Brodman - Charity and Religion in Medieval Europe

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brodman, James.
Charity and religion in medieval Europe / James William Brodman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
isbn 978-0-8132-1580-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Charities—Europe—
History—Middle Ages, 600–1500. 2. Church and state—Europe—
History—Middle Ages, 600–1500. 3. Europe—Church history—
600–1500. 4. Europe—Religious life and customs. I. Title.
hv238.b76 2009
361.7'50940902—dc22 2008040357
introduction
RELIG IOUS CHARITY
C ONTEMPORARY CONCERNS with welfare and

social policy have led scholars to become inter-
ested in the study of poverty and the poor in west-
ern Europe during the Middle Ages. The result of this at-
tention has been a growing bibliography that has focused
on the history of medieval social policy and of the institu-
tions created to implement a strategy of poor relief. This
study seeks to refine our understanding of this history by
exploring the pivotal role played by religion and religious
institutions in the creation, evolution, and sustenance of
the myriad of hospitals, leprosaria, almshouses, orphan-
ages, and confraternal and parochial charities that made
up the medieval opera caritatis. Despite the immense liter-
ature on medieval assistance to the needy, no one has yet
essayed such a broad overview of the subject, particularly
from the perspective of religion. For the most part, mod-
ern writers—feminists, social scientists, and historians—
have been so focused on issues of power, class, and gender
that the religious and spiritual dimensions of medieval
giving have been obscured and, at times, dismissed as al-
most meaningless pious pronouncements. Others have
1
2 religious charity
provided histories of individual institutions or of particular cities and
regions, illumining the actual practice of care without delving into its
underlying motivations. Historians of the medieval Church, moreover,
have paid only passing attention to institutions of charity. This study
seeks to redress this imbalance by looking at medieval charity from a
thematic perspective; it seeks to discover in Christianity an ideological
basis that justified for medieval givers a benevolence toward the needy.
With a wider understanding of medieval charity, we can better appre-
ciate exactly how it functioned within medieval society and the role it
played as the progenitor of western welfare policy. Additionally, such
a broad overview of western European Christian practices is the neces-
sary foundation for any comparative studies that might be undertaken
about the charitable traditions of the other Abrahamic religions of Ju-
daism and Islam.
The focus of this study, therefore, is religious charity. The param-
eters of the discussion include the words and actions of ecclesiastics
who promoted and advanced the works of charity as well as those elee-
mosynary institutions that fell under the governance of the medieval
Church. In addition, this study will address those organizations and
institutions founded or directed by lay groups such as guilds, confra-
ternities, and city councils, to the extent that they also reflect the in-
fluence of religion upon either their structure or function. As a phe-
nomenon, religious charity exhibits several characteristics. First of all,
it implies an altruism toward humanity, or at least toward those within
society who were regarded as vulnerable, degraded, or in serious ma-
terial need. Consequently, its aims are not entirely selfish, and so it
can be distinguished from beneficence intended merely to assist the
family and group or to extol the self. Secondly, the concern for others
is motivated by a spirit that has a religious character and not merely
one designed to preserve a particular social order by, for example, pac-
ifying the poor. The concept of charity employed here encompasses
notions that others have labeled “indiscriminate” and “discriminate,”
that is, assistance given to anyone in need as well as to specific, target-
ed groups. Both practices in medieval society were regarded as being
spiritually meritorious. Finally and significantly, medieval religious
charity was highly fragmented and inchoate; it never coalesced into
religious charity 3
a coherent or cohesive organization. Indeed, this study argues that so
disparate were the organs of medieval charity in terms of structure and
objectives that only religion provided coherence to the phenomenon
and constituted it as a genuine and significant movement within me-
dieval society.
Charity, furthermore, must be studied from two perspectives. First
of all, because to give voluntarily of one’s property runs contrary to
human nature, there must be an ideology or set of incentives to con-
vince society and individual givers that such charity is in their own in-
terest. For example, the modern state encourages generosity through
the provision of tax benefits, and private institutions frequently re-
ward supporters with a quid pro quo such as a token gift or some kind
of permanent memorial. In a similar fashion, medieval people had to
be persuaded that it was right and profitable for them to give a portion
of their material possessions to those in need. The second dimension
to charity is reflected in the particular set of institutions established
to transfer wealth from one group to another. This is so because such
agencies, with their own structures and internal ideology, can also
shape the contours of charity by selecting the individuals to be assist-
ed and by determining exactly the parameters of that help.
This study, therefore, begins with a discussion of the ideology of
medieval benevolence. Charity, caritas in Latin, is itself a problematic
word. In ancient usage, it denoted objects that were highly esteemed
because of their cost and then, more generally, described a sense of be-
nevolence; in the late Empire, caritates were persons who became ob-
jects of this affection. In early Christian usage, the meanings became
more complex. In a broad sense, charity comes to denote an affection
that is nonphysical and directed primarily toward God. From this love
of God flows a warmth toward other human beings: friends, strangers,
and even enemies. This caring for others can have many expressions:
group solidarity and a spirit of brotherhood, personal friendship, or
a sense of individual contentment. Alms, or charity in the modern
sense, therefore, were only one dimension or consequence that grew
from a love for God and for neighbor. Nonetheless, it is this aspect of
charity that manifests itself in a concrete, quantifiable fashion and so
becomes grist for the historian’s mill. Even in late antiquity and the
4 religious charity
early Middle Ages, charity came to carry this sort of material connota-
tion, often expressed as a meal offered to guests or shared by members
of a particular group. Gradually, it also came to describe a distribution
of alms or else an institution that provided gifts of food and clothing
to the poor.¹
Theologically, therefore, caritas denotes a love that could be di-
rected toward God, oneself, neighbors, and things. The love of objects,
however, which was associated with the sin of avarice, is universally
condemned as the root of evil.² Indeed, the ascetic’s rejection of greed
and embrace of a voluntary poverty underscores a gamut of religious
movements from the monasticism of the patristic era to the mendi-
cant and lay penitential movements of the thirteenth century. The love
of God, on the other hand, is just as universally praised as the highest
stage of spiritual perfection. However, the exact manner in which the
love of God should be manifested becomes the subject of debate, par-
ticularly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Traditionalists, such
as Bernard of Clairvaux, defended the path of the ascetic—self-denial
and prayer—as the most direct way to God; this is echoed in the thir-
teenth and fourteenth centuries by Francis of Assisi, the mendicants,
and a myriad of penitential movements and confraternities. On the
other hand, proponents of a more active life, such as Innocent III and
Thomas Aquinas, argued that the love of God is best demonstrated by
practicing charity toward neighbors. For Bernard, any altruism is mere-
ly a sign of a higher, divine love while for Innocent it becomes a means
of attaining that love. This debate on the nature of love, therefore, has
broad ramifications for society’s view of poverty and the poor.
Chapter 1 traces the applications of charity toward society, from
its roots in Jewish and Christian scripture through the patristic era to
the end of the Middle Ages. Theories of an active charity, apparent in
1. Charleton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A New Latin Dictionary (New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1891), 292; J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1984), 144–45. For a broad discussion of the concept of charity, see E. Dublanchy, “Charité,”
in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. A. Vacant and E. Mangenot (Paris: Letouzey et Ané,
1909–50), 2:2217–66, esp. 2257.
2. Geoffrey Chaucer echoes this in the prologue to the “Pardoner’s Tale” when he quotes
from 1 Timothy 6:10: radix malorum est cupiditas. See The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed., ed. Lar-
ry D. Benson (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), VI:426, p. 195.
religious charity 5
patristic sources, revived in the twelfth century and provided the ideo-
logical underpinning for a new medieval European understanding of
social charity. The writings of Innocent III and Thomas Aquinas, for
example, are particularly important for establishing an obligation as
well as a right. The former is imposed upon all Christians who, within
certain parameters, are bound to share their material wealth with the
needy. The latter involves the ennoblement of the needy, who become
not only fit objects for charity but who also acquire a positive right
to assistance. These definitions touch upon such crucial issues as the
proper nature of the religious life, the identification of the poor, and
criteria for their assistance. The patterns so established had broad im-
plications not only for the practice of charity but for its fundamental
structure as well. Finally, in the construction of a theory of charity,
there is no clear separation between the worlds of the clergy and of lay-
people, as similar ideas resonate through sources that are literary and
legal as well as ecclesiastical.
While medieval, just as modern, charity exhibits an intermingling
of secular and religious initiatives, in the Middle Ages the foundation-
al impulse was ecclesiastical. This is explored in chapter 2. The discus-
sion begins with the office of bishop, who from patristic times bore a
special obligation toward the poor. Conciliar evidence gives us some
indication of how bishops fulfilled this obligation in the early Middle
Ages and also how the ideal of charity slowly shifted toward monasti-
cism, where poverty had a voluntary character. The onset of the second
millennium, however, and the unleashing of new social and economic
forces restored the episcopal primacy in charity. The chapter, through
a broad and sweeping survey, demonstrates the ubiquity of charity
houses throughout the towns and regions of western Europe. Many
of these were the initiatives of bishops themselves; others were found-
ed by cathedral chapters and individual clergymen as well as wealthy
laypeople. Whatever the circumstances of their foundation, however,
most maintained some sort of religious character, whether through ap-
pellation, governance, or organization. By the end of the twelfth cen-
tury, bishops individually and collectively began to ask whether gener-
al norms ought to be established to regulate the practice of charity and
its allied institutions. A discussion of the resulting legislation and of
6 religious charity
the debate that ensued over the exact nature of the Church’s responsi-
bility toward the poor concludes this section.
A principal method that the Church used to organize the works of
charity under its own mantle was the institution of new religious or-
ders whose principal work was charity. Chapters 3 and 4 introduce these
charity orders as a new category of religious order and comprise a first
comparative history. The earliest exemplars, dating from the twelfth
century, were tied to the idea of pilgrimage. Chapter 3 thus begins with
the military orders, whose original work of protecting pilgrims led some
to operate shelters for the poor in addition to whatever military respon-
sibilities they eventually acquired all along Europe’s frontiers. Along-
side these, other orders arose that had few if any military responsibili-
ties because their principal charge was to protect pilgrims on the road,
particularly as they traversed places of danger, such as mountain passes
and major river crossings in France, Italy, and Spain.
Still other charity orders were established in the thirteenth century
whose focus on doing works of mercy was even more direct. Chapter 4
addresses these new organizations that cared for the old, the sick, vic-
tims of particular diseases, pregnant women—i.e., those individuals
already being served by episcopal shelters—as well as a new category
of needy, those captured in war. By establishing regional networks to
collect alms, the Antonines, Brothers of the Holy Spirit, and Trinitar-
ians attempted to systematize what had been a highly localized and
decentralized practice of charity. As such, these orders can be seen as
part of a concerted effort to bring charity under the supervision and
control of the hierarchical Church. These orders also illustrate the lim-
its of that supervision, as they too had to deal with the competing forc-
es of localism and centralism.
Chapter 5 demonstrates that beneficence did not have to be cleri-
cal to be religious. Alongside the initiatives already discussed, others
arose that were completely laic in inspiration and structure. Some were
the work of voluntary associations, such as confraternities and guilds,
that practiced assistance to their neighbors and others as part of their
organization’s mission. The religious character of these lay institutions
of charity is revealed through their association with one or more pa-
tron saints as well as through various acts of corporate worship. If evi-
religious charity 7
dence for such lay associations before a.d. 1000 is slight, they became
quite common from the beginning of the eleventh century. Those of
the twelfth century often had a strong social and even political charac-
ter, but afterward, those that engaged in charity became more narrowly
religious in focus and often accepted the spiritual direction of one of
the caritative or mendicant orders. A second locus of lay charitable ac-
tivity was the parish. While pastors and their vicars also had some re-
sponsibility for the material needs of their parishioners, from the thir-
teenth century onward the initiative for and direction of most parish
charities passed into the hands of the parishioners themselves. They
elected trustees who oversaw the collection of alms, the maintenance of
endowments, and the distributions made to the needy of the parish.
Chapter 6 focuses on the internal regimen of charity houses, wheth-
er they be affiliated with a religious order, a municipal council, or a
confraternity. Regardless of their external governance, most institu-
tions that attained a certain size were served by communities of broth-
ers and sisters who had taken vows of religious observance. Since the
late twelfth century, reformers believed that, whenever possible, char-
ity workers should adhere to such a religious rule, most typically that
of St. Augustine. Such uniformity was not so much the product of de-
sign as of necessity, because this Rule had two distinct advantages. Be-
ing older than the Rule of Benedict, it gave validation to a novel vo-
cation; secondly, the Augustinian Rule was virtually without content,
which meant it could be adapted to an almost infinite variety of local
circumstances. The chapter will discuss the challenges that grew out of
this adaptation of the traditional religious life to the active vocation of
nurse or caregiver.
In Chapter 7 we turn from the perspectives of founders, patrons,
and providers to look at the religious dimensions of care provided to
the objects of charity. For long-term inmates, such as lepers or peni-
tent women, this often meant the imposition of a discipline resem-
bling that of professed religious, even including vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience. For others whose stay in a hospital would be
short-term, this implied provision of the sacraments of the Church:
baptism for the newly born, confession, communion, and the last rites
for those on the verge of death.
8 religious charity
This broad survey of religious charity intends to demonstrate, first
of all, that the organized practice of charity was as pervasive a part of
the medieval scene as were the houses of monks and friars. Further-
more, the medieval Church, in its many aspects, played a central role
in the origin, evolution, and governance of this effort to provide as-
sistance to the needy. Theologians, moralists, and canon lawyers pro-
vided an ideological underpinning for the impulse to be generous. Yet,
the Church’s relationship to the movement of medieval charity was
complex. On the one hand, through the office of bishop and the nov-
el adaptation of the religious life to the works of charity, the Church
was able to employ traditional structures to establish, promote, and
oversee various works of mercy. Yet, on the other hand, the magnitude
and complexity of medieval need frustrated the ambitions of reform-
ers who sought to rationalize and perhaps prioritize the distribution
of assistance. Furthermore, charity was never a monopoly of the cler-
gy or of ecclesiastical institutions. Lay associations also played a vital
role in its emergence and practice. Consequently, the movement that
we are setting out to explore does not easily fit into traditional catego-
ries. It spawned pan-European institutions while retaining a very local
character. Clergy were vital to its success, but so also were laypeople.
It joined a concern with the mundane and material to aspirations that
were spiritual in nature. Its principal players spanned the gamut from
popes and bishops to neighborhood associations and even poor wid-
ows. It was, as we will see, a broad and ubiquitous movement within
the medieval Church, although its importance has been obscured by
its complexity and diversity.
1
THE PIOUS
AND THE PRACTICAL
An Ideology of Charity
R ELIGIOUS CHARITY was not just a set of insti-

tutions; it also encompassed an ideology that
describes a distinctive vision of the Christian life
in the Middle Ages. As an expression of Christian spir-
ituality, the love of neighbor has been often overlooked,
ignored, or else undervalued by historians of the Chris-
tian Middle Ages. Modern writers have long studied the
religious paths of the monk and friar and acknowledged
their significance as representatives of medieval religious
values and as windows into society’s spiritual mentalité.
Barbara Rosenwein and Lester Little, for example, have
argued that monasticism represents rural society’s admi-
ration of patience and prayer, while the mendicant move-
ment of the thirteenth century shows the merchant’s ap-
preciation for poverty and prayer. Herbert Grundmann
connected the monk and the friar together by tying both
to a notion of apostolic poverty, which he interpreted not
9
10 the pious and the practical
as the rebellion of the poor against the rich but rather a reaction of
the affluent—whether it be aristocratic monks or bourgeois friars—
against the corrosive consequences of their own wealth.¹ This analysis,
however, as well as those of Giles Constable and other significant con-
tributors to our understanding of medieval religion, gloss over a ver-
sion of the Christian life that was as ubiquitous as those of monks and
friars in the Middle Ages—that of service to those in need. Charity
manifested here is not in the monastic practice of fraternal love within
a closed community, but rather the sense of obligation that individu-
als and entire communities felt toward individuals designated as “mis-
erable persons”—namely, the poor, the sick, the crippled, orphans,
widows, pilgrims, and anyone else who was seen as weak, vulnerable,
or degraded. Furthermore, underlying any decision to assist such indi-
viduals was a religious motive, whether it be a selfless love of God and
neighbor or a more selfish concern with one’s own sin and salvation.
The scriptural tradition of all three Abrahamic religions enjoins
upon believers the obligation of generosity toward others. God Himself
is called “father of the fatherless, defender of widows, ..... who gives a
home to the forsaken” (Psalm 68:6–7). Consequently, the Bible—both
Jewish and Christian—encourages individuals to assist the unfortu-
nate and warns of the perilous consequences for those who too eagerly
hold onto their wealth. Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew (19:21) taught:
“If you wish to be perfect, go and sell what you own and give the mon-
ey to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Ecclesiasticus
(4:4, 4:10) warns “Do not repulse a hard-pressed beggar, nor turn your
face from a poor man ..... Be like a father to orphans and as good as a
husband to widows.” Isaiah (58:7) agrees: “Share your bread with the
hungry and shelter the homeless poor.” James (2:17) concludes: “Faith
is like that: if good works do not go with it, it is quite dead.” The same
sentiments are echoed in the Qur’an (107:1–7), which warns: “Have you
met those who deny the Day of Judgment? They are the ones who turn
1. Barbara H. Rosenwein and Lester K. Little, “Social Meaning in the Monastic and
Mendicant Spiritualities,” Past and Present 63 (1974): 4–32; Robert E. Lerner, “Introduction,”
in Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between
Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movements in the Twelfth and Thirteenth
Centuries, with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism, trans. Steven Rowan, intro.
Robert E. Lerner (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1995), xix–xx.
the pious and the practical 11
away the orphan, and have no urge to feed the destitute and needy.
Woe to those who pray but lack compassion and eschew moral duty,
who make a show of false piety and disdain charity.”
the patristic era

Among Christians, the obligation of charity is found in the earliest
writings of the Church Fathers. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 98–117), in a
letter to the Church of Smyrna, condemns the Gnostics for showing
no concern for widows, orphans, the oppressed, or those who are hun-
gry and thirsty.² St. John Chrysostom (d. 407), patriarch of Constan-
tinople, defines the obligations of charity in this way: “Now charity is
not bare words, or mere ways of speaking to men, but a taking care of
them, and a putting forth of itself by works, as, for instance, by reliev-
ing poverty, lending one’s aid to the sick, rescuing from dangers, to
stand by them that be in difficulties, to weep with them that weep, and
to rejoice with them that rejoice.” To this end, he advised that on Sun-
days, every Christian, even the poor themselves, should collect alms
for distribution to the needy. St. Hilary of Poitiers (d. 367) stresses the
ongoing character of this obligation: “To be courteous and obliging at
times is not the mark of perfect love, but perfect love satisfies every
obligation of a universal charity, since he who bestows upon another
as much as he does upon himself does not remain in debt to anyone
for anything.” The anonymous author of Clement’s Second Epistle to
the Corinthians argues that almsgiving is better than either prayer or
fasting. Pope Leo the Great (r. 440–61) warns of the dire consequenc-
es awaiting the stingy: “Let those who want Christ to spare them have
compassion for the poor.”³
2. Ignatius of Antioch, “Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans,” in The Apostolic Fathers, trans. Kir-
sopp Lake (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 1:259, 6.6.2.
3. St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 7 (Romans 3:19–31),” in A Select Library of the Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: Christian Literature Co., 1886–90), vol.
11, available online at: www.ccel.org/fathers/NPNF1-11/Chrysostom/Romans/Rom-Hom07.
html; St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 10: A Sermon on Almsgiving,” in St. John Chrysostom
on Repentance and Almsgiving, trans. Gus George Christo (Washington, D.C.: The Catho-
lic University of America Press, 1998), 10.12–15, pp. 139–40; Clement, “The Second Epistle
of Clement to the Corinthians,” in Apostolic Fathers, 16.4, p. 155; St. Hilary of Poitiers, The
Biblical and patristic injunctions, however, are personal in charac-
ter because they focus on a single individual’s obligation toward oth-
ers. According to Peter Brown, charity did not become a collective ob-
ligation until the century after the conversion of Constantine (d. 337)
to Christianity, at which time Christian bishops, newly endowed with
both official status and public revenues, institutionalized the practice
of charity through their endowment of hospitals and shelters for so-
ciety’s needy. While the Jewish community, according to a citation of
362 by the Emperor Julian, practiced similar benevolence toward the
poor, it is the official status accorded to Christian bishops that creat-
ed, Brown argues, a rhetorical revolution within Roman society. Clas-
sical notions of giving (euergesia—to do good) had been seen in earlier
generations as a form of mere civic virtue, practiced only by the very
wealthy who doled out patronage to clients selected without regard to
their actual need. Christian bishops, however, who were charged with
being lovers of the poor, redefined charity as that which is rendered
only to the poor—both those in dire need and those whose previous
status was threatened by economic circumstances. Furthermore, by
undertaking the work of charity, Christian bishops transferred the
burden of generosity from society’s elite to the “middling sort” that
comprised the fifth-century Church and, by extension, to the commu-
nity as a whole. Thus, Brown concludes: “In a sense, it was the Chris-
tian bishops who invented the poor. They rose to leadership in late
Roman society by bringing the poor into ever-sharper focus.” This
episcopal responsibility is reflected in the writings of the Latin fathers
and in those of popes Leo the Great and Gregory the Great. St. Au-
gustine stated: “The things of which we have charge do not belong to
us, but to the poor”; and St. Jerome: “Whatever the clergy have be-
longs to the poor.” Pope Leo, in his sermon of November 443, echoed
John Chrysostom by encouraging Christians to gather in their district
Trinity, trans. Stephen McKenna (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1954), 9.25, p. 346; St. Leo the Great, Sermons, trans. P. P. Freeland and A. J. Conway
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 41, no. 9 (November 443);
Maria Moisà, “Debate: Conviviality and Charity in Medieval and Early Modern England,” Past
and Present 154 (1997): 232; Michel Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages: An Essay in Social History,
trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), 22.
churches on Wednesdays to collect alms for the needy. Pope Gregory,
on the other hand, in a letter to Anthemius (no. 26), reproves Pascha-
sius, the bishop of Naples, for his failures to “exhibit fatherly char-
ity to his sons, stand up for the defense of the poor with discretion in
cases that are commended by justice.” The responsibility toward the
poor, therefore, was held to fall upon all Christians, but most especial-
ly upon the clergy.⁴
the early middle ages

In the West during the early Middle Ages, however, the practice of
charity seems to have been more symbolic than real. On the one hand,
it became increasingly difficult to distinguish the worthy in an essen-
tially rural society where the vast majority of individuals existed on the
boundaries of subsistence. Thus, ironically, candidates for assistance
became limited only to those whose existence was compromised by
special circumstances: those few who traversed the dangerous roads,
or widows, orphans, and impoverished members of the upper class-
es. Generally excluded as being the responsibility of their masters
were slaves. Furthermore, with the disappearance of the urban mid-
dling classes, charity again became mostly a matter for the small elites.
Furthermore, the rise of monasticism to a dominant position within
Christian society created a potent competitor to society’s underclass, a
new upper class that undertook poverty on a voluntary basis.⁵
In the post-Roman era, Michel Mollat distinguishes between indi-
gents and paupers. Only the former, that is, individuals who had lost a
previous status, were regarded as being worthy of assistance. “Pauper,”
on the other hand, became a term to designate the large majority at the
bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum. Their condition, Bronislaw
Geremek believes, had no intrinsic value or sanctity and so imposed
4. Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover, N.H.: Uni-
versity Press of New England, 2001), 1–6, 8–9 (quote), 24–25, 79–81; St. Leo the Great, Ser-
mons, 41, no. 9; Brian Tierney, Medieval Poor Law: A Sketch of Canonical Theory and Its Applica-
tion in England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), 40.
5. On the creation of the clergy as a class of paupers, see Brown, Poverty and Leadership,
22–24; on the poor as a category in late antiquity, see 58–62, 69–70.
no obligation upon the elite. As we shall see in chapter 2, there is some
evidence that bishops of the Merovingian era established shelters and
hospitals for the poor in their now shrinking towns as well as others in
the countryside for travelers. Nonetheless, episcopal charity, perhaps
on account of the drastic shrinkage in urban populations as well as the
sharp contraction in episcopal resources, became increasingly symbol-
ic in nature, characterized by the custom of maintaining a group of
paupers at the cathedral called the matricularii. Often twelve in num-
ber, in recollection of the original apostles, these individuals were shel-
tered, clothed, and fed, but oftentimes in return for menial labor and
even minor liturgical services. In the Carolingian era, these slots be-
came sinecures for minor officeholders rather than refuges for genu-
ine paupers. At this time, monasteries seem to have replaced episcopal
shelters as loci for hospitality, but their charity, except that provided
for wealthy travelers, also acquired a symbolic character. The monas-
tic equivalent of the episcopal matricularii was the mandatum, wherein
monks would welcome travelers, wash their feet, and provide food and
shelter, but often only in particular seasons or for specified numbers.⁶
the high middle ages

The twelfth century was a watershed in medieval Europe’s concept and
practice of charity. Population growth, a new urbanization in western
Europe, the expansion of trade, the specialization of labor, and other
6. For a history of the matricularii, see Michel Rouche, “La matricule des pauvres. Evo-
lution d’une institution de charité du Bas Empire jusqu’à la fin du Haut Moyen Âge,” in
Michel Mollat, Études sur l’histoire de la pauvreté (moyen âge–XVIe siècle) (Paris: Publications
de la Sorbonne, 1974), 1:83–110. Mollat, Poor in the Middle Ages, 20–23, 31–32, 40–42, 46–48,
53; Bronislaw Geremek, Poverty: A History, trans. Agnieszka Kolakowska (Oxford: Blackwell,
1994), 17. Among the practitioners of ritualistic charity would be Cluny, which maintained
eighteen paupers in residence; in addition, the monks fed a fixed number of the poor, typi-
cally twelve, at ceremonies honoring benefactors and those of high rank but even more for
exalted patrons like the kings of León. Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Econ-
omy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978), 67–68. For a review of
monastic customs regarding the poor, see Willibrord Witters, “Pauvres et pauvreté dans les
coutumes monastiques du Moyen Âge,” in Mollat, Études sur l’histoire de la pauvreté, 1:117–216.
See also Marvin Becker, Medieval Italy: Constraints and Creativity (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1981), 101.
factors, produced what Lester K. Little has called the profit economy.
Economic change, furthermore, fostered social dislocations to which
those who lived in towns were especially vulnerable. At the same time,
a wave of reform gripped the western Church as the Gregorian move-
ment attempted to understand and correct the relationships between
society and religion. All of these changes coalesced into a new under-
standing of poverty that encouraged individual as well as corporate
charity.
The initial reaction of ecclesiastical reformers to visible poverty in
the twelfth century was to reemphasize their own voluntary poverty
rather than try to ameliorate the need of those in distress. This pro-
duced new religious movements, such as the Cistercians and Carthu-
sians, which demanded of their members the practice of a strict—or
apostolic—poverty. Theologians, such as Gerhoch von Reichersberg
(1132–69), spoke of two kinds of paupers: pauperes cum Petro and pauperes
cum Lazaro. Among the former were counted the practitioners of volun-
tary poverty, such as canons, monks, and nuns, while the latter includ-
ed miserabiles personae who suffered some form of physical or material
need. The relationship between the two was expressed in a disparaging
way by the prominent twelfth-century Cistercian monk, St. Bernard of
Clairvaux (1090–1153): “It is one thing to fill the belly of the hungry, and
another to have a zeal for poverty. The one is the service of nature and
the other the service of grace.” In a newly emerging discourse, however,
it became the vocation of the Christian to fill that belly.⁷
Early Christian writers, such as Pope Leo I, had written that “no
human being should be considered worthless”; and John Chrysostom
argued that even laziness and feigned disability should not disqualify
a beggar from assistance.⁸ In the final quarter of the twelfth century,
this theme was taken up anew, so that there arose, beside the sanctified
poverty of the monk, the material need of the pauper, whose want was
hallowed through an association with that of Christ. Consequently,
in the testaments of this era, the phrase, “poor of Christ,” is redefined
from denoting the voluntary paupers of the cloister to the needy of
7. Little, Religious Poverty, 95; Geremek, Poverty, 25.
8. St. Leo the Great, Sermons, 40, no. 9 (November 443); Christo, St. John Chrysostom on
Repentance and Forgiveness, 10.24, p. 147.
the streets and highways of medieval Europe. Nicholas Terpstra, who
has studied charity and confraternities in medieval Bologna, believes
that society maintained this new religious view of paupers well into
the sixteenth century. Only at the dawn of modernity, and under the
weight of overwhelming need, did the poor come to be seen as a threat
to be contained or controlled by government. André Vauchez argues
that this new medieval attention to the poor reflected a shift in focus
among reformers from the clergy to the laity, and from a spirituality
based upon contemplation to one that emphasized apostolic action.
Promotion of works of charity to these “poor of Christ” formed one as-
pect of this apostolic action.⁹
At the end of the twelfth century, the University of Paris in particu-
lar was awash with ideas of reform. For example, members of the circle
of the Parisian reformer Peter the Chanter (d. 1197) discussed the obli-
gation that the entire Christian community had toward the poor. Peter
the Chanter himself believed that it was wrong for the rich to allow the
poor folk to die of hunger in times of famine, and so he commended
the decision of Count Thibaut of Champagne (d. 1152) to levy a taille
during a serious famine to provide food to those who were starving.
9. In 1167, Pere Queralt left the castle of Roderico “pauperibus Hospitalis Iherusalem,”
that is, to the paupers of the Hospital of Jerusalem. Clearly, Pere here meant the members of
the Order of Saint John, not the inmates of their Jerusalem hospital. See Cartulari de Poblet:
Edicio del manuscrit de Tarragona (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1938), 140–42, no.
234. A century later, however, the notion of who constituted “Christ’s poor” had changed dra-
matically, as seen in the will of Master Llorenç, a canon of Barcelona, who directed in 1267
that the residue of his estate be divided among “the poor of Jesus Christ, orphans, widows,
girls to be married, and captives to be redeemed who come to the notice of my manumissors,
having made those poor of Jesus Christ ..... my heirs.” See Arxiu de Sant Pere de les Puelles
(Barcelona), carp. 33, no. 518; carp. 38, no. 585. While the identification of the “poor of Christ”
with those in material need seems to have taken hold in France and Spain in the early thir-
teenth century, John Henderson argues that in Florence this transformation did not occur
until the material crisis of the fourteenth century; see his Piety and Charity in Late Medieval
Florence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 252–54; Giovanni Ricci, in his study of the deserv-
ing poor in northern Italy, also places the transfer of meaning in the earlier fourteenth cen-
tury; see his “Naissance du pauvre honteux: Entre l’histoire des idées et l’histoire sociale,”
Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 38 (1983): 168–69. See also André Vauchez, The Laity
in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. Daniel Bornstein, trans. Mar-
gery J. Schneider (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1993), 98–99; Nicholas
Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 201.
On the other hand, Robert of Courson (ca. 1160–1219) disagreed with
this endorsement of forced taxation and argued that laymen should
never be compelled to give alms, because these are by nature volun-
tary. Robert, however, echoed patristic notions when he argued that
the poor should be able to turn to churchmen in times of crisis because
clerics, as stewards of the community’s patrimony, had an obligation
to use ecclesiastical resources in times of need.
Preference for the active over the contemplative life was another
characteristic of the thought of Peter the Chanter’s circle. In a trea-
tise on prayer, for example, Peter argued that real prayer consisted of
action, namely, doing works of charity. Another Parisian master, Gil-
bert de la Porrée (1076–1154) chided a fellow bishop who never distrib-
uted alms: “You say the hours, but I practice them.” Stephen Langton
(1155/56–1228) echoed the same sentiment in his commentary on Gen-
esis: “The word of the master must be turned into deed; we must act
upon what we have read and heard.” Consequently, he argued in an-
other place that “‘It is not good,’ says the Lord for such a man, a con-
templative, to be alone, without a companion; it is best that he should
become active. ‘Let us make him a help like unto himself,’ that is a
people subject to him, who will minister to his temporal as he to their
spiritual needs.”¹⁰ These ideas would gain wider currency because Lo-
tario de Segni, the future Pope Innocent III, was also a student at Paris
during these years and, as pope, he would elevate a number of Pari-
sian masters, including Robert of Courson, to powerful positions in
the Church. James Powell believes that Lotario’s sympathy for reform
ideas was so well-known that these individuals converged upon Rome
shortly after Innocent’s election in 1198.¹¹
Canonists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries also showed an
10. John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter
and His Circle (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970), 1: 156, 237, 343; Beryl Smal-
ley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press,
1964), 249–51.
11. Augustine Thompson, O.P., Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–
1325 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 350; James M. Powell, “In-
nocent III, the Trinitarians and the Renewal of the Church,” in La liberazione dei ‘captivi’ tra
cristianità e islam. Oltre la crociata e il Ğihād: Tolleranza e servizio umanitario, ed. G. Cipollone
(Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2000), 249.
interest in the poor, whose status in law they defined. Church lawyers
concluded that, because poverty itself was not a moral evil, individuals
so afflicted should not be deprived of their legal rights. Consequent-
ly, in ecclesiastical courts, paupers were exempted from the payment
of certain court fees and in some instances were provided with free
counsel. Perhaps because the canonists attempted to reserve for eccle-
siastical courts any case where justice might be threatened by a liti-
gant’s poverty, secular courts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centu-
ries reacted by also taking the indigent under some form of protection.
Within Iberian communities, for example, the office of public defend-
er emerged to protect the rights of the poor.¹² The ecclesiastical hier-
archy, for its part, came to accept a special duty to protect miserabiles
personae, or poor wretches—namely, widows, orphans, the blind, the
mutilated, and those debilitated by chronic disease. Out of this devel-
oped in the early thirteenth century a theory that the poor had a right
to help from the patrimony of the Church, which represented the com-
mon property of the community, as well as from the surplus resources
of individuals. Michel Mollat argues that the gift economy of the early
Middle Ages was giving way to an economy of moral restitution, ac-
cording to which the poor, viewed in the image of the suffering Christ,
had a right in both charity and justice to material assistance.¹³ There-
fore, around 1200 a new view of the poor man set in. He was not one
who, like a monk, accepted poverty voluntarily as a means of reach-
12. The right to free legal counsel is a feature of the Castilian fuero of Soria, Alfonso X’s
Las Siete Partidas, and the acta of various Cortes. In the Cortes of Zamora, for example, Al-
fonso X established in his court two advocates of the poor, and in 1312 Ferdinand IV paid an
advocate six thousand maravedis to defend orphans, widows, and other poor people who
made pleas in the royal court. In Valencia and Murcia, the public defender was a municipal
officer. The institution became widespread in both Spain and Italy during the fifteenth cen-
tury. See Agustín Bermúdez Aznar, “La abogacía de pobres en la España medieval,” in A po-
breza e a assistência aos pobres na península ibérica durante a idade média. Actas das 1.as jornadad
luso-espanholas de história medieval, Lisboa, 25–30 de Setembro de 1972 (Lisbon: Instituto de Alta
Cultura, 1973), 1:142; Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 12–14; and Carmen López Alonso, La pobr-
eza en la España medieval (Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad, 1986), 395–403.
13. Mollat, Poor in the Middle Ages, 57–58. See also Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 15–18, 33–
44. The concept of right can also be seen in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae: “He who
suffers from extreme need can take what he needs from another’s goods if no one else will
give them to him” (Little, Religious Poverty, 179).
ing God. Rather his poverty was merely a burden. Charity and jus-
tice, on the other hand, demanded that he be assisted; society in some
sense owed this to him as a form of moral restitution. Francis of Assisi
(1181/82–1226), in the Earlier Rule, stated that alms were “a legacy and a
justice due to the poor that our lord Jesus Christ acquired for us.”¹⁴
Pope Innocent III

A pivotal figure in promoting assistance to the poor is Innocent III (r.
1198–1216). A visionary in many respects, he made contributions to re-
ligious charity that were both practical and theoretical. As to the for-
mer, as we shall see in chapter 4, he assisted in the foundation of two
caritative religious orders—the Orders of the Holy Spirit and the Holy
Trinity. At Rome he built and endowed hospitals, distributed food
to the poor children of the city, and each Sunday continued the cus-
tomary mandatum distribution of small stipends to twelve paupers.
He canonized the Italian merchant-saint, Omobono, as one “who did
much for the poor—whom he kept with him, caring for and attend-
ing to them in his very house—as he did for other indigents, diligently
carrying out acts of humanity on behalf of the living and devoutly of-
fering burial for the dead.”¹⁵
Early evidence of the future pope’s concern for poor people can be
found in one of the three treatises that he composed prior to 1198: De
miseria condicionis humanae. While this work does not address the sub-
ject of poverty directly, it does reveal something of the impact of the Pa-
risian reformers upon the future pontiff. The treatise, written in 1195,
was significant in its own right as the mostly widely disseminated work
of this genre in the Middle Ages and one that influenced the writings
14. Giles Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1996), 319; Mollat, Poor in the Middle Ages, 51. Kenneth Baxter Wolf argues that this
older attitude remained strong among the mendicants in the thirteenth century, for whom all
material possessions, even alms given to the poor, were a source of sin. For the Franciscans,
the key to salvation was in the renunciation of property, and so Wolf believes the involun-
tary poverty of the poor, who had little or nothing to renounce, had no redemptive qualities.
Thus, Francis, Wolf argues, fundamentally ignored the poor. See his The Poverty of Riches:
St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 20–29, 44–45.
15. Wolf, The Poverty of Riches, 71.
of other authors, such as Alexander of Hales, Geoffrey Chaucer, and
Christine de Pisan.¹⁶ In De miseria condicionis humanae, the then Cardi-
nal Lotario, first of all, does not ignore the pauper in his description of
the humanity’s misery. Indeed, he seems to appreciate the dilemma of
honest people in need: “O miserable condition of the beggar! If he begs,
he is confounded with shame, and if he does not beg, he is consumed
with want, and indeed is compelled by necessity to beg” (1.14.3–6,
pp. 114–15). As for the rich, the future pontiff warns about the conse-
quences of their wealth: “Nothing is more wicked than the covetous
man and nothing more wicked than to love money” (2.2.1–2, pp. 144–
45). The remedy for avarice, Lotario implies, is charity because listed
among the sins of the greedy is this: “You neglect the case of the poor
with delay....... The poor man calls and no one hears....... You despise
the poor, you honor the rich” (2.4.15–16, 2.4.20–21, 2.4.29, pp. 148–49).
“The avaricious man has neither compassion for those suffering nor
pity for those in misery, but offends God, offends his neighbor, offends
himself. For he withholds his debt from God, denies the necessities to
his neighbors, takes away useful things from himself....... For he does
not love his neighbor as himself” (2.14.7–11, 2.14.18–19, pp. 160–63). In
the concluding section of the treatise, where Lotario discusses the judg-
ment of God, he again stresses the obligations of charity: “For he will
accuse when he says: ‘I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat; I was
thirsty, and you gave me not to drink.’ ..... He will judge when he con-
cludes: ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire’” (3.15.2–7,
pp. 230–31). In a broader sense, John C. Moore argues that, unlike most
works of this genre, Lotario’s treatise does not summon the individu-
al to the monastic or contemplative life; instead it endeavors to guide
those who lead an active life toward the path of virtue.¹⁷ Implicitly here,
the practice of charity would be one such gateway to righteousness.
As pope, Innocent took up the subject of poverty and alms more
directly in two treatises written early in the pontificate, in 1202 or 1203.
16. Achille Luchaire, Innocent III, vol. 1, Rome et L’Italie (Paris: Libraire Hachette, 1907),
3–8, 11; Lotario dei Segni (Pope Innocent III), De miseria condicionis humanae, ed. Robert E.
Lewis (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1978), 3–9.
17. John C. Moore, “Innocent III’s De Miseria Humanae Conditionis: A Speculum Curiae?”
Catholic Historical Review 67 (1981): 561.
They are bracketed by his patronage to the new ransoming Order of
the Holy Trinity, which he had approved in 1198, and his creation of a
larger Order of the Holy Spirit in 1204. Furthermore, in western and
southern Europe, the years from 1194 to 1207 witnessed severe famine,
the product of natural calamities and poor harvests. In Italy, a Cis-
tercian monk of Fossanova, a monastery located between Rome and
Naples, described 1202 as a year of hunger. In 1200, the pope had al-
ready condemned Berenguer, the archbishop of Narbonne, for his ava-
rice, declaring: “he it is whose god is money, who lives by avarice and
greed.” Thus, it is against this background of crisis—human and ma-
terial—that the new, young pontiff took up the subject of charity.¹⁸
In the Libellus de eleemosyna, the first of these works, Innocent has
several objectives: to explain why and how Christians should give
alms, to show why almsgiving is to be preferred over other works of
piety, to prioritize the objects of charity, and to invite the faithful to
entrust their alms to the Church. While the subtext of the entire pa-
pal discourse rests upon the assumption that the giving of alms, as a
good work, pleases God and will produce a heavenly reward, Innocent
emphasizes the spirit and motivation behind almsgiving as much as
the objective act itself. He argues that such charity has three dimen-
sions: the motivation of the giver, the manner in which the gift is ren-
dered, and the actual charity itself. He explicates this by mimicking an
Aristotelean analysis based upon four causes. First of all, a good deed
must have a proper final cause; for Pope Innocent this is eternal hap-
piness, not earthly favor or advantage. The mode of giving must be
happiness; that is, the giver has to be cheerful about it and not chas-
tise or rebuke the object of his benefaction. The spirit motivating the
gift has to be love; alms that lack love, he argues, are worthless for sal-
vation. The giver thus must have empathy for the object of his charity
18. Grundmann notes Innocent III’s wider role in incorporating contemporary religious
movements into the Church’s hierarchical structure: see his Movimenti religiosi nel Medioevo:
Ricerche sui nessi storici tra l’eresia, gli Ordini mendicanti e el movimento religioso femminile nel XII
e XIII secolo e sulle origini storiche della mistica tedesca, intro. Raoul Manselli (Bologna: Società
editrice il Mulino, 1974), 63–64; Brenda Bolton, “Hearts not Purses: Innocent III’s Attitude
toward Social Welfare,” in Innocent III: Studies on Papal Authority and Pastoral Care (Aldershot:
Variorum, 1995), 123, 129–30, 137–38.
and, perhaps more broadly, for society. As a consequence, before giv-
ing alms, one should seek reconciliation with those who have harmed
you or were harmed by your actions. Lastly, alms must be given using
some criteria or system, not haphazardly or indiscriminately.
While the pope allows that, in certain circumstances, alms might
be given to anyone, he suggests that when they must be rationed—a
situation he here takes for granted—then circumstances must estab-
lish a priority. Surprisingly, and perhaps in a rebuke to ascetics, he as-
serts that each Christian must first be generous to himself, for one who
is stingy with himself cannot be expected to show generosity to oth-
ers.¹⁹ Thus, alms, even if they do not always come from one’s surplus,
are not meant to endanger one’s subsistence. Then, on the basis of
the fourth commandment, the next priority is given to parents, whom
children are bound not only to honor but also to support in times of
necessity. Next in importance would come friends, dependents, and
kinsmen. To further discriminate among one’s neighbors—as well
as among strangers—Innocent believes that, when everything else
is equal, priority should be give to those who lead a just and upright
life, lest alms condone or otherwise support sin and the commission
of evil. Because, as noted above, alms should be given with no expec-
tation of any earthly reward, enemies, debtors, and miserable persons
(i.e., paupers, handicapped individuals, orphans, widows, the shame-
faced poor, etc.) make the best recipients since these would be incapa-
ble of making any restitution to the donor. Consequently, for the pope,
the worthiness of the recipient was as important as the intentions of
the donor. Indeed, he uses this criterion to recommend that the faith-
ful entrust their alms to the Church. The Book of Sirach (12:4) is para-
phrased several times: “Keep your alms in your sweaty palms until you
find the just man to whom you can give them.” Until such an individ-
19. Garth Hallett, in explicating six traditional interpretations of the demand that one
should love one’s neighbor, argues that Innocent’s position, while implied in some patris-
tic writings on almsgiving, was essentially a product of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Specifically, he credits Thomas Aquinas (he seems to be unaware of this treatise of Inno-
cent III) with making the priority of self the standard position in Catholic moral theology
into modern times, although it was a position not accepted by many mystics and ascetics.
See Hallett’s Christian Neighbor-Love: An Assessment of Six Rival Versions (Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University Press, 1989), 2–4, 63–65.
ual is located, Innocent says, such alms are owed to the priest, for his
office is held by scripture to be just.
Pope Innocent sees the obligation to give alms as universal, one
that falls equally upon the poor as well as the rich. God, he argues, is
more interested in the sincerity and devotion of the giver than by the
quantity of alms rendered. Counting more than quantity are intent
and perseverance. The latter is discussed at great length from the point
of view that good beginnings are worthless and can even become occa-
sions of grave sin unless they are followed through to a good conclu-
sion. Evidently, the pontiff sees the practice of charity not as a single
act but as a life-long commitment to the well-being of one’s neighbors,
although he recognizes the reality that almsgiving is more often the
work of the old than the young: “You who have offended in the flower
of youth at least can offer the dregs of your old age to God.”
Much of what Innocent offers in his treatise on alms is not new but
derives from what Gratian had to say about charity in the Decretum (ca.
1140), which in turn is based on such patristic sources as Ambrose’s De
officiis.²⁰ Consequently, its importance rests less in its novelty than in
its attempt to bring this teaching from a juridical into a pastoral envi-
ronment. Innocent, reflecting the influence of the Parisian reformers,
however, diverges from the traditional approach in one significant re-
spect, namely in the preference he gives to the active life of giving over
traditional, monastic asceticism: “Fasting is good but alms are better
..... For through fasting, one’s own flesh is weakened, but through alms
that of another is renewed ..... Again, it is good to pray, but it is bet-
ter to give alms because alms do both, descend toward one’s neighbor
and ascend toward God ..... It is better to pray with works than with
words.”²¹ The novelty of Innocent’s position becomes clearer when
contrasted to this sermon of 442, delivered by Pope Leo I:
20. For example, Dist. 42 c.2 and Dist. 86 c.21, C.1 q.2 c.2, C. 11 q.3 c.103, C.16 q.1 c.5, C.23
q.4 c.35 deal with indiscriminate charity, while Dist. 86 c.14, C.5 q.5 c.2, C.16 q.1 c.68, C.23
q.4 c.37 address charity to particular groups. See Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 52–61, 149. The
standard edition of Gratian is Emil Friedberg, ed., Corpus iuris canonici, I: Decretum magistri
Gratiani (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1879).
21. Innocent III, “Libellus de eleemosyna,” PL 217:752–62.
Consequently, the medicine of three remedies in particular must be applied
for treating injuries often incurred by those who clash with an invisible ene-
my [i.e., Satan]: persistence in prayer, in the mortification of fasting, and in
the generosity of almsgiving. When these three are practiced together, God
becomes propitiated, fault gets wiped out, and the tempter finds himself ex-
pelled.²²
What the earlier pontiff joins together, the latter separates, and by do-
ing so, he sketches an alternative vision of what it is to lead the Chris-
tian life, one that is more open to the world and accessible to whose
lives are closely tied to secular affairs.
In a shorter companion piece, the Encomium caritatis, Innocent
again emphasizes the importance of charity by calling it the first and
the mother of all the other virtues, the one that motivated God himself
to redeem the human race. He argues that charity is essential not only
for salvation but also for leading a moral life on earth: “This is love,
which teaches how to flee temptations, to tread sensual desires under
foot, to contain the desires of the flesh, to sunder illicit desires, to re-
gard material goods to be of little value, to cast off flatteries.” Charity,
he continues, inoculates the soul against pride, gluttony, anger, ava-
rice, despair, and extravagance and permits the Christian to imitate
Christ.²³
One would, of course, expect Pope Innocent to praise charity, to
emphasize its beneficial effects on the living and dying, and to demon-
strate a scriptural basis for giving alms. What is unusual is the pope’s
attitude toward the active life of virtue—that he not only recommends
it as a path for the virtuous Christian but also privileges it over the
deeply entrenched monastic model of contemplation and asceticism.
In counseling the individual not to be stingy with himself and in enun-
ciating a preference for feeding others rather than starving oneself, In-
nocent devalues the spiritual regimen of monks such as the Cister-
cians; in averring that action is a better prayer than mere words, he
diminishes the opera Dei that stood at the center of Cluniac devotion.
While prominent thirteenth-century ascetics such as Francis of Assisi
22. St. Leo the Great, Sermons, 56, no. 15 (December 13, 442).
23. Innocent III, “Encomium caritatis,” PL 217:761–65.
did not keep fully to the path charted out by Pope Innocent, his state-
ment was an important milestone in the development of an activist
spirituality and in its promotion among Europe’s developing urban
populations. Coinciding as it did with papal support for new carita-
tive orders and the initiation of a period of the reform of charity under
the influence of the Parisian school of Peter the Chanter, the publica-
tion of these two treatises gave an important papal endorsement to the
movement of religious charity.
Thomas Aquinas
New attitudes toward charity can also be seen in the writings of theo-
logians. It is useful to contrast the work of the twelfth-century Cis-
tercian monk St. Bernard of Clairvaux with that of the thirteenth-
century Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas (1227–74). The for-
mer, in his treatise “On Loving God,” addresses charity only inciden-
tally and indirectly, as a mere consequence of the love that individuals
have for God:
Nevertheless, in order to love one’s neighbor with perfect justice, one must
have regard to God. In other words, how can one love one’s neighbor with pu-
rity, if one does not love him in God? It is necessary, therefore, to love God
first; then one can love one’s neighbor in God.²⁴
Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae, speaks at length about the nature,

character and consequences of charity. On one level, what he says is
similar to St. Bernard:
Now the light in which we must love our neighbour is God, for what we ought
to love in him is that he may be in God. Hence it is clear that it is specifical-
ly the same act which loves God, and loves our neighbour. And on this ac-
count charity extends not merely to the love of God, but also to the love of
our neighbour.²⁵
24. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, with Analytical Commentary by Emero Stieg-
man (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 27, 8.25.
25. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ed. and trans. R. J. Batten, O.P. (New York:
Blackfriars, 1964), 34:83 (2.25.1).
Both theologians root the love of neighbor in the love of God, the lat-
ter leads one to the former so that, as a consequence, “the friendship of
charity extends even to our enemies.”²⁶ Whereas Bernard then drops
the subject of neighbors, Aquinas takes up the practical questions re-
garding assistance to members of the community, reiterating some of
the same points contained in Pope Innocent’s treatise and modifying
others.
Aquinas, first of all, repeats Innocent’s belief that charity, in its
broadest sense, is the foundational virtue upon which all others are
based: “Charity is higher than faith or hope, and, consequently, than
all the virtues”; “There can be no true virtue without charity.” Char-
ity “is said to be the form of the virtues.” Charity, furthermore, is a
precept, not a counsel, which is to say, it is a duty established by God
and not merely a desirable but optional practice. It is also seen as ac-
tive: “One aspect of our neighbourly love is that we not merely will our
neighbour’s good, but actually work to bring it about.” Aquinas then
defines what he means by the practical consequences of the love of
neighbor. While he allows that spiritual alms (such as instructing the
ignorant, reproving sinners, comforting the sorrowful or forgiving in-
juries) might be superior to the corporal works of feeding, sheltering,
and clothing, nonetheless he argues that common sense dictates that
nutrition has to precede instruction and thus has a certain priority.
Aquinas also acknowledges the reciprocal benefits of charity for the
donor. On the one hand, if a benefactor feeds a pauper out of love for
God, he accrues spiritual benefits for himself; on the other, a grateful
pauper would be moved to pray for the source of his assistance.²⁷
The Summa theologiae also acknowledges limitations on almsgiv-
ing. Just like Pope Innocent, who argued that individuals should at-
tend to their own basic needs first, Aquinas asserts that alms are to
be granted from one’s surplus and should not endanger the existence
of either the donor or his dependents. Because poverty in the Middle
Ages was not, as it is in our society, merely an economic measure rep-
resenting a certain level of income but also involved status, Aquinas
26. Ibid., 34:9 (2.23.1).

27. Ibid., 34:25 (2.23.6); 34:29 (2.23.7); 34:33 (2.23.8); 34:253 (2.32.5); 34:237–51 (2.32.1–4).
argues that it would be excessive to give so much as to endanger or
degrade one’s own station in life. As with any precept, however, there
were exceptions. He allows that one may donate from one’s own basic
substance, and thus threaten one’s own status, if it were for some great
cause—for example, to assist an important political or ecclesiastical
figure—since the well-being of society comes before that of an indi-
vidual. One may also degrade one’s status in order to enter the reli-
gious life (where poverty is voluntary), when the lost wealth can easily
be replaced, or when the indigence of others is extreme.²⁸
Almsgiving could also be limited by other factors, such as the
source of the money or goods to be donated. If such property clearly
belonged to others and came into the possession of the donor through
theft, rapine, or usury, then it simply could not be given out as char-
ity; instead it must be restored to its rightful owner. Similarly, servants
and dependents were not free to give away the property of their mas-
ters. But, if ownership of the property was at all questionable, then
alms could be a legitimate form of making restitution. On the oth-
er hand, income actually earned, even if through disreputable means
such as prostitution, could legitimately be given as alms.²⁹
Like Pope Innocent, Aquinas recognizes that almsgiving requires
discretion and discrimination since need always exceeds resources.
Whereas the pontiff, however, generally argued that alms should be
given first to dependents and kinsmen, Aquinas emphasizes the ex-
tent of an individual’s need. In general, he argues that the highest pri-
ority must be given to those who are most holy, or are of most use to
the community, or who are in the greatest need, as opposed to those
who are related by blood or association. Specifically, he states that it is
sometimes better to feed a complete stranger than one’s own father, if
the latter’s need is not urgent. Yet, on the other hand, alms must never
extend beyond what an individual actually requires. It is better to help
the many than to satiate a few.³⁰
28. Ibid., 34:251–59 (2.32.5–6).

29. Ibid., 34:259–67 (2.32.7–8).
30. Ibid., 34:229–33 (2.31.3); 34:267–73 (2.32.9–10). Theorists also argued that income—
including alms—was not a mechanism for social improvement by improving one’s socio-
economic status. St. Antonino of Florence (d. 1459) taught that the only purpose of a fair
Discriminate vs. Indiscriminate Charity

An important dimension of these thirteenth-century treatises on char-
ity is the approval they give to discrimination as a necessary element
in charitable giving. This point is worth discussing since a number of
modern authors have argued that religious charity, as opposed to that
motivated by secular impulses, has an indiscriminate character. This
is so, it is argued, because such charity is concerned principally with its
effects on the benefactor for whom the merit or need of the recipient
is immaterial.³¹ Clearly such a position, however, is at odds with those
taken by Innocent III and Thomas Aquinas, both of whom established
priorities based on merit, need, and relationship. Implicit in their
writings is a distinction between the deserving poor, called in the me-
dieval sources pauperes verecundi, and the undeserving or, at least, less
deserving. In late medieval Barcelona, for example, the latter, the so-
called pobres captaires, would include slaves, serfs, Jews, Muslims, pros-
titutes, pimps, bastards, blind and deaf beggars, and foreigners.³² This
sort of discrimination between those more and less deserving of alms
wage was to enable the worker to earn a decent living and so lead the sort of virtuous life that
would achieve salvation. See Raymond de Roover, San Bernardino of Siena and Sant’Antonio
of Florence: The Two Greatest Economic Thinkers of the Middle Ages (Boston: Baker Library of
Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, 1967), 23–27. Mendicant preachers
in fourteenth-century Florence limited their definition of poverty to the most marginalized
members of the community and argued that their eligibility for alms stemmed not only from
their resemblance to Christ but also from their acceptance of their state. The working poor,
however, were not eligible for alms precisely because they did not accept their destitution as
permanent. Charles de la Roncière, “Pauvres et pauvreté à Florence au XIVe siècle,” in Mol-
lat, Études sur l’histoire de la pauvreté, 2:705–8.
31. For a discussion of this position, see Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 47–49. Older his-
tories saw this as a fundamental distinction in the sixteenth century between Catholic and
Protestant approaches to social welfare. While more recent works have effectively disputed
the notion that Catholic charity was not discriminating, authors such as J.-P. Gutton have
attempted to argue that regions, such as Catholic Spain, practiced indiscriminate charity
well into the Hapsburg era. See Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social
Institutions of a Catholic State to 1620 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 11–
12, 197–99; Linda Martz, Poverty and Welfare in Hapsburg Spain: The Example of Toledo (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1–3.
32. For a discussion of the distinction between deserving and undeserving poor, see my
Charity and Welfare: Hospitals and the Poor in Medieval Catalonia (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 4–6, 136–37.
is taken up by canonists, such as the Catalan Dominican, Raymond
of Penyafort (1175–1275), who compiled the decretals of Pope Gregory
IX. Citing texts from Saint Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop of Mi-
lan, Raymond argues that charity should be indiscriminate only when
“you have enough for all.” When resources are insufficient, on the oth-
er hand, he argued that preference should first be given to family and
friends. The Glossa ordinaria explained that “if we do not have enough
for all, then we should give rather to the good than to the evil, to a rel-
ative rather than a stranger.”³³ A century earlier, Gratian, the twelfth-
century canonist, approached the problem somewhat differently by
distinguishing between two forms of assistance: hospitalitas and liber-
alitas. The former is the giving of alms gratuitously and is thus, prop-
erly speaking, charity. As Gratian puts it, “In hospitality there is no re-
gard for persons.” Liberalitas, however, discriminates between friends
and strangers, the honest and the dishonest, and the humble and the
arrogant. Gratian says, “In this generosity due measure is to be ap-
plied both of things and of persons; ..... of persons, that we give first
to the just, then to sinners, to whom, nevertheless, we are forbidden to
give not as men but as sinners.”³⁴ Literary and sermon evidence, fur-
thermore, reveals a widespread prejudice against assisting the unwor-
thy. Jean de Meun (d. 1305), in the Romance of the Rose, for instance,
restricts legitimate begging to those who are unemployed or under-
employed due to sickness, old age, educational activities, or economic
conditions, and the Franciscan Francesc Eiximenis (d. 1409) argued
that it was not desirable for cities to support beggars—even the handi-
capped, he says, can find honorable work. Charity, he believed, should
be systematic but discriminating. A fifteenth-century archbishop of
Florence, St. Antonino, argued that assisting a scoundrel was more of
a sin than a means to achieve grace.³⁵
33. The arguments of Penyafort and the Glossa ordinaria are echoed in an English trea-
tise which distinguishes between those who are honestus and inhonestus. See Tierney, Medi-
eval Poor Law, 60, 150n43.
34. Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 55–56, 68.
35. Peter Rycraft, “The Late Medieval Catalan Death-bed,” in God and Man in Medieval
Spain: Essays in Honour of J. R. L. Highfield, ed. Derek W. Lomax and David Mackenzie (Warm-
inster: Aris and Phillips, 1989), 123, 127; Henderson, Piety and Charity, 357–58. Eiximenis felt
Sermons
Sermons provide some evidence of how the clergy transmitted the
Church’s teaching on charity to the laity. As one would expect, these
writings for the most part focused their attention upon the giver—
his sins as well as the potential rewards earned by being generous—
rather than upon the poor or the theme of social justice raised by mor-
al theologians. In the early twelfth century, for example, Honorius of
Autun argued that almsgiving and penitence were the principal means
by which a layperson might gain salvation.³⁶ As with the theological
works cited above, however, most sermon literature on this subject
dates from only the turn of the thirteenth century. An early example
is that of the Cistercian abbot Hugues de Connevaux, given before the
count of Toulouse in 1180, in which he argues that the soul is nurtured
and bound to the wider Christian community through masses, psalms,
alms, and good works. Alain of Lille (d. 1202 or 1203) in his manual on
the art of preaching equates the need of the pilgrim with that of the
poor person seeking shelter with Christ, who himself will reward one’s
show of charity or lack thereof in the life to come. A letter, approved
at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and used by those who collected
alms for various good causes, states: “Since, as the Apostle says, we
shall all stand before the tribunal of Christ to be received according as
we have borne ourselves in the body, whether good or ill, it behooves
us to anticipate the day of harvest with words of great mercy, and, for
the sake of things eternal, to sow on earth what we should gather in
heaven, the Lord returning it with increased fruit.” Sermon literature
of the thirteenth century reflects the principles of the Fourth Lateran
Council, the new practices of penance, and the popularity of mendi-
that blind people could make things with their hands; lame folks could carry burdens on the
shoulders; and those without feet could teach, write, or sell (José Luis Martín, “La pobreza y
los pobres en los textos literarios del siglo XIV,” in A pobreza, Lisboa, 2:594). Guillaume de Lo-
ris and Jean de Men, The Romance of the Rose, trans. Charles Dahlberg (Hanover, N.H.: Univer-
sity Press of New England, 1971), 11.11437–82, pp. 200–201. On Antonino, see Peter Howard,
Beyond the Written Word: Preaching and Theology in the Florence of Archbishop Antoninus, 1427–
1459 (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1955), esp. 195–223 and de Roover, San Bernardino, 4–6.
36. Philip Gavitt, “Economy, Charity, and Community in Florence, 1350–1450,” in As-
pects of Poverty in Early Modern Europe, ed. Thomas Riis (Florence: Le Monnier, 1981), 104–5.
cant preaching. Mendicant sermons in particular reveal two opposing
views of charity and the poor. One the one hand, the Summa de Pene-
tencia of Raymond of Penyafort and the De eruditione praedictorum of
Humbert de Romans, both Dominican friars, propose alms as among
the remedies available to the sinner. On the other hand, however, ser-
mons composed by less erudite friars, by arguing that the poor, pre-
cisely on account of the purgatory of their current sufferings, are more
likely to reach heaven than the rich, seem to discourage charitable giv-
ing. The tug of war between these two theological positions may have
dampened efforts to promote charity, yet extant legislation from thir-
teenth-century diocesan synods reveals at least some concern for its
promotion. For example, acta from Nîmes recommend to confessors
the practice of charity as a remedy for the sin of avarice. Viewed an-
other way, well into the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, when
a material crisis suddenly thrust a heavy burden of charity upon soci-
ety, testamentary bequests for commemorative masses outnumbered
those for charitable gifts to the needy. Indeed, many of the poor were
advised by writers such as Guibert de Tournai to act like Lazarus and
Job, to bear their tribulations in this world so that “they will receive
many good things, grace in the present life, glory in the future.”³⁷
Jacques de Vitry was a Parisian master, canon regular at Oignies in
northern France, bishop of Acre, auxiliary bishop of Liège (1227–29)
and cardinal (1229–40). When addressing the poor, he urged much the
same kind of forbearance and patience as are found in mendicant ser-
mons. But when addressing the rich and powerful, on the other hand,
he urged a much more proactive attitude toward the poor by portray-
ing charity as something heroic. In sermons to soldiers and nobles, to
artisans, and the clergy, he upheld the primacy of charity, not only as a
higher virtue but also as one more difficult to practice. He and moralists
of the Parisian school, nonetheless, urged its practice by all social class-
37. Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century, 149; Daniel Le Blévec, La part du pauvre:
L’assistance dans les pays du Bas-Rhône du XIIe au milieu du XVe siècle (Rome: Ecole Française de
Rome, 2000), 174–75; Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 46; Paul Viard, “Hospitalité,” Dictionnaire
de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire (Paris: Beauchesne, 1937–95) 7:823; Jussi
Hanska, “And the Rich Man also Died; and He Was Buried in Hell”: The Social Ethos in Mendicant
Sermons (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1997) 92, 168–69.
es. Artisans and the working poor, for example, could provide their la-
bor to repair the clothing and housing of the needy; the more powerful
could provide legal and material aid. Jacques’ influence was particularly
strong in Flanders where his attacks upon illicitly gained wealth might
have been a factor in the emergence in this region of the beguines.³⁸
In the later Middle Ages, mendicant friars counseled the wealthy
about their obligation to give to the poor, but in radically different
ways. Some fifteenth-century preachers, most notably Dominicans
and Conventual Franciscans, were social conservatives. Consequently,
their sermons tended to extol those who practiced voluntary poverty,
such as religious, as well as those of the involuntary poor judged as wor-
thy of charity, such as widows or unemployed artisans. Friars, such as
the Augustinian Basilius of Siena or the Franciscan Fra Mariani, how-
ever, showed a disdain for any other categories of the poor as guilty of
sloth, vanity, or prodigality. For these writers, charity, while an impor-
tant obligation, was a limited one and best left to the conscience of the
giver. On the other hand, there is St. Bernardino, a Franciscan Obser-
vant, who is much closer to the spirit evinced in Innocent III’s work on
alms. For him, the obligation of charity is to be gauged by the extent
of a person’s material need and not by his moral worth. Consequently,
alongside those normally classed as worthy of alms, he recommends
assistance to beggars, lepers, and prisoners. Furthermore, colleagues
of his, such as Bernardino da Feltre, promoted such self-help schemes
for the poor as the monte di pietà (interest-free loan fund).³⁹
Secular Legal Writings and Literature

Writings on charity and almsgiving were not the monopoly of the cler-
gy, particularly in the later Middle Ages. Secular authorities also took
up the subject, albeit from a different perspective. While the ruling
elite doubtlessly accepted the basic Christian justifications for charity,
it was also concerned with the practical consequences of giving alms.
38. Jessalynn Bird, “Medicine for Body and Soul: Jacques de Vitry’s Sermons to Hos-
pitallers and Their Charges,” in Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages, ed. P. Biller and Y.
Ziegler (York, England: York Medieval Press and Boydell and Brewer, 2001), 94–95, 102.
39. Bernadette Paton, Preaching Friars and the Civic Ethos, 1380–1480 (London: Centre for
Medieval Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, 1992), 197–205.
Therefore, the focus in legal texts is more directly upon the recipient
of alms. One important theme returns to the writings of theologians,
namely, deciding who was a worthy recipient of alms. An important
statement on this question of eligibility is contained in Las Siete Parti-
das, a mid-thirteenth-century compendium of law redacted by King
Alfonso X of Castile. In laying out criteria for giving, he begins with
two considerations peculiar to the Iberian peninsula: the presence
of significant religious minorities and the phenomenon of captivity.
First, he argued, preference should be given to Christians over non-
Christians (i.e., Jews or Muslims), and particularly to fellow Chris-
tians too ashamed to beg. Secondly, of all the needy, Christians held
captive by Muslims should be assisted before all others.⁴⁰ His other
criteria, however, reflect what Pope Innocent III had already recom-
mended a half-century earlier. So, next in line are debtors who were
otherwise innocent of crime and then those who faced an imminent
threat to their lives or well-being. The king, just like Thomas Aquinas,
prefers that alms be divided among as many recipients as possible and
not be lavished upon a single individual. Preference should be given
to relations over strangers, lest the relations themselves be forced to
turn to strangers for help. Similarly, the old and the disabled should
be favored over the young and healthy, and those of higher caste who
have fallen in social status over those of the lower orders. The royal
legislation also reflects traditional ties of family, since non-Christian
fathers were to be preferred over Christian strangers. Maintenance of
the social order is another prominent issue. Thus, thieves could not
barter their ill-gotten gains for spiritual pardon but prostitutes, whose
trade had legal recognition, could give their earnings as alms. Like-
wise, wives were forbidden to give charity without the consent of their
husbands.⁴¹ Teofilo Ruiz, in a study of late medieval Castile, argues for
the indiscriminate character of religious giving and believes that any
such prioritization destroys the religious character of charity. Howev-
40. This accords with the attitude of the Jewish community of medieval Cairo that also
privileged captives in their allocation of alms. See Mark R. Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the
Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), 109–22.
41. Las Siete Partidas, trans. Samuel Parsons Scott (Chicago: Commerce Clearing House,
1931), 1.23.7, 1.23.8, 1.23.10, 1.23.12; pp. 259–62.
er, King Alfonso’s own successor would not agree. King Sancho IV, in
his Castigos, a literary document, enunciates essentially religious rea-
sons for giving alms, namely that they wash away sins, provided that
the giver is not in a serious state of sin, and that they are given for
the love of God rather than the expectation of gain. The fourteenth-
century Spanish writer Juan Ruiz expresses motives more mercenary
than those of King Sancho. Nonetheless, the expected reward, one
which he argued was in a ratio of 100 to 1, remained a religious one.⁴²
The subject of charitable giving was also taken up by secular Ital-
ian leaders. Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of Florence in the fourteenth
century and a humanist, saw charity as having both a religious and a so-
cial dimension. It not only encompassed the love of God, neighbor, and
the city, but also served as social cement that bound together the sacred
and the secular. His student Leonardo Bruni discusses the Common
Good and emphasizes the role of magistrates in assisting unfortunates.
L. B. Alberti, while distinguishing between the deserving and unde-
serving poor, sees care of the poor as the common duty of the Church,
the State, and hospitals. But in 1440 he also says that the poor “should
not disturb honest citizens uselessly with their begging and the fastidi-
ous with their repugnant appearance,” an idea reflected in widespread
legislation against street begging and vagabondage.⁴³ The Spanish hu-
42. López Alonso, Pobreza en la España, 272, 277, 279; Teofilo F. Ruiz, From Heaven to
Earth: The Reordering of Castilian Society, 1150–1350 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 2004), 117–18; Juan Ruiz, Arcipreste de Hita, Libro de Buen Amor (Madrid: Espasa-
Calpe, 1967), 2: 265, 1654. See also ibid., 2: 248, 1590: “Ayamos contra avariçia spíritu de pie-
dat, dando limosna a pobles, doliéndonos de su pobridat, virtud de natural justiçia judgando
con homildat, con tal mata al avarisia bien largamente dad.”
43. For example, in France, the first laws against vagabondage per se date from the mid-
fourteenth century when John II ordered hospitals not to shelter vagrants. In Castile, Ferdi-
nand IV ordered that beggars who were unwilling to work be expelled from Burgos; in 1351
Pedro I promulgated a more general law against vagabondage. In 1322, nonresident vagrants
were permitted to stay in Barcelona for no longer than a day. See Geremek, Poverty, 73–76,
100–102; Geremek, The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris, trans. Jean Birrell (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 30–31; Martín, “La pobreza y los pobres,” 618–19;
and Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance, 198, 200, 636–37. In 1300, the Grand Council of Ven-
ice decreed that paupers were not to wander the street begging, but instead were to be put
into shelters. Street people like prostitutes, swindlers, and ruffians were liable to a public
whipping; Florence in 1294 expelled poor, blind beggars from the city (Henderson, Piety and
Charity in Florence, 244). Geremek’s argument that restrictions on the nonresident poor and
manist Juan Luis Vives wrote in 1526 in his De subventione pauperum that
civil government should fill the gap between the needs of the poor and
what voluntary charity could provide by conducting a census of the
poor, operating alms funds and shelters, forbidding begging, and pro-
viding civic education and employment for needy children.⁴⁴ The Ob-
servant Franciscans stressed the hardships of involuntary poverty and
condemned usury.⁴⁵ These sentiments are echoed in Barcelona where
the Franciscan Francesc Eiximenis also argued against charity for beg-
gars and idlers. This hardening of attitude, particularly in the late Mid-
dle Ages, evidently reflected the values of the community as well, since
wills during the century after the plague show diminishing support for
hospitals and parish charities. Such institutions of charity instead had
to rely increasingly upon street collections, larger legacies, and subsi-
dies from public authorities.⁴⁶ Brian Pullan dates the shift in attitude
in Venice to the mid-fifteenth century when public authorities began to
view poverty as a problem of public order. Charity was then seen less in
a devotional context and more as an instrument of public policy to coax
beggars, prostitutes, and criminals toward moral reformation.⁴⁷
Religious Literature
Another window on medieval attitudes toward charity is that provided
in religious literature. An appropriate example is the vita of St. Julian
the Hospitaller. In a thirteenth-century version of this life, the saint is
seen pursuing three distinctive lay religious vocations. The story cen-
ters around a young French knight who, in a vain effort to frustrate
a prophecy that he would slay his parents, embarks upon successive
careers as an ascetic pilgrim, a crusader and knight of the Order of
St. John, and lastly as the keeper of a small hospice along the pilgrim
on begging originated in southern German cities in the fourteenth century would seem to be
an overstatement, given the parallel practices in France and Barcelona; see his Poverty, 46–47.
See also Hans Baron, “Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth as Factors in the Rise of Human-
istic Thought,” Speculum 13 (1938): 19–20.
44. Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion, 200.
45. George W. Dameron, Episcopal Power and Florentine Society, 1000–1320 (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 354–58, 400.
46. Rycraft, “The Late Catalan Death-Bed,” 127–28.
47. See his Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice, 199, 633–38.
route to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain.
To expiate his final and inevitable sin, the unwitting murder of his fa-
ther and mother, he is directed by the pope to “lodge ..... and to shel-
ter the poor of God so that God may grant you His love and pardon
for your sins.” The legend is illuminating in several respects. First of
all, it reveals a continuing admiration for voluntary poverty. This is a
fitting state for both the penitent and those who serve the Lord more
actively as pilgrims, crusaders, or hospitallers. Secondly, this is a state
appropriate not only for clerics, but also for laypeople. Notably, Julian
undertakes his final pilgrimage and work as a hospitaller as a married
man and in conjunction with his wife, Clarisse, who is a full partner in
his work with the poor. Finally, the works of mercy toward the poor are
depicted as being more important than mere asceticism or heroic cru-
sading. It is only as a hospitaller that Julian is visited by Christ, who
comes disguised as an ailing leper and finally forgives his sins.⁴⁸
To what degree did the popular practice of charity mirror the sen-
timents of clerical and secular theorists? While motivations for do-
nations to houses of religion and institutions of piety were many and
complex,⁴⁹ the patristic theme of charitable alms as an atonement for
sins continued to be a common note struck during the High Middle
Ages. The vita of Saint Eligius, bishop of Noyon-Tournai in the seventh
century, written by his contemporary Dado, states: “God could have
made all men rich, but He wanted there to be poor people in His world,
that the rich might be able to redeem their sins.” Mendicant writers
48. The legend of St. Julian forms part of the Golden Legend, a collection of saints’ lives
compiled in 1275 by Jacobus de Voragine, a Dominican friar and archbishop of Genoa. “The
Life of St. Julian the Hospitaller,” trans. Tony Devaney Morinelli from the Paris Arsenal
Ms. 2516, fol. 84, and a transcription by Rudolf Tobler in Archiv für das Studium der Neuren
Sprachen und Literaturen IV, 102 (1899): 109–78. Available online in the Medieval Sourcebook at
www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/julian.html. An abbreviated account is contained in Jaco-
bus de Voragine, The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints, trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut
Ripperger (New York: Arno Press, 1964), 130–31.
49. For example, a study of giving by prominent Anglo-Norman families to monaster-
ies in the second quarter of the twelfth century shows that the motives most expressed are
those of religion: for the souls or health of the living and dead, to fulfill a vow, in return for
prayers, out of respect for a religious person, when a relative joined a religious community.
See V. Chandler, “Politics and Piety: Influences on Charitable Donations during the Anglo-
Norman Period,” Revue bénédictine 90 (1980): 63–64.
such as the Franciscan homilist of the thirteenth-century, François de
Mayronnes, repeat the same idea: “Where there is no misery, there is
no mercy either,” meaning that poverty or suffering allowed the rich
to give alms to compensate for their sin.⁵⁰ The atonement of sin, there-
fore, is a motive commonly given for the donation of alms. For example,
the vita of the German emperor Henry II states: “Wishing to redeem his
sins with alms, he assigned very large amounts for all the temples and
monasteries of the religious poor and for hospitals and shelters and he
also took care that money beyond count be dispersed among the poor
of Christ.”⁵¹ Bishop Sancho de Larrosa of Pamplona, in his foundation
of the confraternity of Roncesvalles in 1127, reveals a similar sentiment:
“For fulfilling this task with God’s help, I, Sancho the sinner, not for the
cupidity of an inane glory, nor for the ambition of this world’s honor,
but wishing to hear the longed-for words of the Lord (‘Come, blessed
of my Father, etc.’).”⁵² The archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de
Rada (1170–1247), informs us that King Alfonso VIII of Castile estab-
lished the Hospital Real near Burgos in 1195: “To such an extent that the
works of piety in that same hospital could be contemplated by anyone
as in a mirror, and [he] who in life merited universal praise for his ex-
cellent works, because of the multiplication of [his intercessors], would
deserve to be crowned by God after his death.”⁵³ With regard to inter-
cession, in the thirteenth-century mendicant writers such as Salimbene
and Giordano de Rivalto spoke of alms as a contract, whereby those
who received charity were then bound to pray for those who gave it.⁵⁴
While moral theologians such as Jacques de Vitry found charitable
50. The idea is repeated by the Franciscan Adam di Salimbene and the Dominican Gior-
dano di Rivalto. The Doctrina Compendiosa, written by the fifteenth-century Franciscan Fran-
cesc Eiximenis, argues that God will not only glorify individuals who give alms, but also in-
crease their earthly goods while, at the same time, diminishing those of persons who do not
practice charity. See Martín, “La pobreza y los pobres,” 596; and Geremek, Poverty, 48.
51. Geremek, Poverty, 20. Francesc Eiximenis at the start of the fifteenth century says
much the same. See Martín, “La pobreza y los pobres,” 2:595; Hanska, “And the Rich Man also
Died,” 172; PL 140:149.
52. Maria Isabel Ostolaza, Colección diplomática de Santa Maria de Roncesvalles, 1127–1300
(Pamplona: Dip. Foral de Navarra, C.S.I.C., [1978]), 85, no. 2.
53. See his Historia de rebus Hispanie, sive, Historia Gothica, ed. Juan Fernández Valverde
(Turnholt: Brepols, 1987), 7.13–14, 7.173–74.
54. Quoted in Geremek, Poverty, 20, 48.
giving from the deathbed less meritorious than during life, nonethe-
less, much recorded charity is contained in wills, and these are an im-
portant source for the mentalité of givers. Wills contain lists of other-
wise obscure charitable beneficiaries, to each of whom would be given
a modest gift. In mid-fourteenth century Siena, for example, the typi-
cal will contained twelve such bequests.⁵⁵ The phenomenon was com-
mon and important enough to become the subject of legislation in me-
dieval Castile where such bequests “for one’s soul” become limited to
a fifth of one’s personal property.⁵⁶ The will of the Spanish merchant,
Martín Ortiz de Agonçiello, redacted in 1347, describes the testator as
“greedy” for the glory of paradise and so leaves gifts to the poor “for
the love of God and for his soul.”⁵⁷ In 1444, John Brompton, a wealthy
merchant from Beverley, England, in his will expressed the hope of
being received into the bosom of Abraham through the redemption
of Christ, the intercession of the saints, and “through faith, hope and
charity.” He then went on to donate money to a variety of churches
and religious houses. Especially noteworthy, however, are his bequests
of clothing, coal, and money to paupers on the day of his funeral and
then weekly for up to four years more.⁵⁸
Modern historians debate the relative importance to the medi-
eval benefactor of the motives of religion that have been the subject of
this chapter and the more practical considerations of kinship, neigh-
borhood, and town. As we have already seen, however, canonists and
moralists in the thirteenth century did not view these motives as in-
compatible or contradictory. Instead, they discussed and debated pri-
orities that should be used in giving and approved discrimination that
was influenced by both religious and more mundane considerations.
John Hine Mundy, in his study of charity in medieval Toulouse, docu-
ments this tendency toward targeted giving as beginning in the thir-
55. Bird, “Medicine for Body and Soul,” 93–94; Samuel K. Cohn, Death and Property in
Siena, 1205–1800 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 38.
56. See my “What Is a Soul Worth? Pro anima Bequests in the Municipal Legislation of
Reconquest Spain,” Medievalia et Humanistica, new series, no. 20 (1994): 20–21.
57. Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth, 37.
58. Testamenta Eboracensia: Wills Registered at York, Illustrative of the History, Manners, Lan-
guage, Statistics, &c., of the Province of York, from the Year MCCC Downwards, ed. James Raine
(London: Surtees Society, 1855), 2:96–98.
teenth century. He ties this to the growing use of written testaments
and the development of the Church’s penitential system. Daniel Le
Blévec’s study of the lower Rhône valley of France, on the other hand,
does not believe that charity was more than ritualistic until the crisis
of the plague caused donors to confront specific human tragedies. The
Black Death certainly had a profound impact elsewhere on the magni-
tude and character of medieval giving. Quantitatively, Samuel Cohn’s
study of Sienese wills has demonstrated that there was a tremendous
increase in charitable endowments during the year of the plague, as
one would expect from the catastrophic incidence of death, but also
that this continued into the 1360s, when charitable giving was still dou-
ble that of pre-plague years. The post-plague generosity was not only
greater, but also more targeted. This is suggested by a decline in the
average number of caritative bequests per will, but a doubling in the
value of each gift. One cannot, however, draw broad generalizations,
because conditions varied from region to region. Evidence from south-
ern France, for example, shows an actual decline in giving after 1360
with no measurable recovery until 1430 when economic conditions be-
gan to improve.⁵⁹
Teofilo Ruiz, in his study of northern Castile, furthermore, sees
little of a social dimension to charity and argues that donations to the
poor and good causes were part of “a careful calculation” and a means
of “investing in salvation.” For him, the poor were little more than an
“instrument in the increasingly frantic bargaining for salvation.”⁶⁰
Consequently, none of this is evidence for any genuine love of neigh-
bor. The story of Godric, a mean-spirited butcher in twelfth-century
London, reveals such more immediately selfish motives. He, we are
told, refused repeated requests that he give a bit of meat to the poor of
the Hospital of St. Bartholomew until he was promised that, in return
for a gift, future customers would be willing to pay whatever he asked
for his viands. After one hapless consumer paid a handsome sum for a
sorry piece of meat, Godric and his fellow butchers “began to be more
59. Cohn, Death and Property in Siena, 37–44; Le Blévec, La part du pauvre, 187.
60. John H. Mundy, “Charity and Social Work in Toulouse, 1100–1250,” Traditio 22
(1966): 208–9; Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth, 47, 111, 123.
enthusiastic about giving alms, more fervent in their devotions, and
competed to be the first to give.”⁶¹
Consequently, the question of motivation is a complicated one,
about which historians are far from consensus. The reality is that
many individuals, perhaps a majority, gave little or nothing to char-
ity that can be documented in testaments or elsewhere. For example,
a study of four hundred wills of the thirteenth century preserved in
Barcelona’s cathedral reveals that only forty percent left bequests to
the city’s hospitals; a study of fourteenth-century wills from nearby
Girona shows a similar percentage. More important than charity were
bequests to parish churches, many of which was presumably designat-
ed for memorial masses. For example, in thirteenth-century Genoa,
such Mass stipends amounted to between a quarter and a half of all
pious legacies and represented by far the largest category of pro anima
bequests. Statutes redacted for the Hôtel-Dieu of Notre-Dame du Puy
in France in 1249, nevertheless, stress that charity had both practical as
well as religious purposes. The shelter was to serve as a refuge for the
poor as well as an example of good works for all the faithful.⁶²
The custom of bequeathing the residue of one’s estate for the
“poor of Christ”—or, generically to the needy of one’s community—
was a common practice throughout the medieval period and is per-
haps a good example of charity that focuses more on the well-being
of the donor than of those who are aided. For example, in 1267, Lau-
rerentius, a canon of Barcelona’s cathedral, empowered his executors
to distribute the residue of his estate to needy orphans, widows, cap-
tives, and girls of marriageable age. Alfonso X, in his Las Siete Partidas,
was sufficiently concerned about the practical implications of this cus-
tom that he sought to direct these general bequests to deserving folk,
61. The Book of the Foundation of St. Bartholomew’s Church in London, ed. Norman Moore
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), 24–25.
62. Le Blévec, La part du pauvre, 189, 219; Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth, 132; Léon Le Grand,
ed., Statuts d’Hotels-Dieu et de léproseries: Recueil de textes du XII e au XIVe siecle (Paris, 1901), 97;
C. Batlle and Montserrat Casas, “La caritat privada i les instituciones benèfiques de Barcelo-
na (segle XIII),” in La pobreza y la asistencia a los pobres en la Cataluña medieval, ed. Manuel Riu
(Barcelona: C.S.I.C., 1980–82), 1:160–63; Christian Guilleré, “Assistance et charité à Gérone
au début du XIVème siècle,” in La pobreza en Cataluña, 1:197–99; Steven Epstein, Genoa and the
Genoese, 958–1528 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 118, 185.
namely, those unable to beg for themselves, such as abandoned chil-
dren, the feeble, and those so crippled as to be unable to leave the hos-
pital in which they are sheltered. On Majorca in the fourteenth cen-
tury, the bishop worried that executors often failed in their duty to
distribute these alms properly or at all and so appointed two priests
to seek out such donations provided in wills; in Barcelona, statutes of
1354 provided similar oversight.⁶³
charity: a clerical monopoly?

Was the practice of charity in the Middle Ages an essentially clerical
preoccupation? The tendency is to answer this question in the affirma-
tive, since the preponderance of contemporary writings on the subject
are clerical in derivation, and the institutions that distributed chari-
table alms, as we will see in the following chapters, more often than
not fell under some sort of ecclesiastical governance. Indeed, a num-
ber of modern scholars tend to see the phenomena that we will be dis-
cussing in essentially clerical terms. Walter Simons, for example, de-
picts the Gregorian reform movement, arguably the starting point for
most caritative initiatives of the High Middle Ages, as an effort to re-
assert clerical control over the Church. Consequently, it widened the
gap that existed between the clergy and laypeople and produced, as
R. I. Moore also believes, a privileged state for the clergy.⁶⁴ Even if an
instance of religious charity would have begun from some lay source,
Herbert Grundmann would argue that it, like all religious movements
during the Middle Ages, would be co-opted into some ecclesiasti-
cal corporation or else cut off from society as some kind of heretical
movement.⁶⁵
63. Arxiu St Pere les Puelles (Barcelona), carp. 25, no. 333; Las Siete Partidas, 6.3.20,
p. 1200; Amada López de Meneses, “Documentos acerca de la peste negra en los dominios
de a Corona de Aragón,” Estudios de la edad media en la Corona de Aragón 6 (1956), 369–70, no.
87 (January 19, 1350); Kristine Utterback, Pastoral Care and Administration in Mid-Fourteenth
Century Barcelona: Exercising the “Art of Arts” (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993), 70–
71, 164–90.
64. Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), xi–xii.
65. Grundmann, Movimenti religiosi, 7.
In the broad sense, the opera caritatis conforms to this observa-
tion. As the subsequent chapters will show, bishops and monasteries
played an important role in the genesis of Europe’s first charitable in-
stitutions, and such institutions would maintain a religious charac-
ter throughout the Middle Ages. Some of these institutions, further-
more, would be established and sustained by new religious orders of
hospitallers established during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Many others, particularly due to the efforts of ecclesiastical reformers
of the early thirteenth century, were served by independent congre-
gations of men and/or women who lived under the vows of religion.
Yet, on the other hand, the opera caritatis are also a manifestation of
a genuine lay spirituality. Perhaps because this movement never ven-
tured into the arena of doctrine, Grundmann’s paradigm of clerical co-
option or heresy does not fully apply. While it is true that several
movements, such as the Mercedarians, were eventually transformed
from lay into clerically dominated associations, many others remained
in the hands of laypersons. Some of these individuals were lay reli-
gious, i.e., unordained individuals who were, nonetheless, bound to a
religious rule. Others practiced a corporate religious life but without
any rule or formal vows. Still others exchanged their labor for a prom-
ise of care in sickness or old age within the hospital they served. Many
served hospitals as salaried employees or as members of voluntary as-
sociations, such as confraternities or municipalities. Even more gen-
erally, individual institutions of charity depended for their ongoing
support upon the generosity of generations of laymen and laywomen.
Consequently, the movement of charity definitely operated within the
sphere of lay religious action and so forms a chapter in the story of lay
religious activity and practice in the Middle Ages.
What are we to make of the incongruity between clerical and lay
justifications of charity? As we have seen, moral theologians as well
as institutions themselves tended to emphasize a social message: the
donor’s obligation to give and the worthiness of the poor. Yet sermons
and other appeals made directly to laypeople took a more selfish ap-
proach. They warned individuals of the eternal consequences of sin,
while at the same time offering in works, such as charity, an opportu-
nity for expiation and atonement. In this, there was little focus upon
the poor, and this has led many historians to view medieval charity as
indiscriminate and uncaring. Thus, such modern historians as Sidney
Webb (1927) and Teofilo Ruiz (2004) have discounted the practical ef-
fects of theological or canonist theory and see medieval giving in less-
than-charitable terms.⁶⁶ But there is another way to view this seeming
contradiction. Augustine Thompson, in a recent study of religion in
the northern Italian communes of the High Middle Ages, rejects as ar-
tificial the separation made by most modern historians between the
religious and the secular, between the Church and the State. Instead,
he argues for a more integrated view of society in which the religious
and the secular constantly intermingled on a variety of levels.⁶⁷ Char-
ity is undoubtedly one of these areas in which it is difficult to separate
or distinguish between religious and secular motives. When preachers
and homilists encouraged their listeners to give alms, were they un-
aware to whom such assistance, if rendered, would actually be given?
In other words, the appeal to be charitable was not uttered in a vacu-
um, but in a society that made all sorts of assumptions about who was
a worthy object of charity. Thus, if the words of the homilist and mor-
al theologian were different, the effect of their rhetoric may have been
the same. In any case, this is one of the questions that will have to be
addressed in successive chapters as we consider the actual practice of
charity by both clergy and lay folk.
Religious charity was thus a broad and clearly articulated move-
ment within the medieval Church. While its origins go all the way back
to the patristic era, and its practices can be detected during the ear-
ly Middle Ages, it blossomed into an important force within western
Christianity beginning in the twelfth century. It developed an ideol-
ogy, expressed most forthrightly by Pope Innocent III in his Libellus de
eleemosyna, as well as an agenda. It came to represent the affirmation
of the active life of the Christian in this world. Its existence did not di-
minish older religious practices, because new movements based upon
the more traditional ideas of asceticism and prayer, such as those of the
penitents and the mendicant friars, also flourished in the thirteenth
66. Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 54; Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth, 42–43, 112, 115, 121.
67. Thompson, Cities of God, 3.
and later centuries. Nonetheless, the ideology of religious charity pro-
vided the spiritual and intellectual underpinnings of the myriad of
hospitals, religious orders, independent communities of religious, and
confraternities and parochial organizations that sprang up in defense
of the poor during the High Middle Ages. That these new institutions
coexisted beside older ones whose spiritual paths were more inwardly
directed demonstrates the richness and pluralism of religious life and
practice in the medieval era.

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RELIG IOUS CHARITY

C ONTEMPORARY CONCERNS with welfare and

AND THE PRACTICAL

R ELIGIOUS CHARITY was not just a set of insti-

the patristic era

the early middle ages

the high middle ages

Pope Innocent III

Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae, speaks at length about the nature,

26. Ibid., 34:9 (2.23.1).

28. Ibid., 34:251–59 (2.32.5–6).

Discriminate vs. Indiscriminate Charity

Secular Legal Writings and Literature

charity: a clerical monopoly?

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