Experiencing the dis/abled body in Early Modern Sweden: an exploration of perspectives
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- 1 Compare B. Frohne, « The body in pain », Dis/ability history der vormoderne. Ein handbuch, ed. C. N (...)
1Physical impairment was arguably an all-too-common reality of human life in premodern societies. Because of insufficient health care, the omnipresence of common illnesses without effective cures, and different forms of manual labour being the daily outcome for a vast majority of society, most people presumably encountered impairing injuries and long-lasting illness during their life courses, even if they were born with healthy and normative bodies. The ensuing omnipresence of bodily variety that would come from it suggests that it might have been experienced in other ways in the premodern period compared to today, and that this variety might give interesting insights into experiencing life in the premodernity1.
- 2 See R. Boddice and M. Smith, Emotion, sense, experience, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 202 (...)
- 3 See M. Eyice, « When feelings grow cold: What to do next in the history of emotions », Lychnos. Års (...)
2The study of the body has gained increased focus in branches of history aimed at human emotion, sense and experience2. It is largely agreed upon that the body is historically changeable, and that people’s experiences change accordingly3. This gives incentive to study the variety of human bodies within historical communities as well. How one’s body functioned affected how one saw oneself and interacted with other people. Variety in human bodies is therefore crucial to understand experience in any given society.
- 4 Stockholm, Stockholm City Archive, Justitiekollegium, EIa: I.
3Two texts from early modern Sweden might serve as examples of how we can encounter the variety of bodies in premodern sources. The first is an undated letter to the Justitiekollegium written sometime during the middle of the 17th century, in which a woman named Ingrid Håkansdotter pleaded for poor relief from the city of Stockholm. She (or someone she had asked for help to write) described her physical ailments in detail. She wrote that her whole body was swollen, which caused severe pain, and that she could not walk without crutches. The pain was so intense that she could not lie down, which meant that she needed to sit upright in bed and therefore had had no rest neither night nor day for five years4.
- 5 Petrus Johannis Gothus, Om christeligit tålamod vnder korsset een merkelig lära. Plågadom menniskio (...)
4The second example is a foreword to a Swedish devotional book printed in 1601, in which the publisher Petrus Johannis Gothus recounted his physical ailments over a number of pages. According to the foreword, he had been incapacitated from the age of 14, when he fell ill with a plague. This condition worsened during the course of his life, so that he in his mature age was haunted by constant pain and unable to use his right leg. Like the woman of the previous case, he stressed that this had led to chronic lack of sleep and rest, as well as to financial problems5.
- 6 Within the field of disability studies, « the cultural model » uses the term « dis/ability » with a (...)
5In this article, I will discuss how we can make sense of these texts as expressions of bodily experiences in premodern times. I will argue that the research field of dis/ability history places focus on important aspects of the body in historical societies, but that inspiration from the history of emotions could add essential insights into how the body was experienced6. Finally, I will suggest that the budding research field of history of experience could provide a framework for analysing the lived experiences of the dis/abled body.
1. Premodern bodies and their dis/abilities
- 7 See for example H.-J. Stiker, A history of disability, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, (...)
- 8 I. Metzler, « The social model », Dis/ability history…, op. cit. n. 1, p. 59-61.
- 9 See for example Ead., Fools and idiots? Intellectual disability in the middle ages, Manchester, Man (...)
6Human bodies and their physical and mental capacities cannot be properly understood without considering the social and cultural context in which they find themselves. This has been well argued for a number of years within disability studies7. According to the « social model of disability », physical and mental impairments are bodily conditions that are made into disabilities by society’s demands on a person’s physical or mental capacities8. In a society that requires physical labour for survival, absence of one or more functional limbs might be a more severe disability than in the modern Western society, for instance. Reversely, neurobiological variations such as the ones on the Autistic spectrum might be more disabling in contemporary Western society, which gives great value to the ability to benefit from a standardised school system9. According to this model, disability is thus a social construction rooted in a physical or mental condition, which means that for historians, the social model of disability offers opportunity to study disability as a changing social category in historical societies.
- 10 C. J. Kudlick, « Disability history: Why we need another “other” », The American Historical Review, (...)
7In line with this reasoning, historian Catherine J. Kudlick termed people with disabilities another other already in 2003. She argued that people with disabilities shape the norms of the whole society through their perceived otherness; they are seen as a ubiquitous threat to people with normative bodies. According to her, this is a trait in Western society over centuries, although historians have nuanced this picture for premodern societies much in the years since10.
- 11 I. Metzler, A social history of disability in the Middle Ages: cultural considerations of physical (...)
8For the Medieval period, historian Irina Metzler has argued that there was no clear distinction between people with congenial or sustained impairments and people who were made impaired by poverty or old age in the Middle Ages. According to her, medieval people instead considered those who were not able to sustain themselves as a social category. People with physical or mental impairments, old people and poor people were united in their need of support from others and should therefore all be included in the study of disability in the Middle Ages11.
- 12 B. Frohne, « The body in pain », art. cit. n. 1.
9The social model of disability thus gives special significance to disability as a social category, which is highly revealing of the changing power structures in historical societies. However, it has been criticised for marginalising the experience of disability. Bianca Frohne argues that the unwillingness to focus on how disability was experienced, emotionally and corporally, in historical societies might be a result of the aim to refute the modern view of disability as a personal tragedy of suffering and pain, which is a strong incentive in disability studies12. However, shunning personal experiences and viewing disability solely as a social category displays a kind of preconception of the experience of disability both for people with physical impairments and people with normative bodies. The inclusion into a group of « others » seems to presuppose an exclusion from society that somehow defines the experience of disability.
- 13 Ead., « The cultural model », art. cit. n. 6, p. 61-63.
10Another problem with focusing on disability as a social category based on, but separate from, bodily infirmity is that it obscures the historical changeability of the body in itself, as has been argued in recent years13. By considering infirmity as a biological fact from which disability as a social phenomenon can occur, the social model of disability does not take into account that infirmity in itself is a social construction, i.e., that bodies are historically changeable as well. This has been put forth by advocates of the « cultural model of dis/ability », who argue for an understanding of infirmity as culturally malleable and dis/ability as likewise fluid and changeable.
11Furthermore, by placing focus on the cultural aspect of infirmity and dis/ability, the cultural model of dis/ability widens the scope of inquiry into the societal significance of non-normative bodies to the discursive and ideological spheres, for example. Advocates of the cultural model of dis/ability argue that this is one of the reasons why the cultural model is especially suitable for the historical study of premodern societies. It does not take our modern understanding of bodily impairment as a point of departure, but asks what constituted a diverging body in any given social context.
- 14 See discussion about the historical actor according to the cultural model of dis/ability ibid.
12Lastly, the cultural model of dis/ability places more focus on how bodily variation was infused in cultural frameworks of any given time and place and how the historical actor negotiated them, which means that the historical actor is more prominent in the cultural model of dis/ability than in the social model14.
- 15 See articles in Dis/ability history…, op. cit. n. 1.
13Thinking about dis/ability in this way offers a wider scope for examining bodily experiences in historical societies. It offers a way to make apparent how the body is construed as normative or diverging and through which frameworks these ideas are shaped. Moreover, it offers opportunity to examine how the individual is manoeuvring this landscape. Yet, as is apparent from a recent survey of premodern dis/ability history, the research into the lived experience of disability in premodern time is very limited15.
- 16 Although for example Susan Wendell has urged for a recognition of the links beween disability and i (...)
14There could be several reasons for this. One might be that the fear of connecting dis/ability to pain or suffering makes emotions a problematic topic, as was mentioned above.16 Another might be that the body is still considered a corporal entity separate from mental and emotional processes, despite evidence from modern science and the prevalent view in the premodern past. However, the rich and expanding field of history of emotions would offer great possibilities of examining emotional experiences of dis/ability if the research fields entered into deeper conversation.
2. Emotions
- 17 J. Kuuliala, Saints, Infirmity, and Community in the Late Middle Ages, Amsterdam, Amsterdam Univers (...)
15In her book on medieval saints and infirmity, Jenni Kuuliala calls for an association between dis/ability history and history of emotions. She argues that emotions have an important role in reconstructing holy infirmity. Followers of medieval saints formed emotional communities that responded to the saint’s infirmity, which was understood in Christian religious terms, and the saint’s sufferings were infused with emotional practice. Infirmity was thus made into a meaningful and interpretable experience through emotions, both for the individual saint with infirmity and for people who interacted with the saints17.
- 18 K. Barclay, « State of the field: The history of emotions », History, 106, 2021, p. 456-466, esp. p (...)
16Although Kuuliala’s call is novel and addresses a void in current research both in dis/ability history and the history of emotions, the body as such is central to the more recent development within the history of emotions research field. As Katie Barclay has pointed out, the various branches of modern history of emotions unite around the idea that embodied experience is cultural, i.e., that what is felt in the body is embedded in culture and therefore historically changeable18. However, there are still differences in how much emotions are considered to be embodied experience, according to Barclay, but the group of historians who consider the body as integral to emotional experience is prominent.
- 19 See for example discussion in R. Boddice, « History looks forward: Interdisciplinarity and critical (...)
17Drawing on findings in psychology, neurobiology and anthropology, many historians see emotions as emanating from bodily practice or performance in a culturally specific setting. Bodily phenomena such as blushing or crying, as well as bodily practices such as hunching, singing or praying are from this perspective culturally specific behaviours that shape emotions and that are understood and experienced through the cultural situation in which the person doing them finds him or herself19.
- 20 See primarily M. Scheer, « Are emotions a kind of practice (and is that what makes them have a hist (...)
18For Monique Scheer, this understanding of emotions lends itself to the creation of a theoretical approach for studying emotions in historical settings. She argues that emotions can be seen as practices in the Bourdieuian sense of the word and that these practices, which are bodily in nature, can be studied in their specific historical context. For the historian, the task becomes to uncover how these practices create emotions in the historical society in question20.
- 21 See primarily D. Boquet and P. Nagy, « Une histoire des émotions incarnées », Médiévales, 61, 2011, (...)
19While Scheer is thus stressing the historical changeability of emotions, her theory implies that emotions are created through practices discernible throughout time and place. Piroska Nagy and Damien Boquet are more adamant in their stress on the historicity of emotions. From a historical anthropological perspective, Nagy and Boquet argue that emotions must be understood through the world in which they are manifest, i.e., in the full complexity of their historical setting. The corporeality of emotions should be examined through the anthropology, moral and culture of the age, according to them21.
- 22 D. Boquet and P. Nagy, « Une histoire des émotions incarnées », art. cit. n. 21, p. 14-19.
20For the Middle Ages, Nagy and Boquet are putting forth the Christian anthropological understanding of the emotions as bodily manifestations of the movements of the soul, which is deeply rooted in classical philosophy. Furthermore, they stress that the medical theory of the time connected the emotions to the humoral system, so that emotions were thought to emanate from the balance of humours in the body. They trace a discursive development throughout the Middle Ages that gradually created a holistic view of a human with soul, spirit and body incorporated22. For this reason, the body is absolutely integral to understanding emotions in the Middle Ages and should be in focus for a study of emotions.
- 23 See for example K. Barclay, Caritas: Neighbourly Love and the Early Modern Self, Oxford, Oxford Uni (...)
21Whether the emphasis is on the corporality of emotions from a modern scientific perspective or from a premodern anthropological perspective, then, it seems apparent that the body and emotions are intrinsically connected and that the study of one should include the other. The history of emotions has indeed integrated the body as a focal point in recent years, which has given interesting results23. However, there is a curious lack of acknowledgement of the variety of bodies that could be interpreted as dis/abled, and of how they contribute to the shaping of emotions in different historical settings.
22Yet, if the notion that emotions are actually shaped by bodily practice submerged in the cultural context is taken seriously, we also need to take seriously how difference in bodily functions are carried out, interpreted and acted upon in the historical context. Conversely, it is crucial to consider how emotions shaped the experience of dis/ability.
3. Experience
23Both dis/ability history and the history of emotions are thus concerned with the body, but while the former largely ignores the bodily experience of people with dis/ability, the latter is primarily concerned with the body as a site for emotions. However, the budding research field of history of experience could offer a fruitful framework for studying these things in tandem.
- 24 J. W. Scott, « The evidence of experience », Critical Inquiry, 17, 1991, p. 773-797; V. Kivimäki, S (...)
- 25 Lynn Hunt urges the history discipline to acknowledge how experience is based in the human body in (...)
- 26 R. Boddice and M. Smith, Emotion…, op. cit. n. 2, p. 17.
24The search for historical experience is not new. Joan W. Scott famously argued for a focus on experience in history already in 1991. As has been pointed out, however, Scott’s approach is singularly discursive. She does not acknowledge experience beyond language24. However, there is a growing trend to view human experience as corporal and emotional at the same time as embedded in culture and society, including, but not exclusive to the discursive sphere25. Rob Boddice and Mark Smith have defined historical experience as « the lived, meaningful reality of historical actors ». They argue that it consists of both subjective and communal reality and incorporates « all the features of past perception in their own terms »26.
- 27 V. Kivimäki, S. Soudenjoki and T. Vahtikari, « Lived nation… », art. cit. n. 24, p. 15.
25Historical experience seen in this way thus constitutes a wider category than emotions, but the two research fields nevertheless share much common ground, as has been pointed out by Ville Kivimäki, Sami Soudenjoki and Tanja Vahtikari27. The same could be said for the cultural model of dis/ability. All three research fields see the self as radically submerged in the cultural and the body as a cultural construct, which means that all three are concerned with the lived experience of the historical subject as a cultural and societal phenomenon. However, while both disability history and history of emotions maintain a focus on their respective modern categories (disability and emotion), the history of experience collapses the boundaries between different sectors of human experience.
- 28 R. Boddice and M. Smith, Emotion…, op. cit. n. 2, p. 50. From a history of emotions perspective, Pi (...)
- 29 R. Boddice and M. Smith, Emotion…, op. cit. n. 2, p. 18 and following. See also discussion in M. Ey (...)
26Boddice and Smith argue that the historian should strive to reconstruct « the context of possibilities » for historical subjects or, in other words, what it was possible to experience in a certain context. To understand what it was like to have cancer in a specific historical time and place, for instance, it is not useful to consider our modern understanding of what cancer is or how it could be experienced. Instead, the historian needs to lay bare how the condition was understood, considered, talked about and treated in the historical context in question28. From a methodological perspective, they argue that the history of experience should strive to integrate the research fields of history of emotions and the history of the senses, as these are modern categories that were often entangled or disrupted in the past29.
- 30 Feeling dis-ease in modern history: Experiencing medicine and illness, ed. R. Boddice and B. Hitzer(...)
- 31 Ibid., p. 17.
27It seems prudent indeed to consider emotions and senses together in order to understand what it might have been like to live in certain historical time and place, but both dis/ability studies and the history of emotions seem to suggest that there are more to the lived experience of the body than emotions and senses. In a recent study, Rob Boddice and Bettina Hitzer have stressed the need to consider the human experience of disease, since « humans are biocultural beings, plastic in development and formation, but also in disintegration and decay », thus highlighting the need to explore further how the historical context is integral also to how people of the past experienced the suffering or disease of their bodies30. Moreover, they point out that the experience of disease is highly dependent on what is considered « normal, healthy, beneficial or morally sound » in a society31.
28This reasoning resonates very well with the claim of the wider field of disability studies, which is why it seems called for to widen the study of historical experience from the sensorial and emotional to the function of the body as well. The body occupies a space in the historical context not only through its senses and emotions, but also through its ability to function within it, and therefore it seems likely that an examination of the variety of bodily functions as well as sense and emotion could offer new insights into the experience of dis/ability as well as to the history of experience as such.
4. Experiencing dis/ability in early modern Sweden
- 32 The format of this essay is too narrow to do justice to the early modern context in which we find t (...)
29Returning to the two early modern texts described in the introduction, the last section of this article aims to exemplify how the historical record left behind by two individuals living almost fifty years apart can be placed within their « context of possibilities » and made sense of as embodied historical experience32. In doing so, the article draws on the view of dis/ability as culturally constructed and of the understanding within the history of emotions that emotions are embodied and social both as a category and in the premodern past. Furthermore, uses the history of experience to highlight how the experiences of the body can be understood without resorting to either one category, and in doing so, illustrates that the history of experience could consider bodily function as well as emotions and the senses.
- 33 The Swedish formulation is så svagt, att det förmå icke lyfta och föra sig fram med sin egen kraft, (...)
30As was discussed in the introduction to this article, both Ingrid Håkansdotter and Petrus Johannes Gothus described their bodily ailments in detail in their respective texts. Ingrid Håkansdotter recounted how she, for a long time, had needed crutches to walk, how her whole body was swollen and in so much pain that she could not lie down but had to sit upright. She stressed that this had led to lack of rest. Petrus Johannes Gothus traced the origin of his ailments to a plague that struck the country in his youth. He was ill with the plague for many weeks, with a severe pain in the left side of his waist, which forced him to lay on his right side. The result of this was that he permanently injured his right hip, so that his leg and hip could not carry him and he needed crutches to walk, the leg being « so weak that it cannot lift or carry itself forward of its own accord, but is like half dead »33. Furthermore, the condition worsened during the course of his life. The leg became infected, swollen, and wounds appeared on it. The severity of the pain made him sleepless at night, and disturbed during the day. He stressed that the lack of function in his leg impaired his mobility as well as made him dependent on others to care for his wounds and his household chores.
31The detailed descriptions of bodily impairment in both texts reveal how bodily function and bodily sensations were central to the lived experience of these individuals. The fact that they were conveying so many details about their bodily conditions when writing to other people seems, furthermore, to suggest that they relied on their surroundings to find them meaningful as well. However, the « context of possibilities » needs to be examined more closely to uncover which meanings these descriptions, and by extension, experiences, had to these writers and their readers. Although both texts are rather brief, they seem to invoke entangled social, religious and medical historical contexts, which could help us make sense of how they experienced their bodily ailments.
- 34 See Å. Andrén, Sveriges kyrkohistoria: Reformationstid, Stockholm, Verbum i samarbete med Svenska k (...)
32Sweden was gradually incorporated in the Roman church from the 11th century onwards and was by the Renaissance a relatively big but very sparsely populated realm with weak central power. During the early 16th century, the crown extended its power rapidly and the Lutheran Reformation was implemented by the king Gustav Vasa with other reformers close to him. By the 17th century, the country was strictly Lutheran and aspiring for power in the Baltic region34. This is the social context in which both writers find themselves. Petrus Johannes Gothus was writing from Lutheran parts of Germany, but he was addressing a Swedish audience.
- 35 Two well-known studies are M. Foucault, The birth of the clinic : an archaeology of medical percept (...)
- 36 G. Bjarne Larsson, « Skärseld, mässor och döda själar 1527 », Auktoritet i förvandling: Omförhandli (...)
33The historical development of a strong Lutheran state is central for understanding the lives of people in need of help and support. Both in Sweden and in Europe as a whole, the 16th- and 17th centuries have been pointed out as a period when attitudes towards people in need and diverging people hardened35. In Sweden, historians have pointed out the Reformation as a motor for these changes. Scholars have shown that the care for people in need of different kinds of support changed significantly and abruptly as a result of religious reforms. It has for example been shown that care for the elderly and poor people in Stockholm was reorganised at the beginning of the 16th century. It has also been shown that the financial situation for care changed significantly as donations to shrines and churches became less frequent as a result of the Reformation. Additionally, the politics of care for poor people in the capital has been shown to be increasingly restrictive during the 17th century36.
34Looking at the two texts, it is apparent that both writers were seeking support, albeit in different situations. Ingrid Håkansdotter was writing to the public office in charge of poor relief in Stockholm in the 17th century to request help for meeting her daily needs. There is little information about her personal circumstances apart from her physical condition, but the fact that she was pleading with a public authority suggests that she was destitute.
35Petrus Johannis Gothus was a prolific publisher, pleading with wealthy mercenaries to finance his work as a publisher. Little is known about his personal circumstances, but he emphasised strongly that he was in need of support to manage his day-to-day life because of his injured leg.
- 37 Ibid.
- 38 K. Weber, « Petrus Johannis Gothus, 1536-1616 », Svenskt Översättarlexikon, URL : https://litteratu (...)
36Without knowing more about the lives of these individuals, it is, of course, impossible to connect them directly to the hardening climate for people in need of care during the 16th- and 17th centuries. It is likely that Ingrid Håkansdotter experienced first-hand the harsh attitude of public authorities towards people in need, since the Justitiekollegium was systematically treating people in need of support very harshly, but if there was an answer to her plead, there is no surviving record of it37. Petrus Johannis Gothus, on the other hand, was asking for assistance outside of the public sphere and instead seeking the help of wealthy mercenaries. Although we cannot know their attitude towards him from the text under scrutiny here, his continued production of printed books suggests that he somehow found means to sustain himself38.
37What is clear in regards to the question of need and support is that they both gave their bodies a significant role in their pleading. As we have seen, they both described their physical ailments in detail and took care of informing their readers about how it affected their daily lives as well as their ability to support themselves. This focus on bodily impairment suggests that they saw bodily function as significant for themselves as well as for potential benefactors. It might be that in a situation where being dependent on others for one’s subsistence was increasingly difficult, variety in bodily function was something that set one apart from others in need.
38Although Lutheranism provides a social context in which the situation for people in need was worsening, it is apparent from the texts that religion also provided an important framework for how they understood their situation. Christian moral and imagery are central in both texts.
- 39 Stockholm, Stockholm City Archive, Justitiekollegium, EIa: I.
- 40 Compare M. Eyice, An emotional landscape of devotion: religious experience in Reformation-period Sw (...)
39Ingrid Håkansdotter was applying a language infused with religious references. She repeatedly referred to herself as « poor », « wretched » and « sinful » and formulated her request as a « humble petition »39. These formulations are identical to common formulas found in religious texts such as prayer books and comfort books, and she used them to create an image of subordination towards the public office. At the same time, she powerfully connected her situation of need and suffering to ideals of Christian devotion40. She was thus positioning herself in relation to a worldly authority in the same way as she would as a devout Christian in relation to the divine.
- 41 Compare K. McLelland, « The lame man makes the best leacher: Sex, sin and the disabled Renaissance (...)
40Furthermore, in relation to her descriptions of bodily ailments, the evocation of Christian imaginary of sin and wretchedness suggests a moral understanding of the body. The dis/abled body was often construed as morally deviant in Lutheran literature during the early modern period, and the connection between bodily impairment and religious subordination seems apparent in Ingrid Håkansdotter’s text as well41.
- 42 See foreword in Petrus Johannis Gothus, Om christeligit tålamod…, op. cit. n. 5.
41Petrus Johannis Gothus text is even more thoroughly infused with Christian ideals and is also explicitly applying evangelical imagery, as it is entitled « On Christian patience under the cross: for comfort and consolation to suffering people in the manifold constraints of this world ». It is clear that Petrus was counting himself among the sufferers. He dedicated a number of pages to list a series of tribulations, of which he considered his impaired leg to be the worst. It is also the most comprehensively described tribulation. He emphasised that he had lived according to Christian ideals despite his suffering and that he was confident that the suffering eventually would turn to joy and happiness when the heavenly path would be revealed, as it was to Christ, whom he called « the greatest carrier of the cross »42.
- 43 I. Metzler, A social history…, op. cit. n. 11, p. 2; K. McLelland, « The lame man… », art. cit. n. (...)
42It is clear from both texts that bodily suffering and impairment are strongly connected with Christian ideals and morals, but it is also remarkable that the religious understanding seems to inspire rather different sentiments in the two writers. While Johannes Petrus Gothus interpreted his bodily ailments as meaningful suffering that would be rewarded, Ingrid Håkansdotter seemed to see her bodily impairment as a sign of wretchedness and sinfulness. Both positions are well represented in research on dis/ability in the premodern period, but it seems like the idealised impaired body is more prominent during the Middle Ages and the link between impairment and moral dubiety grows stronger in the early modern period43. From these texts, it is apparent that both positions could be prevalent in the early modern period and it does not seem to be a clear dividing line between them, although the difference between the two writers might have to do with their respective societal standings.
- 44 See M. Eyice, An emotional landscape…, op. cit. n. 40 for further discussion of this claim.
43Furthermore, it seems clear that these positionings are infused with emotions. Concepts of sin, humbleness and wretchedness, as well as patient suffering, were emotionally infused for the Christians of the early modern period and the use of them were meaningful in creating emotional experiences44. In a religious context, then, it seems like an impaired and hurting body inspires religiously infused emotions, i.e., that emotions were evoked through a representation of the body.
- 45 U. Rublack, « Fluxes: The early modern body and the emotions », History Workshop Journal, 53, 2002, (...)
- 46 M. Stolberg, « Emotions and the Body in Early Modern Medicine », Emotion Review, 11/2, 2019, p. 113 (...)
44This is also apparent if we turn to the medical context. Nagy and Boquet showed that the body and the emotions were entangled in the medieval tradition, as we have seen above. The same has been shown for the early modern period. Emotions were central to the understanding of both physical and mental processes in early modern thinking. Ulinka Rublack has argued that emotions were understood as intrinsically situated in the physical body in the early modern period and thus that bodily function was understood as crucial to emotion and vice versa45. There are also examples of how early modern people understood dis/abilities or illnesses to have their causes in emotions, or conversely, that changes in emotional states could cure or worsen an illness or dis/ability46. Thus, early modern people saw the body and the emotions as intrinsically connected.
- 47 Stockholm, Stockholm City Achive, Justitiekollegium, EIa: I. The Swedish phrase is uti den eländigh (...)
45In both texts the writers discussed their bodily conditions in emotional terms. Ingrid Håkansdotter commenced her description of her physical ailments by stating that she had ended up « in such misery » that she has needed crutches to walk for five years47. Petrus Johannis Gothus also used the word « misery » to describe his bodily condition. Furthermore, he identified himself as a « bearer of the Cross » and likened his own suffering to the « torment » of Christ.
- 48 URL: http://www.saob.se/.
- 49 The Swedish phrase is att jag vet ofta icke vart jag skall vända mig, which literary means that he (...)
46Interestingly, moreover, both writers pointed out lack of rest as something particularly disturbing. Ingrid Håkansdotter wrote that her physical condition forced her to sit upright day and night, and that she could therefore get no rest or tranquillity. The Swedish word used in the text is ro, which indicates both physical rest and peace of mind48. When Petrus Johannis Gothus was describing the steadily worsening condition of his right leg and hip, he emphasised how the pain gave him such agony that he was often desperate, and got very little sleep at night and little rest and comfort during the day49.
47It is evident from these examples that both writers understood their physical condition as a state of emotional suffering. « Misery » is used by both writers a general description of their bodily situation, including pain, lack of function, the position of dependence it placed them in and the suffering that came from all of it. Moreover, the references to sleep-deprivation show in a very clear way that they both considered bodily conditions to essentially interlinked with emotional states.
48Looking at these statements about two early modern bodies makes apparent that the writers understood their embodied selves through the specific contexts they found themselves in. Both bodies were suffering from physical ailments, and these were interpreted through social, religious and medical frameworks. The likenesses between the two are apparent, but there are also marked differences in how they seem to perceive themselves. The religious imagery evoked in the two texts highlights that the same framework can be perceived differently depending on ambient factors. The misery they both experienced seems to have brought Petrus Johannis Gothus closer to the divine while it made manifest Ingrid Håkansdotter’s sinfulness.
- 50 Compare discussion in R. Boddice and M. Smith, Emotion…, op. cit. n. 2, p. 33.
49It would of course be easy to write these differences off as a matter of rhetoric. As a positioning of the writer in relation to the audience from which he or she desires something. However, taking seriously the notion in both history of emotions and history of experience that the lived experience of the individual is created in relation to his or her historical context means that these differences must be considered significant for how Petrus Johannis and Ingrid Håkansdotter experienced their lives50.
5. Conclusion
50The two examples discussed in this article seem to suggest that bodily variety was made into comprehensible experience through a number of culturally specific contexts. Both writers understood their bodies as significant for themselves and for others. They appreciated that bodily suffering as well as lack of bodily function shaped their lives. It made them dependent on others to meet their daily needs and it shaped how they perceived themselves. In other words, it was formative for how they experienced their existence. The body did not stand alone, however. It was entangled in the social, religious, and medical contexts of its time and place. The sociocultural climate of the Swedish 17th century was formative for how the writers experienced their bodies, so was the Lutheran religious framework in which suffering and variety in bodily function were understood as both moral and devotional, as well as a medical understanding in which emotions were rooted in the physical body.
51Looking at the two texts through their contexts lies bare that bodies mattered to early modern people in many ways and that neither a dis/ability history approach nor a history of emotions approach by itself is enough to make sense of how they created lived experience. Instead, thinking in the terms of history of experience seems more useful because it offers tools to consider historical contexts, even if Boddice and Smith’s call to merge the history of emotions with the history of the senses seems to restrict the study of embodied experience. The examples discussed in this essay suggest that bodily experience was even wider than sensory and emotional experience, and that the functioning of the body is also something to consider if one wants to understand experience in the premodern past.
Notes
1 Compare B. Frohne, « The body in pain », Dis/ability history der vormoderne. Ein handbuch, ed. C. Nolte, B. Frohne, U. Halle and S. Kerth, Affalterbach, Didymos-Verlag, 2017, p. 409-415.
2 See R. Boddice and M. Smith, Emotion, sense, experience, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020, for an up-to-date survey of research fields. This has happened in proximity to the wider « corporal turn » within the humanities, made manifest within the history discipline for example by C. BYNUM, « Why all the fuss about the body? A medievalist’s perspective », Critical Inquiry, 22, 1995, p. 1-33. However, this article will focus on the development within the research fields specified below.
3 See M. Eyice, « When feelings grow cold: What to do next in the history of emotions », Lychnos. Årsbok för idé- och lärdomshistoria, 2021, p. 295-307, for a discussion of state-of-the-art in History of emotions.
4 Stockholm, Stockholm City Archive, Justitiekollegium, EIa: I.
5 Petrus Johannis Gothus, Om christeligit tålamod vnder korsset een merkelig lära. Plågadom menniskiom til hugßwalelse och tröst i thenna werldennes margfalliga twång. Scriffuin och vthgångin aff Petro Iohannis Gotho Norcopensi, Rostock, 1601.
6 Within the field of disability studies, « the cultural model » uses the term « dis/ability » with a virgule to highlight the constructed nature of both infirmity and disability: see B. Frohne, « The cultural model », Dis/ability history…, op. cit. n. 1, p. 61. For a further discussion about the different strands of research within disability studies see § 1 in this article.
7 See for example H.-J. Stiker, A history of disability, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 2006; L. J. Davis, The disability studies reader, New York, Routledge, 2013; R. Hanes, I. Brown and N. E. Hansen, The Routledge History of Disability, London, Routledge, 2018, for introductions to the field of disability history.
8 I. Metzler, « The social model », Dis/ability history…, op. cit. n. 1, p. 59-61.
9 See for example Ead., Fools and idiots? Intellectual disability in the middle ages, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2016, p. 3‑13.
10 C. J. Kudlick, « Disability history: Why we need another “other” », The American Historical Review, 108, 2003, p. 763-793.
11 I. Metzler, A social history of disability in the Middle Ages: cultural considerations of physical impairment, New York, Routledge, 2013. See also Ead., Fools…, op. cit. n. 9.
12 B. Frohne, « The body in pain », art. cit. n. 1.
13 Ead., « The cultural model », art. cit. n. 6, p. 61-63.
14 See discussion about the historical actor according to the cultural model of dis/ability ibid.
15 See articles in Dis/ability history…, op. cit. n. 1.
16 Although for example Susan Wendell has urged for a recognition of the links beween disability and illness: see S. Wendell, « Unhealthily disabled: Treating chronic illnesses as disabilities », Hypatia, 16/4, 2001, p. 17-33.
17 J. Kuuliala, Saints, Infirmity, and Community in the Late Middle Ages, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2020, primarily discussion on p. 194.
18 K. Barclay, « State of the field: The history of emotions », History, 106, 2021, p. 456-466, esp. p. 457.
19 See for example discussion in R. Boddice, « History looks forward: Interdisciplinarity and critical emotion research », Emotion Review, 12/3, 2020, p. 131-134 and in P. Nagy and D. Boquet, « Pour une historie des émotions. L’historien face aux questions contemporaines », Le sujet des émotions au Moyen Âge, ed. Iid., Paris, Beauchesne, 2008, p. 15-52. See also L. FELDMAN Barrett, How emotions are made: the secret life of the brain, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017, which is an important influence for current trends within historical studies.
20 See primarily M. Scheer, « Are emotions a kind of practice (and is that what makes them have a history)? A Bourdieuian approach to understanding emotion », History and Theory, 51, 2012, p. 193‑220.
21 See primarily D. Boquet and P. Nagy, « Une histoire des émotions incarnées », Médiévales, 61, 2011, p. 5-24. Compare also P. Nagy and D. Boquet, « Pour une historie des émotions… », art. cit. n. 19.
22 D. Boquet and P. Nagy, « Une histoire des émotions incarnées », art. cit. n. 21, p. 14-19.
23 See for example K. Barclay, Caritas: Neighbourly Love and the Early Modern Self, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021; P. Carter, « Childbirth, ‘Madness’, and Bodies in History », History Workshop Journal, 91, 2021, p. 29-50 ; L. Kounine, Imagining the Witch: Emotions, Gender, and Selfhood in Early Modern Germany, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018; A. Runesson, Blod, kött och tårar: kroppslig erfarenhet i Sverige, ca 1600-1750, Stockholm, Historiska Institutionen-Stockholms universitet, 2021.
24 J. W. Scott, « The evidence of experience », Critical Inquiry, 17, 1991, p. 773-797; V. Kivimäki, S. Soudenjoki and T. Vahtikari, « Lived nation: Histories of experience and emotion in understanding nationalism », Lived nation as the history of experience and emotions in Finland, 1800-2000, ed. Iid., Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, p. 1-28, esp. p. 10-11; S. Katajala-Peltomaa and R. M. Toivo, « Introduction: Religion as historical experience », Histories of experience in the world of lived religion, ed. Eaed., Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, p. 1-35, esp. p. 8-9.
25 Lynn Hunt urges the history discipline to acknowledge how experience is based in the human body in relation to its outside surroundings and to make this understanding a basis for historical analysis: L. Hunt, « The experience of revolution », French historical studies, 32, 2009, p. 671-678, esp. p. 672-673. Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and Raisa Maria Tovio argue for seeing experience as a societal process in several layers, starting in the human body and developing in social contexts: S. Katajala-Peltomaa and R. M. Toivo, « Introduction… », art. cit. n. 24, p. 10-15. See also Eaed., « Introduction to medieval and early modern experiences of gender and faith », Lived religion and gender in late medieval and early modern Europe, ed. Eaed., London-New York, Routledge, 2021, p. 11-14.
26 R. Boddice and M. Smith, Emotion…, op. cit. n. 2, p. 17.
27 V. Kivimäki, S. Soudenjoki and T. Vahtikari, « Lived nation… », art. cit. n. 24, p. 15.
28 R. Boddice and M. Smith, Emotion…, op. cit. n. 2, p. 50. From a history of emotions perspective, Piroska Nagy and Xavier Biron Ouellet have also argued for the importance of understanding the context of a historical emotional event: P. Nagy and X. Biron Ouellet, « A collective emotion in Medieval Italy : The flagellant movement of 1260 », Emotion Review, 12, 2020, p. 135-145, esp. p. 136.
29 R. Boddice and M. Smith, Emotion…, op. cit. n. 2, p. 18 and following. See also discussion in M. Eyice, « When feelings grow cold… », art. cit. n. 3.
30 Feeling dis-ease in modern history: Experiencing medicine and illness, ed. R. Boddice and B. Hitzer, London, Bloomsbury, p. 13.
31 Ibid., p. 17.
32 The format of this essay is too narrow to do justice to the early modern context in which we find these texts. The following discussion serves as an example of what could be considered when establishing an early modern historical context.
33 The Swedish formulation is så svagt, att det förmå icke lyfta och föra sig fram med sin egen kraft, utan det är lika som halvdött (Petrus Johannis Gothus, Om christeligit tålamod…, op. cit. n. 5).
34 See Å. Andrén, Sveriges kyrkohistoria: Reformationstid, Stockholm, Verbum i samarbete med Svenska kyrkans forskningsråd, 1999 and The Scandinavian Reformation: From Evangelical Movement to Institutionalisation of Reform, ed. O. P. Grell, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995 for overviews of the Reformation and the development of the Church in Sweden during the 16th century.
35 Two well-known studies are M. Foucault, The birth of the clinic : an archaeology of medical perception, London, Routledge, 1989 and N. D. Jewson, « The disappearance of the sick-man from medical cosmology, 1770-1870 », Sociology, 10, 1976, p. 225-244. See also Health care and poor relief in Protestant Europe, 1500-1700, ed. A. Cunningham and O. P. Grell, London, Routledge, 1997.
36 G. Bjarne Larsson, « Skärseld, mässor och döda själar 1527 », Auktoritet i förvandling: Omförhandling av fromhet, lojalitet och makt i refomationens Sverige, ed. E-M. Letzter, Uppsala, Opuscula Historica Upsaliensia, 2012, p. 13‑32; C. Blom, Hospitalshjon och fribröder: de äldres villkor inom den offentliga vården från senmedeltiden till 1700-talets slut, Uppsala, Sociologiska institutionen-Uppsala universitet, 1991; C. Blom, Tiggare, tidstjuvar, lättingar och landstrykare: studier av attityder och värderingar i skrån, stadgar, ordningar och lagförslag gällande den offentliga vården 1533-1664, Lund, Lund University Press, 1992; C. Unger, Makten och fattigdomen: fattigpolitik och fattigvård i 1600-talets Stockholm, Stockholm, Stockholmia, 1996.
37 Ibid.
38 K. Weber, « Petrus Johannis Gothus, 1536-1616 », Svenskt Översättarlexikon, URL : https://litteraturbanken.se/%C3%B6vers%C3%A4ttarlexikon/artiklar/Petrus_Jo hannis_Gothus.
39 Stockholm, Stockholm City Archive, Justitiekollegium, EIa: I.
40 Compare M. Eyice, An emotional landscape of devotion: religious experience in Reformation-period Sweden, Turku, Iloinen tiede, 2019.
41 Compare K. McLelland, « The lame man makes the best leacher: Sex, sin and the disabled Renaissance body », Framing premodern desires: sexual ideas, attitudes, and practices in Europe, ed. S. Lidman, M. Heinonen, T. Linkinen and M. Kaartinen, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2017, p. 189-209.
42 See foreword in Petrus Johannis Gothus, Om christeligit tålamod…, op. cit. n. 5.
43 I. Metzler, A social history…, op. cit. n. 11, p. 2; K. McLelland, « The lame man… », art. cit. n. 41.
44 See M. Eyice, An emotional landscape…, op. cit. n. 40 for further discussion of this claim.
45 U. Rublack, « Fluxes: The early modern body and the emotions », History Workshop Journal, 53, 2002, p. 1-16.
46 M. Stolberg, « Emotions and the Body in Early Modern Medicine », Emotion Review, 11/2, 2019, p. 113-122.
47 Stockholm, Stockholm City Achive, Justitiekollegium, EIa: I. The Swedish phrase is uti den eländighet kommen.
48 URL: http://www.saob.se/.
49 The Swedish phrase is att jag vet ofta icke vart jag skall vända mig, which literary means that he does not know where to turn because of pain. See Petrus Johannis Gothus, Om christeligit tålamod…, op. cit. n. 5.
50 Compare discussion in R. Boddice and M. Smith, Emotion…, op. cit. n. 2, p. 33.
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Mari Eyice, « Experiencing the dis/abled body in Early Modern Sweden: an exploration of perspectives », Memini [En ligne], 28 | 2022, mis en ligne le 27 décembre 2022, consulté le 03 juin 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/memini/2333 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/memini.2333
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