Ways of Seeing: Staring at and Representing Disfigurement

Abstract

Vision lies at the heart of all medieval responses to disfigurement and difference: modern campaigners for facial equality argue that whilst the visual impact of a different face might be unavoidable, a negative response is almost always conditioned by socialization, that is, prejudice is learned, not inborn. A child growing up with visibly-different parents may realize that difference quite early in life, but will not make value judgments until it witnesses the responses of peers and/or their parents. In medieval culture, the assumption that a disfigured or scarred face might be seen and cause shame underpins the compensation demanded of the perpetrator of the injury (payments which, as we have seen, might continue long after the actual injury itself). The flipside, the exhibition of the judiciallymarked, did not work without an audience to understand the meaning of such marking. Yet the potential for sympathy, rather than derision, from onlookers suggests that the meaning of such marking was far from stable. It clearly motivated some rulers, for example, to disfigure and then seclude their "treacherous" subjects. The visible bramble scratch on the face singled out Helmstan as a cattle rustler, a branded face marked the repeat Lombard thief, noseless hostages were a sign of Cnut's ruthlessness. But difference might also attract attention because of attempts to conceal it: Notker the Stammerer tells the strange tale of a young man who, ashamed of his red hair and lacking a cap to cover it, attended Mass balancing one of his boots on top of his head. The bishop, annoyed at the lack of respect inherent in not removing headgear in church (and this is Notker's point