Episode 5: Saint Bartholomew’s Disability Miracles

In this episode, the Accessible Medievalist explores the disability miracles in the Book of the Foundation of St. Bartholomew’s Church, which details the legendary founding of London’s oldest surviving parish church and hospital in 1123CE. 

Topics: physical disability, mental disability, caretakers, hospitals, literary analysis, hagiography, saints

Bibliography:

Biomedicalization: Technoscience, Health, and Illness. Eds. Adele E. Clarke, et al. Duke University Press, 2010.

Book of the Foundation of St. Bartholomew’s Church. Translated and edited by Humphrey H. King and William Barnard. Rahere’s Garden, 2005. https://www.raheresgarden.org/Book-of-the-Foundation.pdf.

Buterin, Toni, Amir Muzur, and Bojan Glažar. “Saints and ‘Possession’: A Case Review Bordering Ethnopsychiatry and Cultural Diversity.” Journal of Religion and Health 60 (2021): 1116–1124.

Johnson, Ruth W., Joan S. Tilghman, Lorrie R. Davis-Dick, and Barbara Hamilton-Faison. “A Historical Overview of Spirituality in Nursing.” ABNF Journal 17, no. 2 (2006): 60-62.

Parkinson, H. “Patron Saints,” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company, 1911. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11562a.htm.

Tracy, Kisha G. “Middle English Saints Healing, Catalyzing, and Experiencing Disability.” Forthcoming in Oxford Handbooks of Disability and Literatures in English. Oxford University Press. Eds. Tory Pearman, Rick Godden, Leah Pope Parker.

Tracy, Kisha G. ​​“Speech: Medieval Representations of Speech Impairments.” In Cultural History of Disability in the Middle Ages. Eds. Jonathan Hsy, Joshua Eyler, and Tory Pearman Bloomsbury: 2020. 99-113.

Credits: 

Music - Medieval Theme 01 by Strobotone is licensed under a Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Transcript

Welcome to the Accessible Medievalist! I am Dr. Kisha Tracy, your host. 

In twelfth century England, a man named Adwyn lived in Dunwich. He is described as being unable to use either his feet or his hands as his legs were bent and frozen in place and his hands were bent backwards as well. These physical disabilities prevented him from working as a carpenter, and he could barely feed himself. He heard about the church and the hospital of St. Bartholomew’s in London and the miracles that reportedly happened there. He paid for passage on a ship and to be carried to the church. Once there, he stayed at the hospital. He began to get stronger, and, after a while, he was able to move his hands enough to create small tools for spinning. Then he could split logs with an axe. Finally, he was able to return to carpentry, which he practiced throughout London and for the church. 

Adwyn’s tale is one of many in the stories of St. Bartholomew’s about disability.  The founding of London’s oldest surviving parish church and hospital, which happened in 1123CE, is recorded in the Book of the Foundation of St. Bartholomew’s Church. The original Latin version of this manuscript has been lost, but there is a fourteenth (perhaps early fifteenth) century transcript with a Middle English translation. The quotations presented here are from a modern English translation by Humphrey H. King and William Barnard, which is available online.

The Book of the Foundation tells the story of a gentleman - a courtier - by the name of Rahere who lived in London in the early 12th century. He knew most of the important people, including the king at the time, Henry I. Rahere decided to go on pilgrimage to Rome. Now, the travel itself for pilgrimages of great distance was very difficult and dangerous - took a long time. For our gentleman, he gets sick and does what many do when they get gravely ill: he promised God something if he would recover. This time, he promised to found a hospital. Now we would think that story would be enough, but, in fact, it continues! He does recover, but then he has a dream. In this dream, he is visited by none other than St. Bartholomew. Remember Christ’s Apostle Bartholomew? Yep, that’s the one. The saint, moonlighting as a realtor apparently, essentially picks out a location for a church in Smithfield, London, north of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. He proposes that he and Rahere work together - he as spiritual founder and patron and Rahere as the one doing the physical work and all those annoying practical things, getting patronage from the king, securing funding, clearing the grounds - which were apparently a mess and only fit for gibbets and punishing criminals - thanks, Realtor Bartholomew! To be fair, it apparently had been previously prophesied by Edward the Confessor that it would eventually be holy ground. 

Rahere worked on both his promise to God and his charge from Bartholomew simultaneously, combining them into one endeavor. It wasn’t unusual for a medieval Christian church and a hospital to be attached to one another, with spiritual and medical healing intertwined. Sometimes, hospitals had a focus, such as leprosy, creating communities among people with certain common experiences. The hospital of St. Bartholomew’s was a general one, and, as such, had many different purposes - beyond a place for medical recovery, it served as an almshouse for those without economic means, a hostel (particularly for pilgrims), and an orphanage (in this case, especially for children of unwed mothers). The Book of the Foundation of St. Bartholomew’s Church gives insight into the building and administration of these types of institutions. Rahere, beyond securing the king’s patronage, gathers people to help with construction and brings in experienced help to manage the day to day activities, who solicit donated food and other goods.

Saints were commonly involved in the processes of healing. Following in the example of Christ, they are often represented miraculously healing usually unnamed individuals - that these people aren’t given names is a detail that deserves its own episode. I have a forthcoming chapter, “Middle English Saints Healing, Catalyzing, and Experiencing Disability” in the Oxford Handbooks of Disability and Literatures in English, in which I identify ways in which disability appears in saints’ lives, particularly Middle English versions. Healing is one of the most prominent ways.

Sometimes, the types of healing done by a saint may seem random. It doesn’t matter what you are experiencing, the saint can cure it! But stories or legends can have patterns that explain why a saint might become the patron of people experiencing one particular health condition or another. The Catholic Encyclopedia is a very useful online resource for all things Catholic. It defines a “patron saint” as “one who has been assigned by a venerable tradition, or chosen by election, as a special intercessor with God and the proper advocate of a particular locality” with a “real correspondence between the patron and the object of patronage, or by reason of some play on words, or as a matter of individual piety.” You may have seen products that link a saint with particular professions or activities. For instance, St. Christopher is commonly associated with travelers, and there are medals or charms to put in vehicles to protect the occupants. Isidore of Seville is now the patron saint of the modern Internet and computer programmers and users because he wrote a well-known medieval encyclopedia. I’m sure Isidore would be quite surprised by that! 

In their article, ““Saints and ‘Possession’: A Case Review Bordering Ethnopsychiatry and Cultural Diversity,” Toni Buterin, Amir Muzur, and Bojan Glažar note “linkages between saints and diseases were created according to the current medical ‘knowledge’ occasionally combined with iconographic or linguistic associations.” So that might include an item a saint is always depicted with - a leper’s staff, for instance - or it might have something to do with the etymology of their name. These linkages update as we learn about, discover, or rename health conditions. Buterin, Muzur, and Glažar look at saints as prototypical “medical practitioners,” physicians and therapists. The co-authors of “A Historical Overview of Spirituality in Nursing” see the connection between spirituality and medical practice as “the care of the total person” - or what we might call holistic healthcare. Perceiving the body as a physical entity separate from its other parts became more common with the rise of medicalization in the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries. 

The Book of the Foundation is mostly about the miracles at St. Bartholomew’s. You see, miracle stories demonstrate the presence of the saint and legitimize the church. The more miracles you can collect and spread the word about the more prestige you can generate and the more people who will visit. Bartholomew’s miracles are varied: he helps Rahere find a missing (perhaps stolen) music book, prevents a rich man’s house from burning down, saves sailors from drowning. 

Physical ailments are fairly typical: the saint fixes insomnia and cures generic illnesses among humans as well as sick cattle. This list of those in the church for the festival celebrating Bartholomew in 1148 gives a sense of this range:

“Sick men, oppressed with divers diseases, lay prostrate in the church -- while the lamps glowed redly on all sides -- beseeching the divine clemency and praying for the presence of the blessed Bartholomew. Nor, in truth, was the mercy of God far from them, who is always present at the prayer of those that devoutly ask Him. For one man rejoices with a cry of jubilation that he has received remedy of his aching head, another the restoration of his lost walking powers. Here a man rejoices free from ringing in the ears, there one from ulceration of the limbs; here one who has lost soreness of his eyes and received clearness of vision; many rejoice that they are soothed from the distress of fevers, and thunder praises to the honour and glory of the apostle.” 

Among these miracles we see descriptions of a wide variety of disabilities. In the previous passage alone: restoration of sight and of the ability to walk. Some of the disabilities in the Book are a result of extreme illness. One man exhibits signs of dropsy, “a swelling tumour and the disease which lurked within” and “showed outwardly by his swollen belly.” A boy with epilepsy is described with a condition “which compresses the lobes of the brain and hinders the natural functions, takes away sight, hearing, and the other senses of the body, and thus wears out the body itself with intense suffering.” A woman with palsy loses “the use of all her limbs as her sickness grew worse.” One boy is described as being blind from birth, poetically translated as “inborn darkness,” a congenital disability. 

In addition to Adwyn, with whom we started this episode, although not the only ones, three other individuals give us examples of considerable physical disabilities. Osbern with his “right hand clave to his left shoulder, but his head lay immovable, pressed down upon his hand, and neither his hand from his shoulder, nor his head from his hand could be severed.” Second, Wolmer’s “feet hung destitute of natural vigour, his legs clave to his thighs, part of his fingers…twisted back to his hand.” The third, a woman named Godena, “had her legs so twisted back to her thighs that she could never stand upright.”

We also have mental disabilities in the miracles. A young man named Robert, having encountered some sort of supernatural being while asleep, “lost his wits and was deprived of the power of reason, and, knowing not what ought to be done and what left undone, under the influence of madness he ran wandering about, now this way and now that, and, not knowing what he was doing.” A knight “leapt raving from the horse whereon he had sat and rent his garments in pieces, scattered the coins he was carrying, and began to assault with stones those whom he met.” 

One story provides an example of multiple disabilities. A girl is “deaf and dumb and deprived of the light of both eyes, and crippled with legs bent backward.” A note here about terminology - the words “dumb” and “crippled” are archaic ways to describe, respectively, the inability to speak and mobility issues, and not ones that we use now due to their offensive connotations and disrespect towards the disability community. We do, however, need to be aware of how they were used in historical contexts. I am planning a future episode on speech impairments related to some of my past work, and I’ll include more about the history of the word “dumb” in particular.

Returning to the girl in the story, as her miraculous healing begins, she “began to be tortured more grievously and to be vexed more hardly than she was wont, foaming at the mouth, smiting her breast, dashing her head upon the ground.” Although this behavior is described as increased, it also implies it is common for her. 

This girl’s story provides further insight beyond the individuals with disabilities themselves to those around them, caregivers. With her are her “weeping parents” who “lay clinging to the pavement and ceased not from prayer.” When the girl is healed, the parents “wept copiously for joy,” indicating their affection for their child. In the story of the boy with congenital blindness, his parents accompany him to the church, and, upon his healing, it describes a happy scene and how “he knew the parents whom he had never seen.” There are many instances in the miracles of both family members and individuals hired for their services accompanying or assisting people with disabilities to the church. 

The complexities of care-giving are also represented. In another story of a boy who “had lost all sense of reason,” he is accompanied by his mother and described as “burdensome” to her and “past bearing with.” When he is healed, the text says that “she secured joy for herself and health for her boy.” This is actually a quite balanced approach that acknowledges the potential physical and emotional impacts on caregivers.

I am particularly fascinated by the deliberate distinction the Book of the Foundation seems to make concerning the church and hospital spaces. Sometimes, individuals are brought to the church. And, sometimes, they are brought to the hospital. Adwyn, upon arrival at St. Bartholomew’s, “was set in the hospital of the poor and supported there some time of the alms of the said church.” There, he “began to revive and his longed-for health began to return bit by bit.” That “bit by bit” tells us he needed a longer amount of time to be healed. While all of these stories are attributed to the miracles of Bartholomew, some seem to happen immediately or spontaneously in the church while others require time in the hospital. Perhaps this is an acknowledgement of the reality of recovery without supernatural assistance - and how it is not always quick or smooth.

One common perception about medieval disability - and historical disability more broadly - is that it was universally attributed to some sort of sin on behalf of the individual, something brought upon themselves because it was their own fault. In reality, there were multiple ways medieval people viewed the causes of disability, which the stories in the Book of the Foundation illustrate.

One, yes, is a belief that the individual with a disability is guilty of something. For example, there is a story of a young woman who becomes a prostitute - this sinful behavior causes mental health issues and then physical disabilities. A bit of her story:

“And soon the wages of sin followed, and she who prostituted her flesh lost utterly her soundness of mind, and the limbs which were the weapons of sin were turned into weapons of madness…in her punishment she comprehended neither God nor herself…she was carried to the hospital of the aforesaid church. A contraction of her limbs followed shortly after, so that she could nowise use them freely.”

Like Adwyn, this woman is also taken to the hospital and not only to the church, indicating a longer convalescence, even a period of her symptoms getting more intense, until she is “graciously delivered” by Bartholomew. 

A second view of the origin of disability is divine intervention - either through the will of God or through devils - in this text, mostly the latter. The beautiful illegitimate daughter of Wymond the priest has a rather complicated story. Due to her many virtues, the “enemy of mankind” schemes against her. She daily resists him, but eventually is “afflicted in mind,” “tortured with dreadful suffering of body and, rolling backwards and forwards with inordinate movements of her limbs” and “foaming at the mouth.” Later, the “Lord heard and listened… and by the merits of the apostle delivered the maiden from the fiend and, so delivered, restored her to perfect health.” This fiend or other mysterious evil beings roam through the Book of the Foundation causing mayhem!

But, even in a text centered on miraculous healing, there is a clear understanding that disabilities just…exist. People are born with or develop disabilities. No dramatic or supernatural causes necessary! Even if the cures are divine. Wolmer is described as having a “long-standing disease.” Another woman has a “long sickness.” Another is a “boy who for a long time had been” unable to speak. There are no indications in the stories of these individuals - and several others - that there is anything or anyone to blame for their circumstances. 

In all of these cases, from the ones involving sin to those that develop from natural causes, the Apostle intercedes on their behalf once they are in St. Bartholomew’s care, and these individuals with disabilities are healed, many returning to their regular lives or professions. Disabilities are simply a part of life.