Magdalena, “Deaf and Mute,” Makes Her Roman Will (1590)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10410922 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thomas V Cohen (0009-0008-2576-3887, York University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 77 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1184-1221 |
| Publication date | 2024-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Renaissance Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0034-4338 • E-ISSN: 1935-0236 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/rqx.2024.433 |
| OpenAlex | W4410070333 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 19 |
By early modern Roman law, persons born deaf, if they could neither speak nor write, could not make their last will and testament. In the event recounted here, thanks to a coordinated effort by her family, her advocates, papal officialdom, her beneficiaries, and Magdalena herself, the formally impossible proved possible. This article, offering a close reading of the unusual document that lays out the complex tests applied to Magdalena to let her act as a legal persona, asks what her story reveals about the attitudes of the papal state, and of Romans, both to this disability and to the personhood of those who struggled successfully to overcome legal discrimination surrounding it
Linguistics · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Renaissance Literature and Culture
Deafness and Nonspeaking in Late Medieval Iceland (1200–1550)
Legitimacy and Law in the Roman World
Time, Space, and Devotion
Hearing Difference in Calvin’s Geneva
Ecclesiae militantis triumphi
"Holy Cozenage" and the Renaissance Cult of the Ear
Visual-Kinetic Communication in Europe Before 1600
Signing in the Seraglio
Roman Tales
A visual testament by Luca Riva, a deaf and mute pupil of the Procaccini
On Being Heard
Girolamo Cardano and Julius Caesar Scaliger in Debate about Nature's Musical Secrets
The Idea of Gesture as a Universal Language in the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries
Speaking in Hands
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |