Poverty and Prosperity

in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

edited by
Cynthia Kosso
Anne Scott
 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Poverty and prosperity in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. -- (Arizona
studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance ; 19)
1. Poor--History--Congresses.
2. Charity--History-- Congresses.
3. Poverty--Religious aspects--Congresses.
4. Elite (Social sciences)--Attitudes--Congresses.
5. Poverty in literature--Congresses.
6. Wealth in literature--Congresses.
7. Charity in literature-- Congresses.
8. Charity--Political aspects--Congresses.
I. Series II. Kosso, Cynthia. III. Scott, Anne, 1958-
305.5’09-dc23

ISBN-13: 9782503530321

© 2012 BREPOLS
Printed on acid-free paper
D/2012/0095/74
ISBN 978–2–503–53032-1
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
 Table of Contents

Introduction vii
anne scott and cynthia kosso

Part I: Poverty and Morality

Model Rulers and Royal Misers: Public Morality among the 3
Merovingian Aristocracy
alicia mckenzie

Living on Loss: Poverty and Wealth in Shakespeare’s Sonnets 25

roy neil graves

A Sham, Pretense, and Hypocrisy? Poverty in The Book of Concord of 1580 55

jayson s. galler

Promiscuous Monks and Naughty Nuns: Poverty, Sex, and Apostasy in 75

Later Medieval England
christian d. knudsen

Part II: Charity and Almsgiving

Approaching Poverty in the Medieval Countryside 95
phillipp r. schofield

From Caritas to Charity: How Loving God Became Giving Alms 113
eliza buhrer

The Bonds of Charity: Charitable and Liturgical Obligations in 129

Bolognese Testaments
matthew t. sneider

Poverty and Charity: Jews in the Medieval Islamic World 143

mark r. cohen

The Voice of the Poor and the Tin Ear of Nineteenth-Century 155
English Medievalism
charles w. connell
vi Contents

Part III: Spirituality and Institutional Organizations

Comparing Spiritual and Material Goods: Poverty and Prosperity in 179
The Pilgrimage of the Soul and Everyman
rosemarie mcgerr

Innocent IV, John XXII, and the Michaelists on Corporate Poverty 197
jonathan robinson

Traders, Vagabonds, Incarnate Christs, and Pilgrims: The Religious 225

Network of Danilo Filippov, 1650–1850
j. eugene clay

The Poor, the Secular Courts, and Access to Justice in 241

Thirteenth-Century France
ada-maria kuskowski

Part IV: Monetary and Literary Economies and Greed

Rich or Poor? Alfred’s Prose Boethius and the Poetic Economy of 259
Anglo-Saxon Exposition
tiffany beechy

Wealth, Weber, and Whig Historiography: Reading George Herbert’s 279

“Business”
ron cooley

The Economy of the Turnip: Contributions of the Rapularius to the 293

Medieval Debate on Greed
sally livingston

Ferocious Appetites: Hunger, Nakedness, and Identity in Sixteenth-Century 303

American Encounters
heather martel

Notes on Contributors 323

Index 327
 From CARITAS to Charity:
How Loving God Became Giving Alms

Eliza Buhrer

In his foundational book The Poor in the Middle Ages, Michel Mollat wrote that it
was only with the birth of the Franciscan order that the poor were “understood and
recognized at last” and “valued for their intrinsic human and spiritual worth, and
not mere instruments for the salvation of the wealthy.” 1 Following Mollat, histo-
rians have often taken it nearly for granted that the emergence of the mendicant
orders was the watershed moment that shifted the focus of Christian charity away
from the potential benefits that it could bestow upon the souls of their benefac-
tors, and towards the poor themselves. Accordingly, the majority of recent studies
dealing with the history of western medieval poverty have focused on the period
after the twelfth century, with very little attention having been given to the early
Middle Ages. This emphasis is not entirely unjustifiable; a great deal of patristic
and early medieval writing seems to suggest that charity or poor relief was meant
to benefit the souls of the rich more than its impoverished recipients. For example,
the seventh-century Life of Saint Eligius claimed that “God could have made all
mankind rich, but in fact he wanted there to be poor in this world so that the rich
would have by that means a way of remedying their sins.” 2 However, is it truly pos-
sible that western medieval understandings of charity placed so little value on the
actual alleviation of poverty prior to the thirteenth century? This essay will look
at how understandings of the function of charity changed throughout the Middle

1
Michel Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages: An Essay In Social History (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1986), 119, 121.
2
“Potuit nempe Deus omnes homines divites facere, sed pauperes ideo in hoc mundo esse
voluit, ut divites haberent quomodo peccata sua redimerent” (PL 87. 533C), cited and trans. in
William Ian Miller, Audun and the Polar Bear (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 121, n. 11.

Poverty and Prosperity in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. by Cynthia Kosso and Anne Scott,
ASMAR 19 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), pp. 113–128.
FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.1.101058
114 eliza buhrer

Ages, through examining the circumstances in which the Latin word caritas first
came to be associated with poor relief. 3
The project of identifying moments of significant cultural transformation by
looking at how the meaning of a single word changed over time is based upon the
assumption that the meanings of words and concepts adapt when necessary to meet
new intellectual demands. In its original context the word caritas referred to the
love between God and humanity. Latin writing up through the later Middle Ages
likewise used caritas to refer to divine love and frequently opposed this particular
kind of love to the affection that one has for their neighbor. For caritas to come to
mean what we think of as charity, its primary object would need to shift from God
to the poor. Such a transformation would undoubtedly reflect significant changes
in how people valued poor relief, which if one follows Mollat and others would
have occurred largely owing to the new emphasis that the Franciscans placed on
poverty beginning in the thirteenth century. Contrary to this, the ways in which
earlier vernacular homilies reinterpreted various patristic texts concerned with cari-
tas and almsgiving seem to suggest otherwise. Beginning with an examination of
the meaning of caritas in patristic and scholastic thought, I will ultimately argue, on
the basis of a selection of Carolingian and Old English homilies, that poor relief,
and in particular almsgiving, were much more central to particular strains of moral
theology during the early Middle Ages than has frequently been assumed.

3
It is important to note that this article is concerned only with the history of attitudes
towards charity and poor relief as they developed in the Latin west. Thus, it only attempts to tell
part of the story of how modern understandings of charity emerged. A full account would need
to include a consideration of not only Greek, but also Islamic and Jewish sources. In the Greek-
speaking Christian east, for instance, some theologians saw less of a dichotomy between the love
for God and the love for neighbor than thinkers in the Latin tradition with which this article is
concerned. Particularly, traces of the ideas I discuss in relation to western medieval thought can
be found in the writing of John Chrysostom, but his work was not translated and transmitted to
the Latin west until the mid-twelfth century, and his teachings never gained the same degree of
influence there as Augustine’s. For more on the differences between eastern and western models
of charity and their origins, see Bronwen Neil, “Models of Gift Giving in the Preaching of Leo
the Great,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 18 (2010): 225–59. Here, Neil argues that the influ-
ence of Greco-Roman models of patronage led redemptive almsgiving, the act of “giving alms in
order to obtain one’s salvation,” to become the standard model of charity promoted by western
Christian texts by the fifth century. In contrast, Neil argues that the Greek east was quicker to
adopt ascetic models of charity, and thus adhered to a less self-interested, and more direct model
of gift giving. A recent publication, Miriam Frenkle and Yaacov Lev, eds., Charity and Gift Giv-
ing in Monotheistic Religions (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), also contains a number of articles
on charity in non-western traditions.
From Caritas to Charity 115

***

The word ‘charity’ is derived from the Latin word caritas; however, the meaning of
caritas in the Middle Ages had little to do with poor relief. Rather, its meaning was
largely shaped by the Vulgate translation of 1 Corinthians 13, in which Paul wrote,
“And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my
body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” 4 1 Corinthians
13 was often quoted in medieval writings on the topic of the poor or poverty, and
it was frequently expanded upon by canonists and scholastic philosophers. 5 Yet,
despite the fact that the passage was perhaps the point of origin for the understand-
ing of charity in western thought, the original meaning of caritas in 1 Corinthians
13 was quite removed from how charity is today understood. We are inclined today
to think of charity as a gift or act of benevolence aimed at alleviating poverty. The
Vulgate translation of 1 Corinthians 13, however, defined charity in explicit oppo-
sition to external acts, including poor relief. Rather, when Paul wrote that without
charity he was nothing, regardless of his words, knowledge, or deeds, he presented
charity as a quality of the giver’s soul, whose presence gives his actions meaning,
and whose absence renders his gifts useless.
The divergence between the ancient and modern understandings of charity
originated from an issue of translation. 1 Corinthians 13 was, in its original con-
text, a discussion of the highest theological virtue — the love that man has for God
himself. 6 Fittingly, in the original Greek of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul expressed this
with the word agape, which referred to the most perfect form of love in antiquity. 7
When Jerome translated Paul’s words into Latin in the fourth century, however, he
replaced agape with caritas. This choice was undoubtedly inspired by Cicero’s De

4
1 Corinthians 13:3, “et si distribuero in cibos pauperum omnes facultates meas et si tradi-
dero corpus meum ut ardeam caritatem autem non habuero nihil mihi prodest.”
5
Brian Tierney, “The Decretists and the Deserving Poor,” Comparative Studies in Society
and History 1 (1959): 360–73, contains excellent background on how the Decretists interpreted
this and other biblical passages.
6
Paul originally identified charity as the greatest of the three theological virtues in 1 Cor-
inthians 13:13, the Vulgate translation of which reads, “nunc autem manet fides spes caritas tria
haec maior autem his est caritas.” Cf. Matthew 22:38: “Hoc es magnum et primum mandatum.
Primarium autem objectus caritatis Deus est” contains what was perhaps the first identifica-
tion of God as the primary object of caritas, which was accepted by nearly all theologians up
through the Middle Ages. Citation from R. Freyhan, “The Evoluton of the Caritas Figure in the
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948):
68–86, at 68 n. 5.
7
According to Liz Carmichael, the word agape was reworked to describe divine love within
a Judeo-Christian context. It occurs frequently throughout the New Testament, but most impor-
tantly is used in 1 John 4:8, where it is written that “God is love.” Liz Carmichael, “From Classi-
cal Friendship to New Testament Love,” in eadem, Friendship: Interpreting Christian Love (Lon-
don: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004), 36–41.
116 eliza buhrer

Officiis and De Amicitia, which were largely responsible for transmitting the Greek
ideals of friendship to the Latin West. In both of these works, Cicero contrasted
caritas to other lower forms of love, claiming that it alone resulted from the innate
inclination of the soul towards the highest good, rather than the desire for personal
gain. 8 Following this, patristic and medieval theologians were quick to view caritas
as love and to attribute to it all of the qualities that had been previously associ-
ated with agape. When commenting upon 1 Corinthians 13 in The City of God, for
instance, Augustine argued that caritas denoted nothing different from the other
words for love, stating that

Some are of opinion that charity or regard [dilectio] is one thing, love [amor]
another. They say that dilectio is used of a good affection, amor of an evil love.
But it is very certain that even secular literature knows no such distinction.
However, it is for the philosophers to determine whether and how they differ,
though their own writings sufficiently testify that they make great account of
love [amor] placed on good objects, and even on God Himself. But we wished
to show that the Scriptures of our religion, whose authority we prefer to all
writings whatsoever, make no distinction between amor, dilectio, and caritas. 9

Augustine’s conception of the meaning of caritas — the meaning that was trans-
mitted and accepted throughout the Middle Ages — had little to do with material
benevolence towards the poor, but rather man’s relationship with God. 10 Conse-
quently, in the corpus of his work, Augustine never used the word caritas to refer
to poor relief.
Nevertheless, patristic and early medieval understandings of the meaning of
caritas had a profound impact upon the value ascribed to poor relief in the Middle
Ages. Jerome’s rendering of agape by caritas cemented the idea that caritas would
forever be associated in some way with poverty, because Paul had distinguished
it so clearly in 1 Corinthians 13 from what we would today consider to be ‘char-
ity’ — attending to the needs of the poor. Ultimately, the distinction between caritas
and works of mercy that Paul formulated in Corinthians established a hierarchical
division between caritas and almsgiving, which became nearly ubiquitous in west-
ern medieval moral theology. If good works had no value without caritas, and caritas
was strictly understood to be the bond of love between man and God, then the care

8
Carmichael, Friendship, 25.
9
City of God, 14. What Augustine seems to be referring to in this passage is the fact that
the Vulgate substituted the words caritas, amor, and dilectio for agape.
10
Despite his claim to not distinguish between amor, dilectio, and caritas, in the passage
quoted above, in many places throughout his work, Augustine made it clear that he believed that
caritas referred not just to any sort of love, but was reserved for the special sort of love that bonds
man to God. He wrote for instance that “Caritas est nexus quo homines invicem sibi et Deo con-
nectuntur” (PL 35.878). Original citation in Freyhan, “The Evolution of the Caritas Figure in
the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” 68 n. 3.
From Caritas to Charity 117

of the poor was only of secondary spiritual importance to a Christian moral life. In
other words, attending to the needs of the poor had value only if done out of love
for God, rather than intrinsic concern for the state of the pauper.
No writer’s work is more indicative of this attitude than that of Augustine. Per-
haps Augustine held that God was the only proper object of man’s love, and that the
love that persons believe themselves to feel for their fellow men was mere cupidi-
tas — a baser sort of affection. 11 He described this in De Doctrina Christiana where
he contrasted caritas with the affection that one feels for their neighbor, writing,

I call caritas the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for his own
sake and the enjoyment of one’s self and one’s neighbor for the sake of God;
but cupiditas is a motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of one’s self, one’s
neighbor, or any corporal thing for the sake of something other than God. 12

In Augustine’s thought caritas was not something that people felt for other people,
by themselves. Although the two great commandments of Christianity were to
love God and to love one’s neighbor, the first commandment took priority in his
thought, and in that of subsequent medieval thinkers. 13 As 1 Corinthians 13 sug-
gested, caritas — the love of God — was what endowed the love that one feels for
humanity with value and meaning. If not motivated by the love of God, love for
one’s neighbor would then devolve into mere cupiditas, which was spiritually worth-
less. To love another human being on their own account, rather than for the sake of
God, was therefore a dangerous misdirection of affection that distracted man from
his ultimate goal of union with God.
This understanding of caritas leaves very little room for one of the main fea-
tures commonly associated with charity in the modern world — the altruistic ten-
dency towards helping the poor for their own sake. While Augustine’s subordina-
tion of love for other people to the love of God was sensible within a fourth-century
monastic context, his hierarchical interpretation of the relationship between caritas

11
Specifically, in Augustine’s thought, human beings, if left unaided by God, are never able
to love each other in a way that transcends self-love. Thus the natural love that humans have for
each other is inferior to the love between man and God. See Tarsicius J. Van Bavel, “Love,” in
Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A. (Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 509–16, here 514–15.
12
De Doctrina Christiana 3.10.16 (PL 34.72).
13
The idea of the two great commandments originated — by way of exegesis on Matthew
22:37–40 — with Augustine. Augustine believed that the distinction between the command-
ments pertaining to one’s relationships with God and one’s neighbors was so great that the Deca-
logue should be divided (and was divided on the tablets that God gave to Moses) into the first
three, which pertained to God, and the last seven, which pertained to human affairs. The Deca-
logue continued to be portrayed this way in churches and pastorals throughout the Middle Ages.
For more discussion, see Paul Hyams, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2003), 47–49.
118 eliza buhrer

and love for humanity persisted in the writing produced in the monasteries and
universities of the Latin West throughout the Middle Ages. 14 Thomas Aquinas in
particular devoted a large portion of Summa Theologica to expounding the nature of
caritas. 15 Like Augustine, Aquinas saw caritas as the friendship between God and
man, instilled within the human soul through the infusion of grace. 16 Accordingly,
he viewed amor proximi as the inevitable result of amor dei, and not the main point
of caritas in itself. For example, Aquinas directly addressed the question of the rela-
tive merits of loving God and man in ST.II.IIae.27.8 and concluded that “the love
of one’s neighbor is not meritorious, except by reason of him being loved for God’s
sake.” 17
It should not be surprising, then, that Aquinas assigned little value to attend-
ing to the needs of the poor out of an intrinsic concern for their corporeal well-
being. Like Augustine, Aquinas believed that alms, when properly given, were
given for God’s sake rather than the paupers’, and that acts of mercy done for any
other reason were valueless to the benefactor. 18 Likewise, he believed that givers
and recipients of poor relief alike derived more value from spiritual alms — prayers,
comfort, and reproof — than physical alms, which included feeding the hungry and
clothing the destitute. 19 Aquinas’ attitudes towards almsgiving perhaps arise from
the fact that while he saw misericordia, or mercy, as an effect of caritas, he thought
that pity for the plight of others was caused by a defect in the person who pities. 20
For a person to empathize with the evil afflictions of another, they must be moved
by passion to either “look at another’s sorrows as their own,” or identify themselves
with the sufferer such that they fear that “the same could happen to themselves,”
if left un-remedied. 21 Ultimately, the fact that Aquinas contrasted lofty caritas to
lowly mercy demonstrates how far removed medieval understandings of caritas were
from how we think of charity today; for Aquinas’ definition of misericordia as “a

14
For a concise background see Freyhan, “The Evolution of the Caritas Figure,” 73–74.
15
Aquinas’ discussion of caritas can be found in Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundae Partis,
Q. 23–44 (henceforth, ST.II.IIae).
16
ST.II.IIae.24. For more on Aquinas’ conception of the friendship between man and God,
see Daniel Schwartz, Aquinas on Friendship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007).
17
ST. II.IIae.27.8.
18
ST. II.IIae.32 in general concerns the topic of charity. Here Aquinas wrote that “alms-
giving can be materially without charity, but to give alms formally, i.e. for God’s sake, with
delight and readiness, and altogether as one ought, is not possible without charity.”
19
ST.II.IIae.32.iii. Aquinas did, however, believe that the benefactor should consider the
needs of the recipients. Following Matthew 25:34–35, Aquinas accepted, for instance, that cor-
poreal alms were more valuable to a starving man than spiritual alms, despite the fact that the
latter possessed more inherent worth.
20
ST. II.IIae.30.2.
21
ST. II.IIae.30.2.
From Caritas to Charity 119

heartfelt sympathy for another’s distress, compelling us to succor him if we can,”

seems remarkably similar to what we consider to be the foundation of charity.
Aquinas’ understanding of caritas is important on account of the tremendous
influence that his work had upon subsequent medieval thought. The idea that God,
rather than the poor, should be understood as the proper object of caritas ultimately
persisted in Latin theological writing up through the Reformation. In light of the
endurance of the Pauline distinction between caritas and the works of mercy, how
then did caritas come to mean what we think of as charity? The division between cari-
tas and mercy in the writing of Augustine and subsequent western medieval thinkers
reflected real attitudes toward poor relief in the Middle Ages. As the passage quoted
from the Life of Saint Eligius at the beginning of this essay suggests, medieval poor
relief often focused less on eradicating poverty than on advancing the spiritual well-
being of the benefactor. While theologians (and the rich) were inclined to praise
voluntary poverty, involuntary poverty was seen as an evil, which was primarily the
fault of the pauper. 22 Accordingly, churchmen and canonists regarded it as impious to
give alms in excess of what a beggar needed in order to subsist for a day. 23 In light of
this, for the poor rather than God to become the object of caritas would require radi-
cal changes in attitudes toward the meaning of poverty.
In other words, understanding how and why caritas came to refer more to
amor proximi than amor dei is important to understanding the history of attitudes
and treatment towards the poor and poverty. Before caritas could be understood
as denoting poor relief rather than the love of God, people would first have to see
the physical well-being of paupers as a matter of intrinsic spiritual importance, and
thus shrink the hierarchical distinction between the love of God and the love of
one’s neighbor. Ultimately, what would underlie these shifts would be the recogni-
tion that the poor are always with us, not to provide a means for the rich to get into
heaven, but because of evils and injustices that cried out for human remedies on
God’s behalf. A received view holds that these changes had to await the rise of the
Franciscan movement, with its response to the new anxieties created by the devel-
opment of a market economy. 24 Evidence for this line of argument often comes in

22
Kenneth Baxter Wolf argues this, and he nicely delineates the differences between medi-
eval attitudes towards voluntary and involuntary poverty in The Poverty of Riches: Francis of Assisi
Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 25–36.
23
Tierney, “Decretists,” 364–70. In “The Decretists and the Deserving Poor” Brian Tier-
ney discusses this as well other attitudes towards charity that developed as the Decretists sought
to address how much charity one ought to give, and who should rightfully receive it. Aquinas also
asserted as much in STII.IIae, 32.x. where he discussed excessive almsgiving.
24
Among the most persuasive variants of this argument are those of the chapter on avarice
in Alexander Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1978), 59–77, as well as Lester Little’s work. Little linked the development of popular concern
about the well-being of the poor and the spiritual dangers of greed to the rise of the market econ-
omy: “Pride Goes before Avarice: Social Change and the Vices in Latin Christendom,” American
120 eliza buhrer

part from hagiographical sources, most frequently the various accounts of the life
of Saint Francis. Hagiographies, however, provide a highly distorted picture of the
past, which in this instance collapses under critical scrutiny. 25 The time is therefore
ripe to take a fresh look at the pre-history of the late medieval equation of caritas
with poor relief.

***

There is good reason to believe that the protean shift in meaning of caritas — and
by extension some of these cultural changes — began much earlier. A ninth-century
Carolingian homily and its later Old English translations offer a portrayal of the
relationship between charity and almsdeeds quite different from the Latin sources
written contemporary to them. 26 The homilies do not present caritas (or lufe as it
was translated into Old English) as a necessary prerequisite for the moral efficacy
of almsdeeds; rather, the definition of alms that the homilies contain is expanded
to include theological characteristics previously only associated with caritas. The
presence of such innovations is exceptional in that Old English homilies, as a rule,
were nearly always derived from earlier Latin texts. Vernacular homilists generally
compiled and translated patristic texts for sake of communicating church doctrine
to those unlettered in Latin — not for introducing novelty into the canon. Thus,
the occurrence of new religious ideas in Old English homilies can be attributed to
the fact that homilies were routinely created through patchwork arrangements of
diverse Latin sources, which were selected and adapted to meet the pedagogical
needs of the homilist. 27 This was at times done in a way that failed to align with

Historical Review 76 (1971): 16–49, and Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval
Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978). Both Murray and Little present compelling and
intelligent arguments in these works. Nevertheless, I aim to show that there are earlier precedents
for some of the attitudes whose origin they locate in the thirteenth century.
25
In The Poverty of Riches Wolf has criticized this view by arguing that St. Francis did little
to improve the conditions of the involuntary poor, and that the Franciscans (and the rich) still saw
paupers as ‘instruments for the salvation of the wealthy’ during the height of Francis’ career. Wolf
further suggests that the Franciscans actually competed with the involuntary poor for alms, as
the rich favored giving to the voluntary poor over the truly destitute.
26
A later copy of the Carolingian source is thought to be contained in an eleventh-century
manuscript, Cambridge, Pembroke College MS.25. James Cross provided a critical edition of
the manuscript with commentary and source analysis in Cambridge Pembroke College MS. 25: A
Carolingian Sermonary Used by Anglo-Saxon Preachers, King’s College London, Medieval Studies
1 (London: King’s College, 1987).
27
Milton McCormick Gatch, “Two Uses of Apocrypha in Old English Homilies,” Church
History 33 (1964): 379–91. Similarly, while he rejects that composite homilies were simply ver-
batim “scissor and paste” compilations of earlier sources, Donald Scragg has argued that compil-
ers of these homilies sought only to change the style, not the substance of their sources, when
From Caritas to Charity 121

strict doctrinal orthodoxy. However, as most homilies were aimed at disseminating

rather than transforming Christian doctrine, the presence of theological novelty
suggests that the homilist’s understanding of certain religious concepts diverged
from the canonical view.
The unintentional nature of any creativity — beyond adjustments to style — on
the part of the homilist is what makes Old English homilies excellent sources for
examining subtle shifts in understandings of the meaning of words and religious
concepts, such as caritas and almsgiving. The homily in question, best known by its
earliest vernacular form, the third homily of the Vercelli Book, was copied almost
entirely from a now-lost ninth-century Carolingian exemplum, which is fortu-
nately preserved in an eleventh-century manuscript, known as Cambridge, Pem-
broke College, MS. 25. The Latin manuscript was itself a compilation of patristic
writings, including Isidore of Seville’s Sententiae (PL 83. 537–738) and De Eccle-
siasticis Officiis (PL 83.737–826), ps.-Alcuin’s Liber de Virtutibus et Vitiis (PL 101.
615–638), the eighth-century Collectio Canonum Hibernensium (an Irish collection
of penitentials), and sermons written by Caesarius of Arles but spuriously attrib-
uted to Augustine (PL 39. 1735–2354). 28 Even though the Latin and Old English
homilists were drawing on past writings and usually loath to move far beyond their
teachings, their depiction of alms and charity on this occasion runs counter to the
sources that were used.
At least five vernacular translations of the homily contained in Pembroke 25
were produced between the tenth and the late twelfth centuries, including one copy
in Old Icelandic and the third homily of the Vercelli Book. 29 Of the extant manu-
scripts, the Vercelli homily and a late twelfth-century copy, which was included
within a cycle of nine homilies during the late twelfth century and preserved in
section G, item 78 of MS. Bodley 343, reveal the most about changing attitudes
towards poverty and almsgiving. 30 The Latin manuscript from which the Old Eng-
lish homilies were derived is also interesting in itself. Although excerpted from
some rather sophisticated texts, the teachings of the homily preserved in Pembroke
25 are remarkably simple — focused on basic moral precepts abstracted from the
complicated theology found in its own sources. This suggests that the author was
perhaps writing for pastoral purposes.
At least, the medieval editors of the homily’s later editions seem to have
viewed it as well suited to this purpose. Each vernacular copy of the manuscript

adapting them to meet the needs of their audiences: Scragg, Dating and Style in Old English
Composite Homilies (Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, 1999), 11. If one
accepts this point, then the presence of theological novelties in the homilies in question would
most likely have been an unintended consequence of stylistic changes made by the compiler.
28
Joan Turville-Petre, “Translations of a Lost Penitential Homily,” Traditio 19 (1963):
51–78, here 52, 57.
29
Turville-Petre, “Translations,” 51–53.
30
The twelfth-century copy was most likely descended from the Latin original.
122 eliza buhrer

that currently exists was part of a different sermon collection intended for popular
instruction. 31 The third homily of the Vercelli Book was potentially written in the
hope of raising standards of education amongst the clergy, in much the same vein as
the Benedictine reformers a little later in the tenth century. The latest version of the
homily was designed to be read to a lay audience on the first Sunday in Lent, as part
of a liturgical cycle that also included selections from Aelfric’s Catholic Homilies. 32
The fact that there are identifiable Latin sources for the ninth-century homily pre-
served in Pembroke 25, and that the homily continued to be thought worth copying
over so lengthy a period, make it a particularly good source for investigating the
way that the relationship between caritas and almsgiving changed to meet the needs
of lay audiences.
Given that the Old English homilies were derived from a Latin source, which
was itself a compilation of mainstream patristic theology, it seems highly improb-
able that they would contain a substantially novel understanding of caritas and
almsgiving. Initially, the understanding of the relationship between alms and char-
ity expressed in the homily does not appear to diverge too much from the typical
Augustinian conception. But the crucial passage about the importance of alms,
which the homilists falsely attributed to Augustine, introduces a radical concep-
tion of the spiritual significance of almsgiving, which diverges substantially from
Augustine’s own thought. The passage, which occurs at the end of the homily in all
extant versions, reads:

Augustine said, Alms [aelmesse] are a very holy work. It increases present
benefits; it produces forgiveness of sins; it multiplies the number of years; it
illuminates the mind of man; it extends over all limits; it purifies all things;
it frees man from death and from punishment; it joins him to the angels, and
drives devils from him; and it is an impassable wall around the soul. 33

31
For the twelfth-century copy in Bodley 343, see Susan Irvine, Old English Homilies from
MS Bodley 343 (Oxford: EETS, Oxford University Press, 1998), xlix. Cross and Turville-Petre
also speculate about the intent behind each of the manuscripts, beginning with the Carolingian
original. Furthermore, in a different article, Susan Irvine writes more generally about why one
would continue to copy Latin into Old English in the twelfth century, and concluded that it was
possibly done because of the need for vernacular preaching. See Susan Irvine, “The Compilation
and Use of Manuscripts Containing Old English in the Twelfth Century,” in Rewriting Old
English in the Twelfth Century, ed. Mary Swan and Elaine Treharne (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 41–61, here 47–48.
32
Turville-Petre, “Translations,” 53.
33
The translation I have used is from A. O. Belfour, Twelfth Century Homilies in MS Bodley
343 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909), 48, with a few minor changes made on my own.
The Old English reads as follows: “Augustinus cwæð ‘Þeo ælmesse is swiðe haliȝ weorc. Héo
ȝeycð þa andweardan gód; 7 heo sylð synne forȝifenesse; 7 heo moniȝfældæþ ȝearæ fyrstæs; 7
heo liht þaes monnes mód; 7 heo ȝeondbrædaþ þá ȝemæru; 7 heo alle þing clænsæð; 7 heo alýseð
þone món from dæþe 7 from wite; 7 héo ȝeðeodaþ tó þam englum; 7 deoflæ from ascyfð; 7 héo
From Caritas to Charity 123

The idea that almsgiving wins forgiveness of sins and increases worldly benefits
is not quite incompatible with prior understandings of functions of eleemosyna, or
almsgiving, in mainstream theology. However, the second part of the passage, which
identified almsgiving as something that “illuminates the mind of man, extends over
all limits, and purifies all things,” is much more descriptive of qualities attributed
to caritas in patristic and medieval theology. Particularly the ascriptions of illumi-
nation and of infinity implied by the phrase “extends over all limits,” seem almost
to echo the language of mystical theology used by Augustine or Pseudo-Dionysus.
Both contrasted the infinity of God to the finite nature of man and saw divine illu-
mination as a vital step on the soul’s ascent to union with God. 34 The attribution
of these characteristics to almsdeeds then, radicalizes their significance. Medieval
Catholic theology understood infinity as a characteristic that belonged solely to
God, and by extension caritas, the bond of love connecting him to humanity. 35 Fur-
thermore, in the entire corpus of his works, Augustine never claimed that anything
other than the grace of God or the Holy Spirit illuminated the minds of men. 36
It is very unlikely, then, that Augustine would have identified alms with any
of the lofty theological characteristics attributed to them in this passage, especially
given the weaker function that he assigned to the works of mercy in his most endur-
ing works. The original Latin source used for this passage in the sermon contained
in Pembroke 25 came from an eighth-century collection of insular homilies now
known as the Collectio Canonum Hibernensium. While this collection drew upon
many patristic texts, current scholarship has not located a source for the passage

is unoferwinnendlic weal yme þa sawlae’.” A more recent edition of the text, accompanied by its
ninth-century Latin source, can be found in D. G. Scragg, The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts
(Oxford: EETS, Oxford University Press, 1992), 73–83, here 82.
34
In my mind, a distinction between the infinity of God and the finite nature of mortal
beings is one of the distinguishing features of Christian mystical theology. Bernard McGinn dis-
cusses this, and the role ascribed to illumination in mystical theology, throughout The Foundations
of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (New York: Crossroads Publishing Company, 1999).
35
Bernard of Clairvaux’s De Diligendo Deo (PL 182. 971–1000) for instance discusses the
ascent of caritas and uses it interchangeably at times with union with God.
36
Augustine spoke constantly of the need for divine illumination in the Confessions. He
specifically stressed that man could not attain union with God by his own efforts without illumi-
nation from a source (God) outside himself (see Confessions 4.15.25 for example). This makes it
particularly unlikely that Augustine would have claimed that alms illuminated man’s mind, since
the belief that illumination was not obtainable through human efforts or acts was a cornerstone
of his theology, and indeed his rejection of Plotinian Neo-Platonism. See Robert Pasnau, “Divine
Illumination,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://
plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/illumination. Moreover, in an effort to correct the
views of some of his contemporaries, Augustine made a point of stressing that alms in themselves
were not sufficient for guaranteeing salvation, and also placed limits on the types of sins that
could be forgiven through almsgiving: Allan Fitzgerald, O.S.A., “Mercy, Works of Mercy,” in
Augustine through the Ages, 557–61.
124 eliza buhrer

attributed to Augustine — in either his own work or the pseudo-Augustinian texts

falsely attributed to him. 37 Based upon the degree to which the ideas in this passage
were inconsistent with Augustine’s other writing on alms, and possessed an affinity
with his writings on caritas, it is plausible that the passage in the Collectio Canonum
Hibernensium used for the Pembroke 25 manuscript was based upon some now-lost
spurious text. Alternatively, it may not be entirely irresponsible to speculate that the
passage derived from a scribal mistranslation or paraphrase of an existing passage
about caritas, rather than eleemosyna. Regardless of whether either of these inter-
pretations is correct, the presence of such an odd passage in the Pembroke source
suggests that the definition of eleemosyna was capable of being conflated with char-
acteristics traditionally attributed only to caritas as early as the eighth century.
Such a conflation challenges the distinction between caritas and the works
of mercy established by Augustine and upheld in later medieval philosophy. It is
impossible to know whether the compilers of the Collectio Canonum Hibernensium
or the Pembroke 25 source intended to elevate the value of almsdeeds, or possessed
a significantly different understanding of the meaning of eleemosyna from their
predecessors. Regardless of authorial intent, the convergence of the definitions of
almsdeeds and caritas makes the translation and transmission of the Pembroke 25
sermon significant. Readers read the text in front of them and may take it seriously
even when it clashes with received doctrine. Although it is likely that the Old Eng-
lish scribes (or their supervisors) had no wish to introduce innovations to church
doctrine and tried to translate their sources in a fairly literal manner, they probably
did not take into account the possibility of an Augustinian text being doctrin-
ally aberrant. The Pembroke 25 homily and its subsequent translations contained
no mention of caritas being a precondition for the moral efficacy of alms, or any
other good works. Rather, the six essentials that the homilies asserted as neces-
sary to be worthy of God — confession, repentance, holy vigils, fasts, prayers, and
almsdeeds — were not lofty theological concepts, but simple moral prescriptions. 38
Ultimately by merging the definition of aelmmes with that of caritas, the homilist
depicted alms, and the physical well-being of the poor by extension, as a primary
concern for any Christian seeking salvation.
The closeness of this sentiment to the later connotations of charity is at the
very least noteworthy. 39 Although there are little grounds to responsibly claim that
the third Vercelli homily was responsible for introducing this new idea of the mean-
ings of caritas and alms into the vernacular, the homily’s conflation of alms with the
traditional qualities of caritas was perhaps not without influence. It is also present

37
Turville-Petre, “Translations,” 57.
38
This indeed is one of the main themes of the homily: Belfour, Homilies, 41.
39
The new emphasis placed on the love of one’s neighbor as the object of charity is addi-
tionally suggested by its opening, which begins by defining charity as being filled with divine
love towards one’s neighbor. “Þone is þeo soðe lufe, heo béo ifylled mid þare godcunden lufe
onȝean his nystæn — is ælc cristene món”: Belfour, Homilies, 41.
From Caritas to Charity 125

in other contemporary vernacular writing, most notably the entries for aelmesse and
lufe in a tenth-century Old English-Latin glossary and grammar book authored by
Aelfric of Eynsham for the sake of instructing less educated churchmen. In the dic-
tionary, Aelfric defined aelmesse as both eleemosyna and agape, whereas he defined
lufe — which was the word generally substituted for caritas in Old English homilies,
as amor. 40 It seems in short as if Aelfric too had somehow conflated the giving of
alms with the highest form of love. The meaning of agape in early Christian writ-
ing has already been discussed; however, it is worth restating it here. In Greek,
agape had referred to divine, selfless love, and early Christians viewed agape as the
self-sacrificing love of God for humanity. 41 Paul used the word agape in the original
Greek text of 1 Corinthians 13:3, which Jerome replaced with caritas when writing
the Vulgate. In Matthew 22:37–41, Jesus used the word agape when he pronounced
that the two greatest commandments were “to love (agapao) God and to love (aga-
pao) your neighbor as yourself.” 42 In 1 John 4:8, agape was even used to denote God
himself, in the phrase “God is love.”
Amor, a more general catch-all term for a variety of types of love, did not possess
the same theological connotations as agape. While agape referred to the love of God,
Latin Christian writers used amor to denote the lower love that one has for one’s
neighbor, which predictably paled in comparison to the sublime, unconditional,
and selfless nature of agape. Given that caritas was the word substituted for agape in
the Vulgate and other Latin translations of ancient texts, Aelfric’s conflation of the
word aelmesse with agape in his dictionary echoes the reevaluation of the spiritual
significance of almsdeeds implied by the merger of the traditional understandings
of alms and caritas in the spurious Augustine passage. It thus speaks to something
startling about Aelfric’s understanding of the moral necessity and spiritual value of
poor relief. Specifically the conflation of almsdeeds with lofty agape, and lufe with
earthly amor, elevated amor proximi closer to the level of amor dei than it had ever
been previously, through inverting the ordering of Christian virtues established by
the Latin church fathers.
The fact that novel ideas about alms were present in other contemporary
vernacular sources, and that the homily was enduringly popular throughout the
twelfth century despite the aversions of vernacular homilists and scribes to theo-
logical innovation, may be telling us that preachers found the idea attractive to the

40
A version of the dictionary was published by William Somer in 1659: Aelfric, Abbot
of Eynsham, Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum, ed. William Somer (Oxonii: Excudebat
Guliel. Hall, pro authore, prostant Londini, apud Danielem White, 1659). The entries for ael-
messe and lufe can be found on pages 13 and 118 respectively.
41
It is worth noting that while medieval western Christian thinkers adopted the distinction
between agape/caritas as love for God, and baser amor, eastern Christian writers, following in the
footsteps of the Greek fathers, drew less of a distinction between love of God and love of man,
and used agape at times to refer to fraternal love as well as divine.
42
Lynne Grundy, Books and Grace: Ælfric’s Theology (London: King’s College, 1991), 4.
126 eliza buhrer

lay folk in their audiences. Tenth-century churchmen were very skeptical about the
orthodoxy of the sermons of the Vercelli Book, which again contained the earli-
est vernacular copy of the Pembroke 25 source. In the preface of the second series
of his Catholic Homilies, Aelfric of Eynsham even lamented the fact that earlier
homilies had introduced theological errors into the minds of Englishmen, and he
urged the scribes who would copy own his homilies to take care to avoid introduc-
ing theological novelties through scribal errors. 43 Aelfric’s disdain for the earlier
Old English homiletic tradition makes the later history of the Pembroke 25 source’s
transmission rather surprising. In the late twelfth century, a scribe placed the third
homily of the Vercelli Book, along with another homily derived from the Pembroke
25 source, in a series of nine homilies that was otherwise composed of various ser-
mons by Aelfric.
The homilies drawn from Pembroke 25 were designated to be read on the
first and second Sundays in Lent in the liturgical cycle that made up the collec-
tion. 44 The fact that Aelfric’s homilies and a homily derived from the same source
as the third homily in the Vercelli Book were used in the same cycle suggests that
the twelfth-century compiler saw no reason to exclude them from their coherent
body of popular instruction. James Cross has argued from linguistic incongruities
between the Bodley 343 homily and the third homily of the Vercelli Book that
the homilies were copied directly from a Latin source. 45 If this is the case, then it
is impossible that the scribe would have falsely attributed the homilies to Aelfric.
This then reinforces the hypothesis that the scribe must have seen the homilies that
originated with the Pembroke 25 source as particularly complementary to Aelfric’s
in order to undertake the undoubtedly rigorous (and somewhat antiquarian) task of
translating them from Latin into Old English. This seems to be especially the case
when, as Susan Irvine has argued, the multiplicity of origins of the collection sug-
gests that the original scribe had access to a large range of homiletic material. Thus,
any number of Aelfric’s sermons could have been used during the First Sunday in
the Lenten cycle since none of the homilies in the collection were necessarily tied
to any particular time in the church year. 46
In spite of the elevation of almsgiving implied by the identification of aelmesse
with agape in his dictionary, Aelfric’s understanding of the relationship between
works and grace contradicted the message of the homily derived from the Pem-
broke 25 source. Following Augustine, Aelfric believed that people were unable to
live lives directed toward God through their own efforts without the gift of grace or

43
Aelfric’s Catholic Homilies. The Second Series, ed M. Godden, EETS SS 5 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1979).
44
The complete set of homilies are currently preserved in Oxford MS. Bodley 343, and
transcribed and edited in entirety in Belfour, Homilies.
45
Cross, Cambridge Pembroke College MS.25.
46
Irvine, A Critical Edition of Some Homilies in MS. Bodley 343, xlix.
From Caritas to Charity 127

caritas. 47 As discussed, the homilies derived from the Pembroke 25 source strongly
deemphasized the need for caritas or lufe to be behind good deeds if they were to be
morally efficacious. For instance, the author of the homily several times listed the
six works — including almsdeeds — that a person must do “to be worthy of God’s
dwelling in him.” 48 This seems to imply that the internal state of caritas was not a
precondition for virtuous activities, but rather obtained through them. Accordingly,
the Pembroke 25 homily assigned a decent amount of moral agency to its audience
and focused then on direct moral instruction rather than how one might perfect their
relationship with God. In contrast to this is Aelfric’s claim that “we don’t possess
even one stick or one staff or one Eucharist wafer for the good of our mass if God
himself hadn’t provided it for us at an earlier time. Yet we can use God’s own things
and make him pleased with us.” 49 While Aelfric’s moral theology had emphasized
the spiritual importance of good works, it was also strongly indebted to Augustine.
Therefore, he stressed in the Catholic Homilies that the grace by which man loves
God was a precondition for his ability to do good deeds. Ultimately, then, while
Aelfric believed that good works were the measure by which God judged man, his
views on the necessity of caritas or lufe were more or less traditional.
So why did the twelfth-century scribe include the Pembroke 25 homily in the
liturgical cycle, when their representation of alms as sufficient in themselves for
obtaining all of the benefits traditionally associated with caritas clearly contradicted
the theological orientation of the Aelfric sources? I would like to suggest that the
inclusion of the homilies derived from the Pembroke 25 manuscript in the Bod-
ley 343 collection indicates that although scholars today emphasize the theological
differences between Aelfric and earlier Old English homilists, the more compli-
cated aspects of Aelfric’s thought, including his doctrine of works and grace, were
not what drew the original compiler of the Bodley 343 manuscript to his writing.
Scholars have remarked that Aelfric placed far more emphasis upon the importance
of generosity to the poor than his Continental predecessors and contemporaries. 50
This can certainly be seen throughout his homilies contained in Bodley 343. Ael-
fric frequently decried materialism (with heavy apocalyptic overtones) and lashed
out at “unrighteous plunderers and misers [who], when they have collected it in the
greatest quantity, must through some mischance in this life leave, it all.” 51

47
Lynne Grundy argues in Books and Grace that Aelfric essentially adopted Augustine’s
doctrine of grace when shaping his own theology. As noted above in n. 36, this doctrine is largely
incompatible with the idea that the spiritual efficacy of alms was not dependent upon caritas.
48
Belfour, Homilies, 58.
49
Carmen Acevedo Butcher, God of Mercy: Ælfric’s Sermons and Theology (Macon, GA:
Mercer University Press, 2006), 20.
50
Grundy, for instance, argued that Aelfric saw almsgiving rather than predestination as
the necessary prerequisite for obtaining God’s mercy: Books and Grace, 273.
51
Belfour, Homilies, 57. All of the homilies contained in Bodley MS. 343 condemn mate-
rialism with increasing vigor throughout the Lenten cycle. Initially the homilies contrast misers
128 eliza buhrer

Sermons on poverty and abstinence might well have appealed to a late twelfth-
century audience rather more than the millenarianism of the tenth century. Despite
the hodgepodge of orthodox and heterodox ideas that make up the Bodley 343
collection, the need to be kind to the poor is a strand that runs through all the
homilies, and that thematically links the Aelfric homilies with the less orthodox
homilies derived from Pembroke 25. The fact that the twelfth-century scribe was
willing to ignore the major theological incompatibilities of his sources in favor of
this compatibility demonstrates that the treatment of the poor had become a mat-
ter of elevated spiritual importance by the time he came to select his homilies. 52 It
also indicates that the new definition of alms put forth by the pseudo-Augustinian
passage had gained by now a degree of popular acceptance.
This study has been based on a limited range of documents, removed in many
ways from the actual experience of poverty in the Middle Ages, and in that sense
my conclusions are quite incomplete. To truly get a sense of the value ascribed to
poor relief during the period that the homilies span, more research would need
to be done into the daily experiences of medieval lay folk, as they interacted with
the poor around them. Nevertheless, I believe that the conflation of caritas with
almsgiving in the homiletic tradition that I have described at the very least sug-
gests that the early stages of caritas’ transformation into something that referred not
primarily to loving God, but rather to aiding the poor, occurred earlier in the west
than it has been often assumed (indeed by the time of the fourth-century Greek
fathers). 53 At least in England, the emphasis on poor relief typical of Franciscan
teachings seems to have predated the thirteenth century, and was still present at the
time of their arrival (as testified to by the enduring popularity of the homilies). If,
as I have suggested, the homily remained popular throughout the twelfth century
because its ideas about poor relief were viewed as well suited to popular religious
instruction, then it can tentatively be ventured that attending to the needs of the
poor was something that naturally concerned the people who lived in their midst.
In this way, the demands of popular religious instruction played a formative role in
the transformation of caritas into charity.

hoarding wealth with the plight of the poor, such as Lazarus, but by the final homilies the tone
has shifted towards denouncing those who would place the world before God.
52
The collection can be seen as reflective of popular religious sentiment as it was, as Susan
Irvine has suggested, intended for vernacular preaching.
53
See John Chrysostom, Homily 50 on Matthew, 3–4, PG 58. 508–9.