The Convent of the Infirmed: Teresa de Cartagena's Religious Model of Disability

ABSTRACT

This article presents common medieval constructions of disability: disability as connected to moral failing, as part of systems of charity, and as a test that produces virtue. Teresa de Cartagena, a fifteenth-century nun who, through illness, became deaf as a young adult (late teens- early twenties) offers a different construction of disability, one born out of actual experience of physical disability. In her Arboleda de los Enfermos, Teresa de Cartagena offers a biting critique of the social systems that exacerbate the problems faced by persons who are “infirmed” and “afflicted.” She rebuffs those who think that the ill are lazy or lack patience. Instead, she depicts illness as a neutral situation that allows persons the opportunity to purge vice and develop virtues. By drawing a distinction between suffering itself and suffering as a situation, she creates a space in which the harsh realities of disability—loneliness, poverty, and physical pain—are neither diminishing nor totalizing, and presents a detailed account of how physical suffering can be a spiritual charism.

KEYWORDS:

• deafness
• disability
• spirituality
• medieval