elizabeth of Hungary, St Stanislaus of Cracow, and St Birgitta of Vadstena are exceptions in this sense, but they either provide no details about the witnesses’ or beneficiaries’ domiciles, or the community members’ testimonies are heavily summarized. In Margaret of Hungary’s process there are a few miracles in which it is possible that the witnesses lived in a more remote and sparsely populated area, as four of the physically impaired children lived in villages, but none of the witnesses make any remarks about not having neighbours nearby. Two children were from unspecified villages in the diocese of Veszprém, which was a county of great importance in medieval Hungary. One noble child was from Caach in Transilvania, one from Buda, one lived in domo Vataroi in a village in Voch, and one in the village of Endreit. At least one of the witnesses, who lived in a village in Veszprém, stated that when he advised his brother to make a votum to St Margaret their neighbours were present. Margaret of Hungary, p. 319. In one of Margaret’s other miracles it may be inferred that the witnessing family lived in an isolated farmstead, which were atypical of the Arpadian-era villages, and her fama had made its way up there. However, in general most of Margaret’s miracles were connected either to her own monastery or to settlements close to it. See Laszlovszky, ‘Fama sanctitatis and the Emergence of St Margaret’s Cult’. 100 

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established by Peter Laslett. According to this theory, in northwestern Europe, where a small nuclear family was more common than in Southern Europe, nonelite couples married later and a larger proportion of them stayed single; people therefore needed to rely on the help of the community more often, whereas the large, extended families of Southern Europe provided a firmer safety net.102 In her study on Louis IX’s miracles, Sharon Farmer has indeed found support for the northwestern family pattern even before the Black Death, pointing out the large numbers of a migrant population who never married.103 The ‘nuclearhardship hypothesis’ has been questioned by Peregrine Horden,104 and Farmer also concludes that despite the many unmarried, migratory beneficiaries in Louis IX’s miracles, many others followed different life-paths.105 As for the impaired children in our sources, it does indeed appear that the caring role of people outside the household was more regularly referred to in the best-documented hearings from England and northern France — or rather that the vast majority of the individual cases where a person with a childhood impairment received such care comes from processes recorded in those areas. The comparability of the processes in this regard is, however, reduced by the largely unknown reasons for the selection of the miracles. It is possible that in northern Europe the community somehow played a bigger role in caring, especially when the impaired person was in need of support, or took a bigger role in the invocation of saints. Small children were, however, primarily a concern of their parents and immediate families everywhere, the care-taking of others appearing only in the cases when there was no family available. This may be a somewhat distorted image conveyed by the formality of the canonization documents, as it is likely that there was considerable variation between individual families. Nevertheless, the role of those outside the immediate family and 102 

Laslett, ‘Family, Kinship, and Collectivity’. Laslett’s ground-breaking study on the northwestern families in premodern England, The World We Have Lost: England before the Industrial Age, was first published in 1965. See also Hajnal, ‘Two Kinds’. For a useful introduction for the northwestern family patterns and the discussion, see Hartman, The Household and the Making of History, pp. 1–33. 103  Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 25–31. See also Goldberg, ‘Marriage, Migration and Servanthood’. 104  Horden, ‘Household Care’, pp. 44–51, points out, for example, that the picture we have of the distribution of household types is getting more complex, and also that it cannot be taken for granted that caring capacity increased in proportion to the size of the household. See also Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 25–26. 105  Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, p. 29.

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household is mostly visible in the ‘outer circles’ of the care, related to material and psychological / religious support and the search for a cure.106 Communal knowledge of children’s impairments is combined with the commissioners’ attempts to find proof of the miraculous, for which the publicity was an important aspect. Miracles were publicized in order to strengthen the faith and simultaneously, the fama of the saint and their miraculous powers became a hagiographic topos. Each miracle created its own core of witnesses who had experienced a life-forming event and were, in consequence, committed to the cult, and hagiographers were expected to confirm the universality of the fama.107 This is particularly emphasized in the miracle depositions of some of the canonization processes. St Louis of Toulouse’s hearing is one of those, in which communal knowledge of the miracle itself was seldom sought — or recorded. Instead, the witnesses were asked about the general fama of Louis. It is hard to say, however, whether the beneficiary’s social standing had some influence here. In Rixenda de Fayensa’s or Ricardeta Bruna’s (whose father was civis Massiliensis) cases only the general fama is mentioned, while in the case of Beatrix de Sancta Cruce both the girl and her mother were asked who knew about the impairment. At the same time, Guillelma, the wife of Ferrarius de Balnia, also a citizen of Marseille, was asked who had been aware of her son’s gutta.108 Possibly the wealth of the beneficiary had some influence, but there were undoubtedly other aspects that had an influence on whether such questions were asked or recorded. Michael Camille writes that ‘the anomalous body of any kind, whether it be that of those born deformed or later twisted and crippled by disease, was taboo in medieval society’.109 In the light of the sources of this study, this does not hold true, although the bodies of the poor were under more public scrutiny 106 

On the types of assistance, see Horden, ‘Household Care’, p. 36. Goodich, Violence and Miracle, pp. 15–16; Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 32–33. 108  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 153–55, 186, 225–27. As for adults, there are two noblemen who were cured by the merits of Louis. The other one, Burgandus de Belay, cured of a condition making him impotens and contractus, was asked who knew about the vow he made. The other one, Raumundus de Servetis, was cured of a fatal fever. He was only asked about the general fama, though admittedly his testimony had already mentioned that there were other people present during the vow. The third miraculously cured nobleman witnessing in the hearing was primarily summoned to testify about Louis’s vita, and therefore the form of his deposition differs from the miracle testimonies. His deposition, however, records the fama in similar words to those primarily concerned with a miraculous cure: Louis of Toulouse, pp. 97, 172, 200. 109  Camille, ‘The Image and the Self ’, p. 72. 107 

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and treated with less decorum110 — this apparently pertaining also to children. Children’s impairments were a matter publicly known, considered and talked about, belonging to the communal memory. The witness accounts used in this study do not mention any need to hide a child’s disability or impairment — the girl Katherineta who had a deformed nose, the boy Jehennet with a distorted and trembling body, and the baby boy with a distorted hand in the process of Ambrose of Massa being the three exceptions.111 The publicity of explanations and symptoms can be partly explained by the characteristics of inquisitiones in partibus and the importance of the common opinion about the saint’s miraculous powers,112 from which the knowledge of various impairments was inseparable. However, it is only natural that in communities where people were daily in close contact with each other, children’s physical problems could not and did not have to remain private.

Emotions and Reactions of the Community In contrast to the frequently recorded emotions of parents, sorrow and tears are seldom expressed in other people’s depositions about childhood impairments. Occasionally, family members’ testimonies include the possibility that their emotions were shared by other people as well, as is the case with Rixenda’s brother Blacacius, who said that everyone [my emphasis] in the household was ashamed of the girl’s deafness,113 and Agnese’s brother Raynerius, who stated that everyone in the household hoped the girl would die.114 In these cases the persons mentioned were working for the family and possibly even living with them, and therefore would have been in close contact with the child. Unfortu­ nately, the miracle accounts of Rixenda and Agnese do not include testimonies given by people outside their immediate families, so it is not possible to make com­­parisons to see whether they would have mentioned this aspect as well. 110 

See also Farmer, ‘The Beggar’s Body’, p. 170. AASS Nov. IV, p. 606; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 78–81; Louis of Toulouse, pp. 244–45. 112  Sharon Farmer writes regarding the miracles of St Louis IX that ‘[a]lthough many of the elites made post hoc pilgrimages to Louis’ tomb in order to fulfill their vows to him, the ten who received help within their homes, work spaces, or neighborhoods were not subjected to the same degree of public scrutiny and physical display during their illnesses, that the pilgrims who traveled to Louis’s tomb had to endure’: Farmer, ‘The Beggar’s Body’, p. 167. 113  Louis of Toulouse, p. 154. 114  AASS Oct. IX, p. 828. 111 

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Family members’ references to impaired children as ‘monstrous’, discussed above, would have underlined the severity of the affliction, but such terms also reflected the genuine horror that a child’s appearance could cause in the case of some severe conditions. Throughout my sources, all the references from people outside the immediate family to the so-called monstrosity of impaired children come from the statements of commissioners or notaries, and there is no direct record of community members repeating such expressions. The closest such reference comes from the deposition of domina Margarita, the third witness for the cure of Thomasina, who was described as ‘monstrous’ by her parents. How­ ever, even Margarita did not use the term ‘monstrous’ or say that Thomasina was unlike God’s creation, as her father did; rather, she testified that it seemed as if there were no bones in her, and that it was astonishing (mirabile) to look at her.115 Her testimony does not indicate that she found her repulsive, but, on the other hand, the word mirabile may refer to the wondrous nature of monstrous beings, and it is possible that she had discussed this with the child’s parents, given that all three refer to the extraordinary nature of the girl’s condition. Given the acceptability of actually examining physical impairments of children, at least if they were poor, and that there was no need to hide one’s curi­ os­ity regarding them on a more general level, it is reasonable to assume that severely deformed children did indeed cause awe in their social sphere. 116 The few examples referring to this among miracle accounts of adults’ cures allude to extreme deformities. Crafto, sacerdos hospitalis, testified that when Cristina, who was bloated and deformed in her upper body as well as blind, was brought to St Elizabeth’s shrine, he found her swollen face abhorrent to look at,117 and similar reactions were recorded about Ricardus de Insula, whose hands were covered with warts.118 A woman in St Margaret’s inquiry reported that eve115 

AASS Oct. IX, p. 865: ‘erat mirabile quidem ad videndum’. Susan Schoon Eberly writes that birth defects immediately apparent when a child is born have caused most shock and fear throughout history, while those which become apparent later cause more subdued reactions: Schoon Eberly, ‘Fairies and the Folklore of Disability’, p. 228. The sources of this study do not, however, give such a picture, but the reactions of family and the community at large seem mostly to be connected with a child’s striking physical appearance without distinguishing whether the impairment was congenital or not. 117  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 211: ‘Crafto, sacerdos hospitalis, iuratus dixit se puellam taliter inflatam vidisse, quod abhominabatur videre faciem eius’. Crafto is also one of the witnesses whom the commissioners reported as having seen ‘a monstrous and horribly deformed boy’, Cünradus, at St Elizabeth’s shrine: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 215. Possibly Crafto preferred such emphatic wording in order to emphasize the miraculous power of Elizabeth. 118  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 62v–64r. See pp. 302–05 for further discussion on the case. 116 

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ryone shrank back from her because of her infirmity, which made her body deformed and caused her to fall on the ground.119 In St Louis IX’s miracles it is reported that children were afraid of Amelota de Chambli, whose condition made her walk totally bent over.120 One reason for the scarcity of such remarks may be that the witnesses from outside the child’s immediate family were usually from the same neighbourhood, unless they were people present at the shrine by chance. Especially in the cases of long-term impairments and the congenital ones, they had become used to the child’s appearance. One may also assume that in bigger cities, where there were many beggars, as well as in places in which there were famous shrines, different kinds of impairments and illnesses were more commonly seen. Another explanation is that there are far fewer depositions of people other than immediate family and they also tend to be heavily summarized, so that the information on their reactions is generally much sparser. However, given that family members rarely referred to the community’s reactions either, they seem not to have been a distinctive characteristic of the lived realities of these families, or an established way to reconstruct a physical impairment — a certain amount of curiosity and attention may have been normal and thus not worth mentioning. Moreover, it seems evident that, just as was the case with describing the child as monstrous, such reactions were caused by extreme conditions beyond the everyday experience of most people and not expected in the many testimonies regarding impairments that did not significantly alter the child’s appearance. The mentions of impaired children in chronicles reinforce the above impression. For instance, Matthew Paris writes about a ‘miniature youth’ on the Isle of Wight, who was only three feet in height, but was not otherwise malformed. The young man was shown to the queen, who had him led around with her.121 In the early fourteenth century, conjoined twins, described in the chronicle of Meaux Abbey, lived to their late teens. They attracted public attention — one would eat, drink or talk while the other one did something else, and they also used to sing together. The twins died in 1348 at the age of eighteen, one outliving the other by three days.122 Like those reported as having caused public 119 

Margaret of Hungary, p. 311: ‘Per tres annos in tantum inifrma fui, quod omnes abhorrebant me’. 120  Fragments, p. 31: ‘Et dicit quod videbatur esse quoddam monstrum et quod, quando videbant eam parvi venietem, fugiebant’. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 18: ‘Et sembloit un mostre, si que, quant les enfanz la veoient, il s’enfuioient’. See also p. 80, n. 246. 121  Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. by Richards Luard, p. 82. 122  Chronica monasterii de Melsa, ed. by Bond, pp. 69–70. Births of conjoined twins were

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awe or horror in canonization testimonies, the references to such cases are few and all of these children had exceptionally severe or unusual conditions.123 The children, due to their striking physical anomalies, were put on display to arouse public interest and curiosity, which added to their difference but simultaneously gave them a means by which they could earn a living.124 However, the references are very sporadic and, due to their rather extreme nature, they cannot be read as proof that disabled people would commonly have been put on display in the manner of later freak shows.125 These accounts nevertheless support the view that it was deformation, rather than impairment itself, that led to the awe of onlookers, and occasionally even to marginalization. The mockery of community members was briefly referred to above (see p. 116). Only one witness to a child’s impairment in the sources specifically mentioned it: the father of the girl Katherineta, who had a deformed nose. The father’s co-worker reportedly mocked him, saying ‘What a daughter you have! She has a nose resembling a cuckoo!’126 which moved him to ask for help from St Louis of Toulouse. He later testified that he had not let the girl out because of her disfigurement — possibly precisely because of the mockery. Katherineta’s impairment does not belong to the current definition of ‘classic impairments’, meaning that it did not affect her limbs, senses, or ability to speak. Yet the mockery she faced shows the disabling effects of her condition. In this case one could even speak of the ‘social model of disability’, as it was clearly other peorecorded in chronicels throughout the medieval period, but that they were reportedly shown in public is exceptional. For other examples, see Resnick, ‘Conjoined Twins’, pp. 345–47. Since the days of ancient Egypt, if not earlier, dwarfs have been owned, exploited and indulged at courts, but there is no evidence that such a custom would have been especially popular in the Middle Ages, or that there would not have been other work options for those of restricted growth. See Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 87–91, and pp. 85–87 on fools in noble households. According to Betty Adelson, the popularity of dwarfs on exhibit was highest in the eighteenth century, by which time many of those previously serving royalty had turned to exhibiting themselves for money: Adelson, The Lives Of Dwarfs, pp. 21–22. On people with short stature in Early Modern era, see Ravenscroft, ‘Invisible Friends’, and in the ancient world, Dasen, Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece. 123  On the medical and biological ideas about conjoined twins in the Middle Ages, see Resnick, ‘Conjoined Twins’. 124  See also Orme, Medieval Children, p. 97. 125  See also Metzler, A Social History of Disability, p. 86. 126  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 244–45: ‘“Qualem filiam habetis! Habet nasum ad instar cugule!”’ In my opinion, ‘cucule’, or ‘cukoo’, is the most probable meaning for the word, despite the deviation in the spelling.

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ple’s attitudes to Katherineta, rather than any hindrance caused by the disfigurement, that placed her in a marginal position.127 A condition like the one Katherineta suffered from, which caused facial deformities, could cause mockery for subconscious reasons caused by cultural constructions. One of the things thought to cause marginalization of people with disabilities in the modern world is negative iconography (including lit­­er­­ary allusions) of the impaired, also known as image association.128 Ruth Mellinkoff, who has studied physical difference in late medieval northern European art, has discovered that while evil was usually associated with physical deformities, ‘common’ impairments, such as mobility or sensory disabilities, were not used in such a way. Those whose appearance is affected by illness or deformity are, according to Mellinkoff, seen as examples of sinful deeds, apparently meaning that impairment which makes a person look clearly different could be seen as an evil sign. The same goes for other characteristics as well; those who are malicious could also have an unusual skin condition or colour, posture, hair, and so on, or have a vocation that was sinful, such as executioner, 127 

Another example of the severely marginalizing effects of disfigurements and skin conditions is to be found in Dauphine of Puimichel’s process. A woman brought her twelve-year-old girl suffering from noli me tangere to get help from the saintly Countess. Noli me tangere is a skin disease affecting the face and the scalp, presumably the one known to modern medicine as lupus erythematosus, exedens, or vulgaris. The text in Dauphine’s hearing states that the illness caused nausea, and the members of the Countess’s household knew that she would grieve over it, and thus they did not let the woman and the girl enter her presence. Eventually, however, Dauphine’s sister gave the woman water in which the Countess had washed her hands, and this water cured the girl: Dauphine of Puimichel, pp. 65–66, 390–91. On noli me tangere, see Bishop, Words, Stones, & Herbs, pp. 152–55. It is more typical in Dauphine’s hearing that the witnesses described the living saint’s reluctance to perform healing miracles because of her own belief that she was not holy enough. According to Nicole Archeambeau, Dauphine’s own physical suffering and her view that illness was beneficial for one’s soul added to this reluctance. See Archambeau, ‘God Helps Those Who Help Themselves’, esp. pp. 14–16. However, living saints rarely expected their devotees to react to suffering in a similar way to themselves. As an example, the articles of the hearing of St Frances of Rome record that during her illness the saint did not use any medicine, but she did not expect others to behave in such a way, instead providing them with every care and solicitude: Frances of Rome, p. 242. 128  The negative iconography of disabilities is not, however, solely a premodern phenomenon. Three very typical archetypal characters of more recent popular culture, the pirates Long John Silver from Treasure Island and Captain Hook from Peter Pan, and Mickey Mouse’s arch enemy Peg-leg Pete (changed to Black Pete after the Second World War and the sudden increase in disabled men in the community) — as well as their numerous successors — continue the same tradition. In such imagery wickedness is combined with impairments, thus making disability an undesirable social construct. Burke, Brothers and Sisters of Disabled Children, pp. 12–13.

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or belong to marginalized ethnic groups, like Jews.129 Irina Metzler criticizes Mellinkoff for paying too much attention to the concept of sin, but otherwise seems to share her opinion, explaining it as part of the long tradition of portraying the ‘classic’ impaired as people who are deserving recipients of saintly healing or charity.130 Although there are paintings and other visual art which depict the sick and impaired as beggars, often having lost all hope, evil is notably missing from these representations.131 As for blindness, in addition to the blind beggars, there were also noble figures with terrific powers, such as the Blind-(folded) Synagogue and the Blind Death, the former of course being an allegory for the Jews, who did not see the light.132 The medieval iconographic concept that physical impairment did not define one’s character while facial deformations could, subconscious as it may have been, presumably had an effect on how communities viewed children with impair­­ments and deformations. It is thus probable that when the father’s co-­­worker called the girl Katherineta cugule he was also referring to fools, because in medieval art fools are occasionally represented with long, pointed noses. Such a nose was also connected with both the Devil and Jews,133 so Katherineta’s disfigurement could be compared to several character types who were portrayed in an unfavourable light. As already seen, with the exception of beggars, those who were reported as being a cause of shame for their family, who were thought to be difficult or impossible to marry off, or who faced the scorn of other community members often had, in addition to hearing or speech impediments, conditions that made them look anomalous. Derek Newman-Stille speculates that in extreme cases people interacting with those afflicted might have attributed their disability to their behaviour in a moralistic way; meaning that if they considered the person’s disability a result of sin, they could interpret the person as lacking good morals.134 If people had commonly blamed parents for their children’s impairments and considered them sinful or otherwise prone to evil deeds, this would certainly have influenced the way the community viewed impaired children and their parents, 129 

Mellinkoff, Outcasts, i. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 55. On the representations of impaired persons asking for saintly cure in medieval art, see Helas, ‘Der Körper des Bettlers’. 131  See Helas, ‘Der Körper des Bettlers’, p. 373. 132  See Barasch, Blindness, pp. 77–79. 133  See Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, & Jews; Mellinkoff, Outcasts, ii, plates VIII.27–VIII.29. 134  Newman-Stille, ‘Morality and Monstrous Disability’, p. 250. 130 

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besides leading to social stigmatization for the parents in particular. The canonization records, however, provide no evidence of such attitudes. When looking at the canonization testimonies regarding the ‘classic’ physical impairments, mockery appears in very few, individual cases, thus following the pattern of all major medieval miracle collections.135 One adult man in the process of St Louis of Toulouse reported that he was mocked because of his deafness,136 and another blind man eventually cured by St Elizabeth was laughed at when he took the wrong path.137 As discussed above, the narrative of the blind boy, Thoumas de Voudai, in St Louis IX’s miracles records that at times he was beaten by other boys, and he was also left to walk alone so that he almost fell into a pit.138 Rather than the beating, making Thoumas walk unaided so that he would fall may have been a way to amuse the sighted — or it could have been interpreted as such by Guillaume de Saint-Pathus. In Continental, especially French, literature there are several examples of texts in which blindness is portrayed in a comical manner and the blind characters’ struggles are seen as a source of amusement. There is also an early fifteenth-century chronicler’s account of a ‘game’ in which four blind people were given a stick and put in a park with a strong pig, which they could have if they managed to kill it. In a fourteenth-century manuscript from Flanders, there is an illustration of blind people again trying to beat a pig but ending up beating each other.139 There are also other accounts of the mockery that disabled beggars faced, especially in Paris, where the hospital of Quinze-Vingts already housed three hundred blind people in the thirteenth century.140 As such, mockery pertains to general 135 

On mockery in earlier miracula, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 162–63. Louis of Toulouse, p. 155: ‘ita quod nonnulli vicini faciebant derisiones suas de eo’. 137  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 179: ‘ita, ut sepe, de via declinans, per media sata transiret: unde et comites itineris sui ipsum sepe deridebant’. 138  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 27: ‘Et en cel tens il estoit povre, et mendiant et queroit son pain en la dite vile de Voudai, et le menoit a la foiz un jouvencel, fiuz Oudard Boscheron, et aucune foiz Adam Vicart et aucune foiz il aloit seul apuiant soi d’un baston, et aucune foiz cheoit en la boc et se honissoit tout, et le leva aucune foiz Jehan le Chandelier de la boe’. 139  The satirical texts also portray the blind as greedy, lacking sexual morals, and as a parallel of the Jews who choose not to see the light: Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, esp. pp. 1–3, 90–128. 140  On the Quinze-Vingts, see Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 88–90; Geremek, The Margins, pp. 172–73, 195; O’Tool, Caring for the Blind in Medieval Paris, passim.; O’Tool, ‘Disability and the Suppression of Historical Identity’; O’Tool, ‘The povres avugles of the Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts’; Wheatley, ‘Blindness, Discipline and Reward’; Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, pp. 47–60. 136 

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attitudes towards beggars, especially in bigger cities, presumably due to their high numbers there. Hence these examples reflect social hierarchies rather than communal scorn towards impaired children.141 In addition to Thoumas, there are two other cases in Louis IX’s miracles in which the community members had negative reactions towards a person with a childhood impairment. A boy called Moriset de Ranton, who was working as a swineherd, went to his brother’s house because he felt ill. During his stay his legs became so weak that he could not stand or walk. His brother was unable to support him and so, after he made him a pair of crutches, Moriset set off towards the Maison Dieu of Saumur, where their stepmother was supposedly living. When Moriset reached the location, he found out that she had died, but he nevertheless stayed for a while. Meanwhile, oozing abscesses had developed in his leg. The narrative states that they stank so badly that the other residents of the hospital did not want Moriset to approach them.142 Hannah Skoda takes this to mean that Moriset was ‘constantly shamed by the mockery of those around him’.143 The report of the smell of Moriset’s leg being the reason for other residents shunning him does not exclude the possibility of mockery, but I nevertheless see no reason why one should not accept that the foul smell was indeed the primary motive for other residents keeping their distance. It is known that people with conditions such as fistulas or leprosy could be denied admission to a hospital. One reason for this was the extensive nursing they required, but it is reasonable to assume that repugnance to others also came into it.144 The collection has another report of similar situation, as other people in the household of Guillot dit le Potencier’s master blamed him for letting Guillot stay, because his leg stank so badly. 145 Both Guillot and Moriset gave lengthy 141 

See also Weygand, The Blind in French Society, pp. 22–23. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 47: ‘Et puoit si fort la dite apostume que cil de la dite Meson Dieu ne voloient que le dit Moriset aprochast d’els’. Moriset’s age is not revealed, but presumably he was somewhere in his teens as he is called with a diminutive name and referred to as the son of the deceased Jehan Poilebout. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 45. Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, p. 91, suggests that for these reasons he could be even younger than that. 143  Skoda, ‘Representations of Disability’, p. 63. 144  Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England, p.  276; Rubin, Charity and Community, pp. 158, 300–01. In the thirteenth-century Vita of Ambrose of Siena there is a parallel case, in which a poor woman residing in a hospital suffers from stinking fistulas in her hand. According to the text, she was kept separated from the other residents: Vita B. Ambrosii Senensis, ed. by Bolland and others, p. 197. 145  The master’s suggestion that Guillot would have his leg amputated so that he could be among other people and earn his own bread at least partly referred to other people’s opinion and 142 

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and detailed descriptions of their troubles, and one may suspect that if constant mockery had been an essential part of their experience, they would have mentioned it.146 Moreover, in both cases the aversion was reportedly shown only by those living in the same building, presumably in rather cramped rooms, thus further pointing to the smell as being the cause. In Moriset’s case, the lessening of the smell is reported as one of the results of his cure, which indicates that it had been one of the most obvious symptoms of his impairment and perhaps its most socially disabling consequence. Similar remarks about the smell of a festering leg was reported about a man called Rainerius Christiane in Ambrose of Massa’s hearing. His sister stated that she could hardly stand the smell and suggested the vow. In this case reactions were evidently not connected with the ailing person’s social status.147 After all, in medieval culture, sweet fragrance was associated with sanctity, while the putrid smell of decay symbolized sin, hell, and damnation.148 While the rarity of references to mockery may partly be due to its lack of relevance for proving the truth of the miracle and antecedent conditions, it is probably safe to assume that the experience of mockery was recorded in most of the cases when it was an important aspect of the witnesses’ memories. Thoumas is reported as having begged in the village of Voudai, where he had lived most, if not all, of his life. The boys beating/bullying Thoumas thus knew him beforehand, and their treatment of him may indicate their attitude towards a person who found he needed to beg and who was of a low social standing to begin with. This does not exclude the possibility that the boys were beating Thoumas because of his disability.149 However, in the sources for this the smell. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 25. 146  Although the actual testimonies of Moriset’s cure have not been preserved, the narrative makes it clear that he acted as a witness, as according to the text, after he had been cured, Moriset went to the archbishop where he told his story and was later officially interrogated. It seems probable that nobody else gave a witness account for several reasons: the investigation happened soon after Moriset’s cure, his few relatives lived far away, and nobody else besides them is named. Thus, what one learns about the course of events comes from Moriset’s own deposition, even if filtered through the pen of Guillaume de Saint-Pathus. Guillot le Potencier gave a testimony as well. The narrative gives a detailed description of his pilgrimage to SaintDenis, which he seems to have done alone. It is also reported that the examiners saw him healed. 147  AASS Nov. IV, p. 591. 148  Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England, pp. 134–35. 149  See Skoda, ‘Representations of Disability’, p. 62. She reads the scene as friends bullying Thoumas because of his blindness, which emphasizes St Louis’s role as ‘corrector of ills and restorer of the social body’ and also constructs disability as ‘a humiliating experience and rendered the disabled person as someone to be excluded and feared’.

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study, negative attitudes of community members are rare, and usually pertain to impaired beggars, thus making poverty the primary factor leading to such treatment. If the other boys were of a higher social standing than Thoumas, meaning that they were children of the wealthier families for whom he worked, they were not his peers or ‘friends’ in the traditional sense of the word. To draw a conclusion on how big a part Thoumas’s blindness played in the other boys’ treatment of him one would need to be able to compare the situation with his previous life before he became blind, which the source does not allow. However, the idea that they would have been friends with equal status before his blindness and suddenly started beating him after he became blind is not very convincing. Generally, the canonization records are rather silent about the reaction of other children towards their impaired peers. This is partly due to the selection of witnesses. The family members and close relatives testified most often and, according to canon law, those under the age of fourteen were not regarded as competent witnesses.150 However, since in many cases the testimonies were given years or even decades after the miracle, those witnessing a miracle as children could be adults by the time of the hearing, but possibly the commissioners did not consider memories acquired in childhood convincing. A rare example of such a witness is Margeria Thurgryn. She was a girl of nine when she encountered Johannes de Burtone and gave alms to him. Her testimony is quite similar to accounts given by other witnesses, and she does not reveal much about her attitude towards the mute boy. However, she testified that she had seen Johannes in her father’s house, where he had shown them his mouth and that there was no tongue in it, and that she had given him alms. This demonstrates a child’s awareness of acts of charity and also of the social rules that entitled someone to live by begging.151 Children’s play is mentioned in five miracle accounts among the sources of this study. A girl called Francesse was playing with other children when a stone that hit her foot made her severely impaired,152 and a boy became contractus after 150 

Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, p. 65. For further discussion of this rule and how it was occasionally broken when the beneficiaries testified, see Chapter 4. 151  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 207r. In St Yves of Tréguier’s hearing a thirty-year-old man, Elyas, testified about two cures. Both beneficiaries had some fourteen years earlier been residing in his parents’ house while on a pilgrimage to Yves’s shrine. Apparently, the parents had a semi-official lodging for pilgrims. This kind of experience was undoubtedly common for many children and teenagers living near important pilgrimage sites. See Yves of Tréguier, pp. 253–55. 152  Peter of Morrone, pp. 246, 251.

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falling while playing.153 After discussing the vow made to St Louis of Toulouse, Iacobus Deodatus went out with other children and when he returned he was fully cured.154 An eight-year-old girl called Adilhaidi was swollen everywhere and her legs touched her posterior. After a vow to St Elizabeth of Hungary, her condition improved so that she was able to walk with sticks. Her mother testified that on one occasion she was being led on the sticks by other girls and returned home soon afterwards completely healed and accompanied by other children, who also rejoiced in her cure.155 In Ambrose of Massa’s inquiry, a neighbour described a severely impaired boy’s cure, stating that she saw him walking well and going everywhere with other boys.156 Mention of the beneficiary child being out with his or her peers was recorded in the canonization hearings when either injury or cure took place during this activity, or if it acted as a proof of the cure: in other words, when the play had significance for the miracle in question.157 Although these few accounts do not tell us much about the situation of all the other children, the cases of Iacobus and Adilhaidi act as examples of inclusion in peer groups. Starting with the medicalization of society in the late nineteenth century, before the emergence of ideas and studies about the social model of disability, disabled children were mostly treated as medical objects and often institutionalized. As a result, their chance to live like other children was restricted.158 Although comparisons between the modern and the medieval worlds can be dangerous, as regards the discussion about the various models of disability and how they pertain to the Middle Ages, children’s play might be one way of approaching the topic. Medieval society was very different in its lack of any ‘medical model’, and as a result children were not excluded from the company of their peers or prevented from acting like them on the basis of their medical condition. Other accounts of impaired children’s play give a picture of children’s mutual relationships that is quite different from the narrative of the cure of the blind Thoumas discussed above. While the silence of canonization testimonies 153 

Urban V, p. 453. Louis of Toulouse, p. 176. 155  Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 226–27. 156  AASS Nov. IV, p. 606. 157  For Scandinavian examples, see Krötzl, ‘Parent-Child Relations’, pp. 27–28. 158  Thanks to the disability rights movement and the criticism of medicalization, the importance of play for disabled children has also been recently acknowledged and attitudes towards it have dramatically changed. See Lindon, Understanding Children’s Play, pp. 78–79. 154 

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regarding children’s reactions to the impairments of their peers does not mean that they might not have been scared of those looking different, as was the case with Amelota de Chambli in the miracles of St Louis IX,159 such reactions by children were not a typical way of defining the severity of the impairment. Modern observations have shown that young children especially tend to take impairments as given, perhaps being curious about them but not necessarily having prejudices unless acquiring them from adults.160 In many medieval families small children spent a lot of time with each other and were thus socialized as much by their peers as by adult community members,161 hence their social relations presumably had a big impact on how they viewed children with physical differences. Edward Wheatley has written that ‘[t]he medieval Church’s institutionalized relationship to disability was roughly analogous to institutionalized medicine’s control of disability in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: both institutionally segregate and disempower the disabled’. This institutionalized construction of disability is what he calls ‘the religious model of disability’.162 He thus sees religious ideas of physical impairment as factors which strongly defined the experience, as well as communal attitudes towards impaired persons in medieval Europe, and religion as the primary discursive model for disability.163 Avi Rose, on the other hand, has divided western religious attitudes towards physical impairments into four categories: sin and punishment, failure 159 

Fragments, p. 31; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 18. I have not yet come across other examples of fearful children in the canonization records. Children’s mockery was, however, quite a common theme in later medieval art that portrayed old age: Janssen, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Elderly’, p. 447. 160  There has been an illuminating discussion regarding a BBC TV presenter of a children’s show, Cerrie Burnell, who was born with only one hand. While the company has received thanks from many parents for hiring a person with a disability with the opportunity to educate children about diversity, some parents have been complaining that her appearance on TV scares their children. According to Sir Bert Massie, from the Equality of Human Rights Commission, the problem lies with the parents, who project their own prejudices and fears onto their children. Some people with disabilities also report how young children are naturally curious but not really bothered by impairments, while older children and adults express more prejudices: Geoghegan, ‘BBC News — How do you explain a missing hand to a child?’ , [accessed 10 December 2014]. 161  See Goldberg, ‘Childhood and Gender in Later Medieval England’, p. 261. 162  Wheatley, ‘Blindness, Discipline, and Reward’, p. 197. He discusses the model further in Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, pp. 9–19. 163  Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, pp. 9–19.

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in divine perfection, incompetence in religious practice, and object of pity and charity.164 Rose’s categorization lacks one obvious element — the miraculous — and also ignores variations in the tone of discussions about the connection between sin and physical ailments, or the view that all bodily imperfections are a part of God’s creation, or perhaps could even be a favour.165 Nevertheless, both Wheatley and Rose highlight many aspects of medieval religious discourse on disability and its connection with pity and charity. In contemporary discussion on disability and marginalization, pity is a frequent theme, and is now considered to be a negative aspect of community attitudes towards disability.166 However, the conception of ‘pity’ as used and understood in modern discourse cannot be transposed into the Middle Ages. There was no word with an identical meaning, but the most common term used was pietas, which was interlinked with charity,167 and charity — or caritas — was something a good Christian was supposed to demonstrate.168 Charitable actions towards the poor,

164 

Rose, ‘“Who Causes the Blind To See”’, p. 397. See also Tovey, ‘Kingly Impairments in Anglo-Saxon Literature’, p. 145. 166  In the modern context, Thomas E. Reynolds explains the malignancy of pity and its difference from sympathy by stating that it ‘emerges from the presumption that we must do something to hide affliction when we encounter it, making it go away. This urge to cover up suffering is a symptom of shame, the shame we attribute to another whose out-of-control body elicits our own sense of shame’: Reynolds, Vulnerable Communion, p. 114. See also Jaeger and Blowman, Understanding Disability, pp. 21–22; Walton, Appeal to Pity, pp. 65–68. 167  Charity, or caritas, is a virtue closely related to pietas although not synonymous to it. It was considered to be the ‘queen of virtues’, and it represents the proper path of Christians. See Agrimi and Crisciani, ‘Charity and Aid’, pp. 170–71. However, for Augustine, pity for the suffering of others was a defect in the person who experienced such a sentiment, because to empathize with others’ afflictions, one must ‘look at another’s sorrows as their own’, or start fearing that the same could happen to themselves. Misericordia, on the other hand, was an effect of caritas: Buhrer, ‘From Caritas to Charity’, p. 118. On pietas and acts of mercy, see also Allen, ‘Impossible Piety’. 168  That charity was essential for becoming a good Christian and obtaining salvation was one of the cornerstones of medieval Christianity. Charity towards the poor has been dealt with in several studies. See Brodman, Charity & Religion; Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris; Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages; Rubin, Charity and Community. Joel Agrimi and Chiara Crisgiani sum up the link by stating that ‘disease was also a spiritual medication for those in good health, who comforted the suffering invalid with acts of mercy and material assistance, acts destined not only to promote the recovery and health of the invalid but also to further the spiritual well-being of the healthy person who performed them’: Agrimi and Crisgiani, ‘Charity and Aid in Medieval Christian Civilization’, pp. 173–74. 165 

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ill, and impaired were also characteristics attached to many saints.169 Moreover, in this context, even with its harsh side-effects such as violent bodily inspections, mercy and pietas resulted in caring for and supporting those unable to earn their living. An examination of the emotions directly mentioned or described in the tes­­ timonies reveals that overt expressions of sympathy or compassion are extremely rare, especially outside the discourse concerning alms and poverty (which appear as actions rather than sentiments), and, even though it has more spe­­cific cultural connotations, any expression of pietas is equally unusual.170 Alicia de Lonesdale reported that a London-based surgeon, Gilbertus, treated her with emplasters twice because of pietas and the love of God.171 Alicia’s father could not have afforded the services of a medical man, and charity was expected from good physicians and surgeons.172 I have encountered the use of the word pietas in a few other miracle narratives, not all of them parts of canonization inquiries, but most refer to adults or adolescents. As an example, in St Louis IX’s miracles an eighteen-year old youth, Jehan de la Haie, was on his way to Paris in search of work when he suddenly lost all his bodily strength and could not stay on his feet. Passers-by helped him for they felt pitié towards him, although some 169 

See Goodich, ‘Vita perfecta’, pp.  186–205; Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 169; Vauchez, ‘Lay People’s Sanctity’, pp. 21–32. St Louis IX was one of those frequently praised for not showing abhorrence towards illnesses and impairments: ‘Beati Ludovici vita: et veteri lectionario extracta’, ed. by Bouquet, pp. 162–63. Also in the canonization bull, Louis’s non-abhorrent attitude towards a brother suffering from severe leprosy was praised. Sermones et bulla de canonisatione sancti Ludovici, ed. by Bouquet, p. 157. This kind of attitude is, indeed, most visible in the case of leprosy. The holiness of many medieval saints was partly constructed by their charitable actions towards lepers, which also made it possible for the pious laity to follow in their footsteps. See Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England, pp. 131–43. 170  The word misericordia was occasionally used, but it referred to the misericordia of saints or God. See AASS Nov. IV, p. 606; ASV, MS A.A., Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fols 3r, 4r; Margaret of Hungary, p. 343; Peter of Morrone, p. 221. A rare case, not concerning a child but a blind adult woman Lucia Ruimilli, is recorded in St Louis IX’s hearing, in which people reportedly stated that it was a great loss because she was such a sweet woman: Fragments, p. 57: ‘noti et vicini sui dicebant: “Magnum damnum est quod Lucia sit ceca que erat ita pulcra mulier”’. 171  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 66v: ‘Et quia Magister Gilbertus Sirurgicus qui tunc morabat in Ciuitate Londinensi et amore Dei ac intuit pietatis bis apposuerat emplastra in pede dicte Alicie’. 172  For example, Henri de Mondaville (d. 1306), the surgeon of the French kings Philip the Fair and Louis X, wrote that if a surgeon takes his due from wealthy patients and treats the poor out of charity, he does not have to make pilgrimages: Agrimi and Crisgiani, ‘Charity and Aid in Medieval Christian Civilization’, p. 180.

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thought he was drunk and got irritated.173 However, in general such accounts appear to be more common in other miracle accounts than in canoni­zation processes.174 This may partly be due to the emphasis those narratives have on the pilgrimage and the cure at the shrine. It thus seems that when the compassion shown did not directly result in chari­­­ table alms-giving, the tendency was to use the word pietas in matters directly linked to the successful pilgrimages of the poor. Pietas, originally a Roman virtue, is an ambiguous term in medieval discourse. It is a royal virtue closely connected with politics, and came to signify a quality of character. In ecclesiastical discourse, pietas had by the thirteenth century become a com­­mon term in the theories of divine and human governance. Church leaders promoted a conception that a good prince — or pius princeps — was one who served the interests of the Church. Although the Latin term was frequently associated with politics, especially in its vernacular translations the essential meaning of the word came to be clementia, and it was occasionally also used to mean pitié or mercy.175 The canonization testimonies do not belong per se to the discourse on power, and because the few depositions referring to pietas or pitié have been translated, it is impossible to trace the original word used by the witnesses. The usage of pietas or pitié in miracle narratives, however, has strongly religious connotations. Showing pietas towards the poor impaired by helping them to obtain a miraculous cure enforced God’s power on Earth and also strengthened the Church.176 173 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 60–61: ‘Mes quant il leur ennuia, il le lessierent gesant a terre. Et autres qui venoient qui en orent pitié le levarent de terre et le menarent ensement sostenant par les braz jusques au chief de la vile de Saint Denis’. Some passers-by, on the other hand, felt pitié for a thirty-year old cobbler Raou le Cavetier, who had made several futile pilgrimages, and advised him to go to Saint-Denis: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 69. In St Elizabeth’s miracles, a blind woman has nobody to lead her to the shrine, until she accidentally meets three women who help her: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 218. 174  In the miracles of St Hedwig, a man is described as having lost all his friends because of his crippling state and having been begging, when someone felt pietas towards him and took him to Hedwig’s shrine: AASS Oct. VIII, p. 253. In the twelfth-century miracles of St Hugh of Avalon, in a somewhat similar context, the charitable elders of the town took a mute foster child to the shrine: Gerald of Wales, The Life of St Hugh of Avalon, ed. by Loomis, p. 58. For more examples, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 168–69. 175  On the usage of the term pietas throughout the Middle Ages, see Garrison, ‘Pietas’ from Vergil to Dryden, pp. 93–124. 176  On miracles and the strengthening of faith, see Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 15–23, 53.

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A rare example of another type of usage of the word, apparently deriving from pietas, is recorded in Louis IX’s miracles. After the once deaf-mute Loÿs returned from his visit to Louis IX’s shrine, where he got his ability to hear but not the skills to understand or speak a language, he went back to the household of Gauchier, the smith. They felt pité towards him because he was unable to act as a hearing man, and started to teach him words.177 Loÿs was poor as well, but he had also been a member of Gauchier’s familia. In this particular case Loÿs’s continuing ‘disability’ — that is, the lack of language — was the reason for their feelings. The usage of the word links the actions of Gauchier’s household with the miraculous cure, as they were the ones who completed it.178 It has been shown that legitimate charity for the poor included help for all who had difficulty in living up to the standards of those with similar social status, and this resulted in the propertied classes providing most help for those of their own kind, if not their family members.179 When we look for evidence of compassionate feelings towards the impaired that are not obviously linked with charity, we encounter the problem of how to define our terminology of emotions and its relation to actions. Was compassion recorded as a specified sentiment, or was it rather implied in witnesses’ reported actions?180 The actions of Jehan le Chandelier in the narrative regarding Thoumas de Voudai can be read as a compassionate act, not explicitly connected to Christian charitas or pietas, despite the boy’s poverty. The narrative does not report Jehan as giving alms to Thoumas or taking him on a pilgrimage but, rather, helping him when he fell into mud or warning him when he was about to fall into a pit.181 Among the witnesses testifying about the cures of non-pauper children, the testimony of only one person outside a child’s immediate family directly refers to her compassion. When testifying about the cure of Vigilius, domina Bellavicina stated that it caused astonishing compassion or sympathy to see his 177 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 54. See pp. 257–58 for further discussion. 179  Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, p. 85. 180  Compassion has been largely neglected in historical studies until recently, both as an emotion towards other people and as compassion for the suffering Christ. See McNamer, Affective Meditation, pp.  3–7. When the topic has been addressed by scholars, the studies deal with compassion in the religious context, i.e. as compassion towards Christ’s suffering or compassion as a shared sentiment essential for those taking the role of a religious leader. See McNamer, Affective Meditation, pp. 3–7; Cohen, The Modulated Scream, pp. 198–226; Rosenwein, Emotional Communities, pp. 86–88. 181  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 27–28. It seems plausible that Jehan was one of the original witnesses and presumably the one who told of the harsh treatment Thoumas faced. 178 

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small body in such tribulation and affliction.182 In Bellavicina’s testimony about her own reactions, aspects of several other witness accounts already discussed merge. The usage of the word mirabilis resembles the testimony of domina Margarita regarding Thomasina, discussed above, in which she stated that it was astonishing (mirabile) to look at the girl,183 and in that sense her testimony is similar to accounts referring to the wondrous monster-like appearance of badly impaired children. She also seems, at least to some extent, to have shared Vigilius’s mother’s anguish at the boy’s condition, for the mother reported that because of her pain she could not stand to see him.184 Besides Bellavicina, community members’ testimonies are strikingly silent about feelings of compassion or sympathy. The lack of such references does not, how­­ever, signify that such sentiments were alien to community members — merely that emphasizing them was of secondary importance in proving the case when the child in question was not a beggar. As in the case of grief, family members’ emotions were significant in defining the children’s conditions. Community members had an active role in defining the characteristics of impairments, especially their incurable nature and, as will be discussed below, they also had an active role in trying to obtain a miraculous cure. These actions speak of mutual interest and concern for the community members’ wellbeing, but do not portray disabled, non-beggar children as objects of pity or strongly expressed compassion. In this regard the narratives about children’s impairments differ from those of adults. Although the specified sentiments of compassion, charitas, or pietas are rare in them as well, in the case of adults the help and care-taking offered by the community appear to be more significant. While children were the responsibility of their parents and occasionally siblings or grandparents, disabled adults more often got practical help from their neighbours and relatives who did not live under the same roof.185 Although a child’s impairment was a publicly known matter, communal reac­­tions or emotions seldom defined the severity of the impairment in the canonization testimonies. In other words, the desperate situation was proven by the sorrow — and sometimes even disgust — of the family or household 182 

AASS Oct. IX, p. 880: ‘et erat mirabilis compassio ad videndum quod in tam minimo corpore, forsan quod erat duorum annorum vel quasi, tanta tribulation et affliction insistebat’. 183  AASS Oct. IX, p. 865. 184  AASS Oct. IX, p. 865: ‘mater prae nimio dolore non poterat sustinere videre eum’. 185  For the roles of the family during adults’ disabilities, see Kuuliala, ‘Love and Duty in the Time of Family Crisis’; Kuuliala, ‘Nobility, Community, and Physical Impairment’. See also Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 119–20, on children helping their ailing parents.

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members, but other people did not necessarily show or express their emotions. It would be interesting to compare the testimonies of the two parents who expressed shame and the wish to hide their child with those of other community members: the mother of a newborn boy with a twisted arm, and the boy whose condition made him tremble badly.186 In the latter case, the narrative only reports that neighbours said the boy was totally lost and they also suggested a pilgrimage to Saint-Denis,187 which implies that his mother’s attempts at concealment were not very successful — and perhaps not very serious. It is interesting to see that communal reactions to children’s long-term impairments differ from responses to fatal accidents. In part this difference derives from the situation: in life-threatening accidents or fatalities, it was neighbours who often found the child and, consequently, made the vow much more often than in any of the miracle accounts describing children’s cures.188 It is also possible that because fatal accidents often occurred in public places, seeing parents’ sorrow made tears and other signs of devotion more likely among other community members.189 However, despite the tears being a part of the ritualistic act, parents’ ‘privilege’ of expressing sorrow shows also in the cases where grief was referred to as a part of the lived experience before asking help from a saint. Unlike fatal accidents, which often happened in the public sphere and aroused public interest, shock, and grief, the search for a saintly cure for prolonged disabilities tended to be the result of long-term consideration and tended to be situated in the domestic sphere.

Conceptions of Incurability In modern thinking, and especially in the medical model of disability, permanence is an important feature of its definition, although this does not take into 186 

AASS Nov. IV, p. 606; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 78–81. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 79. 188  Despite this, although neighbours were usually those to find the child, mothers were still the most likely individuals to make the vow. See Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 148–49. This would seem to further emphasize parental responsibility to find solutions for ailing children, and not only for physical impairments, but for all kinds of ailments and dangers. At least in England, this is also associated with the legal customs surrounding fatal accidents, in which the person who discovered a fatality was supposed to raise a public ‘hue and cry’ and call a coroner to investigate the case. On coroners, see Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound, pp. 11–13; Hunnisett, The Medieval Coroner, pp. 9–10. 189  On the collectivity of rites, see Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 87–89. 187 

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account, for example, that many chronic conditions can be labelled as both disabilities and treatable illnesses.190 In medieval medical thinking, illnesses either improved or took a turn for the worse, in the latter case leading to death, while impairment was a static condition, and thus, according to Irina Metzler, ‘more the proper concern of miracle rather than medicine in the medieval mind’.191 However, illnesses were concerns of miracles too, and often the limits of impairment and illness were wavering, at least from a pathological or aetiological point of view. The canonization depositions tend to make clear distinctions between a (fatal) illness, a chronic condition such as dropsy or epilepsy, and another type of physical condition, such as the ones meeting our definition of ‘physical impairment’. In the medieval, hagiographic context, curability and incurability had different connotations than nowadays, but the question of the permanence of impairments was nevertheless of vital interest for the inquests. Medical incurability was a prerequisite for proving a miracle. Thus public opinion was frequently mentioned as a proof of the (medical) hopelessness of the situation, although the frequency of such notions depends on the process in question. In this sense the cases of physical impairments are similar to resurrections from death. In testimonies regarding the latter case, death was publicly diagnosed and defined; it was not a private matter.192 The witnesses commonly referred to the common opinion on incurability. Blacacius de Fayensa testified that he and the other members of the household believed that his sister Rixenda’s deafness could not be cured, 193 most likely meaning both family members and the household staff. Thus, he used the opinion of a larger group of people to construct the incurability of Rixenda’s condition. When Antonius Bollegoni’s son became impaired, not only physicians, but also all the bystanders were of the opinion that he would always be ‘powerless and crippled’,194 and those who came upon the three-year-old Nicolaus Iohannis, who did not speak, said that he would remain mute in the future.195 190 

See Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 71. Metzler, A Social History of Disability, p. 6. 192  Krötzl, ‘Parent-Child Relations’, pp. 33–34; Krötzl, ‘Evidentissima signa mortis’. 193  Louis of Toulouse, p. 154. 194  Urban V, p. 301: ‘juxta opinionem ipsorum ac omnium circumstantium credebatur totaliter quod perpetuo esset inpotens et contractus’. 195  Peter of Morrone, p. 323: ‘et omnes qui uidebant eum dicebant ipsum futurum esse mutum’. 191 

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A concrete example of how public opinion affected the way a parent felt about a child’s impairment was given by domina Guilia, whose daughter Agnese could neither eat nor stand up. She got affirmation of her own doubts from other people, which resulted in her desperate feelings: [E]t dicta testis ita credebat quod nervos haberet contractos et retractos omnes; et gentes quae eam videbant ita dicebant quod dicta Agnese erant totaliter contracta, et ita esset toto tempore vita suae; et dicta testis cum audiebat hoc, volebat mori, et dicebat: Utinam mortua esses, filia mi.196 (And the said witness thus believed that she [the girl] had all her nerves restricted and withdrawn; and people who saw her thus said that said Agnese was completely crippled, and has been so for her whole life, and the witness, hearing this, wanted to die and said: I wish you were dead, my girl.)

Irina Metzler has discussed disabled persons’ liminal status as people who are neither healthy nor sick, and who do not have an illness that gets healed or kills them, but whose condition remains incurable. Especially in cultural studies and anthropology, liminality has been regarded as a state in which the person occupies the space and crosses the boundaries between this world and the supernatural. When it comes to matters of disability, liminality can be defined as a more tangible state, the person being an in-between who is not fully alive though not yet dead, and neither healthy nor sick — in other words, incurable.197 On the other hand, if we consider ‘liminality’ in its original meaning, as invented by Arnold Van Gennep in his discussion on the rites of passage and later further developed by Victor Turner and many others, the concept of ‘liminality’ includes the assumption of transition.198 That is, liminality is not something that remains, but something that eventually needs to be stabilized, which pertains to physical impairments when taking into account the possibility of cure. Metzler, on the other hand, considers ‘marginality’ a fixed position outside the structures of society, while ‘liminality’ means lingering on the edge. Therefore she is of the opinion that ‘liminality’ is a more useful term when discussing disability, because it did not necessarily imply marginalization or exclusion.199 196 

AASS Oct. IX, p. 827. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 155–56. 198  Turner, The Ritual Process, pp. 94–96. On Arnold Van Gennep’s theory, see Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage. 199  Metzler, ‘Liminality and Disability’, pp. 273–74; Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 7–8. 197 

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The concept of disabled people as ‘liminal’ appears somewhat problematic based on the sources of the current study, because it requires a definition of ‘disability’ as something separate from illness and health, but which is not necessarily a valid concept within medieval discourse. As has been discussed earlier in this book, the categories were, after all, fluid, and it is certainly not pos­­sible to treat all ‘disabilities’ or ‘impairments’ as a uniform or consistent group. The conception of a child being ‘half-alive’ or looking ‘almost dead’ does, however, surface occasionally. A girl called Sophia, who lived in Spoleto, Italy, was afflicted for three months by a condition that made her arms and legs apostemata. In the end she could not walk or see, but was considered almost as if dead, as stated by her stepmother Angnes, a woman called Philippa, and Sophia’s cousin Iacobuctia. According to Iacobuctia’s testimony, the view of the girl as quasi mortua was commonly expressed.200 The father of Thomasina testified that he did not know what to do because she neither died nor lived, thus being a rare example clearly indicating that the girl lingered somewhere in between those two states.201 However, the expression quasi mortua was not only connected with cases in which a child was physically impaired, but could also be used when he or she was thought to be in actual mortal danger. Another girl in Clare of Montefalco’s process had a disease named as etica, and her parents considered her almost dead, waiting for her to take her last breath.202 In John Buoni’s process a small boy called Thomasius is reported as having been trampled by a horse, and not looking alive, but almost dead, while the parents expected him to draw his last breath.203 Miracle depositions commonly make it clear whether the problem was mortal danger or an incurable or permanent condition, and thus it seems that the fundamental idea in expressions such as quasi mortuus was not the same in cases when people feared for the child’s life or his or her permanent 200  Clare of Montefalco, p. 357: ‘nec poterat ambulare, nec se videre, sed reputabat eam quasi mortum’: Clare of Montefalco, pp. 383–84: ‘Et ex hoc dicta puella non poterat ambulare nec se induere, ymmo reputabant eam quasi mortuam. […] Alia autem apostemata non erant adhuc incisa et ex hoc dicta Sophia reputabat communiter quasi mortua’. For earlier examples, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 156–57. 201  AASS Oct. IX, p. 864: ‘et nesciret quod inde faceret, quia nec moriebatur nec vivebat’. 202  Clare of Montefalco, p. 426: ‘et reputabatur dicta Macthiola a patre et matre quasi mortua et expectabant omni die quod faceret tractum’. 203  AASS Oct. IX, p. 872: ‘ita quod puer quasi perdidit vitam, et non videbatur vivens […] Et dictus testis, pater Thomasini predicti, licet esse infirmus, cucurrit statim, et invenit dictum filium suum quasi mortuum’.

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impairment. In cases of mortal danger the wordings can be seen as referring to liminality in its traditional sense, because there were two options: the child either died or was cured. Permanent, severe disability making a person appear half-dead, on the other hand, could be an unchanging position between the living and the dead; but such a status cannot be associated with milder impairments that did not prevent the person from ‘living’ or fulfilling their role in society. Then again, the possibility of a miraculous cure was always present, but whether it had significant influence on the point of view of someone who had been impaired for years, even decades, is not revealed by the depositions. Besides quasi mortuus, another expression that the witnesses used in order to emphasize the extremity of the state of a child is perditus — ‘wretched’, ‘lost’, ‘destroyed’, and so on. The neighbours of Marie de Fresnai, whose son was trembling all over, stated that the child was perdu du tout.204 A boy called Thomasius was paralyzed in such a way that he could not move nor speak. His father, Iacobus Thomasii Luce de Caramanico, described him quasi totus perditus,205 and Thomasius himself testified that he was penatus in omnibus membris suis ac ita perditus.206 The usage of the word is most common in the process of Peter of Morrone, which suggests that the notaries of this particular process favoured it. On the other hand, it is also possible that it — or its vernacular form — was an expression used in the local community to describe serious impairments that prevented people from moving. Whether the word perditus predicted death, as stated in the case of Burgundus de Belay, a miles whose infirmity made him ‘completely weak and crippled’207 or something less definite seems to have depended on the situation. Especially in the depositions in Peter of Morrone’s hearing the word appears to have been used as a synonym for immobile208 and/or incurable.209 This is also quite explicitly spelled out in the testimony of Yfamia, the mother of Mabileta, who stated that she, the girl’s father, and 204 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 79. Peter of Morrone, p. 263. 206  Peter of Morrone, pp. 264–65. 207  Louis of Toulouse, p. 173: ‘qui omnes qui videbant eum iudicabant eum in membris suis perditum et morti propinquum’. 208  Peter of Morrone, p. 309: ‘nata fuit muta et contracta totaliter et perdita a cinctura inferius ita quod per se moueri non poterat’. 209  Peter of Morrone, pp. 315–16: ‘Uires corporis sui amisit et perdidit loquelam […] Super huiusmodi casu multa experimenta fecisset de consilio medicorum et aliorum prudentum uirorum nec profuissent eidem in aliquo quominus semper sic perditus esset nec haberetur spes deliberacionis ipsius’. 205 

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everyone who saw her said and believed that she was completely perdita and could never stand or walk. A similar remark was made by Mabileta’s godmother.210 Perditus as a synonym for incurability or misery also appears in the testimony of the nurse of Iacobus Deodatus, who referred to the public opinion of the boy’s condition by stating that he was not treated by any medical means, because omnis homo reputabat eum perditum,211 even though his impairment was relatively mild. Similarly, a limb could also be considered perditus, which possibly indicated the fear of amputation or again incurability,212 and the fear of loss of eyes or eye-sight was described with a similar expression.213 Although many of these descriptions come from testimonies of the family members, the idea of disabled children resembling the dead are always connected to those who have serious mobility impairments, but the ones referring to being ‘lost’ could also have milder impediments or sensory problems. The expressions indicating the position between the dead and the living therefore seem to derive mostly from the physical state and how it affected the person’s ability to move, possibly even making them lie motionless like a corpse. In this context the word perditus could indicate the idea of children being ‘lost’ socially: if the child’s condition was severe enough to prevent them from doing anything expected from children of their age, they were not expected to grow up to be members of society fulfilling their social roles. Not all references to the child’s lost status had this association, however. Despite the nurse Guarssias’s statement, Iacobus Deodatus received formal education, so he was not considered a hopeless case. Then again, Guarssias only nursed Iacobus until the age of four, at which point his education started, and she apparently was not aware of 210  Fragments, pp. 47–48: ‘Propter que ipsa et pater ipsius puelle et omnes alii qui videbant eam, dicebant et credebant quod esset omino perdita et quod nunquam posset stare super pedes suos aut aliquatenus ambulare’; Fragments, p. 53: ‘Dicebatur tamen communiter in ipso vico quod dicta puella erat perdita omnino in membris illis et quod numquam ambularet’. 211  Louis of Toulouse, p. 178: ‘Et in isto statu stetit dictus puer sex annis, nec unquam vidit nec sensit nec audivit quod aliqua medicinalia vel unguenta apponerentur ei, quia omnis homo reputabat eum perditum’. For this meaning of the word, see du Cange and others, eds, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, vi, col. 268c. 212  See Peter of Morrone, p. 246: ‘et dum per tres annos remediis medicorum fuisset delusa nec haberetur spes deliberationis ipsius dictus Sir Alexander ex deuotione quam ad fratrem Petrum de Murrone habebat, disposuit dictam puellam sic debilitatam et quasi perditam in membro predicto portare ad fratrem Petrum predictum’; Peter of Morrone, p. 252: ‘iuxta talum ipsius pedis periculosam plagam uidelicet fistulam ut a medicis dicebatur, ex qua uerisimiliter timebatur perdito pedis eiusdem’. See also Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 169. 213  Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 109, 275, 433.

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what happened during the period between her return to her native town Aix and Iacobus’s cure.214 The references to severely disabled children’s ‘lost’ condition cannot be inter­ preted as denoting an active physical or mental marginalization. They are also relatively rare in the miracle testimonies, mostly pertaining to very severe conditions, and therefore I do not see them as representative of the general mentalities of all impairments. Here my views therefore differ from those of Irina Metzler, who, based on similar expressions in earlier miracle collections, writes that ‘those miracle narratives that do touch on the liminality of the impaired make the point very strongly, and such evidence permits the conclusion that modern anthropological/ethnographical theories of liminality may be transposed to discussions of medieval notions on the impaired as liminal figures’. 215 Instead, the testimonies discussed above illustrate a specific state caused by the physical incapacity, acting as powerful rhetorical means to highlight the saint’s powers in restoring the child back to full (social) life. These notions seem to have been connected with incurability as well, but whether this incurability meant permanent disability or death depended on the situation and cannot be generalized.

Medical Professionals To make a healing miracle legally valid, the incurability of the condition in ques­­ tion had to be proved, a process in which the communal opinion given by laymen discussed above, as well as the opinion of medical professionals, played a crucial part. Although canonization testimonies concentrate on saintly reme­ dies, references to earthly medicine appear frequently. The mentions of (usually) university-trained medici,216 chirurgi or barbers,217 as well as the depositions 214 

Louis of Toulouse, pp. 178–79. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 157. 216  On the often wavering terminology of various medical practitioners, see Getz, Medicine in the English Middle Ages, pp. 8–9. 217  Surgeons were not a homogenous group, but there were differences in their background and training. For example, Henri de Mondeville (1260–1320), the surgeon of Philip IV the Fair, blurred the distinction between physicians and surgeons by stressing the differences between the literate and intelligent surgeon and the rude, illiterate craftsman, laicus: McVaugh, ‘Therapeutic Methods’, pp. 284–85. Lanfranco di Milano, for his part, lamented the difference between physicians and surgeons, writing that physicians have abandoned all operations for the laity, but a man needs to have a good knowledge of surgery to be a good physician and vice versa: O’Boyle, ‘Surgical Texts and Social Contexts’, p. 178. For the guild of surgeons, see O’Boyle, 215 

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given by them, serve as proofs of incurability.218 The scientific background they offered to the investigation largely explains their relatively high number,219 and the witnesses were aware that the mentions of unhelpful medical assistance could help them prove their cases.220 In addition to providing the required proofs and illuminating the growing importance of medical men in their communities,221 references to medical help given to impaired children elucidate various aspects of the lived realities of these children and their communities.222 In this chapter the medical professionals’ role in proving incurability as well as the treatment they provided for ‘Surgical Texts and Social Contexts’, pp. 179–85. Considering the canonization processes, we do not usually have enough information on the surgeons appearing in them to know to which category they belonged. Often the surgeons appearing in miracle accounts hold the title ‘master’, which suggests that they are craftsmen by origin, but this does not necessarily exclude the possibility that they would have been literate and educated. See also Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 23–24; Peter of Morrone, p. 253. 218  The distinction between medici and chirurgi was not strict among the witnesses. At least in the case of one child, the family members talked about medici, while the medical professional giving his testimony was defined as a sirurgicus: Peter of Morrone, pp. 246–47, 251–53. The narrative regarding the cure of Guillot le Potencier has similar inconsistencies. First, Guillot wanted to have the advice of a mire, and was thus treated by Master Henri du Perche, cyrurgien. Later another mire named Master Bernart had him in his care for a month. As Bernart was also titled a master, he could be a university-trained practitioner or a master tradesman. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 23–24; Getz, Medicine in the English Middle Ages, p. 8. Thus, although surgeons are mentioned more seldom than physicians, it is possible that some of the medici mentioned in the testimonies were actually surgeons. 219  Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 549. On physicians’ role in canonization processes, see Ziegler, ‘Practitioners and Saints’. The importance of medical men for proving miracles is equally visible in some of the earlier miracle collections. In the miracula of St Frideswide, written primarily for a clerical audience, the role of academic medicine in proving a cure miraculous appears fundamental: Wilson, ‘Hagiographical Interpretations of Disability’, pp. 148–49. In the modern era, medical doctors’ role in canonization hearings increased even more. See Duffin, Medical Miracles. 220  For discussion on the matter in the mid-fifteenth-century process of St Vincent Ferrer, see Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’, p. 345. 221  On trained physicians’ importance for legal procedures, see McVaugh, Medicine before the Plague, pp. 207–18; Ziegler, ‘Practitioners and Saints’, p. 192. 222  Medical ethics, starting from Hippocratic medicine, forbade medical practitioners from disclosing private information on their patients. However, in the medieval medical culture the assimilation of this idea was rather superficial, and hence providing information for the cause of proving someone a saint was not considered as compromising a moral and professional commitment: Ziegler, ‘Practitioners and Saints’, p. 214.

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impaired children will be discussed, asking what factors influenced whether medical practitioners’ help was used or not and how commonly medical intervention is reported in the depositions. It is worth pointing out that medicine in the medieval world was not limited to the ‘educated’ medicine practised by those who had received education in the universities. The chirurgi mentioned in the testimonies were somewhere between educated medical practitioners and folk healers. Along with educated medical practitioners, various folk practices and magical remedies — including of course assistance asked from saints — existed, often side-by-side. 223 Ronald C. Finucane has argued that because people used whatever means they had without taking these divisions into account, ‘[i]n practice the distinctions between what is now called “folk-remedy”, faith-healing and “proper” medical attention are inappropriate to the Middle Ages’.224 However, although various healing methods could be used simultaneously, the differences between educated medical practitioners and uneducated or unprofessional healers were significant for the commissioners of the canonization processes, who valued the former group and ignored the latter as witnesses.225 Thus, it is justifiable to examine these two groups separately and seek to find traces of ‘folk practices’ in the testimonies; this will help to contextualize our sources and shed light on the role the community played in the treatment of impaired children. In the miracle depositions physicians and surgeons occasionally gave their witness accounts, but it is much more common that a witness mentioned that a child had been visited or treated by medical professionals who could do nothing to help. The witnesses either reported medical professionals as suggesting extreme curing methods, or related that medical treatment had been useless in order to prove that the saintly remedy was the only possibility. 226 Thus, by 223 

This diversity is called ‘medical pluralism’ by David Gentilcore in his book Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy. Although Gentilcore’s study concentrates on the early modern era, the concept can be seen to apply also to the Middle Ages. On the interconnection of medicine, folk practices, and magic in the Middle Ages, see also Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p.  63; Haas, The Renaissance Man and His Children, pp.  162–63; Jolly, ‘Medieval Magic: Definitions, Beliefs, Practices’, pp. 31–32; Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, esp. pp. 1–17; Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 65–67. On medicine as a cultural system, see, for example, Kleinman, Patients and Healers, pp. 24–45. 224  Finucane Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 68. 225  See also Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy, p. 194. 226  As an example of the former, two Italian children in the process of John Buoni were in danger of having a foot amputated. Their family members ended up making a vow to avoid it.

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medical standards impairments which could only be treated by amputation or other serious operations were still treatable,227 and a suggestion of an operation could act as a proof of the hopelessness of the situation. As an example, when a woman called Imillia saw the medicus preparing a hot iron in order to treat her daughter, she vowed the girl to Nicholas of Tolentino, asking him to cure her without the burning.228 In the case of an Italian boy who had a serious skin problem, his mother consulted two surgeons who said that they could not liberate the boy without incision, but this could make him impeditus;229 therefore, the operation would ‘disable’ the child. Based on the canonization records, it appears that medical practitioners themselves were often reluctant to perform such operations, 230 presumably because they were considered dangerous. As an example, the physicians and surgeons examining Marote, who had a splinter of wood in her eye, said that she would either die or lose the eye if they tried to remove it.231 There are also legal texts where physicians are warned against being careless when performing cauterizations or amputations. A physician or surgeon could also be sued because of a failed operation leading to the loss of a body part.232 The physicians occasionally gave testimonies about their uncertainty regarding the effects of In the other case the aggravation of the illness was interpreted as a consequence of the mother’s failure to fulfil a vow: AASS Oct. IX, pp. 825, 873–75. On examples of cases where a fear of amputation has led an adult person to search for saintly help in earlier miracula, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 145–46. Amputation was, however, rare before the seventeenth century: Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, p. 157. 227  See also Wilson, ‘Conceptions of the Miraculous’, p. 121, who writes that the frequent reference to futile medicine is in fact an indicator that the treatments were in some circumstances expected to work, rather than reflecting a general discontent with physicians’ work. 228  Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 225, 288: ‘et medicus nomine magister Thomas bene volebat eam coquere cum ferro calido, et ipsa testis videns medicum parare ferrum et ponere ad ignem, ipsa vovit beato Nicholao devotissime quod illam sumam filiam liberaret sine coctura’. The girl, named Bartholonucia, suffered from spasms, and as cautery was commonly used to treat wounds, there is a possibility that Bartholonucia’s condition was tetanus following a wound, the dangers of which were recognized. See McVaugh, ‘Introduction’, pp. 16–23. On cauterization, known to be one of the most painful medieval medical treatments, see Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 61; Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England, p. 261; Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, pp. 116–18, 161–62. 229  Thomas Aquinas II, p. 610. 230  Ziegler, ‘Practitioners and Saints’, p. 223. 231  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 20–21. 232  Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 95.

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their curing methods. For example, the witnesses for the cure of Sophia who was apostemata and quasi mortua reported that she received futile treatment from a medicus.233 The fourth witness, magister Nicholaus, fissicus, testified: ipse habuit in cura unam puellam, filiam Bartholuctii Symonis, que primo habuerat quamdam infirmitatem quam consueverunt habere pueri, que vocatur variole que totam personam occupat; et quod in recessione eorum remanserunt sibi apostemata in cruribus et erat tumefacta et putrefacta in crure, in bracchiis et in genibus, et in uno ex bracchiis vel humeris extraxit sibi os et saniem. Et dixit quod fuit requisitus quod idem faceret in aliis iuncturis predictis. Et dixit quod de necessitate cura fieri oportebat, et ita facere intendebat; quod differebat facere propter timorem mali finis et quia credebat ipsam infirmam incurabilem.234 ( he had in his care a girl, the daughter of Bartholuctius Symonis, who first had a certain infirmity which children usually have, which are called variola, which attack every part of a person; and that on their withdrawal she remained afflicted by abscesses in her legs and she was swollen and putrefied in her shin, arms, and knees, and in one of the upper or lower arms, bone extruded and pus was discharged. And he said that he was asked that he would do the same in the other joints mentioned before. And he said that out of necessity a cure needed to occur, and so he intended to do it; which, however, he put off doing because of the fear of a bad result and because he believed that this infirm girl was incurable.)

He went on to testify that when he saw the girl cured, he asked the stepmother if something new had been done and, presumably answering the commissioners’ question, that the cure had happened because of divine powers, not by medical means.235 Similarly, a sirurgicus called Riccardus de Sulmona was called to treat Francesse, whose leg was injured and had not healed properly, but according to his own testimony, when he saw the girl he backed away. He gave the girl some treatment to soothe her condition but eventually pronounced the condition incurable.236 This kind of testimony gives a clear picture of the responsibilities physicians and surgeons had: they were not supposed to harm the patient, but to treat 233 

Clare of Montefalco, pp. 356–57, 383–84. Clare of Montefalco, p. 482. See also the mother’s testimony regarding the cure of a blind girl, Cathalucia, in Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 311: ‘que patiebatur in oculo sinistro et erat relicta a medicis, qui eam curaverant, dicentibus quod curari non poterat dicta Cathalucia, quod lumen videret de dicto oculo; et testificando dixit quod de dicto oculo non videbat’. 235  Clare of Montefalco, p. 482 236  Peter of Morrone, p. 253. 234 

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them carefully and with responsibility.237 They are also known to have routinely specified the modest outcome that their treatment could achieve.238 Whatever the context, the depositions physicians gave demonstrate that they did not see themselves as omnipotent, nor were they expected to be, as healing depended on many factors and, above all, on God’s will.239 Many medical practitioners were indeed aware of the limits of their art, although risky operations were performed as well, and some medical professionals might prefer to leave the child impaired, perhaps giving ‘alleviating medication’ as reported by Riccardus de Sulmona, rather than proceed with dangerous treatments.240 More common than suggesting or denying grave medical operations are, however, mentions of the incurability of impairment being proved by unhelpful medical treatment.241 Although these two options are not necessarily mutually exclusive, in most cases the treatment per se was not an essential factor for proving incurability, but rather its proved or potential uselessness. This was the case of Petrus Bollegoni, whose father reported that the physicians, as well as other people, believed that the boy would be permanently contractus. 242 The 237 

See, for example, McVaugh, Medicine before the Plague, esp. pp. 169–70. Rawcliffe, ‘Curing Bodies and Healing Souls’, pp. 131–32. 239  As Nancy Siraisi writes, ‘[b]ad or inconclusive results of medical treatment would be no more likely to be destructive of general confidence than an individual’s failure to obtain a miracle would be likely to shake confidence in the healing power of saints’ shrines’: Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, p. 42. Here Siraisi’s views differ from those of Julie Singer, who is of the opinion that later medieval society was in the process of medicalization, which increased the expectations people had of physicians, and which in consequence led to the growth of satirical texts about medical professionals: Singer, Blindness and Therapy, pp. 56–57. Siraisi, however, interprets the critique towards medical professionals as proof that they were generally expected to be competent: Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, p. 42. See also McVagugh, Medicine before the Plague, p. 190 and Wilson, ‘Conceptions of the Miraculous’, p. 121. 240  A different view has been presented by Cory James Rushton, who writes that medical practitioners commonly promised full cures despite the dangers of their operations, at least partly because cures were being viewed as ‘all or nothing’: Rushton, ‘Introduction: Punishment and Pity’, p. 13. The sources of this study do not support such a view, however, nor do other studies on medieval medicine cited in this chapter. 241  See Clare of Montefalco, p. 373; Dauphine of Puimichel, p. 504; Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 456; Urban V, pp. 178–79. 242  Urban V, p. 301: ‘juxta opinionem ipsorum ac omnium circumstantium credebatur totaliter quod perpetuo esset inpotens et contractus’. Similarly, when Berta, the mother of Benasciuta, was asked why her daughter was blind, she replied that she did not know the reason, but that her eyes were covered and the physicians said she would be unable to see the light for the rest of her life: AASS Oct. IX, p. 876. 238 

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testimony does not specify any curing attempts, and hence it can refer either to futile treatment or to an opinion immediately reached by the doctors. That more than just one medical professional was consulted seems to have strengthened the conception of incurability.243 The length of time before doctors pronounced a child’s condition incurable varied, even though the definitions of time in the accounts must be taken with a pinch of salt. A boy called Thomasius Iacobi Thomasii was examined by physicians for fifteen days before a vow was made,244 while a girl called Cathelina was treated for a month,245 and the above-mentioned Francesse for three years.246 Futile medical help was discussed in the community as well, and thus people other than the members of the immediate family mentioned it in their testimonies.247 This undoubtedly had its effects on how the members of the community regarded the child’s impairment themselves, and whether they defined it as incurable. In his study of miraculously cured children, Ronald C. Finucane writes that in the cases he has studied, which are partly congruent with the sources used in this study, medical professionals are involved in about twice as many southern European (including France) as northern European cases. French and Italian children lived in the southern European cultural zone, in which doctors’ help was used more often, because education facilities were concentrated in the urban centres.248 Quantitative method is, however, a problematic tool with hagiographic material, which is also shown by my analysis based on the canonization processes. Table 5 shows the numbers and percentages of references to the presence of medici or chirurgi in the miracle accounts of physically impaired children, and 243 

On examples, see Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 293; Peter of Morrone, p. 305. Peter of Morrone, pp. 280–81. 245  Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 311. 246  Peter of Morrone, p. 246. 247  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 879, 880; AASS Nov. IV, p. 605. Here the differences between various processes become evident, as Nicholas of Tolentino’s hearing is among those where physicians are commonly mentioned, but, at the same time, the witness accounts regarding children’s impairments are almost exclusively given by their family members. 248  Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 5, 95–96. The material Finucane is basing his argument on is not extensive, especially when the differences between his various collections are taken into account, as among his four northern sources is the Becket miracula, which does not follow the canonization formula, and the miracles of Henry VI included were recorded almost one hundred years later than his other sources. 244 

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to unspecified medical help. The latter group includes testimonies which mention that some kind of medicinalia was used, or which specify that the medical help was not being given by a trained physician or surgeon.249 As one can see, there is a big variation in the percentage of children who were reported as having received medical treatment and /or pronounced incurable by medical professionals. Looking at the geographic differences, one sees that in the Italian processes,250 thirty-nine children out of eighty-three, or 47 per cent, were reported as having received some kind of medical treatment. In the French processes,251 twelve children out of fifty-seven, or 21 per cent, were attended by physicians or surgeons, and in the processes from other European areas252 the number of medical professionals is much lower, as only four children out of ninety-one, or 4 per cent, were reported as having received some kind of medical treatment. These numbers are in accord with the ones given by Finucane, as Italian and French children were indeed reported as having received educated medical care much more often than those living in central or northern parts of Europe. On the other hand, the southern French families also reported that they had consulted medical practitioners, whether they were officially trained or not, much less often than the Italian ones, and there are also significant differences between various processes. Interestingly, although the professionalization of medicine increased rapidly during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the proportion of references to medical help in our sources does not seem to change significantly with time.253 249 

As an example of a testimony in which the type of medicine remains unclear, in St Margaret’s hearing a woman called Elisabeth testified that her blind daughter was given a lot of medicine. When the commissioners asked if the girl had received any other medicine besides the said medicine, she replied ‘no’ but that a local woman had put powder into the girl’s eyes: Margaret of Hungary, p. 297. 250  The Italian processes are those of John Buoni, Clare of Assisi, Ambrose of Massa, Lawrence of Subiaco, Peter of Morrone, Clare of Montefalco, Thomas Aquinas, and Nicholas of Tolentino. 251  The French processes are those of Philip of Bourges, Louis IX, Louis of Toulouse, Yves of Tréguier, Dauphine of Puimichel, Charles of Blois, and Urban V. 252  The canonization processes of Elizabeth of Hungary, Stanislaus of Cracow, Margaret of Hungary, Thomas Cantilupe, Birgitta of Vadstena, and Dorothea of Montau. All the impaired children in Birgitta’s process were from Scandinavia. 253  On the development of medical science and training in the High Middle Ages and later, see Park, ‘Medicine and Society in Medieval Europe’, pp. 75–90.

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Table 5: Numbers and Percentages of Children Who Accessed Medical Consultation or Treatment

Girls

Girls attended by a doctor

Girls given unspeci­fied medicine

Boys

Boys attended by a doctor

Elizabeth of Hungary

22

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

27

0 / 4 %

John Buoni

11

4 / 36 %

0 / 0 %

9

4 / 45 %

Clare of Assisi

0

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

1

0 / 0 %

Stanislaus of Cracow

4

0 / 0 %

1 / 25 %

3

0 / 0 %

Ambrose of Massa

2

1 / 50 %

1 / 50 %

6

2 / 33 %

Lawrence of Subiaco

2

0 / 0 %

1 / 50 %

5

0 / 0 %

Philip of Bourges

2

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

2

1 / 50 %

Margaret of Hungary

3

0 / 0 %

1 / 33 %

3

0 / 0 %

Louis IX

8

1 / 13 %

1 / 13 %

7

1 / 14 %

Louis of Toulouse

6

1 / 17 %

0 / 0 %

4

0 / 0 %

Thomas Cantilupe

1

1 / 100 %

0 / 0 %

6

0 / 0 %

Peter of Morrone

3

1 / 33 %

0 / 0 %

12

5 / 40 %

Clare of Montefalco

1

1 / 100 %

0 / 0 %

5

1 / 20 %

Thomas Aquinas I

0

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

1

0 / 0 %

Thomas Aquinas II

0

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

2

1 / 50 %

Nicholas of Tolentino

12

4 / 30 %

0 / 0 %

12

5 / 40 %

Yves of Tréguier

6

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

3

0 / 0 %

Dauphine of Puimichel

0

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

4

2 / 50 %

Charles of Blois

0

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

3

0 / 0 %

Urban V

3

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

9

2 / 22 %

Birgitta of Vadstena

4

1 / 25 %

0 / 0 %

1

0 / 0 %

Dorothea of Montau

8

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

8

0 / 0 %

Total

98

15 / 15 %

5 / 5 %

133

24 / 18 %

Process

Community and the Impaired Child

Number of children attended by a doctor

207

Boys given unspeci­fied medicine

Total number of children

Number of children given unspecified medicine

Number of children given any medical treatment

0 / 0 %

49

0 / 2 %

0 / 0 %

0 / 2 %

2 / 22 %

20

8 / 40 %

2 / 10 %

10 / 50 %

0 / 0 %

1

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

7

0 / 0 %

1 / 14 %

1 / 14 %

1 / 17 %

8

3 / 38 %

2 / 25 %

5 / 63 %

2 / 40 %

7

0 / 0 %

3 / 43 %

3 / 43 %

0 / 0 %

4

0 / 0 %

1 / 25 %

1 / 25 %

1 / 0 %

6

0 / 0 %

1 / 17 %

1 / 17 %

1 / 14 %

15

2 / 13 %

2 / 13 %

4 / 27 %

1 / 25 %

10

1 /1 0 %

1 / 10 %

2 / 20 %

0 / 0 %

7

1 / 14 %

0 / 0 %

1 / 14 %

1 / 10 %

13

6 / 38 %

1 / 8 %

7 / 46 %

2 / 40 %

7

2 / 33 %

2 / 33 %

4 / 67 %

0 / 0 %

1

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

2

1 / 50 %

0 / 0 %

1 / 50 %

0 / 0 %

24

9 / 35 %

0 / 0 %

9 / 35 %

0 / 0 %

9

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

4

2 / 50 %

0 / 0 %

2 / 50 %

0 / 0 %

3

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

1 / 11 %

12

2 / 17 %

1 / 8 %

3 / 25 %

0 / 0 %

6

1 / 17 %

0 / 0 %

1 / 17 %

0 / 0 %

16

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

0 / 0 %

11 / 8 %

231

37 / 16 %

17 / 7 %

54 / 23 %

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When it comes to impaired children in processes other than French or Italian ones, the appearance of medical professionals is strikingly low. Educated medical help was harder to get in the rural areas, also in Italy and France, but especially in areas of present-day Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, including northernmost France.254 However, as mentions of chirurgi are non-existent and references to any medicine (also including folk remedies or unspecified medicinalia) are very low,255 the formulas for these processes, or the preferences of the commissioners, had an effect as well. Of the Central European processes, especially in Dorothea of Montau’s, the testimonies are recorded in a much summarized form, which may have resulted in omitting references to medical help. In the records of St Elizabeth’s hearing, no impaired child was attended by a medicus.256 Additionally, in the testimony on the cure of a girl who was infirma in capite it is stated that she was cured by the merits of St Elizabeth and not by any medicine, which includes the possibility of the use of medical means. 257 As the process is a very early one, and the testimonies are not yet very detailed and lack some of the characteristics typical for the later processes, it is probable that the commissioners rarely asked about possible medical means, or did not consider it important to write them 254 

Among the French sources of this study, only the processes of St Yves and Charles of Blois are distinctively northern, as these cults and their witnesses were based in Brittany. Louis IX’s miracles occurred near Paris, and many of the beneficiaries lived in the city, which was an urban area where there was also access to medical university training. Yet Laura A. Smoller writes that in the mid-fifteenth-century process of St Vincent Ferrier, reporting futile medical help was more common than claiming that no medical help had been attempted: Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’, p. 349. It is likely that over time, the number of medically trained persons increased in Brittany. 255  In St Yves’s hearing, especially, medical professionals or references to them are largely absent, also in the cases of adult beneficiaries. In the hearing of Charles of Blois, several impaired adults, some of whom were injured in military campaigns, had accessed medical help before turning to the saint. See BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fols 121v, 122r–v, 128v, 130r, 132r, 147v. 256  One mother, however, received advice that she should consult a medicus: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 258. With adults the mentions of medical help are rare as well, although they appear occasionally. One woman who suffered from ydropsis was treated by several physicians, who all pronounced her condition incurable; an abbot who had infirm legs could not be cured by the advice of medici, and another man tried several remedies: Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 237, 246, 248. A paralyzed man also asked for help from St Elizabeth, after not finding a cure anywhere, which may refer to medici or chirurgi, but could also imply the use of various folk remedies: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 195. Similarly, a woman had cancer in her eyes, of which nulla posset arte sanari: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 230. 257  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 258.

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down.258 The same can be said of the process of St Stanislaus, the form of which is quite similar to that of St Elizabeth’s.259 As a comparison, in the miracles of Hedwig of Silesia from the 1260s, mostly coming from the region of presentday Poland, medical professionals and unspecified remedies are occasionally referred to.260 That the formula or the chosen questions of a particular process are important is suggested by the occasional enquiries in St Margaret’s process about whether the child in question had received any medicine. The two cases in which the witness replied that no medicine had been given specifically referred to giving medicine during pilgrimage,261 which was forbidden since it was believed this could result in a return or aggravation of the condition hoped to be cured by the saint.262 Besides the impact of geography, it is reasonable to assume that medical assistance was more available for wealthy families than poor ones.263 However, 258 

Barbara Wendel-Widmer also writes that although the beneficiaries of Elizabeth’s miracles were (according to her interpretation) poor, their poverty could not explain the lack of medical help, because medical professionals were expected to treat paupers as charity cases: Wendel-Widmer, Die Wunderheilungen, p. 19. In my sources, the charitable actions of medici are generally very rarely mentioned. I would suggest that because especially in rural areas, where there were few physicians to start with and consulting them was not as common a way of handling health problems as in more urban areas, this aspect of physicians’ work would perhaps be unusual. 259  There is one mention of medicine in St Stanislaus’s miracles of impaired children. The mother of a girl who suffered from a condition in her eyes testified that no medicine helped her: Stanislaus of Cracow, p. 301. 260  See AASS Oct. VIII, pp. 248, 252, 255, 257. 261  Margaret of Hungary, p. 343: ‘Interrogata, si fecit, vel dedit sibi aliquam medicinam, veniendo ad sepulcrum, respondit: “Nullam”’; Margaret of Hungary, p. 355: ‘Interrogatus, si aliqua medicina data, vel facta fuit dicte filie sue, quando ducta fuit ad dictum sepulcrum, antequam sanaretur, ut dixit, respondit: “Non”’. 262  Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 531. Then again, a miles called Gaufridus Budes hurt his leg and made a vow to Charles of Blois, after which he rode to Paris and consulted medici and cirurgi. They said his injury was getting better, and after the next five weeks he was well enough to stay on his feet. Consulting the medical professionals after the vow thus caused no relapse: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 121r–v. On similar examples in St Vincent Ferrer’s canonization process, see Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’, pp. 347–48. 263  In the Liber miraculorum of Louis of Toulouse, a medicus is reported as having been blind for four years. During his pilgrimage to Louis of Toulouse’s shrine, he begged with other paupers, because he was impoverished as a result of the medicine and pilgrimages to cure his blindness. This is a rare reference to the costs of medical help: Liber miraculorum S. Ludovici Episcopi, ed. by Collegio S. Bonaventura, pp. 309–10. The costs were also referred to in the testi-

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in the sources of this study, only one of the few children who were sons or daughters of noblemen were reported as having received medical assistance.264 Also, one notary’s son was reported as having been treated by medici.265 In several cases where medical attendance was reported, the child’s parents were titled as domina or dominus, but their actual social status is impossible to deduce. Because most children in the canonization processes came from betteroff families as a result of the selection process, and also because the witnesses’ actual social statuses were not always described, the testimonies do not reveal exactly how common it was that medical professionals, let alone various kinds of folk healers, were involved in the lives of poorer impaired children. The paupers undoubtedly tried out the healing methods they could afford,266 and medical practitioners would perhaps help the poor out of charity, as the surgeon Gilbertus did when treating Alicia de Lonesdale.267 She is the only poor child specifically reported as having received treatment from a professional medical practitioner.268 Examining the number of cases in the processes used in this study, it appears that boys were more likely to be visited by a physician than girls, as 15 per cent of girls and 24 per cent of boys were reported to have been attended by a medicus or a chirurgus. Whether this suggests that families were more eager to search for medical help for their sons or not is impossible to deduce. There are no notable differences between various processes considering gender either, or if there are, the samples are too small to be used as credible evidence but rather appear as individual cases. In some instances, as in St Thomas Cantilupe’s process, the type of impairment as well as the child’s place of residence seems to have influenced whether or monies regarding the cure of a blind man in Charles of Blois’s process. The beneficiary had used big sums on medical professionals with no help, until one surgeon said that he should waste no more money but that he would need a miracle: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fols 130r, 138r-v, 144v, 147v, 149v. 264  The child in question is a girl called Raynalducia, who had fistulas in her arm: Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 200–01. 265  Dauphine of Puimichel, p. 504. 266  According to Carole Rawclffe, while high-quality medical care certainly was expensive, ‘[o]ne of the most striking features of medieval healing is the wide range of treatment […] available at a price to suit almost every pocket’: Rawcliffe, ‘Curing Bodies and Healing Souls’, p. 113. 267  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 66v. 268  The ailing poor were also treated in hospitals, especially starting from the fourteenth century in Italy. See Park, ‘Healing the Poor’.

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not medical treatment was received. Alicia de Lonesdale is the only girl among the beneficiaries, and she is also the only child who was treated by a medical professional.269 However, all the boys had sensory impairments, three of them being mute because of lack of a tongue, and none of them lived in London, as Alicia did. These presumably were the primary reasons for the boys not receiving medical treatment.270 In the process of Peter of Morrone, one girl out of three and five boys out of twelve were mentioned as having been treated or examined by a medical professional.271 The boys who were not reported as having been visited by a physician or surgeon or given some kind of medicine were all either mute or blind, while the ones given medical treatment all had mobility impairments. However, the two girls not reported as having being attended by medicus or chirurgus had mobility problems as well. Presumably the medical assistance or the lack of it was the result of a combination of financial and geographical issues as well as individual traits and preferences linked to conceptions of curing possibilities. These aspects will be further discussed below. In addition to the importance of medical professionals for giving scientific background to the investigation in question, witness accounts are informative regarding the role of medical professionals in the lives of impaired children, showing not only various medical means to treat different disabling conditions but also revealing the parents’ willingness to invest in curing their offspring. More complicated to interpret are those testimonies in which physicians’ presence is not mentioned. Joseph Ziegler writes that recent studies have proved that when people became ill, asking for help from a saint was usually the last resort, turned to after the treatment of medical professionals or folk remedies had failed.272 Ziegler does not, unfortunately, refer to any ‘recent studies’ 269 

BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 66v. 270  In Thomas Cantilupe’s hearing the commissioners directly asked witnesses whether medical means were used. The wordings differed, though. Alicia, who had reported the treatment she received from the surgeon, was asked whether she was cured by any medical treatment. On the other hand, for example, the father of Johannes de Chandelier, an infant eventually cured of an eye condition, was asked whether any medical treatment was given: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 68r, 72v. 271  Peter of Morrone, pp. 246–47, 251–53, 257, 263, 280, 306–07, 315–16. 272  Ziegler, Medicine and Religion, p. 4. See also Krötzl, ‘Parent-Child Relations’, p. 31. Michael Goodich refers to one of Louis of Toulouse’s miracles that was not included in a canonization bull, suggesting that this may have been because the person had not searched for a natural cure, although at the time of Louis of Toulouse’s canonization inquiry, searching for medical help before a votum ‘had become a sine qua non of any confirmed miracle’: Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, p. 55. This does not seem to have been so unambiguous, however. For example, the

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when making this generalization, and others have been more reserved in their claims.273 There is scattered evidence in hagiographic sources about people actually using various curing methods simultaneously,274 but the witnesses were also aware of the approved structure of a miracle account and appear to have formatted their experiences and actions into this pattern, either consciously or unconsciously.275 Even if they had attempted several curing methods simultaneously, they were likely to report them in an order which would indicate that natural causes could not have effected the child’s cure. It is likely that in some cases even families who could afford medical help and who lived in the areas where such help was available chose not to consult trained physicians or surgeons. One possible reason is that people did not always trust in physicians, as the references to fear of their operations demonstrate. I have come across only one witness, however, who clearly expressed her mistrust. Hildegundis de Wigandeshusen’s son had a broken arm, but she did not want to follow advice to ask for help from medici. Instead, she stated that she would only trust in the merits of St Elizabeth.276 While this example can also be read as a literary motif of the superiority of saintly medicine,277 bad experiences with unhelpful earthly ‘curers’ were probably common. 278 For miracle of Rixenda de Fayensa was included in Louis of Toulouse’s canonization bull, although none of the witness depositions refer to any medical treatments: Bulla canonizationis, ed. by Collegio S. Bonaventura, p. 398; Louis of Toulouse, pp. 153–55. 273  André Vauchez has noted there are differences between various witnesses as to whether they first tried medical help or immediately made a vow to the saint: Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 544–45. Ronald Finucane estimates that ‘[a]t the very least, ten out of every hundred recorded medieval pilgrims who arrived at a shrine to seek or report a miraculous cure had already sought some sort of medical assistance’: Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 59. 274  See Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’, pp. 347–48. Many accounts in St Louis IX’s miracles also portray the beneficiaries using medicine and making various futile pilgrimages without making any comments on the time frame or explaining failing treatment by simultaneousness: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 23–26, 68–69. On the forbidding of returning to earthly medicine after a vow, see Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 531, and for the occasional reports of doing so in canonization processes, see also p. 209, n. 262. 275  Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’, pp. 345–47. 276  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 258: ‘consilium accepit mater, ut consilio alicuius medici uteretur. Que respondit, quod numquam advocaret medicum ad sanandum filium suum, quia merita beate Elyzabet ad sanandum eum solummodo invocaret’. 277  Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 317, n. 157. See also Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, p. 43 and Wendel-Widmer, Die Wunderheilungen, p. 19. 278  According to Ronald Finucane, the twelfth-century miracle collections consistently emphasize the superiority of saintly medicine: Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 64. This view

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example, Bellaflora’s impaired foot was unsuccessfully treated by physicians, and only the vow to St Nicholas of Tolentino cured her. When she was later afflicted by another severely debilitating illness, her mother again asked help from Nicholas, but no medical men were mentioned this time.279 The duration of the child’s impairment does not appear to explain the use or the lack of medical help or the number or absence of references to it. There are witness accounts in which a child remained impaired for years, and a witness was recorded as reporting that no medical treatment had been used. 280 Even more common are cases in which the impairment lasted for years but the witnesses made no reference to earthly medicine at all. At the same time, in those accounts in which the impairment lasted for years and the use of medicinalia was reported, the testimonies do not clarify when the medical means were used and whether they had only been tried when the condition had started and later been abandoned.281 On the other hand, there are accounts in which the child was reported as having had an impairing condition for a day or two, and the vow was almost used as ‘first aid’.282 All in all, the presence of medical professionals is mentioned in only 16 per cent of the accounts of miraculous cures of childhood impairments, even though the verdict of incurability given by medihas been groundedly criticized in Wilson, ‘Conceptions of the Miraculous’. Joseph Ziegler is of the opinion that by the fourteenth century, the so-called ‘earthly medicine’ was not considered an alternative to religious healing, but in fact the one supplemented and complemented the other, of which the presence of medical doctors in canonization trials is one proof: Ziegler, Medicine and Religion, p. 4. This may have been the case in the everyday experience of many people, who, despite their later, appropriate retelling of the order of the events, could nevertheless attempt earthly and saintly medicine simultaneously: see Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’, pp.  345–47; Haas, The Renaissance Man and his Children, pp.  162–63; Krötzl, ‘Saints, Healing and Communities’. However, that saints could still punish those who attempted to use earthly medicine after the votum or during pilgrimage is an indication that some underlying rivalry between the two ‘branches’ of medicine remained, at least from the hagiographic perspective. 279  Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 293–94. 280  See BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 235r; Dauphine of Puimichel, p. 478; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 78–81; Louis of Toulouse, p. 178. 281  As an example, an eighteen-year-old woman called Beatrix Ottonelli had been almost blind since infancy. According to her sister, their parents had tried various medical means to cure her. Based on the testimonies, it seems the parents had died, but the sisters or Beatrix’s brother-in-law did not mention when that had happened. Apparently, then, medical treatment had been given up at some point: AASS Oct. IX, pp. 803–04. 282  See AASS Nov. IV, pp. 590, 606; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 27 v; Yves of Tréguier, pp. 150–51.

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cal professionals increased the authenticity of the miracle. Even if we include the seventeen cases in which unspecified or non-professional medical treatment is mentioned, the corresponding percentage is twenty-four. Thus it seems that consulting physicians or using all other possible medical means before asking for help from the saint to cure a child’s physical impairment was not a norm, even though it is very likely that in reality a bigger proportion of children than that received some kind of medicinalia. The differences in the use of medical help may thus derive from not only geographic and socioeconomic variations, but also from conceptions regarding types of impairment. The hearing of St Louis of Toulouse is the process in which the scarcity of references to medical help is most noticeable. The witnesses came from southern France, the testimonies are lengthy and detailed, and the commissioners also sought to interview the beneficiaries whenever possible. Yet only one of the ten physically impaired children is reported as having been attended by a medical professional because of their condition. The child in question was Xanctia, the daughter of Petrus Vitalis de Massilia, who was contracta as an aftermath of St Anthony’s fire. In her own testimony she said that she believed she was cured by the merits of the saint, and not by the help of medici, cirurgi, or any other medicine,283 which implies that both physicians and surgeons had attended her. The mother of another child made a reference to the usage of unspecified medicinalia.284 The first explanation for the rarity of such references that comes to mind is simply that references to medical help did not end up being recorded in the testimonies — for example, in the testimonies of Xanctia’s parents there are no such mentions. It is, however, likely that in some cases whether or not references to medical help were made depended also on the type of the condition. In Iacobus Deodatus’s case both the nurse and the notary who taught the boy stated, in answer to the commissioners’ question, that the child was given no medicine.285 The nurse explained this by saying that the condition was incurable. This may be related to childhood in the sense that mobility impairments that were inborn or acquired in infancy were more easily considered untreatable.286 In Louis of Toulouse’s process, of the seven children with mobility impairments and not reported as having received medical treatment, three had 283 

Louis of Toulouse, p. 174. Guillel made Balnia stated that she was sure her son was cured of gutta by the merits of St Louis, and not by any other medicinalia: Louis of Toulouse, p. 188. 285  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 178, 179–80. 286  On congenitality and incurability, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 68–69. 284 

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had their conditions since birth,287 and one was less than one year old.288 At the same time, there are thirteen adult beneficiaries cured of conditions affecting mobility, and of them nine were reported to have received some kind of medical treatment, or been cured by the merits of the saint, not because of medicine.289 Moreover, two children with severe fever were reportedly treated by physicians, as well as a boy suffering from dropsy and a small girl who was dropped by her mother.290 Thus the commissioners of the hearing did not systematically leave medical help uninvestigated, nor did the notaries fail to record it. In general, it appears that most of the children’s conditions impairing mobility and treated by medical professionals were acquired later in life, while in the sources of this study only two children who had innate mobility impairments were reported as having received professional medical care,291 and one child was medicated by his mother.292 In Peter of Morrone’s process there are eight children with mobility problems. Of those five were reported as having received failed professional medical care, or were pronounced incurable by a medical professional.293 Among those three in whose cases no physicians or surgeons were mentioned were the two children whose condition was congenital.294 The one child whose mobility impairment was acquired later and who was not reported as having been medically treated was a girl called Floresenda. Her father was the only witness and his account is heavily summarized, so it is possible that any medical remedies used were simply not recorded.295 Although all this may indicate that congenital mobility impairments were considered harder to treat than those acquired later, the accounts in which the child’s condition is defined as innate or acquired ‘in the cradle’ are far fewer in number than those in which the condition started later or its origins were not reported, so that comparisons can only be suggestive.296 This disparity in 287 

In addition to Iacobus Deodatus, see Louis of Toulouse, pp. 161–62, 226–28. Louis of Toulouse, pp. 169–71. Interestingly, in Peter of Morrone’s hearing one child’s rupture was incurable because of the child’s tender age: Peter of Morrone, pp. 277–78. 289  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 97, 167, 182–83, 186–88, 168, 190, 193, 210–12, 227. 290  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 130, 133, 184, 240. 291  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 827, 879. 292  Clare of Montefalco, p. 348. 293  Peter of Morrone, pp. 246–47, 262, 263, 306–07, 215–16. 294  Peter of Morrone, pp. 301–02, 308–10. 295  Peter of Morrone, p. 290. Floresenda was unable to walk for a year, and was cured when the father took her to listen to Peter’s sermon. 296  Of the 124 beneficiaries with childhood mobility impairments, the conditions of only 288 

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numbers presumably reflects the actual situation. Approximately 3 per cent of live-born neonates nowadays are known to have an obvious birth defect, while additional defects detected during the early years increase the percentage to eight in five-year-olds.297 Considering the health problems many such conditions cause, the proportion of surviving children with birth defects must have been smaller in the later Middle Ages. Moreover, even in the cases where congenital conditions were very similar, the treatment given was not. As an example, Iacobus Deodatus and Ceptus Sperançe di Montefalco had both had badly twisted feet since they were born. As mentioned above, Iacobus was reported as not having received medical care, but Ceptus’s mother took him to the baths and gave him ointments,298 even though Iacobus’s family seems to have been wealthy and Ceptus’s apparently was not. This case is an example of how the social standing of the family does not always explain the usage or the lack of medical treatment, even if in some cases it may explain the presence of prestigious trained physcians.299 Despite the importance of medical professionals as witnesses, the way a child’s impairment was defined in medical terms did not have a significant effect on whether a medical professional was consulted or not, or whether the condition was deemed untreatable early on. As an illustration, the sirurgicus Riccardus twenty-two of them were reported to have been inborn or acquired in infancy. See AASS Oct. IX, pp. 827–28, 879–80; AASS Nov. IV, p. 606; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fol. 88r; Birgitta of Vadstena, pp. 131, 133–34; Clare of Montefalco, pp. 348–49; Dorothea of Montau, p. 453; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 175–76, 187, 213, 249–50; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 96–98, 101–04; Louis of Toulouse, pp. 161–62, 176–82, 226–27; Margaret of Hungary, pp. 317–18; Peter of Morrone, pp. 301–02, 308–09; Urban V, pp. 430–31, 447. One child was impaired because he was dragged from his mother’s womb by his toes: Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 185. In addition, in Les Miracles de Saint Louis there are two girls, Denisete and Mabileta, who, according to the narrative, were healthy until they reached the age when children should learn to walk, when they could not stay on their feet. The case of Mabileta has been discussed on pp. 54–55, 95–98, 136: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 108–12, 126–28; Fragments, pp. 39–54. Neither Mabileta nor Denisete are reported as having received medical care. 297  Moore and Persaud, The Developing Human, p. 184, cit. in Graumann, ‘Monstrous Births and Retrospective Diagnosis’, p. 181. 298  Clare of Montefalco, p. 348. 299  See also Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, p. 41, who writes concerning the miracles of Clare of Montefalco that ‘the large minority who had sought out a medical practitioner cannot be identified with any particular social class’. Then again, most of the witnesses in Clare’s hearing come from urban Italian townspeople of Spoleto and its surroundings and do not provide a very representative sample of the general population. For discussion of Ceptus’s social status, see p. 163, and on the Deodatus family, see p. 169.

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de Sulmona thought that Francesse Berardi’s fistulas could not be cured.300 Domina Ottebella testified about the cure of a girl called Tomasina and stated that she was cured by the merits of John Buoni, because the illness was incurable, as is typical of fistulae.301 She thus shared the known attitude of medical professionals who considered them difficult to treat. 302 However, in the same process, three children were reported as having been treated with lots of medicine because of the same problem.303 In addition to children with mobility impairments, others with various kinds of sensory problems were also reported as having received medical treat­­ment. Eye afflictions were treated regardless of whether they were innate, acquired in infancy, or caused by some kind of disease contracted later in child­­hood,304 but as with mobility impairments, there were few cases of eye conditions reported as contracted in infancy. 305 Whether the level of blindness influenced the medical help given also remains unclear, but even complete blindness was occasionally medically treated.306 It seems that the probability of children’s eye afflictions being treated, or at least examined by physicians or given medicine by laymen, was approximately the same as for conditions affecting mobility, as 20 per cent of children miraculously cured of eye afflictions were reported as having either been visited by a physician or given unspecified 300 

Peter of Morrone, pp. 253–54: ‘et statim quod uidit eam in sua cura recipere recusauit reputans morbum esse incurabilem, tamen aliqua fecit ad mitigationem propter debilitatem puelle et sic dimisit ipsam pro derelicta et incurabili, quia plaga ipsa erat cum corrumptione ossis et infistulata ac erant inibi aperture quamplures’. 301  AASS Oct. IX, p. 802: ‘cum ipsa infirmitas esset incurabilis, ut mos est talium fistularum’. 302  Demaitre, Medieval Medicine, p. 96. 303  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 786, 790, 811–12. 304  For those receiving medical treatment for an eye-condition acquired in infancy, see AASS Oct. IX, pp. 803–04, 877–78; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 20–22; Stanislaus of Cracow, p. 307. 305  The cures of those defined as having had an eye-condition since infancy are in AASS Oct. IX, pp. 803–04, 877–78; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 161, 228–29, 252–53; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 20–22; Stanislaus of Cracow, p. 307. 306  According to Irina Metzler, medical textbooks did not offer any remedies for complete blindness, although they give lengthy instructions on how to treat various eye afflictions: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 101–02. In the miracle depositions, physicians are occasionally mentioned in cases where a child is reported as having seen nothing. See AASS Oct.  IX, p.  876; Margaret of Hungary, pp.  297–99; Nicholas of Tolentino, pp.  598, 600; Birgitta of Vadstena, pp. 128–29.

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medicine, while the equivalent percentage for children with mobility impairments is twenty-two. My sources document fifteen miracle accounts in which a child was reported as being mute without other symptoms, and fifteen in which muteness appeared together with a mobility impairment. Of these thirty children, only two were reported as having received medical treatment. Both were boys, eventually cured by the merits of Peter of Morrone, and both, in addition to their inability to speak, were unable to walk.307 In most cases no reason for the inability to speak was specified; however, three mute children featured in the process of Thomas Cantilupe, and the reason given for their condition was the lack of a tongue. This would certainly have been considered an untreatable condition, although the poverty of two of the boys would have made help from physicians improbable in any case, unless someone had treated them as an act of charity. That inability to speak was considered an incurable condition is also suggested by the case of one of the noblest children in our sources, Ludovicus de Sabrano. Despite the family’s evident wealth and the mother’s sorrow over the child’s status as a future heir, the family’s vassal, magister Michael Engelberti de Podio Pino, told the commissioners that the boy had been given no medicine. This may, however, refer to medicine taken after the vow because, when asked whether Ludovicus had been given any medicine, he replied that he had not, of which he was certain because he went with him.308 Concerning the family’s high social standing and that high-profile medical help was easily available in their location, this may be the most plausible explanation.309 Of the eight children with ear afflictions, only one was reported to have received any kind of medical treatment. That was the quasi surdus Vannes in St Clare of Montefalco’s process. The way the information is phrased in the testimony does not make it clear who gave medicine to the boy. The boy’s aunt was the only witness, but the commissioners may also have referred to medical means in general.310 Rixenda de Fayensa’s brother’s remark that everyone

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Peter of Morrone, pp. 263–64, 315–17. Dauphine of Puimichel, p. 478: ‘Interrogatus si fuerunt apposite aliqua medicinalia, dixit quod non, ut potest constatare, cum venit cum ipso testi loquente dictus Ludovicus’. 309  On the availability of medical professionals in the area, see Archambeau, ‘God Helps Those Who Help Themselves’, pp. 21–22. 310  Clare of Montefalco, p. 373: ‘Interrogata si fecerat medicamina, respondit quod plura et plura sed nichil profuerant’. 308 

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considered the girl’s condition incurable may include medical professionals of some kind or at least their opinions, but that remains uncertain.311 Deafness appears to have been generally regarded as incurable, even though ear disorders were occasionally described in medical textbooks. Medical writers had varying opinions on the matter, but most of them agreed that pre-natal deafness was untreatable, and so also was chronic, profound deafness.312 As deaf and deaf-mute children appear much more rarely among the beneficiaries of the canonization processes than blind children or those with mobility impairments, the numbers are not comparable. Still, the absence of medical treatment in most accounts may derive from physicians’ scepticism or the common opinion about the untreatability of deafening conditions. This does not mean that no medical professionals were treating hearing and speech impediments as there are occasional references to it in hagiographic texts. For example, in the first diocesan process of Raymund of Penyaforte from 1279 there is an interesting case recording that a youth who was almost completely deaf carefully studied medical books in order to find a treatment, but found nothing of use.313 Nevertheless, in all likelihood the idea that deafness was incurable was widespread among both laymen and medical professionals. As the examples analysed above show, the miracle depositions include certain patterns concerning (professional) medical help for childhood impairments, as well as the role of medical professionals in their everyday life. However, statistical analysis of the commonness of such treatment can only be suggestive, for there is no guarantee that futile medical treatment would always have been recorded. There are occasional discrepancies between different testimonies concerning a single miracle, which may be a further sign of this.314 There also 311 

Louis of Toulouse, p. 154. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 102. 313  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 6059, fol. 41r–v. For a later example of long-term treatment for deafness in German autobiographical writings, see Frohne and Horn, ‘On the Fluidity of “Disability”’, pp. 37–38. See also Louis of Toulouse, pp. 157, 160, 235; Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. by Craigie Robertson, i, 447. 314  This possibility is illustrated in two of Nicholas of Tolentino’s miracles. The parents of Zuccius, who was in danger of losing his eyes, did not mention medical professionals attending the child. However, Domina Nina, who was the third witness, reported that magister Thomas had attended the child and said that only God could help him. Although Nina testified before the mother, the mother was apparently not asked about the presence of the medicus: Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 109, 257, 433. In another case, the daughter of a nobleman was reported to have suffered from exbruncios. When cured of it, her eyes remained swollen and blind. The term and the family’s status, as well as their residence in Italy, would suggest that trained physicians were 312 

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remains the possibility that in cases where the condition was chronic, medical treatment had been given at some point but was omitted from the testimonies because it had happened in the distant past and was not relevant to the cure. It is also possible that when replying ‘no’ to the question about the usage of medicine, some witnesses precisely meant medicine after the vow. Moreover, when the witnesses stated that they had been sure the cure happened as a result of the saintly intervention, this may imply that futile medical help had been received earlier. Nevertheless, popular and more scientific ideas about treatability and incurability intermingled and influenced the definitions of physical impairment. This interlacing is further visible when non-orthodox or even ‘forbidden’ treatments are concerned.

Folk Medicine and Healing Practices As stated at the beginning of the previous chapter, the medical pluralism of the Middle Ages means that contemporary views of ‘official’, ‘unofficial’, and ‘reli­­gi­ous’ healing practices were by no means unambiguous, and the dividing lines between these categories were quite fluid. Canonization records make spo­­radic ref­erences to the usage of ‘unofficial’ medicine, and the use of incantations or other such methods would have proved the miracle a non-genuine one.315 There­­fore, the wording ad quibus verbis interpositis appearing in the formulae of many processes referred to fraud and superstitious practices. 316 The question was meant to ensure that the vow was made according to the rules and to the par­­ticular saint in question, thus implying that other spiritual beings might be turned to for help. Among the canonization processes used in this study, the pro­­cess of St Thomas Cantilupe is the only one where the specific question regarding any treatment except medical help, either natural or superstitious, or whether there was any fraud involved, was regularly recorded, and consulted, but the testimonies of the girl’s mother and grandmother do not refer to medici. It is therefore possible that physicians had been present during the exbruncios, but that their opinion was not considered important for the residual blindness: Nicholas of Tolentino, pp. 164, 383–84. 315  Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 58–60. See also Bartlett, The Natural and the Supernatural, pp. 22–23. 316  Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 59. The question was, in the first place, essential because the replies to it provided the curia with sufficient evidence that the miracle had not been an act of Satan rather than an act of God: Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, p. 92. Ronald Finucane also writes that the possible use of magic, incantations, and sortilege as remedies was always asked about: Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p. 10.

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where the question appears in the formula interrogatorii.317 The process of St Louis of Toulouse is the other one where the witnesses were occasionally and specifically asked whether ‘unorthodox’ methods had been used to cure a child, but as the questionnaire has not been preserved, it is not known if the question was included in the formal list or only asked when the commissioners had reasons for suspicion.318 It is probable that the commissioners’ enquiries about medicina discussed above included the possibility of treatment given by lay healers, and possibly also so-called magic or superstitious means. However, the witnesses seldom spe­­ ci­­fied any unofficial healing methods, regardless of their type. As an example, a Hungarian woman called Elisabeth reported that her blind daughter had received lots of medicina, and after hearing about the miracles of St Margaret, said that she would have no more of them. The commissioners asked whether the girl had been given other medicina besides the one mentioned earlier, to which Elisabeth replied no, but she said a woman from Buda had put powder in her eyes many times.319 At the same time, the mother of a boy who had fallen from a ladder referred to the opinion of ‘those who know how to set bones’ that the boy would remain crippled or mutilated, probably referring to bone-

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BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 4v: ‘Item quinto si in operacione dictorum miraculorum fuerunt apposite herbe vel lapides vel alique alie res naturales vel medicinales et si incantationes vel superstitiones vel fraudes alique intervenerunt in operacione ipsorum miraculorum’. For replies to the question regarding the cures of physically impaired children, see BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 67r, 69r, 70r, 71r, 72v, 187r, 204v, 235r. 318  In the cases of Beatrix and Iacobus, their mothers and Iacobus’s nurse as well as one of the neighbours were asked if any ointments or figmentum had been used: Louis of Toulouse, pp. 163, 177, 178, 179. Figmentum as a term does not appear in other canonization records. It can be translated as ‘figment’, ‘fraud’, ‘pretence’, or ‘unreality’, thus presumably referring to some unreal or false curing methods, which could include magic, incantations, or sortilegia: See du Cange and others, eds, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, iii, col. 439c. Just as in Cantilupe’s process, the social status of the family in question has no significance, as Beatrix and her mother were poor, while Iacobus’s family was not. Why this question was only sporadically recorded can only be speculated, but perhaps in these particular cases the commissioners had some specific reasons for suspicions. 319  Margaret of Hungary, p. 297: ‘Interrogata, si aliquas medicinas faciebat dicte filie sue, preter dictas medicinas, respondit: “Non, sed mater plebani de Buda que mortua est, misit mul­­ toties pulverem in oculis suis”’. In St Elizabeth’s miracles, a woman cured of blindness did not mention any earthly remedies, but it is reported that nine witnesses from the same village knew about her blindness, and many of them frequently put salt (sal) in her eyes: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 191.

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setters who had no official status as physicians.320 In some testimonies it appears that parents themselves medicated their children. 321 Additionally, Moriset de Ranton reported that he tried to treat his abscesses on his own; among the medicine used were hemp and elder. He did not explain where he found out how to do this, but considering that his loose social network at the time consisted of the residents of the hospital where he was staying, it is probable that someone there advised him, unless he had previous knowledge of how to treat such a condition.322 In the testimonies included in Thomas Cantilupe’s process all witnesses responded ‘no’ to the question about other healing methods. Because there was a fine line between ‘official’ or ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ treatments, one may ask whether the witnesses had a clear picture of them. On the other hand, it is possible that people would not have admitted it even if they had tried healing methods unapproved by the Church, and as they often had time to discuss mat­­ters before giving their testimonies, they could even make such a decision together. It is also possible that if a person was under suspicion of being wont to trust in healing methods unapproved by the Church, he or she would not have been used as a witness. This is supported by the much more frequent reference to folk remedies, healers, and charmers in miracle collections recorded at shrines. As an example, a youth was reported to have been cured at the shrine of Thomas Becket after having been treated ‘by an old woman’s remedies’, and a monk in the same collection used charms (idolatriae medicaminibus et arcanis quibusdam caligantibus) to treat his blindness.323 Occasionally the witnesses also described their trialling of remedies. Alicia de Lonesdale reported that she had put her ailing leg in a stream, which started from a spring in front of St Clemens’s Church. However, she specified that she had done so because she wanted to clean the wound, not because she had any devotion towards the stream or any spring.324 Whether she was telling the 320 

Nicholas of Tolentino, p.  332: ‘credebatur per personas, que sciunt reactare ossa, quod deberet remanere magagnatus’. On the term ‘magagnatus’, see du Cange and others, eds, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, v, cols 166c, 177a. 321  Sinibaldus de Subiaco and his wife medicated their son, who was unable to use his right side: ASV, MS A.A., Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 3r. Similarly, Ceptus Sperançe de Montefalco received medicine given by his mother: Clare of Montefalco, p. 348. 322  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 47. 323  Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. by Craigie Robertson, i, 188–89, 382–83. For more examples, see Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 62–63. 324  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 66v.

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truth, or whether her understanding about her original motivations had been altered by time or her later experiences remains unknown, but springs and wells were still thought to have healing powers in the late medieval period and pilgrimages were made to them.325 As an example of a different kind of assurance, when describing her cure, Bengeven reported that while staying at the shrine of John Buoni, she refused to put any bandages on her drying fistulas, but let them touch the ground upon the grave. She also put some earth from the grave on the wounds.326 Presumably Bengeven was aware of the belief that when a saint had already started the cure, recourse to any earthly medicine could result in aggravation of the illness.327 Although some testimonies about medicina may include treatments more ‘suspicious’ than herbals or powders, direct references to any incantations are extremely rare. One case in St Birgitta’s miracles, however, refers to them. A girl had been possessed by the Devil for some years. Her parents invited a woman to make incantations, but her attempts only made the girl worse. After some time a man came and recited his spells over the girl, but the condition got still worse, and only a vow to the saint cured her.328 For a later case, in St Frances of Rome’s hearing from the 1440s, domna Gentilesca, whose daughter had been unable to move since infancy, was told that she should take the child to a venefica. The girl was cured by the living saint, who praised the mother for not having trusted in the advice of ‘enemies’ (inimici).329 325  Arnold, Belief and Unbelief, p. 95; Webb, Pilgrimage in Medieval England, pp. 141–46. For example, in early fifteenth-century Arezzo there was a spring once sacred to Apollo, where parents bought sick children to get them cured. St Bernardino of Siena tried to eliminate the spring, but the population rose against him because of their respect for its healing powers. Bernardino returned fifteen years later, desecrated the place and dedicated a church to Santa Maria della Grazie. The cures of children continued, but this time they occurred under divine sanction: Haas, The Renaissance Man and his Children, p. 162. 326  AASS Oct. IX, p. 811: ‘et dixit quod nolebat dimittere aliquod ligamen super ipsis foraminibus fistulae, sed apponebat desuper de terra sepulturae dicti fratris’. See also, for example, Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 26. This custom is a fine example of the ingermingling of different curing methods, portraying the saint’s shrine as producing very tangible medicine. Probably Bengeven also wanted the impaired parts of her body to be in as close a contact with the grave as possible. On this custom, see Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 141–42. 327  For example, in a miracle of Lawrence of Subiaco’s process, a boy who was miraculously cured of a leprosy-like condition relapsed after his mother had started to ask for medicine ad suggestionem cujusdam once the curing process had already begun: ASV, MS A.A., Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 4r. 328  Birgitta of Vadstena, p. 120. 329  Frances of Rome, pp. 159–60. Similarly, in Bernardino of Siena’s hearing a woman’s ill-

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The methods of folk medicine, whether they included different kinds of medicine and plasters, or magic and incantations, were mostly transmitted orally,330 and as the curing methods did not exclude one another, it is likely that in many instances the child was treated with ‘scientific’ medicine, folk medi­­­­cine, and by asking help from saints.331 Presumably delivering this kind of information was in the interests of the whole community, but hagiographic sources provide little information about this, and it is reasonable to suspect that often advice like that described by Gentilesca was simply not reported in canonization hearings. There are examples of the community playing an active role in trying to save a child from mortal danger, 332 and one might suppose that attempting to heal children from impairing ailments was also a communal concern. Such an attitude is, however, more apparent in the events resulting in a suc­­cessful vow or pilgrimage, which will be discussed below. As already mentioned, parents were the ones whose primary responsibility it was to find medical treatment for their ailing children, while with adults the sick person was the one responsible for finding a cure. There are a few references in canonization depositions that hint at parental responsibility and the communal deliverance of medical advice. Presbyter Joannes de Cammorata, the father of Petrus who was paralyticus, reportedly took pains to cure the child, but the instructions and help of others did not help.333 This could refer to any form of treatment and does not specify who gave the advice. Whether the mother of Ceptus Sperançe di Montefalco decided to try baths, plasters, and ointments because of advice given by trained physicians, surgeons, or folk healers, or simply because it was customary, is not revealed, but the treatments described were not unlike those used by professionals.334 Francisca, the mother ness had been treated by ‘sortilegious’ means, and it was caused by sortilegia in the first place: Bernardino of Siena, p. 441. In Florence in 1376 there was a legal case, where a man was burned because he had used sorcery to cure people, including children: Haas, The Renaissance Man and his Children, pp. 161–62. 330  Charon, ‘The Knowledge of Herbs’, pp. 119–27; Getz, Medicine in the English Middle Ages, pp. 35–36. See also Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 67–69. 331  See also Arnold, Belief and Unbelief, pp. 93–94; Haas, The Renaissance Man and his Children, pp. 162–63. 332  See Krötzl, ‘Parent-Child Relations’, pp. 31–32. 333  ASV, MS A.A., Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 5r: ‘dixit, quod cum ipse haberet filium nomine Petrum paralyticum, et diu pro sanitate ipsius laborasset, nec consilio vel adjutorio alterius praedictus filius ejus potuisset liberari’. 334  As an example, the healing waters of Bath were a popular place for sick people to visit.

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of a boy who had a blind eye, testified that powder and the advice of medici had not helped him.335 While this spread of healing methods shows one aspect of children’s impairments as being of communal concern, our information regarding the matter remains patchy due to the fragmented nature of the sources.336 In contrast to texts from the canonization processes, the exemplum of Étienne de Bourbon, concerning Guinefort the holy greyhound (discussed on pp. 100–01), gives another angle on the matter. In the narrative, the women of the village ask the help of an old woman, a vetula, who advises them to seek help from the grave of the greyhound.337 The motif of people asking for help from a witch-like old woman in matters concerning the health of small children is a common feature of much earlier writings, being mentioned, for example, by Caesarius of Arles in the early sixth century. In his sermon he talks about women who do not ask for the Church’s medicine to get help for their sick sons or abortions. Instead, they consult soothsayers, seers, oracles, or witches, and sacrifice a garment of a sick person, such as a girdle that can be seen and measured.338 Although making an appearance in canonization records rather rarely, the vetula is a well-known character in medieval literature. She is an old woman, often portrayed in a very negative light and seen, for example, as a go-between, to whose power and advice young women were prone to succumb.339 As an example, besides his narrative about the holy greyhound, Étienne de Bourbon wrote about other instances where an old woman gave erroneous advice or Presumably at least some of them went there on their doctors’ advice: Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 61. In Peter of Verona’s miracles a noblewoman is about to treat her paralyzed son with herbal baths, following the counsel of physicians: Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor, p. 253. 335  AASS Nov. IV, p. 601: ‘qui multorum pulverum et medicorum ante non potuit liberari’. 336  Ronald Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 62–63, writes that although the monks who wrote down the miracles at shrines had ‘little sympathy’ towards the healers, their records nevertheless reveal a lot about the healers and charmers, who could be priests as well as laypeople. These notions further illustrate the ambivalence towards the treatment of impaired children, and that it is possible that the information about the treatments came from clerics. See Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, pp. 10–14, 43–44 on the medical activity of the monks and the attempts to control it. 337  Étienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes Historiques, ed. by de la Marche, pp. 325–28. 338  Caesarius of Arles, Sermons or Admonitions on Various Topics, ed. and trans. by Mueller, p. 262. On Caesarius of Arles and pagan customs, see Morin, ed. Césaire d’Arles, pp. 138–42, and on the pagan customs in Étienne de Bourbon’s exemplum, Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound, pp. 22–23. 339  On the literary representations of vetulae, see Pratt, ‘De vetula.

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acted heretically or superstitiously in other ways.340 He warned people about seeking medical help from a vetula or a soothsayer (the two intermingle in his exempla),341 but not all of the accounts had to do with healing of illnesses. Vetulae were also portrayed as giving advice, for example, on how to make love potions or treat sterility, and were associated with witchcraft by many writers of the era.342 Here again the hazy boundary between superstition and other healing practices must be kept in mind. Robert Norman Swanson reasonably asks if we can really know whether the mothers who took their sick children to Guinefort’s grave actually knew about the legend of the dog which Étienne de Bourbon had written down. There were human saints with the same name, honoured at Bourges, Pavia, and Sens, and devotion to them also included ritual actions, the purpose of which was to determine whether a sickly child would live or die.343 Many practices unaccepted by the Church were quite similar to the invocations to saints,344 and, as mentioned before, different methods could be used simultaneously. Whether pagan practices endured in the Christianized parts of Europe has also been much discussed. It seems evident that traces of them remained in various folk customs, but it has also been proposed that sources that emphasize paganism ‘simply recapitulate the standard language of earlier authorities and offer no reliable information about real magical practices continuing in Christian society’.345 Either way, there was a connection between the vetulae and women healers in the minds of clerical authorities, although the vetulae mainly appear as topos-like characters. The devaluing of old women and their medical advice has been seen as ‘the trauma of professional medicine’s birth as it was juxtaposed to vernacular theology’.346 However, although heavily coloured by the writers’ attitudes, the character is not without any basis in the real world, as (older) women acted both as healers and conveyors of information. Women healers are usually 340 

Étienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes Historiques, ed. by de la Marche, pp. 316–24. See Étienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes Historiques, ed. by de la Marche, p. 319. 342  See Goodich, ‘Miseries of Dulcia and Cristina’, p. 104. 343  Swanson, Religion and Devotion, p. 186. 344  See Arnold, Belief and Unbelief, pp.  94–96; Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, pp. 70–73, 78–80, 103; Radding, ‘Il riconoscimento del miracolo’, p. 103; Swanson, Religion and Devotion, pp. 184–87; Weinstein and Bell, Saints & Society, p. 249. 345  Bailey, ‘The Age of Magicians’, pp. 6–9. 346  Bishop, Words, Stones, & Herbs, p. 147. 341 

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considered as having had a central role, especially in matters regarding procreation and women’s health, but they were also active in other areas of healthcare.347 During the later Middle Ages they started to decline in importance and lose their trustworthiness as academic medicine developed and intervened increasingly in women’s issues.348 When thinking of the births of congenitally impaired children, and especially those with visible malformations, midwives and other women assisting in childbirth were the first to see the infant, possibly also to treat it or advise the mother about what to do, and to spread information about the birth to the community. In canonization records midwives make an appearance mainly in miraculous savings from dangerous childbirth. In the depositions regarding the miraculous cures of impaired children they are almost completely absent, presumably because impairments defined as innate were rare. Midwives were usually women of lower status and not necessarily closely related to the child; therefore, they were not appreciated as witnesses except for childbirths, about which they had intimate information, and because in many cases there was a large gap in time between the child’s birth and the inquiry.349 In addition to women, male healers who were not educated medical ‘professionals’ must also have been active. The reason for the over-representation of women in many warning exempla is that churchmen viewed them as being more prone to superstition and demonic tricks.350 However, as the miracle testimonies cited above show, men were also involved in attempting to heal their children, and in the cases when parents treated children on the advice of others, the gender of the Adviser could as easily be male as female.351 Moreover, Monica H. Green has shown that although there was a growing interest in the vernacular versions of medical writings in the later Middle Ages, these writings were pri347 

Stoudt, ‘Medieval German Women and the Power of Healing’. On female practitioners, especially of gynecology, and how it became a matter of interest for men, see Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine. 349  In the sources of this study, a midwife is sometimes mentioned when the child’s impairment had something to do with her actions. See BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 234v on the blindness of a boy called Roger and Nicholas of Tolentino, p. 185, on a boy with twisted toes. When testifying about Iacobus Deodatus, Maria Marcella stated that she had heard that the boy was born with twisted legs from the women who were present at his birth: Louis of Toulouse, p. 178. 350  While men were connected with rationality and angels, women where connected with corporality and demons. In some writings their bodies were seen as weaker and more open than men’s, making it easier for demons to enter them. See, for example, Caciola, Discerning Spirits, pp. 130–58. 351  ASV, MS A.A., Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 5r: ‘nec consilio vel adjutorio alterius praedictus filius ejus potuisset liberari’. 348 

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marily addressed to male readers. Women were not seen as readers of medical texts beyond certain ‘cosmetic’ works, or herbals addressed to specified noblewomen, and the first texts specifically addressed to midwives — the most uniform group of female healers — was only written in the late fifteenth century.352 The role of trained physicians is (perhaps exaggeratedly) emphasized in any definition of incurability given in the sources for this study. We can assume that references to incurability ‘by any earthly means’ could refer to futile medical help or to an opinion given by physicians or ‘folk healers’, or simply reflect the views of family members or the community. Whatever the case, the role of the community in suggesting or obtaining medical consultation was significant.

The Search for a Miraculous Cure as a Communal Concern Medieval religious life was emblematically communal, and saints and sainthood were negotiated in the community. Miracles also strengthened the bonds of a community, and the witnesses to a miracle remained socially bonded by the spiritual and sacred event.353 This naturally also had an effect on the ways a community sought spiritual help for its members. Although the members of the family, especially the parents, usually took the initiative in making a vow to the saint, other members of the community played their part in this as well. Most often this was done by suggesting either the vow or a pilgrimage, but especially in the cases when the child had no parent to take this responsibility, community members could take the child to the shrine. In this section these two roles will be examined to throw further light on communal knowledge and publicity about childhood impairments, as well as physical impairment as a matter that belonged to the social sphere as a whole. When the Parisian girl Mabileta was four years old, her father Herbertus’s colleague and neighbour, tinctor pannorum Richardus Vaudien, asked why he had not taken the girl to the grave of King Louis IX of France, where it was said that many miracles took place. According to his own testimony, Herbertus replied that he did not know, to which Richardus said that the saint certainly wanted Herbertus to do something for him. After this, Herbertus promised that he would not drink wine on any Friday for seven years.354 Richardus gave 352 

Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, esp. pp. 196–98. Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 12–13. 354  Fragments, p. 40: ‘“Quid est, Herberte, quod tu non portas Mabiletam, filiam tuam, ad tumulum domini Ludovici ubi dicuntur fieri multa miracula?” Et Herbertus dixit: “Ego nescio.” Et tunc dictus dixit ei: “Certe sancti bene volunt quod aliquid fiat pro eis.” […] Unde statim 353 

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a slightly different report of the conversation, stating that he had said that if Herbertus believed him, he should take the girl to the shrine.355 The wording of Herbertus’s testimony indicates that he remembered Richardus wondering why he had not planned on making a pilgrimage with the girl, while Richardus, for his part, emphasized his own faith in the miraculous powers of the saintly king. The hearing took place about eleven years after the events, so it is possible that their memories of the course of the discussion had faded. Nevertheless, Richardus had some first-hand experience of the miracles, because Mabileta’s mother, Yfamia, said that Richardus had actually been to the shrine, and when he returned, he told of the miracles he had seen and said that Herbertus should take the girl there.356 The discussion between Herbertus and Richardus demonstrates how the search for a saintly cure could be a communal matter, and how friends, colleagues, and other community members could have a big impact on where and how the heavenly remedy was searched for. It was, nevertheless, the parents’ respon­­sibility to take the necessary action. A more striking example of this comes from the canonization hearing of St Elizabeth. A miles called Ditricus de Werbim testified about his son’s severe impairment and the events that led to his cure as follows: Requisitus, quando curatus fuit, respondit, quod sabbato ante dominicam Circum­ dederunt anni presentis, dum in mensa sua sederet, redargutus ab amicis suis, quare auxilium sancte E. pro curatione filii sui non imploraret. Surrexit de mensa una cum uxore sua et intrantes ecclesiam post horam vespertinam votum fecerunt dicen­­tes: ‘Sancta E., sana filium nostrum, et nos cum oblationibus et imagine cerea eum ad tuum sepulcrum deferimus’.357 votum emisit et promisit quod portaret filiam suam ad tumulum domini Ludovici et, si infra dies videret eam stare super pedes suos erectam et per se incedere, ipse non biberet vinum aliqua die veneris extunc usque ad septem annos’. In medieval Catholicism, Friday was a fast day, and fasting on that day was one of the signs of a true Christian. In its strictest form, abstinence meant eating only bread, salt and water: Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, pp. 37–38, 40–41. Whether Herbertus thought that not drinking wine on Fridays was an easy way of showing his Christian gratitude or whether he wanted to increase his merits as a Christian man remains unanswered. Additionally, Beatrix Ottonelli promised that if John Buoni cured her of her blindness, she would fast every Friday in his honour: AASS Oct. IX, p. 803. 355  Fragments, p. 43: ‘“Herberte, si vos creditis michi, vos portabitis Mabiletam filiam vestram ad Sanctum Dyonisium et ad tumulum Domini Ludovici.”’ 356  Fragments, p. 48. 357  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 232. The miracle occurred the following day, after the boy had a dream of St Elizabeth who wanted to cure him.

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(Asked how [the boy] was cured, he responded that on Saturday before Septuagesima in the present year [29 January 1233], while he was sitting at his table, he was accused by his friends of not imploring St Elizabeth to cure his son. He rose from the table with his wife and entered the church after the vespers, and they made the vow, saying: ‘Saint Elizabeth, cure our son, and we bring him to your grave with oblations and a waxen image’.)

It seems that miracle stories were an interesting dinner table subject for highstatus laity, so it is only natural that one couple’s child’s ailment became a topic of discussion.358 In addition to Ditricus’s testimony the only one I have found in which other people’s suggestion to make a vow to a certain saint has an accusatory or reproachful tone is found in the hearing of Philip of Bourges. It is perhaps no coincidence that in this case the talk concerned an armiger’s daughter. In his testimony Guillelmus de Chanteler, the father of Ysabellis, who had a severe eye condition, said his wife had told him that many people were rebuking him because he did not vow the girl to the saint, who was known to perform many miracles;359 this demonstrates the father’s responsibility in seeking his daughter’s cure but can also reflect some tensions or disagreements within the family. However, in miracle narratives there are occasional references to children’s accidents, after which community members accuse the parents of not taking proper care of their offspring.360 As noted several times already, parents were considered responsible for the treatment of their ailing children. Thus, it is possible that some of the briefer references to friends’ or family members’ suggestions to invoke a saint had similar undertones. The devotion of saints was prevalent in medieval society and consequently something that was expected of people. Not turning to them at especially difficult times must have appeared strange and questionable behaviour. Reports of those giving advice resulting in a miraculous cure varied. Some witnesses identified the person: for example, the godmother gave the advice

358 

See Yarrow, ‘Narrative, Audience and the Negotiation’, pp. 74–75. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fol. 59r: ‘Quodam die dum rediisset ad domum suam, uxor sua dixit: “Domine, multi increpant vos, quia non vovetis filiam vostram ad Sanctum Philippum archiepiscopum, qui cotidie et affidue miracula facit, ut dicitur”’. The text does not identify Guillelmus’s wife Alma as Ysabellis’s mother. It therefore is possible that he had remarried and that this is the primary reason why vowing the girl was considered his responsibility. 360  See Katajala-Peltomaa and Toivo, ‘Tilan ja hoivan käytänteet’, pp. 23–24. One such case is recorded in Thomas Cantilupe’s canonization process. The equerry stated that the parents had supervised their drowned child badly: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 200v. 359 

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that led to the cure of a severely impaired girl called Methildis.361 More common, however, was to refer to unspecified neighbours or other community members.362 Cecilia de Sancta Cruce made a vow and took her daughter to the shrine of Louis of Toulouse following the advice of ‘some honest men’.363 Occasionally the witnesses had different views on who gave the advice. A boy called Octobellus was cured of blindness by the merits of John Buoni. His mother, Alberta, testified that her aunt gave her the advice, and the aunt herself confirmed that. One of the witnesses for the miracle was Bartholomeus, a judex, in whose house Alberta and Octobellus were staying. According to him, both he and the aunt advised the mother. 364 Although pilgrimages were often done in groups,365 records of communal vows to cure impaired children and which include people other than family members are rare. Such examples were, however, recorded in St Elizabeth’s miracles, in which eight women of the neighbourhood went to the church and vowed a girl called Adilhaidi,366 or one father asked three widows of his village to make a vow to the saint;367 also in St Margaret’s hearing, in which a woman called Venis testified that two fellow villagers accompanied her when she took her son to the saint.368 However, outside the family one of the most likely persons to give advice on saintly help was a clergyman, further discussed below, often officially or semi-officially promoting a certain cult.369 361 

Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 249. For example, AASS Oct. IX, p. 876: ‘ipsa Berta mater dictae Benasciutae doleret ad mortem de dicta filia sua, habito consilio a vicnis suis, fecit fieri duos oculos cereos, et portavit dictam filiam suam caecam ad sepulcrum’. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 79–80: ‘Et en le parfin les voisines de la mere du dit enfant li distrent: “Nos avons bons sainz en nostre eglise de Saint Denis; portez vostre enfant au tombel du benoiet saint Loÿs, que Nostre Seigneur le voile ilecques delivrer par ses proieres.”’; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 109–10: ‘Et aucunes des voisines eussent dit au pere et la mere de la dite Denisete que il la deussent porter au dit tombel d’icelui meesmes beoinet saint Loÿs’. See also Krötzl, ‘How to Choose a Saint’, pp. 379–80. 363  Louis of Toulouse, p. 163: ‘ipsa que loquitur ad suggestionem proborum virorum, ut dixit, habens devocionem ad beatum Ludovicum, dictam Beatricem filiam suam eidem vovit’. 364  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 857–58. 365  Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, pp. 118–20. 366  Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 226–27. 367  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 188. 368  Margaret of Hungary, pp. 242–43. 369  According to Christian Krötzl, a clergyman was a little more likely to give advice than neighbours and friends: Krötzl, ‘“Fama volat”’, p. 82. See also Krötzl, ‘How to Choose a Saint’, 362 

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In his classification of the characters appearing in miracle stories, Stanko Andrić defines the Adviser, who appears when the miraculé suffers from misfortune and advises him or her to invoke the saint, as one of the auxiliary characters. Andrić writes that auxiliary characters appear rarely, or their role is marginal to the course of events.370 In the sources for this study this indeed holds true, in the sense that only a small number of the miracles mention the Adviser. According to Laura A. Smoller, the ‘hero’ of the events was usually the Invoker, who made the vow for the miraculé:371 in the case of small children, that person was usually a parent. Nevertheless, the witnesses of some miracle accounts name and emphasize the role of the Adviser, as demonstrated in the examples cited above, perhaps considering it important. This seems to have been the case with those testifying to Octobellus’s cure, despite the possibility that time had distorted or dimmed their memories. Sometimes the witnesses may have wanted to highlight their own roles in the events. In this situation people might have given contradictory statements, as individuals tend to overstate their own significance in an important event, perhaps even remembering their role as greater than it actually was.372 Certainly, these emphases and contradictory statements show that advising parents with ailing children was considered proper and even essential within the community. The importance of suggesting the vow or pilgrimage is one reason why the communal nature of the search for the saintly cure is emphasized in the testimonies. Conversely, but possibly for the same reason, the occasional mentions of futile vows and pilgrimages are rarely reported as having been done on the initiative of other community members. It has been suggested that futile vows or pilgrimages were common,373 but the witnesses of children’s impairments are pp. 376–78; Krötzl, ‘Miracles au tombeau — miracles à distance’, p. 571; Wendel-Widmer, Die Wunderheilungen, p. 14. On the promotion of saints’ cults soon after their deaths, see for example, Van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, pp. 47–48; Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor, pp. 89–96, 147. 370  Andrić, The Miracles of St John Capistran, p. 323. Andrić also writes that the main characters of a miracle are the Beneficiary, the Saint, the Intercessor, the Assistant (often the same person as the Intercessor), the Reporter of the miracle, the Witnesses, and the Jury. The other auxiliary characters, besides the Adviser, are the Dissuader or Antagonist who is against the Beneficiary’s decision, the Crowd present at the shrine, and the Scribe, who is occasionally mentioned as taking part in the authentication. 371  Smoller, ‘Miracle, Memory, and Meaning’, p. 435, explains this by suggesting that the person who successfully invoked the saint was considered to have a special relationship with the saint. 372  See Smoller, ‘Miracle, Memory, and Meaning’, pp. 434–40. 373  Arnold, Belief and Unbelief, pp. 86, 94, 222; Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 530–31. Ronald

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reticent about them, and there are few reports of parents taking their children from one shrine to another. Although futile pilgrimages or vows could act as a proof of the incurable nature of a child’s impairment, such a conception appears much more infrequently than futile medical care. References to futile medical help were of great importance for proving that the condition was incurable by worldly means, while futile pilgrimages could serve to emphasize the powers of the particular saint. Moreover, there also existed a view that not being healed miraculously was due to lack of devotion.374 Hence it is possible that this aspect had an influence on whether people chose to mention the unsuccessful pilgrimages, although in the end they were, of course, devoted enough to obtain the miracle under investigation. In all of my sources, the decision as to which saint to invoke appears very straightforward, the only exceptions being the sporadic references to making vows to two saints at the same time, as reported by Willelmus de Lonesdale.375 There are, however, other sources, especially from Northern Europe, where the saint was chosen by lot or by testing.376 Even in those cases where a child beneficiary appears to have been acting quite independently, usually due to the family situation, other people do have roles. An example is the swineherd Moriset de Ranton in St Louis IX’s miracles. The narrative does not identify anyone as suggesting the various futile pilgrimages he made, but a reference is made to other inhabitants of the hospital at Saumur, who told him that he should go to the altar of St Eloy, located in the same town. Moriset’s case is one of the very few in which there is a reference to someone giving futile advice. When the pilgrimage to St Eloy’s altar proved useless, Moriset was advised to walk to St Souplice, but the text does not reveal whether that advice was given by hospital residents. When Moriset reached St Souplice, he learned about the miracles of St Louis IX. Seeing that many formerly sick people were coming back cured, he promised to go to the shrine and take a candle ‘if he did not die on the way’.377 His departure from the Finucane has estimated that for every individual involved in a medieval miracle, anything from a hundred to a thousand other people, of whom there are no written trace, came to the shrines: Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 81–83; on examples regarding adults, see p. 85. See also Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?, p. 362. 374  Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?, p.  364; Wittmer-Butsch and Rendtel, Miracula: Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter, pp. 182, 199. 375  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4050, fol. 64v. 376  See Krötzl, ‘How to Choose a Saint’, pp. 381–87. 377  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 47–48: ‘Il proposa donques en son courage que il vendroit au dit tombel, se il ne moroit en voie, et offerroit ilecques une chandele de sa longuer’.

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hospital at Saumur was both fortunate and unfortunate for him. Although the other residents wanted to get rid of him and thus made him homeless, they also turned out to be his spiritual benefactors, because their advice to start a pilgrimage sparked a chain of events which eventually led Moriset to Saint-Denis. Moriset’s testimony thus shows the role of community members in starting the final, successful pilgrimage, though it does it in a subtle way, without naming an adviser. This may simply be a typical feature of the genre, but it may also be explained by the lack of other witnesses,378 or because the advice was given either by several people or by someone Moriset did not know or consider very important. Witnessing other people’s cures was a recommendation strong enough, and Moriset himself appears as the real protagonist, both as miraculé and Invoker, having faith in the saint and making the decision all by himself. There are similarities in the case of the blind beggar, Thoumas de Voudai. The narrative states that after learning about St Louis IX’s miracles, Thoumas decided to start a pilgrimage, but the person who told Thoumas about the miracles is not specified. The text uses the passive voice, which gives the impression that there were several persons who thought Thoumas should go to SaintDenis, thus portraying his community as the Adviser. 379 Interestingly, in the case of Guillot dit le Potencier it is specified that he was told to go to the shrine of St Eloy by a surgeon who had not managed to cure him — and who thus failed twice in his attempts to help the boy — as well as by his master Robert Reboule. Guillot started the successful pilgrimage, however, after simply hearing about the miracles of St Louis IX.380 Guillaume de Saint-Pathus seemingly makes a point of not identifying the one giving the advice in his narrative. Possibly this was his way of underscoring the common fama of Louis IX’s sainthood,381 but the tendency may also derive from his source. After all, public rumour and hearsay, as well as stories told by other cured people, were the most common source of information about a saint’s curative powers.382 Another reason for the ‘general’ view on Louis’s fama as a mir378 

above. 379 

For the probability that Moriset was the only one testifying about his miracle, see n. 812

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 28. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 23–26. 381  See also Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 21, 97, 145, 148, 169. On the spreading of Louis’s fama, see Gaposchkin, ‘Place, Status, and Experience’, pp. 253–54. 382  See Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 156; Krötzl, ‘How to Choose a Saint’, pp. 378–79. In the case of Mabileta, discussed above, of which the canonization testimonies have been preserved, it appears he included Ricardus’s role in his narrative: Fragments, pp. 40, 43, 48; Les 380 

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acle-worker in these particular cases may be the beneficiaries’ social status. For them Louis’s sanctity was not a personal matter in the sense that it would have had anything to do with his identity as a king or as a saint. Instead, for the elite cured by his merits, who had known Louis IX beforehand or otherwise had personal knowledge of him and his deeds, his identity as the miracle-worker and consequently the experience of the miracle were much more personal.383 In the other miracles concerning parentless children, the name of the Invoker or Adviser is frequently given, but the proportion of parentless children is too low to make sweeping conclusions. 384 It is, however, possible that the lack of identified advisers is a product of the lived reality of some parentless children. Especially in Moriset’s case this may be due to his loose social connections. The narrative nevertheless shows how those living on the margins of society did participate in the interaction and the distribution of information concerning the deeds of the saints and, among our sources, this is most observable in the miracles of St Louis. As Cecilia Gaposchkin writes, ‘it was their experiences that created the culture of the miraculous at St-Denis’.385 Occasionally, the participation of lay community members other than the immediate family in searching for a saintly cure is made visible when they actually take the child to the shrine. A Breton boy called Johannes Nani became so contractus that he had to move by crawling at the age of twelve. He remained in such a state for eight years, thus obtaining the saintly cure after reaching adulthood. There are two witnesses to the cure in the process of St Yves of Tréguier. In addition to Johannes himself, a man called Petrus de Lamur gave testimony. Johannes lived in the houses of Petrus and his mother, domina Teophania, for over eight years.386 Concerning the cure of Johannes, Petrus de Lamur reported: Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 128. Unfortunately, it is not possible to make such comparisons with the miraculous cures of other children due to the lack of original depositions. In the case of the two miraculously cured adult women, Amelota de Chambli and Lucia Ruimilli, whose case testimonies are also preserved, neither the original document nor Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s text specifies anyone as giving the advice, and both women made the decision on their own and vowed themselves: Fragments, pp. 18–39, 54–71; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 18–20, 153–58. 383  Gaposchkin, ‘Place, Status, and Experience’, pp. 252, 260–62. 384  The mute orphan boy in St Francis of Assisi’s miracles was vowed to the saint by the man who gave him a place to stay overnight” Vita Prima S. Francisci Assisiensis, ed. by Collegio S. Bonaventura, pp. 113–14. Then again, a blind girl residing in a hospital, whose parents are not mentioned, asked John Buoni to cure her, apparently on her very own initiative: AASS Oct. IX, p. 792. 385  Gaposchkin, ‘Place, Status, and Experience’, p. 252. 386  Yves of Tréguier, p. 211.

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Interrogatus quibus verbis interpositis, dixit quod Vezia, uxor sua, in manerio suo Silva Eudonis parrochie de Lamur, Dolensis diocesis, quadam die sabbati, faciebat parari unum equum cum duobus paneriis sive bastis; tunc predictus testis qui loquitur dixit: ‘Quid vultis facere de illo equo?’ — ‘Volo mittere istum contractum Trecoris ad sanctum Ivonem’. Dixit eciam quod posuerunt eum in uno de illis bastis, et in alio posuerunt aliquos lapides, ut ponderarent equaliter. Et postmodum, quando exinde revenit, fuit sanatus et curatus.387 (Asked after which words inserted, he said that Vezia, his wife, in his manor of BoisEon in the parish of Lanmeur,388 belonging to the diocese of Dol, on one Saturday, had a horse prepared with two panniers or stools; then the above-mentioned witness who speaks said: ‘What do you want to do with that horse?’ — ‘I want to take that cripple to Tréguier to St Yves’. He also said that they put him [ Johannes] into one of the panniers,389 and in the other one they put some stones to even up the weight. And afterwards, when he came back from there, he was healed and cured.)

The testimonies do not reveal the precise relationship between Petrus de Lamur’s family and Johannes. The family was, however, of high social standing: Petrus de Lamur, who was legum professor, is identifiable as Pierre de Lanmeur, the lord and the owner of le château de Bois-Eon. He also testified about the miraculous cure of his daughter Margilia, who is known to have later married a man called Hervé de Coatrédrez.390 Johannes was reported only as having been the son of Nanus, but he was also originally from Lanmeur, and it seems probable that he was in the family’s service. For some reason the de Lanmeur family seems to have been keen to take care of him, because he lived with them during the eight years of his impairment — presumably this may also be read as an example of goodwill or sympathy towards the disabled. Petrus described the effects of Johannes’s condition by stating that he could no longer ride a horse, which suggests that this skill was part of his work.391 The fact that Vezia saddled a horse and took the young man to the shrine herself, instead of giving the task to a servant, implies that their relationship was intimate on some level. 387 

Yves of Tréguier, p. 211. On the place names, see Falc’Hun, ‘Les Noms bretons de Saint Yves’, pp. 182–83. 389  Here the witness is most likely referring to a so called pack saddle, including a wooden frame placed on the horse’s back and two baskets or containers on each side. They put the boy to the other basket and stones to the other one. 390  Yves of Tréguier, p. 210. On the identification of the persons, see Falc’Hun, ‘Les Noms bretons de Saint Yves’, p. 183. 391  Yves of Tréguier, p. 211. 388 

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Interestingly, Johannes did not mention the role of Vezia or her husband at all — he simply stated that he made a vow to St Yves and was then cured.392 It is only possible to guess at the reasons for this inconsistency in behaviour. If one accepts that people did not consciously tell lies at the investigations, then Johannes must have left the family’s participation out of his testimony for some reason — perhaps in order to emphasize his own devotion — while Petrus wanted to underline his wife’s role and perhaps also her devotion. After all, Petrus’s testimony did not include a vow, only his wife’s intention to travel to Tréguier with Johannes, although his report of the discussion with Vezia was a response to the commissioners’ question interrogatus quibus verbis interpositis.393 The role of an employer in initiating pilgrimages is also illustrated in the case of Guillot dit le Potencier. In addition to suggesting futile pilgrimages to the shrine of St Eloy in Noyon, his master Robert Reboule provided him with a servant named Conte as a companion for the second journey and also encouraged him to confess before leaving.394 Robert was also probably the person to arrange the medical help Guillot received. Although the text does not specify any particular person as giving Guillot the information about St Louis’s miracles, after he managed to get close to the saint’s bones and already started to feel better, Robert told him to confess and go to Saint-Denis in a state of great devotion.395 Thus Robert took the nurturing role of a parent searching for both mundane and saintly help. Because he kept Guillot in his household despite his inability to work, it is no wonder that he wanted to go to such trouble to get him cured. Apprentices were, after learning their trade, a free workforce for their masters, and according to Livre des métiers, written by Étienne Boileau in thirteenth-century Paris, a cloth-fuller was not entitled to have more than two apprentices simultaneously in addition to his own legal children.396 So, to have one who was incapable of working or who had a reduced working capacity was an economic calamity, even if Robert Reboule got help from his guild 392 

Yves of Tréguier, p. 212. Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 59. 394  Robert was referring to the idea that one needed to have a clean soul before starting a pilgrimage, and thus confession and absolution were necessary. See for example, Morris and Roberts, eds, Pilgrimage, p. 119; Yarrow, ‘Narrative, Audience and the Negotiation’, p. 70. In the narratives included in St Louis IX’s miracles such a custom appears frequently, also when the parent made the vow and thus confessed beforehand. See for example, Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 36. 395  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 23–26. 396  de Lespinasse and Bonnardot, eds, Les Métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris, p. 107. 393 

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to support Guillot. In the end Robert appears as the spiritual benefactor, since it was his advice to return to the shrine that brought the final relief. This time Robert did not appear to have provided him any companion for the journey. The reason for this presumably lies in geography: Saint-Denis was situated a mere nine kilometres from Paris, while the journey from Paris to Noyon, the home of St Eloy’s shrine, is around one hundred kilometres as the crow flies. Guillot le Potencier and Johannes Nani seem to have been dependent on the goodwill of their lord and master, but they did not belong among the poorest children. As an example of that group, Thoumas de Voudai also had his benefactors. After deciding to start a pilgrimage, Thoumas actively searched for a companion. He went to beg Ysabel, the mother of Adam Vicart, that she would consent to her son accompanying him to the shrine, which Adam agreed to do, but ‘not because her mother wished so’.397 This information presumably came from Adam himself, because the narrative includes a detailed description of the pilgrimage and the miracle, and Thoumas himself had travelled overseas. It is possible that Ysabel had specifically forbidden Adam from going, but it is more probable that Adam wanted to emphasize that the decision was his. If Ysabel Vicart gave Adam permission to go, she acted in a similar manner to Robert Reboule, who provided a servant to attend Guillot to St Eloy’s shrine. The role of the monastic or mendicant orders is most distinctive in the case of the tongueless Johannes de Burtone. After returning to Ludlow from his first pilgrimage, Johannes was encouraged to go back to St Thomas Cantilupe’s tomb by two Franciscan brothers named Hugo de Bromptonis and Johannes de Bromptonis, and the local matron Margeria Aylinche, in whose house they were staying as guests, as well as by some other people.398 The witnesses were at odds about people’s roles in this, as some residents of Ludlow mentioned the role of the community in persuading Johannes to return, 399 while others only mentioned how Hugo took Johannes back to the shrine.400 Johannes de Bromptonis, however, reported that he and Hugo took Johannes to other brothers of their convent, after which Johannes de Bromptonis and the brothers together persuaded the boy to spend a night at the shrine.401 397 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 28: ‘Et le dit Adam i ala, non pas par la volenté sa mere, avec le dit Thomas’. 398  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 186v, 207r–v, 208r. 399  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 186v. 400  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 204r, 206r, 209r. 401  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 208r.

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For the witnesses, Hugo de Bromptonis was the central person in the events, but the testimonies also confirm that the community had a role. Apparently, in their reminiscence of the events, the witnesses felt they needed to find the ‘real’ protagonist or hero. Hugo de Bromptonis was easily given the role of most important benefactor, because he was a famous man,402 and also the one who publicized the miracle.403 Johannes de Bromptonis, on the other hand, was mentioned as being present only in his own testimony and seems to have been left in Hugo’s shadow, unless he was one of those overemphasizing his own role. It is also possible that Hugo de Bromptonis was concerned with the wellbeing of Johannes in some way, for he seems to have been the only person mentioned in the testimonies as knowing the boy since his infancy. Usually the testimonies reveal the order of the frater or clergyman in question. For example, when Alaracia, who was already a young woman, lost her speech and use of one arm, one frater of St Anthony’s order encouraged her mother to make a vow to St Louis of Toulouse.404 Another brother, Diotisalvus, visited domina Guilia, asking for bread to give to the hermit Brother John Buoni. When he saw Guilia mourning for her daughter Agnese, he told her to take the girl to Brother John.405 Often these friars were members of the same order as the putative saint, like Diotisalvus, but this obviously cannot hold true in cases where the saint was not a member of an order. For example, Thomas Cantilupe’s canonization hearing had witnesses in favour of his sainthood from all four mendicant orders,406 although many Franciscans called upon to testify denied that they knew anything about his miracles. These Franciscans were summoned by the commissioners from the monasteries and friaries of London 402  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 208r: ‘quia dictus frater Hugo erat valde famosus et a baronibus ortus et pluribus notus’. 403  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 204r–v, 206r–v, 208r, 209v. 404  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 158–59 405  AASS Oct. IX, p. 827. Diotisalvus had died before the investigation, so he was not interviewed. See also AASS Oct. IX, p. 795. In John Buoni’s hearing it is mentioned that during his lifetime, some friars even collected his miracles in small leaflets and distributed them. This aroused criticism in the order, and when the saint himself heard about it, he destroyed the booklets. The reason was the objection of others, for his image was of greater value than the value of recording his deeds. On the case and the problems in recording living saints’ deeds, see Kleinberg, Prophets in their Own Country, pp. 40–62. The relevant witness account is in AASS Oct. IX, p. 783. On Scandinavian examples of clerical advice, see Krötzl, Pilger, Mirakel und Alltag, pp. 281–85. 406  Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 343.

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and Hereford. Possibly they were still irritated by a conflict that had occurred between the Franciscan Archbishop John Peckham and Thomas Cantilupe.407 Orders could be very enthusiastic, organized, and persuasive in campaigning for a cult, and this undoubtedly had an effect on the advice given to the parents of impaired children. At the same time, the families of impaired children must have been potentially useful for the cult promoters, because there was always the chance of a miraculous cure leading to the strengthening of the saint’s fama publica. St Elizabeth of Hungary’s cult, for example, was powerfully promoted by her confessor Conrad von Marburg and the Marburg Franciscans, as is evident in the testimony of Petrissa, whose daughter was blind in one eye. On this occasion the mother herself went to the brothers to ask for their help, and they recommended praying to St Elizabeth. 408 When spreading the fame of St Peter of Verona, the Dominicans took a multifaceted approach, including use of legislation, hagiography, liturgy, and art.409 Translation of the saint’s relics was a tradition which went back to the roots of Christendom. Before the development of the canonization process, the translation, performed by a bishop, was equivalent to a formal canonization, but maintained an important status in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, especially among the laity, and the cult promoters were aware that it could only increase the saint’s popularity.410 The significance of translation is visible in the sources for this study, especially in the processes of John Buoni, Ambrose of Massa, and Louis IX, during which some of the impaired children were cured.411 Preaching was a common way for the orders to promote their saints’ cults as well as to control images of sainthood and fight heresy.412 Although preachers usually concentrated on the moral virtues of saints rather than their miracles,413 encouragement and advice could be given by preaching as well. This is what 407 

Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 176. Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 249: ‘quod ipsa intravit oratorium beati Francisci in Marpurc et invocato eius auxilio necnon beate Elyzabet voto etiam ibidem facto’. On the relationship of Elizabeth and Conrad von Marburg, as well as the promoting of Elizabeth’s cult after her death, see Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, pp. 284–85. 409  Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor, pp. 89–96. 410  Brown, The Cult of the Saints, p. 92; Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor, p. 89; Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 22–23, 30–31. 411  See, for example, AASS Nov. IV, p. 601; AASS Oct. IX, pp. 803, 864, 876; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 25–26, 50–55, 145. 412  See, for example, Galamb, ‘Sainthood in the Propaganda of Mendicant Orders’. 413  Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, p. 31. 408 

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happened to Iohanna, the mother of Iacobus Deodatus, who heard a Franciscan brother Raymundus preaching about the miracles of Louis of Toulouse and immediately decided to vow her son to him.414 Interestingly, this is the only testimony from my sources in which a witness mentions a sermon as having inspired her to make a vow.415 Yet sermons had significant influence in the veneration of both local saints and those of wide repute, although the preaching and promotion of cults could also raise suspicion among the laity.416 Promotion of cults by preaching is strongly linked with the communal memory regarding impaired children and their chances of receiving a miraculous cure. In addition to information spread orally among lay community members, the general, universal elements of miraculous cures were spread through preaching and everyday communication with clergymen.417 Details such as dates and times were commonly excised from miracle stories used in other media and hagiographic literature, and thus they were universally adaptable.418 Seen in terms of Edward Wheatley’s ‘religious model of disability’, the way children’s impairments were dealt with in sermons and cult promotion was not intended to restrict their options in life. His view, that impairment offered ‘the site where a saint or holy figure was to prove his or her holiness, and the religious figures were aided in that effort if the person with an impairment

414 

Louis of Toulouse, p. 176. On the appearance of preachers in Peter of Verona’s miracles, see Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor, p. 157. On references to preaching in canonization hearings, see Krötzl, ‘How to Choose a Saint’, pp. 374–75. 416  In one of the miracles of Louis of Toulouse a woman called Gaufrida Rossa encountered her relative Beatrix Bruna and her daughter Ricardeta, who were on a pilgrimage to thank the saint for curing Ricardeta from her illness and to offer him a candle. Gauffrida was suspicious of the sainthood of Louis of Toulouse, saying that he was just like other people, and further stated that the Franciscans only promoted his cult to gain profit and benefit. As a result, she became blind and her face became swollen: Louis of Toulouse, pp. 236–39. The testimonies regarding Ricardeta’s cure are in Louis of Toulouse, pp. 226–27. On the voices of doubt among laity, see Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 47–68. 417  On liturgy and the construction of sanctity, see Gaposchkin, ‘Louis IX and Liturgical Memory’. 418  Jussi Hanska discusses this matter in his article ‘From Historical Event to Didactic Story’; see esp. pp. 102–06. As preachers were mobile and therefore needed material which was not tied to one place, the late Middle Ages also saw an increase in miracle collections which were not anchored to one place and time, such as the various miracle collections of the Virgin Mary: Bull, ‘Introduction’, p. 9. See also Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints, pp. 129–32. 415 

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claimed to have immutable faith in the curer’419 is still relevant. Preachers and other cult promoters offered a model to laymen, to which they could adjust their traumatic and painful experiences, thus finding an explanation for them.420 In this way the religious discourse of impairment could give purpose to and make sense of the events, especially after the cure, but presumably also offered hope. Whether the possibly constant invocations and pilgrimages, often resulting in disappointment, were also a disabling factor and a traumatic experience for children will be further discussed in Chapter 3. Orphaned children and young people portrayed in our sources always had an outside community member (either a cleric or a layperson), to suggest a pil­ grimage or take them to the shrine. The narrative of Moriset de Ranton, however, reveals the other side of the coin. Despite the advice they got, poor children with few family ties or loose connections to any specific place or commu­ nity might end up in a situation where they had to take the responsibility them­­ selves and trust to the help of passers-by to survive a pilgrimage. However, although care must be taken not to romanticize the attitudes of wealthier com­­ munity members, nor to exaggerate the lived experience of poor impaired children, the narratives also portray the communal aspect of the lives of poorer impaired children. At least in some accounts, their wellbeing — or at least their possible miraculous healing — might also become the concern of the betteroff. Obtaining a cure for any community member, in the end, allowed those involved to partake in saintly glory and to become a part of the community surrounding that particular saint and miracle.

419 

Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, p. 11. See also Smoller, ‘Miracle, Memory, and Meaning’, p. 433; Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy, pp. 196–98; Klaniczay, ‘Speaking about Miracles’, p. 369. 420 

Chapter 3

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T

hus far this study has largely focused on how other people perceived impaired children and how they delineated or explained their physical differences in their miracle testimonies. Although certain patterns emerge in the testimonies, disability was not a single, distinct phenomenon, and the experiences of those with similar conditions could be very different. Bodies, and their sensations of pain or pleasure, are always constructed and lived in individually, albeit in close connection with the surrounding culture.1 In the last chapter I will therefore take a different perspective and examine how miraculously cured children experienced their impairments. The study of personal individual experience in the Middle Ages has always been problematic due to the nature and scarcity of available primary sources. 2

1  See Rubin, ‘The Person in the Form’, pp. 100, 116. On lived experience of disability in modern sociological studies, see Balcazar, Suárez-Balcazar and Taylor-Ritzler, Race, Culture, and Disability, pp. 348–53; Robillard, Meaning of a Disability. 2  See, for example, Wittmer-Butsch and Rendtel, Miracula: Wunderheilungen im Mittel­ alter, p. 183, who explain this also by the culture. Introspection and self-centredness were not expressed in the Middle Ages as they are today. Wittmer-Butsch and Rendtel put rather too much emphasis on sin, claiming that because illness was a result of sin, people accepted their suffering (at least until miraculously healed) without complaining. The frequent mentions of medical help, however, show that people did not just submit to their fate, although it often appears that permanent impairments could be taken as a normal part of life. The situation concerning the sources changes significantly in the Early Modern era, when people writing family books and autobiographies started to reflect on their experiences and share their views of their disabilities and chronic illnesses: See Frohne, Leben mit ‘kranckhait’.

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Hagiographic writing is one of the few genres where the voices of impaired people come through to us, 3 but even in them the texts are filtered, either through the selection of scribes at the shrines, or due to the practicalities of the can­­onization process itself. As already discussed in the Introduction, the information preserved in miracle testimonies is the result of a strict legal procedure combined with the witnesses’ internalized conceptions of a suitable miracle narrative. At the same time, the message delivered was that of the witness.4 I do not claim that what we see in the depositions is the ‘actual’ lived experience, but rather a narrative of it, a combination of later memories formed by both officials and witnesses to suit the purposes of the canonization hearing. Nevertheless, because of the demands of accuracy during the hearings, the witnesses’ beliefs and recollections, occasionally even verbatim, are traceable, and through their recorded memories it is possible to untangle how a person once miraculously cured of childhood impairment later viewed his or her condition and which aspects of it were later constructed as crucial proof of the experience. When searching for the miraculously cured children’s own accounts, canonization processes only give occasional records, because children gave testimonies rather infrequently. One reason is that, according to the canon law, boys and girls less than fourteen years of age lacked the capacity to take an oath, and thus they could not act as witnesses if the canonization hearing took place while they were still under the age of consent.5 This rule was not strictly followed, which is shown by the occasional occurrence of children’s testimonies.6 Most 3 

Irina Metzler writes that ‘[a]lthough one can make a formal, textual distinction between hagiographical material, such as Lives of saints, or collections of miracles worked at shrines, on the one hand and the records of canonization processes on the other hand, both categories of source material contain valuable information about the lived experience of impaired people’. Therefore, for the purpose of her argument, she groups together the canonization protocol of St Elizabeth and the more informal miracle collections: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 128. On the filtering of beneficiaries’ memories of their impairments and cures in earlier miracle stories, see Horn, ‘Überleben in der Familie’, p. 307, and on the advantages of canonization processes compared with other miracle narratives, Klaniczay, ‘Ritual and Narrative’, p. 209. Among other source types writings that reflect personal experiences in some way usually concentrate on adults. There are occasional autobiographic references to disabilities in the texts of medieval writers. On examples, see Metzler, ‘Perceptions of Deafness’, p. 83; Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, p. 5. 4  See also Goodich, ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis’, pp. 143–44; Goodich, Violence and Miracle, p. 9; Smoller, ‘Miracle, Memory, and Meaning’, pp. 430–31. 5  See Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, p. 65. 6  For example, Beatrix de Sancta Cruce was pupilla IX annorum, and gave her testimony

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of the beneficiaries who gave their own testimonies of their childhood impairments were, however, in their late teens or early twenties, testifying either about a miracle that had happened in their childhood, or about the cure of an impairment acquired in childhood but miraculously healed after they reached the age of fourteen. Regardless of the time span, the aspects they reported for the commissioners were in effect memories, often adjusted during the years since the miraculous cure. Seeking to understand impairment and its possible disabling effects in medieval society and culture, it is vital to attempt to unravel personal experience, however scarce and problematic the sources. What did children know of the origins of their impairments and how was this information delivered? Which aspects of their lived experience of the physical and social consequences of their conditions show in the miracle testimonies? Trying to answer questions, especially about marginalization or inclusion, but also about contemporary attitudes towards impaired children, their own experience, agency, and self-image need to be taken into account. How did communication and interaction within their social sphere work for impaired children, and how did they search for support? What can be said about their emotions regarding their impaired bodies and lives as impaired persons? The following chapter will mostly be based on personal testimonies of miraculously cured childhood impairments but, because of their scarcity, other witness accounts will be used when necessary to obtain fuller information.

Knowledge of the Origins of Impairment The beneficiaries miraculously cured of childhood impairments seem to have been well aware or informed about the origins of their conditions, and it seems that they knew how and when they had acquired their ailment, regardless of their age at the time. However, as is the case with other witnesses, they did not usually contemplate the underlying causes for their impairments. Taking a quite detailed description given by a beneficiary as an example, Rixenda de Fayensa under oath: Louis of Toulouse, p. 162. Another girl, Bengeven, was eleven or twelve years old (her and her mother’s testimonies differ slightly regarding her age) when acting as a witness: AASS Oct. IX, pp. 814–15. The proportion of child witnesses varies significantly between hearings. The process in which people impaired in childhood give their testimonies most often is that of Louis of Toulouse, in which five miracles out of ten have the beneficiary as a witness. The commissioners of St Louis IX’s process also interviewed very young witnesses. See Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 117–18.

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reported how the wet nurse had dropped her, causing blood to run from her left ear, after which accident she was called deaf.7 Whether Rixenda first knew about the accident with the wet nurse while still surda or not until after the cure remains unclear. However, it appears that her mother had died before the miracle, as she did not testify and her whereabouts are not revealed, and so we can guess that Rixenda probably remembered hearing about the accident as a very young child. There are some other beneficiaries to whom the onset seems to have held special significance as well. For example, Alicia de Lonesdale, who was five years old at the time of her accident, gave a detailed description of the incident, just as her father did.8 When the accident occurred she was old enough to remember the trauma, but presumably her memories had also been reinforced or elaborated during later discussions with her father.9 One reason that the accident held special importance for the girl and the father was almost certainly that this is when they left their home village of Lonesdale, 10 to which they apparently never returned, and started a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, which must have been a journey planned for some time. Another very detailed description given by the miraculé is the deposition of Xanctia, who was impaired as an aftermath of St Anthony’s disease. Xanctia first reported the symptoms of the illness, which she had acquired ten years earlier at the age of six, and how she was cured of the fire at St Anthony’s house at Marseille. Because of the burnt flesh, an abscess remained in her hip, which made her totally unable to walk for six months. According to her own statement, she remembered it well.11 Here 7 

Louis of Toulouse, p. 153. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 66r. A boy called Iohannetus also testified that he remembered well how his condition made him suffer: Louis of Toulouse, p. 170. See also Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 172; AASS Oct. IX, p. 811. 9  Even impairments resulting from an accident did not necessarily lead to a testimony about the details. One boy in the process of Peter of Morrone and another in the process of Lawrence of Subiaco had fractured legs, but neither gave any details about the event. On the other hand, in both cases the testimonies themselves are much more summarized than in Thomas Cantilupe’s process: ASV, MS A.A., Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fol. 4r; Peter of Morrone, p. 306. 10  Lonesdale is presumably the modern Kirkby Lonsdale situated in Cumbria, for Willelmus reported that his native village was located in northern England, and he and Alicia were from the diocese of York: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 64v. 11  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 173–74. Interestingly, according to Xanctia’s father, her inability to walk lasted up to the age of ten. The mother did not report the duration of the condition, nor was she asked about the matter: Louis of Toulouse, pp. 174–75. 8 

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again, it appears that the exceptionality of the onset of the condition is the primary reason why it was reported in such a detailed manner by Xanctia, but also by her mother and father. For the girl the burning disease and the treatment received at the house of St Anthony were powerful memories. A detailed description was also given by Ganthelma, the daughter of Petrus Laguarda, who was cured of a grave disease in her left leg. Both the girl and her mother gave similar reports about how she had gone to bed healthy and woken up afflicted by the ailment.12 Ganthelma had acquired the condition about one year and eighteen months earlier, when she was thirteen or fourteen years old, and the events must therefore have been clear in her mind. The onset of the disease was also sudden and unexpected, seemingly coming out of the blue, which presumably also added to her trauma. The sixth elaborate description comes from the deposition of a boy called Johannes Alani: […] dixit per juramentum suum quod anno preterito, circa mensem maii, quadam die de qua non recolit, dum ipse scindisset hora meridiei multas miricas seu genestas, et fuisset circa hoc plurimum fatigatus, et de dictis genestis unam sarcinam habuisset suis humeris, et portasset quantum est jactus lapidis vel circa, arripuit eum quedam guta [sic!] cum dolore maximo, que ipsum adeo contraxit in dorso et in aliis membris suis quod vix ire poterat curvus et manus tenendo super crura sua, et eciam valde parum ire poterat et cum maximo labore, nec quando volebat sedere poterat, sed jacebat.13 ([…] said under oath how in the previous year, around the month of May, on a day which he does not remember, when at noon he pulled up lot of salt cedar or greenweed, and was around that time very fatigued, and he had a bundle of the said greenweeds on his shoulder, and he carried it for a stone’s throw or thereabouts, when a guta with great pain took hold of him, which contracted him to a such degree in his back and other members that he could barely walk bent and holding his hands on his shins, and indeed he could walk very little and with great effort, and when he wanted to sit he could not, but he lay down.)

12  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 224–25. Also Adete, who likely gave a testimony in the original hearing of Louis IX, reported that an impairing condition struck her during the night: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 32. The same goes for Petrus Noueillons, eventually cured by the merits of Philip of Bourges: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fols 64r–v. 13  Yves of Tréguier, pp. 151–52. A young woman called Alaricia gave a similar report, narrating that her mother had sent her to sell grain, and while doing that, as she was crossing a cemetery, she suddenly felt a pain in her heart and fell to the ground, becoming mute and powerless in one arm: Louis of Toulouse, p. 158.

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The fact that Johannes had acquired the gutta only about a year before the investigation may explain why the details of the beginning of the condition were such an essential memory of the events.14 It appears that the origins of his condition were not inquired of him, but he recited them on his own initiative, because the record of his testimony starts with the description of the origins of his impairment, later followed by the section when the commissioners asked more detailed questions. Giving — or at least recording — detailed information about the onset was indeed exceptional, even among the witnessing beneficiaries, which indicates that when the memory was recorded, it was important to the witness and probably also for the commissioners. As was the case with other witnesses, when the commissioners asked for more information about the onset of a condition, the beneficiaries often gave somewhat imprecise answers. In the case of Johannes Nani, the commissioners of St Yves’s process asked for more specific information about his infirmity, also specified as gutta. They wanted to know when he had acquired it, to which he replied that it first struck his legs and loins and then knees and back, without giving more specific information about the time or place, except that he had been contractus for eight years.15 No further inquiries about the matter were recorded, although Johannes had been twelve years old when the condition first struck him and he presumably remembered its onset well. Two other beneficiaries testifying about their miraculous cures of childhood gutta in St Yves’s process, Adelicia Alani Thome and Katherina, the wife of Johannes le Gaven, did not provide much information about the onset of their conditions either. Adelicia testified over thirty years and Katherina about twenty-six years after becoming impaired,16 which may partly explain this. Katherina was asked where her infirmity came from, to which she replied that it was caused by gutta and other infirmities which struck her,17 and Adelicia stated — presumably also as an answer to a question — that the infirmitas fell upon her ‘accidentally’.18 The questions and the replies resemble those of Johannes Nani, 14  In two testimonies among the sources of this study the miraculé is reported as having mentioned that he did not remember well the time when he acquired the impairment: Peter of Morrone, pp. 325, 264. 15  Yves of Tréguier, p. 212: ‘Interrogatus quando sibi venit dicta infirmitas, dixit quod gutta ipsum primo arripuit in cruribus et circa lumbos, et deinde succesive in genibus et in dorso, et deinde infirmitas venit supradicta’. 16  Yves of Tréguier, pp. 236–38, 245–46. 17  Yves of Tréguier, p. 237. 18  Yves of Tréguier, p. 246: ‘Interrogata quanto tempore ante steterat et visa fuerat sic

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as specific information regarding the underlying reason was neither asked nor voluntarily given; it was usually sufficient to provide the type of condition and occasionally the name of it.19 Beneficiaries whose impairments were acquired during their birth or as very small infants were also aware of when and how their condition started. For instance, Ceptus Sperançe de Montefalco’s mother had told him that he had been infirmus and unable to walk since birth,20 and Ricardeta Bruna, who had been afflicted by a morbus in her legs since infancy, mentioned this, as did her mother.21 Beatrix Ottonelli, who had become blind while still in the cradle, also reported this to the commissioners of John Buoni’s hearing. In her case the investigators were exceptionally keen to get more precise information and asked how she knew if the blindness had really been acquired at birth, to which Beatrix replied that her mother had told her about it.22 In the case of the abovementioned Xanctia, the investigators also questioned her about the name of the disease. Her parents and other people were able to supply the information.23 In these cases the commissioners knew the child would have been too young to understand his or her condition. Why they inquired it of the informant remains unclear, as other family members testified in many of these cases too. The only beneficiary who seems to have been completely uninformed about the origins of his impairment was the deaf-mute Loÿs in St Louis IX’s miracles. When found outside the gates of the château of Orgelet and taken to the family of Gauchier the smith in 1260, he was eight years old. Because Loÿs was among the witnesses for his cure,24 we may assume that he would have reported infirma, dixit quod per undecim annos vel circa, et casu et successive venerat et acciderat sibi infirmitas supradicta’. 19  Beatrix de Sancta Cruce only reported that she was badly crippled for four years before being cured at the age of eight. Beatrix was four years old when she acquired the condition, but the mother’s testimony gives no more detailed information: Louis of Toulouse, pp. 162–63. In addition to not providing vital information for the commissioners, it appears that the onset of Beatrix’s disability had little importance in the memories of the girl or her mother. 20  Clare of Montefalco, pp. 348–49. 21  Louis of Toulouse, p. 226. 22  AASS Oct. IX, 803: ‘Interrogata quomodo scit se perdidisse visum dicti oculi tempore partus matris suae quando ipsa fuit, respondit quod mater ejus dicebat sibi hoc’. 23  Louis of Toulouse, p. 173. 24  The narrative, for example, reports that Loÿs enunciated Ave Maria and Pater Noster to the commissioners in the same manner as any other healthy person. Some questions they asked him are also recorded: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 54–55.

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the cause of the impairment if he or Gauchier had had any specific information of it. However, Loÿs only reported that he had never heard anything about it.25 The information about how Loÿs ended up at Orgelet is also vague. It first states that Loÿs was found outside the gates of the château, and later that a youth brought him there, before which he had been looked after at the house of Aymon.26 It is not known if the witnesses would have revealed the identity of the youth, as the actual testimonies about the miracle have not been preserved. He might have been a family member, or if Loÿs had no relatives, a worker or other person from meson Aymon, who brought Loÿs to Orgelet deliberately. Didier Lett interprets Loÿs as an ‘enfant abandonné’,27 and, according to Sarah Farmer, Gauchier probably did not know the boy’s origins, because Loÿs did not return to his biological family to tell his story.28 While this is probable, it may also be that the family members had died, suffered some other misfortune at some point, or were otherwise unreachable. Gauchier had taken the position of a father figure in Loÿs’s life, and it is therefore conceivable that his biological family no longer had any importance for him. Moreover, the reference to meson Aymon suggests, in my opinion, that bringing Loÿs to Orgelet may have been planned beforehand, or that Gauchier or someone at the château had at least been aware of the boy’s existence.29 Concerning another miraculous cure, that of Guillot le Potencier, who was an apprentice and a journeyman, the text does not report him as having any contact with his biological family either, even after the miracle.30 As the examples discussed above show, parents, and especially mothers, were those from whom the children most often learned about the origins of their impairment, and as the testimony of the blind Beatrix shows, a mother’s words were also a sufficient proof for the commissioners, even if they were 25 

This is somewhat exceptional for the collection. The narratives in Louis IX’s miracles do not usually give any name for the children’s impairments, but record all the other children’s ages when their conditions started: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 20, 23, 27, 32–33, 34, 78, 108, 126–27, 144, 147–48, 168–69. 26  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 50: ‘fu trouvé par cas d’aventure el Chastel dit Orgelet […] Et un jovencel un pou greigneur que li diz Loÿs l’amena a Orgelet et le lessa ilecques. Et premierement le dit Loÿs fu herbegié en la meson Aymon’. 27  Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, p. 281. 28  Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, p. 79. 29  According to the editor, Aymon was a man living at Orgelet. See Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 285. 30  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 23–26.

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repeated only by the beneficiary.31 Families naturally discussed the matter after the onset as well, which in turn influenced the memory and experience of the impaired children or, later, the miracle beneficiaries. The past of societies and communities can only be narrated by exchanging information and looking into past events,32 which also holds true for the past of an individual belonging to these groups. At the same time, the discussion of the onset of children’s conditions must also have had a therapeutic function. Finding a comprehensive explanation and reminiscing about it later could help to form their understanding of the situation.33 In the case of Rixenda de Fayensa, it is conceivable that placing particular emphasis on the wet nurse’s role helped the whole family both to make sense of the girl’s impairment and perhaps to distance themselves from it.34 As the information usually came from parents, their conceptions also had a big effect on how the condition was explained and whether the explanations increased or reduced the negative consequences of the impairment within the community. It is conceivable that in some families precisely this reasoning helped to reduce unpleasant associations, especially if some community members tried to put the blame on the parents, or if the parents felt guilty. However, as noted, there is too little evidence on which to base further conclusions.

31 

On parents’ role in forming memories of children’s miraculous rescues and cures, see Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 270–77, and on the gendered roles of forming memories, Van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, passim. How the beneficiary knew that he or she had been impaired since birth was not always asked or recorded. Gaufridus Bartholomey de Coreis gave a very detailed description of the congenital condition he had for over twenty years, but the witness account does not report any sources of information, nor are there any other witnesses: Urban V, pp. 430–31. The brevity of these statements, and their possible intended usage as the articuli may, however, explain this. 32  Van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, p. 11. 33  Smoller, ‘Miracle, Memory, and Meaning’, p. 433. Moreover, miracle accounts can be seen as one form of the universally present stories of misfortune and healing, in which the reformulations and changing interpretations of the events are an essential part of the healing process. See Klaniczay, ‘Speaking about Miracles’, p. 369. 34  In modern psychological studies it has been discovered, for example, that getting a diagnosis has helped dyslexic people to cope with their situation, as it shows they are not intellectually limited but have different brains. See Shakespeare, Disability Rights and Wrongs, p. 71. In the case of the de Fayensa family there may have been something similar going on, given that the reason for the girl’s impairment seems to have been of much greater importance for their communal memory than for the witnesses in general.

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It seems, however, that after the miraculous cure, the underlying reason for the impairment did not hold any special significance for the beneficiaries (or their parents or other witnesses) unless there was something exceptional or traumatic about it. It is also possible that the onset seemed more important to the beneficiaries if only a short time had passed between acquiring the impairment and the miraculous cure. When it comes to the commissioners and scribes, it appears that — at least in those processes in which the testimonies were recorded in detail — the beneficiary was allowed to recite the details of the onset of the condition if they wished, but the commissioners were not particularly interested in them. In this sense the recorded testimonies of beneficiaries follow the pattern of all miracle depositions. 35 Presumably, this is at least partly a product of the formulae interrogatorii and the influence of earlier miracle stories on what was considered essential for the narrative. That said, it is also possible that the difficulties caused by the impairment, as well as the exceptionality of the miraculous cure as an experience, overshadowed memories of the onset of the condition.

Functional Dis/abilities and Pain In testimonies given by persons other than the beneficiaries, the problems in walking, seeing, hearing, and speaking, as well as other outward signs of the con­­dition, were presented in detail, delineating the nature of the condition and empha­sizing the miraculous powers of the putative saint. These descriptions undoubtedly marked out an incurable, severe physical condition, but they also belonged to the traditional pattern of a miracle story.36 Below the beneficiaries’ own testimonies regarding the symptoms and signs of their conditions will be 35 

As noted above, most of the testimonies of the child beneficiaries come from the hearing of Louis of Toulouse, which generally consists of quite detailed testimonies with several witnesses for one miracle, the beneficiary often being the first of them. The same goes for the process of John Buoni, which contains the cures of several people impaired in childhood who also testified, as well as Yves of Tréguier. At the same time, in Peter of Morrone’s process family members always give the primary testimonies, and the beneficiaries’ role was usually just to confirm what had already been reported. A fairly large proportion of these childhood impairments was also acquired as a result of an accident, or an illness or infirmity which was either specifiable or had a clear starting point, so that knowledge of the origins of the problem in question was inevitable. 36  On these patterns, see Andrić, Miracles of St John Capistran, pp. 228–38; Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 93–99; Klaniczay, ‘Miracoli di punizione e maleficia’; Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle.

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scrutinized, asking which aspects they focused on and whether there are any differences between the testimonies of beneficiaries and other witnesses. In addition to informing the commissioners about the origins of her deafness, Rixenda de Fayensa also gave a detailed description of how she experienced it: […] ipsa crescente, mater sua, cum ipsa testis esset in etate quod posset aliquid audire, vocabat eam surdam, et hoc bene recordatur quod aliquo tempore audivit illud verbum a matre et ab aliis de domo patris sui, set non intelligebat quod volebat dicere; et eius etate crescente crescebat in ea surditas et eius obturbabatur auditus ex utraque parte tam a sinistra quam a dextra, ita quod videbatur sibi quod quasi examen apum et bundimentum in eius auribus continuo resonabant, ut dixit. Et circa finem quarti anni sue etatis, ipsa que loquitur incepit cognoscere huiusmodi surditatem; set de anteriori tempore non recordatur nisi quantum vocabatur surda, ut dixit. Et duravit sibi postea illa surditas per octo annos et plus, ut dixit.37 ([…] herself growing up, her mother, when the witness was at the age when she could hear something, called her deaf, and she remembers this well, that at a certain time she heard this word from the mother and from others in her father’s house, but she did not understand what it meant; and as her age increased, the deafness grew in her, and it disturbed her hearing on both the left and the right side, so that it seemed to her as if there was a swarm of bees and a constant buzzing resounding in her ears, as she said. And at about the end of her fourth year, she who speaks started to recognize this deafness; but relating to an earlier time she does not remember it, except that she was called deaf, as she said. And this deafness lasted afterwards for eight years and more, as she said.]

In Rixenda’s testimony memories of childhood, understanding, and hearing inter­mingle. Her utterance about being of the age when she could hear something probably means the age when a child is supposed to understand what is being said. Medieval writers divided childhood into different phases, depending on the view of the author. For Isidore of Seville (or Isidorus Hispalensis, d. 646), infantia meant a period when the child was not yet able to express himself by speaking, or when speech was inadequate. The same notion was adopted later in the Middle Ages, for example by Thomas Cantimpre and Bartholomeus Anglicus.38

37 

Louis of Toulouse, p. 153. Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 28–29. See also Gaffney, Constructions of Childhood, p. 35; Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, p. 23. 38 

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It would be far-fetched to assume that Rixenda was aware of the opinions of Isidore of Seville and his followers, especially as she (according to the document, at least) spoke about hearing, not speaking. Yet it seems apparent that speaking, hearing, and understanding were all expected of a child of a certain age, and that Rixenda connected hearing and understanding.39 Rixenda’s own experience of her deafness differs slightly from her father’s testimony, in that he and his wife had realized the girl could not hear when she was only two years old. Apparently, however, they were also aware that the girl still had some hearing left, because they were of the opinion that the deafness increased as the girl grew up.40 Rixenda’s brothers Blacacius and Guillelmus did not provide detailed descriptions of the state of her impairment, but Guillelmus stated that Rixenda had always been deaf, and heard nothing.41 This inconsistency may derive from the age difference, as Guillelmus was a couple of years younger than his sister. Rixenda’s testimony is the only example I have found of an actual witness account of someone cured of childhood deafness. However, more light can be shed on the matter by using the miracle of the once deaf-mute Loÿs, for his own message is still audible in Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s narrative.42 In addition 39 

There are references to this kind of thinking in other testimonies as well. Xanctia, whose case was discussed above, said that she was not old enough to know what had happened to her when she became ill, but her father, mother and others who could, said that it was St Anthony’s fire: Louis of Toulouse, p. 173. Xanctia was six years old when she acquired the illness, which she considered too young to judge such matters. Her statement was recorded as stating that ‘ipsa nescit, quia non habebat etatem nec poterat videre; set pater et mater et aliqui alii qui viderunt dixerunt sibi quod ille ignis sive morbus erat sancti Anthonii’. Here the verb videre presumably refers to being able to see that the disease afflicted her inner organs, and apparently also her genitals, as she mentioned that she was a virgin. 40  Louis of Toulouse, p. 154: ‘et cum pervenisset dicta filia ad etatem duorum annorum vel circa perceperunt ipse pater et mater sua quod dicta filia nichil audiebat, et quod, ea crescente, surditas eciam cescebat in ea’. 41  Louis of Toulouse, p. 155: ‘et quod propter illum casum semper stetit surda usque pervenit ad etatem xiijcim annorum vel circa, ut dixit; et bene recordatur quod semper vidit eam tunc temporis surdam, et quod nichil penitus audiebat’. 42  Irina Metzler mentions Loÿs’s miracle as a warning example of how one should not read even this exceptional story as ‘genuine’ autobiographical material, due to the reformatting of miracle accounts into the hagiographic formula: Metzler, A Social History of Disability, p. 3. As already mentioned, the witnesses in Louis IX’s canonization process were asked and allowed to give exceptionally long accounts, which were also recorded in Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s text. Yet, even compared with many of the other narratives in the collection, and especially when compared with miracle narratives in other canonization hearings, it must be noted that the description of Loÿs’s cure records exceptionally detailed information about his experiences as

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to relating Loÿs’s experiences at the château of Orgelet and other places, the text also gives exceptional insight into his experiences as a deaf-mute person and as someone regaining his hearing.43 In addition to teaching the boy his profession, Gauchier the smith also taught him to perform religious rites. Loÿs said later that he did not really understand religion, but was mimicking what other people did when he knelt down and raised his joined hands in prayer, acting according to an ancient way of praying, frequently recorded in miracle narratives.44 Interestingly, in the earlier version of the miracle by Guillaume de Chartres, it is stated that Loÿs was told about the miracles by signs, which would mean that he had some basic understanding of the miracle, and that is how he decided to start the journey.45 Perhaps, however, it is safer to trust in the document based on the canonization hearing, where Loÿs himself testified,46 which portrays Loÿs’ leaving the count’s household as a more impulsive act, a response to the chamberlain’s refusal to give him new shoes. At any event, Loÿs joined the royal entourage led by the new king, Philip III, also known as Philip the Bold (1245–85, ruled 1270–85), which was carrying the remains of Louis IX, who had died on crusade. During the journey Loÿs lived on the alms given by the court members and other noble persons travelling in the party, sometimes helping the valets with their horses.47 The entourage finally reached Saint-Denis, where Louis IX was to be buried. According to the narrative and most likely Loÿs’s own testimony, he did not understand what was going on, but learned of it later. At the grave Loÿs acted in a deaf-mute person. Although the text follows the pattern of a miracle story to some extent, the accidental nature of his cure in particular differs crucially from cures in the vast majority of miracle narratives. Although the text is by no means an autobiographical account, like some other narratives in the collection, it shows the keen interest of the commissioners in the everyday experiences of the miraculées. 43  The narrative has also been analysed in Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp.  74–78, 89–90; Farmer, ‘A Deaf-Mute’s Story’; Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 200–03, and Wittmer-Butsch and Rendtel, Miracula: Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter, pp. 272–74. 44  See Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, p. 127. 45  Guillaume de Chartres, De vita et actibus inclytatae recordationis regis Francorum, ed. by Bouquet, p. 38: ‘comperto per signa, quod apud sepulcrum gloriosi regis Franciae Ludovici fiebant miracula, virtute operante divina, adjunxit se quibusdam peditibus venientibus Parisius’. 46  In Guillaume de Chartres’s narrative it is stated that the story was told by the count and many other persons who had known the boy. 47  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 51–52.

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the same way as he had seen other people doing at minsters when staying with Gauchier and his wife and the Countess of Auxerre, not because of devotion, but because he wanted to do what other people did. When the blessed king was being buried, he knelt and prayed at the grave. Noteworthy in the narrative is Loÿs’s remark that he did not think other people would know any more about religion than he did. His lack of hearing thus not only prevented him from learning to understand religion, but from realizing that there was something to understand.48 This underlines the disabling effects of his condition in the narrative and presumably for the members of his community, but not necessarily his personal experience of them. Loÿs remained at Saint-Denis for three or four days, living on the alms he got from the abbey. On the third day, when he was again kneeling at the grave, he suddenly began to hear other people’s voices, and the ringing of the bells and footsteps. Loÿs’s cure at the grave is exceptional among hagiographic sources because of his lack of personal devotion. Although it did not prevent Loÿs from experiencing a saintly cure, in the religious context the lack of devotion appears as the most significant, disabling factor of his condition.49 Consequently, his cure, despite this disadvantage, underlines the greatness of the miracle and Louis IX’s saintly powers. Apparently the case puzzled its investigators as well, because when interrogating Loÿs, they asked if he believed he had been cured by the merits of the blessed king, and further how he knew that, given that he had no faith or devotion. He replied that he could not see any other reason, and that he firmly believed Louis IX had cured him because of his mercy and compassion.50 48 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 52–53: ‘non pas por ce que il seust qu’estoit eglise ne devocion, mes por ce que il veoit les autres en l’eglise agenoillier et lever les mains jointes au ciel et fere teles manieres de choses, il fesoit ausi, non pas pour nule devocion, ainçois le fesoit por ce que il veoit que les autres le fesoient, ne ne savoit pas ne ne pensoit que les autres hommes seussent plus que il savoit’. See also Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 200–01. 49  In the writings of Teresa de Cartagena, a Spanish nun living in the fifteenth century who lost her hearing in her thirties, gives a rare insight into the personal experience of a deaf person — quite different from that of Loÿs, both in the religious sense and in other ways. She wrote that the loss of hearing actually improved her spiritual state, because it prevented her from hearing words offensive to God as well as gossip. She also writes that she would gladly have endured her disability since birth, so that she would never have heard words that would have offended God, but does not take into account the possible effects prelingual deafness would have had on her religious upbringing and education: Metzler, ‘Perceptions of Deafness’, p. 83. 50  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 55. See also Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 76–77, and Metzler, A Social History of Disability, p. 201, who writes that in portraying the

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The sudden ability to hear scared Loÿs and he left Saint-Denis and supported himself for a while by begging, but eventually he returned to Gauchier, who started to teach him to speak.51 The narrative also reports that at that time, the Countess of Auxerre was at the castle of Saint Julien near Orgelet. After learning about the miracle, she sent someone to search for Loÿs and arranged for him to work in her kitchen, as well as making the bailiff teach him prayers. Here again the aural and speech impediments interconnect: the narrative states that Loÿs was taught the meanings of some things or objects each day, and if he did not know their names the following day, he was beaten in the same way children at school were if they did not know their lessons.52 Later on Loÿs was shown to the bailiff of the Count, who taught him Ave Maria and Pater Noster. Loÿs also recited these prayers — which, together with the Credo, every Christian had to know in Latin53 — in front of the commissaries, thus proving that his cure and the (religious) socialization were complete. Therefore the narrative links Loÿs cure and ensuing socialization, as he remained disabled and his socialization incomplete until he was taught, in his twenties, the things that children usually learn at a very early age.54 The narrative presents the socializa‘need’ to be cured as a justification for a miracle, the narrative contrasts with later medieval healing miracles, in which the moral condition of the supplicant is more important than the need to be cured. In the sources of this study, such an attitude, is rarely stressed. This is partly because it was usually the parent who approached the saint, but their spiritual purity too is largely missing from the accounts. As already mentioned, St Louis IX’s collection is an exception, as it makes regular references to confession before pilgrimage. 51  This is one of the aspects of the story that differs in Guillaume de Chartres’s version. He writes that straight after the cure Loÿs started to speak ‘not his native langue, but proper Gallic’: Guillaume de Chartres, De vita et actibus inclytatae recordationis regis Francorum, ed. by Bouquet, p. 38: ‘Statim enim coepit ibiden loqui, non lingua materna, sed recte gallica’. 52  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 55. Loÿs had also been ‘educationally’ beaten by Gauchier earlier, when he had done something against the will of his master: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 52. Corporal punishment was seen as essential for young people if they were to develop into respectful adults: Dzon, ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, p. 194. On corporal punishment and education, see also Boynton, ‘Training for Liturgy’, pp. 9–11; Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, p. 78; Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, p. 152. For teaching of words and reading in general, see Orme, Medieval Schools, pp. 57–60. 53  Orme, Medieval Schools, p. 59. 54  Medieval writers scrutinising deafness also paid attention to this, providing an interesting parallel with the miracle. A French scholar of the early fourteenth century, Jean de Jandun, wrote that a congenitally deaf-mute person was like a child reared in a forest without hearing any meaningful speech. According to him, there is no habit of speaking without social intercourse with men. Marsilius of Inghen, who was a natural philosopher of the early fourteenth century,

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tion primarily as a one-way process, but as we learn from Loÿs’s earlier phases, he seems to have played an active part in the course of events, albeit with a limited understanding of the implications of his actions. One of the few witness accounts given by a beneficiary who was cured of childhood blindness comes from the process of John Buoni. The above-mentioned Beatrix Ottonelli testified that she had lost the sight of her right eye at the time of her birth, and that only a little sight had remained in the left eye.55 The other witnesses to the miracle were Beatrix’s sister Honorata and Honorata’s husband Oprandus, in whose house Beatrix had been staying. Honorata’s deposition is more precise when it comes to details concerning the childhood of Beatrix, because she related that their parents had worked a lot with various doctors, trying to get Beatrix to see. She also explained that Beatrix had lost her sight while ‘in the cradle’; that she could see initially, but then lost the sight of the right eye completely and the left one partially.56 Beatrix was around twenty at the time of the inquiry, but the document does not give the age of Honorata. Honorata had, however, been married for nine years, so it is likely that she was a few years older than her sister.57 If the medicine was given to Beatrix when she was still an infant, it would explain the discrepancies between the beneficiary’s and her sister’s memories. Evidently, Beatrix and her sister made a distinction between complete blindness and having some residual vision, as was typical in the miracle testimonies. had similar ideas. A boy growing up in a forest would remain mute before other men were able to instil in him a definite language: Metzler, ‘Perceptions of Deafness’, p. 83; Metzler, A Social History of Disability, p. 202. Maria Wittmer-Butsch and Constanze Rendtel also draw a parallel between Loÿs’s inability to ask for his own miraculous healing and that of small children and the mentally ill: Wittmer-Butsch and Rendtel, Miracula: Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter, p. 274. 55  AASS Oct. IX, p. 803: ‘dixit quod tempore nativitatis suae amisit visum oculi dexteri, cum adhuc mater ipsius jaceret in partu illo; et dixit quod de sinistro parum videbat tum’. 56  AASS Oct. IX, p. 804. 57  Beatrix and Honorata were originally from Mariana, and both stated they had been living in Mantua for twelve years. Their testimonies do not reveal whether they had moved there with their parents who had then died and that Honorata had married Oprandus at some point, or whether Oprandus simply had a different idea of the period for which he had been married to Honorata. Oprandus stated that he had married Honorata nine years ago, and that they had taken care of Beatrix during those years. Based on the studies of Christiane Klapisch-Zuber and David Herlihy, towards the later Middle Ages Italian girls typically married in their mid- or late teens, although there were differences in that peasant girls might marry at a slightly later age than those belonging to the urban gentry: Herlihy, Medieval Households, pp. 103–04; Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their Families, p. 87.

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In the part of Beatrix’s testimony where her own words are summarized (rather than being recorded as answers to the commissioners’ questions), the term caeca (blind) is not used. At the beginning of Honorata’s testimony she states that Beatrix had lost most of her sight, and later that the parents’ and physicians’ efforts had not helped, and that Beatrix had become blind in one eye. 58 Similarly, Honorata’s husband, Oprandus, confirmed that Beatrix was blind in the right eye and saw only a little with the left. 59 Yet the commissioners seem to have defined her straightforwardly as a blind person, because they asked for how long she had been blind (caeca), who saw this, and who knew that she was blind.60 This is the only miracle account among the sources of this study in which such inconsistencies appear. Although it is possible that the difference in the wordings of the commissioners and the witnesses simply derives from the notary’s choice of words, the inconsistency may also have something to do with personal experience. If Beatrix had only very little vision left, which seems to have been the case, this could make her blind in the commissioners’ eyes. If they followed the rules and read the written statements to the witnesses afterwards,61 it also seems that Beatrix was satisfied with being described as caeca. In either case, especially for the beneficiaries, but most likely also for their family members, slight vision was obviously significant, even if other people saw them simply as blind and unable to act as if they saw, as others did. Besides Beatrix, there are also two young men testifying about blindness experienced in childhood — this time in infancy. They are Adam and Rogerus de Kylpek, who were brothers, once simultaneously cured by the merits of St Thomas Cantilupe. Adam’s blindness originated when he was two or three years old. He gave a quite lengthy and dramatic testimony about the case, concentrating mostly on the miracle itself and describing how he slept on the grave 58 

AASS Oct. IX, p. 804: ‘et dixit quod perpendit ipsam Beatricem in ipsis cunabulis perdidisse visum dexteri oculi; et dixit etiam quod de sinistro parumper viderat; et dixit testis sacramento quod parentes ipsius Beatricis et ipsius testis multum et diu laboraverunt cum medicis et variis medicinis, ut adjuvaret dictam puellam de visu praedicto; et dixit quod nihil profuit eidem, sed caeca stetit ipso oculo’. 59  AASS Oct. IX, p. 804. 60  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 803–04: ‘Interrogata quantum temporis ipsa testis stetit caeca […] Interrogata quibus videntibus et scientibus non videbat, quando ceca erat’. 61  The number of processes rejected at the curia because of the lack of accuracy in this sense declined after 1250, which André Vauchez suggests was because the commissioners began to take the rules more seriously. John Buoni’s process is, however, among the rejected ones: Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 60–64.

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and had a vision of St Thomas.62 This was also reported by the other witnesses of the miracle, and the similar details suggest that the miracles had been commonly and regularly discussed and reminisced about.63 Adam’s memories of his blindness were somewhat vague, but he stated that he recalled how, in his infancy, he was blind ‘for some days’ and was then taken to the shrine of Thomas Cantilupe.64 In addition to ‘recall’, the Latin verb recolere translates as ‘cultivate’ or ‘going over in one’s mind’. Adam gave his testimony in English, so the translation may not reflect accurately what he really said, but the choice of words nevertheless refers specifically to active thinking and reminiscing about the event. The miraculous cure was clearly a much more dramatic experience than the vision problem itself, and left a stronger imprint in his mind, as Adam did not give details about the onset of the condition, unlike his mother Margeria. According to Margeria, Adam was only three years old when the condition started, and five when he was cured of it, which explains why his personal memories of the time before the cure must have been vague. Adam’s account of how long his blindness lasted diverges surprisingly from that of his mother, the boys’ uncle Jacobus Atteperie, and a man called Daniel Landeney, all of whom stated that he had been blind for ‘two years’.65 Perhaps the length of the blindness was not important in their later recollections because the miraculous cure itself overshadowed other details. The other boy, Rogerus, was still in the cradle when one of his eyes became infected, and he was cured after Adam had been taken to the shrine. His testimony regarding the case is very brief; he simply stated that he did not know anything about the two miracles except what his mother had told him. However, he went on to say that he saw well and could distinguish small and delicate objects shown to him.66 The brevity of Rogerus’s testimony can be attributed to him being still an infant when the miracles occurred, which meant that his testimony was based on hearsay.67 The text also states that Rogerus had gilbus and 62 

Adam’s testimony is in BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 235v. The forming of memories regarding the cure of the two boys is discussed in KatajalaPeltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 271–74. 64  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 235v. 65  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 234v: ‘Margeria [dixit quod] de biennio dictus Adam non vidit lucem’. See also BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 236r, 237r. 66  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 235v. 67  On the importance of having eyewitnesses as the informants for miracle stories see, for example, Van Hout, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, p. 143. 63 

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struma,68 and it is possible that the brevity of his deposition was also caused by his illness. The witness accounts do not add more detailed information about Roger’s condition or whether ongoing illnesses may have affected his ability to give reliable testimony.69 Where the distinction between blindness and ‘normal’ loss of eyesight lay is difficult to define. Eyeglasses are a medieval invention which were in general use in northern Italy by the turn of the fourteenth century. However, although the possibility of using the equipment reduced the impact of the loss of vision for some individuals, eyeglasses were not available to everyone because of both cost and geography. Most of the accounts we have of their use relate to churchmen and friars.70 In any event, different levels of sight problems must have been very common.71 The statement of Iohannes le Maignen, who testified about the miraculous cure of his blindness, demonstrates this. Johannes was blind in one eye from about the age of eight, and completely blind from the age of twenty. He said that after he had regained some vision in his left eye at the age of thirty-two, he walked better than his wife, who saw with two eyes.72 The reports of the cure of Beatrix, discussed above, are also somewhat vague. Beatrix simply stated that she saw well, but her sister Honorata’s description leaves more doubt. Honorata first stated that after the pilgrimage Beatrix saw well and clearly with both 68 

BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 235v: ‘et habebat gilbum, et strumam, et dixit se morari cum matre sua’. Gilbus probably means jaundice or a condition similar to it, while struma commonly refers to swellings on one’s neck. 69  If Rogerus had unanimously been labelled as a mentally ill person, he would presumably not have testified at all, since the decretals of Gregory IX stated that the mentally ill were forbidden to act as witnesses. See Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, p. 38; Krötzl, ‘Prokuratoren, Notare und Dolmetscher’, pp. 122–23; Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, pp. 65–70. On the rule and secular law, see Turner, Care and Custody, pp. 42–44. Another deposition in the Cantilupe hearing may, however, be a more concrete example of this. A boy called Nicholas, once resuscitated by the merits of the saint, was found to be in ill health nine years later. The deposition also stated that he was very simplex, which might refer to reduced mental capacities. Therefore, the commissioners decided not to interview him further: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 158v. 70  On the invention and usage of eyeglasses, see Demaitre, Medieval Medicine, pp. 175–78; Frugoni and McCuaic, Books Banks, Buttons, pp. 14–16; Rebold Benton, Materials, Methods, and Masterpieces, pp. 277–78. 71  This is also noted by Luke Demaitre, who writes that compared to our time, ‘the range of acceptable average sight was much wider’: Demaitre, Medieval Medicine, p. 174. 72  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 178v: ‘Dicens quod melius ibat quam uxor sua que de duobus occulis videbat’.

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eyes, and still did. Later, when she was asked if Beatrix’s health had been well preserved she responded that it had and that she was steadily getting better.73 An individual’s experience of their own lack of vision must have depended a lot on aspects of their everyday life, deriving from expectations of both gender and status. This goes for both adults and children. The work someone was expected to do, or their educational level implied a certain expected standard of eyesight. Those professions and everyday tasks that required fineness of detail or good reading or writing skills also required better eyesight than more physical work.74 This is shown in the testimonies of the above-mentioned Honorata and Oprandus, who defined Beatrix’s restored vision by stating that she was now able to sew and to thread a needle, which she had been unable to do before.75 In this respect, the experience of blindness, if understood as also referring to reduced eyesight, varied significantly between children from different social backgrounds, depending on the expectations for their future. In all strata of medieval society, severe loss of vision must have made earning one’s living a challenge — something visually impaired children were undoubtedly aware of.76 The descriptions of symptoms of mobility impairments in testimonies of protagonists and other witnesses are rather similar. As an example, Beatrix de Santa Cruce’s testimony of her inability to feed or to drink with her own hands, or to walk on her feet, was very similar to that of her mother and neighbour.77 73 

AASS Oct. IX, p. 804: ‘et est dita sua soror sana ab infirmitate predicta, et quod nunc bene videt et clare oculis ambobus.  […] Et dixit quod bene perseveraverit in ipsa sanitate, habendo semper melius’. Honorata also stated that she knew about Beatrix’s blindness because Honorata looked after her during it, and that she still looked after her (nutrivit eam dictum tempus et adhuc nutrit eam). This choice of words sounds rather strange because Beatrix was already twenty years old at the time of the canonization inquiry, and could, therefore, have referred to continuing poor vision or ill health. On the other hand, it is also possible that it was simply the scribe’s way of recording that Beatrix was still residing with her sister and brother-in-law, or Honorata’s way of expressing the matter. After all, the testimonies give an impression that Beatrix had been living with her for years, and it is possible that she had developed a motherly relationship with her younger sister. 74  See also Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 74–75. 75  AASS Oct. IX, p. 804. 76  For example, of the residents in the Parisian hospital of the Quinze-Vingts, a large number were working members of the Parisian bourgeoisie, including wealthy merchants, before losing their vision and entering the hospice. On the identities and backgrounds of the residents, see O’Tool, ‘Disability and the Suppression of Historical Identity’. 77  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 162–64.

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Thomasius Iohannis Galterii de Rocca Morici, who was penatus, contractus et claudus due to a swelling that had lasted five months in his teens, also reported that he could not stand or walk on his feet, eat, or drink, or do other necessities, unless assisted by others.78 There are, however, some cases in which different aspects of incapacity were mentioned. This shows, for example, in the testimonies concerning Amadorinus, who was in danger of having his foot amputated. The other witnesses for the miracle were Amadorinus’s uncle, Rosalitus Sassolini, and two brothers, as his father had had died earlier and his mother had died between the miracle and the investigation.79 The uncle and the two brothers described the condition in detail,80 but how it affected his mobility is only mentioned in the testimony given by the boy himself. When describing the effects of the cure, Amadorinus stated that he walked back home on his own, which he had not been able to do before.81 Apparently, Amadorinus was here referring to an inability to use the ailing leg, or the need of another person’s support to be able to walk rather than being completely immobile, thus giving a rather nonspecific description of his mobility problems. 82 The danger of amputation was probably the reason why the others did not mention the inability to walk, as it must have been the most horrifying and frightening effect of the illness, and thus remained in their memory as the defining factor.83 Amadorinus himself, however, was the one who experienced the cure, and for him the recovered ability to walk must have been very significant. He was about thirteen when he was afflicted and was cured three years later, so he was old enough to remember the experience clearly. Ceptus Sperançe de Montefalco is one of the beneficiaries giving the most elaborate description of his impairment and the cure and the deposition reveals

78 

Peter of Morrone, p. 291: ‘non poterat nec stare pedes nec ambulare nec sedere nec eciam manibus tangere quicquam, et cum nolebat bibere et comedere et alia necessaria sua facere parabatur sibi per alios et tenebatur in dictis necessariis suis’. 79  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 825, 826. 80  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 825–27. 81  AASS Oct.  IX, p.  826: ‘Postmodum data licentia redeundi a dicto fratre Joanne Buono  […] dicta mater religavit gambam dicti testis sicut primo erat, et coeperunt redire domum, et statim, ut dixit dictus testis, sensit se melioratum et curatum, ita quod per se ipsum ibat, cum primo aliquo modo ire non posset’. 82  See pp. 48–53 for the discussion of the accuracy in descriptions regarding children’s mobility problems. 83  The danger of amputation is discussed on pp. 200–01.

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that the commissioners asked him some detailed questions.84 For instance, Ceptus related that he had been incapable of walking, and that there had been no respite from his condition at any time. He gave a detailed description of the malformations of his legs.85 He also stated several times that he was unable to walk (impotens ad ambulandum), whereas other witnesses, Petrus Andree, Thomaxius Bartholonis, Andirolus Benvengnatis, and dompnus Nicola, rector, all mentioned that he walked on the balls or insteps of his feet and used crutches.86 As noted earlier, witnesses usually made a clear distinction as to whether a child was totally unable to walk, or could only walk with difficulty or by using aids. By not making such a clear distinction, Ceptus’s as well as Amadorinus’s testimonies differ from the usual practice, and also from the testimony of Beatrix Ottonelli discussed above. Possibly Ceptus experienced the pain or difficulty in walking so intensely that in his memory it was not far from complete immobility. Another interesting inconsistency in the testimonies about Ceptus’s cure is that Andirolus Benvengnatis mentioned that the boy could not walk without considerable pain or torment.87 When describing his impairment, Ceptus, however, did not mention the pain, except when the commissioners asked whether, at the time when he was taken to the shrine, he felt greater pain when walking than before, to which he replied ‘no’.88 Because Ceptus had not mentioned the pain, it seems that the commissioners were referring either to what they had heard but not recorded, or to the difficulties that were described by Ceptus and by Petrus before him.89 As the word they used was pena rather than dolor, they could also refer to the general difficulty he had with walking, rather than just physical pain. 84 

The text does not reveal why the commissioners asked Ceptus so many detailed questions, but one reason may have been that one other witness mentioned that he had been begging during his impairment, which suggests that he was considered a poor and consequently less trustworthy witness. The commissioners also added a chapter about the examination of Ceptus’s legs and walking: Clare of Montefalco, p. 349. 85  Clare of Montefalco, pp. 348–49. 86  Clare of Montefalco, pp. 308–09, 427–28, 504–07. 87  Clare of Montefalco, p. 504: ‘sine mangna pena non poterat incedere’. 88  Clare of Montefalco, p. 348: ‘Interrogatus si illa ora qua portatus fuit ad locum s. Clare et postea liberatus percipiebat se habere aliquam penam ad ambulandum magis quam primo, dixit quod non’. 89  Clare of Montefalco, p. 308: ‘non poterat incedere nisi curvus et cum ciambectis seu crocis et quod superfities amborum pedum ybat et calcabat de subtus terram, quando incedebat, et plante apparebant desuper et cum ipsis superfitie pedum et plantis pro maiori parte incedebat et calcabat terram, ita quod onnino erat impotens ad eumdum’.

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It is possible that the lack of mention of pain in Ceptus’s testimony simply derived from the way he experienced his impairment. Its disabling effects could be connected more to the difficulty of walking than to physical pain, especially when recalled some ten years later, Andirolus Benvengnatis could also have interpreted his impairment wrongly in this respect. There are similar discrepancies in the descriptions of Ceptus’s cure. The same Andirolus testified that when Ceptus was placed on the top of the grave, he as well as several others, saw his legs straightening little by little. As this happened, the boy ‘cried and trembled violently’ and said that he felt the bones straightening, which caused him pain.90 Thomaxius Bartholonis de Monte Falco gave a somewhat similar statement, mentioning that Ceptus’s feet hurt because the skin of his soles, which had not touched the gound before, was thin.91 Again, Ceptus did not mention the pain when describing the miracle. He reported having been placed on the grave by his mother, and also that he sensed his legs straightening, but there are no hints that he felt physical pain.92 Perhaps the cure itself was such a powerful experience that the pain related to it did not define his memories.93 As a comparison, another of the children of our sources testifying about her cure, Gerdurdis de Bleichenbach, related that after she had stayed at the shrine of St Elizabeth for eight days, she started to feel some pain in her afflicted leg, which started to straighten. The following morning she was taken to the grave again, tormented by a pain in her back, and was eventually cured of her other ailments also.94 Pain is also mentioned in the narrative regarding the cure of Adete in Louis IX’s miracles. Adete was ten years old when the illness struck her, and the text states that when Adete entered the shrine, she started to feel better although she felt great pain in her feet and knees.95 The way Adete’s feel90 

Clare of Montefalco, p. 504: ‘Et dixit quod dum stabat suepr ipso pilo […] ipse testis et multe alie persone publice et aperte et manifeste viderunt et videbant quod pedes eius erigebantur paulatim et dirigebantur ad statum debitum. Et dixit quod ipse puer fortiter plorabat et tremitabat in tali erectione; qui dicebat quod ossa pedum que dirigebantur sentiebat et sibi dolorem inferebant’. 91  Clare of Montefalco, p.  427: ‘Bene dixit tamen dictus testis quod predictus Ceptus quando fuit admotus de dicto seppulcro dolebat multum pedes quando ambulabat quia plante predictorum pedum predicti Cepti erant nimis tenere et non erant callose’. 92  Clare of Montefalco, pp. 348–49: ‘et vidit et sensit pedes suos rectos, ut alii homines habent et ut nunc sunt eos habet rectos’. 93  One of the witnesses for Ceptus’s cure even related that he had seen the healing leg smoking at the time of the cure: Clare of Montefalco, p. 377. 94  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 173. 95  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 33.

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ings are recorded in the narrative suggests that she was among the witnesses for her own cure. Another type of dramatic experience immediately before being cured is found in one of Louis IX’s miracles. As already mentioned, Michelet le Sauvage went to the shrine with his sister. Michelet had died before the investigation, so we do not know how he would have described the experience, but his sister later reported that he fell on the ground and stopped breathing, so that she thought he was dead. When he revived he complained to her that he was in a lot of pain.96 As mentioned before, showy cures are relatively common in all miracle accounts describing cures at shrines,97 and descriptions of pain during a cure become quite frequent in all later medieval miracle accounts.98 These narratives portray the saints’ powers over human bodies in a very dramatic way. Although references to (physical) pain are, in general, infrequent in miracle testimonies regarding impaired children, they appear more regularly in the cases when the miraculé gave his or her testimony: of the twenty-eight beneficiaries testifying about their childhood mobility impairments, fifteen referred to pain. The personal experience of pain appears to be a phenomenon connected mostly with mobility impairments.99 In addition to the surviving miracle testimonies, in Les Miracles de Saint Louis physical pain is described in two narratives, in which it is evident that the beneficiary was among the witnesses.100 Some of these beneficiaries articulated their sentiments quite clearly and connect them with the bodily experience of impairment. Valedgrana, a girl once cured by the merits of John Buoni, mentioned that one of her symptoms was pain in the legs,101 and a Marseillean girl Ricardeta Bruna related how an illness called mengassa, which affected her whole legs, troubled her and caused 96 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 146. Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, pp. 165–225. 98  Wittmer-Butsch and Rendtel, Miracula: Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter, pp. 138–39. 99  See pp. 59–63 for discussion of pain in all testimonies regarding childhood impairments. Of the eight beneficiaries testifying about their childhood eye afflictions, none referred to physical pain, which indicates that it was more closely associated with the lived experience of mobility impairment in the sources of this study. See AASS Oct. IX, p. 303; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 235v; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 178v; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 199, 249; Peter of Morrone, pp. 256–257; Urban V, p. 179. The mother of Adam and Roger, however, referred to pain when testifying about her sons’ cures. Presumably the young age of the children prevented them from remembering the pain: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 234v. On the experience of physical pain and miracles that cured blindness among adults, see Craig, Wandering Women, pp. 99–101. 100  These two were Guillot dit le Potencier and Moriset de Ranton. 101  AASS Oct. IX, p. 803. 97 

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stabbing pains every day and night.102 In Ricardeta’s case the pain appears to be an essential aspect of her infirmity, because her mother mentioned it too;103 this also applies in the case of Ganthelma, whose morbus in her left leg caused pain and anguish,104 and Johannes Alani, who testified that gutta caused him great pain.105 There is a slight discrepancy between the testimonies of Alicia de Lonesdale and her father Willelmus regarding the early stage of her severe disability. According to Willelmus, one night the girl began to cry a lot and call for her father, after which he noticed how swollen the injured leg was.106 When describing the same night, Alicia only reported that the pain in the leg troubled her a lot.107 Some witnesses were quite explicit when describing the expressions of pain. Thomasius Iohannis Galterii reported that he cried loudly because of his pain when reaching the hermitage of Peter of Morrone,108 and Adelicia Alani Thome said that the gutta she had acquired in her early teens burdened her day and night so that she could hardly sleep, nor could those near her, because of her cries of pain.109 Valdegrana, who had variis infirmitates, did mention the pain in her legs, but the family’s neighbour Marcus went so far as to state that Valdegrana cried so much that she prevented him from sleeping.110 The way Thomas and 102 

Louis of Toulouse, p. 374: ‘et affigebat et vexabat eam et de nocte et de die’. Louis of Toulouse, p. 374: ‘et affligebat et vexabat eam cotidie predicta infirmita’. 104  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 244–45: ‘Ganthelma [dixit quod] postea excitata invenit se valde gravem et habentem in crure sinistro gravem et angustiosum dolorem, qui eam sic affligebat quod aprum poterat se iuvare et vix surgere de lecto sine adiutorio alieno. […] Cesterona mater dicte Gantelmete [dixit quod] successive incepit crescere dictus dolor, et supervenit ibi gravissima inflatura que ipsam tenuit et afflixit uno anno et dimidio, ut dixit’. 105  Yves of Tréguier, p. 151. 106  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 64v: ‘et nocte illa dicta puella incepit fortiter clamare et vocare dictum testem, patrem suum, et ipse venit ad dictam puellam que habebat dictum pedem suum cuius aliqua ossa ut prius deposuit confracta fuerant, adeo inflatum et infectum sanie’. 107  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 66v: ‘et continue dictus pes magis aggravabant, demum cum esset iuxta fontem ecclesie sancti Clementis Dacorum prope Londinium fuit plus solito aggravata ex dolore dicti pedis, quia per dicta foramina exiuerunt aliqua ossa corrupta et putrefacta’. 108  Peter of Morrone, p. 291: ‘continue ipse testis clamare non cessabat propter dolores intolerabiles quos sustinebat’. 109  Yves of Tréguier, p. 245: ‘et adeo ipsam quasi continue gravabat dicta gutta quod vix dormire poterat, nec eciam assistentes, propter clamores et planctus quos faciebat dicta testis’. 110  AASS Oct. IX, p. 803: ‘Dicens quod tota nocte clamabat ita quod tum testem prohibebat dormire’. 103 

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Adelicia reported their feelings is similar to the narratives of pilgrims whose actions at the shrine underlined the pain, thus making it, and consequently the saint’s powers, visible.111 It is possible that because they were adults at the time of the investigations, this aspect of miracle narratives had influenced the way they recalled the pain felt years earlier. Either way, the sensation of pain seems to have been an essential element in their memory of the events. Except for these very rare cases, references to behaviour which emphasized pain are next to non-existent in the sources of this study. Apparently such drama was not necessary in the canonization testimonies, in which the protagonists and those close to them could give more detailed information on the events, and in which also the common knowledge of the condition could be investigated and proved. This is perhaps the reason why, despite the long and detailed descriptions of their painful pilgrimages, the narratives about Guillot le Potencier and Moriset de Ranton, based on their own testimonies, did not include similar stereotypical expressions. The pain caused by Moriset’s apostumes was so great that it made him grind his teeth when he tried to treat them. When he described his exceptionally long pilgrimage — he walked a distance of more than two hundred kilometres from Saumur to Saint-Denis via Tours, Blois, and Saint-Sulpice-de-Favières over a period of several months — he said that walking was very troublesome, and that he was able to proceed only one lieu per day.112 Guillot le Potencier lived in Paris and walked twice to Noyon, a journey of around one hundred kilometres as the crow flies. The narrative states that when he was advised by a physician to go on a pilgrimage, he grieved because of the malady and because he did not believe he could manage a journey that long. Yet he made the pilgrimage, albeit not without pain and anguish, and occasionally he was carried by others when he could not walk. 113 When describing his second futile pilgrimage to Noyon, the narrative no longer mentions the pain — possibly because by then Guillot had a servant as his compan111 

See Cohen, The Modulated Scream, pp. 134–35. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 47–48: ‘Et quant il les en treoit il estraignoit les denz pour la doleur que il sentoit. […] Et einsi le dit Moriset se parti de la dite Meson Dieu trois semaines ou environ aprés la feste de Touz Saints et vint a Tours, et fu ilecques tout cel yver. Et aprés il vint a Blois, et einsi il vint a petit et petit a l’eglise de Saint Souplise. Car il ne pooit aller que une lieue le jour ou environ, et encore estoit il de tant aler mout las et mout travaillié’. See also Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 76, 92, on Moriset’s journey. 113  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 24: ‘Pour la quele chose le dit Guillot fu dolent et angoisseus pour la maladie et pour ce que il ne creoit pas que il peust soufrir le travail de si grant voiage […] Toutevoies il emprist le voiage et ala a saint Eloy a Noion, non pas sanz mout d’angoisse et de douleur. Et nonpourquant il fu porté aucune foiz par autre, car il ne pouoit aler’. 112 

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ion, which made the journey less troublesome. In both cases physical pain was closely connected with the attempts to obtain the saintly cure, and it forms a constant motif throughout the narratives as an illustration of the severity of the boys’ conditions. In addition to these clear references to bodily pain, some protagonists referred more indirectly to this aspect of their impairments, referring not just to physical pain but also to its psychological aspects. Gerdurdis, who experienced pain when cured, reported that she was ‘troubled by a powerful illness’.114 Bengeven called her fistulas horrible, but did not mention pain. Her mother did make some mention, saying that the fistulas disturbed (turbaretur) her and Bengeven’s choice of words presumably implied the sensation of pain.115 However, if this is the case, she chose not to dwell on this aspect of her impairment. The same goes for Petrus Sulpicii, who testified in the process of Philip of Bourges about the fistulas he had had in his boyhood. Petrus described the outward symptoms of his condition but did not mention them causing him any pain in this context: only when he reported the events during and immediately after the miraculous cure did he state that he no longer felt pain in his shin.116 The other two witnesses for the miracle, who both were friends or neighbours of Petrus, did not refer to his pain.117 In this case the time could not have dimmed the memories much, because, according to Petrus, the illness had lasted for thirty years, and the miracle had occurred only a year or two before the inquiry. The testimonies do not reveal how close to Petrus the two friends who acted as witnesses were, but both mentioned that they had talked about the matter with him. It is possible that the pain Petrus experienced was not very severe, as the witness accounts make no mention of this in the context of his mobility issues, but it is also possible that he made a deliberate or unconscious choice not to emphasize this aspect. The irregularity of expressions of pain seems somewhat surprising, given that the protagonists were testifying about their very own experiences, and pain is definitely a personal matter. The explanation lies partly in the types of conditions reported by the children who testified. For instance, Alicia de Lonesdale said herself that eventually she became so paralyzed that she no longer felt 114 

Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 172: ‘cepit egritudine valida laborare’. AASS Oct. IX, pp. 811–12. 116  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fol. 88v: ‘illa die sanatus fuit ita quod nulla sanies expiuit de foramine cruris, et infra tres dies, uel quatuor clausus fuit vulnus illud, et postmodum non sensit aliquem dolorem in crure’. 117  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fols 88v–89r. 115 

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pain,118 and in Peter of Morrone’s hearing a boy called Nicolaus Benedicti Thomasii made a similar statement.119 At the same time, many of those who did refer to the pain were suffering from fissures and other skin conditions, or gutta, which appears to have been a painful condition. As the miracle testimonies do not focus on physical pain and often fail to distinguish it as a separate symptom within accounts of incapacities, creating a synthesis of children’s lived experience of pain based on the canonization testimonies is an impossible task. All that can be said based on the testimonies is that in some children’s lives it was indeed a dominant factor. What is more important here is the role it could play in the memories and the way the children lived on despite their disability. From the witness accounts, it appears that for most of the beneficiaries the sensation of physical pain did not form an essential part of their memories — or at least the narration — of the impairment, because few of them emphasized this aspect later, even if they referred to it. At the same time, the importance of personal experience is apparent, because pain was more commonly mentioned in the miracle testimonies where beneficiaries acted as witnesses. It is possible that in these cases also the witnesses had reminisced about the event with the miraculé more recently and hence also discussed the pain involved. Anthropologists have shown that expressions of pain vary greatly in different cultures and language areas, as ‘the cultural elaboration of pain involves categories, idioms, and modes of experience that are greatly diverse’.120 Chronic pain is neither ubiquitous nor infrequent; its experience is closely related to the lived experience of an individual and their personal characteristics, philosophy, and view of the world.121 In medieval culture pain was generally accepted as an inevitable part of human existence, often caused by sin and put on Earth by God who, according to Genesis, transformed a paradise-like existence into a worldly one. At the same time, suffering was considered to be a divine gift, because it was beneficial for the immortal soul, making it possible to expiate one’s misdeeds in this life rather than in Purgatory. Suffering also made it possible to imitate the Passion of Christ, and was a characteristic of the lives of many saints.122 118 

BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 67r. 119  Peter of Morrone, p. 325: ‘dum ipse testis esset adeo perditus a uentre suo usque ad plantas pedum et sic contractus quod non senciebat de ipsis membris ac si sua prorsus non essent’. 120  Kleinman and others, ‘Pain as Human Experience: An Introduction’, p. 1. 121  Kleinman and others, ‘Pain as Human Experience: An Introduction’, pp. 1–4. 122  Andrić, The Miracles of St John Capistran, p. 242; Archambeau, ‘God Helps Those Who

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Moreover, the Devil used pain to lure people into despair,123 and although such statements appeared mostly in literature concentrating on the good death and not on living with chronic medical conditions, in all probability this concept also influenced ideas about the handling of illnesses and impairments. Pain is also a gendered issue,124 as well as one related to the sufferer’s social status, and it has been proposed that female pilgrims mentioned pain more than men and that for women it was acceptable to express physical weakness;125 however, men were not supposed to to display any lack of strength or behave in a manner that might be construed as feminine.126 This pertains especially to those from the elite classes of society.127 This gendered approach is not obvious among our protagonists, because seven girls and eight boys with childhood impairments affecting mobility did refer to the sensation of pain. One does, however, get the impression that the most extreme descriptions of pain, especially when they include some pain-driven behaviours, were given by girls or adult female beneficiaries. Moriset de Ranton and Guillot dit le Potencier are exceptions here, but their cases and especially their descriptions of pain differ from the others in the sense that their experiences focused on long pilgrimages and experiencing and expressing pain could be expected from a pilgrim. Moriset was also very poor, and the cultural association of pain with heroic Help Themselves’, p. 15; Cohen, The Modulated Scream, pp. 27–28, 188; Pincikowski, Bodies of Pain, pp. 15–16. For a short historiography of the few studies concentrating on pain in the Middle Ages, see Pincikowski, Bodies of Pain, pp. 7–11. 123  Cohen, The Modulated Scream, pp. 139–41. 124  See Easton, ‘Pain, Torture, and Death’, pp. 51–55; Farmer, ‘Manual Labor, Begging, and Conflicting’, pp. 261–63; Pincikowski, Bodies of Pain, passim. The most gendered type of pain was that related to childbirth, emphasizing women’s humility both after the Fall and in marriage. It was closely connected with the discussion of Christ’s humanity and whether he was born without labour pains. There were reasons to think that the Virgin had indeed experienced some pain in her human existence, as she was assisted by midwives and because all births caused pain. By the later thirteenth century, the consensus was nevertheless that she had given birth to Christ without experiencing pain: Rubin, ‘The Person in the Form’, p. 114. 125  Craig, Wandering Women, pp. 100–01. 126  Bullough, ‘On Being a Male in the Middle Ages’, p. 34. The idea that men ‘need’ to be better able to endure physical pain is still visible in modern thinking in expressions such as ‘be a man’ or ‘take it like a man’: Pincikowski, Bodies of Pain, pp. 5–6. 127  In literature also knights were whipped, beaten, and stabbed when performing their knightly duties: Pincikowski, Bodies of Pain, p. 25. In general, the ideal knight was considered physically fit and strong, but also fierce, gracious and joyful. See Dover, ‘Childhood and Family Relations in the Old French Prose Lancelot’, pp. 254–55.

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male activities did not hold as much importance for boys like him as for the wealthier ones. A young child is unlikely to have been aware of all the religious connotations and meanings of physical pain, but when the beneficiaries gave their accounts years later, these cultural ideas and socialization presumably affected which aspects of the impairment they stressed. With our testifying beneficiaries the comparisons cannot yet be used as a tool due to the low number of them and also because most of those giving longer testimonies did it several years after the cure. Based on these few testimonies, the time span does not seem to have made a difference to whether the miraculé spoke about pain. As an example, Ricardeta Bruna mentioned physical pain although she testified more than ten years after the miracle.128 On the other hand, Beatrix de Sancta Cruce, who was interrogated at the age of nine, was cured in the same year and yet said nothing about feeling pain, merely describing her incapacities.129 Moriset de Ranton was a rare example of a witness who went on to testify immediately after his cure. In any event, as the testimonies of immediate family and other community members have already shown, impairment was primarily defined through physical incapacities, and this also applied in the beneficiaries’ testimonies, although pain could add to the suffering the saint put an end to. It is possible that the vagueness of the references to pain even in beneficiaries’ testimonies is also a matter of proving the condition true. It has been proposed that the experience of pain cannot be shared, and everything it achieves is influenced by this.130 Unless the beneficiary behaved and expressed his or her pain in a clearly discernible way, physical pain was presumably considered a private sentiment difficult to prove, and hence less useful as evidence or proof of a miraculously cured impairment than, for example, a twisted limb.131 In other words, problems in 128 

Louis of Toulouse, p. 226. Also Ceptus Sperançe di Montefalco gave his witness accounts almost ten years after he was cured: Clare of Montefalco, p. 349. 129  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 162–63. 130  Scarry, The Body in Pain, p. 4. In medieval religious culture, however, there existed an idea of shared pain, connected with shared joy, which was most visible in the flagellant rituals: Merback, ‘The Living Image of Piety’, p. 175. In the context of canonization testimonies, the shared emotions are sorrow and grief, especially in cases of sudden death, and shared joy after a successful miracle. 131  Pietro Colonna for one was suspicious of whether lying in bed in agony was sufficient proof of a condition. In his discussion of Amelota de Chambli’s cure, he was of the opinion that such a state could also be faked. However, he concluded that nobody can fake such a condition for a long time, and having several witnesses giving proofs of the condition made the report

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moving and functioning seem to have been a more effective way to underscore the condition than pain even when the deposition was given by the beneficiary, and it is possible that some descriptions were occasionally left out of the written statement. Still, the existence of pain was acknowledged and it was experienced by many, as well as reminisced about afterwards. This is shown by the more common references to pain in the cases when the beneficiary testified; cases in which the beneficiary did not refer to the physical pain, but another witness did, are extremely rare.132

Social Sphere and Interaction A subject that appears frequently in modern disability studies and theories is accessibility.133 The lack of it in a given environment leads to marginalization in many ways: for instance, the mobility impaired cannot access certain buildings, the visually impaired cannot navigate in some environments, and the lack of induction loop systems or interpreters excludes the hearing-impaired from following the speech of others. As the question of accessibility is a major agenda of the contemporary disability rights movement with great relevance to the modern lived experience of the disabled, we are justified to ask whether the question of accessibility arises in medieval sources. Modern sociological studies have also posited the idea that in everyday life we not only are but also perform ourselves, or our identities. According to this theory, we can control the impression we give about ourselves to those around us, and our social selves are largely defined by others. Thus identity is also created as a product of social interaction. This idea has also been connected with disability studies in the sense that disability can be seen as something that is not intrinsic in a person, but rather a construct which develops as a result of people credible: Carolus-Barré, ‘Consultation sur le IIe miracle de Saint Louis’, p. 59. See also Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 81–82. 132  In addition to the mother of Adam and Rogerus de Kylpek (BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 234v), the only one among the sources of this study is Bertrandeta, whose father said that she stabat continue cum maxima perplexitate atque pena: Urban V, p. 173. The depositions in Urban V’s miracles are quite summarized, however. In this particular case the girl’s testimony is very short. As a comparison, Leigh Ann Craig has noted that references to physical pain during a difficult childbirth are rare. This may be explainable by the same reasons. Saints could, however, guarantee a painless childbirth, following the example of that granted to Mary in many descriptions of the Nativity: Craig, Wandering Women, pp. 102–03, 126–27. 133  See Jaeger and Bowman, Understanding Disability, pp. 73–74; Shakespeare, Disability Rights and Wrongs, pp. 58–59; Fleischer Zames and Zames, The Disability Rights Movement, p. 209.

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with impaired bodies interacting with socially-based norms. These norms, for their part, shape the way those bodies are perceived.134 Similar ideas have been applied to the medieval period. Julie Singer writes, for example, that in the later medieval era, impairment was very much a social phenomenon, defined by performed social behaviour. Thus impairment was ‘less a physiological phenomenon than a nonstandard balance of abilities’.135 How, then, do the canonization testimonies portray the communication and interaction of impaired children within their social sphere? By communication and interaction I mean both the exchange of information in everyday situations as well as language and communication as means of socializing, forming networks, and, in some cases, acting as a survival strategy. Moreover, interaction is in this context also understood as interplay, experience, and control of one’s living environment and social relations. The few miracle accounts concerning children with hearing or speech impairments demonstrate that those who were unable to speak were not completely without means to interact with other people. The two tongueless boys in St Thomas Cantilupe’s process were reported to have been persuaded by signs to go to the shrine — even though the narratives do not mention that they would have been deaf. The account regarding Philippus is more detailed in this sense. When people told him to go to the shrine to get a proper tongue, he signalled with two fingers that he had already been there twice. When the persuasion continued, he indicated with a third finger that he would return to the grave.136 In the miracles of St Francis of Assisi, a mute boy used signs to show people that he needed lodging for the night, bending his head to one side and supporting his jaw with his hands.137 There are also occasional references to adult beneficiaries using signs. For example, an eighteen-year-old woman called Jehennet, who could not speak, joined her hands in a prayer and looked

134  Sandahl and Auslander, eds, Bodies in Common, p. 215. See also Garland-Thomson, ‘Integrating Disability’, p.  504 and Küppers, Disability and Contemporary Performance, pp. 54–55. 135  Singer, ‘Playing by Ear’, p. 40. 136  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 90v. For the one mention of Johannes being persuaded by signs, see BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 105r. In that case the usage of signs appears somewhat peculiar, because Johannes was able to hear. Presumably there was some confusion in the way the statement was recorded, and the situation had actually been the reverse, so that Johannes was the one using signs. 137  Vita Prima S. Francisci Assisiensis, pp. 113–14.

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at the picture of St Louis IX, and also indicated with signs that she wanted to be taken to his shrine.138 These examples portray some very basic gestures or mimes. However, there are also indications of more sophisticated ways to communicate with signs, starting from antiquity.139 In Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s narrative, it is stated several times that the deaf-mute Loÿs used signs to express himself. Gauchier the smith educated the boy by indicating with signs if he had done something wrong and beating him. Loÿs also reported that he remembered well how Gauchier taught him to help with his profession, and how he performed other services at his house, as directed by signs.140 The signs were also the method by which the other staff members of the Count’s kitchen, as well as the bailiff Jehan de Sorgy, communicated with Loÿs. This is at least suggested by Guillaume de Chartres’ earlier account of the miracle, which states that ‘almost everyone’ in the Count’s family knew his signs.141 Later, when he had his hearing restored but was still unable to speak, Loÿs also asked for alms in the manner of a mute person, which presumably refers to the use of signs, and when he then returned to Orgelet, the sign-giving continued until he was taught to speak. 142 The narrative does not make it entirely clear from whom each piece of information originally came — in addition to Loÿs, Gauchier at least was among the witnesses.143 It nevertheless appears that Loÿs himself referred to his communication methods several 138 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 166. See also Dauphine of Puimichel, pp. 91–92. Augustine writes about the deaf-mute in his De magistro, saying that there was fairly sophisticated communication between the deaf as well as between the deaf and the hearing, which suggests that they were not isolated from the rest of the society. The references to the use of gestures in trade which enabled two parties that did not speak the same language to communicate further support this notion: Laes, ‘Silent Witnesses’, p. 468. 140  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 52: ‘et fesoit autres servises en la meson d’icelui fevre qui li estoit mostrez par signes’. 141  Guillaume de Chartres, De vita et actibus inclytatae recordationis regis Francorum, ed. by Bouquet, p. 38. 142  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 54. 143  The Countess and the Count of Auxerre were still alive at the time of the canonization inquiry in 1282. (See Martinière and Bruzen, Le Grand Dictionnaire géographique, historique et critique, p. 558.) The Countess seems to have taken a special interest in Loÿs after his cure. This information may indicate that she gave a deposition as well, but it is also possible that Loÿs, like Gauchier, wanted to emphasize his noble protector’s role. In Guillaume de Chartres’ earlier work on Louis IX’s life and miracles, it is specified that the Count was among those telling about the miracle: Guillaume de Chartres, De vita et actibus inclytatae recordationis regis Francorum, ed. by Bouquet, p. 38. 139 

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times, in his descriptions both of his time at Orgelet and his so-called pilgrimage. Interestingly, the text also mentions that Loÿs was not able to explain to the commissioners of Louis IX’s hearing how he had managed to convince Gauchier and his family that he could hear.144 As observed by Irina Metzler, they ‘seem to not have grasped the conceptual possibility of communicating a lengthy and complicated narrative by means of signed language’, although that was the normal practice for those who had lived with the boy for years.145 In the canonization process of St Bernardino of Siena, which was conducted fifty years after the period studied here, there is another exceptional miracle case involving the use of signs. A miles, Antonius de Galiofis, testified that he witnessed the cure of a congenitally deaf-mute youth called Iacobus at the saint’s shrine in L’Aquila. Wanting to test whether Iacobus had faked either his impairment or the cure, Antonius started to interview him. When Iacobus did not understand what Antonius said, he expressed his confusion with nods and signs ‘as mutes do’. Antonius also made another man say obscene and indecent words, which Iacobus repeated as if they had been ordinary words. People then tried to explain their meaning to him, which he could not understand, but when Antonius used signs and nods, Iacobus got the meaning of the words and blushed. Antonius did more tests by making Iacobus repeat passages from Aristotle’s Ethics and some sentences in German as well as in the Aquilan dialect, which he did fluently but without understanding the meaning. After all that he still wanted to know whether the youth had faked the miracle in order to get alms or money, or in order to get better clothes. Again with nods and signs, Iacobus responded to this, and explained that he had clothes and property at home, but that he had lost his good clothes to some armed men during his pilgrimage. He also related that he was from a big and rich city situated in the middle of great waters, and that many grand ships were there. This led Antonius and others present to conclude that he was from Venice, and they started to call him Iacobus de Venetiis.146

144 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 54. Metzler, A Social History of Disability, p. 202. 146  Bernardino of Siena, pp. 82–83. Other witnesses mentioned these tests as well. Notarius Antonius also commented on the communication, stating that Iacobus understood well what was said to him by nods and signs. Christoforus Iohannis ratified Iacobus’s origins. After the miracle, he took the youth into his house for a couple of days and taught him some words. He also showed him a Venetian coin, which Iacobus recognized and with nods and signs explained that he was from the city. The other depositions are in Bernardino of Siena, pp. 83–87, 196–97. 145 

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In the narrative of Loÿs’s miraculous cure it is stated a few times that he used the ‘signs of the mute’.147 Tempting as it would be to interpret this as an indication of a language widely recognized, it is more probable that this referred to the generally acknowledged but imprecise way of communication used by those with severe aural and/or speech impediments. 148 Exactly how sophisticated signing generally was as a communication method cannot be known, but it is unlikely to have been what modern people would define as a ‘language’, meaning a communication system with lexicon and a grammar, which can be used to express any thoughts on any subjects, and which is at least occasionally learned in infancy.149 There has nevertheless been a discussion and varying opinions among scholars about the level of sign language used in the premodern world. Lois Bragg writes that there are no proofs that a visual-kinetic language existed in Europe prior to the modern era.150 Irina Metzler, on the other hand, has taken a different approach. According to her, there is no reason to assume that different forms of sign language as a communication tool did not exist in the Middle Ages, as studies have shown that sign language evolves in deaf children even if no signing adult teaches them.151

147 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 50, 51: ‘ainçois fasoit tant seulement signes d’omme muet. […] Et riens ne fesoit pour tout ce fors signes de muet et fors que jeter les charbons loing de lui. […] Et tout le tens que il i demora, il fesoit signes de sourt et le muet’. 148  In one testimony about Iacobus de Venetiis’s cure, the witness stated that Iacobus responded to him with signs and nods, as the mute usually did. In another account concerning the miraculous cure of a deaf-mute in the same process, a man called Tucius Blasutii, notarius, interrogated the miraculé, who responded with signs and nods ‘exactly as the mute and the deaf are in the habit of doing’: Bernardino of Siena, pp. 87, 94. 149  According to Lois Bragg, the greatest confusion in modern scholarship regarding visualkinetic communication in the premodern era is caused by the lack of an agreed definition of what is actually meant by ‘language’. Monastic sign language is also easily confused with the sign language of the deaf, although the former is heavily dependent on the cultural context and lacks any accompanying grammar: Bragg, ‘Visual-Kinetic Communication in Europe before 1600’, p. 2. On the use of sign language on various occasions among the hearing, see Scott, Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism, pp. 11–12. 150  Bragg, ‘Visual-Kinetic Communication in Europe before 1600’. 151  Metzler, ‘Perceptions of Deafness’, p. 86. Natural sign languages — that is, sign languages that have developed naturally among deaf populations — usually have syntactic organizations, verbs of motion, verbs that show agreement, some numeral classification and morphemes with syntactic and adverbial functions: Johnson, ‘Sign Language and the Concept of Deafness’, p. 106.

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The problem in this discussion lies with the absence of sources about any deaf culture. If there were families in which there was more than one deaf person, the development of this kind of communication would presumably be more advanced. Already the sources of this study indicate such differences, and the level of the signs used presumably differed depending on the community as well as the duration of the hearing or speech impairment. In the case of Loÿs, it is fair to assume that the signs used were more sophisticated or versatile than in the case of the begging, tongueless boys Johannes de Burtone and Philippus, whose social ties were looser. Loÿs did, after all, remain in the households of the smith and the Count for more than ten years, and as he was in close contact with the members of Gauchier’s family and those working for the Count and Countess, the communication system had time to develop. It is possible that the situation of Iacobus de Venetiis was somewhat similar, given that at the time of his cure he was already a youth and his deaf-muteness had lasted for a long time. He managed to make a pilgrimage of over four hundred and fifty kilometres from Venice to L’Aquila, apparently on his own, which indicates that he knew how to make himself understood. Yet the signs he used still had to be quite basic, as they were also understood by those he did not know beforehand. It is evident that, especially in the cases of hearing and speech impediments, the differences in the experience of the impairment varied significantly depending on the level of communication and also educational possibilities, and whether the protagonists had been deaf since birth, or whether their impairment was post-lingual.152 In Loÿs’s case his lack of understanding of religion shows how Gauchier had limited means to teach the boy abstract ideas, due to 152  This difference is also visible in the secular law texts of the time. Some legal texts make a clear distinction between total lack of hearing or speech and plain muteness or reduced hearing. The English collection Bracton states that in order to be classed as unable to stipulate, the person must be naturally deaf and dumb, meaning that the condition had to be congenital, and states that if the person cannot hear anything, he cannot give his consent, either by speaking or by signs. Even if a person can only hear with difficulty, he may stipulate something or make contracts by signs and nods, but not if he is naturally deaf and mute: Bracton, iv, 178, 309. Christian Laes writes that due to the lack of proper education or upbringing, in ancient Rome the deaf-mute appeared as mentally disabled, and were still considered ‘idiots’ until the nineteenth century: Laes, ‘Silent Witnesses’, p. 467. While it is conceivable that such a conception existed, it cannot be held true for premodern society at large. Loÿs’s case, as well as the case of Iacobus de Venetiis in Bernardino of Siena’s hearing, demonstrate that people were well aware of the effects of deaf-muteness and nothing in the narratives suggests that people considered these deaf-mute boys as ‘idiots’. Although their education might remain incomplete, there was clearly a way to teach the deaf.

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inadequate ways of communicating. Also, the narrative offers an interesting perpective on the ways medieval liturgy trained both minds and bodies. Actions performed by a worshipper during the liturgy made that person centrally involved in their religion, but because Loÿs only learned the means to receive and transmit religious messages through his body, and senses other than hearing, he lacked the fundamental information to build religious understanding.153 Especially for those who lost their ability to speak and/or hear sometime after birth, reading and writing skills, if learned, must have held great significance. If the deaf or mute person had been taught to read and write, they retained the possible means of communication with other literate people, thus significantly reducing the consequences of the disability.154 We may also assume that literacy for the deaf child held specific importance depending on their social background. Especially among merchants, it was often regarded as important that the child should acquire this skill, while in the lower classes children with incomplete communication skills were nevertheless still able to work for the family. Even among merchants educational opportunity could still be quite minimal.155 Apparently, there were also ways of giving a more sophisticated education to those lacking speech and / or hearing, at least if it was post-lingual: the humanist Rudolf Agricola (d. 1485) wrote admiringly about a deaf-mute who learned to write and understand things written. The person he wrote of had lost his hearing as a youth.156 153 

On the comprehensiveness of medieval liturgy, see Vitz, ‘Liturgy as Education in the Middle Ages’, pp. 24–25. 154  It has been concluded that medieval literacy is very difficult to determine, especially because the standards differ significantly. Some scholars have estimated that approximately half of the men belonging to the ‘merchant class’ were able to read at least a vernacular language, while for merchant women reading skills were less common or at least incomplete. Going down in the social hierarchy, literacy of course became less and less common. It has also been estimated that in the fifteenth century, about one third of English society was literate. It is also worth noting that in the Middle Ages reading and writing were generally taught separately. See, for example, Dronzek, ‘Gendered Theories of Education’, p. 154, n. 11; Thrupp, The Merchant Class, pp. 157–58, 161. Among the higher social groups reading skills were not essential for everyone, but Nicholas Orme has estimated that by the late fourteenth century, virtually everyone among the nobility was able to follow the Latin breviary, but they were most fluent in reading the vernacular: Orme, Education and Society, pp. 154, 228. 155  On the importance of literacy and formal education among merchants in the later Middle Ages, see Thrupp, The Merchant Class, pp. 155–63. 156  Metzler, ‘Perceptions of Deafness’, p. 87. All in all, the education of children was highly gendered. Although there are no statistics available, the majority of children who attended

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It is reasonable to assume that the ability to communicate is the one aspect which defined the severity and level of disability in hearing and speech impediments, also from the protagonist’s point of view.157 Most probably the majority, if not all, of deaf people in the Middle Ages were disabled in this sense, but for those in whose social sphere a reasonably elaborate sign language had developed, the hindrance was smaller. At the same time, not having sufficient knowledge of religion, and not being able to fully understand other people in a culture that was principally oral, most certainly made hearing impairments a disability in a very real sense.158 Loÿs’s case, however, is an example of the twofold character of the questions regarding ‘marginalization’ and ‘inclusion’. Because he was able to partake in the various deeds and activities which were an essential part of religious life,159 he can be seen to have gone through a religious socialization process. However, the lack of understanding left him halfway to full participation, and he thus remained both marginalized and included in society, albeit not necessarily from his own point of view. When it comes to children with mobility impairments, the problems in interaction were of a different kind. As has already been mentioned a few times, mobility problems were emphasized in canonization testimonies, and can in many instances be seen as the defining aspect of a condition. Not being able to walk at all, or a need to use walking-sticks or crutches, were often-repeated statements serving to underline and specify the nature of a given impairment. Similarly, blindness was mostly illustrated by describing problems of mobility. schools were boys. Among the nobility, both boys and girls could be sent to the households of other nobles to receive a formal education. See Bouchard, Strong of Body, pp. 75–81; Dronzek, ‘Gendered Theories of Education’, pp. 135–36; Orme, Medieval Schools, pp. 59–61; Philips, Medieval Maidens, pp. 109–12. 157  Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts is, undoubtedly, the most famous illustration of this. Following its settlement in the 1640s, an exceptionally large percentage of the population was deaf until the early twentieth century. This resulted in the development of a fully bilingual community, in which people with hearing also used sign-language, often even among themselves. Studies on the island show that deaf people succeed in integrating themselves extremely well when no communication barriers exist. Although their lack of hearing was recognized, the deaf residents of Martha’s Vineyard were not considered to be ‘handicapped’ by the other islanders: Groce, Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language, pp. 2–5. 158  The marginalization caused by the lack of communication was recognized and occasionally stressed in earlier miracle collections as well. As an example, in one of the miracles of St Godric a woman called Adeliz, who had been deaf and mute since birth, was described as having been living for a long time in desolation and desperation: Reginaldo Dunelmensis, Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici, ed. by Stevenson, p. 440. 159  See also Arnold, Belief and Unbelief, pp. 40, 221–22.

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Due to the nature of our sources, in miracle narratives in/accessibility is most apparent in the descriptions of pilgrimages. This is especially highlighted in miracle collections recorded at shrines, which portray the means of transportation and the solutions for mobility problems, as well as the help blind people got from their family or community members. Normally pilgrims approached the shrine on foot as a sign of humility in front of the saint, and thus the scribes of miracle collections often mention if the pilgrim used alternative transportation or aids.160 Canonization documents, however, are more silent about the experiences during pilgrimage. Because a cure as a result of a vow was already an established concept in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,161 many people with mobility impairments or blindness — and many families with impaired children — chose that option. Moreover, due to the formula according to which the witnesses were interviewed and testimonies recorded, pilgrimage did not play an important role in constructing the cured impairment. Nevertheless, these journeys, which were occasionally of significant length, must have had a twofold impact on the experience of impairment. Travelling long distances with mobility problems or with deteriorated or absent eyesight, would undoubtedly have magnified the effects of disability. At the same time, the travelling itself held out the promise of a cure, the chance of which was seen to be increased by the very difficulties of the journey.162 One could even say that ‘inaccessibility’ was one of the fundamental aspects of a pilgrimage, albeit — at least retrospectively — a positive one. The difficulties of moving are emphasized more in testimonies regarding cures of poor children, firstly because their cures were seen as more trustworthy it they occurred in a public place with eyewitnesses, and thus happened as a result of a pilgrimage, and secondly, because they come from processes which generally contain lengthy and detailed witness accounts.163 As discussed above, Moriset 160  The most common method of transportation for the impaired was to be carried by an able-bodied person or sometimes by an animal. For the various means by which the impaired were carried to shrines, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp.  169–71, and also Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 87–88; Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, pp. 120–22. 161  Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 549–50. 162  Irina Metzler also writes that the importance of arriving on foot is illustrated by those cases when the scribe praises the impaired beneficiaries for the effort they make in order to reach the shrine walking: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 169. See also Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 48. 163  In this case those are the miracle collection of St Louis IX and the canonization processes of St Louis of Toulouse and St Thomas Cantilupe.

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de Ranton testified about the difficulties of his pilgrimage, not only by describing his pain and how he had to walk on his toes, leaning on crutches, but also by giving detailed information on the distances he walked and how long it took him.164 Due to the circumstances, long-distance travels largely defined his experience of his impairment, in which both the search for a living and then the search for a cure are combined. Although Moriset’s travels were largely motivated by his search for a cure, his testimony also reveals the need to find nourishment, and travelling in search of sustenance was certainly not uncommon. Poor workers in the miracles of St Louis travelled long distances in search of work and bread, and big cities like Paris suffered from overpopulation, partly caused by their attraction for those not able to earn their living and forced to beg. Presumably those with health problems also came to search for work.165 Although child beneficiaries of canonization processes usually had an adult to accompany them, a few were sent on pilgrimages without one. Thoumas de Voudai is one such example, as he made a long eight-day pilgrimage to SaintDenis accompanied only by another boy, Adam Vicart. This was primarily because Thoumas had no parents, but from Adam’s point of view it also represents a crisis within the community, even if the ailing member was of lesser importance, which he helped to resolve, perhaps out of generosity or piety. Here both boys were taking an initiative despite their young age: Thoumas actively sought a companion and Adam made a conscious decision to go along.166 In another of Louis IX’s miracles, the badly impaired sixteen-year-old Michelet was accompanied on a pilgrimage by his sister Denise,167 and ten-year-old Adete was carried there by her elder sister.168 Children are also known to have made pilgrimages on behalf of their ailing parents or to have assisted them as well as other family members and relatives. For example, in St Yves’s hearing 164 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 45–50. Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 20–38; Goldberg, ‘Migration, Youth and Gender’, pp.  86–87, 91–93; Michaud, ‘From Apprentice to Wage-Earner’, pp.  77–78. Approximations of the number of beggars in medieval Paris are rough at best. Nevertheless, contemporaries estimated the number of permanent beggars to be significant. Following H. Pirenne’s approximation that in fifteenth-century Ypres the proportion of beggars was around ten per cent of the whole population, Bronislav Geremek has estimated that in Paris there were somewhere between 8000 and 20,000, depending on the estimated total population. See Geremek, The Margins, pp. 193–94. 166  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 27–29. 167  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 144–47. 168  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 33–34. 165 

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an abbot called dominus Aufredus testified about a blind woman who was led to the shrine by her daughter. The girl cried because St Yves had not cured her mother, and later, when the mother was cured, she reportedly cried because her mother could see again. When asked how long the woman had been blind, Aufredus responded that he had heard the daughter saying that she had been blind for a long time. In this case the daughter appears as the active party, not only guiding her mother but also communicating with the saint and the locals on her behalf.169 According to Didier Lett, this inversion of roles signified the end of childhood, which was not solely defined by age but often by a crisis in the family, such as the absence of parental care. The changing of roles is most evident in cases when the child taking the initiative is very young, and in the cases when there was no parent involved, the hagiographic texts tend to dwell on the active role played by children.170 In the story of Thoumas de Voudai and Adam Vicart, Thoumas was able to walk, and so most of the boys’ difficulties seem to have been related to sustenance — the text mentions that the journey took a long time because the boys had to stop in the villages on their way to ask for bread.171 This also changed Adam’s position temporarily; now Adam too had to beg, just as Thoumas had been doing. There has been some discussion about whether pilgrimage as a liminal state changed the everyday hierarchies, freeing pilgrims from the old social structures, as suggested by Victor and Edith Turner. This approach has, however, been heavily criticized and the general consensus is that social structures remained intact during pilgrimages and were even reinforced afterwards.172 In Thoumas’s and Adam’s case the pilgrimage linked the two 169 

Yves of Tréguier, pp. 159–60. Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 119–20. In Louis IX’s canonization documents it is reported that during the blindness of Lucia Ruimilli, her daughter Amelia assisted her with taking care of her younger children and took her to the shrine (the family lived in Saint-Denis, so the journey was not long). This did not prevent her from bemoaning her state and the number of sons that she now had to nurture: Fragments, p. 67. It is possible that she was referring to poverty here; the family had some means but their income appears to have been very modest. Other kindred children could assist in a similar manner to Amelia. When the thirty-year-old Agnés de Pontaise became blind, she was guided by her sister Marie as well as a nephew. The boy also guided Agnés when she begged: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 180. 171  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 28. 172  Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, p. 31. For a summary of the discussion, see Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 167–68. However, in her recent article, Anne E. Bailey points out that the concept of a ‘rite of passage’ can justifiably be applied to the majority of miracle stories, which portray the beneficiary as initially unable to meet social 170 

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boys in a new manner, but Thoumas retained his inferior status after his cure. The community rejoiced in his regained vision, and he continued doing the same tasks for people as before.173 Among my sources, the cases of Moriset and Thoumas, and perhaps also of Guillot le Potencier, are the only ones in which Robert A. Scott’s notion of pilgrimage being a way to escape the marginalizing or even stigmatizing effects of disability appears as one possible motif:174 As discussed above, Guillot and Moriset had supurating tumours which caused aversion in the people they lived with, while Thoumas faced rough treatment from other boys in the village. Wealthy children travelled long distances as pilgrims as well, but their experiences of the obstacles were different, as they had better means to organize the journeys or have the help of others to organize them. Although entering the shrine walking barefoot was a way of showing devotion and self-denial,175 those who could afford it are reported as having travelled on horseback or on a donkey. For example, a fourteen-year-old girl Katharina, who wanted to travel to St Yves of Tréguier, was tied in place on horseback and accompanied by the family’s servant.176 Similarly, Thomasius Iohannis Galterii de Rocca Morici testified that he was tied on a donkey and taken to San Giovanni all’Orfento, where Peter of Morrone was then residing. Thomasius was accompanied by his relatives, Gualterius de Grantella and Bartholomeus de Albategio. 177 The hermitage cave where the living saint was residing at that point was approached by

expectations, and in which the benefiary experiences a ‘rebirth’ into full membership of society: Bailey, ‘Peter Brown and Victor Turner Revisited’, pp. 27–30. Although this approach may be valid with other types of miracle stories than canonization processes, and certainly a thoughtprovoking one for them also, it does have its problems. The biggest question is whether such a concept is applicable in the many cases where the physical impairment did not cause problems in fulfilling social roles. As discussed earlier, the ‘restoring process’ was essential for the depiction of a cure, but whether or not this reflected the reality of the protagonist’s everyday life is open to question. 173  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 29. 174  See Scott, Miracle Cures, pp. 74–75. 175  See, e.g., Webb, Pilgrimage in Medieval England, p. xiv; Wittmer-Butsch and Rendtel, Miracula: Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter, p. 200. 176  Yves of Tréguier, pp. 237–38. Also Johannes Nani was taken to Yves’s shrine on horseback by the wife of his master. Yves of Tréguier, p. 211. The case has been analysed on pp. 236–37. 177  Peter of Morrone, p. 291. For other cases mentioning that the beneficiary was taken to the saint on a donkey, see ASV, MS A.A, Arm. 1, XVIII, 3328, fols 4 r, 5r; Peter of Morrone, pp. 254–65, 315–16, 325.

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rough roads.178 The route Thomasius and his relatives had to take was, therefore, a difficult one, but the recorded deposition makes hardly any reference to this aspect of their journey. Only Thomasius’s mention of how he cried in pain after reaching Orfento can be read as referring to the troubles of the journey.179 Occasionally the canonization testimonies also show glimpses of everyday circumstances and the use of space. As an example I will return to the testimonies regarding the cure of Alicia de Lonesdale. Willelmus de Oxonia, testified that he saw the father and the girl begging at various churches in London; Nicholas Chiket had seen them at the church of St  Martin Vintry and in other locations, and dominus Willelmus de Londinium reported that he saw the father carrying the girl through the city, asking for alms.180 The Church of St Martin Vintry is the only church specified as a begging place after Alicia’s disability became well-known, and it was mentioned by Willelmus de Oxonia, Amicia la Rysslwyk, and Nicholas Chiket.181 As the above-mentioned witnesses did not specify the other churches or locations where they had seen Alicia, it is not known how large an area she and her father covered with their begging activities. It is possible that the witnesses mentioning St Martin’s Church visited it most often, probably living in that district, and it was for this reason that they often saw Alicia and her father there. Dominus Willelmus, on the other hand, was the perpetual chaplain of the Church of All Saints at Haymarket and presumably spent most of his time in that neighbourhood. However, the city walls of London then enclosed an area only a little larger than one square mile, which could be crossed in about half an hour if walking normally.182 Thus it is not impossible, despite Alicia’s 178 

On Peter of Morrone’s attempts to find harsh and solitary places to live, see Brentano, ‘Sulmona Society and the Miracles of Peter of Morrone’, esp. pp. 87, 95. These attempts to find solitude were not very successful, however; for example, Thomasius Iohannis Galterii testified that the place was crowded when he and his relatives reached it: Peter of Morrone, p. 291. 179  In general, those searching for Peter of Morrone’s help were willing to endure all kinds of difficulties to reach the saint. His preference for isolated living locations was one thing, but his refusal, or ‘abhorrence’, of receiving female visitors also caused problems. The canon Sir Alexander Berardi de Sulmona, whose niece Francesse had a fistula on her foot, solved the problem by dressing the girl in boys’ clothes: Peter of Morrone, pp. 246–47. More common, however, was that a father or a brother of an ailing girl or a woman visited the living saint. One girl was also taken to listen to a sermon given by him and cured when Peter blessed the audience. See for example, Peter of Morrone, pp. 276, 290, 309. 180  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 69v, 70v. 181  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 68v, 69v, 70v. 182  Hanawalt, Growing up in Medieval London, p. 23. The same holds true for the disabled

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condition, that she and her father moved around the city quite extensively, even if St Martin’s Church was their usual location. Our sources are rather reticent about issues regarding mobility and accessibility in everyday situations and in the domestic sphere. However, the structure of the house where the child lived, as well as the geography of the village or town, must have had an impact on the experience of disability. English cottages and long-houses were single-storied, thus avoiding the problem of stairs, which would have made moving about the house difficult. 183 In towns and villages situated in hilly or mountainous areas, outside steps or slopes were especially ubiquitous, as can still be seen in many well-preserved Italian medieval towns. The beneficiaries or witnesses of our sources rarely mentioned these aspects, but occasionally one can infer the effects of the surroundings from their statements. As an example, after his partial cure, a boy called Cünradus from the diocese of Trier was able to walk without help on even ground but had to use a stick on sloping surfaces.184 Alicia de Lonesdale was reported as having walked without a walking stick for short distances and with a stick when she wanted to go further,185 which again demonstrates the effects physical surroundings could have on mobility. Wealthy families had some advantages in helping the mobility of their impaired children. Thus, in the families that had enough funds so that everyone did not have to work full time, or which employed numerous servants, children with severe mobility impairments may have had more access to everyday community activities. The horses and donkeys occasionally mentioned in pilgrimage descriptions were undoubtedly used to transport otherwise immobile people in everyday life, and servants could provide similar assistance. This is illustrated in the testimonies concerning Bertrandeta, the daughter of Petrus de Alamanono, dominus de Vidalbane, who was totally unable to walk. During her infirmity, which lasted for ten days, her father’s esquire carried her around.186 In addition to the family’s social status, in regard to mobility and accessibility, the child’s age, and probably also gender were important factors. When people residing in the other major medieval cities. For example, the city walls of Paris, built in the thirteenth century, had a circumference of 5.3 kilometres: Roux, Paris in the Middle Ages, pp. 9–10. 183  On cottages and long-houses, see Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound, pp. 31–33. 184  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 176. 185  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 69r. 186  Urban V, pp. 172–73. See also Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p. 57.

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the children were still of the age when they did not have to earn their living or, for example, go elsewhere to be educated, they lived in quite restricted surroundings. The area that urban children used encompassed the house or tenement rooms where they lived, their parish, and the street where they played.187 Children living in the countryside typically resided either on bigger manors, or in villages. The sizes of the villages and their surroundings varied considerably, depending on the usable soil and the historical background of the settlement. Children played at the wells, and the fields were used for dancing, drinking, and games, but a large part of social life happened on the streets as well.188 As a child got older their environment expanded. From the age of about six to twelve, they began to assist outside the home in earning some income for their families. This applied more to boys, as girls are more likely to have remained at home assisting with household tasks.189 The distinction was not always so clear, however. The earlier idea that space, especially in the domestic setting among the peasantry, was clearly defined by gender has recently been criticized by, for example, P. J. P. Goldberg, who writes that girls also took part in many outdoor tasks and activities.190 Medieval society was highly mobile, and young people, especially, migrated frequently — this pertained to both women and men of all social classes.191 In the sources of this study, Loÿs is the only miraculé reported to have travelled long distances because of work while having an impairment, but even in his case this seems to have been organized previously, because he moved from Orgelet to Lyon but still kept working for the noble household who owned the château of Orgelet. The narrative even states that Loÿs went to Lyon avec la dite contesse.192 The information regarding the effect of impairments on young people’s mobility thus remains vague. It nevertheless seems that at this point the questions of accessibility started to have a bigger impact on children’s lives, and the obstacles caused by disability 187 

Hanawalt, Growing up in Medieval London, pp.  24–31. As an example, Iacobus Deodatus’s mother mentioned him playing with other boys on the street: Louis of Toulouse, p. 176. 188  Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound, pp. 19–30. 189  Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 30–31, 78; Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound, pp. 158–59. 190  Goldberg, ‘Space and Gender’, pp. 214–15. 191  Goldberg, ‘Migration, Youth and Gender’, p. 86; Philips, Medieval Maidens, pp. 110–13, 120–22. 192  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 51.

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may have been even greater for boys, who could not necessarily act in the manner expected of them — or who had to struggle, at least partly due to accessibility issues, to follow these expectations.193 If we compare medieval society to the modern Western one, as far as issues of mobility and accessibility are concerned, the difference is immense. Our society is very largely based on moving from one place to another: children go to kindergarten and school from a very early age, young people study in universities and colleges, and adults are expected to work, usually outside their homes. Food needs to be bought at a supermarket and various matters are taken care of in offices and government departments. Children and youngsters also worked, bought food, and studied in the Middle Ages, and most of the work as well as leisure activity was done outside the home,194 but as towns and cities were significantly smaller, the distances to be covered within them were shorter. On the other hand, accessible buildings were next to non-existent and aids were, naturally, less developed if available at all, which is apparent in the reports in our sources about children and young people crawling or being carried by others.195 Whether the more communal nature of medieval society normalized the getting of help from community members is a matter we cannot infer from canonization testimonies.196 A specific type of interaction belonged to the social sphere of (disabled) beggar children, for whom communication with others secured their livelihood, and in many cases made the miraculous cure possible, as already discussed. Moreover, in the context of canonization hearings, the same interaction was a prerequisite for their miracles being publicly recognized. Therefore, the exhibition of disability in everyday situations (pilgrimages and vows excluded) appears mostly in connection with begging, which has the inherent danger of giving a distorted impression of how disability was viewed in everyday life. Not all begging children were impaired, and those with a better social standing also needed to cope and interact with their community and its limitations. However, here again we face the need for outside witnesses to the cures of the 193 

See pp. 67–68 above for further discussion. Goldberg, ‘Space and Gender’, p. 228. 195  See also Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 174–76. 196  Several references to blind children and adults being led by others may hint at the effects of communality. On the other hand, when the guides are identified, they tend to be family members. Another possible reference to this comes from St Elizabeth’s process, in which a girl was reported as having been led on crutches by other girls: Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 226. 194 

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poor — and once again we find that most available information is about the interaction between begging children and those assisting them. In the case of Johannes de Burtone, the performance of disability is visible in his attempts to get support from wealthier locals. The witnesses from Ludlow all gave similar reports about him opening his mouth to people and how he kept making bellowing noises instead of speaking.197 The reports from Hereford are similar.198 Naturally, to a large degree the way Johannes interacted with others was caused by his impairment: with no tongue he simply was not able to speak. Nevertheless, his actions seem to have been alike no matter where he was staying or with whom he was communicating, and in each reported instance his way of interacting only emphasized his muteness. This was, no doubt, an esssential strategy, as he had to make people believe his impairment was genuine so that they would consider him entitled to receive alms. But the testimonies also give the impression that Johannes really performed his muteness, especially when making loud unarticulated sounds. The use of signing also interlinks with the performance of deaf-muteness. The one witness testifying about the other tongueless boy, Philippus, mentioned him communicating with signs.199 Although our sources are very few, it seems there was a certain way a mute person, or at least a mute beggar, was expected to act. In the narrative about the deaf-mute Loÿs, it is stated that after he gained his hearing, he went around ‘asking for alms like the mute because he could not speak’.200 The implication is that a certain kind of (inter)acting showed that the person in question was unable to talk, and it seems that mute beggars also knew how to indicate their disability. We also have one report of Johannes being in the company of other beggars, as it was reported that they beat him on Thomas Sandi’s order.201 Whether Johannes had learned his ‘tactics’ from other beggars, from experience or from both, beggar children were socialized into the group of their peers, as beggars are reported as travelling in groups and children could also help in arousing 197 

BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 186r–v, 204r. See, for example, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 205v: ‘Johannes Alkyn […] dixit se vidisse una quadragesima dictum Johannem in ciuitatem Herefordiensem mendicantem, et mendicando non loquebatur, sed preferebant mugitus, et vidit tunc os eius apertum frequenter et intra os non aparebat lingua magna uel parua’. 199  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 90r–v. 200  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 54: ‘et aloit querant aumones comme muet pour ce que il ne savoit parler’. 201  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 205r. 198 

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sympathy.202 Yet, as that incident shows, beggars were also competitors. It is possible that the other beggars saw the boy as some kind of an intruder because he did not reside permanently in Hereford but came there only occasionally, perhaps even breaking some of the Hereford beggars’ mutual rules concerning the privileged sites for begging.203 On the other hand, beggars had no choice if given orders by powerful locals. Disability’s effects on communication with others is most obvious when the impairment the person has affects speaking or hearing. Given the need for proving a physical condition genuine to secure alms, poor children of our sources who had less obvious impairments had to demonstrate their physical incapacity. The witnesses for the cure of Alicia de Lonesdale mentioned that they had seen the girl crawling on the ground,204 which presumably was the only way she could move but was also undoubtedly an effective way to demonstrate her condition — even though her disability still aroused suspicion. With very young children their parents or other adults with whom they were begging were most responsible for demonstrating the child’s condition, as presumably was the case with Beatrix de Sancta Cruce and her mother Cecilia, who carried the girl on her back when they went around asking for alms.205 Canonization testimonies are rather reticent about the ways blind beggar children highlighted their impairment. The records of the canonization pro­­cess of St Yves of Tréguier contain several accounts of blind people who came to the saint’s shrine as pilgrims. Many of the witnesses were asked how they knew the person in question was blind. A common response was that it appeared evident, but their way of walking and the need to be guided by someone are also often-repeated answers.206 One witness testifying about the cure of a blind boy, Guido, said that she knew he was blind because she saw him asking for bread and being led like the blind, and everyone who saw him considered him blind.207 Similarly, in the process of Charles of Blois one witness testifying about Iohannes le Maignen’s cure stated that he knew the man was blind because he 202 

Geremek, The Margins, pp. 201–03. On the mobility of beggars and their possible rules, see Geremek, The Margins, pp. 193, 206–07. 204  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 68v, 69v, 70v. 205  Louis of Toulouse, pp. 162–63. 206  See Yves of Tréguier, pp. 159, 228. 207  Yves of Tréguier, p. 224: ‘Interrogata quomodo scit quod esset cecus, dixit quod viderat eum querentem panem, et ducebatur tanquam cecus, et cecus ab omnibus qui ipsum vdebant reputabatur’. 203 

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saw him walking in the way of the blind, allowing himself to be led, and asking for bread.208 It seems that, as was the case with the mute, there was a general view of what a blind person looked like and how they acted, especially if they were asking for alms. Even among beggars, the blind travelling in groups were most likely to be led, and that was presumably the primary indication of their lack of eyesight. They are also reported as having played instruments. 209 The blind were, however, very easily suspected as faking, as for many the blindness did not necessarily have any outward marks, so they were under quite heavy pressure not only to perform, but also to prove their disability by that performance. In her recent discussion on disability and charity, Irina Metzler writes that in the early fifteenth century attitudes towards ill and impaired beggars had started to change, and in Germany, at least, the situation was quite different from that of late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century France, which (based on Sharon Farmer’s study and Louis IX’s miracles) she uses as a counterpoint. The begging laws of some towns not only forbade the able-bodied to beg, but also ordered the sick and the impaired to cover themselves and not irritate or upset the citizens with their disfigurements. According to Metzler, physical disfigurement or infirmity had ‘become something shameful that must be hidden, while conversely being the justifying factor for legitimate begging’. 210 In England the late medieval laws also took a stricter view of beggars who were able to work, as well as vagabonds.211 We may assume that this development also changed the way disabled beggars — whether children or adults — displayed their conditions and behaved in front of potential alms-givers. A further study on how and if this showed in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century canonization records might shed new light on possible changes of attitudes.212 208  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 177v: ‘Interrogatus quare credit, dicit quia vidit ipsum cecum in villa de Lavalle predicta pluries per spacium duorum annorum vel circa, ad modum hominis ceci incedentem, et se duci facientem, ac elemosinam petentem’. 209  On blind singers and musicians, see O’Tool, Caring for the Blind in Medieval Paris, pp. 65–69, 276–77. 210  Metzler, ‘Indiscriminate Healing Miracles’, pp. 168–69; Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 192–93. She also refers to the case of Amelota de Chambli in Louis IX’s miracles, in which it is stated that children fled when seeing her, using it as an example of the physical conditions of beggars being shameful. However, as mentioned before (see n. 359), this remark about Amelota is a highly exceptional, individual case. 211  Dyer, ‘The Experience of Being Poor’, p. 20. 212  The idea of a ‘deserving poor’ did not, however, vanish, even at the very end of the medi­ eval era or the beginning of the Early Modern period, as their entitlement to live on charity was still expressed: Metzler, A Social History of Disability, pp. 196–97.

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The disabled beggar children of our sources needed the sympathy of their fellow community members and they appear to have been quite active in search­­ing for it. Those who we know most about were not wandering beggars but remained in one place, as was the case with Thoumas de Voudai, who was sup­­ported by his fellow villagers.213 Some of these beggars had more mobile phases as well, as the case of Johannes de Burtone shows.214 Johannes provides an illustrative example of a child, later a youth, who actively sought the support of the better-off, because the witness accounts portray him frequently visiting certain families, such as that of the above-mentioned Margeria de Thurgryn’s father.215 According to the depositions, Johannes travelled to Hereford twice, and some witnesses limited the time period during which they had seen him to six months,216 but it is also possible that he regularly went to Hereford. 217 Just as in Ludlow, during his travels to Hereford Johannes visited people he knew to be helpful, among them Rogerus Hamptonis and other Hereford canons.218 While the canons’ willingness to help the boy may be a case of assisting pilgrims, it seems they assisted him in other ways as well and he knew that he could expect some help from them. Johannes was undoubtedly aware of the clerics’ responsibility to give alms to the poor.219 Although none of Johannes’s sup­porters came from the very highest strata of society, they belonged to the better-off, so we get a glimpse of a beggar child and youth who searched for support from the wealthy.220 According to Sharon Farmer, propertied individu213 

See Kuuliala, ‘Unlikely Heroes’, for further discussion. This is caused by the type of our sources: the witnesses had most trustworthy information on those they had seen on a regular basis, and it seems the commissioners of the canonization hearings favoured that kind of case. Yves of Tréguier’s process seems to be an exception, because it includes several cases of pilgrims who were otherwise unknown to the witnesses. Yet even in that process a majority of beneficiaries are community members and the cures of those who came from elsewhere were usually well-known enough to have more than one witness. 215  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 207r, 208r. 216  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 208v. 217  This is suggested by two of the witnesses, Thomas Sandi and Rogerus de Hamptonis, who testified that they frequently saw Johannes begging in the city of Hereford: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 205r, 206v. 218  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 206v, 208v. 219  Brodman, Charity & Religion, pp. 81–85; Farmer, ‘A Deaf-Mute’s Story’, p. 206; Rubin, Charity and Community, pp. 59–60. 220  That the de Aylinche family was of a reasonably high social standing is also suggested by the younger Margeria’s later marriage to a wealthy Hereford citizen, as well as her use of French when she gave her witness account, which implied some sort of education in medieval England: 214 

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als were less likely to provide care than more modest artisans,221 although it is also known that noble households nurtured individuals with disabilities.222 However, the only case among my sources in which a person of a noble status reportedly took a special interest in a poor and impaired child or youth were the Count and Countess of Auxerre.223 Dominus Petrus de Lamur, legum professor, who was not a nobleman but had a very high status, provides another such example, as he maintained Johannes Nani, who had severe gutta, in his household for several years.224 Our beneficiaries’ activities after the cure was obtained also illuminate the importance of their social network, at the same time connecting the supporting network with the miraculous. After Alicia de Lonesdale’s miracle at Hereford, the father and the daughter returned to Amicia la Rysslwyk and the others who had helped them, to report what had happened and to thank them for their alms.225 Thus, just as Johannes de Burtone had returned after the first, unsucRichter, Sprache und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter, pp. 187–201. I have analysed Johannes’s agency in his search for support more thoroughly in Kuuliala, ‘Unlikely Heroes’. 221  Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 100–01. 222  Farmer, ‘A Deaf-Mute’s Story’, p. 206. 223  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 51, 54–55. Sharon Farmer acknowledges the good will of the Countess of Auxerre, but concludes that ‘the fact that the Countess left the daily responsibility of educating Louis to her kitchen staff is consistent with the evidence suggesting that daily support for the old and disabled usually came from modestly prosperous artisans and members of the working poor’: Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, pp. 80–81. Canonization testimonies do not allow us to make detailed conclusions regarding the matter, but I find it a somewhat odd idea that the Countess would in any case have personally taken responsibility of educating or giving her time to any of her common servants. Although the poor and the wealthy or the nobility were in contact with each other, people knew their peers or those closer to their own social status most intimately and would naturally both seek and give help amongst those they knew. Moreover, the almsgiving of the nobility often took place in a more institutionalized manner in the forms of hospitals, alms-houses, and colleges, and on specific celebration days: Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages, pp. 11, 96–100; Wood, Medieval Economic Thought, p. 59. See also Rubin, Charity and Community, p. 94. At the same time, the testimonies about Johannes de Burtone’s case show that those belonging to the higher ranks of society, if not to the nobility, also helped disabled beggar children at the grass roots level. Hannah Skoda has come to similar conclusions regarding the miracles of St Louis: Skoda, ‘Representations of Disability’, p. 61. 224  Yves of Tréguier, pp. 211–12. 225  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 69r: ‘Item dixit quod […] in regressu suo dicta Alicia et eius pater retulerunt ipsi Amicie et aliis de vicinia sua quod miraculose fuerat curata meritis dicti sancti Thome et fuerunt regraciati de elemosinis ministratis eis’. Similarly, dominus Willelmus reported that after the miracle, Alicia thanked him for the alms: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 71r.

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cessful cure to those who had supported him and persuaded him to go to the shrine, so Willelmus and Alicia continued communicating with those who had been helping them. Thanking a benefactor, indeed, was a common way of acting. During their pilgrimage to Marseille, Beatrix de Sancta Cruce and her mother Cecilia were provided with a lodging by a woman called Katherina. After the pilgrimage they returned to her house walking hand-in -hand, showing her the results of their pilgrimage.226 Obviously, they also wanted to show her the result of the miracle, for publishing the miracle belonged to the proper ven­eration of saints and was an internalized duty.227 It can be argued that begging and being on a pilgrimage were the only life situations in which emphasizing one’s disability was not only useful but also necessary. In many other situations we can assume the impaired would have attempted to achieve the highest functionality possible. Given the various laws limiting the opportunities for the disabled in matters regarding inheritance, it is also possible that pretending that a family member did not belong to this group was often in the whole family’s interests, but this is a topic which needs more research. Similarly, at the very top of the social hierarchy, performing non-disability must have been useful in order to retain one’s power and authority; overcoming bodily limitations in this sense could also be considered heroic.228 After all, whether children learned to stress the disabling effects of their impairments or to understate them, when exposed to the public gaze, very much depended on their place on the socioeconomic ladder.

Emotions, Devotion, and Experienced Bodily Difference Closely linked to the performance of disability is children’s self-image and understanding of themselves as people with bodily defects. Modern sociology calls this ‘disability identity’,229 and while such a conception obviously was not 226 

Louis of Toulouse, pp. 164–65. Saints could also punish those who failed to publicize a miracle: Craig, Wandering Women, pp. 108–09; Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’, pp. 354–55. 228  As an example, Jean of Bohemia (1296–1346), the Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia, who was also known as Jean l’Auveugle due to his blindness, tried and at first managed to pass himself off as a sighted person, succeeding in fooling many of his contemporaries and peers: Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, pp. 194–95. See also Frohne, ‘Performing Dis/ability?’. 229  For the definitions of disability identity, see Linton, Claiming Disability, pp. 12–13. For disability identity and the disability rights movement, as well as an analysis of the problems cre227 

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used or recognized — especially not in the political sense of the term230 — in the Middle Ages, the question of its connection with physical impairments is vital for understanding the way medieval society regarded chronic bodily conditions. How, then, did children impaired in childhood feel about their ailing or different bodies? Did society identify individuals with physical impairments by their disability or bodily traits, and if so, did the impaired then learn to see themselves as different from others or as a distinct group of people? This will be the topic of the remaining pages of this book. On pages 106–30, the emotions — especially the negative ones — of immediate family were discussed. A few of the children whose parents or siblings mentioned some kind of scorn or disdain towards them are among those giving testimonies. One of them was Nicolaus Benedicti Thomasii, whose father testified that the child was abominable and he wished that he would die. Nicolaus himself, however, simply described his physical symptoms, in a similar manner to the father, but he did not report any emotion or refer to his father’s feelings in any manner.231 This is at least partly explainable by the way the witness depositions were recorded in Peter of Morrone’s process. The father gave the primary testimony, while Nicolaus’s role was mainly to confirm his father’s statement, so he gave only the basic details of the miracle. Another case in which a family referred to negative emotions while the beneficiary remained silent about the matter are the depositions about the miraculous cure of Rixenda de Fayensa. Although her brother Blacacius stated that everyone was ashamed of the girl’s deafness, Rixenda herself did not make any mention of the possible negative impact deafness had on her situation in the family. Blacacius gives testimony to it in passing, as he reported that seeing her anxietas, their father decided to make a vow to St Louis of Toulouse. 232 The father, on the other hand, reported that he mourned for her deafness, and that ated by the connection, see Shakespeare, Disability Rights and Wrongs, pp. 68–74. 230  Aleksandra Pfau writes that although disabling constructions and legal systems are visible in medieval culture, there is every need to be cautious in using the term ‘disability’, which is considered nowadays as a political identity. Yet, according to her, ‘disability’ can be used to reveal ‘what they were able to do, what they were allowed to do and what they were prevented from doing’: Pfau, ‘Protecting or Restraining?’, p. 96. I share Pfau’s view here, and further propose that the question of disability identity as a cultural and social rather than a political identity may be used as a starting point without imposing it on medieval societies. 231  Peter of Morrone, pp. 262, 325. 232  Louis of Toulouse, p. 154: ‘Et postea audivit dici quod dictus pater suus, videns anxietatem dicte sororis sue, devovit eam beato Ludovico’.

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was why he made the votum.233 None of these reported emotions are mutually exclusive, and there is no reason not to believe Blacacius’s opinion of his sister’s emotions. However, given that some of the witness accounts mention the shame or sorrow of Rixendra, her father, or of the whole household, it is striking that the girl herself did not make reference to this. Perhaps Rixenda’s careful description of her surditas was sufficient proof of her condition and the powers of the saintly bishop, but this may also be a result of the general lack of self-reflection in medieval sources. Rixenda’s reported sorrow could be connected to the possible responsibilities she felt towards her family, especially if there had been some previous (religious) curing attempts. That children and youths could feel this kind of responsibility is implied by the testimony of Katherina, who was cured of serious gutta at the shrine of St Yves of Tréguier at the age of around fifteen years. Katherina spent seven weeks at the shrine with no remedy in sight, after which she and the servant who had escorted her started their journey back. Katherina reported to the papal inquisitors: Posita fuit et ligata supra unum equum pro repatriando ad partes suas. Et cum ipsa sic duceretur, et esset prope locum dictum Pontem Combustum, diocesis Trecorensis, distantem a civitate Trecorensi quasi per unam leucam, ipsa iterato habuit magnam devocionem ad dictum sanctum Yvonem; et respiciens versus civitatem et dictam ecclesiam Trecorensem, ubi corpus ipsius sancti Yvonis requiescit, dixit humiliter, affectuose et devote, quantum potuit, in britannico, per hunc modum: ‘O sancte Yvo, quomodo ita ibo infirma ad videndum matrem meam? O sancte Yvo, habeam per vos liberacionem meam’.234 (She was put and tied on a horse in order to return to her region. And when she was being thus led, and was near the location of the said Pons Combustus, in the diocese of Tréguier, about one league away from the town of Tréguier, she herself, for the second time, had great devotion to the said Saint Yves; and looking back towards the town and the said church of Tréguier, where the body of Saint Yves himself rests, she said as humbly, affectionately, and with as much devotion as she could, in Breton, in this way: ‘O Saint Yves, how can I go to face my mother so infirm? O Saint Yves, through you I shall have my liberation’.)

In Katherina’s testimony her plea, which included thoughts of her mother, and the mother’s worry or sorrow, lifted her devotion to such a level that she finally received the cure. It is possible that in her later recollections — she gave her 233  234 

Louis of Toulouse, p. 154. Yves of Tréguier, p. 221.

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witness account some twenty years after the miracle — she had explained the seven futile weeks at the shrine and the cure during the journey back in the light of her ideas about her mother’s emotions.235 Katherina’s expressed responsibility may also result from her age; a fifteen-year-old girl was no longer a child but a young woman responsible for her (religious) actions.236 That children and young people could feel such a responsibility, or that they wanted the cure also for their parents’ sake, is also suggested by the way Verderosa prayed to Ambrose of Massa, asking for her cure because of her mother’s great devotion.237 Unfortunately, Verderosa’s exact age is not revealed. Medieval pedagogues were of the opinion that parents loved their children more than children their parents. Yet medieval authors constantly emphasized the importance of filial love.238 From this point of view, Katherina’s mention of her utterance after leaving the shrine could also be her way of presenting her emotions and actions as those of an ideal daughter. Katherina’s witness account also highlights the devotional action of a young beneficiary. That it only describes her devotion, not that of a parent or other adult responsible for her, is largely explainable by her age. Children’s agency in their search for a saintly cure starts to increase at the age of eight years or more,239 which is evident in the sources of this study. Most of the beneficiaries cured of childhood impairments who reportedly vowed themselves, went on a pilgrimage alone, or otherwise showed specific agency, were teenagers or adults, and among them were most of the poor and parentless beneficiaries.240 At least some of these beneficiaries were, apparently, considered old enough to take responsibility for their own cure, already hinted at by Katherina’s testimo235 

See Smoller, ‘Defining the Boundaries of the Natural’, p. 345, on the witnesses’ tendency to structure their stories accordingly and place the miracle at the most dangerous or desperate time. 236  On the importance of children and young people’s age for the testimonies concerning their devotion, see Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Learning by Doing’. 237  AASS Nov. IV, p. 605: ‘“Sancte Ambrosi, libera me ne medici unquam offendant me, quia mater mea multum te dilexit et in nullo te offendit.”’ 238  Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 147–48. 239  Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 167–78. 240  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 791–92, 803–04; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 90r–v, 105r–v, 186r–88r, 204r–09v; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fols 88v–89r; BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fol. 178v; Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 172–73, 230–31; Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 27–30, 45–50, 96, 101–04, 144–47, 168–71; Louis of Toulouse, pp.  224–25; Peter of Morrone, pp.  256–57; Yves of Tréguier, pp. 226–28, 244–45; Urban V, pp. 430–31.

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ny.241 As another example, the sixteen-year-old Michelet le Sauvage reportedly asked the members of his community what he should do, and they told him to go to Saint-Denis.242 Many beneficiaries in their teens were, however, vowed by their parents. It is possible that (severe) disability could make some of them more dependent on their parents or other adults in this sense too. In addition to age, gender seems to have had a specific importance in the agency of child beneficiaries. Didier Lett has noted that during the time of the miracle, both boys and girls were often accompanied by an adult. At the same time, parents asked for saintly help more often for boys than for girls. It might thus be concluded that parents favoured boys in this way, but it is quite plausible that girls were more proactive in their veneration of saints.243 Moreover, in some processes, girls were taken to the shrines after the cure more often than boys, with the purpose of socializing them into their future roles as caregivers and mothers.244 The agency and initiative of the beneficiary is referred to in fifteen out of ninety-eight cases involving girls and nineteen out of 133 involving boys, but the beneficiaries’ age and familial situation appear to be more important factors than gender. However, as the majority of the poor beneficiaries were boys, this may have an influence on the figures. Cases in which a young child who had parents or other family members took the initiative to implore a saint for help are extremely rare but appear occasionally. Bengeven Barbazani was twelve years old when she testified about her cure from fistulas. At the age of about eight, she heard about John Buoni’s miracles, and told her mother that she wanted to make a vow to him and go on a pilgrimage to his shrine. After getting her permission, Bengeven started the journey and stayed at the shrine for four days. It is mentioned in Bengeven’s mother’s deposition that they made the pilgrimage together, but this deposition also portrays Bengeven alone as responsible for the initiative.245 Some children asked their parent to make the vow or take them on a pilgrimage. Examples are the thirteen-year-old Ganthelma, who testified that she asked her 241 

Fourteen-year-old children were also considered mature enough to distinguish right from wrong and, for example, to confess their sins. See, for example, Orme, Medieval Children, pp. 216–17. 242  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 144–45. 243  Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 165–66. 244  On gendered roles and pilgrimages, see Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life; Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Parental Roles in the Canonisation Processes’, pp. 145–55. 245  AASS Oct. IX, pp. 811–12.

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mother, with great tears and grief, to vow her to St Louis of Toulouse, 246 and ten-year-old Petrus Siri Iohannis, who ‘humbly asked his father to send him to brother Peter’, which the father, seeing his devotion, agreed to do.247 Both of these beneficiaries connected aspects important for the vow with the plea they made to the parent, namely tears and humility, the latter being an important virtue often included in religious rhetoric and biographies.248 More common ways to portray the child’s devotion were, however, ‘joint invocations’ such as that of Verderosa, in which the parent took the initiative and vowed the child, but the child also prayed to the saint. Some of these children were relatively young.249 In some of these cases the parent specifically asked the child to say a prayer, indicating that although their veneration was most important, the child’s own invocation could help the cause.250 Unsurprisingly, most references to the beneficiaries’ own devotion and agency in the search for a cure come from cases in which the miraculé gave a witness account. In Margaret of Hungary’s hearing there is a case that finely illustrates the importance of personal devotion for the beneficiary’s experience of the cure. The mother of a boy called Leo testified that a year ago she and some neighbours took him to St Margaret and prayed to her. The commissioners then asked if the boy also said a prayer, to which she replied that he did not, because he was small (parvus). Leo himself, however, reported his prayer, and said that he believed he was about fifteen years old.251 This is not the only case in Margaret’s process that includes such glaring discrepancies, but leaving this inconsistency aside, it seems that for him the prayer was a definitive aspect of the cure. In St Philip of Bourges’s hearing there is a parallel case. A boy called Petrus Noueillons was unable to move and barely able to eat or talk. According to his testimony, his mother made the vow, and while they were at 246 

Louis of Toulouse, pp. 224–25: ‘dicta filia multis lacrimis et dolore requirebat matrem suam quod devoveret eam beato Ludovico’. 247  Peter of Morrone, pp. 256–57: ‘dictum Siri Iohannem patrem suum humiliter rogauit, ut eundem mitteret ad fraterm Petrum predictum’. 248  On humility, see, for example, Bejczy, The Cardinal Virtues, pp. 77–79, 96–109, 250; Newman, ‘Crucified by the Virtues’. 249  See Elizabeth of Hungary, pp. 209–10, in which the child was only three-and-a-half years old, yet reportedly asked for the help of the saint. 250  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fols 96r–97r; Louis of Toulouse, p. 176; Urban V, p. 173; Yves of Tréguier, pp. 151–52. 251  Margaret of Hungary, pp. 342–43, 355. Leo’s testimony is only partially recorded, due to a lacuna in the manuscript.

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the shrine and he was getting better, he himself prayed to the saint, the prayer being recorded in the deposition. The parents, however, referred only to prayers and oblations that were made, making no mention of Petrus’s invocation in particular.252 Similarly, Xanctia, who was impaired after suffering St Anthony’s fire, testified that when her mother made the vow to St Louis of Toulouse, she herself had strong faith in the saint. The mother or the father did not mention their daughter’s devotion.253 Additionally, the two depositions on the cure of Johannes Nani discussed above also give contradictory information on whether the vow and the initiative came from the boy or from his employer’s wife.254 This kind of specifying was, however, unusual. As noted by Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, in Ceptus Sperançe di Montefalco’s case the boy himself is the only one who credits his mother with the invocation. The other witnesses acknowledged the boy’s own agency.255 The beneficiaries’ reports of their own devotional actions were strictly connected with the miraculous and relevant for the memories they had of the cure and the ideas they had about their own interaction with the saint. They are, however, an effective proof of childhood socialization as well. That children were socialized into religious practices from an early age is obvious in all the miracle narratives, including types of cures and rescues other than those which healed physical impairments.256 When it comes to impaired children, these narratives are a tangible proof of their inclusion in the community of devotees. Even children, who were poor and living on the margins of the society, such as Johannes de Burtone or Thoumas de Voudai, knew how to act at the shrine. Various reports of visions further confirm this point.257 Admittedly, the witnesses usually testified a long time after the event and could adjust their memory to include what they knew about visions,258 but the depositions often state that the beneficiary described the vision immediately after waking up. For example, Alicia de Lonesdale reported the vision of St Thomas Cantilupe she saw while at his shrine, and her narrative included several typical elements of visions, such as the saint’s appearance and how he stroked her damaged limbs. 252 

BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fols 96r–97r. Louis of Toulouse, pp. 173–75. 254  Yves of Tréguier, pp. 211–12. 255  Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Learning by Doing’, p. 138. 256  See Katajala-Peltomaa and Vuolanto, ‘Children and Agency’. 257  See also Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Learning by Doing’. 258  Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, p. 111. 253 

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According to dominus Willelmus, Alicia narrated her experience immediately after waking up.259 A similar report was given by the mother of the begging girl Beatrix in St Elizabeth’s miracles. She stated that immediately after waking up, the girl said that a lady with a beautiful face had rubbed her body and said ‘rise up and walk’ (surge et ambula).260 The children who took the initiative in their search for the cure did not usually mention feelings or emotions about their conditions other than the possible physical pain and functional disabilities, which appears to be a common trend in later medieval hagiographic texts. 261 A rare testimony that can perhaps be interpreted as referring to the beneficiary’s own emotions was given by Thomasius Iohannis Galterii, who described his own disability as making him quasi perditus, or Thomasius Iacobi Thomasii, who made a similar statement.262 The latter, however, also said that he did not remember much of his disability, so the description appears rather a learned or internalized way of depicting the past. One question, however, that has come up in previous research about impaired people’s emotions and their relationships with their families is the feeling of being a burden, which is worth addressing here. As discussed above (see pp. 113–14), some scholars have suggested that such emotions were more common among the nobility,263 but that the sources do not give strong confirmation of this. If such attitudes were indeed common in wealthier families, one might surmise that while growing up, impaired noble or perhaps bourgeois children were more prone to seeing themselves as burdens or to being ashamed of their impairments. However, references to this are non-existent among our beneficiaries, unless Rixenda de Fayensa’s reported anxietas was an oblique reference to it. One might expect that the possible feelings of burden were not so much related to the child’s social status per se, but rather to the expectations of his or her future and whether the impairment prevented them from being fulfilled — just as must have been the case with adults. 259 

Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 142–44; BAV, MS Vat. Lat. 4015 fols 66v–67r. On visions, see also Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, pp. 100–16; Walters Adams, Visions in Late Medieval England, pp. 55–90. 260  Elizabeth of Hungary, p. 164. Surge, et ambula is what St Peter said when curing a lame man: Acts 3. 6. 261  For example, Jonas Van Mulder has made a similar notion about a late-medieval Dutch miracle collection of Virgin Mary: Van Mulder, ‘Miracles and the Body Social’. 262  Peter of Morrone, pp. 264, 291. 263  Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 4, 149–50; Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 162–63.

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The only testimony I have found that explicitly portrays feelings of shame or embarrassment in a person with a childhood condition was given by a Franciscan brother and juris civilis professor, Ricardus de Insula, in the hearing of St Thomas Cantilupe.264 His infirmitas does not meet our current definition of ‘classic physical impairment’, as he was covered with warts, but as a rare example of such emotions, his testimony is worth discussing here. Describing the effects of his condition, Ricardus testified: Ita quod racione dictarum verucarum habebat manus precipue sic deformatas, quod absque magna erubescencia non audebat ostendere dictas manus, nisi cirothecatas, et ex dicta erubescentia consorcia communia declinabat. Cum autem esset scolaris265 in studio Aurelianensi, et portaret cirothecas ne dicte veruce apparerent; et aliquando, ut notaret velocius reportationes, quas scribebat post dominum Petrum de Bellapertica,266 tunc temporis magistrum suum, et alios, extraheret cirothecas. Scolares circumsedentes in banctis, bancte, in qua ipse sedebat in scolis, proximius, surgebant de dictis banctis ad circumspiciendum dictam deformitatem verucarum, quae erant adeo spissae in manibus suis, quod vix puncta unus acus potuisset poni intra easdem; adeo deformauerant sibi manus. Nec unquam opere medicorum curari potuerat ab eisdem, licet diuersa medicamenta adhibuisset tam in Anglia, quam in Francia; et eciam interdum cum ferro calido et cum sulphure eas decoquisset; et interdum cum filo incerato ex ipsis aliquas evulsisset, et quanto plures euelebat, tanto plures repullulabant. Cum autem dicta deformitas et infirmitas dictarum verucarum durasset a natiuitate sua eidem testi per xxii annos et amplius, et nullum posset habere remedium, et ex hoc multum in corde suo et quasi continue fuisset desolatus; et interdum eciam in maximo periculo manum suarum perdendarum propter violenciam nimiam circa amocionem earundem constitutus.267 (So that because of the said warts his hands were particularly deformed, so that where­upon unless with great embarrassment he did not dare to show the said hands without gloves, and because of this shame he avoided communal fellow264  Ricardus was possibly from Lille in France. The other possibility is that he was from the town of Eye in Suffolk, whose Old English name Ey or Eia signifies ‘island’. 265  The term scholaris may refer to both those attending schools and universities. Admission to the latter was commonly given at the age of fourteen or fifteen, although there are exceptions: Schwinges, ‘Admission’, pp. 175, 183–84. At the time of Ricardus’s studies, the university of Orleans only had one faculty, that of law: Verger, ‘Patterns’, p. 42. 266  Pierre de Belleperche (1230–1308), also known as Pierre de Breschard de Villars, was a famous jurist. In addition to being a professor of civil law at the University of Orleans, he was also the Dean of Paris, the Chancellor of France, and Keeper of the Seal of France, and died as the Bishop of Auxerre. For Belleperche’s career, see Bezemer, Pierre de Belleperche. 267  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 62v–64r.

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ship. But while he was a student in the University of Orleans, and carried the said gloves so that the warts would not be seen; and sometimes, in order to write his notes quicker, which he wrote after dominus Pierre de Belleperche, at that time his tutor, and after others, he removed the gloves. The scholars sitting on surrounding benches approached the bench on which he sat, and got up from the said benches to inspect the said deformity of warts which were so dense on his hands that a needle could hardly be put between the two parts once a wart has been pierced, to such a degree that they had deformed his hands. And no care of doctors could cure him of them, although he used diverse medicine in England as well as in France. And sometimes he burned them with hot iron and sulphur; and in addition he tore them out with a waxed string, and the more warts he tore out, the more sprouted. After the said deformity and infirmity of the said warts lasted from the birth of the witness for twenty-two years and more, and he could have no remedy, and for this reason he was continuously very desolated in his heart; and sometimes he was also in great danger of losing his hands because of the excessive violence of the removal of them.)

In his testimony Ricardus portrayed his condition as one causing social disability above all else, again portraying a disfiguring condition as a severe social hindrance, although the constant futile and undoubtedly painful curing attempts added to his desperation. Interestingly, Ricardus did not specify the type of attention he got from other students and his deposition portrays it in a relatively neutral light. However, the other witness for his cure, magister Henricus de Schorne, a Hereford procurator, expanded on this. Henricus had seen Ricardus in Orleans, and according to him, others had been horrified at the sight of the hands, not wanting to eat with Ricardus. Henricus does not seem to have been ignorant of or indifferent to Ricardus’s emotions, as he testified that Ricardus had been embarrassed and aggrieved because of them.268

268 

BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 239r. The miracle was also briefly recorded in the testimony of Willelmus de Cantilupo, the saint’s nephew, who said that he had heard about the cure from Ricardus himself and that he had seen Ricardus’s ‘beautiful hands’ after the cure: BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 61r. Despite Ricardus’s high social standing and the testimonies of Henricus and Willelmus, the case did not end up being investigated in the curia, nor is it included in the canonization bull. Vauchez explains it by the miracle not appearing as that extraordinary for the curialist: Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 571–72, 577. Henricus’s case is curious in the history of procurators, for when asked, he refused to produce the articuli, and the task was therefore undertaken by the papal commissioners. Toynbee, S. Louis of Toulouse and the Process of Canonisation, pp. 167–68. There was no absolute ban for procurators acting as witnesses, but they were considered to be among the testes suspecti together with other persons playing a major role in the process. See Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, pp. 67–68.

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In part Ricardus’s embarrassment may have been a product of his social background. Although not directly stated in the deposition, he appears to have been of a family with some social status, his education being one indication. Moreover, he reported that when he heard about Thomas Cantilupe’s miracles from a pilgrim, one of those present was his brother, Johannes de Insula, who was a professor of civil law, and at the time of the cure the socius and the chancellor of the Patriarch of Jerusalem.269 Ricardus’s shame or embarrassment was accentuated in an interesting way because of the rules concerning priesthood and bodily imperfections. After he was cured as a result of a vow to Thomas Cantilupe, one wart remained ‘in a notable place’ (in loco eminenti) on his left index finger. According to his own testimony, after Ricardus decided to aban­­don the secular life and joined the Franciscans, he took holy orders, and, because of the need to celebrate the mass, he was often self-conscious about the said wart. He tried to remove it, but it would grow back in a different place. Although the wart thus remained ad commendacionem dicti sancti Thomae, Ricardus noted that if he joined his index and middle fingers together, it was hardly discernible.270 Severe skin diseases and defects in hands were among those considered serious for someone acting as a priest, especially if the deformity affected the handling of the Eucharist.271 This does not appear to have been the case with Ricardus, but, even though he had already received his cure, his changed lifestyle still made the very mild skin condition a problem.272 It is, however, worth pointing out that although the deposition underlines Ricardus’s social awkwardness, and although it appears that others found the 269  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 63v. Ricardus dated his cure to 1292, which was one year after the Fall of Acre, during which the patriarch, Nicolas de Hanapes, allegedly drowned. It is probable that he was the patriarch to whom Ricardus is referring. See, for example, Hill, A History of Cyprus, ii, 186–87. I have been unable to identify Johannes de Insula with certainty. There are references to a canon and master with the same name, working with canon law in the University of Bologna in the 1260s, who might be the same man, in which case he was significantly older than Ricardus: Walther, ‘Learned Jurists’, p. 107. Kingsford, The Grey Friars of London also lists a person named ‘Frater Johannes de Insula, juris ciuilis professor, et quondam decanus de Boket…’ but gives no further information. 270  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 63v. 271  See Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 40–41; Montfort, Health, Sickness, Medicine and the Friars, p. 30; Salonen and Hanska, Entering a Clerical Career, pp. 9, 123. 272  In case of mild bodily defects, the diocesan bishop could make the decision on whether the person in question could be given the holy orders. In cases when the bishop had doubts, a dispensation from the papal curia had to be sought: Salonen and Hanska, Entering a Clerical Career, p. 117.

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sight of his hands repugnant, there is another side to the story. Despite the condition deforming Ricardus’s hands, he was able to continue his studies and proceed in his originally intended career in civil law.273 The text does not give a clear picture of the time frame, but as he was more than twenty-two years at the time of his cure, travelling in a prestigious company that included not only his brother but also other scholars and his new magister Rogerus de Heslartonsis, it seems evident that he continued his education. Moreover, as the testimony states, he ultimately became a professor of civil law, and according to Henricus de Schorne, he and Ricardus also worked at the same time in the University of Oxford after the miracle. In addition to Ricardus, among our sources there are few instances of witnesses mentioning shame about impairments acquired in adulthood. In the hearing of John Buoni, domina Bonaventura said she suffered from an illness that made her face contort, shake, and look foolish. She reported having been ashamed of her condition.274 Bonaventura did not belong to the nobility, but was probably a member of the bourgeoisie, although in John Buoni’s process women were typically called dominae without clarifying their social standings. Another man in the same inquiry, dominus Bonvicinus, testified that he was ashamed of his deafness.275 These two cases further support the idea that deafness and disfigurements were among the impairments that most often caused negative reactions and emotions.276 Similarly, in Louis IX’s miracles a priest had 273 

There seems to have been no consensus on whether an impaired person could be admitted to a university. There are occasional cases of regulations that forbade it, but usually impaired persons could gain admission: Cobban, English University Life, pp. 18–19; Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 41; Metzler, A Social History of Disability, p. 91; Schwinges, ‘Admission’, p. 172. Obviously, Ricardus’s condition, which he had had since birth, did not prevent him from entering a university. 274  AASS Oct. IX, p. 821: ‘semper ducebat caput, et cilia, et oculos tamquam fatua, de qua ipsa testis vercundabatur multum’. Fatua was a term used of the ‘foolish’ or the ‘fool’ in legal context as well. See Turner, Care and Custody, pp. 24–25, 162. 275  AASS Oct. IX, p. 878: ‘et verecundabatur dictus testis adeo quod stabat semper in domo’. The wife also reported this: ‘propter verecundiam stabat dictus Bonvicinus semper in domo’ 276  C. M. Woolgar also cites two twelfth-century miracles in which a person was cured of deafness. In a miracle of St William of Norwich a woman had been going deaf for a long time, and she feared the derision and disgrace she would face. The friends of a deaf man, evidently cured at the shrine of St Thomas Becket, avoided conversing with him because they did not want to bring shame on a dear friend. Woolgar interprets these two cases as cures of a moral affliction besides a physical one. See Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England, pp. 7, 78. I would, however, be cautious in labelling deafness as a ‘moral impediment’, because the idea

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a big swelling on his face, but he intended to cover his face and keep on working in his profession. Once he had been compelled to reveal his face to female pilgrims, which made him ashamed.277 Undoubtedly, the condition and its deforming nature were an important reason for this,278 but the fact that he was a priest must have added to his suffering, as instead of concealing his impediment, he should have sought dispensation. His failure to do this led to excommunication.279 In her testimony the wife of a man called Bonapace, who was blind for two years and had to beg because of it, stated that he was ashamed of walking from door to door.280 However, begging was not necessarily a significant memory for the beneficiaries. For example, Iohannes le Maignen, who was cured of blindness by Charles of Blois, did not mention this aspect of his earlier life, but Iohannes Cornuti, advocatus curie secularis, remembered having seen him begging.281 Here it seems likely, as in the case of Ceptus Sperançe de Montefalco, that Johannes le Maignen was not a ‘full-time’ beggar but presumably had to rely on it only occasionally, and so he did not see it as an inevitable or inseparable aspect of his blindness. These testimonies do not tell us anything about the relative prevalence of feelings of shame or being a burden in different social classes, but they do show that such feelings were not limited only to individuals of high status. Bonapace, for instance, seems to have been from a lower class to start with, as he is not titled dominus, which most of the men in John Buoni’s process are. Despite this, in his case the need to rely on begging seems to be the primary reason for his shame, as the blindness lowered his social status and placed him in the social group with which various, negative notions and conceptions were associated. has the connotation that the impaired person was responsible for their own condition. Rather, especially the reported views of the deaf man’s friends suggest that, once again, the lack of communication and consequent lack of full participation in the oral society was the biggest problem and also the primary reason for the derision and shame caused by deafness. 277  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 88–89. 278  See also Skoda, ‘Representations of Disability’, p. 63. 279  See Montfort, Health, Sickness, Medicine and the Friars, pp.  30–31; Salonen and Hanska, Entering a Clerical Career, p. 129. At the same time, the Church provided assistance for priests who were ill with leprosy or some physical disability. See Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England, p. 266. 280  AASS Oct. IX, p. 874. 281  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fols 177v, 178v. The other depositions are on BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4025, fols 177r–78v.

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As for children who had to beg, no such emotions are recorded. Moriset de Ranton was staying at his brother’s household when the condition struck him. The narrative based on his testimony states that as the brother and his wife were poor and had five children, feeding Moriset, who was unfit for work, was a painful thing (grief cose) for him. Thus he felt in his heart that he should go to Saumur and search for his stepmother.282 Hannah Skoda also argues that Moriset left his brother’s house because he felt himself a burden.283 The word grief can be indeed interpreted in different ways in this context as it can mean that nourishing Moriset was painful, difficult, or even devastating. One cannot, however, draw too many conclusions about Moriset’s (or the brother’s) emotions from that expression, given that his testimony was first translated into Latin and eventually summarized by Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, whose Latin narrative was then translated back into French. The brother’s poverty was clearly an important factor, and the text gives the impression that Moriset’s departure for Saumur was a survival strategy, presumably negotiated at the household of his brother, who made him a pair of crutches to help him on the way. As is the case with physical pain, the general lack of references to personal emotions may derive partly from the characteristics of the genre, as emotions were highly personal and difficult to prove. Children rarely made the votum for themselves, and thus even the devotional, ritualistic tears appear rarely. As for shame or feeling oneself a burden, it is evident that some of the negative emotions adults had towards their impairments derived from their inability to support themselves and their families financially, leading to dependency and lowering their status almost to the level of ‘true’ beggars, as is suggested by the case of the blind Bonapace. In the children’s cases begging was presumably not a reason for such feelings, because they were not expected to be responsible for feeding themselves, let alone their families. Although pain, everyday difficulties, and possible worries about the future undoubtedly would have caused them worry or even desperation, it cannot be assumed that impaired children experienced self-loathing, shame, or consciousness of being a burden. Those emotions were not an essential feature of the genre — in other words, they did not belong to the topoi of miracle accounts.284 Suffering was expressed in other ways. On 282 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 46: ‘Et comme son frere fust povres hons et eus cinc fiuz et sa femme, pour la quele chose c’estoit a lui grief chose de norrir le dit Moriset qui ne pooit riens laborer ne proufitier a lui pour l’enfermeté desus dite, le dit Moriset pensa en son cuer que il iroit en la Meson Dieu de Saumur’. 283  Skoda, ‘Representations of Disability’, p. 64. 284  Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 162–64.

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the other hand, there are occasional hints of such emotions in the recorded testimonies, and so their rare occurrence presumably reflects reality — it may simply be the case that such emotions were not ascribed much significance.

Bodily Difference and Self-Image ‘Disability creep’, a term used by Robert Murphy, means that a person’s disability comes to include all other aspects of their being.285 This idea, quite prevalent in modern society, has led to the identities of the impaired being bound up with their bodily afflictions.286 Traditionally, it has been argued that medieval people perceived the core of a person as being lodged in the soul. By the early modern era this core was transplanted into the mind, which became the seat of a person’s unique identity.287 The body was not, however, disassociated from identity or personhood, but was one of the aspects of identity that raised technical philosophical questions, and had an important role in the ways religion and the world at large were perceived.288 Irina Metzler suggests that because of 285 

Murphy, ‘Encounters’; Mitchell and Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis, p.  xi. Also Tom Shakespeare has used a similar argument in his criticism of the conception of disability identity and its connection with the social model: Shakespeare, Disability Rights and Wrongs, p. 71. 286  O’Tool, ‘The povres avugles of the Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts’, pp. 160–61. Lois Bragg discusses an interesting example of this phenomenon. In the Icelandic Sturlu saga there is a passage describing the chieftain Einarr Þorgilsson, the literal translation of which states that ‘[h]e lacked neither zeal nor courage. He was no lawman and [he was] lisping in speech’. The printed English translation from 1970 of the same passage, however, reads ‘[h]e did not lack courage or daring even though [my emphasis] he was not a man of law, and lisped somewhat when speaking’. Here the modern conception that the speech impairment is a paramedical condition requiring medical or therapeutic intervention has influenced the translator, who seems to have been reading the text through the lens of the modern assumption that the lisp must have been an embarrassing defect and something which would be totally exceptional for a leader: Bragg, ‘From the Mute God to the Lesser God’, p. 166. 287  Petkov, The Kiss of Peace, p. 245. According to Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 59–60, ‘[i]f one can speak of a late medieval theory of identity at all, then part of what we would now ascribe to the body, that is physical characteristics, would then have been ascribed to the soul’. Medieval identities have also been discussed in Cohen and FirnhaberBaker, eds, Difference and Identity in Francia and Medieval France; Frazer and Tyrrell, eds, Social Identity in Early Medieval Britain; Huot, Madness in Medieval French Literature; Lord Smail, Imaginary Cartographies; O’Tool, ‘Disability and the Suppression of Historical Identity’. 288  Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. xviii. Bynum discusses the conceptions of identity and its connection to body and resurrection throughout her study. See also Bynum, ‘The Female Body and Religious Practice’, p. 235, for body as something giving access to the divine.

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the conception of bodily perfection at resurrection, also delivered to the masses in exempla and miracle plays, bodily impairments did not, in the end, have significant importance for the identity of medieval people, although there existed notions about the body as a part of one’s identity. 289 Sarah Gordon, on the other hand, has a different opinion from Metzler’s, and suggests that there is a connection between the way literary characters are identified by their bodily difference and the lived reality, arguing that such differences became a person’s primary identifying feature.290 Are there, then, traces of ‘disability identity’ in the canonization testimonies, and if physical impairment was an important identifying feature, was it necessarily a negative one? Or is such a conception a product of modern society, our medical and social models of disability, and the emphasis put on bodily flawlessness?291 Perhaps the most obvious example of a case in which the impairment seems to have become a distinctive factor in the beneficiary’s self-image or identity is the case of the deaf-mute Loÿs, who was traumatized when he became able to hear. Gauchier the smith realized that the reason the youth had returned to them was because he could not operate like hearing people, since he had previously been deaf and mute.292 In Loÿs’s case his ‘identity’, or perhaps the way of living or simply being, was primarily coloured by communication: that is, his way of communication and its deficiencies had been so much a part of his understanding of the world as well as his way of interacting with it, that the dramatic, sudden change completely altered his perception of the world around him, as well as his own expectations of how he was supposed to act in it. One can only guess how the lack of understanding of his deafness and family background might have affected Loÿs’s identity.293 Whether Loÿs had been aware of the way in which his deaf-muteness affected his perception of his sur289 

Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, pp. 60–62. Gordon, ‘Representations of Aging and Disability’, pp. 421, 423. 291  On the attempts of bodily perfection as a[n American] cultural ideal and its connection with attitudes towards disability, see Murphy, ‘Encounters’, pp. 141–47. 292  Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 54: ‘Et cil de l’ostel du dit Gauchier l’aperçurent a ce que il l’apelerent et il se torna vers els, ce que il ne soloit pas fere, comme homme oiant, car au premier il estoit venu avecques els sourt et muet. Pur la quele chose il orent de li pité, et le commencierent a enseignier ausi comme le enfanz sont enseigniez de leur premier aage’. 293  As Irina Metzler writes, during his deafness Loÿs was also disabled in a way that he did not know himself: Metzler, A Social History of Disability, p. 203. Then again, it seems probable that he never learned his true origins — a fate which was undoubtedly relatively common in the Middle Ages. 290 

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roundings and himself before the cure is uncertain, but it seems his own ideas about the influence of the deafness on his everyday life and religious comprehension before the cure were somewhat vague, because he also stated that he did not even know there was something to understand.294 It is thus probable that the extent of its effects had only been revealed to him when he started to hear and that gradually he learned to speak and understand things formerly beyond his comprehension. In cases when the person had various levels of blindness or mobility impair­­ments the effects of miraculous cures were, supposedly, less dramatic. Nevertheless, it is probable, at least in those cases where people lived in close contact with others having similar impairments, that there was a sense of communal identity. The most obvious example of this is the hospital of QuinzeVingts in Paris. Mark O’Tool has convincingly argued that there was also a communal idea among the donators, namely, that despite the various stereotypes of blind beggars, the residents of the hospital could embrace their blindness as a divine test. Moreover, the support the hospital got, especially from the Parisian bourgeoisie, could endorse the shared communal identity of the residents. This was not, however, limited to the blind inhabitants of the Quinze-Vingts, but also pertained to those who could see.295 Such communal identities were, of course, most easily formed in places where there were several people with similar impairments, and who were also communally recognized and identified on the basis of their special characteristics. Another thing which suggests that the community had a habit of labelling individuals on the basis of their outward appearance is the custom of giving people bynames. As discussed earlier, bodily ‘defects’ were not a taboo in the later medieval society, and drawing attention to someone’s impairment was, consequently, not considered improper. The nicknames derived from impairments, as discussed in an innovative article by Irina Metzler, are an illustrative example of this. A large number of the nicknames that were in fashion were not chosen by the individuals to whom they were attached, the unpleasant ones at least being picked by others, who seem to have been keen to choose physical characteristics that were less than favourable as the basis for a nickname.296 Among the miracle beneficiaries impaired in childhood, Guillot dit le Potencier in St Louis IX’s miracles is the only one with such a nickname. His 294 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 52–53. O’Tool, Caring for the Blind in Medieval Paris, esp. pp. 294–95. 296  Metzler, ‘What’s in a Name?’, p. 21. 295 

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case appears quite unusual. Guillot’s birthplace was known and reported in the interrogations, and thus it could have been used as his last name as was common.297 Although Guillot did not need crutches after the miracle, the nickname deriving from the French word for using crutches remained attached to him. In the same collection there is another protagonist who received the same nickname: a woman called Avice de Bernevile, dite la Potenciere. Avice was around fifty years old when she became unable to walk with her right leg; the disability lasted for only three years, and yet twelve years after the cure the nickname was still being used.298 Modern sociological studies have shown that nicknames often derive from a rather trivial incident that quickly becomes forgotten, but the nickname remains.299 This seems to have been what happened with Avice, but also in Guillot’s case the cure did not change the fact that his use of crutches remained a way to identify him. The naming practice appears to us quite incongruous among those who had experienced a miraculous cure. They had got rid of their impairment in the most favourable manner, and no doubt had no reason to try to forget the incident. Among the beneficiaries of miraculous cures the remaining traces of their once impaired self cannot, therefore, be seen as a stigma, although the naming practice shows how both an individual and the community could retain the memory of a corporeal difference. That the name itself was not a stigma is also suggested by their transition to hereditary family names. However, the names per se do not yet tell us much about a person’s identity, but rather about the way they, and their social sphere, defined them.300 When it comes to the carrying of the marks of miraculous cure, Guillot’s situation has peculiar similarities with the case of Johanna la Schirreue in Thomas Cantilupe’s process. Johanna was miraculously resurrected after falling into a pond, and the miracle achieved great notoriety in her community.301 Almost twenty years after the miracle, at the age of around twenty-five, Johanna was still called virgine sancti Thome. She apparently took her reputation seriously as she reported in her testimony that because of her miraculous resurrection, 297 

Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 23. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 104–07. 299  Metzler, ‘What’s in a Name?’, p. 22. 300  See Lord Smail, Imaginary Cartographies, p. 34. 301  The ten testimonies regarding the case are in BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 123r–40v and have been edited in Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 169–206. Johanna’s case has been extensively analysed in Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, pp. 60–61, 76–82, 90–91, 169–70, 277–79. 298 

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she refused to marry, against her parents’ wishes. 302 The miracle still defined Johanna’s identity as the chosen one of the saint, and she carried on with her chosen lifestyle and devotion. In Johanna’s case the nickname was a memory of her special spiritual position and close connection with the saint, while for Guillot it was a remnant of his bodily imperfection without holding any obvious connotations of a miraculous cure.303 As discussed on pages 145–46, mentions of minor impediments remaining as a sign of the miraculous cure are relatively common, and the case of Ricardus de Insula also belongs to this group. The line between such marks and remaining impairments is indistinct. If we assume that occasionally people also interpreted mild or temporary alleviations or remissions as miraculous cures, the number of people who considered themselves as carrying such marks of saintly grace must have been much larger than indicated by hagiographic sources. Therefore it is presumable that a large number of children and teenagers grew up both ‘impaired’ or mildly disfigured and miraculously cured, as was the case, for example, with Alicia de Lonesdale. As the sources are silent about their experiences after the miracle, we can only guess how this may have affected their identity and everyday life. In their social sphere their background and their miracle were undoubtedly publicly known, and the tangible signs enhanced their reputations as spiritual beneficiaries of a miracle, but when facing new situations and new locations, they most likely had to renegotiate their status and the experience of saintly grace. Nevertheless, even partially cured children, with their remaining limps and scars, had the same influence on the cults as sermons and other official pronouncements by reinforcing the fama of a cult.304 For the once deaf-mute Loÿs, taking the name of the saint on Gauchier’s suggestion was a choice that permanently connected him with the king, and also fulfils Gauchier’s role as a sort of a father figure in his life. 305 With this 302 

Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, p. 170. In medieval literature bodily marks or imperfections could be confirmations of the person’s specific individual identity: Huot, Madness in Medieval French Literature, p. 187. 304  See also Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 139–40, who mainly discusses the matter as it pertains to miraculously resuscitated children, although he takes Alicia de Lonesdale’s residual limp into account. Finucane sees such marks as the stigmata of the rustics and other nonprivileged groups. 305  The text highlights Gauchier’s role in Loÿs choosing the name, stating that ‘et comme le dit Loÿs fust enquis et demandé des diz inquisiteurs, qui il mist non Loÿs, il dist que puis que il sot parler il raconta au dit Gauchier comment il avoit recue l’oïe au dit tombel et tout ce qui la li estoit avenue. De quoi le dit Gauchier li dit: “Je voil que tu soies apelé Loÿs a l’enneur de Loÿs le roi de France qui t’a delivré.”’ : Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 55. 303 

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name, Loÿs not only carried the signs of having experienced a miracle, but the miracle made it possible for him to have a name that he could recognize. In this sense, only after the miracle did Loÿs became a full member of society.306 The narrative does not reveal what Gauchier and the others had called him before the miracle. It usually refers to him as Loÿs, but occasionally uses the definition il sourt et muet, which may imply that it was precisely the physical impairment that had defined him before.307 The miracle done by St Louis IX thus gave him a name and, consequently, an identity as something other than a deaf-mute. This was highlighted in his later life when he became Queen Margaret’s vallet. In Loÿs’s case the community’s way of identifying or defining him seems to have been in accordance with the way he saw himself, at least after the cure, when he could distinguish what it was like to be deaf and mute from his healed self. Moreover, Loÿs’s remark that he did not know that there was something he did not understand of religion, as well as his confusion after the cure, indicate that he did not necessarily view his impairment as a personal tragedy. There is no way of knowing exactly how commonly people were given nicknames based on their impairments.308 It is possible that in canonization hearings they were not recorded, especially if the person in question had a patronymic or place name cognomen that had become established before the impairment. 309 306  This does not mean, however, that Loÿs was not baptized and given a name as an infant, considering that baptism immediately after birth was strongly encouraged by churchmen, and that midwives had the responsibility to baptize a new-born baby thought to be in mortal danger. Apparently Loÿs’s Christian name had been ‘lost’ at some point in his childhood. In the Middle Ages the name given in baptism connected the child with his or her family and godparents. Often children were also named after saints, a practice which Gauchier’s suggestion can be seen to follow. See Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p. 42; Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound, p. 172; Hanawalt, Growing up in Medieval London, pp. 46–48. 307  There is one passage in the narrative which specifically hints at this, because it suddenly changes the way of referring to the protagonist, and it may be a compilation of the witness accounts of either Loÿs or Gauchier and the Countess, if the said Countess was among the witnesses. The passage reads as follows: ‘Et puis ce tens que le dit Loÿs avoit esté avec le dit Gauchier fu il sourt et muet avec le conte d’Aucerre et aveques la contesse, et aucune foiz avecques Jehan de Sorgy, baillif du dit conte, et en la cuisine du dit conte’: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 51. 308  There are quite common nicknames originating in impairments, such as the English names Crook, Crumb, Cruickshank and their derivatives. However, their appearance in the records does not imply that everyone, or even most of those carrying such a name, had crooked legs. Instead, they probably had one ancestor who had acquired such a condition at some point in his life, and the name then passed down to later generations: Metzler, ‘What’s in a Name?’, pp. 22–23. 309  In Louis IX’s process, on the other hand, nicknames were recorded, but many of them do

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Moreover, as children were usually named or identified after their father (or mother if they were illegitimate), the nickname deriving from impairment was usually not necessary. Guillot had needed to start using crutches when he no longer lived at his parental home and had moved to Robert Reboule to work there, and thus received his byname sometime in his mid- or late teens. The lack of a nickname implying bodily characteristics does not mean that the said difference was not used to define or identify the person in question. Usually this is not obvious in canonization records, because the impairment needed to be first defined in order to be later cured, and was thus always mentioned when identifying the miraculé. In St Yves of Tréguier’s hearing there is another type of example that may shed light on the matter. Eight people testified about an incident that involved a blind man called Gaufridus Rannou, who fell into a new well and was saved from drowning by a vow to St Yves. 310 The witnesses’ testimonies give a very strong impression of the importance of Gaufridus’s blindness, not only as the cause of the accident,311 but also as the thing that identified and defined him. They all stated that the man was Gaufridus Rannou (or Bonnio, there is slight variance), cecus. Moreover, one witness reported that when Prigencius Rodic vowed Gaufridus, he started with the words ‘lord Saint Yves, Gaufridus the blind fell into a well’.312 The miracle did not involve a cure of Gaufridus’s blindness, and Raolinus Riboul testified about his later life, reporting that he had travelled to Santiago de Compostela with Eudone Fallore, ductore ipsius ceci.313 It is possible that Gaufridus was hoping to get his blindness cured, but as Santiago de Compostela was one of the

not have anything to do with the impairment that was cured by the merits of the saint. See Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 86, 112, 147. Surnames deriving from professions also appear every now and then in the canonization records; for example, in Yves of Tréguier’s process there is a mention of a man called Guillelmus filius Rivallonis Castrou, who was also called Guillermou Carnifex: Yves of Tréguier, p. 285. 310  Yves of Tréguier, pp. 235, 281–82, 284–90. 311  Yves of Tréguier, p. 286: ‘Laurencius Sancti […] dixit quod cum quidam cecus, nomine Gaufridus […] iret solus sine ductore, cecidit capite deorsum immisso in quodam puteo’. There is a similarity with the narrative about Thoumas de Voudai, who fell into mud because he walked alone: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 27. 312  Yves of Tréguier, pp. 281–82: ‘Domine sancte Yvo, Gaufridus cecus cecidit in puteo’. See also Margilia’s testimony on Yves of Tréguier, p. 285. On the usage of the word caecus as the identifier of a person in literary texts, see Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind, pp. 118–19. 313  Yves of Tréguier, p. 288.

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main pilgrimage routes, which also granted the pilgrim plenary indulgences, this may be too obvious a supposition.314 Although a rare example of a miracle case where the beneficiary is mentioned to have had an impairment without obtaining a cure, the testimonies on Gaufridus show how a special corporeal characteristic could be used to identify a person and be used in a surname-like manner, even if the person in question had another, more official patronymic or cognomen. Just as with bynames deriving from impairments, this presumably did not pertain to young children, who were primarily considered as offspring of their parents, but became more common as they grew older. The testimonies use the bodily defect in a nameor pronoun-like manner, and if that was the case also in everyday language, it undoubtedly had an effect on how the disabled children were socialized into viewing themselves. In our sources there is one more aspect relating to how impairment could be crucial in defining a child’s self-image: fruitless and recurrent attempts to get a cure. There are occasional references to the painfulness of medical methods, which connect the question of medical treatment with the varying conceptions of the importance of physical pain for proving a condition genuine and a miracle true. While these mostly come from parents’ testimonies, no doubt they also coloured the experience and memories of children — the most obvious example of which is Verderosa’s plea at Ambrose of Massa’s shrine that the saint would cure her so that the doctors would no longer hurt her;315 there is also Ricardus de Insula, who clearly stated how attempts to remove his warts only added to his suffering.316 However, despite its apparent effectiveness for reconstructing a painful experience of impairment (as well as emphasizing the saints’ powers), this type of rhetoric was rarely recorded.317 In fact, as there was a wide 314 

On the penitence system, see Sumption, The Age of Pilgrimage. AASS Nov. IV, p. 605. 316  BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 63r. 317  There are illuminating examples of this side of the experience of premodern disability in German autobiographic texts. In the sixteenth century a hearing-impaired shoemaker, Sebastian Fischer, wrote of how he underwent several painful therapies in order to cure his condition, mostly following the wishes of his family and friends. Fischer also connected the fruitless medical operations with the help of God, stating that at some point he believed that if it had been God’s will, one of these treatments would have worked. For him, the suffering of his disability was mostly a result of the attempts to return to ‘normality’, rather than a consequence of the condition itself. His family, on the other hand, saw the pain as a necessary evil: Frohne, Leben mit ‘kranckheit’, pp. 86–88. 315 

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variation in the availability, type, and frequency of medical treatment for children, their experiences of curing attempts were similarly disparate. Constant invocations or pilgrimages must also have had a big influence on how children’s quality of life as well. If their lives were marked by repetitive, and in some cases laborious, attempts to find a cure, it must have left them feeling that they were different from others, and perhaps undermined their faith and worldview. John Arnold reasonably ponders how many people who did not receive the miracle they asked for were ‘left wearied and unbelieving’. 318 At the same time, even though healthy people made pilgrimages, sometimes even as a way of exploring the world,319 and although it is probable that minor impairments were quite common,320 children would have seen others with various illnesses and impairments — including some like their own — more when travelling to shrines than in their everyday life. It is therefore possible that during their pilgrimages they came to identify themselves with others travelling with the same purpose, and perhaps even saw people with a similar condition to their own for the first time. In many instances people wishing to be cured stayed at the shrines for several nights.321 It is not impossible that during pilgrimages some form of ‘disability culture’, albeit strongly related to the invocation of saints would have been created between pilgrims, and which would, in consequence, have influenced impaired children’s conceptions of their bodies and impairments. At the same time, parents’ willingness to go through many kinds of difficulties in order to get their children cured could also be an expression of devotion and caring. The problem with this issue is that canonization testimonies are quite reticent about futile pilgrimages, and invocations that brought no help were very rarely recorded. This ‘one-sided reporting’ gives us a distorted image of the uni318 

Arnold, Belief and Unbelief, p. 222. See Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 40–41; Webb, Medieval European Pilgrimage, pp. 51–52. 320  There is also archaeological evidence pointing in this direction. As an example, in excavations done in Norwich it has been discovered that various degenerative pathological conditions such as osteoarthritis were quite common, especially in the lower strata of society, often as a result of hard work and dietary deficiencies. In one excavation about one third of adult skeletons showed signs of damage, especially to the feet and spine, mostly caused by accidents: Rawcliffe, ‘Sickness and Health’, p. 304. In Swiss excavations, traces of osteomyelitis have been found in children, which could be caused by ear infection or angina, but also by a trauma or a soft-tissue injury: Ulrich-Boschler, ‘Kranke, Behinderte und Gebrechliche im Spiegel der Skelettreste’, p. 186. 321  See also Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, p. 127. 319 

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formity of belief in saintly intercession, because, after all, quite a few people must have been disappointed.322 An acquaintance of the sister of Petrus Sulpicii from Bourges reported that in addition to physicians, he sought help from various saints. Interestingly, Petrus himself did not report this as specifically as the friend, but referred to physicians and futile prayers. Another witness, Nicholaus de Norento, who had observed Petrus’s condition for fifteen years, only stated that he did not believe it could be cured, an opinion presumably based on his knowledge of these futile curing attempts.323 Similarly, in the testimony of the miraculous cure of Beatrix de Sancta Cruce, her neighbour, Cecilia Helziarsse, testified that she thought Beatrix’s disability was indeed cured by St Louis of Toulouse, because she had seen the mother carrying her to various shrines without obtaining a cure, but Beatrix or her mother did not mention this.324 It has also been proposed that from the mid-fourteenth century on there was a shift in the way saintly cure was obtained. The proportion of reported cures of physical impairments declined, while cures of sudden, acute situations such as fatal accidents increased. This has been explained by the ways that devotional practices changed. When votum and visiting portable relics and images of the saints became a possible way to ask for help from a saint, it became easier to obtain a miracle in the case of sudden, acute, or fatal problems.325 Irina Metzler has recently suggested that the decline in the cures of long-term illnesses and impairments was due to several cultural changes in the later Middle Ages. According to her, increasing medicalization would have made it easier to obtain an earthly cure, and the stabilization of Christianity as an organ322 

See Arnold, Belief and Unbelief, pp. 86–87. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fols 88v–89r. Philip of Bourges was a recent saint, and, as stated by André Vauchez, the new cults are occasionally portrayed as stopgaps when the old protectors have failed to help. The beneficiaries of Philip’s process reportedly made futile invocations to St Giles of Rocamadour, St Vérain de Jargeu, Virgin Mary, St Stephen, St Radegond, and also the uncle of the saint, St William of Bourges: Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 152–53, n. 10. 324  Louis of Toulouse, p. 164. A woman called Emmeline is also reported as having carried her daughter Eidelot to various churches, but because the information comes from Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s text, it is not revealed who gave this information or whether the child’s parents gave detailed information regarding the futile pilgrimages in their original testimonies: Les Miracles de Saint Louis, p. 36. In the case of Mabileta, her mother revealed having taken her to various churches, but mentioned this only very briefly when answering a question about whether she believed the cure was through the merits of St Louis: Fragments, p. 50. 325  Andrić, The Miracles of St John Capistran, p. 310; Krötzl, ‘Miracles au tombeau — miracles à distance’, pp. 561–66; Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 549–50. On the proportions in earlier miracle collections, see Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, p. 65. 323 

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ized religion meant that healing miracles were no longer needed as tools for conversion. Additionally, changes in attitudes towards poverty and physical suffering, the latter becoming valourized, may have resulted in the decline of healing miracles, as more emphasis was put on proving that the recipient of a miracle was worthy or ‘needy’, and ‘deserving’ of both charity and a miraculous cure.326 These are intriguing suggestions, and although they do not exclude (or comment on) the influence of the shift on invocation practices, the impact of such attitudes on suffering and poverty would be worth further research. As for the ‘educational’ aspect of the miraculous, I find this argument problematic because it is clear that miracles were considered to have an educational role in the fight against heresies, so that healing miracles did not cease to serve a didactive or instructive purpose from the point of view of the Church.327 Moreover, the shift is relatively late, and the Church had definitely secured its position by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As for the argument about medicalization, it is of course possible that people felt that physicians could respond to their needs more successfully, although educated medical help was far from being available for everyone. However, the proportion of acute illnesses also increased in the later medieval miracles, when one might expect that medicalization would have reduced their numbers. If correct, the decline of miracles healing long-term conditions, as well as miracles occurring due to a pilgrimage, would indicate that the lived experience of impaired children changed during the late fourteenth century, as they were taken on fewer laborious pilgrimages — and perhaps were vowed to a saint less often. The overall problem concerning the everyday experience here is that we do not know how big a proportion of the miracles people felt they experienced was included in the written sources. Consequently, it is impossible to infer the extent to which the changes in the recorded miracles actually derived from the experiences of the devotees and to what extent from the ideals of those writing their stories down.328 After all, different types of miracles were selected for 326 

Metzler, ‘Indiscriminate Healing Miracles’. See nn. 397 and 403 above. 328  In the later canonization processes, the proportion of mobility impairments also varies. As an example, in the articuli of the 1445–46 hearing of St Bernardino of Siena, more than half of the fifty miracles investigated were cures of conditions affecting mobility. The hearing from 1447 only lists one cured mobility impairment among the eighteen investigated miracles. See Bernardino of Siena, pp. 16–25, 215–14. It is also noteworthy that David Gentilcore has noted that in Early Modern times, miracles of precisely illnesses, and not long-term impairments are prevalent especially in the canonization records, but in miracle collections where there was less 327 

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different processes. For example, the procurator and commissioners of Thomas Cantilupe’s process specifically favoured miracles that had occurred at the shrine, while the turbulent circumstances of the later fourteenth century had their effect on the selection of miracles for the later processes, that of Charles of Blois with its frequent war-related miracles being an illustrative example. The life cycle of a cult must also have been influential, as the early phases of cults commonly saw plenty of miracles occurring at the shrine, while their numbers decreased as the cult aged.329 Furthermore, the selection of witnesses may have altered the pattern of miracles. Recorded long-distance cures were more common among the upper stratas of society while paupers were still healed at shrines.330 The shifting balance between various social groups thus also had an influence. Among the sources of this study, a change in the proportion of miracles in which a vow resulted in a cure starts to be visible in the early fourteenth-century processes. For example, of the ten physically impaired children in St Louis of Toulouse’s process from 1308, only one was cured at the saint’s shrine. She was the poor Beatrix de Sancta Cruce, whose low social standing is notable here. Likewise, seven impaired children out of nine in St Yves of Tréguier’s canonization documents from 1330 experienced long-distance cures, although there was apparently no socioeconomic reason for not making the journey. In fact, one of them, Katherina, was clearly the daughter of a wealthy family. In Urban V’s miracles from 1376–79 and 1390, all twelve impaired children were cured after a votum, but St Bernardino of Siena’s process from the mid-fifteenth century includes several cases in which an impaired child not definable as a pauper made a pilgrimage. While many of these beneficiaries lived near the shrine, as in the case of Iacobus de Venetiis, already discussed in this chapter, the journey could also be of significant length.331 While it does indeed seem that repeated clerical influence, the division of various ailments is closer to the medieval model where longterm impairments were equally common: Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy, pp. 194–95. Duffin, Medical Miracles, also shows the growing importance of cures of acute conditions. This was mostl likely related to the need of scientific proof. 329  Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, pp. 181–88; Goodich, ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis’, p. 142; Goodich, Violence and Miracle, pp. 2–4; Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, p. 25; Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle, pp. 190–92;. 330  Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, p. 52. 331  See Bernardino of Siena, pp. 56–59, 68–69, 71–73, 82–87, 94–95, 194. Troublesome journeys were also made by adults. For example, a woman called Angelella, the wife of Iohannes Robellie, was so badly disabled that she could not even sit on a horse or a donkey. Therefore she was taken to L’Aquila in a wooden box carried by a donkey: Bernardino of Siena, pp. 79–81.

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pilgrimages were a less commonly experienced aspect of children’s disabilities from the late fourteenth century onwards, impaired children nevertheless kept making long pilgrimages. Edward Wheatley has written that the miracles described in the Bible, as well as the omnipresent possibility of miraculous cures, were widely discussed and internalized aspects of chronic conditions, and hence religion had the position medicine now holds in the constructs of disability.332 However, Wheatley’s notion that the Church ‘diminishes the possibility of independent agency by requiring of them [the disabled] the obedience to Christian teaching and clerical instruction that would keep them in the institution’s good graces’333 appears a somewhat bold generalization. For one thing, religion was not a separate phenomenon in medieval society or something imposed from outside. It was an internalized, intrinsic part of laypeople’s lives, even though the possibility of saintly cure was a notion promoted and controlled by the Church.334 Secondly, despite the occasional references to futile pilgrimages, it seems implausible that all impaired children would constantly have been given various religious ‘treatments’ in the form of pilgrimage or spiritual instruction, or as inhabitants of charitable organizations. Obviously, the situation depended on the nature of the child’s impairment and family. Still, based on the canonization testimonies, bodily defects could also have been taken as a matter of fact, especially if the impairment’s effects on the child’s or the family’s life were not devastating. Thus, although religion can in some instances be compared to the medicalization of disability, when we think of the modern concept of ‘disability identity’ and how institutionalization, medicalization, and rehabilitation create an understanding of bodily difference,335 the situation in medieval society was very different.336 There is some historical evidence suggesting that at least 332 

Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, pp. 9–19. Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, p. 12. 334  Moreover, ‘elite /clerical’ and ‘mass /popular’ religion were in constant dialogue. One of the most obvious examples of this — and essential for the current topic — is the parish priest. He belongs to the clerical category, but was most often drawn from the peasant communities he served, and had only rudimentary education. He was, nevertheless, the representative of the Church, from whom the parishioners most commonly heard about the saints’ deeds. See Watkins, ‘“Folklore” and “Popular Religion”’, pp. 141–42. 335  On disabled people’s experiences of special education and other peer groups in forming their identity, see Priestley & Shah, Disability and Social Change, pp. 156–74. 336  The institutionalization and its ready-made, externally imposed conceptions only emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. See, for example, Irina Metzler’s 333 

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occasionally, the ‘disability label’ was externally given in more refined and profound ways than simply giving the person a nickname. Francesco Landini was a fourteenth-century Florentine composer and organist, who was blinded in childhood. Instead of being commonly identified by his patronymic, the writings of his contemporaries use his impairment (caecus) or his profession (organista) to identify him, sometimes both. Contemporary writings praise Landini, frequently highlighting the fact that he was blind, and his intellectual capacity as well as musical talent were connected with his blindness. One writer claimed that Landini had started to sing to alleviate the misery and horror of his blindness. The extent of his impairment is also marked in the two surviving portraits of him. Thus medieval society did not view Landini’s impairment as a disability, but rather as something that made his extraordinary talent possible.337 Nevertheless, he was first identified through his impairment and the alleged misery caused by it. Landini did not leave us any texts that might have referred to his blindness. The way his blindness was viewed has significant similarities with later retellings of another, albeit much later, famous person, the English MP and scientist Henry Fawcett (1833–84), who was blinded in his early twenties. Those writing biographies of him after his death praised his virtues in overcoming his blindness, and both admired and pitied him for his impairment. Yet, Fawcett himself is not known to have publicly referred to his blindness, nor seen it as a distinctive factor in his life. Moreover, in her biography of her late husband, Fawcett’s wife Millicent Garrett Fawcett never refers to his blindness.338 discussion on the interview with Snowy Harding in The Guardian in 1999. Harding related how he only realized he was ‘disabled’ when he was placed in an institution during the war: Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, p. 7 (Lennon, Peter, ‘100 Years of Solitude’. The Guardian, 26 May 1999 [accessed 5 June 2012]). This aspect has recently been highlighted in the works of Bill Shannon, a performance artist and choreographer who uses crutches while dancing and combines hip-hop aesthetics and skateboarding with disability performance. He has, for example, secretly recorded the reactions of passers-by to him, both when he was dancing and performing, but also when he failed to perform everyday tasks whilst on crutches. In his work Shannon has examined the readings and social embodiment of different bodies as well as the perplexity of the audience, who cannot categorize him either as ‘healthy’ or as ‘disabled’. See Küppers, Disability and Contemporary Performance, pp. 61–64. 337  Singer, ‘Playing by Ear’, pp. 41–47. Here the contemporary views make an interesting parallel with the descriptions of impairments that emphasized a holy person’s sanctity. See, for example, note 487 above on Bl. Margaret of Castello. 338  On Fawcett’s life and the later retellings of it, see Holmes, Fictions of Affliction, pp. 164–71.

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Francesco Landini and Henry Fawcett were born into societies separated by almost 600 years, and were both exceptional people in their own times. It is questionable whether they can be compared with each other, or with other blind or otherwise impaired children of their times, but both examples do show that in the past, a child or youth with severe physical impairment could be educated and climb the ladder to become a highly valued member of society. However, the ways Landini and Fawcett were portrayed as impaired persons by their contemporaries finely illustrate the still continuing ambivalence towards people with disabilities: on the one hand they are seen as heroic for overcoming their bodily difference, and on the other they are identified and defined by the very same characteristic, without taking into account whether that is their personal experience. In other words, in cases such as these the ‘disability identity’ is conferred from outside, and the person’s own experiences are subsumed by the common opinion that disability has to be important for one’s self-image and lived experience.339 One problem with analysing the development and change of the selfimage of an impaired person based on the canonization records is the scarcity of detailed testimonies in which a person disabled in childhood was cured as an adult. Most of our few examples are the above-discussed beggars, who were cured in their adolescence, as well as the deaf-mute Loÿs, but their cases cannot be regarded as typical for all social classes. Guillot dit le Potencier is another type of example, as the starting of his professional life happened before he acquired the condition. In the narrative of the events leading to his cure it is possible to see a twofold development of his identity. The futile pilgrimages, surgeons’ consultations, other people’s aversion to the smell, and even the negotiation with the carpenter appear, if we want to apply such terminology, as traces of a medieval medical, social, and religious approach to, or models of, disability. However, Guillot kept working for his master for a long time, even after acquiring the condition, and still lived in his household when he became unable to work, and returned there after the miracle while still mildly impaired. He appears to have been strongly connected or even identified with his working environment, the location where he lived, and had a status as a member of the said workshop. Thus, despite his nickname that remained to remind him of the condition he had suffered from, while living a life marked by a debilitating condition, he was still socialized into becoming a working craftsman. 340 339  See also Blackie, Disabled Revolutionary War Veterans, pp. 170–71; O’Tool, ‘The povres avugles of the Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts’, pp. 160–61. 340  This is in accordance with the findings of Daniel Lord Smail, whose studies on property

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Categorizing Guillot on the grounds of his impairment, therefore, did not surpass or exclude other identifying aspects of his life. Based on the testimonies we have of the later lives of those beneficiaries impaired in childhood, it seems that they often bore traces of the impairment and the miracle — which appear inseparable — for the rest of their lives. Quite a few of them carried physical reminders of the events, especially among those who had been cured of mobility impairments. Instances in which either a limp or cicatrices remained are quite common, and even for the rest of them the memory of the events was always there, being recalled and reminisced about among families and communities. Whether or not the long-term effects of an impairment — even cured or considerably alleviated — were positive, negative, or somewhere in between, they could appear in several sectors and walks of life, influencing the children’s awareness and conception of themselves.

records of late medieval Marseilles have shown that people were typically identified precisely by their occupation and living location: Lord Smail, Imaginary Cartographies, esp. pp. 24, 134–36, 166–68, 211–12.

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iracle testimonies are the most informative type of source we have for studying what medieval people thought about bodily ailments and the veneration of saints. The testimonies were part of a strict juridical procedure intended to reveal the ‘true’ course of events and because it was considered essential to cite the witnesses faithfully, it has been concluded that the messages recorded in them are essentially those of the witnesses themselves. However, the recorded depositions were heavily influenced by the practicalities of the canonization process: the formula interrogatorii determined what was asked of the witnesses, and their testimonies were also often rearranged, translated and/or summarized when written down. Moreover, contemporary ideas about the essential elements and structure of a miracle story had been internalized by the witnesses. Thus, we need to remember that the construction of childhood impairment is always made in relation to the rules and practicalities of the canonization hearing and people’s preconceptions about the miraculous. The vocabulary used in the testimonies reveals ambiguous conceptions of physical impairments. A person could be infirm, ill, or healthy, possibly more than one of these at the same time, and at the time there was no vocabulary to distinguish illness from impairment, let alone disability when understood as a sociocultural phenomenon. Although physical childhood impairments are, in most cases, distinguishable from other types of chronic conditions, the testimonies portray them quite fluidly, with varying and changing causes, physical and functional symptoms, and occasional social limitations. The same ambivalence

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occurs in the descriptions of miraculous cures. A miracle typically nullified previous effects of the medical condition and allowed the children to appear or act as other healthy children of their age. However, partial cures, which occurred quite frequently, were still regarded as miracles, especially by laypeople, and a partially cured child might be considered healthy. This illustrates the importance of the personal experience and how the conception of being healthy — or non-impaired — is, in the event, always culturally constructed. In miracle testimonies conditions were understood in terms of their individual characteristics rather than choice of vocabulary or medical diagnosis. Thus there are frequent, sometimes even meticulous descriptions of physically disabling consequences regularly repeated in the documents. Problems in walking, seeing, and finding one’s way, communicating or even getting out of bed, or eating without assistance, were highlighted, and often described in detail. It would be carefully specified whether the child was completely unable to walk or needed crutches or other forms of assistance. Similarly, in eye afflictions the word caecus, blind, was used to refer to conditions that caused very severe eyesight problems. The lack of one or more of the very basic abilities or functions was the principal determinant needed to prove the genuineness of a condition. Although this pattern derived from the requirements of precision in canonization inquiries, it is conceivable that these notions were also the communally accepted and internalized indicators and marks of physical impairment. Aside from the descriptions of problems in basic physical functions, other disabling consequences of a condition, such as the inability to work, appear of secondary importance in miracle testimonies. The scarcity of references to work is notable in all miracle testimonies, just as the inability to work and resulting poverty also are also rarely mentioned in earlier miracula. However, this also implies that long-term impairments did not necessarily prevent the child’s social integration by leading to physical or social inability to work or be educated. This was the case especially with mild impairments; a minor disability of the legs, for example, was not uncommon, nor did it necessarily result in socioeconomic problems for the affected child. The testimony of Alicia de Lonesdale, a young woman who had been begging during her severe mobility impairment, suggests that a regained ability to work did not always become a major feature of a beneficiary’s narration after the cure. Begging and impairments were not invariably linked in the mindsets of the time, which is only natural given that, although many beggars — including children — had physical impairments, the severity of the economic problems caused by disabling conditions depended on the beneficiary’s socioeconomic status, the type and severity of the impairment, and the existence or lack of a community safety net. A person’s status

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as a beggar was not something set in stone either — many who did not live in absolute poverty might also rely on alms-giving from time to time. Work and begging are among some aspects in the depositions that appear to be gendered. Most of the beneficiaries in whose cases work or begging featured prominently in later reconstructions were boys. Most likely this was a result of contemporary ideas and learned discourses regarding the differing responsibilities and physical capabilites of boys and girls — all of which would have made the commissioners more interested in the work situation of boys. Witnesses could also have suppressed or overlooked the consequences of girls’ inability to work. Miracle testimonies construct childhood impairment as a condition within the family, primarily a matter for parents to cope with, but occasionally also for siblings. There was a conception that parents’ sinful actions could result in their child’s impairment, but this link appears to have been made only occasionally and was rarely reported. The sins or bad deeds of parents that were reported in the testimonies were blasphemy or a failure to fulfil a vow. Other parental sins that occasionally appeared in other types of hagiographic texts, confessors’ manuals, exempla, or sermons — such as marital sex at a forbidden time, or a priest fathering a child — are absent from the depositions. Saints could thus manifest their powers to adults through their children, who in effect became an instrument for teaching them, but the significance of parental sins in constructing children’s disabilites must not be overemphasized. Rather, the sorrow that children’s ailments brought upon their parents became an indicator of the severity of the situation: these ailments were not only a misfortune for the children; they also brought suffering to their parents. Generally, parents or other witnesses did not appear to analyse the underlying causes for children’s sufferings. It seems such analysis was not of great interest to the commissioners either, as it had no clear relevance to proving a miracle true. It would seem that assigning spiritual and theological reasons for impairments was more a feature of elite discourse and was regarded as less relevant to the laity’s views of childhood impairments. Although the healing miracle primarily cured the child’s physical symptoms, there seems to have been an underlying idea that it also cured the parents’ sorrow, thus giving them a reward for the devotion they had shown. Parents reportedly shed tears — both ritualistic and out of simple distress — even over less severe impairments. The parents’ most extreme emotions — especially feelings of shame or disgust, or sorrow or despair so great that it resulted in them (at least rhetorically) wishing for the child’s death — were most often reported in cases of very serious mobility impairments, conditions affecting the child’s appearance, and sensory impairments. In addition to the occasional references

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to future social hindrances, such as problems in finding a marriage partner or receiving an inheritance, these types of conditions were portrayed as having severe effects on the wellbeing of the family. Although disfiguring conditions were, in the case of both sexes, often constructed through their social consequences, the few cases referring to marital problems all concern girls, whose primary social duty and future purpose it was to get married, hopefully to the profit of their family. For boys, lack of certain abilities could lead to legal restrictions, but these are not referred to in the depositions, and our knowledge about their possible consequences is still very limited. Although it was primarily the parents who delineated childhood illnesses and impairments in the canonization inquiries, as well as being those responsible for searching out a saintly cure for their children, as we have seen, community members had an important role in constructing children’s impairments and preserving and creating related attitudes and beliefs. To start with, when it occurred at a saint’s shrine, a miraculous cure was a public event which had many witnesses and which was later publicized to the whole community. When the child was cured after a vow in the domestic sphere, the publicity of the impairment and the details of the miracle were vital proofs of the miracle’s reality. However, the testimonies do not simply portray knowledge of the various aspects of childhood conditions in the social sphere as a technical aid in fulfilling the demands of the papal curia; they also served as an aspect of the lived realities of both the beneficiaries and their families. Although information about disability in noble families is sparse in the depositions, it appears that rather than being a taboo subject, children’s physical conditions were common knowledge in their social spheres and were discussed openly within households and publicly. For the poorest beggar children favourable community attitudes were crucial for their survival, because their potential benefactors had to believe that their conditions were genuine and that they (the children) were worthy of support. Sometimes the impairment would be tested to establish its authenticity, occasionally by methods that seem shocking to the modern reader. Especially in the case of speech and aural impediments, this appears to have been a widespread and established practice. Although beatings and similar tests were undoubtedly an unpleasant aspect of the children’s experiences, they should not be taken as evidence that children’s physical impairments in themselves inspired negative reactions. Rather, the harsh treatments meted out reflect general suspicion of beggars as well as class prejudices of the time; they also served as proofs of the genuineness of claimed impairments. Impaired beggar children were also recipients of the charity expected from every good Christian, and

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while living on the margins of society, they were nevertheless an integral and visible part of it. Although the testimonies of beggars’ cures follow the same miraculous patterns as all canonization depositions, the social aspects of their disabilities must be understood in the special context of ‘justified begging’ and the economic realities of the time. Although parents’ sorrow, grief, and on occasion even disgust towards their severely impaired children was recorded in their testimonies, the depositions of other community members are surprisingly silent about the emotions raised by children’s ailments or deformations. This kind of sorrow was not expressed communally, except in the case of fatal accidents. Nor, it seems, were astonishment or abhorrence, which are also largely absent from the depositions. Family members’ testimonies provide some evidence for this range of emotions but there are very few reports of astonished or negative reactions from others. Just as they caused the most extreme parental emotions, impairments or illnesses affecting children’s appearance, especially their faces, were most likely to cause public scorn; hearing or speech impediments could also provoke such reactions. Having said this, examples of outright derision or mockery are too rare to be a basis for wider conclusions. While this again highlights children’s impairments as a parental concern, the limited evidence can also be read as an indicator that for society as a whole, a child’s physical difference did not cause rejection by the community. The only two cases in which other people did not want to be in the company of impaired children concerned two boys in St Louis IX’s miracles who had oozing sores on their legs. In these cases this social rejection was used to construct the severity of their condition, although the specific cause of people’s revulsion was the foul smell, not the bodily difference as such. Moreover, references in the canonization documents to the need or wish to hide a child’s impairment reflect the reactions of few individuals — in fact, a child’s impairment was not constructed by any negative communal reactions to their disability. The opinions of community members are most noticeable when they testified about the incurability of children’s conditions. There are hints that these opinions affected the feelings of parents. Descriptions of incurably impaired children as being ‘almost dead’ or ‘almost lost’ may also have constructed chronic impairment as a state somewhere between being alive and dead. ‘Alive’, in this sense, implies being or becoming full members of society. These comparisons of state of being were also an effective way of highlighting the saint’s powers, constructing not only disability, but also sanctity. Medical professionals represented a group of community members whose words and deeds were of great importance for the canonization inquiries and also in the lives of impaired children. Their primary role in the inquisitiones in

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partibus, and consequently in the construction of incurable impairment in the depositions, was to offer a scientific rationale for the miracle in question; such evidence proved that the impairment could only have been cured by divine means. Boys were reportedly visited by medical professionals a little more often than girls, and children from families that were not poor were more likely to receive secular treatment by a trained practitioner. Children living in the southern parts of Europe reportedly received medical treatment or consultation more often than those living in northern or eastern Europe, but the differences between various canonization documents also stem from the practicalities of the hearing in question and the preferences of the commissioners. Even the parents of Italian or French children were not automatically reported as having consulted medical professionals. Although the variations in this seem to be somewhat random, conceptions of incurability could be one basis for whether medici or chirurgi were consulted, and congenital impairments were most likely considered more difficult to treat than those acquired as a result of illness or accident. The same goes for aural and speech impediments, although the testimonies regarding such cures are too few to base firm conclusions on. At the same time, it is possible that when cures of long-term conditions were investigated, the medical treatment given to the child a long time ago was classed of little importance for assessing the miracle as true or false. Aside from providing a specific medical opinion for the commissioners, the use of medical professionals’ evidence and references to medical treatments confirm the community’s role in the search for a cure. In medieval thinking, especially among those who had no medical education, there was no one correct, or specific medical treatment; various healing methods were often used simultaneously. Because the opinion of alternative medical practitioners was not thought to be as trustworthy as that of physicians, they are mentioned only rarely. But parents also treated their children themselves, and information about various curing methods was often transmitted orally within the community. The community’s role in canonization inquests is more prominent in the search for a saintly cure than in finding medical help. This may appear unsurprising, considering the purpose of the inquests, but the general pattern of information transmission was similar in both cases. In the former case, the role of community members — including both laypeople and clerics — was to suggest asking for help from the saint, while the parents’ anticipated role was to actively seek saintly intercession. The community’s role in the search for a cure was to refer to public knowledge of the saint’s miracles. On occasion it appears that the identity of a particular adviser was considered to be of great

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importance, sometimes even to the point that the witnesses would fall out as they sought to emphasize their own role above others. Quite probably, in everyday life the chance of receiving help from various saints was discussed frequently, but traces of these discussions, except for those resulting in the hopedfor results, are extremely rare in the depositions. In this interaction impaired children were also one of the tools clerics and religious orders used to promote someone’s sanctity, simultaneously emphasizing the connection between these two constructions. In addition to studying the conceptions and mentalities of family and community, I have attempted to uncover the lived experiences of those miraculously cured of childhood impairments and thus to explore the effects of chronic impairment on the formation of a young person’s self-image and identity. It is obvious that there was no single medieval experience of childhood impairment — each person experienced their condition in their own way, depending on its nature and their social status, living conditions, and personality traits. Similarly, the influence of impairment on self-image depended on a variety of factors. Yet some patterns emerge from the testimonies. Those with impairments acquired in childhood were well aware of their age when the condition started; this information would have been delivered within the family, most often by parents. The actual onset of the condition was also recorded and described when there was something striking about it. Affected children would have learnt this information at an early age by listening to the discussions of others. However, they also appear to have been actively informed, and thus familial conceptions about their impairments and disabilities would have been formed and passed on to them orally. Presumably this process also helped the children to cope with their limitations. Generally, the beneficiaries gave similar reports about the disabling effects of their conditions as did other witnesses. They mentioned the issues of communication, mobility, and vision. Aural and speech impediments were those that were more likely to result in incomplete socialization in what was a mainly oral society. On the other hand, even deaf-mute children could sometimes access work and education, thereby becoming independent actors, albeit with a limited understanding of the world around them. The few cases in which there are discrepancies between the descriptions given by the beneficiaries and those of other witnesses reflect a difference in emphasis rather than conflicting recollections: for instance, a beneficiary’s experience of their difficulty in walking might lead them to place more importance on that aspect and correspondingly less on other aspects of the case. The passage of time and later retellings of the story also influenced which aspects witnesses recalled.

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The physical pain that was symptomatic of various conditions of reduced mobility was emphasized more in those miracle cases where the beneficiary was a witness. Although pain was not necessarily a significant factor in the lived experiences of all impaired children, it seems that this aspect may have been more often glossed over in the depositions of non-beneficiaries. Presumably pain was considered too personal a sentiment to prove credibly, unlike the physical disablity itself. Cultural ideas of physical pain also came into play. Pain was considered a positive sentiment, even a divine gift, since it enabled one to get closer to Christ. Small children can only have been dimly aware of these ideas, but when they later reminisced about their life stories in canonization hearings they could have been influenced by such cultural norms. The expression of pain does not seem to have been influenced by gender in the testimonies: references to physical pain are equally numerous in the depositions of boys and girls, but the words used give an impression that female beneficiaries were more prone to emphasize this aspect. This view is supported by perceptions of pain as expressed in other areas; upper-class boys were certainly socialized into regarding the experience of pain as an aspect of heroic male activities in which succumbing to pain was not permissible. One can also see that the imitation of Christ’s pain receives special emphasis in female mystics’ texts. An important aspect of the lived experience of physical impairment is its influence on interaction within the social sphere, including both (verbal) communication and accessibility in a given environment. In this respect the child’s socioeconomic situation and type of impairment appear to be very influential factors. There are occasional remarks about the usage of signs in the case of (deaf-)mutes, which shows that those lacking speech were not entirely without a way to communicate, and for those who had strong family or community ties this communication method was more sophisticated than for, say, the wandering beggars. However, this ‘language’ is unlikely to have been complex enough to discuss abstract matters, such as religion. Accessibility to a given environment for the mobility and visually impaired obviously depended largely on the severity of their condition, but also on their families’ wealth and whether, for example, there were servants available to help, whether their siblings could assist them, or even whether they could ride a horse. The effect of inaccessibility, especially when considered in a broad sense of the word, on the child’s social integration also varied based on expectations related to family status and whether he or she was expected to migrate for work. One aspect of interaction, which shows mostly in the testimonies about beggar children, is the performance of impairment according to one’s social sphere. Because the impaired were among those entitled to rely on alms-giving, beggar

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children and youths had to be able to convince their potential benefactors that their physical defects were real, and so for them emphasizing their disability could be a useful strategy. The testimonies suggest that there was indeed a way that a mute or blind beggar was expected to act when asking for alms. Although these ways primarily derived from the disability, it is likely that impaired beggar children were socialized into this behaviour. Proving their impairments was also important for the formation of a social network and in their search for support. Miracle depositions portray beggar children and youths as active in this process, turning to the better-off in order to find nourishment and also for help in their search for a saintly cure. Although descriptions of physical pain seem to have been stressed more in the cases where the miraculé is included as a witness, when it comes to the bene­ ficiaries’ expressions of emotion about their own impairment, their personal testimonies are relatively brief. There are some depositions suggesting that some children, especially those in their teens, felt some responsibility towards their parents in the sense that they wished for the cure for their sakes. Whether such emotions were only attached to the search for the saintly cure and the expression of parental devotion, or were also part of their experience at other times, is not revealed by the depositions. Except for the one man miraculously cured of disfiguring warts, none of the beneficiaries in the sources of this study are reported to have been ashamed or embarrassed because of their conditions. Among adult beneficiaries such emotions were only occasionally reported, and this seems to have usually occurred in connection with facial disfigurements, deafness, and the inability to earn one’s living. With regard to the last problem, such emotions were less apparent among young children, who were not primarily responsible for earning their own bread, although they presumably became aware of the problem once they were expected to contribute to the family’s income by their own work. Again it is worth repeating here that not all impairments led to an inability to work. The effects that long-term physical impairment had on the development of a child’s self-image were caused by both the impairment and its physically dis­ abling consequences, but could also be imposed by others. The once deaf-mute Loÿs seemingly had problems in adjusting to his new life as a non-impaired person, as he had to learn a new way of communication after living for more than twenty years without being able to speak or hear. The known custom of giving people nicknames based on their physical characteristics shows how impaired people could be identified by their bodily differences. This was not considered ‘impolite’ or rude in the sense that it would be nowadays, but it does show that bodily appearance helped to form a person’s identity. That such names were not

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a stigma is further shown by the transformation of some of them into hereditary surnames, as well as by the case of Guillaume dit le Potencier, who was named after his walking aids even when he no longer needed them. At the same time, as Loÿs’s decision to take the name of the saint who cured him demonstrates, a miraculously cured impairment undoubtedly had a special influence on the beneficiary’s self-image. This is especially important in the case of partially cured impairments: in such a case a young person grew up both as someone with some kind of physical difference and as someone who had received the special grace of a saint. Although not clearly visible in canonization documents, it appears that there was also a habit of explaining a person’s activities and achievements through their impairments, and that overcoming one’s physical problems was seen as heroic and admirable. This pertains particularly to those of a higher social standing. Such an approach can be seen as disabling, because it overlooks a per­ son’s lived experience and identity and suppresses their other characteristics while emphasizing their impairment. It is possible that some children, especially from families with a higher social status, were socialized into this kind of thinking. However, there was another side to these conceptions: even a king or a distinguished artist or scholar could be severely impaired, hence there was also a model of success and fame despite — or even because of — impairment. The traditional pattern of a miracle story was clearly internalized by the witnesses of canonization inquiries, which may have strongly affected their (re) construction of childhood impairments. However, because saints and their miracles were not separable from mentalities but were rather an integral aspect of the contemporary way of living and worldview, ideas about impairment and the miraculous influenced each other. In the miracle narratives of the cures of childhood impairments, the idea of sainthood was also constructed by conceptions of bodily deficiencies, while the motifs of saintly cures heavily influenced contemporary ideas, memories, and discourses of impairment. Thus, although the aspects of childhood impairments as reported and recorded in the witness depositions were primarily those expected from a miracle narrative, the continuous retellings of these events, filtered through the patterns of the genre, strongly influenced everyday conceptions of physical impairments. Although it can be a useful tool for the study of the (negative) social consequences of physical and mental impairments, the ‘social model of disability’ has problems that have rightly been pointed out by several medievalists. In the canonization documents it is clearly shown that the corporeal and social aspects of physical impairments are interconnected. Childhood impairments were labelled as physical conditions that resulted in differing levels of functional

Conclusions: Impairment and Social Inclusion

335

disability but only occasionally in social disablement. At the same time, the medieval worldview was highly corporeal. As formulated by Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘[b]ecause preachers, confessors and spiritual directors assumed the person to be a psychosomatic unity, they not only read unusual bodily events as expressions of the soul but also expected the body itself to offer a means of access to the divine’.1 In all likelihood the same concept held true for laypeople. The interconnection of various human conditions with the deeds of saints is a clear example of the corporality of medieval religious thinking. An ailing human body was a surface on which the powers of saints could be, quite literally, manifested. Saints, however, also cured the potentially socially disabling consequences of bodily ailments, so that the power they worked on the human body extended beyond it to the other aspects of human life. Body and social spheres are thus inseparably intertwined in the narratives — as B. Hughes and K. Paterson put it in their discussion of the phenomenological theory of disability, ‘[t]he body — be it impaired or not — is an experiencing agent, itself a subject and therefore a site of meaning and source of knowledge about the world’.2 Although patterns in the construction of childhood impairments are traceable in the canonization testimonies, and although they both colour and reveal people’s ideas about them, the eclectic lived experiences of impairment must not be condensed into a simple miracle story of desperation and relief. Because miracle narratives always construct impairment as an unwanted state, there is a danger that a modern reader places too much weight on the negative consequences of chronic, physical conditions, and interprets the lives of the beneficiaries and their families only through their bodily afflictions, thus pathologizing disabled people of the past and interpreting their everyday life through the lens of our medicalized worldview. In the later Middle Ages a vast number of children grew up with various types of chronic infirmities, and most of them presumably lived their whole lives without a saintly cure or other significant alleviation offered by a range of medical interventions. Despite their infirmities these children were socialized as well as possible into their family and community environments. In a society with views of the human body and the place of mankind in the cosmos that differed markedly from ours, the child’s experience of impairment and its consequences was quite different from that of modern children; nevertheless, then as now, the effects of impairment on the forming of a child’s self-image and on their successful socialization depended on the unique economic and social circumstances of each child. 1  2 

Walker Bynum, ‘The Female Body and Religious Practice’, p. 235. Hughes and Paterson, ‘The Social Model of Disability and the Disappearing Body’, p. 334.

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Index

accidents: 17 n. 64, 19 n. 71, 42, 48 n. 98, 58, 62 n. 169, 76 n. 231, 82, 102–05, 142, 192, 230, 245–46, 252 n. 35, 314, 317, 329, 330; see also disability, reasons for Adam de Kylpeke: 55 n. 137, 259–60, 266 n. 99, 273 n. 132 Adam Vicart: 181 n. 138, 238, 282–84 Adelheidis de Alesvelt, mother of Cünradus: 76 Adelheidi, daughter of Helwicus de Vrideberch: 138 Adelicia Alani Thome: 35 n. 23, 248, 267–68 Adete, daughter of Aelis de Bovieres: 247 n. 12, 265–66, 282 aetiology: 47–48; see also disability, reasons for Agnese, daughter of Guilia, wife of Ugolitetus: 44, 60, 75, 124–25, 175, 194, 239 Agnesia Lageria, wet nurse: 103 Alanus de Kaerritraes, miles: 165 Alaracia Amigua de Campis: 239 Alberta, wife of Bonacursus, mother of Octobellus: 61, 231 Alexander Berardi de Sulmona, canon: 197 n. 212, 285 n. 179 Alexander of Hales: 134 n. 485 Alicia de Lonesdale: 34–35 n. 22, 62 n. 165, 65 n. 183, 66, 68, 71, 142–43, 145, 152–54, 156, 158,

160–62, 188, 210, 211, 222–23, 246, 267, 269–70, 285–86, 290, 293–94, 300–01, 312, 326 Alix, Countess of Burgundy-Auxerre: 166, 255 n. 46, 256–57, 275 n. 143, 278, 293, 313 n. 307 Amadorinus, son of Joannes: 49–50, 263–64 Amelota de Chambli: 23 n. 96, 80–81, 177, 186, 234–35 n. 382, 272–73 n. 131, 291 n. 210 Amicia la Rysslwyk: 66, 143, 153–54, 285, 293 Ancelmus Andree, miles: 135, 170 Andirolus Benvengnatis: 67 n. 190, 131 n. 467, 163, 264–65 Angelischa, widow of magister Accaptus: 84–85 Angelus Iohannis: 102 Anthonius Bollegoni: 193, 203 Antonius de Galiofis, miles: 276 Baldo Ubaldi, jurist: 79 baptism: 74, 89 n. 279, 313 n. 306 of children born monstrous: 79–80, 127–28 n. 456 Bartholomea, daughter of Riccardus Berardi: 128–29 Bartholomaeus Alberti, father of Vigilius: 75, 124, 146 bathing as medicine: 138, 163, 216, 224, 224–25 n. 334

374

Beatrix Bruna: 241 n. 416 Beatrix de Bütingen: 61, 301 Beatrix de Sancta Cruce: 52 n. 119, 66–67, 132, 135, 162–63, 174, 221 n. 318, 244–45 n. 6, 272, 290, 294, 317, 319 Beatrix Ottonelli: 213 n. 281, 228–29 n. 354, 249, 250, 258–59, 261–62, 264 beggars bodily tests of: 153–61 and disability in art: 180 as miracle beneficiaries: 21 n. 77, 23–24, 152–67, 183–84, 234, 264 n. 84, number of: 282 n. 165 receiving support: 184, 187–88, 238, 282–83, 285–86, 292–94 status as a result of disability: 64, 66–71 Bellaflora, daughter of Iacobucia, wife of Angelucius Angeli Benentesi: 212–13 Benasciuta, daughter of Joanninus: 54 n. 135, 108 n. 365, 133, 139, 203 n. 242, Benedictus Thomasii de Sulmona, father of Nicolaus: 124 Bengeven, daughter of dominus Barbazanus: 51, 223, 244–45 n. 6, 269, 298 Bernard de Gordon, physician: 81 Bertrandeta, daughter of Petrus de Alamanono: 168, 273 n. 132, 286 Blacacius de Fayensa, brother of Rixenda de Fayensa: 112, 114–15, 175, 193, 254, 295–96 Black Death: 22, 152 n. 12, 158 n. 34, 173 blindness allegories of: 55–56, 180 definitions and levels of: 37–38, 261–62 origins of: 38–39, 249, 258–60 proofs of: 55–57, 132–33, 164, 290–91 Bonacursus, son of Mantuana, wife of Petrus del Cosa: 85 Boswell, John: 87 n. 271, 94, 99 n. 327, 111 n. 376 Bragg, Lois: 277, 308 n. 286 Buda: 172 n. 101, 221 Burgandus de Belay, miles: 174 n. 108, 196 Bäärnhielm, Göran: 94

INDEX Caciola, Nancy: 98 n. 323, 101 Camille, Michael: 174 canonization processes children as witnesses: 20, 244–45 development of: 15, 24 juridical requirements: 20, 23–27, 244–45, 260–61; see also Pietro Colonna, cardinal parents as witnesses: 29–31 Cathalina, daughter of Caradompna, wife of Mathiolis Boniscambii: 42 n. 68, 61 n. 163 Cecilia de Sancta Cruce, mother of Beatrix: 66, 132, 162–63, 231, 290, 294 Cecilia Helziarsse: 52 n. 119, 135, 317 Ceptus Sperançe de Montefalco: 49, 62, 67, n. 190, 131–34, 136, 163, 166 n. 75, 216, 224, 249, 263–65, 272 n. 128, 300, 306 changelings: 94–95, 99–101 Cola, son of Alifanda: 103 Crafto, sacerdos hospitalis: 176 crutches. See mobility aids Cünradus, son of Adelheidis de Alesvelt: 76, 176 n.117 Cünradus, son of Sophia de Veltbach: 286 Davies, Lennart J.: 136–37 d’Avray, David: 93 n. 296 deafness and communication: 274–79; see also sign language definitions of: 57–58 experience of: 253–58 and legal restrictions: 119–21 medical treatment for: 218–19 and muteness: 40 prevalence of: 18–19 proofs of: 161 n. 48, 278; see also beggars, bodily tests of see also speech disorders death: 88, 123, 193, 196, 198 resurrections from: 20, 102–03, 272 n. 130 of saints: 24 n. 97, 113 n. 387, 132 n. 269, 240 n. 408, wishing for: 17 n. 62, 124–41, 146, 327–28

INDEX Demaitre, Luke: 37 n. 34, 261 n. 71 demons: causing illnesses: 82, 94–102, 135 n. 490, invocation of: 24–25 n. 99, 77 n. 235, 227 possession: 90 n. 283 stealing children. See changelings Denisete, daughter of Richart le Selier: 138–39, 216 n. 296 Denisete, sister of Michelet le Sauvage: 128 derision. See mockery devotion: 93, 106–08, 112, 138, 146–48, 192, 230, 237, 284, 296–300, 307, 327, 333 lack of: 233, 255–56 towards springs: 222–23 see also miracles, punishing Ditricus de Werbin, miles: 229–30 disfigurement: 116–17, 122–23, 178–80, 291, 303–05, 312, 328, 333; see also disability, and deformity; disability, and marriage; disability, emotions towards disability definitions of: 6–7, 17, 32–69, 79, 105–06, 136–47, 191–95, 215–16, 228, 261–63, 272–74 and deformity: 2, 61, 71–81, 87–88 n. 273, 94–95, 115, 117 n. 407, 130, 174–80, 329 emotions towards: 74, 106–30, 146–48, 175–92, 194, 295–96, 301–08 and future: 7, 110, 114–22, 193–94, 262, 301, 307, 327–28 incurability of: 48 n. 98, 114–15, 168, 191, 192–200, 202–05, 213–15, 218–20, 232–33, 329 and law: 3 n. 7, 79–80, 118–23, 261 n. 69, 278 n. 152, 291, 294 and liminality: 194–98 and marriage: 116–18, 327–28 and performance: 273–91 reasons for: 47–48, 82–105, 151–56, 245–52 and resurrection: 137 and self-image: 308–23 and shame: 95, 104, 106, 112–17, 122–24, 175, 180–82, 291, 295–96, 301–07, 327

375

and space: 285–90 see also health, definitions of; miracles; mockery; pain, physical; sin; work doctors. See medical professionals Duffin, Jacalyn: 137 Eidelot, daughter of Raou de Canelli: 49, 140, 317 n. 323 Elisabeth, wife of Everardus, mother of Elisabeth: 55–56, 205 n. 249, 221 Elizabeth of Hungary, St: 22 Elzéar of Sabran, St: 14 n. 48, 59 n. 154 Elzearius de Sabrano, lord of Tour d’Aigues: 59 n. 154 emotions. See disability, emotions towards Engelbert Pretsch, abbot of Admont: 55 n. 135 ergotism. See St Anthony’s fire Étienne de Bourbon: 73 n. 212, 96 n. 311, 100–01, 225–26 Eyler, Joshua: 8 fama: 25, 149–50, 151, 172 n. 101, 174, 234–35, 240, 312 Finucane, Ronald C.: 9 n. 28, 53 n. 237, 83–84 n. 257, 113, 123, 141, 155 n. 21, 156 n. 22, 158, 163, 200, 204, 225 n. 336 fistulas: 34–35, 49–51, 59–61, 102, 182, 216–17, 223, 269, folk beliefs: 220–28 Francesse, niece of canon Alexander Berardi de Sulmona: 102, 145, 184, 202, 204, 216–17, 285 n. 179 Franciscus Adinolfi, father of Zuccius: 83, 108 Francesco Landini: 321–22 Frederico Francisci: 39, 59 Fridericus de Geilenhusen: 71–72, 139–40 n. 511 Frohne, Bianca: 8 Ganthelma, daughter of Petrus Laguarda: 44 n. 81, 247, 267, 298–99 Gaposchkin, Cecilia: 235 Gauchier, smith of Orgelet: 70, 190, 249–50, 255–57, 275–76, 278–79, 309, 312–13

376

Gaufridus Bartholomey de Coreis: 50–51 n. 111, 251 n. 31 Gaufridus Rannou: 314–15 Gentilcore, David: 141, 146, 200 n. 223, 318–19 n. 328 Gerdurdis de Bleichenbach: 265, 269 Ghisla, wet nurse: 103–04 Gilbertus, surgeon in London: 188, 210 Gilbertus Anglicus: 35–36 n. 27 Gilbertus de Cheueninge, protor of the Cantilupe hearing: 155 n. 21, 157, 161 Goodey, C. F.: 6 n. 19, 100–01, n. 334 Goodich, Michael: 4 n. 11, 53 n. 126, 54, 155 n. 21, 211 n. 272 gout. See gutta Gregory of Tours, St: 85–86 Green, Monica H.: 227–28 Guarssias, wife of Guillelmus Lombardi, wet nurse of Iacobus Deodatus: 1, 54 n. 130, 109–10, 197–98 Guglielmo, Nilda: 87 n. 273 guide dogs: 164 n. 69 Guido, son of Hamon de Langoet: 132, 164–65, 290 guilds: 2–3, 65–66 n. 185, 236–37 Guilia, wife of Ugolitetus, mother of Agnese: 124–25, 194, 239 Guillaume de Chartres: 47, 255, 257 n. 51, 275 Guillaume de Saint-Pathus: 12 n. 40, 46–47, 54, 62 n. 166, 64 n. 180, 136, 143–44, 161, 181, 183 n. 146, 234, 254 n. 42, 307 Guillelma, wife of Ferrarius de Balnia: 85, 174, 214 n. 284 Guillelmus de Chanteler, armiger, father of Ysabellis: 230 Guillelmus de Fayensa, miles: 112 Guillelmus de Fayensa, son: 112, 254 Guillelmus de Sellone, father of Katharineta: 117 n. 406 Guillot dit le Potencier: 64–66, 70–71, 140, 165 n. 72, 182–83, 199 n. 218, 234, 237–38, 250, 266, 268–69, 271, 284, 310–14, 322–23 Guinefort the greyhound: 94, 100–01, 225–26 gutta: 5 n. 15, 34–37, 42–43, 248, 270

INDEX Haas, Louis: 52 n. 127, 104, 129 n. 462 Haffter, Carl: 94–95 health, definitions of: 9, 46–47, 63, 131–34; see also miracles, partial; natural, concepts of; normality Henri de Mondeville: 65 n. 183, 198 n. 217 Henricus de Furtone, guardian of the London Franciscans: 155, 159 Henricus de Schorne, procurator: 303, 305 Henry Fawcett, MP: 321–22 Herbertus de Fontaneto, father of Mabileta: 97, 138, 171–72, 228–29 Hereford: 13, 66, 142, 154, 156–57, 159, 161, 239–40, 289–92 Herlihy, David: 258 n. 57 Hildegundis de Wigandeshusen: 212 Hodierne: 45–47, 134, 140 Honesta, wife of Bartholomaeus Alberti, mother of Vigilius: 75, 124, 146 Honorata, wife of Oprandus, sister of Beatrix Ottonelli: 258–59, 261–62 hospitals: 8, 36 n. 31, 152 n. 10, 159 n. 41, 181, 182, 210 n. 268, 222, 233–34, 235 n. 384, 246, 262 n. 76, 293 n. 223, 310, Hugo de Bromptonis: 155–56, 238–39 Hugo de Stocklone: 154–55 Iacobus Deodatus: 1–2, 31 n. 10, 38 n. 41, 49 n. 101, 54 n. 130, 73–74, 107–09, 130, 135, 169–71, 185, 197, 214, 216, 227 n. 349, Innocent III, Pope: 89 n. 278, 133 n. 477 Iohanna Deodata, mother of Iacobus: 1, 107–09, 130, 169–70, 241, 287 n. 187 Iohannes le Maignen: 67 n. 190, 118 n. 411, 261, 290–91, 306 Jean I, Count of Chalon-Auxerre: 166, 255 n. 46, 257, 275 n. 143, 278, 293 Jean of Bohemia, Count of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia: 294 n. 226 Jehan de la Haie: 188–89 Jehan le Chandelier: 181, 190 Jehennet, son of Marie de Fresnai: 112, 175 Jews: 55, 100–01 n. 334, 179–81 Johanna la Schirreue: 311–12 Johannes Alani: 125, 128 n. 460, 247–48, 267

INDEX Johannes Alkyn: 156, 184, Johannes de Bromptonis: 238 Johannes de Burtone: 57 n. 147, 59, 133 n. 476, 154–65, 166 n. 75, 238–39, 274 n. 136, 278, 289–90, 292–94, 300 Johannes de Insula, professor of law: 304 Johannes Nani: 145, 235–38, 248–49, 284 n. 176, 293, 300 Katajala-Peltomaa, Sari: 83 n. 257, 98 n. 323, 114 n. 395, 300 Katherina Colina, wife of Elzearius de Sabrano, mother of Ludovicus: 121, 146 Katherina, wife of Johannes Le Gaven: 16 n. 60, 74 n. 219, 148, 169 n. 89, 248, 296–97, 319 Katherineta, daughter of Guillelmus de Sellone: 76, 81, 175, 178–80 Kessler, Howard: 95 Klaniczay, Gábor: 4 n. 11, 26 n. 106, 91 n. 289 Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane: 179 n. 87, 258 n. 57 Krötzl, Christian: 4 n. 11, 19 n. 72 Laes, Christian: 6 n. 19, 18–19 n. 68, 121 n. 423, 278 n. 152 Leo, son of Leopardus de Fais: 49, 167 n. 78, 299 leprosy: 33 n. 18, 36 n. 29, 306 n. 279 miracles curing: 5 n. 15, 113 n. 389, 117 n. 407 as a result of sin: 86, 89 saints visiting lepers: 188 Lett, Didier: 9 n. 28, 30–31 n. 8, 96, 250, 283, 298 London: 13, 66 n. 187, 153, 211, 285–86 Louis IX of France, St: 188 n. 169, 255 Loÿs: 39–40, 57, 70, 138–39, 160, 166, 190, 249–50, 254–58, 275–80, 287–88, 289, 309–10, 312–13, 322 Ludovicus de Sabrano: 40–41 n. 61, 59, 121, 146, 168, 218 Mabileta, daughter of Herbertus de Fontaneto: 49, 53–54, 95–98, 101, 105, 136, 138, 171,

377

196–97, 215–16 n. 296, 228–29, 234–35 n. 382, 317 n. 324 madness. See mental illness Mahauta, wife of Rivalloni Leyzour, wetnurse: 125 n. 445 Mantuana, wife of Petrus del Cosa: 85 Margaret of Castello, St: 110 n. 375 Margaret of Provence, Queen of France: 12 n. 40, 166 Margareta de Piperno: 116 Margarita, wife of Augustinus: 176, 191 Margarita, wife of Anthonius Sicardi de Apta: 144 Margeria de Aylinche: 156, 238 Margeria de Kylpek: 56 n. 137, 260 Margeria Thurgryn: 184, 292, 292–93 n. 220 Margilia, daughter of Petrus de Lamur: 39 n. 45, 125 n. 445, 236 Marguerite de la Magdaleine de Paris: 46–47, 134, 140 marriage. See disability, and marriage Marseille: 1, 13, 36 n. 31, 109 n. 372, 171, 246, 294, 322–23 n. 340 Mathiolis Angeli: 141–42 Matthew Paris: 177 medical professionals: 41–43, 47, 85, 108, 188, 193, 198–220, 221–22, 224, 228, 259, 268, 317, 318, 330 menstruation: 88–89; see also sins mental illness: 3 n.7, 5 n. 15, 8, 32, 33, 76, 46, 94 n. 303, 98 n. 323, 115 n. 401, 118 n. 412, 126 n. 449, 157, 258 n. 54, 261 n. 69, 278 n. 152 Metzler, Irina: 3 n. 9, 5 n. 15, 7–8, 18–19 n. 68, 40 n. 59, 44 n. 81, 52 n. 121, 58, 70 n. 204, 87, 93 n. 296, 127, 180, 193, 194, 198, 244 n. 3, 254 n. 42, 276, 227, 291, 308–09, 310, 317–18 Michael Engelberti de Podio Pino, notary: 41 n. 61, 168, 218 Michelet le Sauvage: 49 n. 101, 128, 134, 266, 282, 298 miracles gradual: 137–40 partial cures: 137, 140–45, 286, 312, 326 punishing: 82–86, 90–92

378

search for: 128, 173–74, 192, 228–42; see also pilgrimages and community see also health, descriptions of mobility aids: 48–50, 52 n. 121, 64–65 n. 181, 138, 141, 182, 264, 280, 281–82, 307 mobility impairments and bodily appearance: 71–74, 110–11; see also monsters, children compared with definitions of: 32–33 diagnosis and onset of: 34–37, 246–49 experience of: 262–73 proofs for: 48–54 see also health, definitions of mockery: 76 n. 230, 116, 178–84, 186 n. 159, 305–06 n. 276, 329 see also disability, emotions towards monastic orders Dominicans: 240 Franciscans: 107, 155, 157, 161, 238–40, 304 Giambonites: 239 Order of St Anthony: 239 promoting cults: 238–41, 107 monsters children compared with: 72, 75–77, 78–81, 191 as divine creations: 77, 134 n. 485 and foreign races: 77–78 and law: 79–80, 120 Moriset de Ranton: 65 n. 183, 182–83, 222, 233–35, 242, 266, 268, 271–72, 281–82, 284, 307 Murphy, Robert: 308 Murray, Alexander: 126 n. 449 muteness. See speech disorders Myrdal, Janken: 94 natural, concepts of: 134–36 Newman-Stille, Derek: 134–35 n. 486, 180 Nicholaus, magister, physician of vaita Pretinga: 202 Nicholas Chiket: 143, 153 n. 13, 285 Nicholas of Tolentino, St: 84 Nicolaus Benedicti Thomasii: 124, 270, 295 Nicolaus Iohannis Pilosi: 109, 193 Nina, wife of Ionctarellus: 52 n. 132, 83, 219 n. 314

INDEX nobility as benefactors: 293 categories of: 59 n. 154, 152 n. 9, 167–69 as miracle beneficiaries: 113–17, 122, 123–24, 301 Nolte, Cordula: 8 normality: 9, 74, 92 n. 295, 134–35 n. 486, 136–37, 315 n. 317 Noyon: 268 oblation of children: 110 n. 374, 110 n. 375, 111 n. 376 Octobellus, son of Alberta: 53 n. 133, 55 n. 137, 61, 109, 231, 232 orphans: 9, 64, 65 n. 182, 66, 163, 235, 242, 297; see also Johannes de Burtone; Thomas de Voudai Oprandus, husband of Honorata, sister of Beatrix Ottonelli: 258–59, 262 O’Tool, Mark: 310 pain, physical: 59–63, 65, 109, 124, 130, 146 n. 542, 243, 264–73, 282, 285, 301, 307, 315, 332 Paris: 45–46, 158 n. 34, 171–72, 181, 208 n. 254, 237–38, 268, 282, 285–86 n. 182, 310 peer culture of children: 16, 183–86, 289–90 Petronilla Alani Fabri: 67 n. 190, 164–65 Petronilla Albanella: 44 n. 80, 63, 69 n. 201 Petrus Andree: 131, 264 Petrus Bollegoni: 203 Petrus Noueillons: 247 n. 12, 299–300 Petrus Sulpicii: 51, 269, 317 Petrus de Alamanono, miles, father of Bertrandeta: 168, 286 Petrus de Lamur (Pierre de Lanmeur), professor of law, father of Margilia: 39 n. 45, 125 n. 445, 235–37, 293 Petrus de Piperno: 116 Petrus Siri Iohannis: 299 Petrus, son of presbyter Joannes de Cammorata: 224 Petrus Vitalis de Massilia: 214 Peyretus Anthonii Sicardi: 144–45 Philip III the Bold, King of France: 24 n. 97, 255 Philippa, wife of Frantis: 115–16

INDEX Philippus: 59, 133, 154–55, 159, 166 n. 75, 274, 278, 289 physicians. See medical professionals Pierre de Pelleperche (Pierre de Breschard de Villars), jurist: 302–03 Pietro Colonna, cardinal: 23 n. 96, 170 n. 91, 272 n. 131 pilgrimages and community: 281–85; see also miracles, punishment; miracles, search for plague. See Black Death play of children: 57, 184–85; see also peer culture of children Priestley, Mark: 95 n. 305 Prudlo, Donald: 91 Quinze-Vingts, hospital: 8, 181, 262 n. 76, 310 Raynerius, son of Guilia, brother of Agnese: 124–25, 175 relics closeness to: 131, 223, 265 portable: 317 translation of: 240 Rendtel, Constanze: 58 n. 151, 64 n. 179, 87 n. 273, 143, 243 n. 2 Reymunda Clemensana: 54 n. 130, 147 Ricardeta Bruna: 44 n. 81, 174, 249, 266–67, 272 Ricardus de Insula, professor of law: 117 n. 407, 176, 302–05, 312, 315 Riccardus de Sulmona, surgeon: 202–03, 216–17 Riccardus Berardi: 128–29, 146 Richart de Briqueville: 69 n. 200, 70 n. 204 Richter, Michael: 156 n. 22 Rixenda de Fayensa: 39–40, 57–58, 104, 109 n. 369, 112, 114–15, 123–24, 174, 175, 193, 211–12 n. 272, 218–19, 245–46, 251, 253–54, 295–96, 301 Robert Reboule: 65–66, 70, 234, 237–38, 314 Rogerus de Hamptonis: 157, 159 n. 38, 161, 292 Rogerus de Kylpek: 259, 260–61 Rosalitus Sassolini, uncle of Amadorinus: 263 Rose, Avi: 186–87

379

Rose, Martha Lynn: 6 n. 19 Rubin, Miri: 46, 87 n. 273, 157 Saumur: 182, 233–34, 268, 307 Schmitt, Jean-Claude: 100–01 Schoon Eberly, Susan: 176 n. 116 Scott, Robert A.: 87 n. 271, 87–88 n. 273, 141, 284 scrofula. See disfigurement servants: 84, 129 n. 462, 167 n. 78, 168, 236, 237, 268–69, 284, 286, 296, 332 Shahar, Shulamith: 109 n. 372 Shakespeare, Tom: 6–7 n. 19, 308 n. 285 Shannon, Bill: 320–21 n. 336 Sigal, Pierre-André: 45 n. 85, 99 n. 325, 131–32, 137 n. 501 sign language: 277, 280; see also deafness, and communication problems Singer, Julie: 203 n. 239, 274 sin: 2 n. 4, 82–94, 95 n. 305, 103–04 n. 349, 180–81, 183, 186–87, 243 n. 2, 270; see also miracles, punishment Siraisi, Nancy: 203 n. 239 Skoda, Hannah: 9 n. 28, 144 n. 531, 182, 293 n. 223, 307 smallpox. See variola Smoller, Laura A.: 4 n. 11, 27 n. 108, 53 n. 126, 208 n. 254, 232 socialization of children: 10, 15–16, 122, 186, 257–58, 272, 280, 289–90, 300–01, 315, 322, 331–35 Sophia de Bütingen: 67, 162 n. 55, Sophia, daughter of Bartolectus de Spoleto: 42 n. 68, 195, 202 Sophia, grandmother of Zuccius: 83 speech disorders definitions of: 40–41, 59 and legal restrictions: 119–21 see also beggars and begging, bodily tests of; deafness St Anthony’s fire: 36, 144–45, 214, 246–47, 254 n. 39, 300 Saint-Denis: 12, 46, 97, 183 n. 146, 189 n. 173, 192, 234, 238, 255–57, 268, 282, 283 n. 170, 298 Stainton, Tim: 100–01, n. 334 Sulmontina, wife of Berardius Thodini: 98 surgeons. See medical professionals Swanson, Robert Norman: 226

380

Thomas Sandi: 156–59 Thomasina, daughter of Michaëlis Ugonis de Mosso: 44, 75, 79, 80–81, 176, 191, 195 Thomasius Berardi Thodini: 98–99 Thomasius, son of Iacobus Thomasii Luce de Caramanico: 196, 204, 301 Thomasius Iohannis Galterii de Rocca Morici: 263, 267, 284–85, 301 Thomassa, wife of Franciscus Adinolfi, mother of Zuccius: 82–83 Thomaxius Bartholonis: 264–65 Thoumas de Voudai: 64–65, 66, 68, 71, 133 n. 475, 152 n. 10, 161–62, 166 n. 75, 181–82, 183–84, 190, 234, 238, 282–84, 292, 300, 314 n. 311 Tréguier: 14, 128 n. 460, 164–65, 237, 296–97 Turner, Wendy: 6–7 n. 19, 8 Tyfania, wife of Adam Rance de Chastelet: 15 n. 55, 118 n. 410 Valdegrana, daughter of magister Faccinus: 267 Vannes Lucisiani: 218 variola: 34, 37, 38–39, 42 n. 68, 202 Vauchez, André: 4 n. 11, 19, 26 n. 104, 212 n. 273, 259 n. 61 Veszprém: 167 n. 78, 172 n. 101 vetulae: 97–98, 100, 225–26 Vezia, wife of Petrus de Lamur: 325–27 Vigilius, son of Bartholomaeus Alberti: 18 n. 65, 75, 124, 125, 146, 190–91

INDEX wet nurses: 10 n. 30, 103–04, 109, 125 n. 445, 245–46, 251 Wheatley, Edward: 8, 186, 241–42, 320 Wieselhuber, Christoph: 90 n. 282 Willelmus de Lonesdale: 65 n. 183, 66, 143, 233, 246, 267, 293–94 Willelmus de Oxonia: 143, 285 Willelmus, perpetual chaplain of the church of All Saints: 143, 285, 293 n. 225, 301, Wilson, Louise E.: 9 n. 28, 212–13 n. 278 Wittmer-Butsch Maria: 58 n. 151, 64 n. 179, 87 n. 273, 143, 243 n. 2 Woolgar, C. M.: 95, 305–06 n. 276 World Health Organization: 2, 6 n. 17, 51 work of the disabled: 70–71 and gender: 67–68 inability to: 63–69 see also beggars and begging; health, definitions of Yfamia, wife of Herbertus de Fontaneto, mother of Mabileta: 53–54, 95–98, 136, 196–97, 229 Ysabel, mother of Adam Vicart: 238 Ysabellis, daughter of Guillelmus de Chanteler: 230 Xanctia, daughter of Petrus Vitalis: 36 n. 31, 144–45, 214, 246–47, 249, 254 n. 39, 300 Ziegler, Joseph: 211–12, 212–13 n. 278 Zucchius, son of Franciscus Adinolfi: 54 n. 132, 82–83, 108, 219 n. 314

Studies in the History of Daily Life (800–1600)

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Titles in Series Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life: The Evidence of FourteenthCentury Canonization Processes (2009) On Old Age: Approaching Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. by Christian Krötzl and Katariina Mustakallio (2012) Objects, Environment, and Everyday Life in Medieval Europe, ed. by Ben Jervis, Lee G. Broderick, and Idoia Grau Sologestoa (2016)