The role of the Church in the origins of deaf education

Abstract

The aim of this study is to clarify historical questions about the origin of sign language, the role of the monastic Church in inventing the manual alphabet and differences between monks using monastic signs and the deaf using sign language. With the aid of documents and literature often inaccessible in Brazil, I attempt to reconstruct the fragmented narrative of the clergy's role in deaf education, as they found new ways to use manual signs created in those monasteries following the vote of silence, applying signing for pedagogical purposes. The focus of this study is the practice of signing by medieval monks and the investigation of how monastic signs migrated to the context of deaf education. Despite the loss of historical evidence, the results of this study show that even though there is scant evidence to link monastic signs to modern day sign language, manual alphabets presently used by the deaf community were in fact systematized during the monastic movement. © 2007 Revista Brasileira de Educação - ANPEd.