CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS.

Christian Charity in the First Centuries of the Church.—The Eastern Empresses.—The Holy Roman Ladies.—Olympiade, Melanie, Marcella, and Paula.—Charity at the Court of the Franks.—St. Margaret of Scotland and Matilda of England.—Hedwige of Poland.—Origin of the Lazar-houses.—The Lazarists in France and in England.—Progress and Vicissitudes of the Order of St. Lazarus.—The Foundations of St. Louis.—The Order of Mercy founded by St. Nolasque.—St. Catherine of Sienna and St. Francis.—Bernardin Obrégon.—Jean de Dieu.—Philippe de Néri.—Antoine Yvan.

At Christ’s coming, the Greco-Roman civilisation had reached the last stages of corruption, and the slavery of the vast majority of men failed to satisfy the thirst for supremacy which devoured the small section of privileged leaders in ancient society. The barbarian peoples, on their part, recognised no other power than that of brute force, nor any other pleasures than those of sanguinary orgies. To transform this condition of society, which toiled only for money and sensual enjoyment, Christ gave forth these touching and sublime words, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: blessed are the pure in heart” (Beati pauperes spiritu: beati mundo corde). To the savage spirit of the barbarian who deified brute force Christ opposed the reverence for all that is weak and feeble by clothing himself with all manner of infirmities: “Come, ye blessed of my Father; I was poor, I was sick, I was in prison, and ye comforted me; inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

In these powerful words was contained the germ of modern civilisation;wherever the Gospel reaches a feeling of tenderness and respect for the poor and the weak must go hand in hand with the spirit of chastity, self-denial, and devotion. Two words unknown to the old world sum up this transformation—humility and charity. The rich, the high-born, and even the offspring of royalty, from the moment they believe in the divine word, are found tending the sick in hospitals, and the proof of true belief in the Messiah is ever the same as that which He gave to attest his divine mission to John’s disciples: “Unto the poor the Gospel is preached.”

Fig. 265.—Hospitality.—Jesus Christ, represented as a Pilgrim, being received by two Preaching Brothers of the Order of St. Dominic.—Fresco-painting by Fra Angelico in St. Mark’s Convent at Florence (Fifteenth Century).

From the first days of Christianity we find the great apostle of the Gentiles recommending the giving of alms, and stimulating the generosity of the faithful. “If the amount collected,” he says, “makes it worth while, I will come myself and take it to our brethren.” The apostles appointed deacons to distribute the alms. One of those who reflected the greatest honour on this appointment was St. Laurentius, the noble martyr. He had seen his bishop, his spiritual father, led out to execution, and he became entrusted with the care of the property of his church (Fig. 266). The prefect of the prætorium said to him, “I know that you have gold and silver vessels for your sacrifices; let me have these treasures, which the prince requires for maintaining his troops.” The holy deacon replied, “I know that our church is rich; I will let you have all its most valuable contents, but you must give me three days to put everything in order.” He madeuse of this delay to bring together the poor whom he maintained, and divided the silver and gold amongst them. The prefect came upon the appointed day, and St. Laurentius, pointing to the crowd of halt and poor, said with a saintly pride, which he afterwards expiated by his martyrdom,“Here are the treasures which I promised you; the real gold is the divine light which illuminates these poor men, the disciples and brethren of Jesus Christ.”

Fig. 266.—Pope Sixtus II. handing to St. Laurentius, in 258, the Treasures of the Church, to be distributed amongst the Poor.—Fresco, painted by Fra Angelico, in the Chapel of Nicholas V. in the Vatican (Fifteenth Century).

Thus Christian charity began in the days of the apostles, and went on increasing even amidst persecution; but it did not reach its full expansion until the conversion of the Emperor Constantine at length obtained for the Church peace and liberty.

Helen, the wife of Constantius Chlorus, and mother of Constantine (247–328), may be regarded as having most brilliantly inaugurated the era of Christian charity in the Middle Ages. Simple and modest, kind to the suffering and to the needy, she tended and consoled the poor with maternal solicitude; her fortune was exclusively devoted to their relief. When, in her extreme old age, this pious lady went to visit the Holy Places in Palestine, she made most munificent gifts to the sick soldiers, whom the imperial government left without relief; also to the places where the inhabitants were poor; and to the religious houses and churches, whose mission it was “to succour the suffering members of Jesus Christ” (Fig. 265), according to the figurative expression which the new faith used to characterize human misery. She recalled the exiles, ransomed the captives, released from the mines the unfortunate men who had been condemned to labour underground, and obtained for them the means of living in open daylight, thus causing them to bless her name and that of her God. Her daughter Constance also devoted herself to works of charity; she was accompanied by a band of maidens whom she animated with her example—and this was, in fact, the first school of Sisters of Charity.

Despite the religious disputes of this century, Christian charity did not stop here; it received a further impulse during the reign of Theodosius, thanks to Placilla his wife, and to Pulcheria his daughter, both of whom were canonised after death. Placilla and Pulcheria were the guardian angels of the imperial palace, Placilla especially being full of compassion for all those who were in distress. She would go, without attendant, to visit the poor in their hovels; she passed whole days with the sick in the infirmaries attached to the canonical churches and convents, never shrinking from any charitable service, however repugnant it might be. Pulcheria, a worthy rival of her mother, was associated with her in all these good works by their eloquent panegyrist, St. Gregory of Nyssa. She was, nevertheless,outdone by another Pulcheria, grand-daughter of the great Theodosius, who was calledaugusta, and who already, at the death of her father the Emperor Arcadius, though at that time only sixteen, was a model of piety and wisdom; she established so severe a rule of life and such complete asceticism around her, that her palace was commonly “the convent” (asceterium vulgo diceretur). For forty years she reigned like a saint and a great empress, and this period was for the Church a golden age.

Fig. 267.—The Holy Brothers, Cosmas and Damianus (end of the Third Century), visiting a sick man and relieving him.—Picture on wood, by Francesco Peselli, in the Louvre (Fifteenth Century).

Many other heroines of Christian charity descended from an illustrious family at that time exiled in the forests of Pontus, were also distinguished by the same virtues; to wit, Emmelia, mother of St. Basilius, Macrina his aunt, and Macrina his sister, who were true servants of the poor, undertaking as they did long journeys to discover unknown suffering, with a view to its relief. Anthusa, mother of St. John Chrysostom, suffered great privations in order to give away as much as possible, whilst Olympiade, widow of a prefect of Constantinople, and heiress of an immense fortune, distributed her money with ungrudging freedom. The emperor, who was anxious to marry Olympiade to a member of his own family, deprived her ofthe management of her property, but afterwards restored it to her, knowing what a noble use she would make of it. Olympiade visited the sick, the orphans, the widows, and the aged, gave alms to the prisoners and the exiles, and ransomed the captives, for her liberality knew no bounds; she was, moreover, seconded in her works of charity by ecclesiastical virgins (vierges ecclésiastiques), devoted to the service of God. Never was woman’s apostolic mission more effective, nor had charity more zealous servants.

The wonderful influence which Olympiade and her companions exercised in the Christian world, towards the close of the fourth century, was derived from their ardent charity, which radiated from Constantinople throughout the whole empire, and awoke a sympathetic response at Rome, Milan, Lyons, Trèves, Rheims, &c. Thus Melanie, the elder daughter of the Consul Marcellinus, Proba, Falconia, St. Juliana, St. Demetriada, St. Paula, mother of St. Ambrose, and her daughter St. Marcellina, Roman ladies of the highest rank, were endowed with the heroism of the Roman character purified by the Christian religion. St. Ambrose, who has given us so touching an account of their good works, calls them “the august brides of Jesus Christ.” They dwelt with their own families, but passed nearly all their time in workshops, where they laboured together for the benefit of the poor, leaving off their occupations only to sing hymns, recite psalms, attend church for the hearing of God’s word, sharing with each other the task of instructing the people, distributing alms to the poor, and giving succour to the weak. Thus was prepared the way for the first charitable institutions which were called into existence at the bidding of Melanie the Younger, Fabiola, St. Paulina, and St. Pammachius, thanks to the help given by a great number of Roman ladies whose lives set an example of all the Christian virtues.

Whilst St. Melanie the Younger was exciting the enthusiasm of the Catholic world by her ardent charity, St. Marcella, the most illustrious of the gifted daughters of St. Jerome, was the pride and admiration of the Roman aristocracy. Gifted in the very highest degree both in respect to birth, wealth, grace, and beauty, at a time, too, when these rare endowments were rendered such a source of peril, owing to the capture of the Eternal City by Alaric (410), she had withdrawn to a modest dwelling on the Aventine Hill, with Principia, a young maiden recommended to her by St. Jerome. Here she had to submit to every kind of outrage, without permitting her zeal to be lessened by this cruel trial. She afterwardsopened a fresh centre of charity, having founded not far from Rome the Convent of the Relieving Virgins (Vierges Secourables), which was taken as a model for many similar institutions throughout Italy.

Fig. 268.—Robert I., Duke of Burgundy, having slain his father-in-law, builds the Church of Sémur to expiate the crime, and has the parricide represented on the building.—Tympan in the portico of the Church of Sémur (Eleventh Century).

Her friend St. Paula, who was Roman by birth, and a descendant of the Scipios, whose daughters were saints, whose theatre of action was in the East, whose tomb was at Bethlehem, and whose panegyrist was St. Jerome, followed in her footsteps. A widow at thirty, she effected a sweeping change in her own household and property, set all her slaves at liberty, and devoted herself to doing good; then shrouding herself in an incomparable modesty, and breaking off all her social ties, she emigrated to Palestine, where she worked miracles of charity. Long before her death, in 404, she had distributed all her worldly wealth to the poor. She had herself become so needy that it was necessary to borrow money to pay for her funeral, and her beloved daughter, who closed her eyes, inherited nothing but her faith and charity.

The marvels of charity wrought by the Christian ladies for two centuries were imitated in the fifth by many bishops, who had in turn become missionaries and dispensers of alms. St. Paulinus, the illustrious Bishop of Nolo, who died in 431 at the age of eighty, after having for forty years fed, clothed, and comforted the poor of his diocese, after having released the insolvent debtors from prison, ransomed the captives, and allowed himself to be sold as a slave to the barbarians in order to rescue from their hands the son of an unfortunate widow, is the most perfect type of the prelates of this remarkable epoch. Amongst his many other remarkable contributions to literature, must be cited his “Discourse on Almsgiving,” which is an eloquent expositionof his doctrine. St. Paulinus, by his teaching and his example, had formed an eminent school of disciples, amongst them Sulpicius Severus (363–420), who, in concert with some pious ladies of the Roman aristocracy, seems to have been desirous of inaugurating a new era of things in the reign of Gregory the Great.

The ransom of the captives was the most urgent of the works of charity in the sixth century, for the wars and invasions of the barbarians had reduced whole populations to slavery; and so the Church devoted all its resources and efforts to this work of redemption, Pope Gregory deeming no sacrifice too great for furthering it. He was, moreover, powerfully seconded by the earnest efforts of women who constituted themselves the humble handmaids of Jesus Christ. The Empress Constantina, her sister-in-law Theodissa, St. Sopatra, and St. Damienna, all of whom were imperial princesses, sent him enormous sums from Constantinople; the Empress Leontia, Theodelinda, Queen of the Lombards, and her son Theodoaldus acted in a similar manner. As Christianity extended westward, the bright light of charity radiated in the same direction. St. Adelberga, wife of the first Christian King of England, and her daughter Bertha, wife of Ethelbert, King of Kent, were zealous in the cause of benevolence upon their conversion to the faith.

This impulse given to the Christian spirit did not slacken: St. Clotilda, Queen of the Franks, who was guided by the counsels of the Archbishop of Rheims, the eminent doctor St. Remigius; St. Albofleda, sister of Clovis; St. Radegonda of Thuringia, wife of King Clotaire, who founded a hospital at Athies, and a monastery at Poitiers; and St. Bathilda, of noble birth, who, after degrading herself to the humble condition of slavery, shared the throne of Neustria as the wife of Clovis II., were so many heroines of charity. Bathilda, in the course of a long and wise administration of affairs (645–680), was the good angel of the unfortunate. The abbot St. Gènes was her almoner, and her privy councillors were St. Eloi, St. Owen, St. Leger—venerable prelates whose active and pious co-operation was in perfect harmony with the prompting of her own heart. She founded abbeys, and, what was even more useful, increased the number of hospitals which were built in every direction. The royal abbey of Chelles, near Paris, founded by Queen Clotilda and rebuilt by Bathilda, and another monastery which she constructed after the same plan, were establishments of religious education, literary instruction, and benevolence.

Fig. 269.—Works of Charity.—Reduced Fac-simile of a Drawing of the Fifteenth Century, attributed to Savonarola, in the National Collection of Drawings. The artist shows the practice of works of mercy being carried on in each of the detached cottages, the mottoes recalling the texts in which Christ intimates that at the Last Judgment the exercise of Charity will weigh heaviest in the scale. In No. 1, the sick are being tended in their beds or picked up in the streets; in No. 2, the people are being clothed; No. 3 represents travellers who are being given to drink; No. 4, the hungry receiving bread; No. 5, pilgrims being sheltered; No. 6, a dead body being prepared for burial; No. 7, the visiting of prisoners. The last scene is a sanctuary in which the divine sacrifice—the true source of Christian charity—is being celebrated, whilst a penitent is obtaining the remission of his sins because he has practised charity. In the foreground rich men are throwing their money into a heap, and the poor are receiving their share of it. The monk whose bust is seen to the left is perhaps Bernardin de Feltri, preaching in encouragement of this good work.

During the eighth and ninth centuries, a great number of hospitable houses were built upon the high-roads leading from France to Italy, from France to Spain, and also from Spain to the confines of civilised Germany. The Carlovingian kings, beginning with Charlemagne and ending with Charles the Bald, with the view of facilitating international commerce throughout the vast extent of their empire, ordered the establishment of a number of free houses of which travellers might make halting-places, and in which they could count upon finding not only security, but any assistance which they might require. The establishment of lazar-houses or lazarettos, the origin of which dates from the fifth century, seems to have been less a work of charity than a sanitary measure of precaution against leprosy, a terrible and incurable malady which was generally looked upon as a punishment from heaven. These lazar-houses increased in the West, as the relations of Europe with the East became more general. It is from this period also that may be dated the foundation of manyHôtels-Dieu, religious asylums, most of which were constructed in close proximity to the porch of the cathedral churches, taking the place of the ancient canonical infirmaries. Such was the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, the origin of which is lost in the obscurities of the Middle Ages.

After an interval of dejection and selfishness which must be attributed to the misfortunes that overwhelmed the peoples and ruined the Church, Christian charity, though permanent and persistent in each diocese, though too often ineffectual, was the distinguishing characteristic of several contemporary sovereigns. Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great (900–925), surnamed in the Roman breviary “the father of the poor and of the orphan,” must be mentioned as the first of them, for the various benevolent institutions which he created were never a burden upon his subjects, the whole cost coming out of his private revenues.

Canute I., leader of the Danes, converted to Christianity by a French princess to whom he was married, did as much good at the close of his reign as he had done evil in the early part of it by his persecution of the Christians (1016–1036). Olaus or Olaf of Sweden, and Olaus of Norway, King of the Scandinavians, founders of two Christian monarchies in the North, intermixed works of charity with dogmatic principles, and rendered the religion of Christ popular by making it contribute to the welfare of their subjects. But the two noblest types of the Christian Church in Northern Europeduring the eleventh century were Queen Margaret, wife of Malcolm, King of Scotland (1070–1095), and St. Matilda their daughter, wife of Henry I. of England.

Margaret, the mother of the poor, the consoler of the afflicted, looking upon her subjects as a large family committed to her charge by providence, underwent constant privations that she might have more to distribute in alms; she relieved sufferers before they had time to ask for help; inquired into hidden distress; sought out the insolvent debtors in order to free them from their liabilities; ransomed the prisoners of war, and visited constantly the hospitals which she had endowed or founded. Before sitting down to table, she washed the feet and dressed the wounds of the sick poor, while nine orphans and twenty-four widows or aged persons were always partakers of her meals. During Advent and Lent she had as many as three hundred at her table.

Her daughter Matilda, who was also canonised, survived her more than twenty-six years (1118). She founded two hospitals in London, and took great pleasure in visiting them, and tending the inmates with her own hands.

Fig. 270.—St. Elizabeth of Hungary, going to relieve the poor, suddenly sees the folds of her cloak covered with roses in full bloom.—From a Painting by Fra Angelico in the Academy of Fine Arts at Perugia (Fifteenth Century).

Before her day there was another St. Matilda, who was early instructed in the exercise of charity, first by her august mother, and afterwards by her grandmother, abbess of a convent at Erfurt, where she spent several years: she was a woman of true piety. She married the Emperor Henry, surnamed the Fowler, and owing to the wars in which her husband was constantly engaged, the regency was often entrusted to her. When she had resigned these high functions, which were very burdensome to her, she again became the influential adviser of the emperor, the counsellor of justice, the minister of clemency, and thefriend of the unfortunate. Left a widow, she retired, when her son succeeded his father on the throne, to her favourite convent of Northausen, a vast charitable foundation in which three thousand maidens belonging to the first families of Germany passed their lives in holy meditation, and in the relief of human suffering. Her three children, the Emperor Otho I., the Archbishop Bruno, the apostle of Germany, and Queen Gerberga, wife of Louis d’Outremer, King of France, reflected the virtues of their mother; but the memory of St. Matilda of Germany was still more vividly awakened in the person of her grand-daughter St. Adelaide, and of her great-grand-daughter Emma, wife of King Lothair.

Under the Emperor Henry II., surnamed the Pious, and the Empress Cunegunda, charitable establishments, hospitals, houses of relief, and places of refuge increased very largely, and when Conrad came to the throne at the death of Henry II., the empress-regent retired to the convent of Kaffung, which she had founded in the diocese of Paderborn, and devoted herself to the service of the poor and the sick who were under the special care of this institution.

Dambrooka, daughter of the despotic Boleslav, Duke of Bohemia, and wife of a duke of Poland whose hardness of heart she succeeded in softening, afterwards mother of Boleslav the Great, together with the Princess Adelaide of Poland, mother of St. Stephen I., the most famous of the Hungarian kings, were both celebrated for their charity and self-devotion, and, with St. Margaret of Scotland, Matilda of England, Matilda of Germany, and Adelaide of Germany, they prepared the way for St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207–1231), who reflected so faithfully the angelic disposition of her aunt Hedwiga, the patron-saint of the kingdom of Poland. It would seem, indeed, as if they all followed the same programme of benevolence. St. Hedwiga, daughter of the Duke of Carinthia, who by her marriage with Boleslav the Modest became Duchess of Poland and Silesia, created a new kind of charitable institution which was calculated to bring about the best results. She founded a convent of the Carthusian order at Trebnitz, of which her daughter Gertrude became an inmate, with the view of devoting it specially to the education, the marriage, and the dowry of girls who had been left unprovided for. She enriched it with very large donations, and a thousand needy persons were fed there every day, exclusive of the abundant alms and relief in kind which the community distributed without its walls.

At this epoch, the Abbey of Longchamps, near Paris, began its existencewith the modest and touching title of “the Humility of our Lady.” Isabella, the only sister of Louis IX., whom the saintly monarch made the minister of his bounty and kindness to the suffering, was the foundress of this institution. The nuns at Longchamps educated and maintained poor girls, and distributed the rest of their revenues in alms. Their rules, a model of good sense, wisdom, and charity, approved of by St. Bonaventura, were copied by several similar establishments. Isabella, who had consecrated herself to the service of God by taking the veil, besides instructing, caring for, and feeding the poor, also worked for them with her own hands. She established in the abbey a kind of workshop in which ladies of the highest rank, while singing hymns and reciting prayers, spun wool and made garments for the poor.

The Crusades, what with the additional calls which they made on public charity, and the epidemic diseases which they brought, had rendered greater development of works of mercy absolutely indispensable. Works of charity are, in fact, the most marked characteristics of the reigns of Louis VII., Philip Augustus, and Louis IX. (1179–1270); most notably of the last, in which the saint-king set all his contemporaries such an example of Christian self-denial. We possess, under the titleEtablissements de Saint Louis, a collection of the laws and ordinances framed by this great monarch, and forming an administrative code which displays wonderful sagacity, firmness, and forethought. His saintly mother, Blanche of Castille, to whose counsels he perhaps paid too little heed, seems to have taken a prominent part in the drawing up of this admirable code, which seems to breathe the true spirit of the Gospel. In St. Louis’s numerous and important charitable foundations, such as the Quinze-vingts, the Maison-Dieu, enlarged and endowed in Paris, the Hostelleries des Postes, in the chief towns of the kingdom, we recognise the collective work of this great king and his mother, who threw their love for humanity into the scale of politics (Fig. 271).

The angel of charity spread its wings over the West and the East, and whatever might be the final result of so many distant wars which were on that account the more perilous, they could not fail to bring about an infinite increase of benevolent institutions. The most important, in point of utility, was the extension of the hospitaller order of St. Lazarus.

Fig. 271.—St. Louis serving a Repast to the Poor.—Miniature from the “Petites Heures” of Anne of Brittany, which belonged to Catherine de Medicis (beginning of the Sixteenth Century), in the Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.

The Lazarists had two hospitals in Jerusalem, when Godfroi de Bouillon entered the holy city with the Crusaders (1099). Subsequently Louis VIII., having induced these monks to send some of their brethren to France,settled them outside Paris at the extreme end of the Faubourg St. Denis, in the lazaretto originally founded by Queen Adelaide, wife of Louis le Gros. These monks were also endowed with a rich domain at Boigny, near Orleans (1154), which afterwards became the head-quarters of their order. Louis VII.,who had seen female communities in the East devoted to the tending of lepers, and who wished to create similar ones in France, founded a house at La Saussaie, near Villejuif, where nuns had charge of leprous women, and he assigned them, as a revenue, the tithe on the wine brought into Paris, which belonged by right to the king and queen. This establishment rapidly became rich: Philip Augustus bequeathed to it at his death all his gold and silver seals, on condition that prayers should be said on behalf of himself and the members of his family; other sovereigns gave it the privilege of claiming, at the death of a king or a prince of the house of France, his linen, his mules, the state-horses, and all the other horses used at his funeral, together with all the mourning harness and drapery. These privileges were so fully recognised, and the rights of the nuns so completely understood, that, a century and a half later, after the death of King John in England, eight hundred pounds (800 livres parisis) were paid to this convent as an indemnity for the horses which, owing to the death of the insolvent monarch in captivity, had not been bequeathed. Charles VI. paid the convent 2,500 livres to buy back the horses belonging to his father, Charles V.

A lazar-house had also been established by Louis VII. at Etampes, in an ancient hospital for indigent lepers, and the monks of this house, being entitled to call themselvesmaîtresandfrères, were authorised to hold chapters and to sign their own capitulary documents. Their founder assigned them valuable property, with right of petty and ordinary justice, with right of toll, of market, &c. Several institutions of a similar kind were also set up in different parts of France, for the public health required that persons afflicted with leprosy should be provided with asylums where they could not come in contact with any one. Henry II., King of England and Duke of Normandy (1133–1189), founded one house at Rouen for lepers and for the monks in charge of them, and another in the forest of Rouvrai, not far from Rouen, for leprous women, with the condition that their nurses should be ladies of noble birth. Henry II., moreover, in founding a number of lazarettos in England, did for his kingdom what Louis VII. had done for France upon a much smaller scale. Both were seconded by the aristocracy of their respective countries, as the progressive development of a disease which science deemed incurable was beginning to cause great alarm.

Fig. 272.—The Banner of a Flemish Lazaretto with the Arms of the Gruthuyse Family, dating from 1502.—From a painted Curtain preserved among the Collection of Engravings in the National Library. The picture refers to the life of St. Lazarus. In the middle are the Virgin and St. Lazarus, the latter with traces of the sores which the dogs licked. In the top medallion to the left is the rich man driving Lazarus from his door. Opposite, Lazarus is standing at the rich man’s door, while a dog licks his sores. Below, the rich man is upon his death-bed, with an evil spirit waiting to carry off his soul. Upon the opposite side, Lazarus is lying dead upon the bare ground, but a dove is bearing his soul to heaven. The donors of the banner are kneeling before the Virgin and St. Lazarus. The clapper (which was used to announce the approach of the lepers) is depicted eight times in the border.

Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England, also supported the Order of St. Lazarus, which he had seen doing good service during the Crusades. TheLazarists, both men and women, who had taken up their abode at Jerusalem, Acre, Jericho, and Bethany, were looked upon with admiration even bySaladin, who permitted them to remain in the first-named city a year after its capture. They were also favourably treated by the Emperor Frederick II., who, in his fierce disputes with Rome, had occasion to notice their pacific and conciliatory spirit. His contemporary and friend, Andrew II., King of Hungary, and father of St. Elizabeth, combined with his daughter and with his son-in-law, Louis VI., Landgrave of Thuringia, to increase the lazarettos throughout Germany. The hospital of St. Mary Magdalene at Gotha, which was founded by St. Elizabeth, and richly endowed by her family, was administered by the Lazarists, who “received travellers and needy wayfarers.” Detachments of the same order gave succour in Saxony, Poland, the banks of the Elbe, the Danube, and the Maine. Wherever the brethren were established they recognised the authority of the grand-master, who resided at Boigny, in France, and the sovereignty of the King of France. They all followed the rules of St. Augustine, and lived in conformity with the statutes which commanded them to visit the sick with pious zeal, to tend, feed, and clothe persons afflicted with incurable diseases, and to receive charitably the pilgrims, the poor, the desolate, and those who were unable to earn their livelihood. The order, though at times a warlike one in the Holy Land, was never any but a hospitallers’ order in Europe.

During the latter half of the thirteenth century, various papal bulls, decisions of councils, and official sentences testify very clearly to the eminently hospitable character of the Lazarists; and these good brethren, far from confining themselves to the care of the lepers whose numbers diminished daily, relieved every variety of infirmity and sickness, and succoured all kinds of misery and suffering.

The downfall of the Knights Templars, who had been rivals of the Knights of St. Lazarus, in respect both of fortune and influence, proved advantageous to the latter. The greater the severity shown towards the Templars, the greater was the protection accorded to the Lazarists, the Knights of St. John, and all the orders designated in the papal bulls ashospitalarii milites, that is, warriors or knights of hospitality and charity.

In the time of St. Louis, a Languedoc knight called Nolasque, touched with pity for the fate of the unhappy captives, men, women, and children, who were daily falling into the hands of the Barbary corsairs, and sold like cattle in the Eastern slave-markets, conceived the philanthropic idea of instituting an order of “Mercy,” or Ransom. He died in 1236, after havinghad the satisfaction of seeing this charitable undertaking make great progress. The Brethren of Mercy preached and collected arms for the ransoming of the captives; they then crossed the seas with the produce of their appeals to buy them back, and, if the sum was insufficient, they gave themselves to slavery in exchange for the unhappy prisoners. The Christian religion was alone capable of inspiring such feelings of self-devotion.

Fig. 273.—The Seven Christian Virtues, with their Symbols.—From a Miniature in the “Ethics of Aristotle” (Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century), Rouen Library.

On the left are the Theological Virtues:Faith, dressed as a nun, is holding a church, a New Testament, and a wax taper;Hope, in the garb of a peasant girl, has a ship upon her head, a cage beneath her feet, a beehive and a spade in her hands;Charityis a young woman standing on a hot oven, with a pelican upon her head, and her hair falling loose upon her shoulders; she has in her hands a bleeding heart and the monogram of Christ surrounded with flames of fire. Then come the Cardinal Virtues:Temperance, balancing upon the sails of a windmill, a bridle in her mouth, a clock upon her forehead, and a telescope in her hand;Justice, standing on the seat of justice, with scales at her girdle, and balancing swords;Prudenceis in the garb of a nun, and is weighed down under her symbols, viz. a coffin, a mirror, a sieve, and the shield of faith; lastly,Strength, mounted on a screw-press, and with an anvil on her head, is holding a donjon in one hand, while she strangles a dragon with the other.]

Leprosy, however, still prevailed, and was, moreover, complicated with strange and unknown epidemics which spread terror everywhere and depopulated the cities of the West. It was then that Providence raised up a few saintly women and holy confessors who, amidst sickness and death, pursued their charitable mission—such as St. Catherine of Sienna (1347–1380); St. Bernardin of Sienna, who was born in the same year that Catherine died (1380–1446); St. Frances, a Roman matron; St. Juliana of Florence, and many others, who taught men that God only sent them trials in order to render them more worthy of Him. St. Catherine, from her youth, was a member of the Order of St. Dominic; she distributed amongst the poor the patrimony which her father had left her, and devoted herself to teaching and preaching to the salvation of souls. When she took upon herself the further task of tending the sick, she selected the most painful cases, those in which the sores were so contagious and so fearful to behold that no one had the courage to come near them. During the great plague at Florence (1374), her heroism was something sublime; divine inspiration made up for a want of medical skill, and she cured a great number of the plague-stricken; she saved, perhaps, even more of those who were hardened in sin—a double miracle of nature and of grace.

Fig. 274.—Orphan of the Venice Hospitals in the Sixteenth Century.—From the work of Cesare Vecellio: octavo, 1590.

In spite of the terrible vicissitudes to which Europe and Asia were exposed for two centuries, the Order of St. Lazarus never lost, either in the West or in the East, its essentiallyhospitablecharacter. This it preserved, notwithstanding the impediments placed in its way by the rivalry of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and the avowed preference of the Court ofRome for the latter—a preference which was due to the fact that the Popes, who had never given up all hope of recovering the Holy Land, were vexed to see the Lazarists renouncing altogether their military functions to devote themselves exclusively to the poor, the infirm, the sick, and the pilgrims. It was, however, their purely charitable mission which obtained for them the security, the protection, and the privileges which were everywhere accorded them.

Fig. 275.—The Great Hospital at Milan, founded in 1456 by Duke Francis Sforza and his Wife.

The chief authorities at Boigny, who had remained intact amidst the ruin of the Order of the Templars, acted with extreme prudence; the chapters were held very quietly, but always at fixed periods, and the nature of their decisions, their choice of persons to direct the branch establishments, their general administration of the property of the poor, were such as to give no handle to hostile criticism and malevolence. Moreover, it was the sole hospitable institution which was in proper and continuous working order. The spirit which animated King Louis and Queen Blanche had communicateditself to many of the lords and ladies of their Court, who, as volunteer or auxiliary Lazarists, devoted themselves to the service of the lepers and the sick. Such were Elzéar de Sabran, Count of Arian, and his wife. Not only did they assiduously frequent the lazarettos and do work as menial as it was revolting, but they collected alms in concert with the Lazarist brethren, and assisted them in the most painful of their duties.

Fig. 276.—Knights of the Order of the Holy Ghost from pure intent.—“Ytem doyvent jeuner chascun jeudi de l’an si veullent ou ont le povoir, et se n’ont le povoir ou la volonté doyvent donner à mengier à trois poures en lonor du Pere, du Fils et du Saint-Esprit ou leur donner tant qu’il puissent avoir leur sustenance pour le jour” (old French).—From the Statutes of the Order of the Holy Ghost from pure intent, or of the Union, instituted at Naples in 1352, by Louis of Anjou, the first of that name, King of Jerusalem, Naples, and Sicily.—Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century, preserved in the Louvre (Musée des Souverains), now in the National Library, Paris.

St. Cajetan the Dominican, so celebrated in the fifteenth century for his controversy with Luther, his clerical institutions, and the energy of his proceedings with regard to teaching and benevolence, sowed the germs of the charitable congregations which, under various names, afterwards constituted a splendid body of religious and hospitable establishments. At Naples he founded the immense Hospital for Incurables, the Mount of Mercy for the poor belonging to the better classes, asylums for orphans, and houses of refuge for penitent women. Nor was this all,—with a view to suppressing usury, which had ruined so many families and prevented theunfortunate debtors from recovering themselves, he conceived the idea of founding pawn establishments, and a lady, the Contessa di Porto, procured him the sum of four million pounds (Italian) to establish the first house which lent money at the legal rate of interest (1469–1534).

Fig. 277.—Margaret of York, third wife of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, one of the most charitable princesses of her time, who died at Mechlin in 1503.—She is represented on her knees between the four Doctors of the Church, St. Gregory, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Ambrose. In the background is the Church of St. Gudule, at Brussels.—From a Miniature in a “Traité sur la Miséricorde,” translated from Latin into French by Nicholas Finet, Canon of Cambrai and Almoner to Margaret. (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian Library, Brussels.)

The saddening spectacle of human misery excited the sympathy of Jean de Dieu, a Portuguese gentleman, who had successively fought against the French, the Turks, and the Hungarians; after having led a licentious life as a soldier, he devoted himself to healing the wounded and to the care of thesick (1540). The wounds inflicted by fire-arms required much more careful treatment than those caused by steel weapons, for they were followed by suppuration of a contagious character, and other dangerous consequences; they, moreover, entailed terrible operations, which made an increase in the number of surgeons a matter of absolute necessity. Jean de Dieu determined to make good this deficiency, and he was the originator of the corps of hospital attendants and sick-nurses. But the institution which he founded was not properly organized and put in working order until after his death (1550), in the midst of the Italian wars and the great struggles of France and Spain.

Fig. 278.—St. Vincent de Paul.—Reduced Fac-simile of a Drawing by Edelmet (Seventeenth Century).

Obregon and Jean de Dieu were both contemporaries of Philippe de Néri, founder of the Order of the Oratory, a learned Florentine, animated as much by the spirit of charity as by his fondness for religious teaching. The beneficent institutions of St. Philip were perhaps but the intelligent application upon a larger scale of the schemes of moral reform so wisely conceived by St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Francis the Roman, and St.Juliana. At about the same period, a Frenchman, less celebrated than Philippe de Néri, but whose memory is cherished by his compatriots in Provence, Antoine Yvan, inspired by the example of the Somasques, the Crucifers, and the Scholopians (regular clerks whose office it was to care for the orphans, the sick, and the poor), endeavoured to collect in one institution, under the title of “Order of the Religious Clerks of Mercy,” a staff entrusted with the task of relieving these three classes of misery (1576–1653). And, lastly, there appeared in France that great benefactor of suffering humanity, St. Vincent de Paul, who, having taken orders in 1600, commenced his apostleship just at the close of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period, bequeathing to modern generations the admirable practice of Christian charity, organized, regulated, and disseminated with wondrous forethought amongst all grades of society in the Catholic world.

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