![]() Leprosy was associated with sin, and those who had it were often condemned to social exclusion and forced to live as beggars–a fate represented perhaps most famously in Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid. While cases of leprosy are relatively rare and largely treatable in present-day Europe, in the late medieval period they were much more common. One of the major causes of blindness in medieval Europe was leprosy (now often known as Hansen’s disease). Why is the charming pup in the image above carrying a bowl? This dog, like the one in this mid-fourteenth century manuscript, may be collecting alms for his owner, since blind people in medieval Europe often faced significant financial struggles. Given their contexts within medieval prayer books, such images may have been intended as sites of ennobling reflection. ![]() A near-contemporary illustration of a blind man with a dog can be found in another Book of Hours, produced for a woman in Ghent (c.1315-25): ![]() It is striking that, among the manuscript illustrations of medieval guide dogs that have been identified, many are from such prayer books. Here, a blind man receives sight from Christ while his dog looks on: Our search for medieval guide dogs leads us to a Book of Hours (a popular type of medieval prayer book) produced slightly later, in the first quarter of the fourteenth century. In keeping with a growing (and important) interest in the history of disability, the goal of this post is to point to the variety of representations of guide dogs in medieval manuscripts, and to explore some of the roles of guide dogs in medieval Europe. The blind man wears patched clothing and seems to be a beggar: One of these is in a manuscript of the Decretals of Gregory IX produced in the South of France around the end of the thirteenth century (this is the same one I tweeted about awhile ago). But there are actually several earlier depictions of guide dogs that survive in medieval manuscripts. It has been suggested that the earliest surviving illustration of a guide dog (in the sense of a dog providing mobility support to a person with impaired vision) from Western Europe dates to the late fifteenth century. Were there guide dogs in medieval Europe? And what is the earliest picture of a guide dog? These questions are important for the history of disability and for our understanding of medieval culture.
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