Darkness and Silence: Blindness, Deafness, and Mutism in English Miracle Literature 1070-1400

This thesis is an examination of the conditions of blindness, deafness, and mutism in medieval hagiography – the lives of saints and miracle collections - produced in, or closely associated with the Kingdom of England, 1070–1400 CE. Through this examination, it aims to demonstrate that the existing historiography of disability in the Middle Ages is based on a fundamentally flawed approach, that a new approach is possible, and that this new approach provides a very different picture of the lives of people with disabilities in the Middle Ages. It focuses on the hagiography associated with the most well-known English saint of the period, Thomas Becket, on one of the most widespread collections of hagiography being copied throughout the time period – the so-called Cotton-Corpus legendary – and the canonisation proceedings of two English saints (St Gilbert of Sempringham – canonised in 1203, St William of York, canonised in 1227). These case studies each demonstrate significant elements of hagiography in the period, how attitudes varied across time periods, how – in the case of the Cotton-Corpus – views of much earlier authors could remain part of a general consensus for a considerable amount of time long after their development. The thesis will explore the perceptions of blindness, deafness, and mutism, and analyse how these distinct conditions were treated in medieval hagiography, and what this can tell us about the treatment of these conditions in society as a whole across the High Middle Ages. It aims to answer which elements were most important to medieval authors – an individual’s condition, or their person as a whole, and attempt to demonstrate that using this new approach – using a functional model of disability – produces a more nuanced view of disability in the Middle Ages than has been possible using the existing methodology.