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))

Medieval disability history has started to gain more and more scholarly attention during recent years. In this study, testimonies from medieval canonization processes are for the first time systematically used as sources for the study of medieval attitudes and everyday life concerning physical impairments. The book explores children's disabilities, their definitions and social consequences from the point of view of the family, the community, and the children themselves. It explores the ways laity explained and understood children's impairments, the ways physical difference affected a child's socialization, and how children's own experience of their impairments were formulated in the miracle narratives. By focusing on physical disability within the miraculous and the everyday life, the book untangles a large set of questions regarding the ways medieval society viewed physical difference and constructed it in the discourse of miracles as well as in their everyday life.