Justitia Sengers – a Forgotten Sixteenth-Century Exegete

By Simonetta Carr - Posted at Place for Truth:

Blindness was common in ancient, medieval, and early modern Europe, due to the frequency of infections, malnutrition, accidents, and acts of violence, as well as to the lack of effective treatments. Some men, such as Jan Žižka, a commander of the Hussite forces, became legendary for their courage despite their blindness. Žižka, who had lost one eye in his youth, lost the other one in battle but still went on to lead his troops to victory.

Many blind people lived in poverty and were reduced to begging. Others were supported by their families. Most of them, however, were exposed to some kind of abuse and derision.

While the church in the Middle Ages provided some hostels for the blind, in the early modern era Juan Luis Vives, a Spanish humanist, began to advocate for training for the blind so they could work. “Some have a literary disposition,” he said, “provided that someone read to them. Let them study, for we observe that a number of them make progress in erudition that is not to be disdained.”[1]

Justitia Sengers was one of these people with a literary disposition. We know very little about her. In her commentary on Psalm 69, published in 1585 under the title Trostbüchlein, uber den Neun und Sechzigsten Psalm (Little Book of Comfort on the Subject of the Sixty-Ninth Psalm),[2] she doesn’t talk about herself. Only the title of the 1593 reprint of the same work mentions her blindness: From the Holy Ghost’s Description of the Suffering and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by a Maiden Who Was Born Blind, Justitia Sengers in Braunsweig. And that’s all we know.

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