Homo debilis, femina debilis? Gender-specific perception and representation of ‘disabled’ women and men in the 11th to 14th centuries

One of the central questions of human development is whether and to what extent a person is important to another person, another group, or what significance is attached to them as a sick or ‘disabled’ person. It is therefore all the more surprising that Disability Studies is still a young field of research in Germany, which distinguishes it from its international and European neighbours. Studies have already shown that there have been ‘disabilities’ of people at all times, and that the depiction of physical disabilities in words, writing and images has occupied a large space for thousands of years. It seems that the cultural context has always been decisive in determining what an impairment means and what reactions to it are appropriate.

A look at medieval history gives rise to the assumption that the people of this time did not recognise ‘disability’ as a category or that they dealt with homo debilis in different ways due to views other than those we are familiar with. With regard to the gender aspect, several findings stand out, as they suggest that the way in which the physically disabled were treated in the Middle Ages was dependent on their gender: Compared to their male counterparts, there are far fewer written and pictorial representations of the female sex. The latter are mentioned much less frequently in official sources. As far as pictorial representations are concerned, no depictions of women with major wounds or mobility impairments have been found to date - evidence for which it would be worthwhile finding reasons. The question is to what extent differences were made in the written and pictorial tradition of the 11th - 14th centuries in dealing with a female or male homo patiens or homo debilis in the sense of a needy, injured person, and whether these changed in the course of the Middle Ages. 

Accordingly, the aforementioned breadth of sources is incorporated into the research project: not only the written tradition, but also pictorial sources are systematically consulted.

Supervisor of the project: Prof. Dr Brigitte Englisch