Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/660

 CHARITY

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CHARITY

ent, unscrupulous, acknowledging no claims but those of might, demoralized both ecclesiastical and civil order. The spiritual leaders of the people were to a very great extent incompetent, worldly, and avari- cious. Clerics as well as nobles exploited their serfs and neglected the poor. From the middle of the ninth to the beginning of the twelfth century these deplorable conditions were general throughout Eu- rope. In England, however, the demoralization did not reach its lowest depths until the second half of the tenth century; in Ireland it did not come until the eleventh. Nevertheless the doctrine of charity, as expressed in the documents accompanying char- itable foundations, and in the writings of the great teachers like St. Bernard, was everywhere identical with that of the Scripture and the Fathers. The old truths about property as a trust, about the duty of distributing superfluous goods among the poor, about the supernatural rewards of almsgiving, and its value as expiatory of the temporal punishment due to sin — are all clearly taught. Owing to the relatively lower average of Christian fervour, the last two features assume a relatively greater prominence than they had in the teaching of the age of the persecutions.

During the three centuries following the death of Charlemagne, the work of relieving the poor was steadily and rapidly transferred from the diocesan clergy to the monasteries. The demoralization of the diocesan clergy, the misappropriation of church property and revenues by the clergy and the lords, the theory that the lords were to care for all the poor within their domains, the deflexion to some of the monasteries of tithes that formerly went to the parish clergy, the practice of giving landed endowments to the monasteries instead of to the parish churches, the humane treatment generally accorded to their tenants by the monks, and the fact that Christian life became more and more centred about the monasteries — com- bined to effect this transformation. The new and dominant position of the monasteries is thus described by Ratzinger: "The energy of Christian life had gone over from the diocese to the monastery. The latter became the centre for rich and poor, high and low, for innocent youth and repentant age. It provided in some measure a substitute for the primitive episcopal parish. In every district, alike on towering mountain and in lowly valley, arose monasteries which formed the centres of the organized religious life of the neigh- bourhood, maintained schools, provided models for agriculture, industry, pisciculture, and forestry, shel- tered the traveller, relieved the poor, reared the orphans, cared for the sick, and were havens of refuge for all who were weighed down by spiritual or corporal misery. For centuries they were the centres of all religious, charitable, and cultural activity" (op. cit., pp. 287, 288)— that is, until the end of the fifteenth century. The orders that took the most prominent part in the work of poor-relief were the Benedictines, Cistercians, Premonstratensians, Dominicans, and Franciscans. Through the purtarius alms were daily distributed at the monastery gate. The needy who win- unable to come for a portion of this received assistance in their homes. Connected with the mon- asteries were hospitals for the treatment ami relief of all forms of distress. In addition to their material works of charity, the monasteries did much for the improvement of social conditions and ideals. They treated their tenants and servants a great deal better than diil the secular lords, and in their schools main- tained a genuine equality between the children of the mil and the poor. The teaching and example of St.

Francis and his followers concerning the solid worth of holy poverty, recalled millions of souls from selfish- ness, luxury, and avarice to simpler and saner ideals of life, and as a further result not merely gave an im- mense impetus to charitable activity among all the people, but contributed not a little towards the aboli-

tion of serfdom in Italy (cf. Dubois, Saint Francis of Assisi, pp. 59-61). During the fourteenth and more frequently in the fifteenth century, however, many abuses got a foothold in the richer monasteries. Avarice, luxurious living, lavish entertainment of guests, favouritism towards relatives, and other forms of relaxation rendered these institutions unable and unwilling to attend properly to the relief of distress. Moreover, the mendicant orders withdrew in the later Middle Ages to the towns, where they devoted them- selves almost exclusively to the contemplative life and to preaching.

Next in importance to the monasteries came the hospitals. As already noted, these institutions dis- charged the functions of guest-house, asylum, alms- house, and hospital in the modern sense. Many of them were managed by secular brotherhoods whose members lived a common life and wore a distinctive garb, but did not claim the privileges of a religious order. The first of these hospitals was established at the end of the ninth century, in Siena, by a cer- tain Soror. Similar institutions in charge of similar brotherhoods soon made their appearance in many of the other cities of Italy. About the middle of the twelfth century the Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit was founded by one Guido in connexion with his hos- pital at Montpellier. This association grew very rap- idly. In 1198 Pope Innocent III took it under his special protection, and entrusted to it a large hospital which he had endowed at Rome. This was but one of the many hospitals established under the direction of that remarkable pontiff. By the end of the thir- teenth century there was hardly an important town in Germany that did not possess one or more hospitals of the Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit. St. Elizabeth of Hungary founded three hospitals. The military orders, such as the Knights of St. John and the Hos- pitallers in Germany, whose existence is due to the spirit of service and self-sacrifice created by the Cru- sades, established and maintained hospitals in nearly every country of Europe. These orders did an im- mense amount of good while they remained true to their original spirit, but their usefulness had come to an end by the middle of the fifteenth century. In the later Middle Ages numerous hospitals were main- tained by the free towns and cities. Every town in Italy and Germany had at least one, while the larger cities possessed several. They were superintended by a layman, but the attendants and nurses were mem- bers of religious associations. Akin to the hospitals were the leper houses and leper huts in which were sheltered the victims of that form of leprosy which the Crusaders brought back from the East. In the thirteenth century these institutions numbered, ac- cording to Matthew Paris, nineteen thousand (cf. Ratzinger, op. cit., p. 341). To meet this plague there arose in the twelfth century the military order of St. Lazarus. It spread rapidly over the whole of Europe, hail charge of many hospitals, and obtained extensive landed possessions. Having finished its task and be- come somewhat demoralized, it was dissolved by Pope Innocent VIII at the end of the fifteenth century.

Several other religious communities and pious asso- ciations having for their chief object the relief of distress arose during the period which we are now considering. A group of women belonging to the Third Order of St. Francis, and under the patronage of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (now known as Elisa- betherinnen in Germany and Grev Nuns in France), were f rmed into a community by Pope Martin V in 142 J Their work on behalf of the poor, the sick, and t' e distressed in Germany, France, Austria, and Italy, has been noteworthy in amount and quality. At the end of the twelfth' century a lay sisterhood,

called Beguines, was organized to care for tin' sick in the homes of the latter. Later on they gave in- struction to poor girls, and shelter to uoor girls and