Blurb cover:
The petitions received and the letters sent by the Papal Chancery during the late Middle Ages attest to the recognition of disability at the highest levels of the Church. Disease, impairment, or old age could prevent clerics from fulfilling the duties of their divine office and can thus be understood as forms of disability. The Papal Chancery bore the responsibility for determining if disabled people were suitable to serve as clerics; whilst some petitioners were allowed to enter or remain active in the clergy, others were compelled to resign their position and leave the clergy entirely. Petitions and papal letters lie at intersection of authorized, institutional policy and practical sources chronicling the lived experiences of disabled people in the Middle Ages. They thus constitute an excellent analytical laboratory in which to study medieval disability in relation to the papacy as an institution, alongside the impact of official ecclesiastical judgments on disabled lives.
Short biography:
Ninon Dubourg is a doctor in Medieval History of the University of Paris Diderot, now a post-doctoral researcher at the Transitions Unit of the University of Liège (Belgium). She is in charge of the research blog History of Disease, Disability & Medicine in Medieval Europe and the co-organiser of the EHESS’ monthly seminar “Construire une histoire du handicap et de la surdité au travers des siècles” (Building a history of disability and deafness through the centuries) with Fab-rice Bertin (EHESS) and Gildas Brégain (Rennes, CNRS) (2021-2022). She is a foreign associate member of the research network Homo Debilis at the Bremen University and a member of the Re-search Group Handicap et sociétés of the Réseau Jeunes chercheurs Santé et Sociétés at the EHESS.
Introduction: The introduction presents the main historical context to the study at hand, with an in-depth focus on the corpus: the petitions sent to the popes and the letters written in answer by the Papal Chancery. It investigates the identity of the petitioners, alongside procedures and regulations relating to the written documents themselves. Most writers were members of the Italian and French high clergy, though individuals from all levels of the Church are represented in the petitions. The correspondence between such clerics and the Papal Chancery depended upon established writing and regulatory processes, both in terms of the rules put in place by the Chancery to guarantee its intervention and the mechanisms available to supplicants for reporting their impairments and mak-ing an effective case for dispensations.
Keywords: Petition; Papal Letters; Experiences; Methodology; Discourses
Chapter 1: This chapter investigates the legal origins of the prohibition against impaired clerics. Petitions and letters helped to define ‘invalidity’ as a legal category, since they contributed directly to medieval canon law’s statutes regarding so-called ‘defects’ of body and mind. This institutional construction of disability allowed the Apostolic See to set a standard for bodies and minds, in order to distinguish the normatively able-bodied from those deemed ‘abnormal’, impaired. The Papal Chancery thus defined a physical standard in which a body diverging from the norm was consid-ered ‘defective’, and thereby unfit for clerical office, according to two criteria: its capacity and its image. They were only two mitigating factors for disabled clerics: their innocence and their ‘igno-rance’ (i.e., their lack of ‘culpability’) in relation to the existence of their impairment.
Keywords: Canon Law; Default; Irregularity; Normality; Circumstances
Chapter 2: As presented in this chapter, during the petition process, supplicants defined their impairments through dialogue with the Papal Chancery. They drew on medical and religious cul-ture, evident in the specific words deployed in letters, to present the causes of their impairments and to relate their ongoing experiences. Letters from the Chancery in response make use of similar ter-minology and frameworks, highlighting that petitioners’ conceptualizations of disability was shared by the Curia’s staff and vice versa. The legal, cultural, and linguistic frameworks provided by Chapters 1 and 2 allow us to develop argumentative strands in the later chapters.
Keywords: Discourses; Aetiology; Medicine; Religion
Chapter 3: This chapter interrogates the tests used by the Church to determine disability. These were required at several stages of the clerical profession: canon law stipulates that all candidates applying for admission to the secular and regular orders, and all clerics wishing to receive a promo-tion, must be examined before their appointment. Supposedly a ‘quality-control’ measure to guaran-tee the uniformity of the clerical condition at all levels, this evaluation was required from a cleric’s first tonsure to their entrance into the priesthood, up until his election as bishop or abbot, when the Pope himself, in theory at least, conducted the examination.
Keywords: Examination; Promotion; Election; Education; Black Death
Chapter 4: This chapter moves to examine the consequences of the ‘failure’ of such disability tests and of clerics’ disclosures of impairment in petitions. In such cases, gracious papal letters sometimes allowed for the relaxation of ecclesiastical regulations to accommodate the disabled cler-ic’s conditions, if he himself desired to remain in the clergy and was deemed capable enough. The process of supplication was used to improve clerics’ lives by adapting existing statutes to their per-sonal situations.
Keywords: Coadjutors; Monastic Rules; Transfers; Mobility
Chapter 5: This chapter probes the fate of the disabled men who were less fortunate: those who had to leave the clergy entirely, either of their own volition or due to the severity of their disability. At times, poor health or impairment forced clerics to resign from their positions as they became unable to perform their rights and duties. Often, they were forced to find care and support outside of their clerical community. Case studies demonstrate, however, that petitions and pontifical letters sometimes allowed for the adaptation, even contravention, of existing rules so that the disabled former clerics could live out their days with dignity.
Keywords: Resignation: Retirement; Transfers; Leprosaria
Conclusion: As argued through this book, studying petitions and letters enriches our under-standing of institutional and religious history: it sheds light on the Church’s place in society and on the contemporary understanding of disability. Indeed, the process of supplication could erase the negative institutional effects of disability by actively including the disabled cleric within the eccle-sial and Christian body. With this process, the Apostolic See thus created a metaphorical place con-ducive to negotiation, where disabled clerics could disclose their physical and/or mental difficulties to advocate for themselves, requesting accommodations from the institutional Church.
Keywords: Inclusion; Apostolic Penitentiary; Modern Canon Law; Modern Legislation
[en] The petitions received and the letters sent by the Papal Chancery during the Late Middle Ages attest to the recognition of disability at the highest levels of the medieval Church. These documents acknowledge the existence of physical and/or mental impairments, with the papacy issuing dispensations allowing some supplicants to adapt their clerical missions according to their abilities. A disease, impairment, or old age could prevent both secular and regular clerics from fulfilling the duties of their divine office. Such conditions can, thus, be understood as forms of disability. In these cases, the Papal Chancery bore the responsibility for determining if disabled people were suitable to serve as clerics, with all the rights and duties of divine services. Whilst some petitioners were allowed to enter the clergy, or – in the case of currently serving churchmen – to stay more or less active in their work, others were compelled to resign their position and leave the clergy entirely. Petitions and papal letters lie at intersection of authorized, institutional policy and practical sources chronicling the lived experiences of disabled people in the Middle Ages. As such, they constitute an excellent analytical laboratory in which to study medieval disability in its relation to the papacy as an institution, alongside the impact of official ecclesiastical judgments on disabled lives.
Disciplines :
History
Author, co-author :
Dubourg, Ninon ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département des sciences historiques > Histoire du Moyen Age tardif et de la Renaissance
Language :
English
Title :
Disabled Clerics in the Late Middle Ages, Un/suitable for divine service?
Publication date :
2023
Publisher :
Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, Netherlands
