A Deformed Child and the ‘Fault’ of his Mother: the Monster of Bourges in Gregory of Tours

As Gregory of Tours reports (De virtutibus sancti Martini 2.24), in Bourges a child, ‘sinfully’ conceived on a Sunday night and born fearfully deformed, was nevertheless cared for by his mother, who refused to kill it, resisted the derision of neighbors and finally entrusted it to a group of beggars. The story of this monstrum – healed by two miracula performed by Saint Martin – allows us to formulate some reflections on socio-cultural (the connection between morbum and peccatum), economic (poverty, inheritance calculations, family planning), and juridical aspects (the relationship between imperial laws and ecclesiastical legislation) connected with abandonment and/or infanticide which, in always spell out 6th-century Gaul, could be the sad destiny of those with severe psychophysical handicaps.