Approaching Holy Infirmity

Bodily infirmity and sanctity are inseparable in all medieval hagiography. Since late antiquity, saints’ miraculous and charitable actions towards their followers were recorded in an endless number of legends and miracle collections, in sermons and exempla, in liturgies, in pictorial depictions, and from the thirteenth century onwards, in the protocols of canonization inquests. As a large majority of recorded miracles were healings, hagiographic sources place illness and impairment at the core of lived religion.

In my earlier research I have mostly focused on miraculous healing, the more famous connection between saints and their devotees. While researching disability and sanctity in late medieval canonization processes, I started to wonder about the other side of the coin. Although much sparser and usually less elaborate than descriptions of miracles healing bodily illness and impairment, the depictions of the sufferings of the saints themselves caught my eye. What meanings did saints’ devotees give to the ailments of those they venerated, and how were infirmities used and investigated in canonization proceedings? Some late medieval saints for whom a canonization process was opened, such as St. Louis IX of France (d. 1270) or St. Clare of Montefalco (d. 1308), are known sufferers. What surprised me was that with very few exceptions, in virtually all inquisitiones in partibus the topic was approached even when the holy person's death was not in question.