A Social History of Disability in the Middle Ages: Cultural Considerations of Physical Impairment by Irina Metzler (review)

With Disability Studies on the rise in academia, Irina Metzler’s comprehensive study of the cultural aspects of disability in the Middle Ages is a welcome and will be a well-appreciated addition to the field of study. Her goal, as stated outright, is to explore the “lived experience” of disability in the Middle Ages—what life truly was like for a medieval disabled person (1). Though somewhat challenged by a dearth of autobiographies of disabled persons, Metzler skillfully makes use of many other primary sources at her disposal—from law court proceedings, to guild statutes and guidelines, to poetry—to investigate medieval “mentalities” and “social attitudes” regarding the disabled (3). Through chapters on the relationships between disability and the law, work, ageing, and charity, Metzler examines, above all, the liminality of the disabled person in the Middle Ages.

In her first chapter, on law and disability, Metzler analyzes the role that law often played in the Middle Ages in creating disability. Looking carefully at the many instances in which mutilation was prescribed as a “judicial” (a word that Metzler acknowledges “can be interpreted in a very wide sense”) punishment, she reveals one way in which disability delivered a medieval person into a liminal state of being (15). Many crimes were punished, both in secular and clerical courts, with mutilation. A fair number of these mutilations, Metzler points out, were “meant to reflect the nature of the crime”: thus, a slanderer would have his tongue cut in two, a thief’s hand would be amputated, and the feet cut off of a runaway soldier (28). The logic in this case is meant to injure and mutilate the body part used to commit the crime. Beyond that, though, in both legal cases and in cases of triumphant soldiers mutilating their conquered foes, another set of examples Metzler explores in this chapter, the primary aim of legal mutilation was both to humiliate the criminal or enemy, and to mark them. Because of the relative frequency of such legal action, Metzler writes, “A disabled body had come to be associated with a criminal body” (29). Such mutilation, she argues, “marked” the body as external and dangerous to the greater community, excluding that disabled, deformed body to the liminal space of the convicted criminal.

Metzler’s second chapter, considering the relationship between disability and work, begins with an in-depth discussion of disabilities resulting from what we today would call “occupational hazards.” Starting with a consideration of soldiers disabled on the job, Metzler demonstrates that, while such an occurrence was extremely common, especially among the foot soldiers of the lower ranks, the disabled soldier—particularly the disabled knight—is a figure rarely seen in literature. This uneasiness with the literary portrayal of such people, Metzler argues, supports her argument regarding the liminality of the disabled person in medieval culture. The bulk of the rest of the chapter focuses on disabling work injuries acquired at home, rather than on the frontlines, and the response to such injuries, as well as the care for those injured, by guilds. Meztler’s careful tables, displaying exhaustive information about guild benefits, make the job of understanding the vast wealth of her primary sources easy for the reader. She concludes the chapter with a discussion of laws preventing medieval peasants from gleaning if they lacked specific disabilities, and a debunking of the now popular myth that disabled persons, most notably dwarfs, worked predominantly as entertainment, both elements that nuance her argument about the liminality of the disabled.

In her third chapter, on ageing, Metzler adroitly addresses the question of ageing and disability. “If ageing is a natural process,” she asks, “how can it simultaneously be a pathology?” (93). Yet again, Metzler’s argument regarding the liminalizing effect of disability comes to the front, as she considers the strange position of those disabled by old age; for of course such disabilities are brought about...