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Disabled people have existed in all periods of history, but until very recently the discipline of Medieval Studies had not concerned itself with historical questions as to who, for instance, were the physically, sensory or mentally disabled in the Middle Ages, how did medieval society interact with its impaired members, or what socio‐economic consequences being disabled might have implied for a medieval person. The sociological and cultural insights gained from the disciplines of Disability Studies and ethnology have provided recent emerging scholarship with a theoretical framework from which to approach the study of impairment in the pre‐modern past, which supersedes the medical model of disability favoured by older historiography. Arguably a transdisciplinary approach is central to research on the topic, covering not just the various sub‐disciplines of the historical sciences, such as social, economic, legal, or cultural history, but also religious studies, archaeology, history of art and literary studies. This is an exciting and important new field of research, allowing both historians and sociologists to gain insights into the lives of a previously neglected demographic group.

For medieval thinkers, a prominent philosophical, religious and legal problem concerned how to distinguish between the ‘will-not’ and the ‘can-not’. Amassing medieval evidence for the characterization these 'types', this chapter considers the tension between people regarded as not wanting to do something and people incapable of doing something despite perhaps wanting to. The 'genuine fool' was accorded preferential treatment in all these realms, but the 'pretend fool' was regarded with suspicion, and was perceived as morally dubious, even dangerous. Precisely because cognitive disability is not something writ large on the body, like a crippled limb, medieval commentators were worried by it, just as they were worried by deafness (equally invisible and also causing communication and moral issues). It is the behaviour rather than the physique that is highlighted as being different from 'the norm'. It is a sign of more modern times that physical appearance comes to be more strongly linked to cognitive disability. Medieval children appear to have been categorised by their learning ability as expressed through behaviour, not physiognomy.

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