Disabled Children: Changing Perspectives between Ancient World and Early Christianity

Abstract

Terms such as “handicap/disability” are absent from ancient thinking, and disabled people are not at all a focus of interest for the ancient authors. The attitude of an individual and of a society towards deformity is a cultural product informed by a particular value system (Garland 1992), and this is especially true for the perception and treatment of children born with malformations. The rejection of “defective” infants after birth was a practice thought morally acceptable in the Greek and Roman world. Conversely, Christian authors appear to have sided with their Jewish counterparts in challenging the morality of abortion, exposure, and infanticide under any circumstances. The late imperial laws partly transposed this new orientation. This paper will try to understand the Greek, Roman and Christian discourse on physical malformation and its actual impact on the daily life of adults and children. Above all, it will focus on the changes that have occurred in the different cultural passages, but nonetheless on the aspects that have remained constant over time.