Disabled Clerics in the Late Middle Ages: Un/suitable for Divine Service? [Hardcover]

Based on rich documentation this work proposes an history of disabled people experiences, theorized as lived disability that allows us to rethink the place of the (disabled) body in the Christian thoughts. It also offers a sensitive history of the clerics' bodies.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 Li?ge (Belgium). She is in charge of the research blog History of Disease, Disability and Medicine in Medieval Europe and the co-organiser of the EHESS monthly seminar Construire une histoire du handicap et de la surdit? au travers des si?cles (Building a history of disability and deafness through the centuries) with Fab-rice Bertin (EHESS) and Gildas Br?gain (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 soci?t?s of the R?seau Jeunes chercheurs Sant? et Soci?t?s at the EHESS.Preface, Introduction: A Formal Dialogue, Chapter 1: Legal Origins of the Prohibition on Clerical Disability, Chapter 2: Aetiologies of Impairment: Congenital, Geriatric, and Acquired Conditions, Chapter 3: Joining the Clergy, Chapter 4: Staying in the Clergy, Chapter 5: Leaving the Clergy, Conclusion, List of works cited for each chapterThe 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 olc+