The Female Condition: Gender and Deformity in High-Medieval Miracle Narratives

This article explores the intersection of medicine, religion and gender within the context of miracle narratives compiled in England and France in the High Middle Ages. Women in miracle accounts have much to tell us about medieval ideas of gendered sickness and health, yet this is an area which has received little scholarly attention. Focusing on stories of female deformity and disfigurement, it is argued that sickness has a feminising effect on women's bodies in these sources, but proposed that symptoms of excess femininity were not always seen as the spiritual hindrance that might be expected.