Contemporary historical and medical writing on impairment in the medieval period claim the disabled were blighted evidence of God’s disfavour. Such opinions are often tautologies, unsupported by fourteenth-century primary sources such as Piers Plowman and Lollard writings. Vagrancy proclamations (1495), and dissolution of monasteries from 1538 encouraged self-sufficiency. Impairment may not have equalled poverty.
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