The change in sentiment and method could hardly be more strongly marked than by a comparison of “theTeaching” with St Ambrose’s (334-397) “Duties of the Clergy” (De Officiis Ministrorum). For the old instinctive obedience to a command there is now an endeavour to find a reasoned basis for charitable action. Pauperism is recognized. “Never was the greed of beggars greater than it is now.... They want to empty the purses of the poor, to deprive them of the means of support. Not content with a little, they ask for more.... With lies about their lives they ask for further sums of money.” “A method in giving is necessary.” But in the suggestions made there is little consistency. Liberality is urged as a means of gaining the love of the people; a new and a false issue is thus raised. The relief is neither to be “too freely given to those who are unsuitable, nor too sparingly bestowed upon the needy.” Everywhere there is a doctrine of the mean reflected through Cicero’sDe Officiis, the doctrine insufficiently stated, as though it were a mean of quantity, and not that rightly tempered mean which is the harmony of opposing moods. The poor are not to be sent away empty. Those rejected by the church are not to be left to the “outer darkness” of an earlier Christianity. They must be supplied if they are in want. The methodic giver is “hard towards none, but is free towards all.” Consequently none are refused, and no account is taken of the regeneration that may spring up in a man from the effort towards self-help which refusal may originate. Thus after all it appears that method means no more than this—to give sometimes more, sometimes less, to all needy people. In the small congregational church of early Christianity, each member of which was admitted on the conditions of strictest discipline, the common alms of the faithful could hardly have done much harm within the body, even though outside they created and kept alive a horde of vagrant alms-seekers and pretenders. Now in this department at least the church had become the state, and discipline and a close knowledge of one’s fellow-Christians no longer safeguarded the alms. From Cicero is borrowed the thought of “active help,” which “is often grander and more noble,” but the thought is not worked out. From the social side the problem is not understood or even stated, and hence no principle of charity or of charitable administration is brought to light in the investigation. Still there are rudiments of the economics of charity in the praise of Joseph, who made the peoplebuythe corn, for otherwise “they would have given up cultivating the soil; for he who has the use of what is another’s often neglects his own.” Perhaps, as St Augustine inspired the theology of the middle ages, we may say that St Ambrose, in the mingled motives, indefiniteness, and kindliness of this book, stands for the charity of the middle ages, except in so far as the movement which culminated in the brotherhood of St Francis awakened the intelligence of the world to wider issues.
The change in sentiment and method could hardly be more strongly marked than by a comparison of “theTeaching” with St Ambrose’s (334-397) “Duties of the Clergy” (De Officiis Ministrorum). For the old instinctive obedience to a command there is now an endeavour to find a reasoned basis for charitable action. Pauperism is recognized. “Never was the greed of beggars greater than it is now.... They want to empty the purses of the poor, to deprive them of the means of support. Not content with a little, they ask for more.... With lies about their lives they ask for further sums of money.” “A method in giving is necessary.” But in the suggestions made there is little consistency. Liberality is urged as a means of gaining the love of the people; a new and a false issue is thus raised. The relief is neither to be “too freely given to those who are unsuitable, nor too sparingly bestowed upon the needy.” Everywhere there is a doctrine of the mean reflected through Cicero’sDe Officiis, the doctrine insufficiently stated, as though it were a mean of quantity, and not that rightly tempered mean which is the harmony of opposing moods. The poor are not to be sent away empty. Those rejected by the church are not to be left to the “outer darkness” of an earlier Christianity. They must be supplied if they are in want. The methodic giver is “hard towards none, but is free towards all.” Consequently none are refused, and no account is taken of the regeneration that may spring up in a man from the effort towards self-help which refusal may originate. Thus after all it appears that method means no more than this—to give sometimes more, sometimes less, to all needy people. In the small congregational church of early Christianity, each member of which was admitted on the conditions of strictest discipline, the common alms of the faithful could hardly have done much harm within the body, even though outside they created and kept alive a horde of vagrant alms-seekers and pretenders. Now in this department at least the church had become the state, and discipline and a close knowledge of one’s fellow-Christians no longer safeguarded the alms. From Cicero is borrowed the thought of “active help,” which “is often grander and more noble,” but the thought is not worked out. From the social side the problem is not understood or even stated, and hence no principle of charity or of charitable administration is brought to light in the investigation. Still there are rudiments of the economics of charity in the praise of Joseph, who made the peoplebuythe corn, for otherwise “they would have given up cultivating the soil; for he who has the use of what is another’s often neglects his own.” Perhaps, as St Augustine inspired the theology of the middle ages, we may say that St Ambrose, in the mingled motives, indefiniteness, and kindliness of this book, stands for the charity of the middle ages, except in so far as the movement which culminated in the brotherhood of St Francis awakened the intelligence of the world to wider issues.
In Constantinople the pauperism seems to have been extreme. The corn supplies of Africa were diverted there in great part when it became the capital of the empire. This must have left to Rome a larger scope for the development of the civic-religious administration of relief. St Chrysostom’s sermons give no impression of the rise of any new administrative force, alike sagacious and dominant. The appeal to give alms is constant, but the positive counsel on charitable work isnil. The people had theannona civica, and imperial gifts, corn, allowances (salaria) from the treasury granted for the poor and needy, and an annual gift of 50 gold pounds (rather more than £1400) for funerals. Besides these there were many institutions, and the begging and the almsgiving at the church doors. “The land could not support the lazy and valiant beggars.” There were public works provided for them; if they refused to work on them they were to be driven away. The sick might visit the capital, but must be registered and sent back (A.D.382); the sturdy beggar was condemned to slavery. So little did almseffect. And in the East monasticism seems to have produced no firmness of purpose such as led to the organization of the church and of charitable relief under St Gregory.
Another movement of the Byzantine period was the establishment of the endowed charity. The Jewish synagogue long served as a place for the reception of strangers—a religiousξενοδοχεῖον. Probably the strangers referred to in “theTeaching” were so entertained. The table of the bishop and a room in his house served as the guest-chamber, for which afterwards a separate building was instituted. In the East the Jewish charitable inn first appears, and there took place the earliest extension of institutions. There was probably a demand for an elaboration of institutions as social changes made themselves felt in the churches. We have seen this in the case of theἀγάπη. Similar changes would affect other branches of charitable work. The hospital (hospitalium,ξενοδοχεῖον) is defined as a “house of God in which strangers who lack hospitality are received” (Suicerus,Thesaur.), a home separated from the church; and round the church, out of the primitiveξενοδοχεῖονof early Christian times and the entertainment of strangers at the houses of members of the community, would grow up other similar charities. InA.D.321 licence was given by Constantine to leave property to the Church. The churches were thus placed in the same position as pagan temples, and though subsequently Valentinian (A.D.379) withdrew the permission on account of the shameless legacy-hunting of the clergy, in that period much must have been done to endow church and charitable institutions. In the same period grew to its height the passion for monasticism. This affected the parish and the endowed charity alike. Under its influence the deacon as an almoner tends to disappear, except where, as in Rome, there is an elaborate system of relief. Nor does it seem that deaconesses, widows, and virgins continued to occupy their old position as church workers and alms-receivers. Naturally when marriage was considered “in itself an evil, perhaps to be tolerated, but still degrading to human nature,” and (A.D.385) the marriage of the clergy was prohibited, men, except those in charge of parishes, and women would join regular monastic bodies; the deacon, as almoner, would disappear, and the “widows” and virgins would become nuns. Thus there would grow up a large body of men and women living segregated in institutions, and forming a leisured class able to superintend institutional charities. And now two new officers appear, theeleemosynariusor almoner and theoeconomusor steward (already an assistant treasurer to the bishop), who superintend and distribute the alms and manage the property of the institution. (In the first six books of theApost. Constit.,A.D.300, these officers are not mentioned.) In these circumstances thehospitiumor hospital (ξενών,καταγώγιον) assumes a new character. It becomes in St Basil’s hands (A.D.330-379) a resort not only for those who “visit it from time to time as they pass by, but also for those who need some treatment in illness.” And round St Basil at Caesarea there springs up a colony of institutions. Four kinds principally are mentioned in the Theodosian code: (i) the guest-houses (ξενοδοχεῖα); (2) the poor-houses (πτωχεῖα), where the poor (mendici) were housed and maintained (theπτωχεῖονwas a general term also applied to all houses for the poor, the aged, orphans and sick); (3) there were orphanages (ὀρφανοτροφεῖα) for orphans and wards; and (4) there were houses for infant children (βρεφοτροφεῖα). Thus a large number of endowed charities had grown up. This new movement it is necessary to consider in connexion with the law relating to religious property and bequests, in its bearing on the rule of the monasteries, and in its effect on the family.
The sacred property (res sacra) of Roman law consisted of things dedicated to the gods by the pontiff with the approval of the civil authority, in turn, the people, the senate and the emperor. Things so consecrated were inalienable. Apart from this in the empire, the municipalities as they grew up were considered “juristic persons” who were entitled to receive and hold property. In a similar position were authorizedcollegia, amongst which were the mutual aid societies referred to above. Christians associated in these societies would leave legacies to them. Thus (W.M. Ramsay,Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, I. i. 119) an inscription mentions a bequest (possibly by a Christian) to the council (συνέδριον) of the presidents of the dyers in purple for a ceremonial, on the condition that, if the ceremony be neglected, the legacy shall become the property of the gild for the care of nurslings; and in the same way a bequest is left in Rome (Orelli 4420) for a memorial sacrifice, on the condition that, if it be not performed, double the cost be paid to the treasury of the corn-supply (fisco stationis annonae). No unauthorizedcollegiacould receive a legacy. “The law recognized no freedom of association.” Nor could any private individual create a foundation with separate property of its own. Property could only be left to an authorized juristic person, being a municipality or acollegium. But as the problem of poverty was considered from a broader standpoint, there was a desire to deal with it in a more permanent manner than by theannona civica. Thepueri alimentarii(see above) were considered to hold their property as part of thefiscusor property of the state. Pliny (Ep.vii. 18), seeking a method of endowment, transferred property in land to the steward of public property, and then took it back again subject to a permanent charge for the aid of children of freemen. By the law of Constantine and subsequent laws no such devices were necessary. Widows or deaconesses, or virgins dedicated to God, or nuns (A.D.455), could leave bequests to a church or memorial church (martyrum), or to a priest or a monk, or to the poor in any shape or form, in writing or without it. Later (A.D.475) donations of every kind, “to the person of any martyr, or apostle, or prophet, or the holy angels,” for building an oratory were made valid, even if the building were promised only and not begun; and the same rule applied to infirmaries (νοσοκομεῖα) and poor-houses (πτωχεῖα)—the bishop or steward being competent to appear as plaintiff in such cases. Later, again (A.D.528), contributions of 50 solidi (say about £19, 10s.) to a church, hostel (ξενοδοχεῖον), &c., were made legal, though not registered; while larger sums, if registered, were also legalized. So (A.D.529) property might be given for “churches, hostels, poor-houses, infant and orphan homes, and homes for the aged, or any such community” (consortium), even though not registered, and such property was free from taxation. The next year (530) it was enacted that prescription even for 100 years did not alienate church and charitable property. The broadest interpretation was allowed. If by will a share of an estate was left “to Christ our Lord,” the church of the city or other locality might receive it as heir; “let these, the law says, belong to the holy churches, so that they may become the alimony of the poor.” It was sufficient to leave property to the poor (Corpus Juris Civilis, ed. Krueger, 1877, ii. 25). The bequest was legal. It went to the legal representative of the poor—the church. Charitable property was thus church property. The word “alms” covered both. It was given to pious uses, and as a kind of public institution “shared that corporate capacity which belonged to all ecclesiastical institutions by virtue of a general rule of law.” On apia causait was not necessary to confer a juristic personality. Other laws preserved or regulated alienation (A.D.477,A.D.530), and checked negligence or fraud in management. The clergy had thus become the owners of large properties, with thecoloniand slaves upon the estates and the allowances of civic corn (annona civica); and (A.D.357) it was stipulated that whatever they acquired by thrift or trading should be used for the service of the poor and needy, though what they acquired from the labour of their slaves in the labour houses (ergastula) or inns (tabernae) might be considered a profit of religion (religionis lucrum).
The sacred property (res sacra) of Roman law consisted of things dedicated to the gods by the pontiff with the approval of the civil authority, in turn, the people, the senate and the emperor. Things so consecrated were inalienable. Apart from this in the empire, the municipalities as they grew up were considered “juristic persons” who were entitled to receive and hold property. In a similar position were authorizedcollegia, amongst which were the mutual aid societies referred to above. Christians associated in these societies would leave legacies to them. Thus (W.M. Ramsay,Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, I. i. 119) an inscription mentions a bequest (possibly by a Christian) to the council (συνέδριον) of the presidents of the dyers in purple for a ceremonial, on the condition that, if the ceremony be neglected, the legacy shall become the property of the gild for the care of nurslings; and in the same way a bequest is left in Rome (Orelli 4420) for a memorial sacrifice, on the condition that, if it be not performed, double the cost be paid to the treasury of the corn-supply (fisco stationis annonae). No unauthorizedcollegiacould receive a legacy. “The law recognized no freedom of association.” Nor could any private individual create a foundation with separate property of its own. Property could only be left to an authorized juristic person, being a municipality or acollegium. But as the problem of poverty was considered from a broader standpoint, there was a desire to deal with it in a more permanent manner than by theannona civica. Thepueri alimentarii(see above) were considered to hold their property as part of thefiscusor property of the state. Pliny (Ep.vii. 18), seeking a method of endowment, transferred property in land to the steward of public property, and then took it back again subject to a permanent charge for the aid of children of freemen. By the law of Constantine and subsequent laws no such devices were necessary. Widows or deaconesses, or virgins dedicated to God, or nuns (A.D.455), could leave bequests to a church or memorial church (martyrum), or to a priest or a monk, or to the poor in any shape or form, in writing or without it. Later (A.D.475) donations of every kind, “to the person of any martyr, or apostle, or prophet, or the holy angels,” for building an oratory were made valid, even if the building were promised only and not begun; and the same rule applied to infirmaries (νοσοκομεῖα) and poor-houses (πτωχεῖα)—the bishop or steward being competent to appear as plaintiff in such cases. Later, again (A.D.528), contributions of 50 solidi (say about £19, 10s.) to a church, hostel (ξενοδοχεῖον), &c., were made legal, though not registered; while larger sums, if registered, were also legalized. So (A.D.529) property might be given for “churches, hostels, poor-houses, infant and orphan homes, and homes for the aged, or any such community” (consortium), even though not registered, and such property was free from taxation. The next year (530) it was enacted that prescription even for 100 years did not alienate church and charitable property. The broadest interpretation was allowed. If by will a share of an estate was left “to Christ our Lord,” the church of the city or other locality might receive it as heir; “let these, the law says, belong to the holy churches, so that they may become the alimony of the poor.” It was sufficient to leave property to the poor (Corpus Juris Civilis, ed. Krueger, 1877, ii. 25). The bequest was legal. It went to the legal representative of the poor—the church. Charitable property was thus church property. The word “alms” covered both. It was given to pious uses, and as a kind of public institution “shared that corporate capacity which belonged to all ecclesiastical institutions by virtue of a general rule of law.” On apia causait was not necessary to confer a juristic personality. Other laws preserved or regulated alienation (A.D.477,A.D.530), and checked negligence or fraud in management. The clergy had thus become the owners of large properties, with thecoloniand slaves upon the estates and the allowances of civic corn (annona civica); and (A.D.357) it was stipulated that whatever they acquired by thrift or trading should be used for the service of the poor and needy, though what they acquired from the labour of their slaves in the labour houses (ergastula) or inns (tabernae) might be considered a profit of religion (religionis lucrum).
Thus grew up the system of endowed charities, which with certain modifications continued throughout the middle ages, and, though it assumed different forms in connexion with gilds and municipalities, in England it still retains, partially at least, its relation to the church. It remained the system of institutional relief parallel to the more personal almsgiving of the parish.
Monasticism, in acting on men of strong character, endowed them with a double strength of will, and to men like St Gregory it seemed to give back with administrative power the relentless firmness of the Roman. In the East it produced the turbulent soldiery of the church, in the West its missionaries; and each mission-monastery was a centre of relief. But whatever the services monasticism rendered, it can hardly be said to have furthered true charity from the social standpoint, though out of regard to some of its institutional work we may to a certain degree qualify this judgment. The movement was almost of necessity in large measure anti-parochial, and thus out of sympathy with the charities of the parish, where personal relations with the poor at their homes count for most.
The good and evil of it may be weighed. Monasticism working through St Augustine helped the world to realize the mood of love as the real or eternal life. Of the natural life of the world and its responsibilities, through which that mood would have borne its completest fruit, it took but little heed, except in so far as, by creating a class possessed of leisure, it created able scholars, lawyersand administrators, and disciplined the will of strong men. It had no power to stay the social evils of the day. Unlike the friars, at their best the monks were a class apart, not a class mixed up with the people. So were their charities. The belief in poverty as a fixed condition—irretrievable and ever to be alleviated without any regard to science or observation, subjected charity to a perpetual stagnation. Charity requires belief in growth, in the sharing of life, in the utility and nobility of what is done here and now for the hereafter of this present world. Monasticism had no thought of this. It was based on a belief in the evil of matter; and from that root could spring no social charity. Economic difficulties also fostered monasticism. Gold was appreciated in value, and necessaries were expensive, and the cost of maintaining a family was great. It was an economy to force a son or a brother into the church. The population was decreasing; and in spite of church feeling Marjorian (A.D.461) had to forbid women from taking the veil before forty, and to require the remarriage of widows, subject to a large forfeit of property (Hodgkin,Italy and her Invaders, ii. 420). Monasticism was inconsistent with the social good. As to the family—like the moderns who depreciate thrift and are careless of the life of the family, the monks, believing that marriage was a lower form of morality, if not indeed, as would at times appear, hardly moral at all, could feel but little enthusiasm for what is socially a chief source of health to the community and a well-spring of spontaneous charitable feeling. By the sacerdotal-monastic movement the moralizing force of Christianity was denaturalized. Among the secular clergy the falsity of the position as between men and women revealed itself in relations which being unhallowed and unrecognized became also degrading. But worse than all, it pushed charity from its pivot. For this no monasteries or institutions, no domination of religious belief, could atone. The church that with so fine an intensity of purpose had fostered chastity and marriage was betraying its trust. It was out of touch with the primal unit of social life, the child-school of dawning habits and the loving economy of the home. It produced no treatise on economy in the older Greek sense of the word. The home and its associations no longer retained their pre-eminence. In the extreme advocacy of the celibate state, the honourable development of the married life and its duties were depreciated and sometimes, one would think, quite forgotten.
The good and evil of it may be weighed. Monasticism working through St Augustine helped the world to realize the mood of love as the real or eternal life. Of the natural life of the world and its responsibilities, through which that mood would have borne its completest fruit, it took but little heed, except in so far as, by creating a class possessed of leisure, it created able scholars, lawyersand administrators, and disciplined the will of strong men. It had no power to stay the social evils of the day. Unlike the friars, at their best the monks were a class apart, not a class mixed up with the people. So were their charities. The belief in poverty as a fixed condition—irretrievable and ever to be alleviated without any regard to science or observation, subjected charity to a perpetual stagnation. Charity requires belief in growth, in the sharing of life, in the utility and nobility of what is done here and now for the hereafter of this present world. Monasticism had no thought of this. It was based on a belief in the evil of matter; and from that root could spring no social charity. Economic difficulties also fostered monasticism. Gold was appreciated in value, and necessaries were expensive, and the cost of maintaining a family was great. It was an economy to force a son or a brother into the church. The population was decreasing; and in spite of church feeling Marjorian (A.D.461) had to forbid women from taking the veil before forty, and to require the remarriage of widows, subject to a large forfeit of property (Hodgkin,Italy and her Invaders, ii. 420). Monasticism was inconsistent with the social good. As to the family—like the moderns who depreciate thrift and are careless of the life of the family, the monks, believing that marriage was a lower form of morality, if not indeed, as would at times appear, hardly moral at all, could feel but little enthusiasm for what is socially a chief source of health to the community and a well-spring of spontaneous charitable feeling. By the sacerdotal-monastic movement the moralizing force of Christianity was denaturalized. Among the secular clergy the falsity of the position as between men and women revealed itself in relations which being unhallowed and unrecognized became also degrading. But worse than all, it pushed charity from its pivot. For this no monasteries or institutions, no domination of religious belief, could atone. The church that with so fine an intensity of purpose had fostered chastity and marriage was betraying its trust. It was out of touch with the primal unit of social life, the child-school of dawning habits and the loving economy of the home. It produced no treatise on economy in the older Greek sense of the word. The home and its associations no longer retained their pre-eminence. In the extreme advocacy of the celibate state, the honourable development of the married life and its duties were depreciated and sometimes, one would think, quite forgotten.
We may ask, then, What were the results of charity at the close of the period which ends with St Gregory and the founding of the medieval church?—for if the charity is reflected in the social good the results should be manifest. Economic and social conditions were adverse. With lessened trade the middle class was decaying (Dill,Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, p. 204) and a selfish aristocracy rising up. Municipal responsibility had been taxed to extinction. The public service was corrupt. The rich evaded taxation, the poor were oppressed by it. There were laws upon laws, endeavours to underpin the framework of a decaying society. Society was bankrupt of skill—and the skill of a generation has a close bearing on its charitable administration. While hospitals increased, medicine was unprogressive. There were miserable years of famine and pestilence, and constant wars. The care of the poorer classes, and ultimately of the people, was the charge of the church. The church strengthened the feeling of kindness for those in want, widows, orphans and the sick. It lessened the degradation of the “actresses,” and, co-operating with Stoic opinion, abolished the slaughter of the gladiatorial shows. It created a popular “dogmatic system and moral discipline,” which paganism failed to do; but it produced no prophet of charity, such as enlarged the moral imagination of the Jews. It ransomed slaves, as did paganism also, but it did not abolish slavery. Large economic causes produced that great reform. The serf attached to the soil took the place of the slave. The almsgiving of the church by degrees took the place ofannonaandsportula, and it may have created pauperism. But dependence on almsgiving was at least an advance on dependence founded on a civic and hereditary right to relief. As thecolonusstood higher than the slave, so did the pauper, socially at any rate, free to support himself, exceed thecolonus. Bad economic conditions and traditions, and a bad system of almsgiving, might enthral him. But the way, at least, was open; and thus it became possible that charity, working in alliance with good economic traditions, should in the end accomplish the self-support of society, the independence of the whole people.
Part V.—Medieval Charity and its Development
It remains to trace the history of thought and administration in relation to (1) the development of charitable responsibility in the parish, and the use of tithe and church property for poor relief; and (2) the revision of the theory of charity, with which are associated the names of St Augustine (354-430), St Benedict (480-542), St Bernard (1091-1153), St Francis (1182-1226), and St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). (3) There follows, in reference chiefly to England, a sketch of the dependence of the poor under feudalism, the charities of the parish, the monastery and the hospital—the medieval system of endowed charity; the rise of gild and municipal charities; the decadence at the close of the 15th century, and the statutory endeavours to cope with economic difficulties which, in the 16th century, led to the establishment of statutory serfdom and the poor-laws. New elements affect the problem of charity in the 17th and 18th centuries; but it is not too much to say that almost all these headings represent phases of thought or institutions which in later forms are interwoven with the charitable thought and endeavours of the present day.
Naturally, two methods of relief have usually been prominent: relief administered locally, chiefly to residents in their own homes, and relief administered in an institution. At the time of Charlemagne (742-814) the system ofThe parish and charitable relief.relief was parochial, consisting principally of assistance at the home. After that time, except probably in England, the institutional method appears to have predominated, and the monastery or hospital in one form or another gradually encroached on the parish.
The system of parochial charity was the outcome, apparently, of three conditions: the position and influence of the bishop, the eleemosynary nature of the church funds, and the need of some responsible organization of relief. It resulted in what might almost be called an ecclesiastical poor-law. The affairs of a local church or congregation were superintended by a bishop. To deal with the outlying districts he detached priests for religious work and, as in Rome and (774) Strassburg, deacons also for the administration of relief. Originally all the income of the church or congregation was paid into one fund only, of which the bishop had charge, and this fund was available primarily for charitable purposes. Church property was the patrimony of the poor. In the 4th century (IV. Council of Carthage, 398) the names of the clergy were entered on a list (matriculaorcanon), as were also the names of the poor, and both received from the church their daily portion (cf. Ratzinger,Geschichte der kirchlichen Armenpflege, p. 117). There were no expenses for building. Before the reign of Constantine (306) very few churches were built (Ratzinger, p. 120). Thus the early church as has been said, was chiefly a charitable society. By degrees the property of the church was very largely increased by gifts and bequests, and in the West before St Gregory’s time the division of it for four separate purposes—the support of the bishop, of the clergy, and of the poor, and for church buildings—still further promoted decentralization. Apart from any special gifts, there was thus created a separate fund for almsgiving, supervised by the bishop, consisting of a fourth of the church property, the oblations (mostly used for the poor), and the tithe, which at first was used for the poor solely. The organization of the church was gradually extended. The church once established in the chief city of a district would become in turn the mother church of other neighbourhoods, and the bishop or priest of the mother church would come to exercise supervision over them and their parishes.In France, which may serve as a good illustration, in the 4th century (Ratzinger, p. 181) the civic organization was utilized for a further change. The Roman provinces were divided into large areas,civitales, and these were adopted by the church as bishop’s parishes or, as we should call them, dioceses; and the chief city became the cathedral city. The bishop thus became responsible in Charlemagne’s time both for his own parish—that of the mother church—and for the supervision of the parishes in thecivitas, and so for the sick and needy of the diocese generally. He had to take charge of the poor in his own parish personally, keep the list of the poor, and houses for the homeless. The other parishes were at first, or in some measure, supported from his funds, but they acquired by degrees tithe and property of their own and were endowed by Charlemagne, who gave one or more manses or lots of land (cf. Fustel de Coulanges,Hist, des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France, p. 360) for the support of each parish priest. The priests were required to relieve their own poor so that they should not stray into other cities (II. Counc. Tours, 567), and to provide food and lodging for strangers. The method was indeed elaborated and became, like the Jewish, that contradiction in terms—a compulsory system of charitable relief. The payment of tithe was enforced by Charlemagne, and it became a legal due (Counc. Frankfort, 794; Arelat. 794). At the same time two other conditions were enforced. Each person (unusquisque fidelium nostrorumoromnes cives) was to keep his own family,i.e.all dependent on him—all, that is, upon his freehold estate (allodium), and no one was to presume to giverelief to able-bodied beggars unless they were set to work (Charlem.Capit. v. 10). Thus we find here the germ of a poor-law system. As in the times of theannona civica, slavery, feudalism, or statutory serfdom, the burthen of the maintenance of the poor fell only in part on charity. Only those who could not be maintained as members of some “family” were properly entitled to relief, and in these circumstances the officially recognized clients of the church consisted of the gradually decreasing number of free poor and those who were tenants of church lands.Since 817 there has been no universally binding decision of the church respecting the care of the poor (Ratzinger, p. 236). So long ago did laicization begin in charity. In the wars and confusion of the 9th and 10th centuries the poorer freemen lapsed still further into slavery, or becamecolonior bond servants; and later they passed under the feudal rule. Thus the church’s duty to relieve them became the masters’ obligation to maintain them. Simultaneously the activity of the clergy, regular and secular alike, dwindled. They were exhorted to increase their alms. The revenues and property of “the poor” were largely turned to private or partly ecclesiastical purposes, or secularized. Legacies went wholly to the clergy, but only the tithe of the produce of their own lands was used for relief; and of the general tithe, only a third or fourth part was so applied. Eventually to a large extent, but more elsewhere than in England (Ratzinger, pp. 246, 269), the tithe itself was appropriated by nobles or even by the monasteries; and thus during and after the 10th century a new organization of charity was created on non-parochial methods of relief. Alms, with prayer and fasting, had always been connected with penance. But the character of the penitential system had altered. By the 7th century private penance had superseded the public and congregational penance of the earlier church (Dict. Christian Antiquities, art. “Penitence”). To the penalties of exclusion from the sacraments or from the services of the church or from its communion was coupled, with other penitential discipline, an elaborate penitential system, in which about the 7th century the redemption of sin by the “sacrifice” of property, payments of money fines, &c., was introduced. (Cf. for instance Conc. Elberti:—Labbeus i. 969 (A.D.305), with Conc. Berghamstedense, Wilkins, Conc. p. 60 (A.D.696), and the Penitential (p. 115) and Canons (A.D.960), p. 236.) The same sin committed by an overseer (praepositus paganus) was compensated by a fine of 100solidi; in the case of acolonusby a fine of 50. So amongst the ways of penitence were entered in the above-mentioned Canons, to erect a church, and if means allowed, add to it land ... to repair the public roads ... “to distribute,” to help poor widows, orphans and strangers, redeem slaves, fast, &c.—a combination of “good deeds” which suggests a line of thought such as ultimately found expression in the definition of charities in the Charitable Uses Act of Queen Elizabeth. The confessor, too, was “spiritualis medicus,” and much that from the point of view of counsel would now be the work of charity would in his hands be dealt with in that capacity. For lesser sins (cf. Bede (673-735),Hom.34, quoted by Ratzinger) the penalty was prayer, fasting and alms; for the greater sins—murder, adultery and idolatry—to give up all. Thus while half-converted barbarians were kept in moral subjection by material penances, the church was enriched by their gifts; and these tended to support the monastic and institutional methods which were in favour, and to which, on the revival of religious earnestness in the 11th century, the world looked for the reform of social life.
The system of parochial charity was the outcome, apparently, of three conditions: the position and influence of the bishop, the eleemosynary nature of the church funds, and the need of some responsible organization of relief. It resulted in what might almost be called an ecclesiastical poor-law. The affairs of a local church or congregation were superintended by a bishop. To deal with the outlying districts he detached priests for religious work and, as in Rome and (774) Strassburg, deacons also for the administration of relief. Originally all the income of the church or congregation was paid into one fund only, of which the bishop had charge, and this fund was available primarily for charitable purposes. Church property was the patrimony of the poor. In the 4th century (IV. Council of Carthage, 398) the names of the clergy were entered on a list (matriculaorcanon), as were also the names of the poor, and both received from the church their daily portion (cf. Ratzinger,Geschichte der kirchlichen Armenpflege, p. 117). There were no expenses for building. Before the reign of Constantine (306) very few churches were built (Ratzinger, p. 120). Thus the early church as has been said, was chiefly a charitable society. By degrees the property of the church was very largely increased by gifts and bequests, and in the West before St Gregory’s time the division of it for four separate purposes—the support of the bishop, of the clergy, and of the poor, and for church buildings—still further promoted decentralization. Apart from any special gifts, there was thus created a separate fund for almsgiving, supervised by the bishop, consisting of a fourth of the church property, the oblations (mostly used for the poor), and the tithe, which at first was used for the poor solely. The organization of the church was gradually extended. The church once established in the chief city of a district would become in turn the mother church of other neighbourhoods, and the bishop or priest of the mother church would come to exercise supervision over them and their parishes.
In France, which may serve as a good illustration, in the 4th century (Ratzinger, p. 181) the civic organization was utilized for a further change. The Roman provinces were divided into large areas,civitales, and these were adopted by the church as bishop’s parishes or, as we should call them, dioceses; and the chief city became the cathedral city. The bishop thus became responsible in Charlemagne’s time both for his own parish—that of the mother church—and for the supervision of the parishes in thecivitas, and so for the sick and needy of the diocese generally. He had to take charge of the poor in his own parish personally, keep the list of the poor, and houses for the homeless. The other parishes were at first, or in some measure, supported from his funds, but they acquired by degrees tithe and property of their own and were endowed by Charlemagne, who gave one or more manses or lots of land (cf. Fustel de Coulanges,Hist, des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France, p. 360) for the support of each parish priest. The priests were required to relieve their own poor so that they should not stray into other cities (II. Counc. Tours, 567), and to provide food and lodging for strangers. The method was indeed elaborated and became, like the Jewish, that contradiction in terms—a compulsory system of charitable relief. The payment of tithe was enforced by Charlemagne, and it became a legal due (Counc. Frankfort, 794; Arelat. 794). At the same time two other conditions were enforced. Each person (unusquisque fidelium nostrorumoromnes cives) was to keep his own family,i.e.all dependent on him—all, that is, upon his freehold estate (allodium), and no one was to presume to giverelief to able-bodied beggars unless they were set to work (Charlem.Capit. v. 10). Thus we find here the germ of a poor-law system. As in the times of theannona civica, slavery, feudalism, or statutory serfdom, the burthen of the maintenance of the poor fell only in part on charity. Only those who could not be maintained as members of some “family” were properly entitled to relief, and in these circumstances the officially recognized clients of the church consisted of the gradually decreasing number of free poor and those who were tenants of church lands.
Since 817 there has been no universally binding decision of the church respecting the care of the poor (Ratzinger, p. 236). So long ago did laicization begin in charity. In the wars and confusion of the 9th and 10th centuries the poorer freemen lapsed still further into slavery, or becamecolonior bond servants; and later they passed under the feudal rule. Thus the church’s duty to relieve them became the masters’ obligation to maintain them. Simultaneously the activity of the clergy, regular and secular alike, dwindled. They were exhorted to increase their alms. The revenues and property of “the poor” were largely turned to private or partly ecclesiastical purposes, or secularized. Legacies went wholly to the clergy, but only the tithe of the produce of their own lands was used for relief; and of the general tithe, only a third or fourth part was so applied. Eventually to a large extent, but more elsewhere than in England (Ratzinger, pp. 246, 269), the tithe itself was appropriated by nobles or even by the monasteries; and thus during and after the 10th century a new organization of charity was created on non-parochial methods of relief. Alms, with prayer and fasting, had always been connected with penance. But the character of the penitential system had altered. By the 7th century private penance had superseded the public and congregational penance of the earlier church (Dict. Christian Antiquities, art. “Penitence”). To the penalties of exclusion from the sacraments or from the services of the church or from its communion was coupled, with other penitential discipline, an elaborate penitential system, in which about the 7th century the redemption of sin by the “sacrifice” of property, payments of money fines, &c., was introduced. (Cf. for instance Conc. Elberti:—Labbeus i. 969 (A.D.305), with Conc. Berghamstedense, Wilkins, Conc. p. 60 (A.D.696), and the Penitential (p. 115) and Canons (A.D.960), p. 236.) The same sin committed by an overseer (praepositus paganus) was compensated by a fine of 100solidi; in the case of acolonusby a fine of 50. So amongst the ways of penitence were entered in the above-mentioned Canons, to erect a church, and if means allowed, add to it land ... to repair the public roads ... “to distribute,” to help poor widows, orphans and strangers, redeem slaves, fast, &c.—a combination of “good deeds” which suggests a line of thought such as ultimately found expression in the definition of charities in the Charitable Uses Act of Queen Elizabeth. The confessor, too, was “spiritualis medicus,” and much that from the point of view of counsel would now be the work of charity would in his hands be dealt with in that capacity. For lesser sins (cf. Bede (673-735),Hom.34, quoted by Ratzinger) the penalty was prayer, fasting and alms; for the greater sins—murder, adultery and idolatry—to give up all. Thus while half-converted barbarians were kept in moral subjection by material penances, the church was enriched by their gifts; and these tended to support the monastic and institutional methods which were in favour, and to which, on the revival of religious earnestness in the 11th century, the world looked for the reform of social life.
To understand medieval charity it is necessary to return to St Augustine. According to him, the motive of man in his legitimate effort to assert himself in life was love or desire (amororcupido). “All impulses were onlyMedieval revision of the theory of charity.evolutions of this typical characteristic” (Harnack,History of Dogma(trans.), v. iii.); and this was so alike in the spiritual and the sensuous life. Happiness thus depended on desire; and desire in turn depended on the regulation of the will; but the will was regulated only by grace. God was thespiritualis substantia; and freedom was the identity of the will with the omnipotent unchanging nature. This highest Being was “holiness working on the will in the form of omnipotent love.” This love was grace—“grace imparting itself in love.” Love (caritas—charity) is identified with justice; and the will, the goodwill, is love. The identity of the will with the will of God was attained by communion with Him. The after-life consummated by sight this communion, which was here reached only by faith. Such a method of thought was entirely introspective, and it turned the mind “wholly to hope, asceticism and the contemplation of God in worship.” “Where St Augustine indulges in the exposition of practical piety he has no theory at all of Christ’s work.” To charity on that side he added nothing. In the 11th century there was a revival of piety, which had amongst its objects the restoration of discipline in the monasteries and a monastic training for the secular clergy. To this Augustinian thought led the way. “Christianity was asceticism and the city of God” (Harnack vi. 6). A new religious feeling took possession of the general mind, a regard and adoration of the actual, the historic Christ. Of this St Bernard was the expositor. “Beside the sacramental Christ the image of the historical took its place,—majesty in humility, innocence in penal suffering, life in death.” The spiritual and the sensuous were intermingled. Dogmatic formulae fell into the background. The picture of the historic Christ led to the realization of the Christ according to the spirit (κατὰ πνεῦμα). Thus St Bernard carried forward Augustinian thought; and the historic Christ became the “sinless man, approved by suffering, to whom the divine grace, by which He lives, has lent such power that His image takes shape in other men and incites them to corresponding humility and love.”
Humility and poverty represented the conditions under which alone this spirit could be realized; and the poverty must be spiritual, and therefore self-imposed (“wilful,” as it was afterwards called). This led to practical results. Poverty was not a social state, but a spiritual; and consequently the poor generally were not thepauperes Christi, but those who, like the monks, had taken vows of poverty. From these premisses followed later the doctrine that gifts to the church were not gifts to the poor, as once they had been, but to the religious bodies. The church was not the church of the poor, but of the poor in spirit. But the immediate effect was the belief for a time, apparently almost universal, that the salvation of society would come from the monastic orders. By their aid, backed by the general opinion, the secular clergy were brought back to celibacy and the monasteries newly disciplined. But charity could not thus regain its touch of life and become the means of raising the standard of social duty.
Next, one amongst many who were stirred by a kindred inspiration, St Francis turned back to actual life and gave a new reality to religious idealism. For him the poor were once again thepauperes Christi. To follow Christ was to adopt the life of “evangelical poverty,” and this was to live among the poor the life of a poor man. The follower was to work with his hands (as the poor clergy of the early church had done and the clergy of the early English church were exhorted to do); he was to receive no money; he was to earn the actual necessaries of life, though what he could not earn he might beg. To ask for this was a right, so long as he was bringing a better life into the world. All in excess of this he gave to the poor. He would possess no property, buildings or endowments, nor was his order to do so. The fulness of his life was in the complete realization of it now, without the cares of property and without any fear of the future. Having a definite aim and mission, he was ready to accept the want that might come upon him, and his life was a discipline to enable him to suffer it if it came. To him humility was the soul making itself fit to love; and poverty was humility expanded from a mood to a life, a life not guarded by seclusion, but spent amongst those who were actually poor. The object of life was to console the poor—those outside all monasteries and institutions—the poor as they lived and worked. The movement was practically a lay movement, and its force consisted in its simplicity and directness. Book learning was disparaged: life was to be the teacher. The brothers thus became observant and practical, and afterwards indeed learned, and their learning had the same characteristics. Their power lay in their practical sagacity, in their treatment of life, outside the cloister and the hospital, at first hand. They knew the people because they settled amongst them, living just as they did. This was their method of charity.
The inspiration that drew St Francis to this method was the contemplation of the life of Christ. But it was more than this. The Christ was to him, as to St Bernard, an ideal, whose nature passed into that of the contemplating and adoring beholder, so that, as he said, “having lost its individuality, of itself the creature could no longer act.” He had no impulse but the Christ impulse. He was changed. His identity was merged in that of Christ. And with this came the conception of agracious and finely ordered charity, moving like the natural world in a constant harmonious development towards a definite end. The mysticism was intense, but it was practical because it was intense. In that lay the strength of the movement of the true Franciscans, and in those orders that, whether called heretical or not, followed them—Lollards and others. Religion thus became a personal and original possession. It became individual. It was inspired by a social endeavour, and for the world at large it made of charity a new thing.
St Thomas Aquinas took up St Bernard’s position. Renunciation of property, voluntary poverty, was in his view also a necessary means of reaching the perfect life; and the feeling that was akin to this renunciation and prompted it was charity. “All perfection of the Christian life was to be attained according to charity,” and charity united us to God.
In the system elaborated by St Thomas Aquinas two lines of thought are wrought into a kind of harmony. The one stands for Aristotle and nature, the other for Christian tradition and theology. We have thus a duplicate theory of thought and action throughout, both rational and theologic virtues, and a duplicate beatitude or state of happiness correspondent to each. On the one hand it is argued that the good act is an act which, in relation to its object, wholly serves its purpose; and thus the measure of goodness (Prima Secundae Summae Theolog. Q.xviii. 2) is the proportion between action and effect. On the other hand, the act has to satisfy the twofold law, human reason and eternal reason. From the point of view of the former the cardinal factor is desire, which, made proportionate to an end, is love (amor); and, seeking the good of others, it loses its quality of concupiscence and becomes friendly love (amor amicitiae). But this rational love (amor) and charity (caritas), the theologic virtue, may meet. All virtue or goodness is a degree of love (amor), if by virtue we mean the cardinal virtues and refer to the rule of reason only. But there are also theologic virtues, which are on one side “essential,” on the other side participative. As wood ignited participates in the natural fire, so does the individual in these virtues (II. II.aelxii. l). Charity is a kind of friendship towards God. It is receivedper infusionem spiritus sancti, and is the chief and root of the theologic virtues of faith and hope, and on it the rational virtues depend. They are not degrees of charity as they are of (amor) love, but charity gives purpose, order and quality to them all. In this sense the word is applied to the rational virtues—as, for instance, beneficence. The counterpart of charity in social life is pity (misericordia), the compassion that moves us to supply another’s want (summa religionis Christianae in misericordia consistit quantum ad exteriora opera). It is, however, an emotion, not a virtue, and must be regulated like any other emotion (...passio est et non virtus. Hic autem motus potest esse secundum rationem regulatus, II. II.aexxx. 3). Thus we pass to alms, which are the instrument of pity—an act of charity done through the intervention of pity. The act is not done in order to purchase spiritual good by a corporal means, but to merit a spiritual good (per effectum caritatis) through being in a state of charity; and from that point of view its effect is tested by the recipient being moved to pray for his benefactor. The claim of others on our beneficence is relative, according to consanguinity and other bonds (II. II.aexxxi. 3), subject to the condition that the common good of many is a holier obligation (divinius) than that of one. Obedience and obligation to parents may be crossed by other obligations, as, for instance, duty to the church. To give alms is a command. Alms should consist of the superfluous—that is, of all that the individual possesses after he has reserved what is necessary. What is necessary the donor should fix in due relation to the claims of his family and dependants, his position in life (dignitas), and the sustenance of his body. On the other hand, his gift should meet the actual necessities of the recipient and no more. More than this will lead to excess on the recipient’s part (ut inde luxurietur) or to want of spirit and apathy (ut aliis remissio et refrigerium sit), though allowance must be made for different requirements in different conditions of life. It were better to distribute alms to many persons than to give more than is necessary to one. In individual cases there remains the further question of correction—the removing of some evil or sin from another; and this, too, is an act of charity.It will be seen that though St Thomas bases his argument on a duplicate theory of thought, action and happiness, part natural, part theologic, and states fully the conditions of good action, he does not bring the two into unison. Logically the argument should follow that alms that fail in social benefit (produceremissionem et refrigerium, for instance) fail also in spiritual good, for the two cannot be inconsistent. But in regard to the former he does not press the importance of purpose, and, in spite of his Aristotle, he misses the point on which Aristotle, as a close observer of social conditions, insists, that gifts without purpose and reciprocity foster the dependence they are designed to meet. The proverb of the “pierced cask” is as applicable to ecclesiastical as to political almsgiving, as has often been proved by the event. The distribution of all “superfluous” income in the form of alms would have the effect of a huge endowment, and would stereotype “the poor” as a permanent and unprogressive class. The proposal suggests that St Thomas contemplated the adoption of a method of relief which would be like a voluntary poor-law; and it is noteworthy that his phrase “necessary relief” forms the defining words of the Elizabethan poor-law, while he also lays stress on the importance of “correction,” which, on the decline and disappearance of the penitential system, assumed at the Reformation a prominent position in administration in relation not only to “sin,” but also to offences against society, such as idleness, &c.
In the system elaborated by St Thomas Aquinas two lines of thought are wrought into a kind of harmony. The one stands for Aristotle and nature, the other for Christian tradition and theology. We have thus a duplicate theory of thought and action throughout, both rational and theologic virtues, and a duplicate beatitude or state of happiness correspondent to each. On the one hand it is argued that the good act is an act which, in relation to its object, wholly serves its purpose; and thus the measure of goodness (Prima Secundae Summae Theolog. Q.xviii. 2) is the proportion between action and effect. On the other hand, the act has to satisfy the twofold law, human reason and eternal reason. From the point of view of the former the cardinal factor is desire, which, made proportionate to an end, is love (amor); and, seeking the good of others, it loses its quality of concupiscence and becomes friendly love (amor amicitiae). But this rational love (amor) and charity (caritas), the theologic virtue, may meet. All virtue or goodness is a degree of love (amor), if by virtue we mean the cardinal virtues and refer to the rule of reason only. But there are also theologic virtues, which are on one side “essential,” on the other side participative. As wood ignited participates in the natural fire, so does the individual in these virtues (II. II.aelxii. l). Charity is a kind of friendship towards God. It is receivedper infusionem spiritus sancti, and is the chief and root of the theologic virtues of faith and hope, and on it the rational virtues depend. They are not degrees of charity as they are of (amor) love, but charity gives purpose, order and quality to them all. In this sense the word is applied to the rational virtues—as, for instance, beneficence. The counterpart of charity in social life is pity (misericordia), the compassion that moves us to supply another’s want (summa religionis Christianae in misericordia consistit quantum ad exteriora opera). It is, however, an emotion, not a virtue, and must be regulated like any other emotion (...passio est et non virtus. Hic autem motus potest esse secundum rationem regulatus, II. II.aexxx. 3). Thus we pass to alms, which are the instrument of pity—an act of charity done through the intervention of pity. The act is not done in order to purchase spiritual good by a corporal means, but to merit a spiritual good (per effectum caritatis) through being in a state of charity; and from that point of view its effect is tested by the recipient being moved to pray for his benefactor. The claim of others on our beneficence is relative, according to consanguinity and other bonds (II. II.aexxxi. 3), subject to the condition that the common good of many is a holier obligation (divinius) than that of one. Obedience and obligation to parents may be crossed by other obligations, as, for instance, duty to the church. To give alms is a command. Alms should consist of the superfluous—that is, of all that the individual possesses after he has reserved what is necessary. What is necessary the donor should fix in due relation to the claims of his family and dependants, his position in life (dignitas), and the sustenance of his body. On the other hand, his gift should meet the actual necessities of the recipient and no more. More than this will lead to excess on the recipient’s part (ut inde luxurietur) or to want of spirit and apathy (ut aliis remissio et refrigerium sit), though allowance must be made for different requirements in different conditions of life. It were better to distribute alms to many persons than to give more than is necessary to one. In individual cases there remains the further question of correction—the removing of some evil or sin from another; and this, too, is an act of charity.
It will be seen that though St Thomas bases his argument on a duplicate theory of thought, action and happiness, part natural, part theologic, and states fully the conditions of good action, he does not bring the two into unison. Logically the argument should follow that alms that fail in social benefit (produceremissionem et refrigerium, for instance) fail also in spiritual good, for the two cannot be inconsistent. But in regard to the former he does not press the importance of purpose, and, in spite of his Aristotle, he misses the point on which Aristotle, as a close observer of social conditions, insists, that gifts without purpose and reciprocity foster the dependence they are designed to meet. The proverb of the “pierced cask” is as applicable to ecclesiastical as to political almsgiving, as has often been proved by the event. The distribution of all “superfluous” income in the form of alms would have the effect of a huge endowment, and would stereotype “the poor” as a permanent and unprogressive class. The proposal suggests that St Thomas contemplated the adoption of a method of relief which would be like a voluntary poor-law; and it is noteworthy that his phrase “necessary relief” forms the defining words of the Elizabethan poor-law, while he also lays stress on the importance of “correction,” which, on the decline and disappearance of the penitential system, assumed at the Reformation a prominent position in administration in relation not only to “sin,” but also to offences against society, such as idleness, &c.
On this foundation was built up the classification of acts of charity, which in one shape or another has a long social tradition, and which St Thomas quotes in an elaborated form—the seven spiritual acts (consule,carpe,doce,solare,remitte,fer,ora), counsel, sustain, teach, console, save, pardon, pray; and the seven corporal (vestio,poto,cibo,redimo,tego,colligo,condo) I clothe, I give drink to, I feed, I free from prison, I shelter, I assist in sickness, I bury (II. II.aexxxii. 2). These in subsequent thought became “good works,” and availed for the after-life, bringing with them definite boons. Thus charity was linked to the system of indulgences. The bias of the act of charity is made to favour the actor. Primarily the benefit reverts to him. He becomes conscious of an ultimate reward accruing to himself. The simplicity of the deed, the spontaneity from which, as in a well-practised art, its freshness springs and its good effects result, is falsified at the outset. The thought that should be wholly concerned in the fulfilment of a definite purpose is diverted from it. The deed itself, apart from the outcome of the deed, is highly considered. An extreme inducement is placed on giving, counselling, and the like, but none on the personal or social utility of the gift or counsel. Yet the value of these lies in their end. No policy or science of charity can grow out of such a system. It can produce innumerable isolated acts, which may or may not be beneficent, but it cannot enkindle the “ordered charity.” This charity is, strictly speaking, by its very nature alike intellectual and emotional. Otherwise it would inevitably fail of its purpose, for though emotion might stimulate it, intelligence would not guide it.
There are, then, these three lines of thought. That of St Bernard, who invigorated the monastic movement, and helped to make the monastery or hospital the centre of charitable relief. That of St Francis, who, passing by regular and secular clergy alike, revived and reinvigorated the conception of charity and gave it once more the reality of a social force, knowing that it would find a freer scope and larger usefulness in the life of the people than in the religious aristocracy of monasteries. And that of St Thomas Aquinas, who, analysing the problem of charity and almsgiving, and associating it with definite groups of works, led to its taking, in the common thought, certain stereotyped forms, so that its social aim and purpose were ignored and its power for good was neutralized.
We have now to turn to the conditions of social life in which these thoughts fermented and took practical shape. The population of England from the Conquest to the 14th century is estimated at between 1½ and 2½Charity and social conditions in England.millions. London, it is believed, had a population of about 40,000. Other towns were small. Two or three of the larger had 4000 or 5000 inhabitants. The only substantial building in a village, apart perhaps from the manor-house, was the church, used for many secular as well as religious purposes. In the towns the mud or wood-paved huts sheltered a people who, accepting a common poverty, traded in little more than the necessaries of life (Green,Town Life in the 15th Century, i. 13). The population was stationary. Famine and pestilence were of frequent occurrence (Creighton,Epidemics in Britain, p. 19), and for the careless there was waste at harvest-time and want in winter. Hunger was the drill-sergeant of society. Owing to the hardship and penury of life infant mortality was probably very great (Blashill,Sutton in Holdernesse, p. 123). The 15th century was, however, “the golden age of the labourer.” Our problem is to ascertain what was the service of charity to this people till the end of that century. In order to estimate this we have to apply tests similar to those weapplied before to Greece and Rome and the pre-medieval church.
The Family.—Largely Germanic in its origin, we may perhaps set down as elemental in the English race what Tacitus said of the Germans. They had the home virtues. They had a high regard for chastity, and respected and enforced the family tie. The wife was honoured. The men were poor, but when the actual pressure of their work—fighting—was removed, idle. They were born gamblers. Much toil fell upon the wife; but slavery was rather a form of tenure than a Roman bondage. As elsewhere, there was in England “the joint family or household” (Pollock and Maitland,English Law before Edward I.i. 31). Each member of the community was, or should be, under some lord; for the lordless man was, like the wanderer in Homer, who belonged to no phratry, suspected and dangerous, and his kinsfolk might be required to find a lord for him. There was personal servitude, but it was not of one complexion; there were grades amongst the unfree, and the general advance to freedom was continuous. By the 9th century the larger amount of the slavery was bondage by tenure. In the reign of Edward I., though “the larger half of the rural population was unfree,” yet the serf, notwithstanding the fact that he was his lord’s chattel, was free against all save his lord. A century later (1381) villenage—that is payment for tenancy by service, instead of by quit-rent—was practically extinguished. So steady was the progress towards the freedom and self-maintenance of the individual and his family.The Manor.—In social importance, next to the family, comes the manor, the organization of which affected charity greatly on one side. It was “an economic unit,” the estate of a lord on which there were associated the lord with his demesne, tenants free of service, and villeins and others, tenants by service. All had the use of land, even the serf. The estate was regulated by a manor court, consisting of the lord of the manor or his representative, and the free tenants, and entrusted with wide quasi-domestic jurisdiction. The value of the estate depended on the labour available for its cultivation, and the cultivators were the unfree tenants. Hence the lord, through the manor-court, required an indemnity or fine if a child, for instance, left the manor; and similarly, if a villein died, his widow might have to remarry or pay a fine. Thus the lord reacquired a servant and the widow and her family were maintained. The courts, too, fixed prices, and thus in local and limited conditions of supply and demand were able to equalize them in a measure and neutralize some of the effects of scarcity. In this way, till the reign of Edward I., and, where the manor courts remained active, till much later, a self-supporting social organization made any systematic public or charitable relief unnecessary.The Parish and the Tithe.—The conversion of England in the 7th century was effected by bishops, accompanied by itinerant priests, who made use of conventual houses as the centres of their work. The parochial system was not firmly established till the 10th century (970). Then, by a law of Edgar, a man who had a church on his own land was allowed to pay a third of his tithe to his own church, instead of giving the whole of it to the minister or conventual church. Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury (667), had introduced the Carolingian system into England; and, accordingly, the parish priest was required to provide for strangers and to keep a room in his house for them. Of the tithe, a third and not a fourth was to go to the poor with any surplus; and in order to have larger means of helping them, the priests were urged to work themselves, according to the ancient canons of the church (cf. Labbeus, IV. Conc. Carthag.A.D.398). The importance of the tithe to the poor is shown by acts of Richard II. and Henry IV., by which it was enacted that, if parochial tithes were appropriated to a monastery, a portion of them should be assigned to the poor of the parish. At a very early date (1287) quasi-compulsory charges in the nature of a rate were imposed on parishioners for various church purposes (Pollock and Maitland, i. 604), though in the 14th and 15th centuries a compulsory church rate was seldom made. Collections were made by paid collectors, especially for Hock-tide (q.v.) money—gathered for church purposes (Brand’sAntiquities, p. 112). But there must have been many varieties in practice. In Somersetshire the churchwardens’ accounts (1349 to 1560) show that the parish contributed nothing to the relief of the poor, and it seems probable that the personal charities of the parishioners, and the charities of the gild fellowships and of the parsonage house sufficed (Bishop Hobhouse,Churchwardens’ Accounts, 1349-1560, Somerset Record Society). Many parishes possessed land, houses and cattle, and received gifts and legacies of all kinds. The proceeds of this property, if given for the use of the parish generally, might, if necessary, be available for the relief of the poor, but, if given definitely for their use, would provide doles, or stock cattle or “poor’s” lands, &c. (Cf. Augustus Jessopp,Before the Great Pillage, p. 40; and many instances in the reports of the Charity Commissioners, 1818-1835.) Of the endowments for parish doles very many may have disappeared in the break-up of the 16th century. There were also “Parish Ales,” the proceeds of which would be used for parish purposes or for relief. Further, all the greater festivals were days of feasting and the distribution of food; at funerals also there were often large distributions, and also at marriages. The faithful generally, subject to penance, were required to relieve the poor and the stranger. In the larger part of England the parish and the vill were usually coterminous. In the north a parish contained several vills. There were thus side by side the charitable relief system of the parish, which at an early date became a rating area, and the self-supporting system of the manor.The Monasteries.—As Christianity spread monasteries spread, and each monastery was a centre of relief. Sometimes they were established, like St Albans (796), for a hundred Benedictine monks and for the entertainment of strangers; or sometimes without any such special purpose, like the abbey of Croyland (reorganized 946), which, becoming exceeding rich from itsdiversorium pauperum, or almonry, “relieved the whole country round so that prodigious numbers resorted to it.” At Glastonbury, for instance (1537), £140 16s. 8d. was given away in doles. But documents seem to prove (Denton,England in Fifteenth Century, p. 245) that the relief generally given by monasteries was much less than is usually supposed.The general system may be described (cf. Rule,St Dunst. Cant. Archp.p. 42, Dugdale; J.B. Clark,The Observances, Augustinian Priory, Barnwell; Abbot Gasquet,English Monastic Life). The almonry was usually near the church of the monastery. An almoner was in charge. He was to be prudent and discreet in the distribution of his doles (portiones) and to relieve travellers, palmers, chaplains and mendicants (mendicantes, apparently the beggars recognized as living by begging, such as we have noted under other social conditions), and the leprous more liberally than others. The old and infirm, lame and blind who were confined to their beds he was to visit and relieve suitably (in competenti annona). The importunity of the poor he was to put up with, and to meet their need as far as he could. In the almonry there were usually rooms for the sick. The sick outside the precincts were relieved at the almoner’s discretion. Continuous relief might be given after consultation with the superior. All the remnants of meals and the old clothes of the monks were given to the almoner for distribution, and at Christmas he had a store of stockings and other articles to give away as presents to widows, orphans and poor clerks. He also provided the Maundy gifts and selected the poor for the washing of feet. He was thus a local visitor and alms distributor, not merely at the gate of the monastery but in the neighbourhood, and had also at his disposal “indoor” relief for the sick. Separate from the rest the house there was also a dormitory and rooms and the kitchen for strangers. Ahospitulariusattended to their needs and novices waited on them. Guests who were laymen might stay on, working in return for board and lodging (Smith’sDict. Christian Antiq., “Benedictine”).The monasteries often established hospitals; they served also as schools for the gentry and for the poor; and they were pioneers of agriculture. In the 12th century, in which many monastic orders were constituted, there were many lavish endowments. In the 14th century their usefulness had begun to wane. At the end of that century the larger estates were generally held in entail, with the result that younger sons were put into religious houses. This worldliness had its natural consequences. In the 15th century, owing to mismanagement, waste, and subsequently to the decline of rural prosperity, their resources were greatly crippled. In their relation to charity one or two points may be noted: (1) Of the small population of England the professed monks and nuns with the parish priests (Rogers,Hist. Agric. and Prices, i. 58) numbered at least 30,000 or 40,000. This number of celibates was a standing protest against the moral sufficiency of the family life. On the other hand, amongst them were the brothers and sisters who visited the poor and nursed the sick in hospitals; and many who now succumb physically or mentally to the pressure of life, and are cared for in institutions, may then have found maintenance and a retreat in the monasteries. (2) Bound together by no common controlling organization, the monasteries were but so many miscellaneous centres of relief, chiefly casual relief. They were mostly “magnificent hostelries.” (3) They stood outside the parish, and they weakened its organization and hampered its development.The Hospitals.—The revival of piety in the 11th century led to a large increase in the number of hospitals and hospital orders. To show how far they covered the field in England two instances may be quoted. At Canterbury (Creighton,Epidemics, p. 87) there were four for different purposes, two endowed by Lanfranc (1084), one for poor, infirm, lame and blind men and women, and one outside the town for lepers. These hospitals were put under the charge of a priory, and endowed out of tithes payable to the secular clergy. Later (Henry II.), a hospital for leprous sisters was established, and afterwards a hospital for leprous monks and poor relations of the monks of St Augustine’s. In a less populous parish, Luton (Cobbe,Luton Church), there were a hospital for the poor, an almshouse, and two hospitals, one for the sick and one for the leprous. The word “leper,” it is evident, was used very loosely, and was applied to many diseases other than leprosy. There were hospitals for the infirm and the leprous; the disease was not considered contagious. The hospital in its modern sense was but slowly created. Thus St Bartholomew’s in London was founded (1123) for a master, brethren and sisters, and for the entertainment of poor diseased persons till they got well; of distressed women big with child till they were able to go abroad; and for the maintenance, until the ageof seven, of all such children whose mothers died in the house. St Thomas’s (rebuilt 1228) had a master and brethren and three lay sisters, and 40 beds for poor, infirm and impotent people, who had also victual and firing. There were hospitals for many special purposes—as for the blind, for instance. There were also many hospital orders in England and on the continent. They sprang up beside the monastic orders, and for a time were very popular: brothers and sisters of the Holy Ghost (1198), sisters of St Elizabeth (1207-1231), Beguines and Beghards (seeBeguines), knights of St John and others.The Mendicant Orders.—The Franciscans tended the sick and poor in the slums of the towns with great devotion—indeed, the whole movement tells of a splendid self-abandonment and an intensity of effort in the early spring of its enthusiasm, and with the aid of reform councils and reformations it lengthened out its usefulness for two centuries.
The Family.—Largely Germanic in its origin, we may perhaps set down as elemental in the English race what Tacitus said of the Germans. They had the home virtues. They had a high regard for chastity, and respected and enforced the family tie. The wife was honoured. The men were poor, but when the actual pressure of their work—fighting—was removed, idle. They were born gamblers. Much toil fell upon the wife; but slavery was rather a form of tenure than a Roman bondage. As elsewhere, there was in England “the joint family or household” (Pollock and Maitland,English Law before Edward I.i. 31). Each member of the community was, or should be, under some lord; for the lordless man was, like the wanderer in Homer, who belonged to no phratry, suspected and dangerous, and his kinsfolk might be required to find a lord for him. There was personal servitude, but it was not of one complexion; there were grades amongst the unfree, and the general advance to freedom was continuous. By the 9th century the larger amount of the slavery was bondage by tenure. In the reign of Edward I., though “the larger half of the rural population was unfree,” yet the serf, notwithstanding the fact that he was his lord’s chattel, was free against all save his lord. A century later (1381) villenage—that is payment for tenancy by service, instead of by quit-rent—was practically extinguished. So steady was the progress towards the freedom and self-maintenance of the individual and his family.
The Manor.—In social importance, next to the family, comes the manor, the organization of which affected charity greatly on one side. It was “an economic unit,” the estate of a lord on which there were associated the lord with his demesne, tenants free of service, and villeins and others, tenants by service. All had the use of land, even the serf. The estate was regulated by a manor court, consisting of the lord of the manor or his representative, and the free tenants, and entrusted with wide quasi-domestic jurisdiction. The value of the estate depended on the labour available for its cultivation, and the cultivators were the unfree tenants. Hence the lord, through the manor-court, required an indemnity or fine if a child, for instance, left the manor; and similarly, if a villein died, his widow might have to remarry or pay a fine. Thus the lord reacquired a servant and the widow and her family were maintained. The courts, too, fixed prices, and thus in local and limited conditions of supply and demand were able to equalize them in a measure and neutralize some of the effects of scarcity. In this way, till the reign of Edward I., and, where the manor courts remained active, till much later, a self-supporting social organization made any systematic public or charitable relief unnecessary.
The Parish and the Tithe.—The conversion of England in the 7th century was effected by bishops, accompanied by itinerant priests, who made use of conventual houses as the centres of their work. The parochial system was not firmly established till the 10th century (970). Then, by a law of Edgar, a man who had a church on his own land was allowed to pay a third of his tithe to his own church, instead of giving the whole of it to the minister or conventual church. Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury (667), had introduced the Carolingian system into England; and, accordingly, the parish priest was required to provide for strangers and to keep a room in his house for them. Of the tithe, a third and not a fourth was to go to the poor with any surplus; and in order to have larger means of helping them, the priests were urged to work themselves, according to the ancient canons of the church (cf. Labbeus, IV. Conc. Carthag.A.D.398). The importance of the tithe to the poor is shown by acts of Richard II. and Henry IV., by which it was enacted that, if parochial tithes were appropriated to a monastery, a portion of them should be assigned to the poor of the parish. At a very early date (1287) quasi-compulsory charges in the nature of a rate were imposed on parishioners for various church purposes (Pollock and Maitland, i. 604), though in the 14th and 15th centuries a compulsory church rate was seldom made. Collections were made by paid collectors, especially for Hock-tide (q.v.) money—gathered for church purposes (Brand’sAntiquities, p. 112). But there must have been many varieties in practice. In Somersetshire the churchwardens’ accounts (1349 to 1560) show that the parish contributed nothing to the relief of the poor, and it seems probable that the personal charities of the parishioners, and the charities of the gild fellowships and of the parsonage house sufficed (Bishop Hobhouse,Churchwardens’ Accounts, 1349-1560, Somerset Record Society). Many parishes possessed land, houses and cattle, and received gifts and legacies of all kinds. The proceeds of this property, if given for the use of the parish generally, might, if necessary, be available for the relief of the poor, but, if given definitely for their use, would provide doles, or stock cattle or “poor’s” lands, &c. (Cf. Augustus Jessopp,Before the Great Pillage, p. 40; and many instances in the reports of the Charity Commissioners, 1818-1835.) Of the endowments for parish doles very many may have disappeared in the break-up of the 16th century. There were also “Parish Ales,” the proceeds of which would be used for parish purposes or for relief. Further, all the greater festivals were days of feasting and the distribution of food; at funerals also there were often large distributions, and also at marriages. The faithful generally, subject to penance, were required to relieve the poor and the stranger. In the larger part of England the parish and the vill were usually coterminous. In the north a parish contained several vills. There were thus side by side the charitable relief system of the parish, which at an early date became a rating area, and the self-supporting system of the manor.
The Monasteries.—As Christianity spread monasteries spread, and each monastery was a centre of relief. Sometimes they were established, like St Albans (796), for a hundred Benedictine monks and for the entertainment of strangers; or sometimes without any such special purpose, like the abbey of Croyland (reorganized 946), which, becoming exceeding rich from itsdiversorium pauperum, or almonry, “relieved the whole country round so that prodigious numbers resorted to it.” At Glastonbury, for instance (1537), £140 16s. 8d. was given away in doles. But documents seem to prove (Denton,England in Fifteenth Century, p. 245) that the relief generally given by monasteries was much less than is usually supposed.
The general system may be described (cf. Rule,St Dunst. Cant. Archp.p. 42, Dugdale; J.B. Clark,The Observances, Augustinian Priory, Barnwell; Abbot Gasquet,English Monastic Life). The almonry was usually near the church of the monastery. An almoner was in charge. He was to be prudent and discreet in the distribution of his doles (portiones) and to relieve travellers, palmers, chaplains and mendicants (mendicantes, apparently the beggars recognized as living by begging, such as we have noted under other social conditions), and the leprous more liberally than others. The old and infirm, lame and blind who were confined to their beds he was to visit and relieve suitably (in competenti annona). The importunity of the poor he was to put up with, and to meet their need as far as he could. In the almonry there were usually rooms for the sick. The sick outside the precincts were relieved at the almoner’s discretion. Continuous relief might be given after consultation with the superior. All the remnants of meals and the old clothes of the monks were given to the almoner for distribution, and at Christmas he had a store of stockings and other articles to give away as presents to widows, orphans and poor clerks. He also provided the Maundy gifts and selected the poor for the washing of feet. He was thus a local visitor and alms distributor, not merely at the gate of the monastery but in the neighbourhood, and had also at his disposal “indoor” relief for the sick. Separate from the rest the house there was also a dormitory and rooms and the kitchen for strangers. Ahospitulariusattended to their needs and novices waited on them. Guests who were laymen might stay on, working in return for board and lodging (Smith’sDict. Christian Antiq., “Benedictine”).
The monasteries often established hospitals; they served also as schools for the gentry and for the poor; and they were pioneers of agriculture. In the 12th century, in which many monastic orders were constituted, there were many lavish endowments. In the 14th century their usefulness had begun to wane. At the end of that century the larger estates were generally held in entail, with the result that younger sons were put into religious houses. This worldliness had its natural consequences. In the 15th century, owing to mismanagement, waste, and subsequently to the decline of rural prosperity, their resources were greatly crippled. In their relation to charity one or two points may be noted: (1) Of the small population of England the professed monks and nuns with the parish priests (Rogers,Hist. Agric. and Prices, i. 58) numbered at least 30,000 or 40,000. This number of celibates was a standing protest against the moral sufficiency of the family life. On the other hand, amongst them were the brothers and sisters who visited the poor and nursed the sick in hospitals; and many who now succumb physically or mentally to the pressure of life, and are cared for in institutions, may then have found maintenance and a retreat in the monasteries. (2) Bound together by no common controlling organization, the monasteries were but so many miscellaneous centres of relief, chiefly casual relief. They were mostly “magnificent hostelries.” (3) They stood outside the parish, and they weakened its organization and hampered its development.
The Hospitals.—The revival of piety in the 11th century led to a large increase in the number of hospitals and hospital orders. To show how far they covered the field in England two instances may be quoted. At Canterbury (Creighton,Epidemics, p. 87) there were four for different purposes, two endowed by Lanfranc (1084), one for poor, infirm, lame and blind men and women, and one outside the town for lepers. These hospitals were put under the charge of a priory, and endowed out of tithes payable to the secular clergy. Later (Henry II.), a hospital for leprous sisters was established, and afterwards a hospital for leprous monks and poor relations of the monks of St Augustine’s. In a less populous parish, Luton (Cobbe,Luton Church), there were a hospital for the poor, an almshouse, and two hospitals, one for the sick and one for the leprous. The word “leper,” it is evident, was used very loosely, and was applied to many diseases other than leprosy. There were hospitals for the infirm and the leprous; the disease was not considered contagious. The hospital in its modern sense was but slowly created. Thus St Bartholomew’s in London was founded (1123) for a master, brethren and sisters, and for the entertainment of poor diseased persons till they got well; of distressed women big with child till they were able to go abroad; and for the maintenance, until the ageof seven, of all such children whose mothers died in the house. St Thomas’s (rebuilt 1228) had a master and brethren and three lay sisters, and 40 beds for poor, infirm and impotent people, who had also victual and firing. There were hospitals for many special purposes—as for the blind, for instance. There were also many hospital orders in England and on the continent. They sprang up beside the monastic orders, and for a time were very popular: brothers and sisters of the Holy Ghost (1198), sisters of St Elizabeth (1207-1231), Beguines and Beghards (seeBeguines), knights of St John and others.
The Mendicant Orders.—The Franciscans tended the sick and poor in the slums of the towns with great devotion—indeed, the whole movement tells of a splendid self-abandonment and an intensity of effort in the early spring of its enthusiasm, and with the aid of reform councils and reformations it lengthened out its usefulness for two centuries.
As in the pre-medieval church, the system of relief is that of charitable endowments—a marked contrast toMedieval endowed charities.the modern method of voluntary associations or rate-supported institutions.