Disabled clerics in the late Middle Ages : un/suitable for divine service? / Ninon Dubourg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dubourg, Ninon, author.

Series:

Premodern health, disease and disability.

Premodern health, disease and disability

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Catholic Church--Clergy--History.

Catholic Church.

Church history--Middle Ages, 600-1500.

Church history.

Clergy with disabilities.

Disabilities--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Disabilities.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (293 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2023.

Summary:

The 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 of disability. In these cases, the Papal Chancery bore the responsibility for determining if disabled people were suitable to serve as clerics, with all the rights and duties of divine services. Whilst some petitioners were allowed to enter the clergy, or - in the case of currently serving churchmen - to stay more or less active in their work, others were compelled to resign their position and leave the clergy entirely. Petitions and papal letters lie at intersection of authorized, institutional policy and practical sources chronicling the lived experiences of disabled people in the Middle Ages. As such, they constitute an excellent analytical laboratory in which to study medieval disability in its relation to the papacy as an institution, alongside the impact of official ecclesiastical judgments on disabled lives.

Contents:

Cover

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: A Formal Dialogue

Petitions and Papal Letters

Writing Processes in Action

The Status of Disabled Petitioners

1. Legal Origins of the Prohibition on Clerical Disability

Irregularity: Ex Defectu Corporis and Ex Defectu Mentis

Canonical Standards of Normality: Capacity and Image

Personal Responsibility and Mitigating Circumstances

2. Aetiologies of Impairment: Congenital, Geriatric, and Acquired Conditions

The Principal Causes of Clerical Impairment

Writing Disability

3. Joining the Clergy

Examination of Future Clerics

Promotions and Elections

Favourable Circumstances

4. Staying in the Clergy

The Nomination of Coadjutors

Breaking Monastic Rules

Clerical Mobility

5. Leaving the Clergy

Leaving the Workforce

Transferral to Specialist Institutions

Monasteries as Retirement Homes

Conclusion

Index

List of Figures

Figure 0.1 Life cycle of a petition, from supplicants' initial testimony to administrative registration

Figure 0.2 Life cycle of a papal letter granting grace, from composition in the Papal Chancery to receipt by petitioners

Figure 0.3 Status of supplicants identified in petitions and papal letters in the corpus

Figure 0.4 Petitioners identified in pontifical letters: secular vs. regular clerics (one point every fifty letters)

Figure 0.5 Status of secular clerics identified in pontifical letters (one point every fifty letters)

Figure 0.6 Status of regular clerics identified in pontifical letters (one point every fifty letters)

Figure 2.1 Main causes of clerical impairment on 1140 cases (twelfth to fourteenth century)

Figure 3.1 Promotions granted for major and minor orders, with or without cura.

Figure 3.2 Cross-referenced data from supplicants and executors 'in e. m.' in the thirteenth century

Figure 3.3 Cross-referenced data from supplicants and executors 'in e. m' in the fourteenth century

Figure 5.1 Recipients of resignation letters

Figure 5.2 Reasons for resignation in papal letters and petitions (when the reason is known)

Figure 5.3 Resigners in receipt of a pension.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 18 Oct 2023).

ISBN:

1-003-69404-7

1-04-078440-2

90-485-5432-2

9781003694045

OCLC:

1369062687