Deceiving Disability: The Blind Man and the Boiteux in Machiavelli's Mandragola

This article shows Machiavelli as a modern and a medieval thinker by unearthing the reworking of the medieval topos of L'Aveugle et le Boiteux in the Renaissance comedy the Madragola. The Blind Man and the Boiteux who, in symbiotic union, form one complete beggar received several treatments in the dramatic arts, reaching its culmination in 1496 in André de la Vigne's Moralité de l'Aveugle et du Boiteux. Woven into this commedia erudita is a long-standing medieval tradition of using disability as a narrative trope with symbolic connotations that ultimately implicate a striking Renaissance rendering of a miracle play.