Disability in the Middle Ages

Reconsiderations and Reverberations

Joshua R. Eyler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317150183
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

What do we mean when we talk about disability in the Middle Ages? This volume brings together dynamic scholars working on the subject in medieval literature and history, who use the latest approaches from the field to address this central question. Contributors discuss such standard medieval texts as the Arthurian Legend, The Canterbury Tales and Old Norse Sagas, providing an accessible entry point to the field of medieval disability studies to medievalists. The essays explore a wide variety of disabilities, including the more traditionally accepted classifications of blindness and deafness, as well as perceived disabilities such as madness, pregnancy and age. Adopting a ground-breaking new approach to the study of disability in the medieval period, this provocative book will interest medievalists and scholars of disability throughout history.

PART 1
Reconsiderations

Chapter 1
Disability and the Suppression of Historical Identity: Rediscovering the Professional Backgrounds of the Blind Residents of the Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts

Mark P. O’Tool

Regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or social status, people with disabilities often report that their identity is defined first and foremost by their disability. Robert Murphy has labeled this phenomenon ‘disability creep.’1 While this phenomenon dramatically impacts upon the lives of people in modern society, it can be just as problematic for the study of people with disabilities in history because it reduces their lives to presumed ideas about disability, denies the agency they had in the process of identity formation, and effaces the importance of other elements of their characters.2 Indeed, the effects of this deep-seated way of thinking have influenced the study of medieval history. Until recently, medieval historians have tended to overlook the experiences of people with disabilities or to consider them primarily from others’ perspectives. This has been particularly true for studies of the blind, which have tended to focus on the image of quarrelsome and sexually grotesque blind beggars in medieval French farce.3

One opportunity to explore the implications of this essentialisation of disability is to examine the lives of the residents of the Quinze-Vingts, the hospital for the blind that Louis IX founded in thirteenth-century Paris. Following his return from crusade in the mid-1250s Louis established this hospital to house 300 blind people and their sighted guides. Although this hospital has remained in continual operation since the thirteenth century, there have been few significant inquiries into the structure and function of this institution.4 Moreover, the hospital has maintained a significant medieval archive, presenting a tantalizing opportunity to analyze the lives of its residents.

Scholars have long known that the residents of the Quinze-Vingts were predominately laypersons from the Parisian bourgeoisie.5 Yet, preoccupation with their blindness and the assumption that blindness superseded other elements of their identity have prevented earlier studies from inquiring into the residents’ professional lives before they entered the hospital. In fact, the residents were drawn almost exclusively from the lower and middling levels of the medieval Parisian bourgeoisie.6 Neglecting this element of their lives has left the impression that the residents of the Quinze-Vingts were simply poor blind beggars, rather than working members of the community.7 Social and professional status are particularly important because damning stereotypes of idleness, avarice and wantonness were increasingly associated with the poor, particularly poor blind beggars during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.8

Temporarily setting aside our preoccupation with the blindness of the hospital’s residents allows for a greater appreciation of other aspects of their social identities. These residents constituted a community of people with diverse professional backgrounds, including concentrations in some lines of work that were among the most important to the medieval economy. More than half of the residents, for whom their occupations can be determined, were involved in the cloth industry and in the preparation of furs and leather. Since there are no records of how the residents lost their eyesight, this line of inquiry also allows us to speculate on the impact of the procedures and chemicals used in these professions. In fact, these professions would have exposed practitioners to eye hazards and rendered them susceptible to eye disease, eye injuries and eyestrain, problems which still plague the leatherworking and textile industries today.

Sources

In order to analyze the professional backgrounds of the residents of the Quinze-Vingts, it is necessary to understand the possibilities and limitations of the available sources. Documents survive from four different years that name residents of the hospital. The first three lists, which survive from 1281, 1302 and 1329, appear in charters where the residents serve as witnesses to legal proceedings on the hospital’s behalf. These lists name 42 men (in 1281), 157 men and women (in 1302) and 100 men and women (in 1329).9 The fourth list survives in a register from 1383–84, which records the rents that 57 men and women paid to live in the institution.10 Additionally, residents appear in a variety of other charters in the hospital’s archive: land transactions, donations, testamentary bequests and claims of fraternal succession. Together, these sources offer considerable information about the residents, but they also present certain problems. Many of the residents only appear in one charter, so it is difficult to learn much about them. Moreover, the sources rarely list the residents’ occupations, so this information has to be gleaned from other evidence.

Fortunately, seven tax registers, called the livres de la taille, survive from the reign of Philip the Fair, which offer detailed information about the Parisian bourgeoisie. These registers record the name, location, amount assessed and sometimes the occupation of each taxpayer.11 The rolls from 1296 to 1300 record the taxes levied on approximately 9,000–11,000 people from the last five years of an eight-year tax.12 Philip authorized the final levy in 1313 to collect taxes from approximately 6,000 Parisians to contribute to the knighting of his eldest son.13 The last roll, compiled in 1292, has no title and does not include notations of payment. The general consensus holds that this list was drawn up in anticipation of the tax to determine how much each family would be able to contribute.14 These registers have been rendered even more useful to scholars by Caroline Bourlet, at the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, in Paris. She has created a searchable database of all of the taxpayers, allowing researchers the ability to find any given taxpayer or all taxpayers with any given name or occupation. Because a few taxpayers were assessed while they were living at the Quinze-Vingts, they too have been included in this study.

Numbers and Methodology

Compiling the data from these sources reveals the names of 545 people who lived at the Quinze-Vingts from the 1270s to the 1430s. Of these 545 known residents, 335 individuals (61.5 per cent) are known exclusively through the lists of names discussed above. The names of five residents (0.9 per cent) appear exclusively in the tax registers, with no reference in the hospital’s charters. The remaining 205 residents (37.6 per cent) appear in one or more other charters in the hospital’s archive. Complicating the matter is the reality that of these 545 residents, 401 (73.6 per cent) leave only their names.

Three methodologies were used to determine the professional backgrounds of the residents of the Quinze-Vingts: 1) direct statements of a resident’s occupation in the charters; 2) cross references with the livres de la taille; and 3) trade-based last names. The first two methodologies have allowed me to pinpoint the professions of 30 of the 545 residents (5.5 per cent) who lived at the Quinze-Vingts during this period. The professions of 13 of these 30 residents are stated directly in the hospital’s charters, while the occupations of 17 more residents can be traced by cross-referencing their names with the names of the taxpayers listed in livres de la taille. The third methodology—the analysis of trade-based last names—offers a global picture of the residents’ professional backgrounds that can be compared with the contemporary Parisian workforce. Before analyzing the results, let me briefly explain the second and third methodologies.

Cross-referencing the names of those living in the hospital, between the years 1290 and 1330, with the names in Caroline Bourlet’s database of taxpayers from the livres de la taille has found matches for 45 of the 305 individuals (14.8 per cent) who joined the Quinze-Vingts during this period. Of these 45 individuals, the professions of 17 (as stated above) are listed in the tax records. There are two ways to match the names of the residents of the Quinze-Vingts with these taxpayers. For 20 of the 45 residents (44.4 per cent), there is sufficient documentation to confirm their place in the tax registers concretely. In 11 of these cases, the records from the Quinze-Vingts reveal the street where a resident lived before he or she joined the hospital, and this person is assessed in the tax registers on that street, confirming that the references point to the same individual. The other nine people were assessed while they were living at the Quinze-Vingts.

The other cross-referencing methodology involves matching the names of the residents of the Quinze-Vingts with taxpayers in the livres de la taille when the resident’s name can be associated with only one person assessed in the tax registers. Because of the concentration of names in medieval Paris, this methodology provides reasonable assurance that these individuals are the same people. Take, for example, the case of Jean Chief de Fer, a brother of the Quinze-Vingts whose only appearance is in the list of residents from 1302. A search for Chief de Fer in Bourlet’s database reveals seven people with this surname: Ameline, Guillaume and his wife Chrétienne, Jean, Olivier, Pierre and Philippe. Because of the scarcity of this surname, it is highly likely that Jean Chief de Fer, brother of the Quinze-Vingts, is the same man as Jean Chief de Fer, the leather strap-maker, who is assessed on the rue Quincampoix in the parish of Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs in 1292 and 1296–1300.15 These links have been accepted when there is only one person who appears in the registers with the same name as the given resident of the Quinze-Vingts. The identities of residents with surnames such as Le Picart, L’Anglais and Le Normant cannot be traced in this manner because these surnames were especially common.16 As stated above, cross-referencing the names of residents of the Quinze-Vingts with the names of the taxpayers in the livres de la taille has allowed me to determine the profession of 17 total residents. Combined with the 13 residents whose professions are listed in the archival record, there are 30 individuals whose occupations, prior to joining the Quinze-Vingts, is known.

The third methodology, the analysis of trade-based names, allows a global perspective on the professional backgrounds of the residents of the Quinze-Vingts. Of the remaining 515 residents (the 545 total residents minus the 30 whose occupations are known), 82 residents bore trade-based names, such as La Feutriere (the Felt-maker), Le Gainier (the Sheath-maker) and La Poulaillier (the Poultry seller). Because of the instability of medieval surnames, we cannot assume that all of these men and women worked in the trade for which they were named, but trade-based names can be used to estimate the approximate number of people who worked in these professions. Janice Archer has determined that 59 per cent of the men and women with trade-based surnames who appear in the livres de la taille were actually practicing the stated trade.17 Using this per centage, we can approximate the per centage of residents of the Quinze-Vingts who practiced each kind of trade before they joined the hospital.

Professional Diversity

The residents of the Quinze-Vingts practiced a wide variety of occupations prior to j...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Breaking Boundaries, Building Bridges
• PART 1 RECONSIDERATIONS
• PART 2 REVERBERATIONS
• Bibliography
• Index