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A social history of disability in the Middle Ages: cultural considerations of physical impairment

Until Irina Metzler published her first volume on medieval disability in 2006 (1), the lives of the physically impaired in the Middle Ages had received relatively little scholarly attention. Happily, in the past seven years the body of literature on this topic has increased substantially, and now includes a number of monographs (2) and several essay collections.(3) In addition, Metzler herself has now produced a second volume, A Social History of Disability in the Middle Ages: Cultural Considerations of Physical Impairment, in which she sets out to explore the social and cultural factors which affected the lives of medieval crippled, deaf, mute and blind people through a detailed examination of four key themes: ‘Law’, ‘Work’, ‘Ageing’ and ‘Charity’.