The Reformation of Charity: The Secular and the Religious in Early Modern Poor Relief (Studies in Central European Histories)

THE REFORMATION OF CHARITY: The Secular and the Religious in Early Modern Poor Relief

THOMAS MAX SAFLEY Editor

BRILL ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS, INC.

THE REFORMATION OF CHARITY

STUDIES IN CENTRAL EUROPEAN HISTORIES

Editors THOMAS A. BRADY, JR. ROGER CHICKERING

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THE REFORMATION OF CHARITY The Secular and the Religious in Early Modern Poor Relief

EDITED BY

THOMAS MAX SAFLEY

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BRILL ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS, INC. BOSTON • LEIDEN 2003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The reformation of charity: the secular and the religious in early modern poor relief/edited by Thomas Max Safley. p. cm. — (Studies in Central European histories) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0–391–04211–4 1. Charitities—Europe—History. 2. Public welfare—Europe—History. 3. Poor— Services for—Europe—History. I. Safley, Thomas Max. II. Series. HV238.R44 2003 362.5'58'09409031—dc22 2003061236

ISBN: 0–391–04211–4 © Copyright 2003 by Brill Academic Publishers, Inc., Boston All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS Acknowledgements ......................................................................................

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Contributors ................................................................................................

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Introduction ................................................................................................ Thomas Max Safley

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Chapter One: The Poverty of Christ ........................................................ Lee Palmer Wandel

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Chapter Two: Charity and the Reformation in Italy: The Case of Treviso .............................................................................. David D’Andrea

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Chapter Three: “Con buona affetione”: Confraternities, Charity, and the Poor in Early Cinquecento Florence ........................................ Nicholas Eckstein

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Chapter Four: Welfare, Reformation, and Dearth at Memmingen ........ Philip L. Kintner Chapter Five: Poor Relief and Health Care Provision in South-German Catholic Cities During the Sixteenth Century .......... Peer Friess Chapter Six: Refashioning Poor Relief in Early Modern Emden .......... Timothy G. Fehler

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Chapter Seven: Calvinism and Poor Relief in Reformation Holland .................................................................................................... Charles H. Parker

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Chapter Eight: Welfare Reform in Frisian Towns: Between Humanist Theory, Pious Imperatives, and Government Policy ............................ Joke Spaans

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Chapter Nine: Mennonites and Sectarian Poor Relief in Golden-Age Amsterdam .............................................................................................. Mary S. Sprunger

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Chapter Ten: Curing Body and Soul: Health Care in Early Modern Orange .................................................................................................... S. Amanda Eurich

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Chapter Eleven: Motivations for Charity in Early Modern France ...... Susan E. Dinan

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Conclusion .................................................................................................. Thomas Max Safley

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Index ............................................................................................................

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my gratitude to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, and the University of Pennsylvania, all of which have contributed generously over the years to my study of early modern society and its response to need. My students and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, in the United States, and in Germany have discussed my ideas and improved them in the process. They know who they are, and they know how much I owe them. Thomas A. Brady, Jr. and Roger Chickering approved publication in their series and, so, brought this project to fruition. To the contributors to this volume, finally, goes my deepest thanks. Their research broadened my horizons and offered me new insights into poverty and charity and their complex relationship to economy and society. I hope this volume does justice to their merit as scholars and colleagues. Thomas Max Safley Havertown, Pennsylvania

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CONTRIBUTORS David D’Andrea is Assistant Professor of History at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Susan E. Dinan is Assistant Professor of History at C. W. Post, Long Island University in Brookville, New York. Nicholas Eckstein is Cassamarca Lecturer in Italian History at the University of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia. S. Amanda Eurich is Professor of History at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. Timothy G. Fehler is Associate Professor of History at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. Peer Friess is Lecturer in History at the Institut für Bayerische Landesgeschichte in Munich, Germany. Philip L. Kintner is Professor Emeritus of History at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. Charles H. Parker is Associate Professor of History at St. Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri. Thomas Max Safley is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Joke Spaans is Lecturer in the History of Christianity at the University of Amsterdam in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Mary S. Sprunger is Associate Professor of History at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Lee Palmer Wandel is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin.

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INTRODUCTION Thomas Max Safley

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omething happened to charity in early modern Europe. If one attends to historians who envision the period as one of fundamental change—a transitional phase in the process of modernization, a period of “great transformation”1 or a world in purposeful upheaval—then charity was essentially altered. What had been a Christian good work, seemingly voluntary, inclusive and free, became a social disciplinary mechanism, compulsory, exclusive and coercive. Where charity had once been left in the hands of private persons or ecclesiastical institutions, it became a function of state governments and bureaucratic structures. Rather than succoring the needy, it sought greater efficiency in the administration of its resources and greater accuracy in the selection of its recipients. Where poverty had once been considered innocent and, indeed, important as a reflection of the soul’s relationship to God, it came to be viewed with suspicion, even opprobrium. The poor were examined, categorized, assisted, and regulated in an effort to limit their numbers and control their activities. Charity disappeared, and poor relief materialized. It was a requisite, albeit harrowing, step toward modern social welfare. This stylized description owes much to the influence of Max Weber. Since the early twentieth century, scholars generally have understood the establishment of poor relief as a turn from the personal and moral toward the bureaucratic and rational. Weber’s great work, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, is a seldomacknowledged point of departure for any discussion of this historical process and its confluence of sacred and secular impulses. The foundering of the postulate of brotherly love in its collision with the loveless realities of the economic domain once it became rationalized led to the expansion [in mystical religions] of love for one’s fellow man until it came to require a completely unselective generosity. Such unselective generosity did not inquire into the reason or outcome of absolute selfsurrender, into the worth of the person soliciting help, or into his capacity to help himself. It asked no questions and quickly gave the shirt where

1 The phrase derives from the title of Polanyi’s classic study of modernization, which attributed the contents and discontents of the modern age to the ubiquity of market economies and market relations. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston, 1944).

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the cloak had been asked for. In mystical religions the individual for whom the sacrifice is made is regarded in the final analysis as unimportant and exchangeable; his individual value is negated. One’s “neighbor” is simply a person whom one happens to encounter along the way; he has significance only because of his need and his solicitation. The result is a distinctly mystical flight from the world which takes the form of a non-specific and loving self-surrender, not for the sake of the man but for the sake of the surrender itself—which Baudelaire has termed “the sacred prostitution of the soul.”2

Weber envisioned an absolute distinction between ideal types, what he called the “postulate of brotherly love” and “the loveless realities of the economic domain,” between the sacred and the secular. Why should this be so? The origins of charity were to be sought, Weber argued, in the hospitality of the ancient world, where the wealthy and powerful displayed their status by offering shelter and support to those without means, including poets and priests.3 Even among early Christian sects, charity existed only as a form of religious welfare insurance that functioned to maintain communal solidarity and stability. When congregations lost their sectarian character, charity became nothing more than a mechanical function, a prerequisite for spiritual salvation and an imperative of sacred law. Economic development and rationalization put an end to all this. As Weber put it: “It is impossible to control a universe of instrumentally rational activities by appeals to particular individuals”4 or, one might add, to ethical considerations. Not surprisingly, given the author, it was the Calvinists who finally destroyed traditional forms of charity by eliminating indiscriminate alms-giving, imprisoning able-bodied beggars, and organizing work-relief. In their hands, “charity became a rationalized enterprise and its religious significance was eliminated or even transformed into the opposite significance.”5 Weber set a series of mutually exclusive dichotomies that are simple and unproven: sacred as opposed to secular, rational as opposed irrational, charismatic as opposed to bureaucratic. Why should religious behavior be considered irrational or economic behavior be assumed rational? The 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics to the Princeton psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, for his work on the influence of “irrational” decision-making in economic life—loss avoidance rather than profit seeking—testifies that such overly simple bipolarities no longer bear scrutiny.6

Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley, 1978), 589. Ibid., 581. 4 Ibid., 585. 5 Ibid., 589. 6 See, among others: Daniel Kahneman, ed., Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (New York, 1982); idem, and Amos Tversky, eds., Choices, Values and Frames (New York, 2000). 2 3

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Yet, Weber’s argument—or, better put, his tendency to construct and maintain ideal types—has passed more or less intact into the modern historiography on early modern poor relief. Scholars following Otto Winckelmann located the beginning of the reorganization of poor relief in the Holy Roman Empire with the reform ordinances of 1522, presuming a clear association with the Reformation, and identified a series of common features.7 Regardless of locale, relief was placed in the hands of political authorities, begging was prohibited by law, financial resources were centralized, and assistance was awarded according to individual circumstances. Robert Jütte wrote one of the most explicitly Weberian of modern studies.8 He separated the reorganization of poor relief from the Reformation, seeing the abandonment of charity as a consequence of a larger social, economic, and religious crisis of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Indeed, in some communities, the “deprivatization” (Entprivatisierung) and “communalization” (Kommunalisierung) of charity began as the expression of civic identity and responsibility as early as the thirteenth century.9 Yet, the reorganization itself proceeded true to form regardless of time, place, or confession: relief was centralized in civic hands; finances were centralized likewise; the poor were registered; work was required. Allowing for variations of degree and depending on local circumstances, rationalization and bureaucratization ran their course. If “the postulate of brotherly love” did not flounder, it at least struggled in a gathering sea of worldly values and secular administration. Nor has Weber’s influence been limited entirely to the German-speaking world, although some scholars10 question this model with its sleek, linear trajectory from past to present. Similar patterns of development—similar reductions in historical argumentation to antitheses between traditional charity and modern rationality—have been identified in the Netherlands by Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly,11 in France by Jean-Pierre Gutton,12 in Spain by Linda Martz,13

7 Otto Winckelmann, “Über die ältesten Armenordnungen der Reformationszeit,” Historische Vierteljahresschrift 17 (1914/15): 187–228, 361–400. 8 Robert Jütte, Obrigkeitliche Armenfürsorge in deutschen Reichsstädten der frühen Neuzeit: Städtisches Armenwesen in Frankfurt am Main und Köln (Cologne, 1984). Cf. Hans Scherpner, Theorie der Fürsorge (Göttingen, 1962). 9 The creation of lay superintendancies (Zechpflegschaften) over ecclesiastical institutions, such as the Spital, in Augsburg offers a perfect case in point. See Rolf Kießling, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft und Kirche in Augsburg im Spätmittelalter (Augsburg, 1971), 102–30. 10 Lee Palmer Wandel, for example, has demonstrated that “the condition of poverty was not understood solely in economic terms” and that the same can be said for its amelioration. Lee Palmer Wandel, Always Among Us: Images of the Poor in Zwingli’s Zurich (New York, 1990), esp. 1–16. 11 Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly, Poverty and Capitalism in Preindustrial Europe (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1979). 12 Jean Pierre Gutton, La société es les pauvres. L’exemple de la généralité de Lyon, 1534–1789 (Paris, 1971). 13 Linda Martz, Poverty and Welfare in Habsburg Spain: The Example of Toledo (Cambridge, U.K., 1983).

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and in Italy by Brian Pullan.14 The rationalizing or secularizing—although Weber never used the word—trend persisted, albeit with local variations and without confessional implications. Even those who explicitly reject the notion of secularization as it pertains to early modern charity fall into the trap of dichotomous arguments and ideal types. Since 1997, Ole Peter Grell has argued that the scholarly emphasis on secular concerns and goals in the theory and practice of early modern charity has obscured the enduring importance—even centrality— of religion. He writes: “In an age which was profoundly dominated and shaped by faith, [I] find it difficult to accept that religions should not have shaped the public and private approach to the way the poor and the sick should be treated.”15 Yet, his argument—reasonable in itself—overlooks much evidence of change and seems finally to amount to little more than a reaction against putatively materialist arguments, substituting one over-simplification for another. The essays that comprise this volume demonstrate the inadequacy of what one might call the Weberian trope. Quotidian realities and local circumstances overthrow normative statements and ideal types. They make clear the need for a new set of questions and conceptions. What do the theory and practice of poor relief in early modern Europe teach us about the categories, worldly and religious, secular and sacred? *

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There can be little doubt that poverty had become a more visible, insistent, ambiguous and even dangerous presence in people’s lives by the late fifteenth century, if not earlier still. The causes were complex but are usually understood in material terms.16 Social and economic changes had made an ever-larger segment of the population vulnerable to poverty. The capitalization of agriculture with its attendant renegotiation of tenancies reduced peasants to dependency in many parts of Europe: those who once were freeholders now became tenants, subject to the landlords’ whim; those who had been tenants now became laborers, subject to the inadequacy of their wage. The industrialization of manufacturing similarly affected craftspeople: masters and journeymen lost control of their skills, tools, and materials in production processes; they became wage laborers under the direction of merchant entrepreneurs. Though the economy of the period was expanding, generating new wealth and creating new jobs, wages never managed to keep pace with prices. More and more people lived at the

14 Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State to 1620 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971). 15 Ole Peter Grell, “The Protestant Imperative of Christian Care and Neighborly Love,” in idem, ed., Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, 1500–1700 (London, 1997), 45. 16 See Wilhelm Abel, Agricultural Fluctuations in Europe from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (New York, 1980); Lis and Soly, Poverty and Capitalism.

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subsistence level, unable consistently to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves or their dependents, vulnerable to natural and human disasters. Crop failure or market inelasticity might drive them into indigence and vagrancy. Material changes were inseparable from cultural changes. As the poor washed over the land and flowed into cities in increasing numbers, attitudes toward them seemed to change. In their struggle to survive, the poor appeared less humble and deferential.17 They seemed to be more demanding, antagonistic, and brutal. What was worse, their need was not always genuine. So the argument runs: economic and social change increased the material suffering and despair of the poor and attenuated the spiritual virtue attributed to poverty by the Christian church. There is certainly evidence of a relationship between material and moral change in the history of early modern poor relief. Whether that evidence points to a causal relationship or a general conclusion is another question altogether. Scholars agree, however, the numbers and attitude of the poor posed a challenge to the voluntary, pious character and the existing, haphazard structure of charity.18 Quite apart from the individual handout, an array of institutions, offering a variety of alms or assistance, had come into being well before the end of the fifteenth century. Wealthy individuals created pious foundations for the salvation of their souls, the prestige of their families, and the support of the poor. Craft guilds sponsored confraternities to promote public piety, to elevate corporate visibility, and to assist needy members. Monastic orders assisted the needy within their walls; some devoted themselves to the operation of hospitals and sanitaria. Churches and cathedrals set up tables, often in their own portals, from which food and money were distributed to those in need. Towns gradually began to exercise oversight of hospitals and other institutions, in which moneys collected from citizens provided services to citizens. They also founded institutions to meet a variety of needs not already serviced: orphanages and sanitaria, foundling homes, and pawnshops sprang up. The increased engagement of secular states in the provision of poor relief has been taken as further proof of its gradual secularization. Towns and cities offered a bazaar-like array of charities that competed for resources and shared responsibilities under varying degrees of state control.19

Michel Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages (New Haven, 1987). See, among many others, Miriam Usher Chrisman, “Urban Poor in the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Strasbourg,” in Miriam Usher Chrisman and Otto Grundler, eds., Social Groups and Religious Ideas in the Sixteenth Century (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1978); Natalie Zemon Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy,” in idem, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975); Robert Jütte, Obrigkeitliche Armenfürsorge in deutschen Reichsstädten der frühen Neuzeit: Städtisches Armenwesen in Frankfurt am Main und Köln (Cologne, 1984); Carter Lindberg, Beyond Charity: Reformation Initiatives for the Poor (Minneapolis, 1993); Martz, Poverty and Welfare in Habsburg Spain, Elsie Anne McKee, John Calvin on the Diaconate and Liturgical Alms-giving (Geneva, 1984); Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice; Wandel, Always Among Us. 19 See Rolf Kießling, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft und Kirche in Augsburg; Thomas Max Safley, 17 18

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The poor could shop for support within the same community. As their numbers increased in the course of the fifteenth century, however, they were increasingly turned away. Existing resources, whether ecclesiastical or secular, proved inadequate to the task of feeding, clothing, or sheltering all those in need. And those not truly in need—the sturdy beggars who begged for reasons not legally sanctioned—were undeserving of assistance in any form. For economic as well as disciplinary reasons, therefore, some form of discrimination became essential, often spurring still further state intervention. Not that distinguishing the deserving from the undeserving poor was a new or even secular concern in early modern Europe. Canon lawyers and scholastic theologians had argued the fundamental difference between those who should and those who should not receive assistance since the twelfth century at least.20 Nor had these discussion been without influence. Early modern authorities, ecclesiastical and civil, considered distinctions among the forms and degrees of poverty and made them the basis of its relief. Those whose inability to support themselves was innocent and permanent—the disabled, the elderly, the parentless—were recognizable and uncontroversial. None disputed that widows, orphans, and cripples deserved assistance, as did the shame-faced poor, whose poverty was legitimate but whose honor forbade begging. Those whose need was a matter of circumstance—the unemployed or the underemployed—were still deserving but more ambiguously so because their situation might change and because they were fundamentally able. The form and duration of their care was subject to vigorous debate and dramatic variation. Those whose poverty was contrived—the sturdy and, therefore, undeserving poor—threatened charities and communities alike. Their relief was neither affordable, given the greater numbers of poor people, nor tolerable, given the illegality of their need and the impiety of their manner. Changes in the structure and function of poor relief in the early modern period have been seen as an effort to address the issues of discrimination, that is, to rationalize poor relief, making it more efficient by directing it to those truly in need. What is often—and mistakenly—viewed as the abandonment of religious charity, which presumably made no such distinctions, further underscores without demonstrating the Weberian dichotomy between “brotherly love” and “economic realities.” The pursuit of efficient poor relief began well before the sixteenth century, its persistent association with the Reformation notwithstanding. Here, too, the interrelationship between religious and worldly concerns remains complex.

Charity and Economy in the Orphanages of Early Modern Augsburg (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1997). 20 Thomas Fischer, Städtische Armut und Armenfürsorge im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert: Sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen am Beispiel der Städte Basel, Freiburg i. Br., und Straßburg (Göttingen, 1979); Brian Tierney, Medieval Poor Law: A Sketch of Canonical Theory and Its Application in England (Berkeley, 1959).

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Inspired by humanist tracts and political concerns, ecclesiastical and secular authorities in most parts of Europe extended administrative oversight to established charitable institutions in an effort to control the disbursement of resources and improve the delivery of services. Where Protestantism eventually fastened foot, these reforms were often part of a broader campaign to introduce evangelical religion.21 Secular governments assumed greater responsibility for religious practice not only in church but also in the community at large. Poor relief became their duty as a Christian magistracy. They instituted changes that were intended to be dramatic, marking a clear break with a degenerate past. The earliest Protestant poor laws, such as that passed in 1522 in the Imperial city of Nuremberg, placed charitable institutions under a single, secular administration, disbursed financial resources from a “common chest,” introduced specialization to avoid duplication of services, mandated examination of the poor to determine their exact need and appropriate relief, and prohibited begging as a public nuisance. Such sweeping rhetoric notwithstanding, continuity was the rule. Individual institutions continued to exercise extensive administrative independence. Common funds did not preclude institutions from encouraging individual donations and maintaining individual endowments. Rather than specialization, as required by many ordinances and statutes, omnicompetence—the provision of different kinds of relief for different kinds of poverty by a single institution—remained the order of the day. The poor were certainly examined, but little less by ecclesiastical officials in Catholic lands, where the state’s role tended to be consultative, than by secular officials in Protestant lands.22 In terms of the sea changes supposedly wrought in early modern poor relief, confessional differences, like secular inclinations, in poor relief need to be reconsidered. In the matter of begging, however, Catholics and Protestants parted company, as did the church and the world.23 Due to rising numbers of poor persons and rising pressures on charitable resources, begging had become suspect well before the Reformation. Yet, Protestant authorities underscored that judgment. Theologians rejected mendicancy as the expression of a fundamental misunderstanding of justification; no human works, including begging or giving charity, could affect spiritual salvation. Nor did they equate economic poverty with the soul’s relationship to God. Begging became an activity, aptly subject to

21 See Harold Grimm, “Luther’s Contribution to Sixteenth-Century Organization of Poor Relief,” Archive for Reformation History 61 (1970): 222–34; Robert M. Kingdon, “Social Welfare in Calvin’s Geneva” in idem, Church and Society in Reformation Europe (London, 1985); Carter Lindberg, “‘There Should Be No Beggars Among Christians’: Karlstadt, Luther, and the Origins of Protestant Poor Relief,” Church History 46 (1977): 313–34; William Wright, “A Closer Look at House Poor Relief through the Common Chest and Indigence in Sixteenth-Century Hesse,” Archive for Reformation History 70 (1979): 225–38. 22 See especially, Brian Pullan, “Catholics and the Poor in Early Modern Europe,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 26 (1976): 15–34. 23 See Grimm, “Luther’s Contribution”; Lindberg, “‘There Should Be No Beggars’”; Mollat, The Poor of the Middle Ages; Pullan, “Catholics and the Poor.”

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state regulation. Protestant governments prohibited it and set the poor to work, attempting to make them to some extent self-supporting and to instill in them a fixed habit of labor. Catholic governments opposed begging, too, but their policies remained ambiguous. Begging remained, for many Catholics, a pious act that was deeply imbedded in their religious tradition and practice. Some Catholic theologians, including Domingo de Soto in the sixteenth century, taught that all persons, regardless of circumstance, should be allowed to beg as a devout undertaking. As a result, some Catholic authorities permitted specifically defined groups—invalids, foundlings or orphans, for example—to beg at specific times and places. Yet, different approaches should not obscure similar results: regardless of intention, neither Protestant nor Catholic authorities possessed the means or the will to eradicate begging completely. That such measures as they devised proved largely futile speaks, in part, to the scope of the problem but also to the persistence of the practice. Whether Protestant or Catholic, persons continued to beg alms, which means that, whether Protestant or Catholic, persons continued to give alms. It would be premature to assume that the traditional religious signification of poverty and charity played no role in the persistence of traditional forms of behavior. Whether it sought to eliminate or restrict begging, early modern poor relief ceased to be voluntary and came to rely on principles of discrimination and exclusion. Protestant and Catholic authorities sought to distinguish among poor people according to the nature of their poverty. To receive aid, the poor had to demonstrate the legality of their need. The authorities also sought to distinguish among poor persons according to membership in a community. To receive assistance, the poor had to be local residents or confessing congregants. Finally, the authorities distinguished according to precepts of morality. To receive assistance, the poor were required to submit to political authority, conform to religious practice, and labor in their own support. In this regard, at least, there appears to have been little difference between confessions in their charitable practices. All discriminated in one way or another. In theory, as noted, discrimination was nothing new. Too little is known of medieval practices, however, to determine conclusively to what extent early modern discrimination marked a break with the past. Some scholars believe nonetheless, this increasingly involuntary process of discrimination and exclusion separated early modern poor relief from medieval charity and expressed its newly found purpose. What had been an open ritual binding Christians became a compulsory function imposed on prescribed groups. Influenced by the theories of Karl Marx24 or, more recently, Michel Foucault,25 they see the purpose of early modern poor relief in terms fundamentally different from those of medieval charity, that is, not to save poor souls or render them self-sufficient but rather to make

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Karl Marx, Capital, 3 vols. (London, 1976), Vol. I, 675–873. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1978).

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them docile and dependent, shaping their activities to the economic interests of the elite. Poor relief placed the poor in environments that were closely regulated in such a way as to encourage industry, regularity, and obedience, all keys to economic dependence and social deference.26 Once again, the discussion of historical change finds itself captive to broad ideal types that generalize it in order to explain the present. *

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The following collection of essays addresses the traditional characterization of motives and methods as secular or religious in the reorganization of charity and the formulation of poor relief in early modern Europe. It grows out of four sessions, organized for the 2002 meeting of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, in which a series of close, local studies reviewed specific developments in the Venetian Empire, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of France. It brings together an international group of scholars, all of whom are engaged in original research on local or regional case-studies that demonstrate, as broad syntheses cannot, the degree to which varying resources, institutions, conditions, and perceptions shaped the reorganization of charity case by case and place by place. By entering into the diversity and complexity of poor relief, this volume emphasizes the intrinsic limitations of general theory, the determinative quality of local conditions, and the richness of early modern history. Their specificity sets these works apart and makes them valuable. At a time when images of the poor invoked an ideal of Christian life, the relief of poverty assumed even greater significance as the responsibility of a Christian community. Every major reformer adduced evangelical legitimations for new forms of charity. Yet, the pressing needs of the poor threatened civil society to such an extent that appropriate measures had become a matter of imperial policy as early as 1497. The Imperial Diet of Lindau ordered secular authorities throughout the Holy Roman Empire to prohibit begging and provide work relief. In a period of rapid change, therefore, poor relief remained both secular and religious in its motives and its measures. Certainly, the early modern period confutes easy dichotomies, the very notion that this world and the next could be thus easily separated. Calvinism, after all, made of work and wealth signs of divine favor. How, then, is the relationship between “brotherly love” and the “economic domain” to be grasped?

26 See, for example: Sherrill Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums since 1500: From Refuges for Ex-Prostitutes to Shelters for Battered Women (Oxford, 1992); Margaret DeLacy, Prison Reform in Lancashire, 1700–1850: A Study in Local Administration (Stanford, 1986); Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (New York, 1980); David Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971).

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In a general reflection on Christianity’s troubled relationship to property and its ownership, Lee Palmer Wandel argues that the origins of charity are to be found in the Gospel itself—not in the self-interest of a priestly cast, as Weber seems to have argued. Still, the oft-repeated prescript of paupertas was observed most often in the breach, Francis of Assisi being the one sterling exception to the general practice of communal property and individual indulgence. Yet, his propertylessness struck a responsive chord among the cities of Europe. What is more, increased access to the Bible in the second decade of the sixteenth century gave more Christians Christ’s injunctions with regard to money and charity as well as textual descriptions of apostolic Christianity and its social and economic arrangements, providing powerful tools with which to critique religious orders, bound by but forgetful of a vow of poverty. Poverty remained, as a result, not merely an economic state but also a moral distinction, and “charity” remained a Christian imperative that could never be entirely secularized. The case for secularization has been made most forcefully for the cities and states of the Holy Roman Empire, where social and theological concerns supposedly combined to change the face of medieval charity. Insofar as this generalization bears any scrutiny, it raises interesting questions about the situation in Italy. Hans Baron has asserted the historical similarity between cis- and transalpine city-states. Both possessed proud, self-conscious citizens, eager to assert their historical, cultural and moral preeminence through charitable initiatives. They were led by magistrates, sensitive to issues touching their authority and jurisdiction. Self-consciousness and self-government combined with economic development to provide ideal preconditions for rationalization and bureaucratization. Likewise, the humanistic tradition that emanated from Italian city-states and resonated in German Imperial cities encouraged these processes directly.27 In his path-breaking study of Venetian poor relief, however, Brian Pullan demonstrates that such neat generalizations do not apply. Charity remained central to lay piety. Venetians relieved the poor out of a “desire to express the love of God through the love of one’s neighbour, and to make contact with Christ through one of the least of his brothers.”28 Yet, they also acted out of a concern for public order and decency. The machinery of Venetian charity was, therefore, a congeries of old and new institutions that marked no clear break with the past; the ancient Scuole Grandi stood cheek by jowl with the newer Monte di Pietà and Casa del Soccorso. Venice can also be said to have pursued more efficient rational organization through greater centralization and state

27 Juan Luis Vives’ radical work, De subventione pauperum, helped to inspire and direct early modern poor relief. It called for innovations that were set into practice in many cities and states: discrimination between deserving and undeserving poor; prohibition of private, manual alms-giving; inculcation of moral and social discipline; compulsion to productive labor. 28 Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice, 631.

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supervision, but these policies were not imposed by fiat on every one of the cities charities. The question is whether similar conditions obtained elsewhere. David D’Andrea and Nicholas Eckstein both argue the affirmative, albeit on the basis of different institutions in different cities. In Treviso, a city of the Venetian Empire, as in Venice itself, charity provided an essential outlet for lay piety. D’Andrea makes the case that the city’s principal charitable institutions, the Ospedale and the Monte, passed into lay control and administration by the fifteenth century but continued to employ clergy in a variety of capacities and, so, were little affected by confessional change in the sixteenth century. The machinery of Trevisano charity pursued efficiency and rationality through greater centralization and public supervision, but public participation was both an expression of religious piety and a matter of public order. Likewise in Florence, a degree of secular oversight in no way compromised the spiritual import of poor relief. Nicholas Eckstein uses evidence from a number of Florentine confraternities to argue that the changes that occurred in Florence after 1500 should not be seen as part of an even or unbroken trend towards the secularization of confraternal activities, and in particular of their charitable mission. These activities are usually construed in relation to state programs of welfare. Assumptions that these developments were necessarily or automatically subject to increased control by the secular state, however, simultaneously exaggerate the assumed autonomy of earlier confraternities, and underplay the degree of continuity with “late-medieval” lay-devotional societies. For the sixteenthcentury laity, poor relief remained linked to ideas of interior, individual salvation. Treviso and Florence offered a broad specturn of public and private forms of poor relief that pursued worldly and religious goals simultaneously. Both cities pursued centralization and rationalization of these institutions without necessarily compromising their spiritual functions. Weber’s argument for secularization and rationalization as essential concomitants of modernization finds no more confirmation in the Holy Roman Empire than it does in Italy. Empirical studies have argued the case forcefully and cogently, but one has only to look beyond institutional structure and administration to quotidian activity and motivation to see that the realities were more complex. On the basis of poor relief in the Imperial city of Memmingen, Philip Kintner demonstrates that “secularization” understood narrowly as civic oversight of charities began as early as the fourteenth century. Memmingen’s guildbased City Council involved itself in all forms of poor relief, from providing alms to running hospitals and raising orphans. None of this changed with the Reformation. Memmingen’s long experience with welfare did not require the impulse of Luther, Zwingli, or any other reformer or humanist, though it may well have borrowed their rhetoric. At the same time that secular, lay authorities exercised administrative control, however, they acted not only out of fiscal or political engagement but also out of religious concern. Magistrates and burghers alike testified to their Christian responsibility to care for those unable to care for themselves. Peer Friess comes to similar conclusions with regard to

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Memmingen’s Catholic neighbors. Taking the Imperial city of Wangen as representative, he concludes that there were no substantial differences in the provision of poor relief and health care between Catholic and Protestant cities. Similar processes of reformation and reorganization in the public welfare system took place in towns of either confession. Council records, government decrees and private testaments give further insight into the motivations of city councillors. Though they reacted to actual economic, social and medical challenges, they never forgot the Christian obligation to care for the needy. Institutional continuity or change needs to be balanced against individual principle and motivation. In these cities at least, religion was never entirely absent, no matter what form secularisation and rationalization might have taken, and the Reformation made little difference. Yet, generalizations are perilous. Timothy Fehler argues compellingly that Reformation and confessionalization could make a great difference in poor relief, given the proper circumstances. In Emden, situated on the North Sea, near the border with Holland, continuity remained the order of the day until late in the sixteenth century. Charity tended to be parish-based and lay-administered. Attempts at centralization in no way compromised the traditional pattern of confraternities and almsgiving. In a form reminiscent of Italy, multiple forms of poor relief thwarted a thoroughgoing rationalization. The establishment of a reformed diaconate, “the household of faith,” by Dutch Calvinist refugees in the 1560s, devoted to the support of their own needy church members, introduced confession into poor relief. Henceforth, civic officials would have to negotiate with deacons to set the boundaries between ecclesiastical and municipal assistance. In few places was complexity more evident, as Fehler’s essay suggests, than where multiple confessions lived openly and in proximity to one another and where ecclesiastical and municipal administrations converged and competed. Such was the case in the Dutch Republic, where confession, if not Reformation, seems to have played a substantial role in shaping poor relief. Charles Parker offers an overview in his examination of the Dutch cities of Leiden, Gouda, Haarlem, Delft, and Amsterdam. The currents of poor relief reorganization and religious reformation that washed across Europe over the course of the sixteenth century crossed into Holland by the 1570s. Though the Dutch did not inaugurate a modern approach to poverty or invent “godly religion,” the convergence of poor relief and Calvinism left an unmistakable imprint on Dutch society. In particular, the establishment of a Reformed diaconate, independent of municipal control, led to a fragmentation of poor relief along confessional lines. What emerged was a tri-partite system, very similar to that identified by Fehler, a congeries of public welfare, church assistance, and private charity. Though varying in degree from city to city, the result was near constant conflict and negotiation among confessions and between church and state, splintering the medieval, corporatist culture of the Netherlands and fostering a modern multi-confessional society. As in the cities, so in the countryside. Joke Spaans addresses the role of religion in the introduction and transformation of early

INTRODUCTION

13

modern welfare reform in Frisia. As early as the 1520s and 1530s magistrates in several towns intervened in the provision of charity, centralizing funds in order to meet current needs. A complete reform along the lines advocated by sixteenth century humanist authors was, however, introduced only after the Dutch Revolt and in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. The prohibitions against begging and almsgiving, and the eligibility of all locally settled poor for the new centralized civic welfare proved to go against the grain of early modern social sensibilities; local elites and churches eventually successfully overturned the “humanist” program. What emerged was a tri-partite system that included public welfare controlled by civic magistrates, reformed diaconates controlled by church deacons, and private charities controlled by local elites. How did such a system function? Mary Sprunger offers a closer look at poor relief within the Mennonite community of seventeenth-century Amsterdam. She identifies a by now familiar constellation of concerns and innovations in which church-based poor relief played an important role in caring for the needy because civic institutions were not extensive enough to cover the entire indigent population. The Mennonites supported up to 15 percent of their congregants with a generous and broad array of assistance. Within their congregations, poor relief contributed to social control through keeping close tabs on their paupers and imposing church discipline when necessary. What was expressly viewed as a Christian imperative of each community to take care of its poor members served well the city’s interest in reducing indigence and maintaining order. Parochial welfare could supplement and compliment municipal institutions. Religious motivations could also serve secular ends. Given these complexities, strict distinctions between secular and religious, state and ecclesiastical, or rational and irrational appear to have little relevance. Notions of rationalization and secularization prove clumsy tools, when applied to early modern Europe. In France, too, rationalization occurred, as demonstrated by repeated attempts to create centralized, omnicompetent institutions for the relief of poverty: the hôtels dieu, the hôpitaux généraux and the depots de mendicité. There were, however, neither widespread nor lasting instances of secularization,29 understood either as the conversion of ecclesiastical institutions or property to secular possession or use or as the giving of a secular or nonsacred character or direction to a given activity.30 The character of charity in France seems nonetheless to have changed. Colin Jones described the common view of medieval charity as “voluntaristic, individually motivated, compassionate [and] freely given,” which yielded slowly to a contradictory, early-modern

29 The case of Lyon may be the one noteworthy exception. See Natalie Zemon Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy: The Case of Lyon,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 5 (1968): 217–75; Jean Pierre Gutton, La societé et les pauvres. 30 Definitions are drawn from The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 1971).

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“principle of compulsion.”31 As he saw it, early modern charity became enmeshed in a matrix of moral obligation, religious duty, economic exigency and social expectation. Yet, respect for local autonomy and the Catholic Church suborned centralization and secularization. Voluntary charity continued to flourish. Indeed, charity itself seems to have become compulsive. Amanda Eurich provides a useful bridge between the local, communal or congregational initiatives of Calvinistinfluenced poor relief and the national, institutional projects of Gallican charity. In Orange, William of Nassau introduced a centrally administered system of poor relief, to which the Edict of Toleration of 1607 added a biconfessional administration. Despite a shared moral program, however, Catholic and Protestant elites increasingly directed their charitable bequests toward local, private, churchbased programs of relief, diaconate poor relief on the one hand and confraternal sodalities on the other. The practice of charity in seventeenth-century Orange attests to the enduring potency of the sacred in early modern poor relief programs. The function of piety and charity as militant expressions of confessional allegiance and distinction is no less evident in larger, national companies, such as the Daughters of Charity. Susan Dinan focuses on this product of Catholic-Reformation fervor, to show that religion remained a highly significant force in determining the final shape of poor relief. The Daughters’ vocation was to imitate Christ by assisting the poor and to serve the Church by keeping the poor from heresy. Thus, political and social considerations were inseparable from religious and spiritual ones. The Daughters of Charity, and the many other religious communities of women dedicated to nursing and teaching who imitated their example, demonstrate that innovations in poor relief in seventeenth-century France were the product of a complex set of relationships among the church, state and community, involving a multiplicity of motives, worldly as well as religious. *

*

*

The concepts of secularization or rationalization explain very little in the final analysis. The former applies only to the conversion of church institutions or properties to secular possession. It does not preclude continued clerical or ecclesiastical participation. More importantly, it does not dissolve the sacred character of charity. “Rationalization” bears little relation to the motives and processes revealed in these studies. Institutions and functions might have been rendered more efficient—the development was halting and incomplete at best—but the motives and goals remained far more complex. The specificities of each case— of each particular town or territory—presented by the following essays indicate that the realities of early modern poor relief do not lend themselves to such simple explanations or, in the end, such linear descriptions.

31 Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France (London, 1989), 1.

C H A P T E R

THE POVERTY

ON E

OF

CHRIST

Lee Palmer Wandel

And behold, one came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which?” And Jesus said, “You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “All these I have observed; what do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions. And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:16–24 (RSV)

I

n the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus altered the relationship between property and piety. The Ten Commandments are relatively straightforward; two address property specifically: You shall not steal (Exodus 20:15) You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s. (Exodus 20:17)

The Ten Commandments affirm the ownership of property, command the acknowledgement of ownership per se, in fact; two commandments forbid two different ways in which human beings fail to live within the bounds of ownership, “theft” and “covetousness.” In Matthew 19, Jesus, however, set a different relationship for the faithful to “property,” calling for them to give it away, to “leave” it as he called them to leave father, mother, sister, brother, and “follow” him. Nor did he call for communal ownership, though the apostles offered that model to later generations of Christians, but a life without property—or, more precisely, a life free of property. In the millenium and a half following the death of Christ, those who would

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follow him took up that call in various ways. In so doing, the devout brought to “poverty” complex resonances, multiple valences. In the world of antiquity, “poverty” had certainly not been a simple or easily defined condition.1 Indeed, “poverty” was a condition into which the great majority of Roman citizens— quite apart from the enormous slave population—could fall at one time or another in their lives: it was not a state of a minority, but a potentiality for the majority, a vulnerability. But in those 1500 years, as Christians chose to live “poverty” in a wide range of ways, they brought to that socio-economic vulnerability a multitude of associations, ethical and psychological as well as visual and material. The earliest efforts to model a life upon that of Christ suggest that those early Christians held propertylessness to be essential to that mimesis. Before going out into the desert, the earliest hermits of the eastern Mediterranean gave away all their property, setting out into the “wilderness” with only a cloth to cover them. The hermits who built the cells on the rocky islets to the west of Ireland seem to have taken no possessions with them and to have built the cells with their bare hands out of the stones they found on the land. The imitatio Christi embodied by the hermits did not take hold more broadly in the west. Another mimesis, which posited a different relationship to property and its ownership, was far more popular and spread quickly and broadly. In the sixth century, Benedict of Nursia stated in the Rule that would form the foundation for western monasticism: The vice of private ownership must be uprooted from the monastery. No one, without the abbot’s permission, shall dare to give, receive or keep anything—not book, tablet or pen—nothing at all. Monks have neither free will nor free body, but must receive all they need from the abbot. However, they may keep nothing unless permitted or given them by the abbot. All things are to be common to everyone for, “Neither did any one say or think that anything whatever was his own” (Acts 4:32). If any one is found with a predilection to this terrible vice, he is to be scolded twice. If he does not reform, then he is to be punished.2

As the Rule makes clear, the ownership of property was freighted in a number of ways. Augustine had contrasted covetousness to the ethics of “the City of God”—which was not a place but a state of mind and soul. Augustine preached an orientation toward God, away from what medieval Christians called “the world.” That “world,” as Benedict here suggests, was defined not by things, but by human being’s relationship to those things. Benedictines were not, in fact, propertyless, but no one monk was to own anything—the danger lay, for Benedict, not in property itself, but in private ownership. Monks were to have

Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hannover, 2002). Chapter 33, The Rule of Saint Benedict, translated with notes by Anthony Meisel and M. L. del Mastro (Garden City, N.J., 1975), 76. 1 2

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books, tablets, pens in common—to have the use of them, access to them, but not the ownership of them. For those 1500 years, ownership of goods had complex social meaning. The “rich” of the late antique world did not simply have more possessions: they had status, a social place “above” the great majority, rank and power.3 In the medieval period, power and rank were inseparable from the ownership of vast tracts of land and the ability to display such luxury goods as tapestries; with the rise of the towns wealth and status were no longer directly connected— one could be poor and noble or, like the Medici, rich and common—but they were not yet severable: social place still held its own power, status was associated with wealth, even if it was not always supported by it.4 The ownership of property did not pose simply the problem of covetousness—the riveting desire to possess things—but also arrogance. Or, to put the point differently, at no time was the state of destitution itself construed as essentially pious, but throughout the period, devout Christians preached and lived, that property pulled the attention from God to “the world,” a matrix of values in which status and ownership and goods signified. Some, such as the hermits, simply got rid of all property. Others, such as the Benedictines and those orders who followed their rule, the Cistercians foremost, practiced communal ownership, still owning property, but not owning it individually. For the hermits, all property, no matter how it was owned, was pernicious, a danger to the soul. For the Benedictines and the Cistercians, Jesus had called not for the rejection of all ownership of property, but to place oneself absolutely in obedience to God, for the Benedictines, in the person of the abbot. The ownership, not the use, of goods worked against “the commandments of holy obedience.”5 The humility which Benedict sought to instill through “a school for God’s service” was counteracted by ownership of goods and the social import that that ownership carried. Benedict’s formulation proved problematic in the eyes of many Christians by the twelfth century. While individual monks were “propertyless,” those individual monks’ orders collectively owned vast stretches of land, the most substantial form of wealth, which generated income in kind and in rents. Individual religious might live without property, but they lived collectively within all the protections the ownership of property provided: shelter, food, comfort, warmth, materials for reading, contemplation, images, music. The “propertylessness” the Benedictines lived, in other words, was not absolute:

3

Brown, passim. Michel Mollat, Les Pauvres au Moyen âge: étude sociale (Paris, 1978). On the shamefaced poor, see Richard Trexler, “Charity and the Defense of Urban Elites in the Italian Communes,” in Frederic Cople Jaher, ed., The Rich, the Well Born, and the Powerful, (Urbana, Ill., 1973), 64–109; Amleto Spicciani, “The ‘Poveri Vergognosi’ in 15th Century Florence,” in Aspects of Poverty in Early Modern Europe, edited by Thomas Riis (Alphen aan den Rijn, 1981), 119–72. 5 Prologue, Rule, 45. 4

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they were housed; they had wine and food; they were given clothes for winter and for summer, they had shoes, all of which fit them; they had a mattress, a pillow, a coverlet, and a blanket—which they were not to hoard but whose use they had.6 Christ’s poverty figured centrally for religious movements, such as the Poor of Lyon, which arose out of dissatisfaction with institutional Christianity and particularly the Benedictine form of the imitatio Christi. In the early thirteenth century, a young nobleman, son of one of the powerful families of an Italian town, transfixed European Christians with his particular conceptualization of the imitatio Christi, which found in poverty the key to that mimesis. No other person in the history of Christianity after Christ gave such dramatic expression to “poverty,” and in so doing, at once riveted attention on the implications of the socio-economic state of poverty and transformed the context of meaning for that state. Stripped naked before the bishop of Assisi, repudiating patrimony as well as patronym, status as well as social place, accepting the clothes of another solely in order to cover his nakedness,7 Francis of Assisi signalled so many dimensions of the protections of property as he rejected them. Living in donated cloth, in a cave, receiving food as others were willing to donate it, Francis expressly sought a life without that protection, that security, a life which was utterly and radically pendant upon God. As recounted by contemporaries and subsequent historians, Francis’s life consisted in a series of dramatic moments such as the one in the cathedral. The theatricality of those moments has led some scholars to question the authenticity of Francis’s piety. And yet, precisely in their theatricality, those moments made visible and articulate so many dimensions of what it meant to have property. In the cathedral, Francis explicitly repudiated the status and security of patrimony. In throwing away his sandals, his staff, and leather belt three years later, and in choosing explicitly to have only one robe, tied with a simple cord, Francis called attention to the ways in which clothing complexly signals, not only luxury—a choice of fabrics, color, cuts—but also itself serves to protect, both physically, as a covering against the elements, but also socially as a visible signal of social place, of one’s clear location within the map of human relationships.8 In living in a cave, as his biographer suggested, Francis demonstrated so many of the ways that shelter provided physical comfort and psychological haven; he was “exposed” not only to the elements, but to thieves, to danger, to assault, to unpredictability.

Chapter 56, Rule, 91–92. Thomas de Celano, “Vita Prima Sancti Francisci,” in Enrico Menestò and Stefano Brufani, et al., eds., Fontes Franciscani, (Assisi, 1995), 290; John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from Its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968), 7. 8 Moorman, 8–9; Celano passim. 6 7

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For Francis, as he made clear in his Admonitions, the goal was not propertylessness—though Jesus’s command to sell all and give it to the poor would form one of the constitutive acts of the foundation of the order.9 Francis sought to imitate not the outward gestures of Christ, but a complex psychology of faith, in which the protections of property had to be stripped away, in order to place the Christian in absolute and radical dependence on God. “Poverty” for Francis was not a simple material state.10 Physical poverty was the visualization—the theatrical expression—of man’s spiritual state before God. That physical condition helped human beings to live in humility—without the trappings of status or patrimony—more completely in the consciousness of their poverty of spirit, and in the psychological and social stance of the servant.11 More than any other order, the Franciscans gave visible form to a particular conception of humanity before God: man is a beggar before God. That particular conceptualization of the relationship of humanity to God was much older: John of Chrysostom had drawn the stark and direct analogy that man before God is as the beggar before the rich man.12 But in the thirteenth century, the Church formally recognized two “mendicant” orders, two orders who lived by begging. For Francis, begging was not simply the consequence of a radical commitment to poverty: it was the enactment of man’s relationship to God. It is worth pausing for a moment to underline the transformation of the resonances of poverty that Francis’s life engendered. The stories of Francis’s repudiation of his patrimony, of the time he spent among the lepers and other outcasts of his own society, of his destitution, and of his life of begging circulated widely for some three hundred years. In each of those dramatic moments, Francis delineated dimensions of what it meant to have property in thirteenthcentury Europe—the delicate and multiple interconnections between the ownership of property and status. In each, he challenged that entire construct of values, in which goods brought status. In each he acted, performed a radically different orientation, not simply “away from the world,” as the Benedictines, Cluniacs, and Cistercians had preached, but to place himself in absolute dependence upon God, it absolute independence from the world of goods. Francis lived a vision of man Christian preachers had put before their congregations, “man is a beggar before God,” he gave it dramatic expression and in so doing, linked visually the spiritual state of man’s poverty before God to the material condition of those who were propertyless, without the protections of property.

9

Moorman, p. 12; see also Celano, 282. Celano, “Vita Prima Sancti Francisci,” 282. Moorman remains the authoritative account. For an exploration of Francis’s complex understanding of poverty, see also Auspicius van Corstanje, Francis: Bible of the Poor (Chicago, 1977); 11 Francis, “Admonitiones,” Fontes Franciscani, especially chapters 14, 17, 19, 20, and 23, pages 31–35. 12 Brown, 86–87, especially. 10

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Francis’s begging was seen by contemporaries and later generations as one demonstration of his sanctity. It was an essential attribute of his imitatio Christi. The begging became a defining attribute of the order that Francis founded, and as that order spread, with stunning speed, throughout Europe, town after town witnessed beggars whose begging was constitutive of the piety of their lives. Some, such as Bernardino of Siena, sought to approximate the drama of Francis’s poverty: descriptions of Bernardino echo descriptions of the desperate poor— toothlessness, emaciation, the layers of dirt that come of no access to bathing facilities, ragged cloth, bare feet. Bernardino, like Francis, lived the reality of poverty, in all its desperation and deprivation. His face, which contemporaries construed as radiant in its sanctity, was no different in the effects of poverty from those of the most wretched of the poor. The story of the Franciscans reflects much of the tension within the Christian tradition between that call to propertylessness and a life lived within the western market economy.13 Throughout its history the Order of Friars Minor had members who sought to live more completely, more absolutely the “poverty” that Francis had embodied. Francis’s first followers also sold all they had and gave the money to the poor, like him, begging for food. But such a life is consciously and expressly unstable. Perhaps more importantly, as the usus pauper controversy of the later thirteenth century made evident, the radical poverty of Francis and those who would be called the “Spiritual Franciscans,” who sought to cleave most closely to the poverty of Christ, challenged the institutional church.14 In the very drama of each friar’s embodiment of Christ’s poverty, which Francis had linked so immediately to the state of humility, was a contrast with the accommodations of the cloistered orders and of the papacy— their imitatii Christi were neither as dramatic nor, in the eyes of many Christians, as pure or complete as Francis’s had been. In 1318, the Papacy had executed for heresy friars who had cleaved too radically to “poverty” and in so doing, had brooked the authority of the Pope. By the sixteenth century, the Franciscans no longer captivated European imaginations as they once had. Many, if the polemicists are to be believed, had grown fat and lazy. Demographics suggest that the membership had declined in many European towns: houses in a number of cities within the Empire had declined significantly from fourteenth-century numbers. But Francis had brought to begging connotations that had not been forgotten; even Luther would speak of man as a beggar before God.

13 The great study of this tension is Lester Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 1978). 14 On the Spiritual Franciscans, see Moorman, chapters 16 and 17. David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (University Park, Penn., 2001) argues that it was not so much poverty as the tension between obedience and purity that lay at the heart of the controversy.

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In many ways, the history of Christianity can be read as the tension between property and piety. Francis of Assisi provides a dramatic example of what the “all” that those who would follow Jesus encompassed: patrimony and jewelry, certainly—many Europeans could “follow” Christ in that way—but he also gave away his robes and shoes, standing utterly “naked,” not only unclothed, but without all the protections and status possessions give, before the bishop. No European, other than possibly Francis, was truly possession-less, though few were “rich,” to follow Jesus’s message more fully. Over a millenium, Europeans both clerical and lay created a caste distinguished in part by its relationship to “property,” according that caste—those who took a vow of “poverty”—special status within European society: legal, economic, and political privileges and rights that attached to that caste. And after Lateran IV, one part of that caste, priests, acquired even greater distance from common Christianity, a distance at once signalled and justified by the vows of poverty and chastity. Europeans reserved to the religious the closest adherence to Jesus’s command, the “laity,” those who did not take that vow of poverty, living in a far more convoluted relationship to property and, then, wealth. *

*

*

In the history of Christianity, neither “possession” nor “property” has been extirpated. Those in the sixteenth century who called for the eradication of private property, either, like Thomas More, cloaked their call in irony,15 or, like the Anabaptists and revolutionaries of 1525, found themselves the singular target of both ecclesiastical and secular extermination.16 Europeans allotted to the “religious,” “communal property,” but free use was illegal—those who called for it found themselves the targets of military force.17 No, “property,” if not “private possession,” has remained inviolate throughout the history of institutional Christianity. That is not to say, however, that “property” and “possession” have been unambivalent within the history of Christianity. Quite the contrary, they have been consistently and powerfully a point of tension. Each call for “reform” took up the question of “possession” and “property,” most often invoking precisely the passage with which this essay opens. Francis’s movement was breathtakingly popular—growing in unprecedented numbers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such that by the sixteenth century, almost all towns throughout the Empire had a Franciscan monastery or Tertiary convent. As Little pointed

15 See the discussion of the question of property in the Norton edition of Utopia, Thomas More, Utopia (New York, 1993). 16 James Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and the Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal, 1991). 17 Cf. Peter Blickle’s argument throughout a number of his works, especially Die Revolution von 1525 (Munich, 1975) and Gemeindereformation (Vienna, 1985).

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out, the mendicant orders, the begging orders, received their greatest support from the towns, the centers of commerce, trade, and capitalism.18 Nor was “poverty” secularized in the sixteenth century. The evidence is diverse and largely unexplored. Evangelical preachers seem to have come in substantially larger numbers from the mendicant orders than from Benedictines or other earlier medieval orders. Clerical “poverty” came under widespread and intense criticism, from theologians, laity, townspeople, and peasants, who contrasted to Christ not simply the luxury or the abundance of the monastic orders, but their security, their insularity, and the status their goods brought them.19 Although the care of the poor in cities that adopted some form of Protestantism was brought under lay administration, that does not mean that poor relief was “secularized,” brought into a world without religious connotations, resonances, values. At the most superficial level, any one of the poor laws formulated by town councils in the wake of “Reformation” evidences the perseverance of Christian ethics: “for the honor of God,” out of love of God. Some, moreover, were promulgated on or near Christian feast days. And alms remained a central source of income for many poor relief agencies of the early modern period. The resilient claim, that poor relief was “secularized” in the Reformation, has its origins in Max Weber’s broader argument for “secularization.” Both partake of assumptions about “poverty,” indeed about socio-economic conditions more generally, foremost, that socio-economic conditions and religion are separate categories. The poor themselves are defined in terms of income—socio-economically—without reference either to the complex resonances Christ had given to “poverty” fifteen hundred years earlier, or to those to which Francis had given such theatrical and memorable expression three hundred years earlier. “Poverty” itself continued to have complex religious resonances throughout the Reformation, resonances that were, moreover, explicitly taken up by Protestants. I have delineated elsewhere some of the ways Zwingli linked the poor to Christ: as the object of Christian brotherly love, as a living example of God’s power and human powerlessness, and as visible embodiments of Christian humility.20 Zwingli and other Protestant reformers distinguished the voluntary poor—mendicants and other false beggars—from the involuntary poor. They attached to the voluntary poor those values—laziness, a kind of duplicity—that Weber argued became attached to the socio-economic condition with the Reformation.21 They did not speak of all poor in the same terms: poverty,

This is one of the major arguments of Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy. See, for example, the pamphlets collected in Adolf Laube et al., eds., Flugschriften der frühen Reformationsbewegung (1518–1524), Vol. I (Berlin, 1983), Section I. 20 Wandel, Always Among Us: Images of the Poor in Zwingli’s Zurich (Cambridge, 1990), chapter 2 and conclusion. 21 See Wandel, Always Among Us, in particular chapter 2. 18 19

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in other words, was not the focus of their criticism, but the will, the willful choice to seek poverty. Perhaps most telling in the poor laws were two widespread characteristics. Poor laws invoked love of one’s brother, called for the support of the poor through Christian brotherly love. The civil magistrates, in other words, were not seeking solely to extend disciplinary control over the poor; they were also involving the Christian community in the care of the poor, consciously in communal, as distinguished from individual, charity. Protestant poor laws also called for the poor to conduct themselves with modesty and humility. That requirement, viewed through the lens of discipline, can be read as a demand to pattern their behavior to connote some of the consequences of propertylessness within a mercantile society. But here, too, if one reads that demand with a sense of the resonances within any urban community where Franciscans, the Friars Minor, continued to be housed, then the call to humility resonates differently, echoes what Francis sought through living propertylessness. “Humility” is exactly the word he used. *

*

*

That connection between humility and poverty, that sense of the interdependence of Christ’s poverty and his embodiment of faith, was articulated more explicitly in Reformation polemics, in plays and in images of various kinds. Perhaps best known are the dramatic characters, peasants and low-ranking artisans, whose lack of possessions signals a humility that links them to Christ. Christ’s own poverty was represented in hundreds of Protestant images, beginning with the woodcuts illustrating the new vernacular Bibles. Europeans could purchase in exponentially increasing numbers in the 1520s printed Bibles, most of which carried at least one illustration of Christ—all of which depicted Christ in the simple robe of an apostle. Frequently, Christ is barefoot, and when not, he wears the most rudimentary of sandals. Those images were available to many Christians, perhaps not as available as the medieval painted crucifixes in churches, which depicted Christ stripped of all but a loincloth, but Europeans could see in many different venues Christ’s own embodiment of propertylessness—the simplicity and crudeness of the cloth he wore, the absence of any other possessions, the absence of any symbols of wealth or economic power. Protestant polemics took up the connection of Christ and poverty to attack the Roman clergy and papacy. Two failures, in particular, were the target of bitter anticlerical satire: the failure of celibacy and the failure of poverty. The first was ridiculed in tales of clerical sexual promiscuity—though clerical clandestine marriages seem not to have been targeted nearly as often.22 The precise 22 On anticlericalism, see Hans-Jörg Goertz, Antiklerikalismus und Reformation: sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Göttingen, 1995) in Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman, eds., Anticlericalism in late medieval and early modern Europe (Leiden, 1993).

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criticism of the clergy’s relation to property in anticlerical polemics reveals much of the complex perception of “the poverty of Christ” in early modern towns. Most pamphlets did not dispute the clergy’s ownership of property. Like Von dem pfründtmarckt der Curtisanen und Tempelknechten of 1521, they argued that the benefices had been gifts which bound the clergy to take care of those poorer than themselves, not the foundation for a grand life of luxury. It was not that religious owned, possessed, but that they lived opulently and that they did not see their possessions as binding them to poor laity. These visual and verbal polemics, as well as evangelical preaching, also invoked Christ’s life as the model by which to judge the clergy. There, too, Christ’s particular relation to poverty both served as a contrast and was held as the ideal for Christian piety. Let me offer one particularly popular and widely circulated example of the powerful interplay of the, in this case, predominantly visual, invocation of the ideal, and explication of its contrast to papal practice. The pamphlet, Passional Christi und Antichristi, published in Wittenberg in 1521, articulated in thirteen pairs of woodcuts, designed by Lucas Cranach the Elder, how Christ had lived and the Pope’s antithetical practices. Two of those pairs are of particular interest for our purposes. In the first of the two pairs (fig. 1), Christ is shown among people whose torn clothes and crutches designate them as poor in property—they do not possess wealth, their outward appearance displays no wealth. The scriptural text that accompanies the image does not explicitly describe the people as poor; its focus is Christ, [RSV] “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death.” Here, too, low economic and social status, such as the poor of towns, was the outward manifestation of Christ’s extraordinary embodiment. Poverty was the precise attribute of Christ’s chosen form of Incarnation. And in this image, Christ also is to be found among the poor and beggars, who attend to his prayer, faces turned toward his. The contrasting image of the Pope in both text and image represents his sense of honor that will not permit him to humble himself. That sense of honor is contrasted with Christ’s “emptying himself,” while the religious who surround the Pope then are implicitly contrasted with the humble of its paired image. Poverty is not simply an economic state, but a particular relation to “honor,” and its self-importance. The second image (fig. 2) deals more directly with the poverty of Christ: [RSV:] “Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff,” and, quoting St. Peter in Acts, “I have no silver and gold.” The image of Christ bears the title, “Christ had need of neither possessions nor gold.” The image itself depicts the second tunic, as well as Peter dropping a belt with its money purse attached. As in so many images of Jesus in the 1520s—both biblical and polemical—Jesus wears only a

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tunic, no sandals, no belt, no purse, no walking stick, no staff. And in both pictures, Jesus is not simply outdoors, but away from any town, “auf dem Land,” without shelter—very much as Francis sought in his mimesis of Christ. In contrast, the papal image underlines the ways in which popes, here through bishops, lay claim to land that is not theirs, through reserving the privilege of consecration to themselves. *

*

*

These images do not speak, finally, to how individual poor men, women, and children—the unemployed artisan, the physically handicapped, the widows, or orphans—were perceived. They speak to how very complexly “poverty” resonated in sixteenth-century Europe. “Poverty” was not simply the absence of wealth or ambition. Poverty was that which contrasted with what was so very wrong with the Pope; poverty was that which linked Christ to the devout. In these images, and in others, poverty was the visualization of humility—much as it had been for Francis. The attack on the grandeur and hauteur of the Papacy had resonances for Protestants throughout Europe. We can speak of a “Protestant aesthetic,” in which somber doctoral robes replaced the colored silks and gold stitching of priests’ stoles and chasubles; and a Protestant ethic, in which endowments for masses for the dead were redirected to support the poor, in which alms collection became a civic and communal responsibility. The antithesis of that grandeur, as these woodcuts articulated so starkly, was Christ’s own poverty and the poverty of those to whom he preached. Finally, what linked the everyday poor to Christ’s poverty was the manner in which they bore that poverty. In Protestant poor law after poor law, magistrates distinguished between the undeserving and the deserving poor. The foremost characteristic that Christian magistrates demanded of the poor to whom they were willing to administer was humility. That quality was “Christian,” powerfully so. For Protestants, Christ’s poverty—his possessionlessness—did not simply contrast with papal grandeur and wealth. It embodied, incarnated, qualities Christians associated with Christ’s singularly pure faith: humility not only of economic place, or of social status, but humility as the genuine, the true, and essential spiritual attitude of humanity before God. Christ’s poverty was no mere socio-economic condition; his socio-economic condition made visible in the mundane the truth of his relationship to God—it made transparent his spiritual condition. Perhaps most significantly in the Reformation, Christ’s own poverty also made manifest his choice, to live among men, not above them.

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Figure 1. Lucas Cranach, Passional Christi und Antichristi (1521).

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Figure 2. Lucas Cranach, Passional Christi und Antichristi (1521).

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C H A P T E R

T W O

CHARITY AND THE REFORMATION ITALY: THE CASE OF TREVISO

IN

David D’Andrea

T

he study of charity and the Reformation combines two intensely examined and debated aspects of early modern European history: the motivation (secular or spiritual) behind early modern charitable reforms and the relationship between the Renaissance and the Reformation. The last generation of scholarship has increasingly downplayed the theological motives and either emphasized the humanist ethos behind both Catholic and Protestant charity or viewed poor relief as a manifestation of social control.1 Two recent collections of essays, however, have sought to revise the discussion of charity and refocus on the centrality of religion.2 The central goal of this essay will be to apply this approach to the current debate regarding the reformation of charity in Italy. A survey of the charitable institutions in one Italian city, Treviso, will serve as a test case to modify or amplify accepted conclusions. In addition, this survey of charity will shift the chronological paradigm to pre-Tridentine charitable institutions instead of the centralized and organized response of the CounterReformation. This reassessment and new focus will contribute to our understanding of the complex relationship between charities, popular devotion, and the Reformation in Italy. Charity and the Italian Reformation Confraternities have emerged as key elements in Renaissance Catholicism, for these religious brotherhoods served a variety of religious and political roles,

1 For example, see Natalie Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1991), 2: 17–64; Beat Kümin, ed. Reformations Old and New: Essays on the Socio-Economic Impact of Religious Change, c. 1470–1630 (1996); Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994). 2 O. P. Grell and A. Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, 1500–1700 (London, 1997); idem, Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe (London, 1999).

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from personal devotion to the administration of powerful charitable institutions.3 Given their important role as expressions of religious devotion, it is not surprising that confraternities were often at the center of Reformation debates, attacked by Protestant leaders but actively encouraged and adopted as models in Catholic regions. In fact, the vitality of these institutions has called into question a number of traditional assumptions regarding Renaissance religious devotion on the eve of the Reformation.4 As Grell and Cunnigham have observed, It remains somewhat of a paradox to historians why this renewal should have taken place in Italy far away from where the Protestant challenge was strongest . . . That, however, might well be a typically anachronistic interpretation. It is, in our opinion, far more likely that the evangelical movement in northern Europe in the 1520s was ideologically much closer to the movement for reform in Italy which generated the new religious orders than we realise today, despite the different paths they eventually took.5

The editors correctly recognize an outmoded (yet very much repeated) approach to the Reformation in Italy, an understanding that has undergone a dramatic reassessment in the last generation of scholarship.6 Although Grell recognized the common inspiration for Catholic and Protestant reforms, his observation begs the question why the reform movements took such different paths. To begin to address this issue, it is crucial to examine urban charities before and during

3 The current historiography on confraternities is enormous. For recent surveys, see Christopher Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1989); Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge, 1995); Barbara Wisch and Diane Cole Ahl, eds., Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 2000); Nicolas Terpstra, ed., The Politics of Ritual Kinship: Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 2000). 4 For the historiographical debate, see John Van Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 519–52; Daniel Bornstein, “The Religious Culture of Late Medieval Italy,” in The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy (Ithaca, 1993), 1: 8–42; Francesco Cesareo, “The Complex Nature of Catholicism in the Renaissance,” Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2001): 1561–73. 5 Grell, Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter Reformation Europe, 3. 6 For recent summaries of the state of the question, see Adriano Prosperi, “Italy,” in Hans Hillerbrand, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation (Oxford, 1996), 2: 324–29; Silvana Seidel Menchi, “Italy,” in Bob Scribner, Roy Porter, and Mikulás Teich, eds., The Reformation in National Context (Cambridge, 1994), 181–201; John Tedeschi, The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture: A Bibliography of the Secondary Literature (ca. 1750–1997) (Modena, 2000); Euan Cameron, “Italy,” in Andrew Pettegree, ed., The Early Reformation in Europe, 189–90; Anne Jacobson Schutte, “Periodization of Sixteenth-Century Italian Religious History: The Post-Cantimori Paradigm Shift,” Journal of Modern History 61 (1989): 269–84; Massimo Firpo, Riforma protestante ed eresie nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Rome, 1997), 2nd edition; Salvatore Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy, trans. Anne C. and John Tedeschi (Kirksville, Mo., 1999); John O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, Mass., 2000), 72–91.

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the early years of the Reformation, a time period that has not yet received adequate scholarly attention.7 Most of the work on charity, the Reformation, and Italy, while acknowledging the importance of fifteenth-century reform movements, has primarily focused on the new institutions of the Counter-Reformation.8 Brian Pullan fully recognized the difficulty in trying to reconcile the chronology of the CounterReformation, with milestone events such as the establishment of the Roman Inquisition (1542) and the convocation of the Council of Trent (1545), with the continuity in charitable institutions. “Can a historian of poor relief point to an equally significant series of events in the same decade (1540s)? Possibly not, but the exercise is worth trying.”9 In the same volume, John Henderson states, “The systems of charity and welfare established in the Italian city-states in the sixteenth century were ostensibly little different from those already in place.”10 He further noted that Catholic institutions went relatively unchallenged and that a crucial element of this system was the confraternity, which provided a model and an inspiration for Catholic reforms. There was a more stringent control of the poor and a more moralistic tone, but the fundamental institutions were not challenged or greatly modified. Although a general consensus exists that reforms of the Catholic Reformation were inspired by earlier ideas and institutions, there remains one fundamental issue: what sacred or secular concerns explain this continuity? A survey of the charitable activities in Treviso can help us address this critical question. Treviso: Church and State Treviso provides a good test case for a number of reasons. First, we possess good sources for the medieval and early modern period that allow us to document continuity and change. Second, two of the most important charitable institutions for the city, the civic hospital and the monte di pietà, flourished in this period and provide concrete examples of charitable activity. Third, Treviso formed part of the Venetian empire, and its charitable institutions are linked to historiographical questions relating to the role of subject cities, the independence of Venice from Rome, and the myth of Venice. In fact, the seminal work for the history of charity in a Catholic state was a study of Venice, Brian Pullan’s Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice. As Pullan has demonstrated, unlike other territorial states such as Florence or Milan, “the Venetian government did not issue social legislation for the whole Terra Ferma . . . it allowed indi7 Historians have only recently begun to address these questions. See the collected essays in John Patrick Donnelly and Michael Maher, eds., Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France, and Spain (Kirksville, Mo., 1999). 8 See Pullan’s essay, “The Counter-Reformation, medical care and poor relief,” in Crell and Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe (London, 1999), 18–39. 9 Brian Pullan, “The Counter-Reformation, medical care, and poor relief,” 24. 10 John Henderson, “Charity and Welfare in Early Modern Tuscany,” 56.

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vidual cities and ecclesiastical authorities to initiate proposals about such matters as the reorganization of hospitals, the expulsion or retention of the Jews, or the foundation of Monti di Pietà.”11 Therefore, the charitable activities in Treviso embody the sacred and secular concerns of local ecclesiastical and civic leaders. Venetian expansion on the Italian mainland began in the 1300s, and the first city subjected to Venice was Treviso, about twenty miles northwest of the lagoon.12 A prosperous city with a population of approximately ten thousand people, Treviso’s local government was gradually but radically curtailed under Venetian subjugation. Once under Venetian domination, the city’s communal bodies continued to convene but under the watchful eyes of the Venetian representative, the podestà, who ultimately decided the crucial issues of taxation and justice. Although political autonomy was all but eliminated, the local laws, customs, and institutions remained in place, and the legally recognized colleges in Treviso—nobles, doctors, notaries, and the craft guilds—all enjoyed a degree of representation in the communal bodies. In addition to the professional and political organizations, the citizens could also join guilds and confraternities. Despite continued local involvement, Venetian domination had a profound influence on public life, including the oversight of ecclesiastical authorities and the administration of the city’s charitable organizations. The Church in Treviso: Bishops, Protestants, and Reform The Venetian government carefully monitored the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Treviso, as in all Venetian subject territories. Bishops were appointed only after Venetian approval, usually for political rather than religious considerations.13 During the Reformation both of Treviso’s bishops, Bernardo Rossi (1499–1527) and

Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor, 629. See also Pullan’s collected essays: Poverty and Charity: Europe, Italy, and Venice 1400–1700 (Aldershot, 1994). 12 For the history of Treviso, see A. A. Michieli, Storia di Treviso, 3rd ed. (Treviso, 1988); Bianca Betto, Il Collegio dei notai, dei giudici, dei medici e dei nobili in Treviso (secc. XIII–XVI) (Venice, 1981); Giuseppe Del Torre, Il Trevigiano nei secoli XV e XVI: L’assetto amministrativo e il sistema fiscale (Venice, 1990); Luigi Pesce, La Chiesa di Treviso nel primo Quattrocento, 3 vols. (Rome, 1987); Ernesto Brunetta, ed. Storia di Treviso, 4 vols. (Venice, 1989–93). 13 For a discussion of the Venetian church and the Reformation, see Aldo Stella, “La riforma protestante,” in Gaetano Cozzi and Paolo Prodi, eds., Storia di Venezia: Dal Rinascimento al Barocco (Rome, 1994), 341–63; Gaetano Cozzi and Michael Knapton, La Repubblica di Venezia nell’età moderna (Turin, 1999), 19–39; William Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty, 65–78; Paolo Prodi, “The Structure and Organization of the Church in Renaissance Venice,” in J. R. Hale, ed., Renaissance Venice (London, 1973), 409–30; Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation, 108–10; John Martin, “Salvation and Society in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Popular Evangelism in a Renaissance City,” Journal of Modern History 60 (1988): 205–33; John Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City (Berkeley, 1993); Federica Ambrosini, Storie di patrizi e di eresia nella Venezia del ’500 (Milan, 1999). 11

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Francesco Pisani (1527–57), were remarkable for their absenteeism, one due to suspicions of betrayal to Venice and the other because of service to the Most Serene Republic. Rossi belonged to a noble family from Parma whose connections served Venetian interests. As a reward for loyalty, Venice petitioned Rome for Bernardo Rossi, who was granted the episcopal see in 1499. His service in Treviso, however, was marred by controversy. In fact, he so irritated local leaders and the Venetian podestà that in 1503 the former podestà conspired in a thwarted assassination of the bishop.14 Rossi came under increased scrutiny when his brother, Filippo, betrayed Venice and went to serve the forces of Emperor Maximilian I. Expelled in 1509, Rossi received Venetian permission to enter Treviso only a few times and then for brief visits. His successor, Francesco Pisani, was also an absentee bishop but for very different reasons.15 The son of one the most powerful men in Venice, Francesco spent most of his career in Rome as a Venetian cardinal looking out for Venetian interests. During his thirty-year tenure as bishop, he only entered Treviso a few times, usually brief stops on his way to Venice. Vicars, therefore, carried out the daily administration of the diocese for almost fifty years. Routine visitations of the diocese reveal that Treviso suffered from the supposedly common vices: corruption, simony, ignorant priests, clergy with concubines. Following the Council of Trent, however, Treviso underwent an episcopal transformation. We find three resident bishops for the remainder of the 1500s who institute typical reforms: stricter enclosure of convents, establishment of Convertite to help reformed prostitutes, foundation of a diocesan seminary, and emphasis on catechism for children. In 1552 episcopal visitors were ordered to question local clergy whether or not there were Lutherans or heretics in their parishes. From the perspective of Catholic authorities, a revived episcopacy was sorely needed, for an increasing number of Protestant groups and literature flowed into the diocese.16 One reason Treviso played such an important role in the Venetian empire was its strategic position on the trade route to Germany, a fact that also made it a crossroads for heresy during the Reformation. As in Venice, a large German community secured a steady stream of Lutheran literature and ideas into Treviso. Luther’s ideas most strongly influenced his brethren in the Augustinian monastery of Santa Margherita in Treviso, where a number of monks fell under the sway of his teachings. In 1526 the Lutheran heresy, the Augustinian Order, and Treviso came to international attention when Treviso hosted the first Augustianian

14

For the assassination plot, see Gerolamo Biscaro, “Il dissidio tra Gerolamo Contarini podestà e Bernardo de Rossi vescovo di Treviso e la congiura contro la vita del vescovo,” Archivio Veneto (1930): 1–53. 15 Giuseppe Liberali, Il “Papalismo” dei Pisani “Dal Banco” (Treviso, 1971). 16 For the ecclesiastical history of pre and post-Tridentine Treviso, see Giuseppe Liberali, Documentari sulla Riforma Cattolica pre e post-Tridentina a Treviso, 1527–1577, 10 vols. (Treviso, 1971–77); Luigi Pesce, ed. Diocesi di Treviso. Padua, 1994), 84–132.

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Synod after the condemnation of Luther in 1520. Eight hundred prelates convened in Treviso to condemn Luther in an attempt to free the order from the taint of heresy. Yet, in the 1530s Lutheran ideas were still preached by local clergy. The Protestant conventicles grew to such an extent that Baldassare Altieri, secretary to the English ambassador in Venice Edmond Halwell, wrote to Luther in 1542 in the name of religious dissenters in Venice, Vicenza, and Treviso, asking for and receiving encouragement.17 It should not be assumed, however, that the Veneto was awash with heretics. On the contrary, two of the leading lights of the Catholic Reformation were products of the religious climate on the terraferma. If the Venetian government was reluctant to persecute questionable doctrines, it did actively encourage staunch defenders of Roman Catholicism, who had no doubts about the need to eliminate heresy. In fact, one of the first to define Luther as a heretic and one of Lutheranism’s staunchest foes was a Venetian subject. Girolamo Aleandro (1480–1542) was originally from Motta di Livenza in Treviso’s neighboring diocese of Oderzo. His humanist studies in Venice and Padua set the stage for a stellar ecclesiastical career. Friendship with Erasmus secured Aleandro an invitation and patronage from King Louis XII of France and a teaching position at the Sorbonne. His ability and patronage eventually led him back to Italy, where he came to serve Cardinal Giulio de’Medici, later Pope Leo X. His papal service launched his ecclesiastical career, especially once he helped orchestrate Luther’s excommunication and Charles V’s condemnation of Luther at the Diet of Worms. Aleandro would spend the rest of his life persecuting the Lutheran heresy.18 One interesting example of the nexus between Venice, Treviso, and the Catholic Reformation is the life of Girolamo Emiliani (Miani).19 Miani (1486– 1537) was a Venetian patrician leading troops on the frontlines during the League of Cambrai. Defeated, captured, and imprisoned in 1511, Miani prayed to the Virgin Mary for physical as well as spiritual liberation from his present state. Miraculously freed from prison, Miani went to the Marian icon in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Treviso and left his chains as a votive offering to the Blessed Virgin (his chains can still be seen there today). The Marian

17

For a discussion of the synod, see Augusto Serena, “Il sinodo agostiniano del 1526 a Treviso,” Nuovo Archivio Veneto (1917): 13–32. In another study Serena notes that despite vigorous medieval persecutions against heresy, Treviso remained fertile ground for the Lutheran heresy. See his “Fra gli eretici trevigiani,” Archivio Veneto-Tridentino (1923): 169–202. 18 G. Alberico, ed., Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, (Rome, 1960): Vol. 2: 128–35. 19 For the life of Miani, see Giuseppe Della Santa, “Per la biografia di un benefattore dell’umanità nel ’500 (S. Girolamo Miani),” Nuovo Archivio Veneto (1917): 33–54; Carlo Pellegrini, ed., San Girolamo Miani e Venezia: Nel V Centenario della nascita (Venice 1986); Roberto Binotto, “Miani o Emiliani, Girolamo,” in idem., Personaggi illustri della Marca Trevigiana (Treviso, 1996), 390–91.

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icon of Santa Maria Maggiore was a popular local pilgrimage destination, and Miani’s pious act confirms the reputation for miracles that had been established since the fourteenth century, when apparitions of the Virgin Mary first began to appear.20 The miracle profoundly changed Miani, who eventually abdicated his political and military service to Venice in favor of a life of service to the poor. His dedication and example eventually led to the establishment of the Somaschi, one of the new religious organizations that formed part of the Catholic Reformation. Miani epitomizes religious life in the Veneto. Although a Venetian patrician, Miani participated in a popular religious devotion in a mainland city, known as religious center, with hospitals, Monte di Pietà, and votive icons. How did he choose to express his newly-found piety? He turned to charity. In sum, the diocese of Treviso reflects the diversity and heterogeneity of the pre-Tridentine Veneto. Although Venetian secular authorities closely monitored the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the everyday care of souls remained in the hands of local clergy, often not very well educated and sometimes flirting with heretical ideas. Yet despite absentee bishops, some ignorant clergy, and the ready access to Protestant ideas, Treviso remained firmly tied to Roman Catholicism, participating fully in the reforming spirit of the early sixteenth century. To explain this popular devotion and piety, therefore, we must not look to the ecclesiastical leadership but to the role played by confraternities and charitable organizations. Santa Maria dei Battuti and Poor Relief The main providers of poor relief in Treviso were a centralized hospital and the Monte di Pietà. Founded in the wake of the Flagellant Movement of 1260, Santa Maria dei Battuti, the largest and most active confraternity in Treviso, administered the hospital.21 Membership was open to men and women, laity and clergy, provided they all were citizens of the city. While the clergy could join the confraternity, they were not allowed to be officers or to partake in oversight or administration. In return for their membership fees and participation, brothers and sisters received spiritual and physical assistance during times of sickness or destitution, and at burial. The confraternity also took a central role

20 For the history of the Benedictine monastery and church of Saint Maria Maggiore, see Luigi Pesce, La Chiesa di Treviso nel primo Quattrocento, 1: 451–56. The church’s miraculous icon was a destination for pilgrims throughout the Middle Ages. See Pesce, Diocesi di Treviso, 116; Giampaolo Cagnin, Pellegrini e vie del pellegrinaggio a Treviso nel Medioevo (secoli XII–XV) (Verona, 2000). 21 For the confraternity and hospital of Santa Maria dei Battuti, see Gerolamo Biscaro, L’Ospedale ed i suoi benefattori (Treviso, 1903); Giovanni Netto, Nel ’300 a Treviso: Vita cittadina vista nell’attività della “scuola” Santa Maria dei Battuti e del suo Ospedale (Treviso, 1976); David Bryant and Michele Pozzobon. Musica, devozione, città. La Scuola di Santa Maria dei Battuti (e un suo manoscritto musicale) nella Treviso del Rinascimento (Treviso, 1995); David D’Andrea, Civic Christianity in Fifteenth-Century Treviso (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1999).

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in the organization of religious processions and celebrations, becoming in effect the city’s most important public display of piety.22 The dedication, devotion, and activities of Santa Maria soon garnered popular support and wealthy patrons. In the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries its endowment grew to one of the largest in the Veneto. Many large bequests came in the form of trusts left to the Battuti for the support of dowries, prisoners, and the annual clothing of the poor. The other form of income came from private almsgiving, often spurred by the promulgation of ecclesiastical indulgences. Indulgences were a major source of income for the confraternity, which petitioned ecclesiastical officials on several occasions for the concession of spiritual benefits to support their charitable activities. Initially the confraternity only served the spiritual and material needs of its members and a relatively small number of the poor and the sick, but as its popularity and patrimony grew, the confraternity extended its charity to the entire community. The most common acts of civic charity included the feeding and clothing of the shamefaced poor, namely widows, the old, and the sick. The confraternity provided for these people in a variety of ways: one-time donations of firewood in a cold winter, money to buy food, or the annual distribution of clothing. In all of the confraternity’s actions, the worthiness of the recipient was considered. The shamefaced, humble poor came seeking alms or were recommended to the brothers by a member of the community. Those seeking spiritual renewal could ask for the necessary funds to take a pilgrimage, both near and far. Pilgrims from foreign lands could rest and receive medical aid in the hospice. All of these services wedded the confraternity to the community, creating a system of mutual interdependence between the administrators and those desiring assistance. Since the fourteenth century Santa Maria dei Battuti had also assumed the responsibility for orphans and abandoned children. Deprived of their identity, a stable home, and a network of support, these children found themselves at the mercy of the community and were provided for with the foundling home.23 22

For the important civic and religious function played by ritual, see Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, 1981). 23 Abandoned children, those whose parents were unknown (usually bastards), were different from orphans, who had been separated from known and legitimate parents because of the death of parent(s) or inability of the family to care for them (most often because of economic hardships). The documents of the Battuti refer to all of these children as “children of the house.” For an introduction to the topic, see Brian Pullan, “Orphans and Foundlings in Early Modern Europe,” ch. 3 in idem., Poverty and Charity; John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers (New York, 1988); Volker Hunecke, I Trovatelli di Milano: Bambini esposti e famiglie espositrici dal XVII al XIX secolo (Milan, 1989); David Kertzer, Sacrificed for Honor: Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control (Boston, 1993); and the collection of essays Enfance abandonnée et société en Europe, XIV–XX siécle (Rome, 1991). For a discussion of the care of abandoned children by hospitals and confraternities in Italy, see Black, Italian Confraternities, 200–206.

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The Battuti’s moral and charitable concern is clear from a beautifully-decorated parchment produced by the papal chancellery of Paul II in February 1465. It depicts the Blessed Virgin Mary protecting an infant, a symbolic recognition of Santa Maria dei Battuti and its care of foundlings. The bull granted a plenary indulgence to anyone who contributed to the confraternity’s efforts to care for children. The papal notary wrote of the work of mercy performed by the hospital in its acceptance of abandoned and poor infants. The hospital lacked sufficient facilities and support for its efforts to nurture and educate the children, for which it was famous in the area. Therefore, on the authority of Saints Peter and Paul, the pope granted plenary remission of sins for three categories of support: whoever nursed or paid to have nursed a child for one year; whoever assumed the nurturing and education of a child for five years after the baby had been weaned; and whoever gave dedicated service, including fasting during Easter, for seven years in the orphanage.24 After obtaining the papal indulgence to increase awareness and donations, the Battuti sought to learn whether the same ecclesiastical authority could be also used for dissuasive purposes. The Battuti obtained a series of denunciations in the fifteenth century from Paul II (1464–71), Sixtus IV (1471–84), and Innocent VIII (1484–92) to stop a common abuse of its charity. In addition to those genuine foundlings in need of immediate attention, many legitimate and capable parents were abusing the system by “temporarily” leaving their children in the care of the hospital and failing to take them back. The confraternity sought a decree of excommunication to encourage parents not to evade familial obligations. Not all abandonments were clear cases of need. A rubric in the confraternity’s rule book summarized the abuse and the remedy: “Excommunication, summary of the statute and ordination ordered by Pope Sixtus IV to avoid the frauds and deceptions that are committed by those who bring infants to the hospital of Madonna Santa Maria di Battuti di Treviso.” The section outlined the initiative the brothers took to prevent what apparently was a common fraud: mothers placing their own children in the hospital while they nursed other children to earn money. Appealing to the pope for help, the confraternity secured an excommunication for the following offenses: for any persons in the city or suburbs of Treviso who sent their own children to be taken care of at the expense of the hospital while they earned money nursing other infants; for any persons who had the ability and means to nurture their children yet brought their infants to be nursed at hospital expense; for persons of any city or village outside of Treviso who brought their children to the hospital without the permission of the gastalds; for anyone who gave aid, counsel, or favor to the abovesaid offenders, especially those wet nurses who sent their own natural or legitimate children over ten years old to the hospital without a previ-

24 Archivio di Stato di Treviso, Ospedale di Santa Maria dei Battuti, Pergamene, box 113, number 16166.

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ous agreement with the gastalds.25 The care for foundlings demonstrates the interplay of sacred and secular concerns: the souls of the abandoned children were saved through baptism and the social fabric reaffirmed with the Battuti as surrogate parents. The unwanted or orphaned girls placed in the care of Treviso’s foundling home were typical of hundreds of young women in Renaissance Italy who did not leave the custodianship of such institutions until they had found either employment or a husband.26 Like families, attaching the same importance of marriage and dowry to the material and spiritual survival of the state, foundling homes sought to insert their wards into the structure of the traditional family. The girls in the care of the confraternity were destined to live as wives and mothers, and many received the proper instruction in homes where they worked as domestic servants. Employment contracts, almost exclusively for domestic service, between the confraternity and the family stated that in exchange for years of domestic service, the girl would receive good moral guidance, food, lodging and at the completion of years of service a dowry.27 The dowry was an essential aspect of most of the contracts concerning girls of the hospital because it provided the young woman with the means to secure a legitimate marriage, thus releasing them from the care of their custodians. A dowry gift, with a value between ten and twenty lire, usually included articles of clothing, a dowry chest, and almost always coltre, a blanket or bedding.28 Special gifts and festivities accompanied the departure of one of the women from the foundling home. The dowries offered to the young women signaled the end of many years of nurturing and care. Welcomed into the foundling hospital as newborns, the girls were raised and protected until a suitable marriage with a respectable man could be arranged. The confraternity successfully reintegrated hundreds of foundling girls into society, where they would begin their own families and raise their own children, free from the support of the hospital. Santa Maria dei Battuti provided another important communal charity in the form of educational subsidies. Young, capable scholars who could not afford to

25 Archivio di Stato di Treviso, Ospedale di Santa Maria dei Battuti, busta 359: 98–99. 26 See Terpstra, Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna; Philip Gavitt, Charity and Children, 259; Jutta Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic in Renaissance Venice (Chicago, 2000); Kate Lowe, “Secular Brides and Convent Brides: Wedding Ceremonies in Italy during the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation,” in Trevor Dean and Kate Lowe, ed., Marriage in Italy, 1300–1600 (Cambridge, 1998): 41–65. See also Marion Kaplan, ed. The Marriage Bargain: Women and Dowries in European History (New York, 1985). 27 For the placement of a few of these girls, see the notary books for 1501 found in Archivio di Stato di Treviso, Ospedale di Santa Maria dei Battuti, busta 284: 91. 28 The expenses for dowries and “coltre per le novize” are found throughout the account books. For example, see Archivio di Stato di Treviso, Ospedale di Santa Maria dei Battuti, busta 1: 142, 157, 177, 209, 231.

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further their education at the University of Padua had the opportunity to apply for university scholarships.29 It was (and is) universally recognized that poverty was a barrier to education. In his treatise On Liberal Learning (1403), Pier Paolo Vergerio noted that “Not seldom it happens that a finely tempered nature is thwarted by circumstances, such as poverty at home, which compels a promising youth to forsake learning for trade . . .”30 Vergerio and other humanists were aware of the practical, financial aspects of education. The financial support of students raised a fundamental societal question: Who would have access to an education and an opportunity for a promising career? If Treviso was to produce the best civic leaders possible, it had to support its deserving students beyond grammar school, for an education in grammar was only the first step on the road to a successful career; the next step was a university degree. By 1500 Trevisan students were very fortunate to have the opportunity to compete for four different endowed university scholarships, which were administered by Santa Maria dei Battuti. Impressed by the charitable activities of the confraternity, Tommaso Salinguerra in 1369 established the first scholarship to aid the deserving students of the city. Pietro da Trento, a physician who worked in the hospital of the Battuti, established a similar scholarship for medical students in 1377. Later in the 1400s, two other doctors gave funds for similar foundations: Taddeo Adelmari in 1454, Matteo da Settimo in 1484. The purpose and aim of the scholarships differed—stipends, length of study, and faculty varied from scholarship to scholarship—but by 1500 about a dozen scholarships worth approximately 50 lire per year for 8 years were supporting the best and brightest of Treviso at the University of Padua. The university scholarships are another example of civic charity, with its inseparable blend of religious and secular motivations. Assisting a poor student functioned as a both a charitable act as well as a service to the entire community by providing trained and competent citizens. The bequest of Taddeo Adelmari epitomizes these mixed motivations. A leading cleric and physician at the papal court, Adelmari endowed a lay confraternity to establish a scholarship for young theology students from his hometown. Religious piety and city pride were not mutually exclusive. The relationship between the confraternity and ecclesiastical and communal authorities demonstrates how Santa Maria dei Battuti acted as a mediator for sacred and secular concerns. Despite the occasional jurisdictional and legal dispute that led to prolonged legal battles, the Battuti had a very close working relationship with local clergy, whom they hired to administer the sacraments and preach in the hospital. The confraternity also enjoyed an excellent rela-

29

See Luciano Gargan, “Studenti Trevigiani a Padova fra Tre e Quattrocento: Il Lascito di Tommaso Salinguerra.” Quaderni per la storia dell’Università di Padova 13 (1980): 1–35. 30 Quoted in William Harrison Woodward, ed., Vittorino da Feltre and other Humanist Educators (RSA Reprint, 1996), 103.

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tionship with Venetian authorities. To ensure their continued independence and freedom of action, the confraternity on a number of occasions secured guarantees of its right to control its own finances and properties. By the sixteenth century the political and economic responsibilities had been hammered out and the arrangement formally codified in the late 1500s. The hospital would perform its civic and sacred activities until the fall of the Venetian Republic. Monte di Pietà The hospital of Santa Maria dei Battuti administered a variety of charitable activities that provided critical social and spiritual services. As Brian Pullan has argued, the poor also needed another form of charity: access to cheap credit.31 The uncertainty of daily and seasonal life militated against those on the margins of society. A poor harvest or marauding army could leave whole families destitute. For most of the Middle Ages, theological proscriptions limited the opportunities for capital, which could be borrowed from private lenders, publicly contracted moneylenders, or public loan banks. Although sporadic attempts had been made in France and England to create Christian loan funds, it was not until the mid-fifteenth century that a practical alternative emerged. The new entity, the Monte di Pietà, flourished with the strong support of Observant Franciscan preachers, who sought to end the sin of usury, provide for the needs of the poor, and free Christians from dependence on Jews. In the tradition of Bernardino of Siena, preachers supported the Monti as part of a larger call for a reform of public morality. The Monte di Pietà in Perugia, established in 1462, served as a model for others, and Monti rapidly spread throughout central and northern Italy, with twenty established over the next ten years. By the 1480s Monti were being established throughout Venice’s mainland dominions, although Venice itself preserved existing contracts with Jewish lenders. Bernardino da Feltre (1439–94) was a major influence in the establishment of Monti throughout the Venetian mainland state. His intense preaching in the Veneto, from 1477 to 1483, then again in the 1490s, prepared the ground for the establishment of Monti. Throughout the Veneto Bernardino’s sermons emphasized the need for social reform and charity. In support of the Monti he argued that donations to the Monti performed all seven works of mercy, for the loans could be used for a variety of necessities. These sermons reinforced the sacred and secular aspects of charity, which both supported the needy in material ways and bound both giver and recipient in a spiritual act of mercy. Traveling throughout the Veneto, Bernardino had preached in Treviso on a number of occasions, calling for moral reform and connecting the perfidy of the Jews with the abuse of the poor.32

For this summary of the Monti and what follows, see Pullan, Rich and Poor, 431–75; Ivano Sartor, Il Monte di Pietà di Treviso: Cinque secoli di storia. (Treviso, 2000). 32 On the presence of Bernardino da Feltre in Treviso, see Giovanni Bonifaccio, Istoria 31

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The foundation of the Monte di Pietà in Treviso resembled the operation and administration of Monti throughout the Venetian mainland. The statutes of the Monte of Treviso, established in 1496, were modeled on the Monte of Mantua, another inspiration of Bernardino da Feltre and approved by Innocent VIII in 1486. According to the statutes, Treviso’s Monte owed its foundation to Bishop Niccolò Franco, Podestà Hieronimo Orio, and the Franciscan, Domenico Ponzone, an example of ecclesiastical and communal support of this charitable initiative. After an inquiry to determine if they were residents of the district and how they would use the money, the poor were given permission to leave an article and receive a monetary equivalent (loans in Treviso were restricted to two ducats). Officials had to inquire as to the origin of the pledge (to make sure it was not stolen) and determine to what use the money was to be put. A careful distinction was made between those whose need was genuine and those who wanted the money for what the administrators of the Monte considered a disreputable purpose, either gambling or business investment. In Treviso pledges of gold or other imperishables had to be worth one-third more than loan; perishable goods, such as clothes, fifty percent more. After a set period of time (six months in Treviso) the person could buy back the article, paying a low interest charge (five percent) to cover administrative costs, or keep the money and have the article sold at auction. If sale of the pledge at auction did not cover the interest, the official was to compensate the Monte. This arrangement was designed to benefit the borrower and justify the interest charges. Administrators of the Monti charged fees not as usurers did, solely for interest, but to cover risk and to compensate for administration, actions that theologians considered justifiable. To ensure the cooperation and equality of the ten Conservatori (two from each social group—noble, doctor, notary, citizen, craftsman) the cashboxes each had five locks, thereby ensuring unanimous consent of expenditures. In addition to electing the governing body, the city council also elected the Massaro, the paid official who actually dispensed the funds. A native of Treviso, the Massaro was forbidden from holding other offices and had to provide a five hundred ducat security. All transactions were carefully recorded by the bookkeeper. The paid officials—the treasurer and bookkeeper— had to provide a security deposit as a sign of their good faith. Finally, to secure the financial stability and popular support for the Monte, the notaries were required by statute to ask testators if they wished to donate to it. The high ideals expressed in the foundation of the Monte were unfortunately not always the guiding principles of the Conservatori. In the first years of the

di Trivigi (1744; reprint, Bologna, 1981), 480–81. For the anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe and the murder case of Simon of Trent preached by Bernardino, see R. Po-chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, 1988).

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sixteenth century charges of corruption and mismanagement marred the reputation of the institution. In addition, the capital of the Monte was often appropriated by the city council, which borrowed against the Monte’s endowment to meet fiscal shortfalls in the city’s budget. Removing liquid capital from the Monte’s treasury denied money to the poor the institution was designed to serve. Despite the repeated problems, however, the activity of the Monte increased significantly during the sixteenth century. With help of an annual procession organized to raise donations to the pious institution, the amount loaned to the poor more than doubled in the sixteenth century. The increasing quantity of pawns in the Monte necessitated an expansion to the complex in the 1560s, as the original building literally became stuffed to the rafters with objects ranging from gold rings to mattresses. In sum, the Monte served civic needs, providing credit to those in need and access to necessary capital when the community needed emergency funding. The Monte di Pietà in Treviso perhaps did not put into practice the ideal system the fiery Franciscans had hoped, but it was one that served to a relatively good degree both the spiritual and secular needs of the Trevisan poor and the civic leadership. Charity and the Urban Elite Crucial to any inquiry into the role of charity and civic religion is who administered the organizations and what was their position in the community.33 As Pullan and others have argued for Venice, Venetian officials allowed local elites to control charitable and professional groups as a benign outlet for political ambition. In order to prevent a Venetian patrician from assuming too much power, the government limited service in a subject city to one year. As a result, the podestà (the Venetian governor) came to rely heavily upon local judges and advisors for the administration and execution of local laws and traditions. By statute these communal elders and judiciary positions were restricted to those members of the college of nobles and the college of judges, often a man was a member of both. In the course of Venetian domination, law and practice increasingly weakened the power of communal deliberative bodies and the closed caste of nobles became increasingly difficult to enter. Although the possibility existed for non-nobles to enter the nobility, this opportunity became increasingly rare during the sixteenth century. The same nobles and judges who held sway with the chief political authorities in Treviso also had a prominent role in the administration of the main hospital and the Monte di Pietà. Santa Maria dei Battuti had four governors drawn equally from four groups: noble, doctor, notary, and craftsman (or citizen).

33 For the changing perception of wealth and the role of merchants in this rearticulation, see Lester Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 1978). The seminal work on elites: Richard Trexler, “Charity and the defense of Urban Elites in the Italian Communes,” in F. C. Jaher, ed., The Rich, the Well-Born and the Powerful (Urbana, 1973), 64–109.

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The statutes of the city’s communal hospital stipulated that one of the four presidents of the hospital had to derive from the noble class. The other three were to be a doctor and a notary, or two notaries, and an artisan. Therefore, for the city as a whole, the professional and political men who constituted less than 10 percent of the adult male population controlled the central outlet of poor relief for the whole city. The same holds true for the Monte di Pietà. Although an ecclesiasticallyinspired movement, the Monti were administered by the communal governments, especially in the Venetian dominions where the government took careful measures to curtail ecclesiastical administration and power. The Trevisan Monte was administered like others on the mainland through a governing body drawn from every social class, with nobles, merchants, notaries, and artisans all having a place on the governing board. The organization and administration of Treviso’s main charitable institutions stood at the critical intersection of patronage and piety. The urban elite of Treviso (like their counterparts throughout Italy) turned to charities to satisfy various, if not necessarily competing, needs. Noble families sought to retain the prestige of their family with a prominent role in the administration of the city’s powerful and popular charitable institutions. Grounded in humanistic learning and eager to demonstrate their leadership role in a subject city, lawyers and notaries turned to the administration of charities as an outlet for their political ambitions. Their leadership represents a quest not for social control but for social participation, along with other citizens and clergy, in a thriving social, religious, and political matrix. The implications of this supervision for charity and the Reformation are obvious. By the time of the Reformation local laymen, working in coordination with ecclesiastical and civic leaders, had already supervised the city’s poor relief for over a century. Although dominated by those of greater wealth and power (nobles and notaries), all strata of urban society participated in the administration of the charitable institutions. Rich and poor, lay and clergy, had created an active charitable system that formed a key component of the community’s religious life. Their shared goal was to glorify both God through acts of charity and the city through excellent social services. In the meantime they shaped the reforms of charity, which sought to reinforce the family, education, and social harmony. Conclusion To conclude, let us consider Treviso’s charitable institutions, the motivations for charity, and the reforms of these institutions both before and after the Reformation. The evidence in Treviso supports the general trends observed for other Italian cities: the institutions which provided poor relief, the civic hospital and the Monte di Pietà, were established before the Reformation and underwent little change throughout the sixteenth and successive centuries (as Pullan and Henderson have argued). The reason for this stability and continued communal support can be most readily explained by the fact that the insti-

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tutions satisfied the city’s spiritual and charitable needs and provided an outlet for social and political ambitions. The Battuti were a pivotal component of popular religious practices and performed most of the poor relief services for the community. The Monte di Pietà came in the way of efforts to provide the poor with access to needed capital. In terms of social and economic needs, the main charitable institutions in Treviso provided essential communal services that strengthened the community by integrating and supporting the deserving poor while excluding those who tried to abuse local generosity. The motivations for charitable reform, or continuity, are much more difficult to quantify. Local elites in Treviso, like their counterparts in Venice, found prestige and a political outlet in their patronage roles. The two most powerful and popular poor relief programs were administered by local lay elites, supported by both Venetian and ecclesiastical officials. Although lacking a strong ecclesiastical hierarchy, the charities of Treviso were, however, well-served and encouraged by local clergy, who were employed for religious services. As we have seen, the charitable institutions were so well respected that they often received substantial donations from lay and clergy alike. The charities did reflect the interests and concerns of the laity, which funded and administered most of the poor relief, but everyone in the community benefited from well-administered institutions. Civic religion and civic charity bound together the disparate social, political, and economic forces always threatening to pull apart any civil society.34 The Trevisan charities contributed to both a civic and religious goal: a harmonious community, what one scholar has called “the social miracle.”35 Finally, the study of charitable institutions in Treviso can also contribute to the debate regarding the relationship between the Renaissance and Reformation in Italy, or at least in the Veneto. Continuity in charitable institutions complicates the artificial but often-repeated separation between Renaissance and Reformation, Catholic and Protestant, secular and sacred motivations. For example, some of the Protestant criticisms of religious practice, such as complaints about the abuses of indulgences and the corrupt administration of the clergy, probably would have fallen on deaf ears in Treviso, where the city’s civic hospital depended on indulgences to support its efforts and the hospital was firmly in the hands of the local lay leadership. Nor was it the case that Protestant ideas did not reach the city, for there were Protestant preachers and literature in Treviso, as well as an absentee bishop and a distrust of Rome. Yet, in Treviso very popular and active charities flourished, not as props of a hierarchical church, but lay civic institutions. This survey of the charitable institutions of

34 On this topic, see Edward Muir, “The Sources of Civil Society in Italy,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1999): 379–406. 35 Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1985).

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Treviso demonstrates that throughout the early modern period, civic identity, patronage, and Christian charity were inextricably linked. The two most important charitable organizations in Treviso were intersections between secular and sacred concerns, where political realities and religious ideals confronted and comforted those in need.

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“CON BUONA AFFETIONE”: CONFRATERNITIES, CHARITY, AND THE POOR IN EARLY CINQUECENTO FLORENCE1 Nicholas Eckstein

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hen the Florentine patrician Ludovico Capponi died in 1534, a relative wrote the following tribute:

. . . he bestowed endless alms [limosine] on needy pious establishments, and helped an infinite number of lay persons to marry or give their poor daughters to convents, subsidising part or all of their dowries. In his will he left money to marry twenty poor girls in the decade following his death, two a year, notwithstanding that over a number of years his own patrimony had shrunk by many thousands of ducats because of the evil storms of war. He was, moreover, always an upright and trustworthy counsellor to those less knowledgeable than himself: unbiased and frank, compassionate to the poor, he delighted in the good fortune of others, was obedient to his superiors, kind and unpretentious with his equals, humane to his inferiors, and gracious, so that, from the greatest to the least, he acquired such gratitude [gratia] as was shared by very few citizens of his time.2

1 The quotation in the title is from the reformed statutes of the Florentine confraternity of San Sebastiano, redacted in 1520. Capitoli delle Compagnie Religiose Soppresse da Pietro Leopoldo (hereafter “Capitoli”) 364. All archival sources in this essay, unless other stated, are from the Archivio di Stato di Firenze. “Buona affetione” appears twice in relation to descriptions of charity in this volume of statutes. See 5r, 42v. In the first reference it is seen in close relation to the survival in every sense—spiritual, temporal, institutional—of the confraternity and its members. 2 Archivio Capponi delle Rovinate, Registro III, Acquisti di Ludovico Capponi e figli, 3. I wish to thank Niccolò Capponi for generously granting me access to his private family archive, and for his kind permission to cite this reference.

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Reading this passage in isolation, we are tempted to take such praise with a grain of salt, perhaps even to regard it with outright scepticism. In fact, however, this little character sketch has a context which requires us to take it seriously. Its author was drawing—probably consciously—on the lexicon of Florence’s lay confraternities, which throughout the entire late Middle Ages and early Renaissance had been the city’s most important charitable lay bodies. The portrait is therefore quite purposeful. It employs a cultural vocabulary familiar to all contemporaries to construct its subject according to an equally recognisable typology of the charitable—and therefore the good—Florentine citizen. Its keynote is the kindness that Ludovico showed to his fellow human beings, in particular those less fortunate than himself. Given that scholars in recent times have not taken for granted that charity and poor relief necessarily entailed either “compassion” or “humane” concern, the passage raises an interesting question as to what was in the minds of sixteenth-century people who dedicated themselves to the practice of charity. In our own modern, western society we prefer to conceive of compassion, charity, and the material alleviation of the burden carried by the poor as closely linked concepts. Individuals and groups expect their charitable donations to have a measurable impact, even if only small, on the material conditions of the poor and the sick. We should not automatically assume, however, that these concepts were combined in the same way, or were present in the same degree, in earlier societies. Most certainly the balance was different in pre-modern Europe. Medieval people prized charity and poor relief at least as much for their symbolic religious importance as for the material benefits they conferred on the poor.3 Such attitudes continued and in many ways intensified in the sixteenth 3 The relevant secondary literature on charity is vast. On European as well as Italian charity see the edited collection of essays by Brian Pullan, ed., Poverty and Charity: Europe, Italy, Venice, 1400–1700 (Aldershot, 1994); O. P. Grell and A. Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, 1500–1700 (London, 1997); O. P. Grell, et al., eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, (London, 1999); on Italy, see Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice. The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971); Christopher F. Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1989); Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge, 1995), passim; idem, ed., The Politics of Ritual Kinship. Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 2000); Nicholas A. Eckstein, The District of the Green Dragon: Neighbourhood Life and Social Change in Renaissance Florence (Florence, 1995), chs. 3 and 4; Philip Gavitt, Charity and Children in Renaissance Florence. The Ospedale degli Innocenti, 1410–1536, (Ann Arbor, 1990); idem, “Economy, Charity and Community in Florence, 1350–1450”, in Thomas Riis, ed., Aspects of Poverty in Early Modern Europe (Florence, 1981), 79–118; idem, “Charity and State Building in Cinquecento Florence: Vincenzio Borghini as Administrator of the Ospedale degli Innocenti,” Journal of Modern History 69 (June, 1997): 230–70; John Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence, (Oxford, 1994); idem, “Charity and Welfare in Early Modern Tuscany,” in O. P. Grell and A. Cunningham et al., eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, 56–86 (see the thorough bibliography in Henderson’s notes to this chapter).

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century. But in avoiding the temptation to make over the past in our own image, we should be equally careful of presuming that things were different. In recent times, many scholars writing about the sixteenth century have implied, if not openly stated, that concern with the symbolic side of charity was necessarily linked to a hardening of attitudes towards the poor and unfortunate that could lead to contempt and outright hostility. This essay does not so much deny the copious evidence in favour of this argument as suggest that contemporary attitudes could be rather more complex than this. The following essay is a brief analysis of attitudes expressed in a number of sixteenth-century Florentine confraternities. Such a study makes clear that while Florentine society after 1500 was more authoritarian than ever before, more concerned with social status and honour, people could and did actually care personally about the plight of the less fortunate brethren to whose welfare they had dedicated themselves. Regardless of whether Ludovico Capponi really measured up to the praise of his anonymous memorialist, most Florentines would probably have aspired to something very close to the model proposed by the portrait. Florentine confraternities changed a great deal between the mid-fifteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries. By and large, the religious companies that flourished before 1500 were heirs to medieval experience, and they embodied the corporate principles of that age. Most historians have interpreted confraternities in the years after 1500, by contrast, as more authoritarian, more “aristocratic,” “princely,” and incipiently individualistic than their medieval antecedents.4 These scholars point to a range of factors—an ever more urgent impulse towards religious reform, the arrival of syphilis, political upheaval, economic crisis—to account for the undoubtedly more judgemental and moralistic attitudes towards the poor that one encounters in the records of the sixteenth-century confraternities. There is wide agreement about these generalisations because, by and large, they are true. A problem arises, however, in the widespread assumption that because early modern Europeans were concerned with the spiritual benefits they could obtain for themselves by engaging in “redemptive” charity, that they did not care about the fate of poor.5 John Henderson’s recent résumé of Tuscan charity and

4 See esp. R. F. E. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1982). Also Black, Italian Confraternities; Henderson, Piety and Charity; Pullan, Rich and Poor. 5 The gestation of this assumption is a complicated one and in fact requires separate treatment. It may in part be traced to what Ole Peter Grell has termed the rise of an overly-secularised “socio-political interpretation” of early-modern charitable poor relief, which he argues leaves no room for religion. Grell dates the beginning of this tendency to the publication of Natalie Zemon Davis’s influential essay, “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy,” in N. Z. Davis, ed., Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1977), 17–64. For assessment of the argument and its impact on subsequent historiography, see O. P. Grell, “The Protestant Imperative of Christian Care and Neighbourly Love,” O. P. Grell and A. Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant

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welfare, for instance, highlights widespread and apparently growing intolerance, even contempt, for the unprecedented numbers of sick and indigent people who crowded sixteenth-century Italian cities. At the same time, however, he testifies to the great effort and resources expended both by the Tuscan ducal state and the lay population as they tried to come to terms with the problem. Where Henderson finds copious evidence of “moral and religious renewal” leading to increased direct engagement with poverty, he interprets this redoubling of effort as a moral battle against sin, not as compassion.6 One can, I think, both agree with Henderson’s interpretation and also ask—without being a Pollyanna— whether the many men and women who performed the frequently unpleasant tasks that their charity necessitated did not add so much as a tincture of sincere Christian compassion to the undoubted concern they nurtured for their own souls. Indeed, does the fact that sixteenth-century Catholics were “primarily concerned with the afterlife” necessarily mean that they all subscribed to Leo X’s open contempt for the sick and the poor who surrounded them in the temporal world?7 Brian Pullan reports just as much pious severity in his examination of early Counter-Reformation poor relief, but he is unusual amongst current historians in allowing the glint of simple human compassion to shine through here and there. He raises some doubts as to the assumption that poor relief was not informed by a spirit of generosity by indicating the variety of attitudes that could proliferate in the authoritarian climate of Counter-Reformation Europe.8 In Florence, the records of many confraternities after 1500 testify to

Europe, 43–65; also O. P. Grell and A. Cunningham, “The Counter-Reformation and Welfare Provision in Southern Europe,” O. P. Grell, et al., eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, 1–17. The socio-political interpretation runs the risk of separating the religious dimension of charity from the material effects of poor relief, which is an anachronism. To simplify what is actually a rather involved argument: once these two elements are detached from each other it seems as though the sincerity of pious intentions can be judged by the material efficacy of the alms that are given. From this point our understanding of contemporary attitudes to the poor becomes distorted. While he draws attention to a genuine problem, Grell’s position is itself problematic in my view, because he unintentionally reintroduces the dilemma that he sets out to resolve. The most prominent examples of the tension in Grell’s own argument can be found in “Protestant Imperative,” 49–51. 6 Henderson, “Charity and Welfare,” 56–86. See also the comprehensive bibliography that Henderson furnishes in his notes to this essay. 7 Grell, “Protestant Imperative,” 49; Henderson, “Charity and Welfare,” 58. 8 “The Counter-Reformation, Medical Care and Poor Relief,” in O. P. Grell et al., eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, 21–22, 25. Brian Pullan’s work on charity is exceptional in its consistent avoidance of easy explanations for complex patterns of behaviour. Richly textured arguments can be found all his work, but see especially in the present context his “Catholics and the Poor in Early Modern Europe,” Poverty and Charity, I, 15–34; “‘Support and Redeem’: Charity and Poor Relief in Italian Cities from the 14th to the 17th Century,” Poverty and Charity; V, 177–208.

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a conviction amongst confraternal members that salvation for themselves and for the society as a whole—including the poor—was to be achieved by sacralising everyday life. This objective was in large measure to be achieved through genuine material relief of the poor. The concern for poverty and illness manifested by Florentine confraternities in the first half of the sixteenth century is frequently expressed in authoritarian language that sounds harsh to our ears, but the spiritual benefits that accrued from relief of the poor seem always to have been linked to a concern for the actual well-being of those directly affected. The large numbers of Florentines who belonged to confraternities believed that earnest recognition of the plight of the poor, and the concomitant material assistance that flowed from their concern—not perfunctory, symbolic charity—were the ways to achieve the sacralisation of quotidian relationships upon which the fate of literally everyone ultimately depended. *

*

*

What, then, happened after 1500 to the balance between what one might call the “secular” dimension of the confraternities’ poor relief, and the pious, charitable motives behind it? The distinction is in large measure anachronistic. One the one hand—and the point applies however far back one cares to look in the medieval period—Italian confraternities were a visible presence in the saeculum. They had a civic face, and their activities conferred pragmatic benefits on the society in which they operated. The administrative structures of Florentine confraternities mimicked those of the guild-based commune, and confraternal officeholding has in fact been interpreted as a way of preparing citizens for service amongst the plethora of magistracies upon which the government depended.9 The later confraternities of youth were particularly important in this regard, and also for another, equally worldly reason: they helped literally to keep young men off the streets and out of the kinds of trouble that their parents, elders, and betters dutifully imagined for them.10 Florentine confraternities performed a range of services for their members and for the population at large. In addition to their function as societies of group veneration of Jesus, Mary and the community of saints, they provided an important alternative to the factionalism and conflict in everyday Florentine

In the former, Pullan re-poses “the hoary question of whether Catholic doctrine really encourages the almsgiver to think only of self-advantage and to treat the poor with a total absence of discrimination.” (See “Support and Redeem,” 27.) 9 Weissman: Ritual Brotherhood, 58–59. 10 See the comments of Ambrogio Traversari, as cited by Richard C. Trexler, “Ritual in Florence: Adolescence and Salvation in the Renaissance,” in Charles Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman, eds., The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (Leiden 1974), 209; also the observations by Konrad Eisenbichler, The Boys of the Archangel Raphael. A Youth Confraternity in Florence, 1411–1785 (Toronto, 1998), 33, 51–2.

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life, assisted with the funerals of their membership and prayed for the souls of the dead in the afterlife, visited prisoners on the Florentine equivalent of death row, funded dowries for poor girls, visited the sick and the dying in their homes, commissioned works of sacred art, maintained the fabric of the churches in which they met, baked loaves for the indigent and made secret donations to honourable families fallen on hard times (the so-called poveri vergognosi, or “shame-faced” poor).11 Much of the relief offered to the poor was symbolic, in that it recalled mankind’s primary bond with his Creator, which was charity. The poor were therefore a central element in the performance of rituals that were intended to deepen the bond between the members of confraternities and their God.12 But it does not follow from this that such help was not intended to have a material effect. As Henderson has argued, it is difficult to assess relationship between medieval charity and economic conditions from across the centuries. It is clear nonetheless that the most important Florentine confraternity in the fourteenth century, that of Orsanmichele, dispensed alms in relation to genuine economic need. Meanwhile, over the entire period covered by this essay, two confraternities that met in the parish of San Frediano on the left bank of the Arno, deliberately restricted their activities to the relief of the large poor community of their immediate neighbourhood.13 Material poor relief always had a religious, symbolic importance, but this dimension was heightened—not attenuated—by the fact that it served a pragmatic function as well. Poor relief lessened the likelihood of lower-class insurrection and rebellion occasioned by hunger and deprivation, and in one sense was simply good social policy.14 The same applies on the other side of the ledger. If confraternities in their classic ‘late-medieval’ phase were always a functioning element in the saeculum, it is equally true that the same societies in the sixteenth century—a period when, it is often assumed, sensibilities became more worldly and secular—maintained the spiritual significance of the activities they performed in the secular sphere. This sense of balance is probably not more simply nor aptly expressed than by the authors of the capitoli (statutes) of the Florentine confraternity of Santa Maria della Neve: “because it is possible for people who are accustomed

11 Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood; Henderson, Piety and Charity; Black, Italian Confraternities; Eckstein, The District of the Green Dragon; Barbara Wisch and Diane Cole Ahl, eds., Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Italy: Ritual, Spectacle, Image, (Cambridge, 2000); Richard Trexler, “Charity and the Defense of Urban Elites in the Italian Communes,” in idem, Dependence in Context in Renaissance Florence, (New York, 1994), 61–111. 12 Henderson, Piety and Charity, 19. 13 Henderson, Piety and Charity, ch. 7; Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, esp. chs. 3 and 4. 14 On the potential for civil unrest against which the activities of confraternities could militate, see Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, ch. 1; on Florentine examples of the central position of charity in European state formation, see Gavitt, “Charity and State Building.”

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to wear secular robes to turn themselves to spiritual lives and to cultivate fruits that give eternal life.”15 Florentine confraternities did, however, change in important ways from the end of the fifteenth century and an important feature of that change indeed concerns the companies’ attitudes to the poor and unfortunate: those whom the confraternities wished to help because they were themselves members, and people who, on the other hand, lived in society at large. One of the sources in which one first marks an attitudinal change is the books of rules and procedures (capitoli or statuti) by which every Florentine confraternity was governed. The capitoli are by definition normative documents, but in this context that fact can actually be turned to advantage: it is precisely because the capitoli were consciously redacted to prescribe an ideal form of behaviour that they testify reliably to contemporary thought about the kind of Christian society that educated lay fratelli and their religious mentors wished to bring into existence. A second factor makes them useful. The many volumes of capitoli that survive from the second half of the quattrocento and the early decades of the cinquecento differ from each other in subtle but important ways, and these differences require explanation. Until the mid-fifteenth century, confraternities regarded subordination of the individual persona to the collective identity of the entire company as a prerequisite for the establishment of a pious community governed by the rule of charity. By contrast, the founding fathers of new companies and the reformers of existing societies after 1500 frequently treat individuals as independent constituents of the confraternal membership. Individual members had never been invisible, but their status was conceived differently in the past. When an obscure lay fratello named Antonio di Benedetto di Butino died in Florence in 1445, his surviving brethren remembered him affectionately as a personification of the kind of self-effacing charity that benefited the corporate body of the entire membership (corpo). Antonio, paradoxically, was singled out for special mention because he exemplified the pious ideal of the individual who eschewed individual praise. Other evidence concerning Antonio’s confraternity—a famous and venerable society dedicated to the Virgin and Saint Agnes and known by the nickname of Sant’ Agnese—encourages us to accept that the concept of the ideal fratello was indeed not the individual who stood out from the crowd because of his virtue, but the kind of person who quietly went about his devotions and charitable service without drawing attention to himself.16 In the sixteenth century, by contrast, the lay fratello appears more and more as an end in himself, as though society were no longer regarded as an anonymous corporation that drew on a shared fund of Christian virtue, but was being reinvented as a constituency of individuals whose collective salvation depended upon

15 16

Capitoli 606, 36r. Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 100.

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the perfection of each and every member’s soul. Confraternal statutes accordingly concentrate much more on the individual’s experience of confraternal piety and devotion than ever before. Much of this attention to individuals was didactic, and the tones in which it was expressed were often stern and admonitory. The writers of sixteenth-century capitoli seem often to have doubted the merits of positive reinforcement, and one is continually struck that so many descriptions of policy and regular duties conclude with punishments for failure to live up to expected standards. The officials who drafted these documents apparently had few false illusions about their successors and the general membership, and fully expected them to fail. The conclusion to the description of the duties of one company’s treasurer is therefore typical: whoever acts contrary to or disobeys the aforementioned ordinances . . . should be understood automatically to have lost his office and be expelled from the company for one year. And any governor [of the company] who does not expel him shall himself be understood to have been erased [raso] from the company.17

Expulsion was only the most extreme of a range of possible penalties. Offenders were more usually punished with a fine that they were required to pay to the company’s poor-box or alms-box (cassetta de’ poveri; cassetta delle limosine). The capitoli of the company of San Giovanni Battista, nicknamed the Scalzo, listed a series of fines for various officials who neglected their duties, concluding with an injunction that “the said money [deriving from the fines] must go to the cassetta of the ailing poor (poveri infermi).”18 Another company stipulated that fines paid into the poor box at every meeting “must be used solely for the said alms for the said sick, and not for any other purpose.19 Though they punished minor offences such as failure to carry out appointed tasks or to attend meetings, these enforced payments to the poor nevertheless occur within the broader authoritarian framework that I have just described, and it is easy to see how they might be interpreted to support an argument that construed contemporary charitable giving in terms of compulsion, duty and an absence of compassion. Charity was certainly seen as an obligation, to be rewarded by purification of the individual donor’s soul. Recalcitrant fratelli whose punishment was to make payments to the poor were being reproved on the one hand and spiritually improved on the other in a way that linked concepts of discipline and charity. These qualities, while vitally important to the larger group, were in the final analysis the property of the individual member.

17

Company of the Sacrament of San Iacopo Soprarno. Capitoli 171, 28. Capitoli 152, 8r. 19 Compagnia of the Archangel Raphael, called Il Raffa. Compagnie Religiose Soppresse da Pietro Leopoldo (hereafter CRS) 141, 168r. 18

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The company of San Sebastiano elected special almoners, called limosinieri, whose job it was to attend sick members in their homes. The descriptions of their visitations clearly reveal an element of performance that points directly to the intention to cleanse the souls of all the individuals involved. The limosinieri were specifically warned not to take public credit for their actions: “You should not trumpet [news of the visitation] in public, because the benefit (merito) of the charity will be lost. . . .”20 Sant’ Agnese’s fifteenth-century capitoli contain no such provision, so that from an institutional perspective, Antonio di Benedetto di Butino’s humble reticence seems to have been taken for granted—in 1520 it is the object of a deliberate stricture. The actions of the limosinieri were minutely choreographed, and in one explicit statement of the ritual’s deep symbolic significance they were told to regard the invalid as a physical emblem of Jesus: “. . . your brother who is receiving the alms represents the person of Christ, who sees everything.” The limosinieri were being metaphorically enjoined to regard themselves as actors in a sacred play, with God himself as their audience— there could be no more powerful way of turning the protagonists’ attention to their own gestures. Moreover, it was not only the sick or impoverished colleague who personified Christ. The limosinieri themselves embodied Christ’s charity, and the entire event was conceived in relation to Christ’s speech in Matthew 25:35–36: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” The symbolic import of this ritual, however, was not limited to the limosinieri, but extended indubitably to the recipient of the charity, who, it should be remembered, was himself a member, and could on another occasion find himself involved in the same setting with the roles reversed. Not least because they were so often members of the confraternities themselves, the poor were not regarded as passive objects by Florentine confraternities. While we are left in no doubt as to their subordinate role in charitable transactions in the sixteenth century, poor members were active participants in these exchanges. San Sebastiano’s reforming officials proclaimed that: . . . any fratello who because of his poverty is unable to meet the normal subscriptions and payments and has therefore fallen into a debt of five lire or more, and who wishes to be pardoned [of the said debt] must go to the middle of the oratory as soon as the Mass has been said, during a full meeting, and on his knees, confess his poverty and for the love of God and of our sacred protector and lord Saint Sebastian beg the governor that he cancel [the debt]. And so for the love of God shall he [i.e., the governor] request the scribe to cancel the debt, stating the reason.21

20 21

Capitoli 364, 30v. Capitoli 364, 34v.

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Regardless of whether the supplicant was wearing his cowl when he made his appeal, this piece of confraternal theatre exposed the individual and his financial plight to the hard light of his fellow members’ judgment. Such nakedness in the sight of one’s fellow citizens was no small matter in a city like Florence, whose citizens were simultaneously so obsessed by privacy and so pathologically interested in each other’s business. In the sixteenth century, when people were increasingly preoccupied with questions of honour and status, the stakes were indeed high for any Florentine who chose to throw himself on the confraternity’s mercy in this manner. But does it follow from this that the assembled confratelli felt less compassionate concern for their unfortunate brother than before? There is no reason to suppose so. Indeed, the performance makes most sense when interpreted as a purifying ritual in which the pauper acknowledges the moral and religious authority of the company in exchange for the merciful waiving of his debt and his reintegration with the lay fellowship. In fin de siècle Florence and in the decades after the turn of the century the population became more zealous and worldlier at the same time.22 The promotion of Christian charity by means of concrete strategies adopted in the quotidian sphere was, for instance, a constant and powerful theme of Savonarola’s apostolate. The Dominican friar preached the reform of existing bodies and the creation of new institutions that would realise the inextricably related objectives of social justice and spiritual renovation that he desired.23 Coordination of the city’s confraternities was a sine qua non of the Savonarolan campaign, and it is in perfect accord with the friar’s aspirations that he and his followers should have taken over and magnified the charitable programme of a confraternity as prominent and famous as the Buonomini di San Martino.24 In the

22 Arnaldo d’Addario warned over a generation against the assumption that the spirit of charity in Florence weakened in the sixteenth century. See his Aspetti della Controriforma a Firenze (Rome, 1972), 57. 23 L. Polizzotto, The Elect Nation. The Savonarolan Movement in Florence, 1494–1545 (Oxford, 1994), 30. The adoption by many Florentine confraternities of specific constituencies within the population forms part both of a redemptive consciousness and of a more organised approach to poverty as a social problem. On aspects of this development see Henderson, Piety and Charity, 394–97. On the Buonomini di San Martino, which became the major provider of aid to the “poveri vergognosi,” Florence’s “shamefaced poor,” see Amleto Spicciani “The ‘Poveri Vergognosi’ in Fifteenth-Century Florence. The First 30 Years’ Activity of the Buonomini di San Martino,” in T. Riis, ed., Aspects of Poverty, 119–182; idem, “Aspetti finanziari dell’assistenza e struttura cetuale dei poveri vergognosi fiorentini al tempo del Savonarola (1487–1498),” in Studi di storia economica toscana nel medioevo e nel rinascimento: In memoria di Federigo Melis (Pisa, 1987), 321–46 24 L. Polizzotto, Elect Nation, 33. Polizzotto’s study includes many examples of Savonarola’s coordination, reorganization and influence on other Florentine confraternities. See also his “Confraternities, Conventicles, and Political Dissent: The Case of the Florentine Capi Rossi,” Memorie Domenicane, NS. 16 (1985): 258–82; NS. 17 (1986): 285–300.

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generation after Savonarola’s death the city’s confraternities felt the brunt of an institutional crisis caused by political instability, and many companies were forced to close for long periods.25 Whether such crisis reduced the confraternities’ sense of mission, as has been assumed, is highly debatable.26 In 1520, officials of the confraternity of the Arcangelo Raffaello certainly lamented an alleged lack of “fervente charità” in their ranks, but the complaint was probably largely rhetorical. The rapidity with which the membership of Il Raffa overcame the challenge of its own recent closure, and the sheer energy and creativity it displayed in these years, suggest that the concern articulated by its officers is better interpreted as a sign of intense commitment than a crisis of faith.27 The Venetian ambassador, Marco Foscari, assessed the entire city in glowing terms in the same decade, and the basis of his praise is telling in the present context. Florence, in Foscari’s opinion, was “a devout, Christian and a religious city” precisely because it boasted approximately forty hospitals—in other words, it was a model of charity because of its highly organised system of poor relief. Brian Pullan himself lends weight to Foscari’s judgement in his conclusion that Venetian planners looked to Tuscan models like Florence and Siena when developing their own system of hospitals.28 This developing health system can from one point of view be regarded as an attempt to institutionalise the Christian love of one’s neighbour that all Florentines in theory were supposed to bear. Indeed, as shown by the encomium to Ludovico Capponi with which this essay began, Florentine citizens regarded a reputation for charity in one’s personal dealings as being of the utmost importance, and the charitable persona was understood as a combination of internal piety and worldly action. Florentine charity should not be interpreted as a process that conscripted the poor as passive agents in an endless cycle of pious self-serving. In the decades after 1500 one certainly notes an increasing attention to the individual souls of all concerned—benefactor and recipient alike—but this did not come at the expense of direct contact with the social problems represented by the poor. If anything, preoccupation with the individual was the product of direct involvement. Confraternal charity was for the most part directed to those the membership knew well, either because they were members themselves, or because

25 Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood, 173ff.; Lorenzo Polizzotto provides a list of the suppressions of many Florentine confraternities in the sixteenth century. See his “Confraternities, Conventicles,” 251. 26 Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood, ch. 4; see also Polizzotto’s comments in Elect Nation, 33–35; also my “The Religious Confraternities of High Renaissance Florence: Crisis or Continuity?” in Bill Kent and Charles Zika, eds., Rituals, Images, and Words: the Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval, and Early Modern Europe, (Leiden, 2003). 27 The company grew, and even established a new company of youth for boys. Eckstein, “The Religious Confraternities.” 28 Foscari was writing in 1527. Angelo Ventura ed. Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al senato (Bari: Laterza, 1980), 109.

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they were connected with the membership in some other way—by marriage, blood, occupation, or neighbourhood or by membership in a constituency that the confraternity had targeted for assistance. By 1500, the confraternity of Sant’ Agnese had for more than two centuries expended its pious energies and material wealth in the provision of Christmas and Easter loaves and dowries for poor girls in the parish where it operated. To my knowledge, the company’s records for this entire period contain not a single mention of the criteria by which the company’s officials determined who amongst its large constituency of “poor and wretched persons”29 deserved to receive the traditional annual distributions of Christmas and Easter loaves. Such a process must have existed—the distributions were very large and required a great deal of organisation, so there must always have been a standard procedure. We also know that the many poor who came to the company’s meeting place on these occasions were required to present a chit (polizza) to the officials before they could receive their loaves, and they must therefore have been assessed before the actual distribution.30 It is striking, however, that this matter only became important enough to merit official mention in preparation for the distribution of the Christmas loaves for 1504. The minutes of the meeting of 8 December of that year contain an entry that records the election of two fratelli who were ordered to dispense the loaves to the poor. The two were given exclusive responsibility to select: . . . all those poor of the gonfalone whom their consciences lead them to believe deserve [meritare] this almsgiving. And they must have these written on a sheet in the order that seems correct to them. And on the feast of Saint Thomas [21 December] they must report the poor whose names have been written in this fashion to the said captains.31

Having appeared in the records, these passages then recur regularly. Before Christmas in 1505, a similar entry specified that the fratelli elected to choose the worthy poor should in fact work under cover (“the said [fratelli] must go secretly throughout the said gonfalone”),32 and other comparable examples occur in the same decade.33 The concept of people who “merit” the confraternity’s charity—those whom we are accustomed to call the “worthy poor”—seems quite suddenly to have become a matter of importance to the membership of Florentine confraternities. In turn, this development influenced both the religious significance of confraternal charity and the way in which it was dispensed.

29

Compagnie Religiose Soppresse incamerate nel Bigallo (hereafter CRS/Bigallo), Compagnia di San Frediano detta la Brucciata (hereafter Brucciata) 1, 8v–9r. See also Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 91. 30 Similar, in all probability, to the one used by the Buonomini di San Martino. See Spicciani “The ‘Poveri Vergognosi’ in Fifteenth-Century Florence,” 119–82. 31 CRS/Bigallo, Compagnia di Santa Maria delle Laudi detta di Sant’ Agnese (hereafter Sant’ Agnese) 4, 103r. 32 CRS/Bigallo, Sant’ Agnese, 4, 108v. 33 See CRS/Bigallo, Sant’ Agnese, 4, 132v, 134v.

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As will emerge below in evidence drawn from another confraternity, the criteria by which people were judged were neither exclusively religious nor secular. What might at first glance appear as evidence of an increasing desire to control and to discipline the poor cannot be explained quite so neatly. As little as two or three generations earlier, Sant’ Agnese’s members had aspired to act as a largely anonymous corporation that made regular, large-scale distributions of charity—mostly Christmas and Easter loaves and dowries for poor girls—to an equally faceless mass of God’s poor. By the first decade of the sixteenth century, at latest, an important shift had occurred. Individual members of the company were being asked to examine their own consciences to determine whether other, less fortunate, individual neighbours “deserved” their help. The instructions given to the aforementioned limosinieri of San Sebastiano in 1520 give us deeper insight into the meaning of the tersely-worded fragments of language in Sant’ Agnese’s minutes. The limosinieri were asked to perform the same task as the pairs elected by Sant’ Agnese’s membership, and were told to decide on the worthiness of the putative recipient at the moment that they felt God’s presence: “examine his [i.e., the invalid’s] condition and that of his family, and his illness, and when you judge that God has entered your heart and taken away every hatred and love, then decide”34 Elsewhere the limosinieri were reminded that they belonged to a group of twelve elected officials, a number chosen because it recalled the number of Christ’s Apostles.35 Sant’ Agnese’s concentration on the autonomous decision of those it elected to judge who was poor and who was not is very close to that of San Sebastiano, and it is clear that the secret search for the gonfalone’s poor was intended as a purifying ritual for the individuals involved. Attention to the worthiness of the beneficiaries of confraternal assistance, however, was not done solely for the spiritual benefit of the officials performing the exercise. The sixteenth-century records of the Scalzo, for instance, reveal an equally serious concern with the choice of recipient. On 1 February 1533/34, the Father Governor [Padre Governatore] and his counsellers won two successive votes on the motion to pay for the dowry of a girl who was to marry a weaver.36 The second vote, which involved the entire membership, was overwhelmingly in favour of the donation (forty-three to five). On another occasion, this time on 22 February 1539/40, the company held a ballot to decide which of two candidates was to receive the benefit of the dowry: Two girls were put to the vote, that is, to decide upon the one more favoured: Felice, daughter of Ridolfo the brick-layer; and Andrea, daughter of Andrea di Francesco di Giovantomaso Ghineglj the shoemaker.37

34 35 36 37

Capitoli 364, 30v. Capitoli 364, 5v. CRS 1197, fasc. 21, 8r. CRS 1195, reg. 1, 30v.

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The company’s limited resources were obviously not always equal to the demand for the company’s largesse. How, then, did the members decide to whom this assistance should go? The Scalzo’s records are silent on the matter, but other companies discussed the same issue. In interpreting the criteria these companies applied what we might at first anachronistically perceive as practical or temporal matters resolve themselves as part of an ethico-religious frame of reference that made the plight of the poor a central concern. One of the ways in which the Florentine confraternity of wool-washers, Sant’ Andrea de’ Purgatori, took care of its own members was by providing dowries for men in their ranks who had daughters but who, as the scribes put it, “because of poverty, cannot marry them or send them to a husband.”38 The company’s reformed capitoli of 1515 specified that the membership would assist three families a year in this way, also that the names of those requiring dowries should be entered in a volume dedicated exclusively to this purpose. The dowry was to be given only after the marriage had been consummated: And in the eventuality that in the aforesaid volume there appear more than three girls, we order that those who have been the first to consummate their marriage be chosen, and that the others must wait until the following year.39

The insistence on consummation, indeed, was motivated in large part by a practical exigency. Because the confraternity was dedicated to the assistance of fellow workers in the wool industry, members wanted to be sure that the funds were not lost to those outside their own guild. Consummation sealed the marriage and guaranteed against this eventuality.40 But this prudential concern is inseparable from the religious significance of the dowries. In helping their own, the wool workers of Sant’ Andrea were self-consciously working to create a microcosmic version of the kind of charitable commonwealth anticipated by Savonarola. Both aspects were tied to the existence of widespread poverty within the wool industry, a crisis that the membership specifically identifies: amongst the men of our occupation and company there are many needy and wretched persons in the most calamitous and miserable circumstances, who have no means of setting their daughters on an honourable path, and who because of their poverty and indigence cannot marry them.41

Material relief of the poor, worldly honour and, ultimately, the state of these poor families’ souls are all linked in this passage. Sant’ Andrea’s charity was similar to that of Sant’ Agnese’s Christmas and Easter loaves. Both addressed genuine need, and both memberships dedicated

38

Capitoli 843, 25v. Capitoli 843, 26r. 40 CRS/Bigallo, Brucciata 1, capitoli of 1439, (additional statute of 25 October 1520), 21r–v. 41 Capitoli 843, 25r–v. 39

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themselves to their respective constituencies in the pious certainty that the consequent cycle of charity would both safeguard the souls of the girls they assisted and rebound upon themselves. To a quotation from Luke—“Give, and it shall be given unto you” (6:38)—Sant’ Andrea’s members added their own gloss: “give in God’s name to the poor, and you will receive and be rewarded by God, for just as water quenches fire, alms extinguish and cancel sin.”42 Much current scholarship, as already stated, will read an objectification of the poor into such a statement. The fratelli of Sant’ Andrea, I think, may have understood the relationship in a different sense: poverty and disease were breeding grounds for sin, and in relieving the earthly tribulations of the poor, one was working both to purify social relations and to unify the city in the way most pleasing to God. As much of the evidence in confraternal records suggests, compassion—actually caring about the poor—mattered a great deal. Scholars writing the history of charity, health care and poor relief over the longue durée of European history face a particularly exquisite variation of the dilemma that faces all historians. While health and welfare as understood in our so-called developed societies are now less touched by religious concerns than ever before, tracing the history of these themes into the past requires dealing with mentalités in which they could not possibly be conceived in isolation from the concept of Christian charity. A history that attempts to trace the development of health care and poor relief over the longue durée will of necessity become something larger still, as the attempt to trace specific themes from the present into earlier societies may cause the historian either to lose the scent, or to reify concepts which, at worst, falsify the experience of the people being studied. This does not mean that chronology need be abandoned as an organising principle. Brian Pullan has recently drawn attention to the 1540s, when previously localised and uncoordinated Catholic reform movements began to coalesce under the centralised direction of the Church.43 This moment is ripe for investigation as a possible turning point, when early-modern attitudes to charity and poor relief may indeed have begun to look more like our own. Most of the confraternal attitudes and activities described in the present essay, indeed, are drawn from a period of approximately forty years between the last decade of the fifteenth and the fourth decade of the sixteenth centuries, and may therefore be understood as belonging to a phase before the watershed to which Pullan averts. But it also bears saying, I think, that while human compassion is not equally shared by all, and while it may appear to recede or advance at different moments, it is present in all periods and cultures, and is every bit as much an instinctively human quality as the urge to selfishness or aggression. Ernst Gombrich

42 43

Capitoli 843, 25r. Pullan, “The Counter-Reformation, Medical Care,” 18–19.

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maintained something rather similar thirty years ago when, on the same grounds, he expressed doubt about the Renaissance as the birthplace of the modern individual.44 Without for a moment seeking to underplay—let alone deny—the harsh tones of much official discourse on charity and discipline in the Tridentine period, it may be possible to enrich our understanding of contemporaries’ attitudes to both concepts by looking more closely at the varieties of individual charitable experience. Examining the minutiae of evidence such as that contained in the evidence of the Florentine confraternities may accord more autonomy to the period under examination, as well as serving the interests of longer-term historical investigations.

44 E. H. Gombrich, “The Renaissance—Period or Movement?” A. G. Dickens, et al., Background to the English Renaissance: Introductory Lectures (London, 1974), 9–30.

C H A P T E R

F O U R

WELFARE, REFORMATION, AND DEARTH AT MEMMINGEN Philip L. Kintner

Both magistrates and citizens in the sixteenth century proved themselves able to exploit Protestant doctrines to justify their behavior. . . . These doctrines, after all, were but the latest weapons in an old war . . . Seen in this light, the “urban Reformation” appears neither as a unique set of events nor as the culmination of a medieval trend. Instead it appears as only one phase, albeit a very important one, in a recurrent pattern of internal conflict in German cities, which stretched from the end of the thirteenth century to the end of the eighteenth.1

A

t the outset of an investigation of the relationship between the Reformation and early modern welfare at Memmingen, Professor Friedrichs here provides a useful caveat. Religion was fundamentally important in all aspects of life, and not least in matters of poor relief. But though the Reformation wrought significant changes in ideology and liturgy, it need and should not necessarily be considered the sine qua non of civic welfare in the sixteenth century.2

1 Christopher R. Friedrichs, “Citizens or Subjects? Urban Conflict in Early Modern Germany,” in Miriam U. Chrisman and Otto Grundler, eds., Social Groups and Religious Ideas in the Sixteenth Century (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1978), 58. 2 Professor Ole Peter Grell has recently asserted the need to accept a faith-based interpretation of welfare in early modern Europe which attributes to the Reformation, and especially to the efforts of Luther and Bugenhagen, the creation of modern welfare systems throughout Europe, even in Catholic areas. Based on prescriptive literature, Grell’s thesis rejects the work of Brian Pullan, Natalie Davis, Robert Jütte and others who, though they in no sense deny the importance of religion, nevertheless see continuity of poor relief structures. Robert Jütte’s recent work almost restates Grell’s position but is deemed unacceptable because he finds in Catholic areas “communal and governmental” systems of poor relief that parallel those in Protestant areas. Lack of descriptive justification for his position (one must ask whether admonitions were actually implemented and produced social change) severely limits its usefulness. Grell’s insistence upon the universal

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This essay examines the archives of the South German Imperial City Memmingen in order to determine the extent to which the Reformation altered welfare structures and policies there.3 A principal guideline will be Bernd Moeller’s perceptive insistence that the Reformation in any given city followed a form dictated by its constitution.4 Consequently, it will be necessary to outline Memmingen’s governmental structure, in order to relate it to welfare activities there from the time in 1522/23 when Christoph Schappeler introduced Zwinglian/evangelical ideas in his sermons, through the period of revolts in 1525, to 1528, when the Mass was officially abolished, and the full implementation of reform in 1528–31 and the city’s response to the dearth of 1530–31. Until 1552, when Charles V mandated a patrician-based regime, Memmingen was governed by a City Council (Rat) established in the mid-fourteenth century, whose members represented eleven major craft guilds and the patrician Grosszunft. Despite numerous and often bitter differences between patricians and craftsmen, even escalating to litigation at the imperial level in the fifteenth century,5 the councilors governed efficiently, and wisely learned to close ranks when facing serious problems. But the differences between the craftsmen and patricians were large, and there can be little doubt that their views of welfare also, despite their common religious outlook, differed radically. Given the teachings of the late medieval church, wealthy individuals could assume a right to assure their salvation through monetary contributions, such as the founding of hospitals, ‘eternal’ masses for their own or others’ souls, distribution of alms, and the like. Though some craftsmen acquired sufficient wealth to emulate

importance of the Reformation for early modern welfare tends also to question the historical principle of uniqueness. See Peter Eitel, “Die Auswirkung der Reformation auf die Stadt-Republiken Oberschwabens und des Bodenseeraumes,” in Wilhelm Rausch, ed., Die Stadt an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit (Linz/Donau, 1980), p. 66; Ole Peter Grell, “The Protestant Imperative of Christian care and Neignhbourly Love,” in Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500–1700 (London, 1997), 43–65; Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994), 108. 3 For discussion of the Reformation in Memmingen, see Peter Blickle, “Memmingen,” in Historischer Atlas von Bayern, Teil Schwaben, Heft 4 (Munich, 1967); idem, “Memmingen—Ein Zentrum der Reformation,” in Joachim Jahn, et al., eds., Geschichte der Stadt Memmingen (Stuttgart, 1997) I, 351–418; Friedrich Dobel, Memmingen im Reformationszeitalter (Augsburg, 1877); Peer Friess, “Die Zeit der Ratsreformation in Memmingen,” in Joachim Jahn, et al., ed., Die Geschichte der Stadt Memmingen, I (Stuttgart, 1997), 419–56; idem, Die Aussenpolitik der Reichsstadt Memmingen in der Reformationszeit (Memmingen, 1993); Barbara Kroemer, “Die Einführung der Reformation in Memmingen. Über die Bedeutung ihrer sozialen, wirtschaftlichen und politischen Faktoren,” Memminger Geschichts-Blätter (1981); Wolfgang Schlenck, “Die Reichstadt Memmingen und die Reformation,” Memminger Geschichts-Blätter (1969). 4 Bernd Moeller, Reichsstadt und Reformation (Gütersloh, 1962), 28. 5 Peter Eitel, Die Oberschwäbischen Reichsstädte im Zeitalter der Zunftherrschaft (Stuttgart, 1970), 96–101. See also Rolf Kießling, “Memmingen im Spätmittelalter (1347–1520)” in Joachim Jahn, ed., Geschichte der Stadt Memmingen (Stuttgart, 1997), 163–246.

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these practices, most could not. Yet, their experience made them aware of the need for permanent, carefully managed welfare institutions and aid for disadvantaged persons that was communally based—that is, not dependent upon the whims of individuals. It is thus not at all surprising that the new craftsdominated civic regime should have moved quickly to assume control of welfare at Memmingen, if one considers the late medieval church’s failings precisely in the arena of welfare.6 Memmingen’s guild government, or Zunftregiment, was of course not unique; it paralleled that found in many other South German towns. The City Secretary, a very important adjunct to the Council, kept minutes of the meetings, the Ratsprotokollen, extant from 1508, which provide the basic source for this investigation. Soon after its formation, the new guild government assumed control, in 1365 with papal approval in 1367, over the Lower Spital, which functioned as the welfare section of the Holy Ghost Order. The Order throughout pursued its monastic obligations in the Upper Spital. From 1367 until 1806, when Memmingen fell under Bavarian control, the monastery’s Spitalmeister had the right to, and did, monitor the annual Spital reports to the Council, but he played no direct role in civic welfare, now controlled by the Council. Official records always refer to this council-controlled Lower Spital simply as ‘the Spital,’ as will be done here. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Spital was Memmingen’s unquestioned central welfare structure.7 Almost a city within the city, it had its own bakery, brewery, slaughterhouse, and permanent resident staff. It included, within the walls, a hospital for non-infectious patients, a section to provide obstetric care for women who could not afford a midwife or needed special care,8 and long-term care facilities for elderly folk, both wealthy and poor (who stayed

Peter Brown’s Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hannover, 2002) describes a chain of events that seem roughly to foreshadow events at Memmingen during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. In the later Roman Empire the new Christian churches assumed the task of providing for citizens who had previously relied upon donations by prominent wealthy individuals whose actions were prompted by “civic virtue.” Christian welfare, which began as specifically cultic, gradually broadened after imperial recognition to include all citizens. Though at first it too was directed to urban residents, the later establishment of rural monasteries broadened its scope. While donations by wealthy persons for private religious purposes played an important role in Memmingen’s poor relief, they embraced not only citizens but all who appealed for aid. 7 For a general discussion of Memmingen’s Spital, see Hannes Lambacher, Das Spital der Reichsstadt Memmingen (Memmingen, 1991); idem, “Klöster und Spitäler in der Stadt” in Joachim Jahn et al., eds., Geschichte der Stadt Memmingen (Stuttgart, 1997) I, 293–350. 8 Merry Wiesner, “The Midwives of South Germany and the Public/Private Dichotomy,” in Hilary Marland, ed., The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe (London, 1993). 6

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in the “Indigents’ Room” or Dürftigenstube),9 as well as for orphans and mental incompetents. The Spital oversaw and supplied food for satellite facilities outside the walls, among them the Seelhaus, which especially aided non-citizens such as villagers and travelers or “foreigners” (thus assuming the responsibility of the earlier Spital to house and feed pilgrims); the Blatterhaus, which specialized in treating infectious diseases (at first leprosy and plague, but in the sixteenth century primarily syphilis); and plague houses to deal with major epidemics.10 From its vast resources, the Spital provided most of the food and supplies for all care facilities, both inside and outside the walls, but especially for the Indigents’ Room, whose vaults still exist, and in times of dearth baked cheap loaves of rye bread for citizens. From two of the three extant complete tax lists we learn that the number of “have-nots” (Habenichtse), that is, citizens who paid the least tax of five Schillings and who lived on the margins of existence, rose from 30 percent of the population in 1450 to 55 percent in 1521, a striking indication of the growing welfare needs.11 Commensurate with its enormous responsibilities the Spital accumulated great wealth. Its annual income from numerous villages and large farmsteads (which numbered 47 in 1448) by the mid-sixteenth century equaled or surpassed the city’s income from all sources—a fact that has not been adequately recognized. Its large grain reserves assured supplies in times of need. In 1447 the old wooden granary burned, destroying some 4,300 Malter—about 30,000 bushels— of grain and was quickly replaced with a larger stone structure. In times of dearth, the Spital supplied cheap bread to poor citizens, as Schorer’s chronicle tells us under the year 1482;12 it distributed bread and soup or Mus (an oatmeal porridge) to citizen and noncitizen indigents as well as to “foreigners,” that is, vagabonds. It also made available cheap or free grain to citizens and villagers as necessary. The Council through its trustees, both of whom were councilors, one of them normally the present or recent Burgomaster, as the list for the period 1370 to 1794 presented by Lambacher shows, minutely controlled everything the Spital did.13 Supplementing the Spital’s welfare activities were other foundations, most important among them the Großspend. A Seelgerät (that is, an attempt to assure the founder’s salvation through “eternal” masses and the distribution of alms), it

Walter Braun, “Die Dürftigenstube im Spital zu Memmingen,” Der Spiegelschwab (1952), Nr. 11. 10 Karl Wankmüller, Die Pest in Memmingen (Dissertation: Frankfurt, 1951). 11 Peter Eitel argues for a somewhat lower percentage of poor in 1521 (though still a considerable rise from 1450), because a different accounting system was used at the later time. See Eitel, Die oberschwäbischen Reichsstädte, 117–23. 12 For similar developments at a later date, see also Philip L. Kintner, “Die Teuerung von 1570/72 in Memmingen,” Memminger Geschichtsblätter (1987/88): 27–75. Again, the continuity is apparent. 13 Hannes Lambacher, Das Spital der Reichsstadt Memmingen (Memmingen, 1991), 366–375. 9

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was created with only sixteen Pfund in 1404. Its welfare arm began as an almschest for distribution of bread every Friday, under Council supervision, and though it began small its value swelled throughout the century. The Kunzelman Almosen, another Seelgerät, initially had far greater resources. Its donor endowed it with 450 Gulden (fl.) in 1392 and at his death in 1406 bestowed his entire estate of 3,800 Pfund (c. 2171 fl.) and several properties upon various welfare institutions, but primarily the Spital. He named the Council as trustee and instructed it to determine how the money should be divided among the various foundations. Sometime before 1500 Kunzelmann’s Almosen merged with the Großspend under the latter rubric.14 From the extant records we learn from a couple of the few extant records that it distributed roughly a bushel of grain to each of 109 persons in 1461 and 100 persons in 1488, years of special need. Conrad Stüdlin’s Stift of 1468, likewise a Seelgerät, specified that it be controlled by two trustees named by and from the Council, who should distribute alms in food, clothing or grain as they deemed desirable, to “poor though not irresponsible” persons, preferably on the founder’s birthday, but especially as need dictated, and that they must keep careful records. Though no mention is made of religion in Stüdlin’s instructions, he probably intended that it be understood as part of being responsible. These early alms foundations were thus hybrid entities, religious because founded as Seelgeräte, secular because controlled by the Council even to determining the moral rectitude of alms recipients. But we must remember that throughout the early modern period, the councilors perceived themselves as appointed by God to preserve and aid the Christian community that He had placed under their control.15 The Großspend, with an average annual income of about 2,500 fl. in the first decade of the sixteenth century, was an important source of welfare; in 1509, a period of dearth, it distributed alms worth 1,500 fl., a huge sum for that time. Thomas Fischer cites similar examples of foundations under secular control elsewhere.16 Using records from Basel, Freiburg im Breisgau and Strasbourg, he

Jakob F. Unold, Geschichte der Stadt Memmingen (Memmingen, 1826), 88–94; Stadtarchiv Memmingen [StaAMM] D 193/1. 15 Joachim Berger, “Spital und Seelhaus,” Memminger Geschichtsblätter (1993/96): 61–123. On p. 80 Berger argues that the Council, while respecting the religious intent of the founders and their endowments, took control of their finances and oversaw the distribution of alms, etc., in order to prevent their becoming untaxed Church property. 16 Thomas Fischer, Städtische Armut und Armenfürsorge im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1979), 155–60. For further discussion of poor relief in late medieval and early modern cities, see Pierre Brachin, ed., Bienfaisance et repression au XVIe Siecle. Deux textes neerlandais (Paris, 1984); Carter Lindberg, “‘There Should Be No Beggars Among Christians’: Karlstadt, Luther, and the Origins of Protestant Poor Relief,” in Church History 47 (1977): 313–34; Michel Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages (New Haven, 1986). Paul Slack, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999); Theodor Stark, Die christliche Wohltätigkeit im Mittelalter und in der Reformationszeit in den ostschwäbischen Reichsstädten (Munich, 1926). 14

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shows that begging ordinances and conciliar involvement in the distribution of alms originated generally in the latter half of the fifteenth century as a result of population displacement caused by a stagnating economy—that is, not as a result of the Reformation. At Memmingen, though Council involvement in alms distribution began earlier, the date of its first begging ordinance remains unknown; the fifteenth century seems likely, even though no exemplars from that time have survived. After assuming control of the Spital the Memminger Council, whose members always included merchants and traders, centralized control through its trustees and applied rational bookkeeping, to which testify hundreds of volumes from the fifteenth to eighteenth century, filled with minute details.17 The Council and its trustee members were indeed intimately involved in every aspect of welfare. That the Council micro-managed welfare at Memmingen is apparent in hundreds of examples found in the Council minutes, a few of which must suffice to show continuity between pre- and post-reform procedures. On September 11, 1508, in one of its earliest recorded actions, the Council cited both of the city doctors and the midwives and “read them a riot act” (ain gut dursch gsagt), demanding they improve their services to the public. Welfare, as the council understood it, extended far beyond alms giving to include all matters concerning public health. From the beginning of records in the fifteenth century through the seventeenth, every person admitted to any of the several care facilities had to be approved by their Council-appointed trustees, who referred to the full Council any special cases, so that the minutes tell, for example, of the “poor woman” from nearby Dickerlisshausen accepted into the Spital in 1509, and of the “grossly pregnant woman” admitted to the Spital’s child-bed in 1519; of the young son of a deceased “poor man” taken into the Kindshaus and a woman from Lauben allowed to enter the Blatterhaus, both in 1519. When the Indigents’ Room was reported to be in bad condition on August 17, 1519, trustees were dispatched to examine it, and two days later 15 fl. were appropriated for repairs. Each year the Council received condensed accounts of all welfare foundations’ receipts and expenditures, and especially for the Spital, whose accounts could be questioned, though they almost never were until 1598, when a Lutheran burgomaster/trustee embezzled nearly 10,000 fl. from its funds. The Spital was, in fact, a ‘wholly owned subsidiary’ of the Council and the community.18 The minutes note appointments of doctors, apothecaries, surgeon-barbers, midwives and bathers; costs of bathing; whether persons should be allowed to purchase or be given “for God’s sake” a living in the elder-care units, the Pfründhäuser, of which the city had four by 1519. Similar entries continue apace

17

StaAMM, D, all under Folioband 99. Philip L. Kintner, “Memmingen in den vergessenen Jahren 1550–1600,” in Joachim Jahn, et al., eds., Geschichte der Stadt Memmingen, Vol. I (Stuttgart, 1997), 44. 18

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through 1522, but in late 1523 they diminish greatly just as the Council minutes double or triple in size because of growing religious and social unrest. It was a time when the priests and preachers were almost literally at one another’s throats and when revolutionary ideas were invading the city, inciting fear of interference by the Swabian League, as in fact happened in 1525. Defeat of the 1525 rebellions in South Germany left thousands dead or maimed and created thousands of homeless refugees, so that food supplies diminished as farms were vacated or understaffed, creating conditions which led, in 1530–31, to one of the worst of many dearths in that stormy century.19 Because Memmingen traditionally treated its peasants well, having listened and responded to their grievances for years before 1525, few of them joined the revolt.20 As a result, the city’s and Spital’s grain supplies from their own villages remained relatively stable. But the numbers of refugees begging for food at the city gates soon became overwhelming, causing the Council to decide that a “new” begging ordinance (which suggests at least one non-extant, previous version) should be created in December 1525. The committee to write it consisted of six Council members and the City Secretary. The lack of clergy is noteworthy, but should not be interpreted as meaning that religious values were neglected. We must again remind ourselves that the councilors dealt consistently and inevitably with religious matters, as can be seen in the Council’s decisive involvement in the choice of priests and later ministers at the St. Martin church, for example. When the Begging Ordinance Committee submitted a draft document on April 13, 1526, the Council decided that “everyone” should consider it, after which there are no further notations concerning it, nor does any copy of it exist. Either it died in the full committee, or it was adopted and used without being promulgated. Trouble was afoot, at any rate: In May, a new door was ordered made in the Spital, back of the Kindshaus, so that the main hospital could be kept closed “in this time of great difficulties” (bei disen schweren lauffen), one of ten recurrences of plague in the century, three of them prior to 1530.21 That same day, May 14, 1526, the Council decreed, “no beggar should be allowed to enter the city,” thus clearly relating these two events; closing the gates to foreigners in order to prevent spreading disease had been standard practice for many decades. During 1526 the minutes begin once more to note

19 For a general discussion of dearth in early modern Germany, see Wilhelm Abel, Massenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorindustriellen Deutschland (Göttingen, 1977). 20 Rolf Kießling, “Stadt und Kloster. Zum Geflecht herrschaftlicher und wirtschaftlicher Beziehungen im Raum Memmingen im 15. und in der 1. Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in I. Batori, ed., Städtische Gesellschaft und Reformation (Stuttgart, 1980); idem, Die Stadt und ihr Land (Cologne, 1989); Han-Christoph Rublack, “Gravamina und Reformation,” in I. Batori, ed., Städtische Gesellschaft und Reformation (Stuttgart, 1980), 191–220. 21 Robert Stepp, “Krankenhäuser und Krankenpflege in Memmingen im Laufe der Jahrhunderte,” Memminger Geschichtsblätter (1951): 2–6.

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increasingly special cases like those recorded before 1520, that is, arranging for the entry, usually free, of men, women and children into the Seelhaus, Blatterhaus and Spital.22 Though 1526 was a year of epidemic and threats of Turkish invasion, following hard upon the displacements caused by the Peasant Revolt, Memmingen’s Council diligently sought to address urgent welfare problems. On December 7, 1526 the Council ordered the Spital to distribute “hot alms” (Mus or soup), and though a week later the decree barring beggars’ entry into the city was renewed (thereby revealing that it had not been stringently enforced), the Council added that beggars outside the walls should be taken to the Seelhaus to be examined. Those found to be “false” (that is, faking disabilities) should be punished, but all others should be given something to eat or a bit of money, and then sent on their way. As conditions worsened in early 1527, evidenced by the increasing number of entries in the minutes, the Council moved to lessen its burden by forming another committee to further revise the begging ordinance. This one consisted of six councilors and the burgomaster—again no clerics. Begging, a central element of welfare, was throughout considered more an economic than a religious matter for the magistrates, who were forced to regulate it when the sheer volume of needy, desperate, and sick persons, both inside and outside the city, threatened to drain the city’s resources. This 1527 Begging Ordinance, which is extant, undoubtedly drew heavily upon past experience, previous ordinances, and statutes solicited from Memmingen’s sister cities.23 Dr. Peer Friess, who has published and analyzed this ordinance, concludes that it cannot be attributed to any one source; it is indeed an eclectic and somewhat idiosyncratic document.24 The first article, Das kaine betler under den Cristen sein sollen, may depend upon Nuremberg’s ordinance of 1522, a copy of which is in the Memmingen archives, or upon the teachings of Zwingli, then more prevalent in Memmingen than those of Luther.25 This article also encapsulates the efforts, evident since at least 1508, by Memmingen’s magistrates to assure that its citizens not lack the necessities of life. It should be noted that at no time in the period under examination here did the Council ever seek to

22 The decrease of special cases noted in the minutes for 1523–25 and resumption of such notices in 1526 suggest that the overworked council temporarily delegated to the various trustees the right to decide cases. 23 Philip L. Kintner, “Die Teuerung von 1570/72 in Memmingen,” Memminger Geschichtsblätter (1987/88): 37. 24 Peer Friess, “Die Bettelordnung der Reichsstadt Memmingen aus dem Jahre 1527,” in Materialen zur bayerischen Landesgeschichte, Vol. XI (Munich, 1993), 345–70. 25 Martin Luther, “An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation von des christlichen Standes Besserung,” in O. Clemen, ed., Luthers Werke in Auswahl (Berlin, 1929) I, 362–425; idem, “Ordnung eines gemeinen Kasten,” in O. Clemen, ed., Luthers Werke in Auswahl (Bonn, 1925) II, 404–23.

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do more than prevent begging in the city. Precise and relevant as it was, the 1527 ordinance apparently was no more effective than its unpublished predecessors, because its admonitions could not be fully realized in the context of future problems. And a new set of problems was emerging. Tithes related directly to welfare issues because they were used in part to support the clergy and in part to fill the granaries which served to feed the needy. Faced with increasing requirements of food and money, on June 5, 1527, the Council demanded payment of the Great Tithe upon threat of property seizure, but merely pleaded (sol man nit zu hart anhaben) that the Lesser Tithe be paid “in order to preserve the peace.” Scattered entries in late 1527 show that attempts were being made to enforce the new begging ordinance as another dearth threatened, but the evidence is somewhat contradictory. On October 18 the Council asked the Vöhlin corporation, controlled by an old, important and staunchly Catholic Memmingen family, which had recently distanced itself from the city and reform, to buy grain at Ulm or elsewhere “without advertising the fact” (und kain schreiber darzu stellen). Five days later the Welser of Augsburg were consulted “concerning grain.” And on October 25, the Council ordered that indigents be given, on All Souls Day, no more than one or two Pfennig, “as the ordinance says.” On October 30, again concerning All Souls Day, it insisted that poor people be given no more than the ordinance permits, but added that its ruling should apply only within the city: “if someone wishes to give much outside the gates he may do so” (vil fürs thor geben mags thon)—whatever the donor’s reason might be. Private alms-giving for whatever altruistic purpose, if it took place outside the walls, was not a concern, because the ordinance aimed chiefly to protect citizens and the community within the walls, though the Council continued doing what it could for the ever-present, unfortunate, “foreign” vagabonds. Money spent on “outsiders” restricted funds spent on residents, so that one must ask why Memmingen’s Council concerned itself with the vagabonds. One plausible explanation is tradition. Before 1367 the Spital’s functions included the housing and care of travelers, and this element continued as a commitment after the city assumed responsibility. Thus, the religious-moralistic qualities of poor relief continued to play a role long after the so-called secularization of welfare. Signs of the reduced grain supplies, which had appeared in 1527, reappeared in 1528, but not until 1530 did the situation threaten to become truly serious. Orders went out on 25 May to buy Schmalz (both butter and lard) at Nuremberg up to sixty hundred-weights, if available at 4 fl. “more or less” per measure, and five days later the Spital received orders to grind Malters of rye each into twenty parts and sell the small portions at reduced price “for the good of the poor community”—clearly a form of price control with welfare overtones. In July a reported shortage of both white and brown bread in the market so infuriated the Council that it read the baker guildmaster, Mang Engler, a “good Leviticus” and directed him to inform the bakers that they must supply fresh

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bread every day. Should shortages occur, the Council demanded to be notified at once. The bakers complied, of course, but only reported their compliance a full month later. On October 3, 1530 the city officers (Stadtknechte) received detailed instructions about foreigners found begging in the city: they were to remove them. Once outside the gate, they should conduct the unfortunates to the Seelhaus, where they would receive either soup or Mus, as they chose. This gentle treatment of vagabonds, remarkable for that period, suggests that the city had not forgotten its duty to care for travelers—a religious duty acquired along with the Lower Spital in 1367. To prevent abuses, however, the officers were required to note the names of all who accepted aid and give lists of them to the bailiff (Büttel) for posting at the inns, and also to the Council. That same day, the third of October, the Spital received orders to begin baking special loaves of bread for distribution to citizens too poor to purchase the cheap grain—and here also to record the names of recipients. None of these lists of alms recipients still exists. While the Council’s attention to ‘bookkeeping’ in these instances might seem to support the notion that such was the result of the Reformation, the severity of conditions provides a more viable explanation. At any rate, on October 12, 1530 the Council’s requirement that the city gates (except for the Westertor which should open a half hour after the others) must remain closed until full daylight reveals the increasing pressure from travelers outside the walls, while the addition on October 19, of three councilors to those already supervising the distribution of loaves of bread to the community attests to the expansion of internal operations. Throughout this dearth, which ended officially on October 27, 1531, when the Spital received permission to cease supplying bread to indigent citizens, the Council remained in full command, like generals directing a defense. Did the villagers at Dickenreishausen need grain? Very well, “Ziekinen” might have two Viertel (roughly bushels) of rye, “but not all at once” (November 17, 1530), while another was allowed “no more than citizens were permitted, as the ordinance requires” (February 20, 1531). In a notable action on February 27, 1531 the Bettelherren—the committee composed of four councilors and eight citizens charged with implementing the 1527 ordinance, none of whom were clergy— were permitted to give or withhold alms for Ausburger as they saw fit. These Ausburger were alien residents, citizens of other towns who received permission to reside temporarily in Memmingen. In May the Council instructed the Bettelherren to “make an ordinance about what one should do with the beggars,” a sign that the 1527 ordinance had proven inadequate during this period of extreme need; consequently, those charged with implementing it should use their experience to construct a better one. Anyone reading these minutes must admire the flexibility of the Council, its willingness to bend rules that failed because of unforeseen situations and to create new rules for the changing times—for example, its order concerning the Ausburger, which left to those on the front line the final decision to allow

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or disallow alms. Some Ausburger paid minor taxes, while others did not, yet they were apparently accepting alms, thereby draining resources reserved for “true” citizens. In that same action of February 27, thereafter, the Council directed the Bettelherren to identify any citizens housing non-citizen relatives, to inquire about the tax status of these Ausburger, and then require them to make arrangements with the Council before Easter (April 10, 1531) or be removed from the city. The Council’s ruling concerning the Ausburger is closely analogous to a situation, detailed in Professor Miriam Chrisman’s analysis of welfare at Strasbourg. Lucas Hackfurt, welfare administrator there from 1523 to 1554, originally urged that welfare should address the needs of citizens and “foreigners” alike; but in 1530–31, convinced by the huge influx of refugees and the dearth, he began to favor citizens over foreigners and even resident ‘second-rate’ citizens (Schultheisbürger), who crowded the welfare rolls. When available funds proved inadequate, Hackfurt suggested that income from Catholic institutions be applied to welfare, which indicates that sheer need rather than the importation of Nuremberg’s 1522 ordinance led him to suggest the seizure of church property, because, as in Memmingen, the Catholic foundations were not helping the needy. Hackfurt’s decision was primarily humanistic and pragmatic rather than religious and dogmatic. He identified the cause of 1531’s terrible conditions as “the great need and the dearness of all things,” ultimately caused by God’s anger; as Professor Chrisman summarizes, Hackfurt considered “inflation, unemployment, immigration, and the diversion of welfare funds to the Schultheisbürger” as the true underlying reasons for Strasbourg’s difficulties in meeting welfare obligations to its citizens.26 Hackfurt’s analysis is noteworthy because it does not involve the Reformation or religious doctrine, but instead makes the basic economic and social conditions responsible for diverting ecclesiastical property to welfare. This is very different from Winckelmann’s argument, which finds in the transferal of Lutheran ideas from Nuremberg to Strasbourg the key to new begging ordinances, and the Reformation as central to seizure of Catholic property, while recognizing the continuity of Strasbourg’s welfare agencies.27 Professor Chrisman’s conclusions thus parallel in many respects my findings for Memmingen. Not surprisingly, Memmingen’s Council minutes concerning welfare contain no references to theology or religion, because the Council’s approach was pragmatic, an

26 Miriam U. Chrisman, “Urban Poor in the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Strasbourg,” in Miriam U. Chrisman and Otto Grundler, eds., Social Groups and Religious Ideas in the Sixteenth Century (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1978), 61–62; 64–65. 27 “Die Kirchenreformation brachte für das Strassburger Hospital keine allzu tief einschneidenden Änderung mit sich, da die Anstalt ja schon lange unter rein bürgerlicher Aufsicht und Verwaltung stand und von der Geistlichkeit unabhängig war”: Otto Winckelmann, Das Fürsorgewesen der Stadt Strassburg, 2 vols. (New York, 1971) I, 78 ff., 5–59 and 122–67.

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admirably flexible response to specific communal needs. Given the ambiance of the sixteenth century, Memmingen’s councilors could never have acted outside the bounds of religion, though especially in periods of dearth the records necessarily reflect the practical business acumen essential for dealing with crisis. That the Council’s efforts during the dearth of 1530–31 were successful we learn from Alexander Berner of Strasbourg, who visited cities and areas throughout South Germany and Switzerland—including Nuremberg, Augsburg, Ulm, Isny, Lindau, St. Gall, Constance, Basel, Zurich, Baden and Wuerttemberg—during the dearth to learn at first hand how various welfare systems were coping under duress. His detailed report, published by Otto Winckelmann includes a section on Memmingen28 that highly praises its care of the sick and needy, both within and outside the walls; Berner especially notes the benevolent treatment of its villages. In all respects, the Council minutes support the accuracy of Berner’s observations. Unconvinced by the efforts of its always hypercritical preacher, Simprecht Schenck, to belittle Memmingen’s welfare activities, Berner’s close attention to details convinced him that Memmingen’s “poor, common, simple folk subsists to some extent [in a manner which] is not far from the kingdom of God.” Berner, indeed, rates Memmingen higher than any other of the places he visited. Though Memmingen’s officials would not divulge specific amounts collected and applied as alms, they certainly did not refuse from shame, as extant records prove. The Großspend income, for example, jumped from a few hundred Pfund heller in 1527 to 7,063 Pfund in 1530, when 6,318 Pfund were expended, and to 9674 Pfund in 1532. The source of these increases remains uncertain, though not the result of selling Catholic properties.29 But the Council had, somehow, certainly found ways to fund the huge needs of those years. Conclusion The businessmen who assumed control of welfare at Memmingen in the fourteenth century immediately centralized the functions of its various elements in their own hands and proceeded to keep exceptionally fine records for the next four hundred years with only minor changes of format. They did not require the Reformation to teach them business practices, probably sharpened by trade relations with the Italian communes, which may have influenced their attitudes toward welfare, as they did those of Luther.30

28

Ibid., 2: 274–76. Großspend: StaAMM, D 193/1a. Christoph Engelhard details the increased income from sale of gold and silver from the churches in 1538 and 1545. See Christoph Engelhard, “Was das Silber hat gewogen und was daraus braucht ist worden,” in Peer Friess, ed., Auf den Spuren des Heiligen Antonius (Memmingen, 1994), 124–33. 30 Cf. Grell’s “The Protestant Imperative,” op. cit., p. 64, n. 63. The data presented here contradicts Grell’s assertion that “without the Reformation the centralisation and increased accountability of poor relief which took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would have been unimaginable.” (ibid., 51–52). 29

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Writing in 1930, Heinrich Gürsching insisted that expansion of the city’s control of the Spital’s lands from partial to total was already underway before Luther could have influenced events: “the Reformation period only brought that which had begun to its completion, by removing the last real bar between the Upper and Lower Spital . . .” And in 1950 Robert Stepp, also exploring Memmingen’s welfare structure, after noting that the care of sick and poor persons in monastic and secular foundations gradually coalesced “to become a [single] concern of the civic community,” adds “that this step coincides with the years of the Reformation does not arise from a causal relationship of the two events.”31 What these writers correctly assert has here been documented from the Council minutes, which provide the best window onto day-to-day social welfare activities at Memmingen, because the Council had assumed responsibility for them one hundred fifty years before the Reformation. Undeniably, a fundamental religious motivation for welfare activities remained constant at Memmingen throughout the early modern period, even though the doctrinal underpinnings changed profoundly. In the matter of welfare, what Memmingen took from the Reformation in general was the occasional rhetoric, as in the begging ordinances, not the admonitory substance, of which it had no need, having long since accomplished most of the welfare activities and reforms demanded by Luther and other reformers. The Reformation did not profoundly alter welfare at Memmingen, always a religious as well as civic enterprise, because the city fathers had reformed it long before 1520.

31 Heinrich Gürsching, Evangelische Hospitäler: Studien zur Rechtsgeschichte der Vereinigten Wohltätigkeitsstiftungen Memmingen (Memmingen, 1930), 35; Robert Stepp, “Krankenhäuser und Krankenpflege in Memmingen im Laufe der Jahrhunderte,” Memminger Geschichtsblätter (1951): 3.

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POOR RELIEF AND HEALTH CARE PROVISION IN SOUTH-GERMAN CATHOLIC CITIES DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY Peer Friess

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he monk Sigbert of Gembloux wrote in his chronicle about the year 1089 that it was a year of plague, especially in the western part of Lorraine, where many suffered from the “Holy Fire” and died because their limbs decayed. The annals of Lobbes tell us “in the year 1144 rain, storm, and frost ruined the harvest. In the valley of the Rhine people even ate grass and an uncountable number of men died.”1 Again and again, medieval chroniclers report plague and starvation. Members of all social ranks, having the biblical example of the Good Samaritan and the commandment of charity in mind, tried to help those poor and sick people. Christian belief distinguished six deeds of charity: to feed the hungry, to give water to the thirsty, to shelter the homeless, to dress the needy people, to relieve the sick, and to comfort the prisoners. Cloisters provided this kind of charity throughout the medieval period. The Benedictines tried to offer medical care and alms to all poor and suffering people in the Early Middle Ages.2 Later, the mendicant orders focused their support on the lower classes of the growing urban population. Newer orders, such as the Johanniter or the Antoniter, specialised in helping sick and injured people in the Late Middle Ages.3 Those who were unable or unwilling to help per-

1 Adalbert Mischlewski, Grundzüge der Geschichte des Antoniterordens bis zum Ausgang des 15. Jahrhunderts (Cologne, 1976), 22. 2 Wolfgang F. Reddig, Bader, Medicus und Weise Frau. Wege und Erfolge der mittelalterlichen Heilkunst (Munich, 2000), 31–45. 3 For a general overview, see Peter Hawel, Zwischen Wüste und Welt. Das Mönchtum im Abendland (Munich, 1997); the latest survey about the Antoniter is written by Adalbert Mischlewski, Un ordre hospitalier au Moyen Age. Les chanoines reguliers de SaintAntoine-en-Viennois (Grenoble, 1995).

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sonally tried to ease the misery of the poor by donating money, land, or goods to these orders. In this way, donors sought at once to follow the commandment of charity and to secure their own salvation. By the end of the fifteenth century, the number of needy, poor and sick people had grown in such a dramatic way that the traditional institutions of medieval poor relief and health care, based on the fundament of personal charity, could not cope with the increase of beggars and vagabonds.4 Since bishops and cloisters, cities and lords were unable to deal with this burden on their own, the Imperial Diet, assembled at Lindau in 1497, passed a resolution that every authority in the Holy Roman Empire had to assure that nobody begged who was able to work and that children learned a trade to earn their own money. Gypsies were to be expelled from the country, and even the begging of orders, like the Antoniter, was to be curtailed. The only exception was travelling students who were still allowed to beg on their way to school or university.5 The same Diet passed another ordinance that every authority had to guarantee the quality of food, especially wine.6 Neither poor relief nor health care was regulated by clerical institutions but rather by secular authorities. Not an ecclesiastical official or council but the Imperial Diet established new rules. On the local level, this development had begun even earlier. Hospitals, for example, had been governed by urban administrators at least since the fourteenth century and, so, had increasingly escaped clerical influence.7 A similar reduction of clerical influence can be found in medical ordinances or treatises on the plague, which were published in the late fifteenth century. Unlike the famous abbess, Hildegard of Bingen, Renaissance

Michel Mollat, Die Armen im Mittelalter (Munich, 1984), 190–228; see also the very instructive contribution of Ernst Schubert, “Erscheinungsformen der Armut in der spätmittelalterlichen deutschen Stadt” in Helmut Bräuer and Elke Schlenkrich, eds., Die Stadt als Kommunikationsraum (Leipzig, 2001), 659–97; cf. Thomas Fischer, Städtische Armut und Armenfürsorge im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1979). 5 Item, sol ein yede oberkait der bettler halber ernstlich insehens tun, damit nymants zu betteln gestattet werde, der nit mit swacheyt oder gebrechen seins leybs beladen und des nit notdürftig sey, das auch der bettler kinder zeytlich, so sie ire brot zu verdienen geschickt sin, von inen genomen und zu hantwerken oder sunst zu dinsten gewyst werden, damit sie nit also für und für dem bettel anhangen, des ein yede oberkait ordenung fürnemen und uf die nechsten versamelung fürbringen soll, davon wyter zu handeln: Deutsche Reichstagsakten Mittlere Reihe (RTA MR), Vol. VI, 344, Reichstagsabschied, Lindau, February 9, 1497. 6 Item, nachdem durch swyfelung der wyn den menschen mancherley krankheyt und beswerung entsteet, als die gelerten der arzney sagen, ist betracht, das ain yede oberkeit daheym ratslagen soll, wie dem swyveln der wyn ein zimlich maß gegeben werden möge, damit es deßhalb zimlich gehalten, dadurch oberürt beswerung fürkomen werde: RTA MR, Vol. VI, 345, Reichstagsabschied, Lindau, February 9, 1497. 7 See Hannes Lambacher, Das Spital der Reichsstadt Memmingen (Memmingen, 1991); Kuno Ulshöfer, “Ein Haus für Arme und Kranke.” Kurze Geschichte des Hospitals zum Heiligen Geist in Schwäbisch Hall (Schwäbisch Hall, 1995). 4

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physicians like Dr. Ulrich Ellenbog from Memmingen or Dr. Anton Klump from Überlingen did not rely on religious arguments or clerical support.8 The medical treatises published in the years around 1500 contained a great deal of practical advice.9 They all assumed that plague and other epidemics were natural diseases rather than divine punishments.10 Was this the beginning of a new secular social welfare-system driven by humanistic philosophy and modern utilitarianism or was there still a religious motivation for charity and medical care in spite of all the social, political, and economical changes that took place in sixteenth century Germany? Recent publications give this question a deeper dimension. In contrast to the widely accepted position that changes in the field of social welfare and medical care were not influenced by religious convictions or confessional differences, a divergent opinion emerged that at least in Northern Europe “the Reformation was of particular importance for the reforms in poor relief and health care provision.”11 Accordingly, we should find significant differences in the development of poor relief and health care between Catholic and Protestant territories in the sixteenth century.12 To test the validity of this theory, this essay will examine the similarities and differences between neighbouring Protestant and Catholic

Reddig, Bader, Medicus und Weise Frau, 46–53; the treatises of the quoted renaissance physicians are published by Günther Bayer, Memmingen in historischen Bildern, (Memmingen, 1983), 89–95: “Ordnung die doctor Ulrich von Ellenbog zu Memingen wider die gifftigen anrur der pestilentzlichen prechen gemacht haut” (1484) respectively quoted by Annemarie Kinzelbach, Gesundbleiben, Krankwerden, Armsein in der frühneuzeitlichen Gesellschaft. Gesunde und Kranke in den Reichsstädten Überlingen und Ulm 1500—1700 (Stuttgart, 1995), 142–45: “Regiment, Eyn kurtz, und Consilium für die erschrockenlichen schnellen krankheit, der Englisch schweiß genant” (1529). 9 See Karl Sudhoff, “Pestschriften aus den ersten 150 Jahren nach der Epidemie des ‘schwarzen Todes’” 1348. “16 Pesttraktate aus Südwestdeutschland und der Schweiz” Sudhoffs Archiv 16 (1924): 1–69; cf. Mirko D. Grmek, Die Geschichte des medizinischen Denkens, (Munich, 1996). 10 Wolfgang Eckart, Geschichte der Medizin (Berlin, 1990), 95, 128 where he refers especially to the work of Girolamo Fracastoro (1484–1553), “De contagionibus et contagiis morbis et eorum curatione.” 11 Ole Peter Grell, “The Protestant Imperative of Christian Care and Neighbourly Love” in Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500–1700 (London, 1997), 43–65, 45; the traditional position is formulated by Robert Jütte, Arme, Bettler, Beutelschneider (Weimar, 2000), 138. “Heutige Historiker sehen so gut wie keinen religiösen Einfluss, sei er katholisch oder protestantisch, auf die Entwicklung der charakteristischen Merkmale der Fürsorgestrukuren im 16. Jahrhundert . . .” 12 Grell and others speak, for example, of a “retardation in medical and health care renewal in the Catholic South.” See Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Health care and poor relief in Counter-Reformation Europe (London, 1999), 6. The essay of Brian Pullan about “The Counter-Reformation, Medical Care and Poor Relief” in the same volume, 18–39, shows on the other hand that many cities in Italy but also in France and Spain developed poor relief and healthcare institutions similar to those in Protestant territories. 8

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cities in the Holy Roman Empire. Since the system of poor relief and medical care in Protestant cities is relatively well known I focused my research on Catholic Imperial Cities of South-Germany. These include Buchau, Buchhorn, Gengenbach, Kaisersberg, Oberehnheim, Offenburg, Pfullendorf, Rosheim, Schlettstadt, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Türkheim, Überlingen, Wangen, Weil der Stadt, and Zell am Harmersbach.13 The cities of Überlingen and Wangen shall serve as examples for this group. *

*

*

Because its excellent geographical position—situated both at the junction of long-distance trade routes and the waterfront of Lake Constance—and its burgeoning wine industry, Überlingen became one of the wealthiest marketplaces in Upper Swabia.14 It attracted not only merchants and craftsmen but also beggars and vagrants, hoping to participate in this prosperity. By the fifteenth century, the city had already been provided with a large number of institutions to take care of poor, elderly and sick people. There was a leprosarium, a house for foreign pilgrims (Seelhaus), and a house for sick people. A foundation for almsgiving, called “Die Spend,” had existed since 1438 to support poor citizens. Additional food and goods for beggars was collected twice a week by a cityofficial called the “Bettelvogt.” The heart of the whole welfare-system, however, was the hospital founded in the middle of the 13th century.15 Whereas medieval hospitals had usually been part of a cloister, this one was a civil hospital. A “Spitalmeister,” who was engaged by the City Council, managed it. Donations were contributed to its wealth. Chunrat and Adelhaid Lerer, for example, donated their farm in Andelshofen on March 12, 1378, “for the sake of God, for the sake of our souls and the sake of our ancestors and descendants.”16 Besides this religious motivation there was also a pragmatic one: in return for the handing-over of their farm they received an annual income that enabled them to live a life free from worries. A great number of other citizens followed their example. The hospital of Überlingen thus became a place for those elderly citizens of the middle and upper class who could effort a reasonable donation.

13 For a brief overview see Wilfried Enderle, “Rottweil und die katholischen Reichsstädte im Südwesten” in Anton Schindling and Walter Ziegler, eds., Die Territorien des Reiches im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung (Münster, 1993), Vol. V, 215–30. 14 Wolfgang Bühler, “Ein Gang durch die Geschichte. Von den Anfängen bis zum Ende der Reichsfreiheit,” in Überlingen. Bild einer Stadt (Weißenhorn, 1970), 19–38; Wilfried Enderle, Konfessionsbildung und Ratsregiment in der katholischen Reichsstadt Überlingen (1500–1618) im Kontext der Reformationsgeschichte der oberschwäbischen Reichsstädte (Stuttgart, 1990), 61–119. 15 Alfons Semler, Geschichte des Heilig-Geist-Spitals in Überlingen am Bodensee (Überlingen, 1957), 5–8. 16 The document is published ibid., 78: “durch Got, durch vnser selen vnd durch aller vnser vorder seligen vnd nachkomenden selen hayls und trost willen.”

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The real problem for the city had to do with other needy persons, however. According to the 1531 report of Alexander Berner, three hundred indigent residents of the hospital and another five hundred poor individuals or families had been registered as deserving.17 This was a surprisingly large group for a city of five thousand inhabitants, and it did not include the foreign beggars, who took up places in doorways or on corners. Since the Late Middle Ages, councillors of Überlingen, like their colleagues in Ulm, had tried to reduce the number of those who were entitled to relief. Following the edicts of the Diet of Lindau, they passed several Begging Ordinances (Bettlerordnungen) that distinguished precisely between foreigners, who should not be given alms, and residents, who were allowed to beg.18 To handle the problems of poor relief in its relatively large territory the Überlingen councillors decided to force every village to support their own needy people.19 Trying to coordinate and to increase the efficiency of these measures, the magistrate reached an agreement with neighbouring aristocrats, Count Joachim of Fürstenberg and the Abbot of the Imperial Abbey of Salem. On July 14, 1573, they agreed jointly to stop supporting foreign beggars. Every authority would list their needy residents and give copies of this document to their partners. In addition, they forced resident beggars to wear a special sign on their clothing.20 The idea was to prevent vagrants from collecting alms from two governments at the same time. Other ordinances organized the administration of the hospital in detail.21 The motivation for those administrative acts shows up in the introduction of the Hospital Ordinance (Spitalordnung), published in 1571, where the magistrates explained that the properties that had been donated “in a pious, faithful and loving attitude to honour God the Almighty and to help the poor and needy people” would be protected from abuse. The councillors felt responsible “to obey the divine order to take care of the poor and indigent.”22

Otto Winckelmann, Das Fürsorgewesen der Stadt Straßburg vor und nach der Reformation bis zum Ausgang des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1922), 272–74. 18 Kinzelbach, Gesundbleiben, 33–37. 19 Am andern von den Gartknecht, Bettler vnnd Lanndtfarer wegen, ist vnser Beuelh vnnd gepott, das ain iedes Comun, dorff vnnd fleckh vermog mergemelts Abschids ire arme Leut die sy inn ain sonnder verzaichnus nemen sollen, selbs erhalten vnnd niemannds anndern darmitt beschweren: Stadtarchiv Überlingen (StA Üb), “Bettlerordnung” of 1551, 1, 53, 144, fol. 2v–3r. [I would like to thank Marcel Ferner for his helpful hint on this source.] 20 StA Üb, “Bettlerordnung” of 1573, 1,53, 145. See also Claudia Schott, Armenfürsorge, Bettelwesen und Vagantenbekämpfung in der Reichsabtei Salem (Bühl, 1978). 21 Alexander Muck, Das Medizinalwesen der freien Reichsstadt Überlingen am Bodensee (Stuttgart, 1951), 18–21. 22 . . . uß christlicher Andacht, trew und liebe Gott dem allmechtigen in lob und ehr unnd unnderhaltung den Armen notdurfftigen mensch (. . .) Gottlichen bevehl nach zu befurderung nehrung und erbauung der Armen Notdurfftigen underhaltung zuthun: Spitalarchiv Überlingen 8b, Spitalordnung 1573, fol. 1. 17

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The city’s government regulated medical care in the same way. By the end of the fourteenth century it employed a physician, who was also responsible for the hospital.23 Around 1400, the Council decided to admit servants and maidens to the leprosarium (Sondersiechenhaus) at no cost, like ordinary citizens, if they became infected with leprosy.24 In the middle of the fifteenth century the City Council tried to find a physician who was willing to settle in Überlingen in order to provide constant medical care for the residents. By offering special conditions they finally convinced Dr. Andreas Reichlin to become a citizen.25 At about the same time, Überlingen housed a small pharmacy within its walls. Ordinances for pharmacists, physicians, and midwives were passed. As a result of the Imperial Police Ordinance (Reichspolizeiordnung) of 1548 and the Caroline Constitution of 1552, Überlingen began to rework all urban ordinances at the beginning of the second half of the sixteenth century. In 1553 they regulated the medical treatment of those who suffered from the pox (Blattern). In 1555 a new ordinance for the pharmacy and in 1557 another one for midwives was finished. In 1580 the city hired a barber to care for people in the hospital. In addition to this wave of legislation, a water pipe was constructed at the hospital to ensure its supply of fresh water.26 One year later, in 1581, the City Council passed a special Syphilis Ordinance (Syphilisordnung), based on a long consultation between the physicians of Überlingen and Constance, to protect the citizens of Überlingen from the threat of this new disease. A central point was the introduction of a prototype of quarantine to reduce the danger of infection. Barbers and physicians had to notify the magistrate of every person they found sick with syphilis. The patients were not to be allowed to leave their houses, not even to go to church, until the city-physician finished an official examination and declared them to be cured.27 Like the magistrates in other cities, such as Lutheran Nuremberg or Zwinglian Zürich, the councillors of Überlingen considered themselves a Christian government responsible for the common good (Gemeiner Nutzen) and the prosperity of the city. They thus justified the minute regulation of poor and sick persons. These regulations seem to prove the secular tendencies implicit in the final declaration

23 This was relatively early if you compare it with the other parts of Germany, Rudolf Schmitz, “Stadtarzt—Stadtapotheker im Mittelalter” in Bernhard Kirchgässner and Jürgen Sydow, eds., Stadt und Gesundheitspflege (Sigmaringen, 1982), 9–25. 24 Cf. the ordinance of the Council published around 1400 quoted by Munck, Medizinalwesen, 20: “Item wir hand ouch gesetzt: wer der ist, der gesunt in unser statt komet und jaur und tag ain unserm burger dienstbar ist, ob da ain semlicher siech und ußsetzit wirdet, daz der unser pfründ uf dem berg haben und niessen sol in aller mahs als ain ander burger, ungevarlich.” 25 Ibid., 18. 26 Semler, Spital, 49. 27 O. Roller, “Der Kampf gegen die Syphilis in Überlingen im Jahre 1581,” Sozialhygienische Mitteilungen 1 (1928): 10–18.

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of the Imperial Diet of Lindau as noted above. Although it acted conservatively in many ways as a loyal subject of the Habsburg Emperor Charles V and a loyal member of the Roman-Catholic Church, although it remained hostile to the Protestant Reformation and the Peasants’ Revolution of 1525, the City Council nevertheless gained influence in a field that was organized by the Church in former times. *

*

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Regulations are mainly normative texts, however, showing nothing more than the intentions of urban governments. Like the theoretical publications of this time, they reveal the principals but not the practices of charity.28 To discern what, if anything, really changed in urban poor relief and medical care during the sixteenth century, it is necessary to look closely at the daily work of midwives, barbers, physicians, administrators, clergy, councillors, and citizens. Such an analysis can be carried out in the Catholic Imperial City of Wangen. During the sixteenth century this relatively small city reached the zenith of its economic development. Based on the production of linen cloth and highgrade ironware, the commerce of Wangen flourished, and its citizens lived comfortable lives.29 They participated in the political affairs of the region and successfully enlarged their influence in the neighbourhood.30 The problems posed by the poor and the sick could not be escaped, however. On Friday, August 13, 1540, Onofrius Hinderofen, the wealthiest citizen of Wangen, donated one hundred florin to help needy people. The city had just managed to repair damages from the biggest fire in its history. Over half the town burned to the ground. Among the buildings destroyed was Hinderhofen’s house. Thinking the catastrophe a sign, Hinderofen wanted to fulfil the divine commandment with this donation and avoid eternal damnation as becomes obvious in the introduction of the document: With regard to the Word of God, spread out in the daily preaching of the gospel, we understand that we have to respect, love, and praise the Lord as we have to love and care for our neighbour. We are obliged to help them with diligence and all our capacity in the same way we want to be treated. We shall stay by them in times of illness, fear, and danger

28 See Robert Jütte, Obrigkeitliche Armenfürsorge in den deutschen Reichsstädten der frühen Neuzeit. Städtisches Armenwesen in Frankfurt am Main und Köln (Cologne, 1984), 31–39. 29 Albert Scheurle, Wangen im Allgäu. Das Werden und Wachsen der Stadt (Wangen, 1975), 44–51; Karl-Friedrich Eisele, “Wangen” in Meinrad Schaab, ed., Handbuch der baden-württembergischen Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1995) II, 742–43. 30 See Peer Frieß, “Reichsstädtische Diplomatie als Indikator für die politische Struktur einer Region“ in Rolf Kießling and Carl A. Hoffmann, eds., Kommunikation und Region (Konstanz, 2001), 113–38.

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and give them consolation, help, advice, and assistance all the time in order to avoid eternal damnation, to get rid of our sins and to gain in exchange everlasting joy and salvation.31

Many other citizens of Wangen had the same concerns and added money to Hinderofen’s donation. The City Council decided to support the foundation with an annual subvention of 10 gulden. The medieval idea of saving one’s soul by doing good deeds was often realised by donating money in this way. Neither Onofrius Hinderofen nor the City Council was content with this, however. The major part of the document details specifically what was to be done with the interest coming from these donations. The aim was to make sure that this new institution of social welfare complimented the existing system of poor relief and medical care in the city. As in many other towns, the hospital was in the centre of this system in Wangen. Besides some wealthy owner’s rich benefice,32 the “Heilig-Geist-Spital” took in impoverished citizens, for whose care nobody felt responsible.33 The fate of these people seems to have encouraged many wealthy citizens of Wangen to do a good deed at the end of their lives. To secure their personal salvation they ordered a gift of bread, meat, fish, wine, and other food to be given annually on the anniversary (Jahrtag) of their death. The recipients of these goods were obliged to pray for the salvation of the donors, thus satisfying the religious aims. By and by the number of anniversaries increased until they filled a thick book.34 By the middle of the sixteenth century, they had reached such proportions that the poor citizens of Wangen received food from this source twice a week.

31 In ansehung das wir in teglicher predig vnd verkündung des wort Gottes anhören vnnd desse Evuangelischenn bericht hailsame lere vnnd cristenliche anweisung empfachen vilfältig erfinden dürfet, wie wir Gott den herrn förchtenn, liebhaben, loben Eeren vnd preisen auch vnnsern nächsten jn rechter, warer, vngefelschter lieb vnd trewen mainen, Jme nach vnserem höchstenn pestenn vnnd allem vleis vnd vermögen nit weniger dann vns vnd wir vnns selber zethun begeren Jn allen seinenn gebrechen ängsten Nötten gefhar vnd anligen gewarten vnd in getrewen beuelche haben vnd in aller truebsal vnnd widerwertigkait mit beweisung trost hilff Rath beistand vnd guttiger milter handtraichung vnnd fürderung niemer zuuerlassen vnnd das wir dardurch des lasts vnnd ewig verderbung vnnser sindenn enntladenn vnnd erledigung ab vnnd auslöschung derselben mit reichlichem gegenn wechsell nemblichenn vergleichung vnd empfachung ewiger fröd vnd seeligkait zu rechnenn vns derselbigen vächig thailhaftig vnnd empfengklichen machen vnnd die auch gewissenlich erlangen werden: Stadtarchiv Wangen (StA Wa), Xn 30, Selhausstiftung August 13, 1540. 32 See for example StA Wa, Wangener Urkunden U 425; the relatives of the widow Margarethe Fryin bought for here a “Pfründe” in the hospital (January 12, 1501). 33 Ralf Reiter, “Das Heilig-Geist-Hospital der Reichsstadt Wangen am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts” in Wangener Hefte 4 (1986): 56–58. 34 StA Wa, Jahrtagbuch.

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Another important institution was the leprosarium, the “Haus der Sondersiechen am Sattel,” a house for lepers at the outskirts of Wangen. All citizens who had been struck by leprosy were sent there and looked after for the rest of their lives. It too had benefited from the many donations made since the end of the fourteenth century.35 Medical examinations could not be offered in Wangen, however. Whoever wanted to be admitted to the “Haus zum Sattel” had to go to Lindau, Überlingen, or Constance to be examined by the local specialists. The admission was offered only to those who were identified as lepers without any doubt.36 All the others had to look for help elsewhere. One such group, the so-called “Hausarmen,” were citizens too proud to beg, who remained hungry in their homes. As they often went unnoticed and were not the recipients of donations, their care was not systematic. The poor students had to cope with the same problem. They couldn’t pay for their school and often starved. Only a few citizens were as generous as Mark Bremer who provided in 1517 for both the “Hausarmen” and the poor students with a gift of bread and lard every Sunday after “Invocavit,” the fifth Sunday before Easter. To avoid abuse he added the advice that only one “Hausarmer” per house be allowed to ask for support at a time. The administrator of his donation then was obliged to give as much as necessary.37 Even though there are many differences among these various private donations one aspect is similar: every donor displayed charity and calculation. They sought to do good but also determined what that good would be and to whom it would go. Beside the important civic institutions, the confraternities of St. Sebastian and of St. Eligius also supplied the poorest citizens with food or money.38 Yet, it did not suffice. The guilds, too, felt responsibility for the care of widows and orphans, of poor, sick, and crippled people. In cases of disability to work, the guilds often gave financial help.39 Many poor people still begged in the market place or the portals of churches. As was the case in other cities during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, only residents were allowed to beg in Wangen.40

35 Cf. StA Wa, Wangener Urkunden, U 86: donation of intrests to the “Hauses der armen Feldsiechen” (November 23, 1413); U 706: Jörg Steub aus der Grub citizen of Wangen sells an intrest at the curator of the “Sondersiechen zum Sattel” (December 2,1500); U 512: purchase of an intrest to the “Sondersiechen zum Sattel” (February 8, 1512); U 692: the curator of the “St. Nikolaus-Bruderschaft” and of the “Sondersiechen zum Sattel” bought an intrest (December 16, 1532). 36 Eckhart, Geschichte der Medizin, 96; see also Dietrich Walcher, Die armen Siechen an dem Felde. Geschichte der Ravensburger Leprosenhäuser (Ravensburg, 1994). 37 StA Wa, Jahrtagbuch, fol. 8r. 38 Alois Schneider, Wangen im Allgäu (Stuttgart, 2001), 103; Scheurle, Wangen, 129. 39 Scheurle, Wangen, 29–34. 40 . . . der armen leuten halben so am freitag das almusen samlen ist beschlossen, das man allein die jn der stat vnd vßburger hier vmb geen lassen soll: StA Wa, Ratsprotokolle 2 (1567–69), May 28, 1568, 243.

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The city magistrates were not satisfied to pass and enforce this ordinance, however. The council also intervened and ordered the feeding of beggars by public institutions such as the hospital.41 In times of starvation, therefore, the councillors assisted beggars, even those who were not local.42 Throughout the sixteenth century, the citizens of Wangen sought the medical advice of hospital barber-surgeons and midwives in cases of injury or illness.43 During epidemics, the City Council engaged a specialist, who stayed in a certain house for several months and offered his help to each citizen who asked for a medical treatment.44 Not before the end of the sixteenth century did Wangen engage its own, full-time physician. A popular form of private health care was the bleeding (“Aderlass”). Likewise, bathhouses served as means of private healthcare and entertainment. The citizens of Wangen bleed themselves in order to prevent diseases and regularly went to bathhouses.45 While other cities closed their bathhouses because of the new threat of the syphilis, the citizens of Wangen renovated their old building and used it very frequently throughout the whole century.46 The names of these women can be found on the city’s payrolls from the beginning of the sixteenth century. To make sure that pregnant citizens got the help they needed, the magistrates made midwives public employees by giving them an annual salary. Thus they were obliged to follow urban regulations, instruments of a government that not only wanted to help but also to control its citizens.47

41

Als die Pfleger des Seelhaus jungstlich 1553 Jars Raitung gethan vnnd sich in austeilung des almusens etwas mangell bestund ist dieser Zeit bis zu weiterem vermögen das seelhaus geordnet das die pfleger durch ihre geordneten underpfleger oder einzieher aller Jar lehen aus des seelhaus einkhomen armen leuten in der statt zehen guldin Namblich ieder quotember insonder zwen guldin vnd am Newen Jarstag auch zwen guldin vmb Gottes willen sollen ausgethailt werden. Nota vor der auffahrt christi anno 53: StA Wa, Ratsprotokolle 1539–1558, 286. 42 . . . die armen leut jn der stat sollen vmb 8 vr herumbgeen; vnd die frembden erst umb 9 vu eingelassen: StA Wa, Ratsprotokolle 2 (1567–69), January 1569, 337. 43 . . . 15ß dem maister Jörg Bader von Martis wegen, dem man den fuß abgehowen hat: StA Wa, Seckelmeisterbuch 1513/14, fol. 19r. A brief overview is given by Wolfgang Fischer, Das Medizinalwesen der Reichsstadt Wangen im Allgäu unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Baderordnungen und Bestallungsurkunden (Dissertation, Ulm 1991). 44 StA Wa, Ia V m, Nr. 88, outline of the contract with Martin Nieschen of Raitnau, September 11, 1525. 45 . . . 16d den vischermaister zu badgelt geben als sy den großen weyer gevischt haben: StA Wa, Secklmeisterbücher 1513/14, fol. 20r. 46 The permission to go to the bathhouse for free even was given as a kind of official gratification; StA Wa, Ratsprotokoll 1539–58, 104; see also Birgit Tuchen, “. . . wolher ins bad reich und arm . . .” Die “Obere Badstube” zu Wangen im Allgäu (Stuttgart, 1994). 47 StA Wa, Säckelmeisterbücher WG I B Nr. 1, 1500/1501, passim. For a general overview, see Merry Wiesner, “Early Modern Midwifery. A Case Study,” in Barbara Hanawalt, ed., Women and Work in Pre-industrial Europe (Bloomington, 1986), 94–113.

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All in all, the poor relief and health care systems of Wangen offered almost everything the citizens of those days could expect from their government. Only for the foreign beggars, who swarmed into the city in times of war or dearth, were no provisions made. Onofrius Hinderofen’s donation was used to close exactly this gap. In 1520, the city built a shelter for foreign beggars. Twenty years later, thanks to Hinderofen’s generosity, two suitable persons were engaged to run the shelter.48 This “Seelhaus” provided a refuge for foreign pilgrims, mercenaries and beggars for one night. It was the duty of the two administrators to make sure that bad and good persons were always separated. Dubious folk were locked up. Those who could fend for themselves were allowed to do so; all others were given bread and mush. The next day all of them were sent on their way and not allowed to return for one month. The only exceptions were sick persons, who could stay longer to receive medical attention. As the public records of the city show, the well-founded “Seelhaus” served its purpose.49 Although the City Council provided subventions of up to 250 Pfund to cover expenses in times of need, foreign beggars ceased to bother the citizens of Wangen in the second half of the sixteenth century. Wangen’s welfare system withstood the severe crisis of 1591. As happened in 1570/72, a cold and rainy summer caused a very poor harvest.50 The consequences were a lack of food and an increase in disease that drove poor and sick persons into urban social institutions.51 Though the city paid as little as ten Pfund in 1525 and about fifty Pfund in 1565 for health care and poor relief, in 1591 it spent almost three hundred Pfund.52 This amount covered a variety of special needs and offers a detailed picture of the urban response to crisis. It purchased drugs from the pharmacy in Lindau and paid servants to escort foreign beggars—especially women—to the next neighbouring town. Officials sent sick persons to Lindau for a special examination, paid for the burial of a poor foreigner, and organized vocational training for an orphan. In addition to this, the money provided six Pfund for local midwives and twenty-six Pfund for Peter Eckolt, the city-physician of Lindau who served in Wangen too. Given the threat of plague, city councillors enlarged Wangen’s medical staff and concentrated its services on resident citizens. As a first step they ordered the governor of Niederwangen, a county within the city’s territory, to make sure that

48

StA Wa, Xn 30, Selhausstiftung. Albert Scheurle, “Aus Verfassung und Verwaltung der ehemaligen Reichsstadt,” Wangener Hefte 2 (1972): 17–37. 50 Rüdiger Glaser, Klimageschichte Mitteleuropas. 1000 Jahre Wetter, Klima, Katastrophen (Darmstadt, 2001), 128. See also Philip L. Kintner, “Die Teuerung von 1570/72 in Memmingen” Memminger Geschichtsblätter (1987/88). 51 Since August 1591 you can find an increasing number of notes in the public records dealing with food-supply given by the mayor to certain individuals. StA Wa, Säckelmeisterbücher 1 B Nr. 46 1590/91. 52 Ibid. Nr. 18 1525/26 and Nr. 27 1565/66. 49

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the rural population stopped using urban institutions of poor relief and health care. The local priest had to take care of them and bury the dead in the village graveyard. As a second step they asked the barber-surgeon, Mathäus Spiltz, to give medical help in time of plague. He agreed for an additional salary.53 One month later the City Council hired another barber-surgeon, Christian Beschler.54 That the epidemic was dramatic can be seen in the 1621 report of Konrad Kuhn, a former servant in the “Seelhaus”: “In 1591 plague caused the death of 148 person including my wife and my beloved children.”55 Together with some other servants he was responsible daily for the care of the sick, the repair of the bedsteads, and the burial of the dead. To avoid a stir most of this works had to be done at night. The “Seelhaus,” created to help foreign beggars and situated outside the city walls, was changed in those days into a hospital for the victims of the plague. The traditional hospital inside the town placed food, bedsides, and sheets at the disposal of the Seelhaus but didn’t offer any medical care. The order to exclude or expel foreign beggars shows that the magistrates of Wangen did not want to overload their own resources and capacities. The handling of the crisis of 1591 proves the decisive influence of the City Council in all matters of poor relief and medical care. The clergy didn’t appear at all. *

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With the variety of institutions, both for their own citizens and for foreigners, the city of Wangen offered almost the same social and medical assistance as all the other small Imperial Cities in South-Germany, including Lindau, Memmingen, Kaufbeuren, Kempten, Biberach, Leutkirch, and Isny.56 Even though

53 . . . sterbleuffen halben ist vff heut dem hauptmann zu niderwangen beuelch gegeben dz sie hinfuro die personen so mit solicher krankheit angegriffen durch iren pfarrern sollen versehen vnd jn jren kirchhof so in jrer pfarr gehörig begraben werden sollen.”— “scherern alhie namlich dem Christoff Stamlern, Matheussen Spiltzern und Enderlin Meusch ist fürgehalten, welcher sich vnder Jnen in sterbleuffen gebrauchen lassen, sölle geburlich besoldet werden; vnd als sich darauf spiltz erclärt sich gegen geburender besoldung vnd vnderhaltung gebrauchen zu lassen: StA Wa, Ratsprotokoll Bd. 1589–1592, 518, August 26, 1591. 54 StA Wa, Medizinalwesen, Nr. 85: contract with Christian Beschler of Missen, September 24, 1591. 55 Jm 1591 iar war alhie ain sterbett darin gott beuelchen sind 148 personen darin mein husfrow vnd liebe kinder: Ibid., fol. 2r. 56 Bernhard Zeller, Das Heilig-Geist-Spital zu Lindau im Bodensee von seinen Anfängen bis zum Ausgang des 16. Jahrhunderts (Lindau, 1952); Peer Frieß, “Die Bettelordnung der Reichsstadt Memmingen aus dem Jahre 1527” in Elisabeth Lukas-Götz, ed., Quellen zur Verfassungs-, Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte bayerischer Städte in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Munich, 1993), 345–70; Adolf Fuchs, Geschichte des Gesundheitswesens der freien Reichsstadt Kaufbeuren (Kempten, 1955); Rolf Kießling, “Bürgertum, Kirche und Sozialentwicklung” in Volker Dotterweich, ed., Geschichte der Stadt Kempten (Kempten, 1989), 113–23; Kurt Diemer, “Vom Leben im Spital: Die Spitalordnung von 1491” in

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the citizens of these towns followed the teachings of Zwingli and Luther and assumed control of clerical institutions, there was no real difference in the character or quality of poor relief and medical care.57 They all passed ordinances that prohibited begging or identified beggars. They distinguished precisely between the “deserving poor” and the “undeserving poor.”58 Every authority— regardless of confession—introduced special signs for beggars to wear in order to show that they were allowed to beg.59 They did not spend money indiscriminately. It was a widespread practice to send away poor foreigners as soon as possible in order to save the financial resources for the own needy and sick people. The same applied to the system of medical care. Urban magistrates regulated this service closely and, wherever possible, placed it in the hands of trained physicians. Calculation was not alien to charity. A public alms chest (Almosenkasten), a typical creation of Protestant poor relief, was never established in Wangen, Überlingen or any other Catholic city. This seems to be a consistent distinction between Protestants and Catholics, but the appearance is deceiving. There was no need to create such an institution in Wangen, because it existed already in essence. The City Council controlled the finances and administration of all the institutions mentioned above, the hospital, the leprosarium, the “Seelhaus,” the bathhouse, and the pharmacy. The same applied to the charitable activities of the guilds and the confraternities. The Caroline Constitution of 1552 gave city councillors the necessary power, and they used it at once. The Council controlled even the donations, presumably private acts. During the sixteenth century the clergy of Wangen preserved the right to give a tiny amount to beggars each year: four Pfund, nine Shilling, and three Pence.60 The members of Wangen’s council were not satisfied to control the administration of the public welfare institutions. They also acted as the highest authority and decided in each case of doubt. Ursula Brand, for example, received money to pay for the release of her daughter from serfdom and, so, to offer this girl the opportunity of a civil marriage. A poor woman from the neighbouring city

Kurt Diemer, ed., Ausgewählte Quellen zur Biberacher Geschichte 1491–1991 (Stuttgart, 1991), 9–26; Volker Baumann, “Leutkircher Stadtärzte und das öffentliche Gesundheitswesen in Leutkrich und Umgebung” in Emil Hösch, ed., In und um Leutkirch. Bilder aus zwölf Jahrhunderten (Leutkirch, 1993), 121–31. 57 Robert Jütte, Ärzte, Heiler und Patienten. Medizinischer Alltag in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 1991), 17–32; Ingomar Bog, “Über Arme und Armenfürsorge in Oberdeutschland und in der Eidgenossenschaft im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert,” Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung (1975): 983–1001. 58 See, for example, the development in Augsburg: Thomas Max Safley, Charity and Economy in the Orphanages of Early Modern Augsburg (Atlantic Highlands, 1997), 5, 19–36. 59 . . . der armen leut halben, so allhie jre kind nach dem almusen schicken. Ordnung machen, das die eltern der stat zeichen tragen sollen: StA Wa, Ratsprotokolle 2 1567–69, 19, April 4, 1567. 60 StA Wa, Jahrtagbuch, fol. 1.

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of Kempten received one florin. And some gambling mercenaries, who argued that they escaped from a Turkish prison, received three Shillings. The councillors, of course, may have wanted to preserve public order, but their main goal was a different one: They gave the money “for heaven’s sake,” a motive all councillors in every Imperial City followed without consideration of confession.61 The same was true in the field of medical care. City officials sought to provide services that were needed without regard to confessional or religious scruples. When the city of Wangen decided to engage a physician, it sought an experienced person, willing to take responsibility for the medical care of its citizens even in times of the plague or other epidemics. They finally hired the Lutheran Peter Eckholt, city-physician of neighbouring Lindau. Again, the City Council controlled this process primarily for fiscal and medical reasons. *

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During the sixteenth century the townspeople of southern Germany confronted increased poverty as a social, medical, and moral dilemma.62 To cope with the challenge secular authorities instituted reforms in the fields of poor relief and medical care. They spent more money, passed more ordinances, and regulated more closely the lives of citizens. In the process, they seized control of poor relief from the clergy and gained more and more influence in the general realm of social services. In the documentation of his donation, Onofrius Hinderofen wrote explicitly that the foundation of the “Seelhaus” was done “(. . .) with the knowing and the assistance of the Council and the Assembly of the Holy Imperial City of Wangen as a Christian government feeling responsible for the support and the supply of pious acts of this kind.”63 The shape of medical care and poor relief at the end of the sixteenth century differs thus substantially from the situation in the Middle Ages.64 It is not correct, however, to describe the process of change as “secularisation,” because the donations of the citizens and the policy of the governments of Überlingen and Wangen had a strong and vivid religious motivation.65 The councils of

61 StA Wa, Säckelmeisterbücher Nr. 46 1590/91 fol. 96r. See also Andreas Bingener, “Almosen und Sozialleistungen im Haushalt deutscher Städte des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit” in Peter Johanek, ed., Städtisches Gesundtheits- und Fürsorgewesen vor 1800 (Cologne, 2000), 41–63. 62 Manfred Vasold, Pest, Not und schwere Plagen. Seuchen und Epidemien vom Mittelalter bis heute (Munich, 1991), 108–26. 63 . . . durch vnnd mit sonderlichem vergünstenn wissen vnd willen [vnd] hilf [durch] rath vnnd gemaindt des hailigen Reichsstadt Wangen als cristennlicher vnnd söllich vnd annder dergleichen gottseelig werckh zubefürdern vnnd zuerhalten schuldig willig vnnd genaigte oberkait . . .: StA Wa, Xn 30, Selhausstiftung August 13, 1540. 64 See Heinrich Schipperges, Die Kranken im Mittelalter (Munich, 1993), 134–84; Heinrich Schipperges, Der Garten der Gesundheit. Medizin im Mittelalter (Munich, 1990), 91–123. 65 See Kinzelbach, Gesundbleiben, 260; an example for the connection of religious

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Wangen and Überlingen alike took prophylactic measures to prevent epidemics by improving healthcare and by forcing the citizens to live proper Christian lives. Frank Hatje called this “religious prophylaxis.”66 The policy was based on the firm belief that political authority came not only from the Emperor but also from God. Thus councillors felt a religious as well as a worldly responsibility for the welfare of the entire Christian community.67 It was no longer possible to delegate this responsibility to the church.68 Thus poor relief was not secularised but rather laicised, that is, controlled by laymen. The acquisition of patronage over the parish churches in Überlingen (1557) and Wangen (1608) by the City Council of each concluded a development that started long before the Reformation and confirmed the authority of those councils as a “Christian government.”69 Religious motivation continued to provide the moral basis of the whole system, however. Even though economical and political reflections influenced the decisions of city councillors and normal citizens, comforting the poor and the sick remained a Christian obligation that everyone felt. In this regard there was no significant difference between Catholic and Protestant.70 Health care and poor relief were organized similarly in both.71 Such differences in theoretical

hope and gouvernmental action can be seen in the contract with a physician in Wangnen. See StA Wa, Bestand Ia V m Medizinalwesen: “Bestallung in Sterbleuffen Gemainer Statt Wangen gegen M. Balthus Spiltzen Arzet und Burgern daselbst zu Wangen,” April 14, 1595: “. . . auf den fall wa die beschwerliche kranckhait oder Seuch der Pestilenz regieren sollte (der allmechtige wolle solliches gnedig verhieten) zur nottürfftiger cur, versehung vnnd warthung der Infizierten Personen zur ainem Bestallung.” 66 “Die Hauptform der kollektiven prophylaxis theologica stellen freilich Messen und Gottesdienste dar. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die Reformation keinen wesentlichen Einschnitt bedeutet.” Frank Hatje, Leben und Sterben im Zeitalter der Pest (Basel, 1992), 60. 67 The same position of the urban authority can be found in Zurich. See Lee Palmer Wandel, Always among Us: Images of the Poor in Zwingli’s Zurich (Cambridge, 1990), 170–78. 68 See for a general overview Jörg Rogge, Für den Gemeinen Nutzen. Politikverständnis von Rat und Bürgerschaft in Augsburg im Spätmittelalter (Tübingen, 1996), 179–83. 69 Enderle, Konfessionalisierung, 207–18; Scheurle, Wangen, 130. The city councils acted like the princes and nobels of that time. See Friedrich Battenberg, “Obrigkeitliche Sozialpolitik und Gesetzgebung. Einige Gedanken zu mittelrheinischen Bettel- und Almosenordnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 1 (1991): 33–70. 70 Other surveys came to the same result, see: Ulrich Knefelkamp, “Sozialdisziplinierung oder Armenfürsorge? Untersuchungen zu normativen Quellen in Bamberg und Nürnberg vom 14. bis zum 17. Jahrhundert,” in Helmut Bräuer and Elke Schlenkrich, eds., Die Stadt als Kommunikationsraum (Leipzig, 2001), 515–33. 71 Grell did not make a comparison to Catholic cities of a similar size when he says that “the speed was faster and the changes far more radical in Protestant areas.” See Ole Peter Grell, “The Protestant Imperative of Christian Care and Neighbourly Love” in Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500–1700 (London, 1997), 48. Grell did not make a comparison to Catholic cities of a similar size when he says that “the speed was faster and the changes far more radical in Protestant areas.”

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treatises or established organization of the time should not distract from the essential likeness among the Imperial cities of southern Germany in the sixteenth century. Coping with the challenges of poverty and disease took priority over confessional differences. Councillors of different cities worked together across confessional lines, therefore, to improve the regulation and provision of healthcare and poor relief and developed similar programs and institutions despite their different denominations.72 There is no doubt that the Reformation changed many things, but the basic changes in poor relief and health care were far more influenced by the practical concerns of urban magistrates, who felt responsible for the welfare of their communities.

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Munck, Medizinalwesen, 32–46.

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REFASHIONING POOR RELIEF EARLY MODERN EMDEN

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Timothy G. Fehler

T

he sixteenth century, which brought about such “a radical departure from the beaten paths of medieval charity,” has begged closer analysis of its new charitable institutions and impulses.1 Of course, change is almost always easier to describe than to explain, and the central place of religious changes in the sixteenth century has only complicated the explanation of developments in poor relief. Until the mid-twentieth century, confessionally based interpretations dominated the discussion of social welfare reforms.2 Robert Jütte summarized the outpouring of research of the past several decades that has demonstrated the flaws in assuming a direct link between Luther’s theological and social reforms of the sixteenth century: “We have shown that the Reformation created neither the communal nor the governmental system of poor relief, since both had their counterparts in Catholic countries.”3 In response to this recent emphasis on socio-economic causes, Ole Peter Grell has made an urgent call for a revisionist interpretation of the socio-economic explanation that will “reinsert” the Reformation into the story: “Without the Reformation the centralization and increased accountability of poor relief which took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would have been unimaginable.”4

Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994), 2. e.g., Otto Winckelmann, “Die Armenordnungen von Nürnberg (1522), Kitzingen (1523), Regensburg (1523) und Ypern (1525),” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 10 (1912–13): 242–72; idem, “Über die ältesten Armenordnungen der Reformationszeit (1522–25), Historische Vierteljahrschrift 17 (1914/15): 187–228, 361–440; Franz Ehrle, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Reform der Armenpflege (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1881); idem, “Die Armenordnungen von Nürnberg (1522) und von Ypern (1525),” Historisches Jahrbuch 9 (1888): 450–79; Georg Ratzinger, Geschichte der Armenpflege, 2nd ed. (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1884); Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. by Olive Wyon (New York, 1931), I: 133–38, II: 557–67. 3 Jütte, Poverty and Deviance, 108. 4 Ole Peter Grell, “The Religious Duty of Care and the Social Need for Control in Early Modern Europe,” The Historical Journal 39 (1996): 263; idem, “The Protestant 1 2

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This examination of Emden’s system of poor relief illustrates the need to avoid polarities. The development of Protestantism certainly influenced the course of Emden’s social welfare legislation and institutions, but the new Reformation ideology was not sufficient to bring practical innovations in Emden’s poor relief. If we look carefully, we may gain a more nuanced understanding of the interaction of the religious and socio-economic catalysts that helped modify Emden’s social welfare system. Religious controversies of the early Reformation occurred in Emden well before the town underwent dramatic social-economic transitions. Yet, the rapid social and economic change of mid-century, triggered by the arrival of thousands of Calvinist-leaning refugees, altered the course both of the Reformation and of the organization of poor relief. During the course of the sixteenth century, the northern German port town of Emden leapt from political and economic obscurity to become one of the most important shipping centers in northern Europe. The shipping capacity of its fleet of registered ships in 1570 surpassed perhaps even that of the entire kingdom of England.5 Rapid social, political, and economic changes occurred at the same time as major religious changes, and the sphere of Emden’s intellectual, economic, and political connections grew dramatically.6 Protestant preaching reached Emden in the early 1520s, and by 1529 the ruler issued Lutheran-inspired church ordinances to restructure the church in the town and surrounding territory. Additional religious changes began around mid-century when the city was flooded with tens of thousands of refugees from the Dutch revolt; Emden earned the moniker “Mother Church” for the struggling Protestant congregations in the neighboring Netherlands. During the last half of the sixteenth century, the Emden church underwent a process that Heinz Schilling has described as “Calvinization,” and the city won from its count in 1595 the unique right within the Holy Roman Empire to maintain a Calvinist religious settlement. The (ultimately) Calvinist city of Emden provides a rich opportunity to probe the relative composition of secular and religious concerns in shaping poor relief at the local level. Emden’s social welfare system also underwent periods of massive growth and change during this century of social, economic, and religious conflict. This essay will examine continuity and change over the course of the sixteenth century by investigating four phenomena in Emden’s early modern social welfare evolution: first, the place of poor relief in the territory’s first Reformation-era

Imperative of Christian Care and Neighbourly Love,” in Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500–1700 (London, 1997), 51. 5 Bernd Hagedorn, Ostfrieslands Handel und Schiffahrt im 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1910), 251. 6 Heinz Schilling, Civic Calvinism in Northwestern Germany and the Netherlands (Kirksville, Mo., 1991), 21.

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church ordinances; second, the survival of Catholic institutional forms of charity in Protestant Emden; third, the need to expel the friars from the local monastery to transform it into a hospital; and finally, the difficulty in establishing a particular “Reformed” charitable endeavor as the city became Calvinist. Emden’s approach to poor relief offers striking evidence of the interdependence of political, economic, social, civic, and ecclesiastical factors in early modern Europe. I. Territorial Church Ordinances A relaxed policy of religious supervision in the territory of East Frisia ended with the death of Count Edzard I in 1528. His twenty-three-year-old son Enno attempted to bring order and unity to an East Frisian religious scene comprised of Catholics, Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Anabaptists. After consultation with Johann Bugenhagen, Luther’s friend and collaborator, and the Lutheran ministers of Bremen, Johann Timann, and Johann Pelt, Count Enno issued a church ordinance for his entire territory on 13 December 1529.7 Nevertheless, these Lutheran territorial ordinances faced resistance from some urban ministers and sacramentarians, for whom the territory also had a reputation as a haven.8 Count Enno solidified these ordinances with further Lutheran church ordinances in 1535.9 In addition to the many theological and ceremonial discussions contained in the territorial church regulations, the 1529 church ordinance presented the first general, albeit short and undetailed, instructions for the financing of a system of poor relief in East Frisia.10 These first Reformation church ordinances reflected the traditional East Frisian manner of self-administration that had developed in the medieval church

7 The ordinance is edited in Emil Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, Volume VII: Niedersachsen, second half: Die außerwelfischen Lande, first halfvolume (Tübingen, 1963), 360–72; see also the introduction by Anneliese SprenglerRuppenthal, pages 316–18. 8 Letter of Count Enno to Landgrave Philip of Hesse (25 March 1530): Staatsarchiv Marburg, Politisches Archiv des Landgrafen Philipp Nr. 2377; a portion is quoted by Sprengler-Ruppenthal in Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 317–18, note 51. For Luther’s 1531 complaint of sacramentarianism in East Frisia: D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe: Briefwechsel, Vol. VI (Weimar, 1935), 16. 9 Facing military threats of recatholization from outside forces, Count Enno requested in 1535 ministers from the Duke of Lüneburg, who had implemented a conservative Lutheran Reformation in his territory, to help bring order to the church institutions in East Frisia, condemn variant teachings on the sacraments, and hence reduce Catholic claims of religious disorder; Menno Smid, Ostfriesische Kirchengeschichte, (Pewsum, 1974), 146; Sprengler-Ruppenthal, in Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 318–19; Heinrich Schmidt, Politische Geschichte Ostfrieslands (Leer, 1975), 174–76; Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 361, 376. 10 Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 366–68. “On the Beggars,” the ninth topic in the 1529 church ordinance, began the short discussion on the support of the poor in East Frisia.

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polity, namely through individual communities or parishes.11 Following the traditional, decentralized organization, the new church order confirmed that each parish was responsible for the care of its own poor, both in determining need and financing relief. Unlike Bugenhagen’s church ordinances for Braunschweig and for Hamburg, which served as models for East Frisia’s 1529 church ordinance, Enno’s regulations lacked detail both in outlining the system of relief as well as in providing theological discourses elucidating the social welfare changes.12 Both Braunschweig and Hamburg established a “common chest” for the care of their poor, and Bugenhagen’s ordinances provided thorough descriptions of which poor should be supported, why they should be supported, and how the “common chest” should be administered. Such explicit poor relief considerations, however, are notable by their absence in Count Enno’s ordinances. Count Enno established no “common chest” (a typical Protestant change)13 into which some proceeds from his dissolution of the monastic properties would return to cover parish expenses.14 Instead, continuity was maintained in East Frisia, but now with new “administrators of the poor” using traditional methods to supervise charity. Count Enno delegated the implementation of poor relief administration to newly elected men in each parish and admonished them to use creativity in support of the poor. Each parish elected its own supervisors of the poor whose qualifications included that they be godly, God-fearing and not of ill-repute, in addition to being clever or capable and able to “understand the poor.” The 1529 church ordinance specified that each parish elect two such men, whereas the subsequent ordinance of 1535 referred indefinitely to “a few” or “some.”15 The

11

On the development of communal self-administration in the medieval East Frisian churches, see Smid, Ostfriesische Kirchengeschichte, 25–81; idem, “Zur Geschichte und Bedeutung des Ostfriesischen Interessentenwahlrechts,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für niedersächsische Kirchengeschichte 68 (1970): 39–58; Gerda Krüger, Der münsterische Archidiakonat Friesland in seinem Ursprung und seiner rechtsgeschichtlichen Entwicklung bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters (Hildesheim, 1925); D. Kurze, Pfarrwahlen im Mittelalter (Cologne, 1966), 319. 12 The Braunschweig church ordinance of 1528 is in Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, Vol. VI, Bk. 1 (Tübingen, 1955), 348–455 (dealing with poor relief, pages 445–55); the Hamburg church ordinance of 1529 is in Sehling, Vol. V (Leipzig, 1913), 488–540 (dealing with poor relief, pages 531–40). 13 Robert Jütte has made the blanket assertion, “All the Protestant systems of poor relief had certain points in common: all were based upon the idea of a ‘common chest,’ which was financed by funds that were taken from the formerly Catholic hospitals and charitable institutions, from monastic properties, from gifts and endowments, and from the current collections in the Church.” Poverty and Deviance, 105–6. 14 For an interesting contemporary reference to the parish financial problems caused by the Count’s elimination of traditional sources of income for the parishes after the Reformation can be seen in Emden’s church account book: Liber Expensarum 1572–95; Johannes A Lasco Bibliothek, Archive no. 364, 4. 15 The first reference to the actual existence of these “supervisors of the poor” in

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use in the 1535 church ordinance of the category “church officers” to signify only “pastors, chaplains, schoolmasters, and sextons,” and not the new supervisors of the poor, implies that these charity administrators were to come from outside the traditional positions of leadership in the church.16 The method of raising money ordered by Count Enno was based on the traditional medieval Frisian practice of supporting the community’s priests and worship services, the huusdelinge.17 The new regulations instructed that half of this revenue was now to go to the pastor and half to the poor.18 In order to illustrate how further to support the poor, the church ordinances described the practices of the recently forbidden mendicant friars in East Frisia.19 Just as the mendicants had their “terminei” or districts where they possessed the right to collect alms (especially bread, cheese, sausage, etc.), the two newly elected men were now to circulate through their parish “as often in the year as they think it to be useful” in order to collect “bread and other sustenance” for the poor: “We are without doubt,” wrote the count, “that our people, out of Christian love, will indeed know their duty and, each according to his ability, will not deny their help to the poor.” Yet, if the number of beggars in the parish was large and the mandatory and voluntary contributions proved insufficient to their maintenance, the two men should approach the churchwardens, and if anything at all was left over from the church goods, it should be bestowed on the poor.20 Bugenhagen’s ordinances for the previously mentioned two northern cities, especially those of Hamburg, also regulated the local hospitals and confraternities in their care of the poor, but the East Frisian ordinance made no men-

Emden is in a contract from 9 March 1532; Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv Aurich, Rep. 234: Emden Kontrakten-Protokolle 2/179v; hereafter cited as EKP. 16 This list of church officers occurs several times in the church ordinance; Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 389). 17 According to church regulations in the Emsland, in the huusdelinge “the people, [both] poor and rich, according to their means” provided donations to their priests at regular intervals; see section five of the late-medieval Emsgauer Sendrecht, in Conrad Borchling, ed., Die niederdeutschen Rechtsquellen Ostfrieslands, Vol. I (Aurich, 1908), 134–35. Compare also K. von Richthofen, Friesische Rechtsquellen (Berlin, 1840), 406–8, 484; Smid, Ostfriesische Kirchengeschichte, 44–51. 18 Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 366. 19 Very early in his reign, Count Enno began a dissolution of the East Frisian monasteries with the confiscation of the properties and church goods entering into his coffers. Due to the reforms of the Fransiscan monastery in Faldern/Emden during the last two decades of the fifteenth century and the introduction of the very strict rule of the Franciscan Observants in 1498 (including the ban on the ownership of earthly goods), Count Edzard I had received certain ownership rights for the Faldern monastery at the turn of the century. These reforms perhaps help explain why the “Observanten toe Embden” were granted an exemption in the 1529 church ordinance and allowed to continue a private existence. See Smid, Ostfriesische Kirchengeschichte, 105, 137; Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 367, 370–71. 20 Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 367.

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tion of the hospitals (locally called Gasthäuser) or confraternities in the territory. Thus, despite Enno’s utilization of the distinctly Lutheran church ordinances of Braunschweig and Hamburg as models for theological matters in the East Frisian church ordinance, these prototypes seem not to have influenced Count Enno’s poor relief strategies in East Frisia, and the “common chest” system of social welfare, normally considered a “Lutheran” hallmark, was not implemented in Emden or East Frisia. Apparently social conditions in East Frisia did not require the same “reformation” that the count was establishing for his churches. II. The Confraternal Legacy If a sow were made the patron saint of such a brotherhood she would not consent. Why then do they afflict the dear saints so miserably by taking their names in vain in such shameful practices and sins, and by dishonoring and blaspheming with such evil practices the brotherhoods named after these saints?21

Martin Luther went on in his 1519 sermon on brotherhoods to describe these “shameful practices” of confraternities, including gluttony, drunkenness, and an evil “spiritual nature.” Only charitable activities were worthy of continuance. Protestant polemics aside, the introduction of the Protestant Reformation did not necessarily result in immediate large-scale changes in local confraternities or many other traditional religious activities. Confraternal administrative changes and increased centralization often occurred before the introduction of Protestantism and in non-Protestant areas, as has been clearly established by Brian Tierney, Nicholas Terpstra, and others.22 What is perhaps most interesting is that we find the survival of religious brotherhoods in Emden for as much as three decades after the introduction of Protestantism. Only when the city was faced with extreme social and economic strains in the middle of the sixteenth century—brought about by the effects of the revolt in the neighboring Netherlands—did the confraternities lose their spiritual functions and evolve into solely charitable brotherhoods.23

21

From Martin Luther’s 1519 “Sermon on the Blessed Sacrament of the Body of Christ and the Brotherhoods,” in D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar, 1884), Vol. II, 754–55; translation taken from Helmut Lehman, ed., Luther’s Works (Philadelphia, 1960), Vol. XXXV, 67–68. 22 e.g., Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State to 1620 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971); Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge, 1995); see also David D’Andrea’s essay in this volume. 23 As mentioned above, the Lutheran church ordinances in 1529 and 1535 made no reference to the confraternities. Countess Anna’s territorial Police Ordinance of 1545 addressed the problems of gluttony and drunkenness, and instructed “the shippers and all other trades and guilds” in Emden to “correct” their regulations so that the poor were not forgotten. In particular, all the “useless expenses” of the confraternities and

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There seems to have been no significant change in the composition of Emden’s confraternities after the Reformation. At least two of Emden’s five confraternities, St. Ann’s and Our Lady’s, continued receiving new members for a time and apparently continued their spiritual activities under the auspices of the local monastery’s exemption from the prohibition of the Mass in the rest of the territory.24 Additional evidence reveals administrative continuity in Emden’s confraternities. There was no noticeable break in the pattern of service among confraternities’ administrators around the time of the Reformation.25 We find administrators who began their service before the Reformation and continued for many years thereafter, while additional new administrators began their service after the Reformation. There was also no break in the lending activities of the confraternities, which continued to use their large endowments and capital to make loans.26 Moreover, Emden’s confraternities did not immediately abandon the spiritual activities that motivated their foundations. Even more than a decade after the prohibition of the Mass, donors can still be found using the phrase “to the salvation of their souls” in testaments.27 The “reformation” of Emden’s traditional confraternal activities did not occur uniformly, and some confraternities continued their activities for as much as thirty-five years after the introduction of Protestantism.28 Finally, by the mid-1550s, as Protestant theology and the accepguilds were to be eliminated and the money given instead “on behalf of the poor”; Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 406–7. 24 This is in contrast to the situation in Protestant Lübeck where some of the wealthier brotherhoods survived, but only to distribute alms to the poor. They stopped taking new members, and only a board of directors remained to administer their assets; Monica Zmyslony, Die Bruderschaften in Lübeck bis zur Reformation (Kiel, 1977), 153. 25 On Emden’s confraternities before and after the Reformation, see Timothy Fehler, “Social Welfare in Early Modern Emden,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1995), 84–131, 219–36. 26 Many of the surviving records of confraternal loans are associated with the purchase of a house or other property. The typical interest rate was 6 percent, and the borrowers often financed most or all of the purchase price of the property. The lone confraternity for which membership rolls survive, Our Lady’s Confraternity, made many of its loans to members (and occasionally administrators) of the confraternity, who seem to have gotten first choice for these loans. The only significant shift in the loan-making activities during the early sixteenth century was in the terminology of the contracts: through the mid-1520s the interest payments of most confraternal loans were made to the “use of the brotherhood,” whereas after about 1525 phrases such as “to the use of the common poor who for the time receive alms from [the confraternity] according to God’s will” or “to the use of and on behalf of the poor who are being fed there” became the norm; e.g., EKP 1/208v, 1/192, 1/232v, 1/252, 1/252v, 2/4v, 2/9, 2/63, 2/559, 2/581. 27 e.g., EKP 2/569 (1541). 28 For example, St. Anthony’s confraternity, the sole confraternity with a parish priest in its administration, was the first obviously affected by the prohibition of the Catholic mass; the parish church absorbed its assets and administration. Our Lady’s and St. Ann’s, on the other hand, were able to survive at least 25 and 35 years, respectively,

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tance of the legal prohibitions of the Mass became customary among most town folk, the confraternities had lost their spiritual functions. The remaining confraternities were dissolved, and their assets were merged into St. Clement’s shippers’ confraternity, which now modified its charter.29 The fact that the shippers’ brotherhood was allowed to survive reflects the central role that the harbor and the seafaring professions played in Emden’s social and economic development. In the reorganization of social welfare, the town wisely maintained the institution that had traditionally provided assistance to its most important trades. Although Emden’s social welfare system ultimately took on Reformed Protestant forms with ecclesiastical poor relief officers called deacons who dominated the charitable activities, the pattern of Emden’s reform was not inherently Protestant: it responded to economic exigencies and maintained much continuity with traditional institutions. The successful activities of the medieval lay hospital (Gasthaus)30 and confraternities enabled them to survive the early Reformation decades relatively unscathed; the confraternities continued their spiritual activities and the hospital’s endowments were not confiscated by the ruler along with the other seized ecclesiastical properties after the shift to Lutheranism. III. The Dissolution of the Monastery Unlike the several dozen other East Frisian monasteries and convents that were dissolved by Count Enno, the Franciscan monastery in Emden’s suburbs (Faldern) was not secularized by the count when he officially mandated Protestantism in his territory after 1529.31 Eventually, Emden’s medieval lay-operated hospital, St. Gertrude’s Gasthaus, moved into the old monastery complex of the Franciscans, who were finally expelled in 1557. Earlier attempts to expel the friars on religious grounds had failed; a social and economic crisis finally forced the ruler to proscribe Emden’s last Catholic institution. The fate of the house was also affected by the fact that the few remaining elderly friars were becoming less effective in providing charity. Despite this centralization of resources, the hospital retained both its independence and its large endowment from its preReformation days.32

after the introduction of Protestantism, probably because of connections with the monastery, whose friars were not expelled until 1557; see, EKP 2/559, 2/581. 29 Originally founded as a confraternity for shippers and merchants to provide spiritual assistance to its members, St. Clement’s evolved into a poor relief brotherhood in the latter sixteenth century, newly chartered to assist the families of its members and those who lost their goods or relatives at sea. Emden’s Clementiner Brotherhood still survives to this date. On the difficulty of dating the confraternities’ mergers exactly, see Fehler, “Social Welfare,” 231–34. 30 Gasthaus was a term used for hospitals in this area and along the Frisian coast of the Netherlands. 31 See note 19 above. 32 Unlike Geneva’s Hôpital-général, the Gasthaus was not taken over by the city.

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During Johannes a Lasco’s tenure as Superintendent of East Frisia’s churches in the mid-1540s, he had sought to expel the Franciscans.33 Lasco was sorely disappointed with the level of church discipline in the city when he arrived. In addition to the foothold that Anabaptists had in Emden, Lasco was concerned that too many citizens and “most of the city council” were still entangled in “the old superstitions.” He placed much of the blame for this on the “wicked practices of the friars in the Franciscan cloister” and wanted to put an end to their influence in the town. Despite his anger that the friars were still tolerated in the city, even after the Protestant Reformation, he could not get Countess Anna’s approval for their expulsion. Lasco did receive her authorization to order the friars to stop their public activities in the town: baptizing children, visiting the sick, and writing testaments.34 In the mid 1550s, the town experienced a significant increase in refugees and transients as Emden’s reputation as a refuge spread. Thus, by 1555, the local charitable institutions had problems providing adequate space to care for the increased numbers of poor. At the end of April 1555, Countess Anna sent her advisor to meet with the friars in the Franciscan monastery in an attempt to buy a portion of their convent to use for the poor of the town. The number of resident friars had been declining since the Reformation, and they apparently had unused space available in their monastery. They were fearful, however, of giving up any portion of their monastery and thereby ultimately losing the whole.35 After two years of negotiations and stalling by the Franciscans, the friars lost their fight. Countess Anna sent an “open letter,” explaining why she was seizing the monastery.36 In the face of her decision against the friars, she felt it necessary to emphasize that the friars had lived uprightly and were not being driven out on account of misbehavior. Rather, Anna justified the seizure “to the advancement of the glory of God and according to the opportunity of the common use and emergency needs of this city” and asked that the friars “depart from here with honor and good will.” The countess did not cite religious or confessional grounds for the expulsion. Her stated reasons for the appropriation of the Franciscan cloister were the town’s dramatic social evolution, tremendous population explosion, and shortage of adequate housing, because “our town Emden daily multiplies and takes in to itself, both rich and poor out of other and foreign lands.” The properties of the Franciscan monastery were now

33 Countess Anna had called Lasco to East Frisia in order to further the reformation of the territorial churches. Cf. Henning Jürgens, Johannes a Lasco in Ostfrielsand: Der Werdegang eines europäischen Reformators (Tübingen, 2002). 34 Ubbo Emmius, Rerum Frisicarum Historia, Vol. LIX (Leiden, 1616), 916–17; Joachim Christian Ihering, Ausführliche Kirchen-Historie von Ostfriesland (ca. 1710), Vol. II, fol. 220v (manuscript in Staatsarchiv Aurich, Rep. 135, no. 147), fols. 219v–225. 35 Staatsarchiv Aurich, Rep. 135, no. 12, fols. 1–2; his later report on fols. 5–6. 36 Staatsarchiv Aurich, Rep. 135, no. 12, fols. 3–4.

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to be used as a new parish church and cemetery, and also as a school, hospital and orphanage. The friars wanted to stay in the Faldern monastery, and they attempted to remain for a while. By the summer of 1557, however, the situation had worsened so much with refugees and inflation that the administrators of the poor needed the whole monastery. In August 1557, the five remaining friars wrote to Anna and acknowledged that they would be leaving their already reduced quarters.37 Their monastery had by now been partially converted to a Gasthaus “through the manifold emergency and the multiplication of the people and poverty of the city.” The friars hoped that “it did not occur out of our fault or crime, but is rather out of emergency as stated.” The countess was no proponent of monasticism, but poor relief exigencies were required to convince her to seize the monastery. Despite previous appeals to the countess to expel the Franciscans on the grounds of Protestant theology, of which she was openly a supporter, her delayed expulsion mandate referred publicly to the current economic emergency only. IV. The Experiment With the Deacons of the “Household of Faith” The 1550s witnessed both the reorganization of existing facilities and the establishment of three genuinely new institutions. One civic innovation was the “grain reserve” initiated in 1557 by several Emden citizens in response to inflation caused by demographic pressures and two years of bad harvests. This private enterprise thereafter maintained a stockpile to be provided at low prices in times of need. The use of lay deacons, one of Calvin’s four church offices, as the administrators of the other two new charitable institutions indicates the extent that Reformed Protestant theology had begun to shape the organization of the city’s poor relief after mid-century.38 A special diaconate of the foreign poor was created around 1554, enabling the wealthier Dutch refugees to finance and administer assistance for thousands of their poorer compatriots. By absorbing a great deal of financial pressure, the foreign (so-called fremdlingen) deacons made it politically and socially tolerable for Emden to accept so many Dutch refugees, and the city profited greatly from the additional mercantile activities they generated.39 While social and economic forces were the prime catalysts for

37

Stadtarchiv Emden, I. Reg., no. 423, fol. 2. The text of the letter is reprinted in Fehler, “Social Welfare,” 518 (Appendix IV/A). 38 For two excellent yet competing explanations of Calvin’s understanding of the diaconate, compare (for an institutional/practical explanation) Robert M. Kingdon, “Calvin’s Ideas about the Diaconate: Social or Theological in Origin?,” in Carter Lindberg, ed., Piety, Politics, and Ethics: Reformation Studies in Honor of George Wolfgang Forell (Kirksville, Mo., 1984), 167–80, and (for a theological/exegetical explanation) Elsie Anne McKee, John Calvin on the Diaconate and Liturgical Almsgiving (Geneva, 1984). 39 On the creation of a similar set of deacons, the so-called Bourse française, for French

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most of these developments, the formation of the third new institution reveals even deeper religious motives as well. In this period of crisis Emden’s already existing local (so-called haussitzenden) diaconate underwent a transformation. As the haussitzenden diaconate developed during the second quarter of the century, it had already grown to about two dozen deacons, with a hierarchical organization involving specialized duties, from the small number of “administrators of the poor” called for in the early church ordinances.40 The 1557 crises forced the deacons to review their use of resources as they faced mounting problems providing for the city’s poor.41 Some church leaders began to advocate the application of a Reformed theological conception, the “household of faith,” to questions of charitable provision. This ideal category distinguished between a pure church made up only of those who participated in communion (“the household”) and the wider community of the baptized.42 The Emden consistory decided in 1557 to establish a third diaconate, to augment the local (haussitzenden) and foreign/refugee (fremdlingen) deacons, in order to ensure that the poor “members of the household of faith” were adequately cared for. The original Reformed deacons (haussitzenden) would continue to care for the “common” poor of the city and church, but the consistory decided to elect three additional deacons to administer a fund for the “household of faith.”43 In this way, the poor of the congregation would not be left to beg but would be fully supported by the congregation according “to the command of God’s word and the nature of love.”44 The creation of this new diaconate of the “household of

refugees in Geneva in the 1540s, see Jeannine Olson, Calvin and Social Welfare: Deacons and the Bourse française (Selinsgrove, 1989), 29–36. 40 On the administrative evolution of the haussitzenden deacons, see Timothy Fehler, Poor Relief and Protestantism: The Evolution of Social Welfare in Sixteenth-Century Emden (Aldershot, 1999), 118–20, 155–64. 41 Heinz Schilling, ed., Die Kirchenratsprotokolle der Reformiertien Gemeinde Emden, 1557–1620, 2 vols. (Cologne, 1989–92), I: 1–2; hereafter cited as KRP. 42 Martin Bucer used the term “hausgnossen des glaubens” in November 1547 in reference to the members of the narrow congregation; Bucer, Mehrung götlicher gnaden und geists . . . (1547), fol. 91v, printed in Werner Bellardi, Die Geschichte der “Christlichen Gemeinschaft” in Straßburg (1546/1550). Der Versuch einer “zweiten Reformation” (Leipzig, 1934), 130. Johannes a Lasco’s church ordinances for his London congregation, Forma ac Ratio tota ecclesiastici Ministerii (1550), had instructed the deacons to distribute the alms conscientiously and wisely to the poor, “especially to the members of the household of faith.” See Abraham Kuyper, ed., Joannis a Lasco opera, Vol. II (Amsterdam, 1866), 78. Marten Micron’s 1554 Dutch translation: W. F. Dankbaar, ed., De christlicke Ordinancien der nederlantscher Ghemeinten te Londen (The Hague, 1956), 56. Micron’s 1565 German translation: Kirchenordnung . . . in der staat Londen in den niderlendischen gemeine Christi, Emil Sehling, ed., Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 597. 43 KPR, I: 12–13 (22 November 1557). For an analysis of the complete chronology and discussions which led to the creation of the Becken diaconate, see Fehler, “Social Welfare,” 261–78. 44 Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 461.

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faith” was based on Reformed theology and the belief that the people of God should not have to beg. As Emden’s church became more Reformed or Calvinist in the second half of the century, the consistory records reveal that church discipline and poor relief became closely connected. Supervision of the poor now involved not just control of moral behavior but also control of religious belief.45 In the attempts to promote and stabilize Reformed beliefs and practices, poor relief—especially that administered by the deacons of the “household of faith”—became an important tool with which the church could monitor its members and remove its dissidents. The new diaconate kept a close eye on the lowest social strata of the city, and was to ensure that the pious poor be cared for and that the congregation’s reputation be preserved.46 Although Emden’s diverse set of poor relief institutions was effective in helping the city avoid major social turmoil during the period of tremendous socioeconomic pressure, not everything ran smoothly during the two decades when the deacons of the “household of faith” existed. Stiff opposition came from the officers of the original diaconate, who did not approve of this theological distinction among the needy and delayed the introduction of the new diaconate. The elders and pastors in the consistory reported with disdain their decision in early 1558 to postpone their creation of the new diaconate: We do not want to create any strife among the other deacons who do not like to see that one should have special deacons for the poor of the congregation, even though they [the haussitzenden deacons] are unable to look after the poor.47

Additionally, once the new institution began to function officially, it found itself entangled in virtually perpetual disputes with the other deacons, especially about the distribution of charitable bequests and questions regarding their jurisdiction in specific social welfare cases.48 Surviving sources suggest that the deacons of the “household of faith” never gained widespread acceptance among the town’s population. Between 1558 and 1578, dozens of surviving wills specified support for local poor relief institutions (usually the haussitzenden deacons and/or the Gasthaus), while only a handful bequeathed money to the poor of the household of faith, and most of

45 See, for instance, the case of Jacob and Prone de Boer who had accepted alms from the local Anabaptists and would no longer be allowed relief from the Reformed deacons until they renounced their Anabaptist connections: KRP, I: 159 (22 February 1563). 46 Even as they considered creating the new diaconate, Emden’s church council dealt with numerous questions—both hypothetical and relating to specific congregational circumstances—involving poor relief and church discipline of church members; for instance, KRP, I: 28, 34. 47 KRP, I: 34–35. 48 Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 461–62.

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these latter testaments split their bequests between the household of faith and one of the other institutions for the “common” poor.49 Of course, one might be cynical about the extent to which the deacons of the household of faith should have expected donations from those who where not members of the communion congregation. Nevertheless, the pastors and deacons assumed that identification of such donations with only the “proper and most pious poor” would encourage broad donor support. Although the sample of surviving wills might be biased, the frustration of Emden’s ministers as the new diaconate was dissolved in 1578 corroborates our perception that many Emden testators favored the town’s traditional poor relief system rather than the new concept of the “pure” congregation.50 The ministers had failed to win large-scale support for the partition between the “deacons of the common, wild poor” (namely the haussitzenden) and the “deacons of the poor members of Christ” (the new household of faith). Because it lacked the established endowments that the older relief institutions possessed, the new diaconate ran into severe financial difficulties. These practical concerns, along with an apparent rejection of the religious category of “household of faith” among the poor, combined to motivate the dissolution of the diaconate of the “household of faith” and its merger with the original haussitzenden deacons in 1578.51 Here, once again, we discover the difficulties in attempting to separate sacred from secular concerns in early modern poor relief. The Emden citizenry largely accepted Reformed church discipline, and the town’s poor relief institutions typically implemented church discipline as a condition for receipt of alms during the second half of the sixteenth century; yet, a purely religious definition of the poor failed to secure extensive patronage. Conclusion Because both the late ancient and the early modern periods included dramatic religious and charitable changes, it is tempting to compare their respective revolutions in poor relief to understand the transformations. Despite the limitations of such analogies, Peter Brown’s recent study illustrates the complexity of circumstances involved in the poor relief revolution that accompanied the Christianization of the later Roman period.52 New religious perspectives in the fourth through sixth centuries brought new categories of the poor and new definitions of the bonds of society.53 All the same, Brown’s analysis precludes

49 For a list of all surviving references to these bequests, see Fehler, “Social welfare,” 387, note 143. 50 Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 461. 51 Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek, Emden, Archive no. 3001, fols. 23–27; Sehling, Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Vol. VII/2/1, 461–62. 52 Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover, 2002), 3–9, 75. 53 Ibid., 45–54, 69–70, 76.

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easy causal explanations and complicates our understanding of religiously inspired charity by pointing out that Christian preaching on the poor and founding of new charitable institutions was driven in part by the need to justify imperial tax exemptions.54 So, too, the case of Emden accentuates the need to study charity in its religious, economic, political, cultural, and municipal or regional contexts if we wish to understand the catalysts for change. Emden’s achievement in early modern poor relief was remarkable, both in terms of institutional variety and in the speed and effectiveness of response. During the second half of the sixteenth century, new poor relief forms were put into place which would last largely unchanged into the nineteenth century. Rather than being inherently Protestant, however, the pattern of reform responded more to specific socio-economic needs than to ideology, valued continuity with the traditional institutions, and combined the current religious (e.g. the Reformed diaconates) with civic (e.g. the citizen “committee of the grain reserve”) priorities. The confraternities and the monastery survived attacks by Protestant religious leaders until the socio-economic conditions created a social welfare crisis. Even the fascinating example of the “deacons of the household of faith,” whose creation was driven almost entirely by a Reformed theological concept, is an exception that proves the rule. Struggling with insufficient financial endowment and a lack of voluntary support, it remained but a temporary phenomenon. Many of the citizens viewed it not as a new institution created of economic necessity but as a theological invention, and despite their commitment to Reformed Protestantism and church discipline, most were more interested in charitable endeavors that cared for a larger segment of the civic community. Although Emden’s diverse system avoided tendencies toward centralization, the account books and organizational hierarchy of the deacons demonstrate the growing rationalization of Emden’s social welfare after the middle of the sixteenth century.55 Maintenance of church discipline and conformity was an important early activity of Reformed deacons, but Emden’s deacons maintained responsibility even for poor from outside Emden’s Reformed congregation. As other confessions were allowed into Emden, from the late seventeenth century onward, the haussitzenden deacons remained the largest and most organized poor relief administrators of the city, and much of Emden’s charitable activity was operated through the haussitzenden deacons regardless of confession of the donor or recipient. The investigation of Emden has demonstrated that the question of the Reformation’s role in poor relief provision provides few easy answers. Institutional poor relief change came relatively slowly. Even the institutions to which Luther’s doctrines of “justification by faith alone” and “priesthood of all believers” were so

54

Ibid., 31. Records for the both the haussitzenden and fremdlingen deacons survive and are housed in the archive of the Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek in Emden. 55

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inimical, namely Emden’s confraternities and monastery, survived for three decades after the Reformation. But when real institutional innovation came (largely under the pressure of immigration after 1550), the transformations were swift and the Reformation clearly affected the nature of the changes. The earliest impact of Protestantism can be seen most clearly in East Frisia’s Lutheran church ordinances, which omitted reform of poor relief provision in the territory, despite their alterations in church polity and liturgy. Of course, there is often a dramatic disconnect between the worlds of ordinances and of practical charitable provision. The church ordinances of Johannes Bugenhagen, Luther’s collaborator and a figure who for is put forward by historians and theologians as an important example of the Protestant imperative in poor relief, provide an important demonstration of the need for caution and restraint.56 For instance, his Ordinance for Lübeck (1531) called for the consolidation of the assets of all religious brotherhoods and hospitals into a common chest (Hauptkasten) to be administered by the fifteen oldest deacons of the city. These mandated reforms never fully took place in Lübeck, however.57 Continuity thwarted certain attempts at centralization in Emden, and religious conviction often took a backseat to socio-economic constraints in driving social welfare reform. Nevertheless, Emden’s poor relief provision, particularly that provided by the church’s deacons and the Gasthaus (each under a degree of civic oversight), became increasingly bureaucratic and rationalized over the course of the sixteenth century—yet, this occurred in ways that overly normative interpretations will miss. In the search for the intersection between prescriptive sources and practical charity, the difficulties of bringing ideology in line with practice become apparent.

56 For Ole Peter Grell’s discussion of Bugenhagen’s importance to the Protestant ideology of poor relief and health care provision, see his “Protestant imperative,” 52–59. See also Frank P. Lane, “Poverty and Poor Relief in the German Church Orders of Johann Bugenhagen 1485–1558” (Ph.D. diss, Ohio State University, 1973), 141–224. 57 Lübeck’s former confraternities continued as “private relief institutions under civic oversight” until 1846; Zmyslony, Bruderschaften in Lübeck, 153; Max Hasse, “Marie und die Heiligen im protestantischen Lübeck,” Nordelbingen 34 (1965): 72–81.

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he Protestant Reformation’s most direct influence on the development of poor relief in Holland was the introduction of the Reformed diaconate, the church office responsible for care of the needy in Calvinist congregations. By virtue of the Reformed Church’s privileged position in Dutch society, the diaconate became a central component of social provision as Reformed deacons served a large constituency in most every community. Highly acclaimed and widely criticized, the Reformed diaconate also became the most controversial charitable agency in Holland by the end of the sixteenth century. Calvinists hailed the diaconate as a return to the New Testament practice of providing Christian charity to the needy within “the household of faith.” Outside Calvinist circles, however, many thought otherwise. A Remonstrant critic claimed in 1645 that the establishment of diaconates had led “to a partitioning of Christians into sects that try to grow by attracting people with alms.”1 And an Amsterdam regent contended that deacons promoted inequity in the distribution of alms, since “church members receive a double portion while others have to do with much less.”2 Indeed, Catholics regularly complained that many poor abandoned the old faith for Reformed churches, which were only too eager to recruit them with alms.3 Thus, not only did Reformed Protestantism leave an indelible imprint on provisions for the poor throughout Holland, but controversies surrounding the diaconate were also emblematic of religious division in a multi-confessional society. Across sixteenth-century Europe changes in poor relief generated a great deal of discussion and debate, so it is fitting that scholars of this period should discuss and debate poor relief as much as they have. The relationship between

Johannes Uytenbogaert, Kerckelijcke historie (Rotterdam, 1647), 799. Cornelis Pieterszoon Hooft, Memoriën en adviesen (Utrecht, 1857), 54. 3 Het Utrechts Archief. Archieven van de Apostolische Vicarissen van de Hollandse Zending en hun Secretarissen 1579–1728, nr. 12, Katholieken te Goes to Sasbout Vosmeer, July 21, 1611 (hereafter cited as UA. Apostolische Vicarissen). 1 2

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the Reformation and poor relief has now moved through several historiographical cycles. From the early 1970s to the late 1990s, the prevailing view of poor relief in Europe attributed little substantial influence to the Reformation or to religious motivation in general for the dramatic innovations in social provision during the sixteenth century.4 This approach came out of the groundbreaking work of Natalie Davis on the aumône générale in Lyons and Brian Pullan on Venetian charitable institutions.5 To a large extent, Davis and Pullan were responding to long-standing confessional arguments by Lutherans and Catholics over the origin on poor relief reform. The primary debates had focused on the degree to which Protestantism, Catholicism, or humanism deserved credit for inaugurating reform: either Lutherans in the German territories or Catholics in the southern Low Countries or humanists in both areas.6 Davis argued that poor relief reform cut across confessional lines, while Pullan demonstrated that Venetians had put many of these reforms into practice long before the sixteenth century. Subsequent research has indeed confirmed that reform took root all over Western Europe, and that in many areas elements of this program had been implemented gradually over the course of the late Middle Ages.7

4 The major components of sixteenth-century poor relief reform included centralization of parish foundations and incomes, prohibition of begging, expansion of lay control, classification of the poor as “deserving” or “undeserving” of relief, and creation of work projects or institutions. 5 Natalie Zemon Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy in Sixteenth-Century Lyon,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975), 17–64; Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 198–215. Davis’s article was originally published in Past and Present in 1968. 6 For the Catholic position, see Franz Ehrle, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Reform der Armenpflege (1881); idem, “Die Armenordnungen von Nürnberg (1522) und von Ypern (1525),” Historisches Jahrbuch 9 (1888): 450–79; Georg Ratzinger, Geschichte der Armenpflege, 2nd ed. (1884). For the Catholic and humanist position, see P. Bonenfant, “Les origines et le charactère de la réforme de la bienfaisance publique aux Pays-Bas sous le règne de Charles-Quint,” Revue Belgique de Philologie et d’Histoire 5 (1926): 887–904; 6 (1927): 207–30. For the humanist position, see Henri Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, 7 vols. (Brussels, 1922–32), III, 288–90. For the Lutheran position, see Otto Winckelmann, “Über die ältesten Armenordnung der Reformationszeit,” Historische Vierteljahrschrift 17 (1914/ 1915): 361–440; Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2 vols., 2nd ed., trans. by Olive Wyon (New York, 1960), I: 133–38. For the Lutheran position in later twentieth-century historiography, see Harold Grimm, “Luther’s Contributions to Sixteenth-Century Organization of Poor Relief,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 61 (1970): 222–34; Carter Lindberg, “‘There Should be no Beggars among Christians’: Karlstadt, Luther, and the Origins of Protestant Poor Relief,” Church History 46 (1977): 313–34; idem, Beyond Charity: Reformation Initiatives for the Poor (Minneapolis, 1993); idem, “The Liturgy after the Liturgy: Welfare in the Early Reformation,” in Emily Albu Hanawalt and Carter Lindberg, eds., Through the Eye of a Needle: Judeo-Christian Roots of Social Welfare (Kirksville, Mo., 1994), 177–91. 7 Linda Martz, Poverty and Welfare in Hapsburg Spain: The Example of Toledo (Cambridge,

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It seemed, therefore, that the reform of poor relief really had little connection to the reformation of religion. Subsequently, the general pattern of scholarship examined the function of charitable institutions in the burgeoning capitalist economy and the disciplinary mechanisms in the administration of poor relief.8 Research on the diaconate and Reformed poor relief in the last ten years or so has corresponded to a new emphasis on the ways in which both Protestant and Catholic Reformations breathed fresh life into initiatives for the needy. Historians working in areas as diverse as Florence and Friesland are seeking to understand the renewed importance of charity within the regenerated piety of the post-Reformation period and the means by which religious reformers attempted to place their confessional stamp on social provision.9 Some historians have gone even further, echoing pre-1970s historiography, by making the case that the Reformation was a leading cause of centralization. The chief contention is that Protestantism led to an “increased accountability of poor relief,” without which reform “would have been unimaginable.” Consequently, this scholarship calls for an extensive reconsideration of the role of the Reformation welfare reform during the sixteenth century.10 In Holland, city authorities and church leaders fought out these disputes about the Reformation’s influence on poor relief at the end of the sixteenth century. Reformed leaders opposed centralization schemes that brought deacons under municipal control, whereas magistrates expected deacons to fulfill a function within the framework of municipal provision. Furthermore, the rather unusual political and religious settlement in the Netherlands, as well as the commercialization of the Dutch economy, enables us to examine the place of social

1983); Sandra Cavallo, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and their Motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge, 1995); Philip R. Gavitt, The Opsedale degli Innocenti, 1410–1536 (Ann Arbor, 1990); Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe, (Cambridge, 1994). 8 Davis, Poor Relief, 58–60. For two examples of these approaches, see (economic) Catharina Lis, and Hugo Soly, Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-industrial Europe (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1979) and (social discipline) Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York, 1977). 9 Raymond A. Mentzer, “Disciplina Nervus Ecclesiae: the Calvinist Reform of Morals at Nîmes,” Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987): 89–115; Lee Palmer Wandel, Always Among Us: Images of the Poor in Zwingli’s Zurich (Cambridge, 1991); Timothy G. Fehler, Poor Relief and Protestantism: The Evolution of Social Welfare in Emden (Aldershot, 1999); Charles H. Parker, The Reformation of Community: Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in Holland, 1572–1620 (Cambridge, 1998); Paul Slack, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999); Joke Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland 1500–1800: Publieke Zorg en Particuliere Liefdadigheid in zes Friese Steden (Hilversum, 1997); Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500–1700 (London, 1997); Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Jon Arrizabalaga, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe (London, 1999). 10 Grell, Protestant Europe, quote on 50, see also 3, 43–65.

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provision in a multi-confessional society.11 My research on poor relief in Holland has led me to three general conclusions that have application for an assessment of charity and welfare in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: 1) a fundamental notion of Christian community, influenced by both religious and secular motivations, drove charitable endeavors; 2) institutional arrangements depended on local power structures and were thus highly particularized; and 3) poor relief became an instrument of religious strife in areas contested by confessional groups. To begin, however, a brief sketch of the development of poor relief in Holland, it is necessary to understand the influence of Calvinism on social welfare in the post-Reformation period. Compared to the general European pattern, poor relief reform in Holland occurred very gradually over the course of the 1500s, culminating in dramatic changes at the end of the century. And, unlike the case of Lutheran cities in the 1520s or Puritan towns in the 1560s, the reorganization of welfare did not generally come immediately on the heels of Protestant, in this case Calvinist, ascendancy.12 Since the fourteenth century, parish relief networks and almshouses under the management of lay officials accountable to the magistracy had carried out social provision in Holland’s cities. For most of the sixteenth century, city governments simply made modifications to these foundations or their constituencies in response to changing economic circumstances.13 A recent study has called attention to the pragmatic considerations that guided orphanage administrators in Augsburg, an interpretation that holds true for city governments and lay officials in Holland. They were immensely practical, imposing restrictions and managing resources.14 Municipal governments consistently tried to restrict begging by prohibiting solicitation from non-residents and by stipulating the times and locations for residents to beg. Lay parish officials, known as either Heilige Geestmeesters or Huiszittenmeesters, who were accountable to the municipal government, managed outdoor relief, just as lay regents oversaw the network of almshouses that lodged the destitute, who either were too infirm to live at home or had no domicile. Parish officials drew from church revenues, tithes, gifts, duties, and collections to finance the works of charity. City governments and lay officials controlled access to all instruments of parish charity by imposing residency requirements at all points of entry. For most of the sixteenth century, then, no

11 The Reformed Church was the public church of the United Provinces, but not a state church in the customary sense. Church membership was voluntary and local officials often showed a deliberate indifference to the private worship of dissenting Protestant groups. 12 For the influence of Puritans on social welfare in English cities in the 1560s, see Slack, Improvement, 30. 13 Parker, Community, 48–59, 75–90. 14 Thomas Max Safley, Charity and Economy in the Orphanages of Early Modern Augsburg (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1997), 58–107.

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city government in Holland undertook any basic reorganization of its parish foundations. Rather, lay officials adapted to shifting social and economic circumstances so that parish charity remained well organized over the course of the sixteenth century.15 The transformation of parish establishments into a comprehensive municipal structure of provision began to take place in the 1570s in the six chief cities of Holland. The immediate motives in the shift to a more coordinated and centralized system for relieving poverty were economic. City governments had always expanded or restricted the scope of parish charity in response to economic changes and demographic needs by manipulating residency requirements. The late sixteenth century was a period of rapid economic transition in Holland as cities dependent on domestic manufacturing (Leiden, Haarlem, Delft, and Gouda) began to pull out of a protracted period of economic stagnation that had affected the textile and beer industries. Dordrecht and Amsterdam had largely escaped these difficulties because of their investment in inland and overseas commerce.16 City governments responded to changes in trade and industry, though there is some disagreement whether they acted in concert with the needs of a commercial economy or in response to hardship brought on by short-term volatility at the end of the century.17 This is important for understanding poor relief reform in Holland, since some historians have contended that the labor demands of a capitalistic economy necessitated robust instruments of charity to regulate the market for labor.18 While economic historians disagree over the timing and extent of the Dutch economic revival at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, my evidence indicates that economic distress was the major concern driving the reform of parish charity. Lingering contraction in the beer and textile industries, recurring outbreaks of the plague, coupled with the economic

Parker, Community, 75–80, 86–90. Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Economic Growth in the Golden Age: The Development of the Economy of Holland, 1500–1560,” in K. Davids and L. Noordegraaf, eds., The Dutch Economy in the Golden Age (Amsterdam, 1993), 6–11; L. Noordegraaf, Hollands Welvaren?: Levensstandaard in Holland 1450–1650 (Bergen, 1985), 15–27, 52–61; Leo Noordegraaf, “Dearth, Famine, and Social Policy in the Dutch Republic at the End of the Sixteenth Century,” in Peter Clark, ed., The European Crisis of the 1590s: Essays in Comparative History (London, 1985), 67–76; Hubert Nusteling, Welvaart en Werkgelegenheid in Amsterdam, 1540–1860 (Amsterdam, 1985), 126–30; N. W. Posthumus, De Geschiedenis van de Leidsche Lakenindustrie, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1939), II, 135. 17 Van Zanden, “Economic growth,” 9–11, and Noordegraaf, “Dearth,” 67–83, whereas Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude argue for a quick transition to a commercial economy. Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, Nederland 1500–1815: De Eerste Ronde van Moderne Economische Groei, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam, 1995), 420–42. 18 See Catharine Lis and Soly, Poverty and Capitalism; H. Soly, “Economische ontwikkeling en sociale politiek in Europa tijdens de overgang van middeleeuwen naar nieuwe tijden,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 88 (1975): 584–97. 15 16

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disruption and physical devastation of war, overwhelmed parish relief agencies and compelled city governments to look for new measures to alleviate poverty. In municipal ordinances, magistrates cited hardship and rising levels of poverty, justifying action to help feed the needy.19 Even in Amsterdam, the foremost entrepôt of northern Europe, economic success attracted thousands of destitute workers looking for jobs, which inundated parish charitable institutions.20 The only city that did not completely reorganize its charitable agencies was Dordrecht, and it was also the only city whose prosperity continued unabated in this period. After the States of Holland secularized church property in 1575, magistrates found new sources of revenue, selling off property or diverting incomes for relief. They also had to take into account the emergence of the diaconate, which Calvinist congregations were implementing in the 1570s. But the primary action taken by city governments during this period was to consolidate institutions and centralize them under a board of almoners accountable to the city government. Though it sometimes took cities years to complete the process of consolidation, it became finalized in Leiden in 1582, in Gouda in 1586, in Haarlem in 1597, in Amsterdam in 1598, and in Delft in 1614. The relationship of Reformed diaconates to municipal organizations varied significantly from one city to another.21 The initiatives taken by city governments and different confessional groups both before and after the Reformation point to pervasive notions of Christian community that characterized expressions of charity in late medieval and early modern Holland. Throughout this entire period, membership in a corporate body, such as a town, parish, guild, or congregation, was the critical factor in obtaining charity from that body. During the Middle Ages and for most of the sixteenth century, the salvific implications of good works and a sacral view of poverty shaped the cultural framework of charity in Holland.22 The operation of almshouses, for example, reflected the deep influence of the medieval church on parish charity. Benefactors routinely cited “the salvation of their souls” as motivation for making bequests, just as the works of mercy formed a common theme in artwork within almshouses. An inscription above the Old Almshouse in Delft declared the medieval adage, “Christus in pauperibus.” Further, religious from local monasteries often served the denizens of almshouses and celebrated

19 For several examples, see Gemeente Archief te Delft. Archief van de Vroedschap, Keurboek (hereafter cited as GAD. Keurboek), Vol. I, November 23, 1597, November 30, 1597, December 16, 1597, October 11, 1598, December 13, 1598. Christina Ligtenberg, Armezorg te Leiden tot het Einde van de 16e eeuw (’s-Gravenhage, 1908), 299–300. 20 J. G. C. A. Briels, Zuidnederlandse Immigratie in Amsterdam en Haarlem omstreeks 1572–1630 (Utrecht, 1976), 7–8; Johannes Isaac Pontanus, Historische Beschrijvinghe der seer wijt beroemde coop-stadt Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1614), 129. 21 Parker, Community, 90–96. 22 Adriaan H. Bredero, Christenhied en Christendom in de middeleeuwen: over de verhouding van godsdienst, kerk, en samenleving, 2nd ed. (Kampen, 1986), 277.

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Mass in adjoining chapels.23 By the sixteenth century, these attitudes had become interwoven within social provision for hundreds of years so that a genuine sense of Christian charity, combined with the pragmatic need to alleviate economic hardship, motivated urban elites to take responsibility for the poor. The concern of these elites, however, did not extend indiscriminately to all the poor, but rather to needy citizens and residents within the municipal community. Though medieval Christianity provided the loftiest rationale for charity, it was the ruling elites’ sense of responsibility and concern to maintain order that actually made poor relief functional. Invoking their prerogative as the “Christian government” or “Christian authority,” city magistrates regarded the welfare and order of the civic corporation as their charge.24 As a result, urban charity in Holland was not aimless, abstract or intangible, as some historians have claimed about pre-Reformation charity, but it served rich and poor with real needs in real ways.25 Magistrates tried to assure provision for members of the municipal community by establishing residency requirements to exclude outsiders and to prioritize care for insiders. Parish relief officers and almshouse regents did not just serve anyone willy-nilly, but all charitable institutions served a function within an overarching municipal structure of provision. As city governments overhauled parish institutions at the end of the sixteenth century, they did so out of concern for the municipal community and they appealed to their duty and right as the Christian authority. Thus for city governments, charity was a sacred obligation with a tangible purpose: to serve the Christian and civic community and to preserve the social order in it.26

23 P. H. J. van der Laan, Oorkondenboek van Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1975), 371; F. Allan, Geschiedenissen Bescrijving van Haarlem van de Vroegste Tijden tot Onze Dagen, 4 vols. (Haarlem, 1874; reprint ed., 1973), IV, 2–3; Ignatius Walvis, Beschryving der Stad Gouda, 2 vols. (Gouda, 1713), II, 157–58; D. P. Oosterbaan, Zeven eeuwen gescheidenis het Oude en Nieuwe Gasthuis te Delft (Delft, 1954), 51–63; Joke Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie, Stedelijke Cultuur en Kerkelijk Leven, 1577–1620 (The Hague, 1989), 63– 68. See also Sheila D. Muller, Charity in the Dutch Republic: Pictures of Rich and Poor for Charitable Institutions (Ann Arbor, 1985). 24 See Ligtenberg, Armezorg te Leiden, 299; GAD. Keurboek, Vol. I, September 19, 1577, April 27, 1578. The Amsterdam burgermaster, P. C. Hooft declared that “we should do justly for the widows, orphans . . . because we are the fathers of the burgers.” Hooft, Adviesen, 163. Thomas Safley has recently made the point that charity served the interests of elites by promoting order and mollifying the resentment of the poor. Given the penchant of Dutch regents to protect their prerogatives and privileges, it seems likely that charity served the same end in Holland. See Safley, Augsburg, 8. 25 The charge that Catholic charity only served the spiritual needs of donors was a staple of the older Protestant historiography taken up recently by Ole Peter Grell who claimed that “. . . Catholic charity . . . continued to be preoccupied with the salvation of the donor’s soul in particular, and to treat the poor as objects, even after the postTridentine reforms.” Grell, Protestant Europe, 51. 26 The conjunction of religious motivation and political power seems to be a characteristic of charitable enterprises in many areas of Europe. Sandra Cavallo argues that

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The exclusion of non-residents and elite actions on behalf of the municipal community raise fundamental questions about the extent to which parish charity was genuinely Christian in Holland. That is, the self-interest of city governments seems to stand in sharp relief to the Gospels’ demand of selfless service to others, especially to those in need. Since the medieval church promoted indiscriminate giving as a joyful response to divine love, does the approach of urban magistrates represent a retreat from Christian charity and a return to the type of civic self-centeredness that influenced social provision in the late Roman Empire?27 My reading of a variety of prescriptive evidence,28 such as municipal ordinances, almshouse and monastic charters, and testamentary bequests, leads me to conclude that urban elites believed themselves to be acting in concert with both their religious obligations to help the poor and their civic responsibilities to protect the welfare of the city.29 While these two principles might seem to stand in opposition, urban elites seem not to have recognized any dichotomy between the religious injunction to show mercy and the restriction of resources for members of the municipal community. Christian humanists in the Low Countries in the early sixteenth century argued that reorganizing charity along communal lines and making distinctions among those seeking alms would best serve the needs of the poor.30 For city magistrates in Holland, the municipal community circumscribed Christian charity. As Calvinist leaders began the process of selecting deacons and implementing Reformed poor relief in the 1570s, they also acted out of a deep commitment to the community. They ran into obstacles with city authorities in many areas, however, because the Dutch Calvinist conception of community and charity was not civic, but confessional. Though Dutch Calvinists did not oppose, given the right circumstances, assisting residents who were not members of the church,

“symbiosis between political power and religious initiative—or ‘civic religion’” was an important force in charity in Turin in the Late Middle Ages and the sixteenth century. Sandra Cavallo, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and their Motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge, 1995), 31. For similar views among scholars working in other areas of Europe, see Safley, Augsburg, 8; Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge, 1995), 205–16. 27 For the argument that a major shift in charity occurred as the Empire declined and Christianity emerged, see Peter Brown, Poverty and leadership in the later Roman Empire (Hanover, N.H., 2002). 28 Though prescriptive evidence cannot inform us how institutions functioned, it does point to intention, which is the point at issue here. Even if linguistic formulation (e.g., in a testament) was formulaic, the formula itself points to cultural constructions of intent and motivation. For my use of this evidence in a broader work, see Parker, Community, 20–64. 29 One primary objective mentioned in municipal ordinances was to safeguard resources from fraudulence by foreigners. Parker, Community, 57–59. 30 Juan Luis Vives, De subventione pauperum in F. R. Salter, ed., Some Early Tracts on Poor Relief (London, 1926), 6–22; Davis, “Poor Relief,” 59–64.

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their overriding priority was to help those within their confessional community or “the poor within the household of faith.” For Dutch Reformers, diaconal charity was a living manifestation of love among Christians “so that the poor member of our lord Christ might not be neglected,” as one minister put it.31 Viewing charitable giving as an expression of compassion for fellow believers in a confessional community marked a different motivation from the sense of civic obligation in municipal poor relief. In this regard Dutch Calvinists adopted the community-building spirit of Martin Bucer, John Calvin, and Johannes a Lasco. Bucer held that loving service to fellow believers was a hallmark of Christian community. Johannes a Lasco followed Bucer by teaching that assistance to the needy within the body of Christ was a sacred duty for church deacons.32 Dutch Calvinists considered the Reformed Church to be a church of gathered true believers set apart from the ecclesiastical corruptions and idolatry of their age. The exile experience of Dutch Reformers during the early Revolt against Spain bolstered this “sectarian tendency,” as Alastair Duke has called it.33 From 1566 to 1572, Calvinists fled Spanish persecution and formed refugee communities in Emden and London, and in the Palatinate. Observing diaconal practice in these communities, Dutch Calvinists found a working model of Reformed poor relief and consequently became influenced by a Lasco, the chief architect of these churches.34 The first national synod of the Dutch Reformed Church held in Emden in 1571 established the diaconate as the church office for the relief of poor members.35 It is significant that the Reformed diaconate came of age during the time of exile. For the exile experience shaped the religious identity of the first generation of Dutch Reformers, the same ones who formulated the diaconate and implanted it in Holland. Exile, migration, and persecution reinforced their identity as an embattled confessional community set apart from local civic traditions and culture.36 As a result, in negotiations with city

31 Gemeente Archief te Delft. Archief van de Kerkeraad van de Nederlands Hermormd Gemeente, Verzameling van Arent Corneliszoon Crusius, nr. 100, Gebeden en Meditaties. 32 Martin Bucer, De regno Christi in Wilhelm Pauck, ed., Melanchthon and Bucer (Philadephia, 1969), 157–59; Wilhelm Bernoulli, Das diakonenamt bei J. a Lasco (Grifensee, 1951), 12–16. 33 Alastair Duke, “The Ambivalent Face of Calvinism in the Netherlands, 1561–1618,” in Menna Prestwich, ed., International Calvinism 1541–1715 (Oxford, 1985), 112–13. 34 Fehler, Emden, 109–53. 35 F. L. Rutgers, ed., Acta van de Nederlandse synoden der zestiende eeuw, (The Hague, 1889), 81. 36 Andrew Pettegree and Heiko Oberman have argued that the exile experience of Calvinist groups throughout Europe contributed to its international confessional outlook. Andrew Pettegree, “Exile and the Development of Reformed Protestantism,” paper presented at the Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference (Toronto, Ontario, October 28, 1994); Heiko Oberman, “Europe afflicta: The Reformation of the Refugees,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 83 (1992): 99.

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governments, Dutch Calvinist ministers doggedly pressed for a diaconate that would be able to assist church members without municipal oversight.37 Another reason that Dutch Calvinists refused to accept municipal control was their insistence on imposing their own brand of discipline on their poor relief operation. In order to protect the purity of the congregation, Dutch Reformers made discipline one of the three marks of a true church, compelling ministers and elders to exert enormous effort in regulating the moral behavior and doctrinal beliefs of church members.38 Having just survived the disorders of war and Spanish occupation, city governments were not too keen on a church body claiming the right to police a portion of the citizenry. For many magistrates, ecclesiastical discipline was a return to religious inquisition.39 Thus, the establishment of the Reformed diaconate in conjunction with the centralization of municipal welfare produced dual structures of poor relief, grounded in anti-thetical notions of Christian community. Beyond these two operations, the Reformation led to a further splintering of charity, and poor relief became a tool of confessional strife. Though documentation is uneven and meager, disenfranchised groups, namely Catholics and Mennonites, established their own networks of assistance. There is evidence that Mennonite deacons were quite active in Haarlem and Delft and that poor relief among the Waterlanders in Amsterdam was substantial.40 Distributed by churchwardens and funded by lay patrons, poor relief was provided regularly to the Catholic poor in their clandestine confessional communities throughout the Netherlands. In most cities the non-Reformed needy could receive aid from a municipal agency, and no diaconate ever demanded that a relief recipient join the Reformed Church. Catholics and Mennonites set up their own systems of poor relief because they believed, like Calvinists, that charity was integral to the workings of a Christian community and that they had a responsibility for their spiritual brothers and sisters. Because each confession necessarily regarded itself as the true church and rejected all others as sectarians, heretics

Parker, Community, 113–22. Parker, Community, 125–42; Herman Roodenburg, Onder censuur: De Kerkelijke tucht in de Gereformeerde Gemeente van Amsterdam, 1578–1700 (Hilversum, 1990), 105–45; Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht 1578–1620 (Oxford, 1995), 28–67. 39 Christine Kooi, “Pharisees and Hypocrites: A Public Debate over Church Discipline in Leiden, 1586,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 88 (1997): 1–21; J. C. Overvoorde, “Advies van Burgermeesters en gerecht van Leiden aan de Staten van Holland over de acta van de 1578 te Dordt gehouden,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 9 (1912): 117–49. 40 See Mary Susan Sprunger, “Rich Mennonites, Poor Mennonites: Economics and Theology in the Amsterdam Waterlander Congregation during the Golden Age,” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois, 1993). For a study in one Catholic relief network see, F. Smit, De fundaties van Sasbout en Pieter van der Dussen te Delft (1622–1752): Bijdrage tot de Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Armenzorg in de 17e en de 18e eeuw (Amersfoort, 1987). 37 38

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or idolaters, it was essential that each provide charity to the poor within their own community. Confessional groups also went to such lengths to maintain programs of assistance because they feared losing members to their religious rivals. Delft deacons complained in 1579 that Mennonites were trying to steal away members by offering them alms; they even offered to repay a loan one member had received from Mennonite deacons if she would return to the Reformed fold.41 In 1592, the Delft consistory admonished Margariet Brans for “forsaking Christ for a handful of goods” when she informed them she was leaving them for a Catholic community in the southern Netherlands.42 Likewise, a Catholic community in Goes urged the head of the Catholic mission in Holland to do more to provide assistance because many poor people were joining heretical churches for alms. And late in the seventeenth century lay Catholic leaders warned the hierarchy if it did not do more to help the poor in Groningen, no Catholics would be left there in a few years.43 These complaints from Catholics have led some to conclude that Calvinists used poor relief to recruit members, a charge that continues to have currency among some historians.44 The weight of the evidence in my view does not support this contention; nevertheless, it is undisputable that poor relief did become a tool of religious strife in the competition for souls in this multi-confessional society. The primary strife that occurs throughout municipal and Dutch Reformed Church records are struggles between city magistrates and Calvinist ministers over the relationship between the diaconate and municipal agencies. Since deeply held visions of Christian community shaped social provision in Holland, the negotiations were usually precarious and could be downright rancorous. Reformed church leaders wanted to retain ecclesiastical authority over the diaconate, whereas city governments carefully guarded their prerogatives.45 Furthermore, most magistrates were not keen on what they regarded as the overweening theocratic pretensions of Calvinist enthusiasts. The negotiations

41 Gemeente Archief te Delft. Archief van de Kerkeraad van de Nederlands Hervormed Gemeente, Handelingen van de Algemene Kerkeraad, (hereafter cited as GAD. Kerkeraad) January 21, 1579. 42 GAD. Kerkeraad, July 27, 1592, August 10, 1592. 43 UA. Apostolische Vicarissen, Katholieken te Goes to Sasbout Vosmeer, nr. 12, July 21, 1611; nr. 232, Groningen Gemeente to Johannes van Neercassel, [July] 1685. 44 L. J. Rogier, Eenheid en Scheiding: Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 1477–1813 (Utrecht, 1968), 107. Though it is certainly clear that poor people did go to Reformed churches in hopes of receiving alms, most evidence suggests that church officers lacked the resources and motivation to recruit members with alms. Deacons and elders spent a good deal of their efforts trying to ferret out the unworthy rather than attracting nonmembers. Rogier’s influence can be seen on J. A. de Kok, Nederland op de breuklijn RomeReformatie (Assen, 1964), 11; A. Ph. F. Wouters and P. H. A. M. Abels, Nieuw en Ongezien: Kerk en Samenleving in de classis Delft en Delftland, 1572–1621, 2 vols. (Delft, 1994), II, 239; Roodenburg, Onder censuur, 112. 45 Parker, Community, 157–87.

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produced three organizational arrangements in the six major cities of Holland. One was for the municipal agency and the diaconate to divide relief along civic and church lines, so that deacons served poor church members and city officials cared for everyone else, as was the case in Amsterdam and Haarlem. Another settlement was for church deacons to take responsibility for assisting all the poor in the city, non-members as well as members, which occurred in Dordrecht and Delft (until 1614). A third outcome was for the city government to merge the diaconate into a municipal agency, the resolution in Leiden, Gouda, and ultimately Delft after 1614.46 For Calvinists, the most favorable settlements allowed church officers to manage poor relief without municipal interference. This took place in Dordrecht, Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Delft until 1614. In the case of the former, an overwhelming Calvinist presence in the city council and a staunchly confessional consistory worked together cooperatively. The city government in Dordrecht did not undertake any major municipal restructuring of parish relief but handed over virtually all social provision in the city to the deacons. Amsterdam and Haarlem had both strong support and strong opposition to confessional Calvinism in their city governments and the split arrangement between deacons and municipal agencies in these cities would have satisfied both sides. It allowed the deacons to serve the church poor and it protected the non-Reformed from Calvinist influence. The magistracy in Delft was largely supportive of the Reformed consistory. As a result, the city government permitted the Delft deacons to run their own affairs and occasionally gave them support, but in return they had to provide assistance to non-members, which consistently ran the diaconate in the red. The consistory is filled with complaints of having to look after so many poor, especially given the deacons’ meager financial means. In the early seventeenth century, the Delft magistracy became increasingly composed of regents who were less sympathetic to the confessional aims of the local church. For this reason, the magistrates responded to deacons’ complaints by forced them to merge with a municipal agency, the Kamer van Charitate. Losing control was a bitter pill for the Delft diaconate and it set off protests, remonstrances, and quarrels with city officials for at least thirty years. The city governments of Leiden and Gouda gained the reputation of being the most hostile to Reformed claims to ecclesiastical autonomy in any area, especially in the area of discipline. The city government of Gouda regulated all activities of the Reformed church from its inception in 1572. Leiden was the site of perhaps the bitterest religious and political divisions in Holland. There conflicts over poor relief became caught up in disputes over the election of church officers, calling of ministers, and carrying out discipline. In this acrimonious atmosphere, the city government merged the diaconate with its municipal agency in 1582 over the persistent complaints of deacons, elders, and ministers. Thus in

46

Parker, Community, 157–87.

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Holland, the fate of independent Calvinist poor relief and its confessional objectives were resolved at the local level and depended on the favor of the ruling elite.47 The case of poor relief in Holland offers important perspectives on the relationship between the Reformation and poor relief that scholars have recently raised. The well-regulated network of parish charity in Holland counters the view that charitable institutions prior to the Reformation and the major poor relief reforms were badly managed and served only the needs of donors who themselves were only interested in their own salvation. Traditional Christian ideals for charity certainly influenced the maintenance of parish foundations in Holland, yet lay officials managed charitable institutions carefully and responded to changing economic circumstances. A sense of religious obligation to the poor, along with concerns for civic order in a time of changing economic conditions, led city magistrates to reorganize parish institutions into a system of municipal relief at the end of the sixteenth century. The Reformation in Holland seems to have played no role in promoting the centralization of social provision.48 In fact, the appearance of deacons shouldering responsibility for many poor people might have even postponed centralization for several years in Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Delft.49 The city government in Dordrecht did not centralize relief foundations at all in this period because of continued economic prosperity and the work of the deacons. It is possible that Leiden’s magistrates centralized poor relief in response to the emergence of a diaconate, though the war and the collapsed textile industry provided more than ample reason to take drastic measures.50 Indeed, as city governments overhauled poor relief, they cited a social and economic rationale: to help the pious poor during a period of rising poverty.

Parker, Community, 157–87. Grell claims that Reformed and municipal poor relief in Holland were indistinguishable and he cites the centralization of resources in Leiden and magisterial influence on church resources in Amsterdam. Grell, Protestant Europe, 6–7. His point on the centralization of funds is misleading because there is considerable evidence that Calvinist church officers regarded poor relief to members as a distinct ministry throughout this period. Though the resources were centralized, not only in Leiden but also in Delft after 1614, church deacons continued to keep separate lists of church members and, in some cases, attempted to provide additional funding. This led to all sorts of disputes between almoners and deacons in the 1580s. In Delft, relief was distributed to church members on a different day than that to non-church members. The consistories in both Delft and Leiden put up stiff resistance to the mergers. All of this indicates that contemporaries regarded Reformed and municipal provision as distinct operations. See Parker, Community, 158–63, 178–87. 49 Complete centralization took place in the 1590s in these cities, twenty years after the establishment of local diaconates. 50 Reformers were instituted in Leiden between 1577 and 1582; the first deacons were selected in 1574. Christine Kooi, Liberty and Religion: Church and State in Leiden’s Reformation, 1572–1620 (Leiden, 2000), 45–47. 47 48

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All of this is not to claim that the Reformation had no or even minimal impact on the development of poor relief in Holland. The formation of the diaconate marked a change in the motivation for charity from civic obligation to compassion for fellow believers in a confessional community. On a broader level, the introduction of Calvinism led to a splintering of civic and religious community along confessional lines and controversies surrounding the implementation of the diaconate reveal the renegotiation of the sacred and the civic in post-Reformation Holland.

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WELFARE REFORM IN FRISIAN TOWNS: BETWEEN HUMANIST THEORY, PIOUS IMPERATIVES, AND GOVERNMENT POLICY Joke Spaans

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le Peter Grell has challenged us to examine how, in an age dominated by faith, religion shaped public and private approaches to poor relief. His thesis is twofold. Ideologically, Protestantism changed the purpose of charity—from a benefit to the souls of donors in the hereafter to the relief of the indigent in the present. In terms of practice, without the Reformation the speed and extent to which poor relief was centralized in the seventeenth century would have been unimaginable. The role of civic humanism is relegated to a second place: humanists proposed reform as an option, for good Protestants it was an obligation.1 The Dutch Republic shows a much more complex configuration of ideologies and practices. Although the Reformed Church was the established Church, the population remained confessionally very diverse, and the Church was not in a position to shape the culture and morality of society. The Dutch Republic boasted a renowned system of poor relief, in which local and provincial governments, various churches, and wealthy individuals all played a part, each with their own priorities. Locally, welfare arrangements differed widely. This article focuses on Frisia, one of the northern provinces of the Netherlands, the wealthiest after Holland. Where in Holland power rested with the cities, in Frisia the gentry dominated the Provincial Estates and cities were relatively weak. How, in these circumstances, did religion influence welfare? A Reluctant Reformation The Reformation was slow to win Frisia. This was not for want of evangelical influences. In the 1520s Luther’s books found an audience, mainly among the 1 Ole Peter Grell, “The Protestant Imperative of Christian Care and Neighbourly Love,” in Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500–1700 (London, 1997), 43–65.

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educated elite, both clerical and lay. The 1530s saw a considerable amount of Anabaptist activity. After the suppression of the Anabaptist Kingdom in Münster they were harshly persecuted for a while, but the Frisian pastor Menno Simons led the movement away from radicalism. From the later 1550s, it was no longer seen as a threat to Christian society. Like those pastors and humanists who were influenced by the teachings of Luther and Erasmus, Mennonites were largely ignored by secular and ecclesiastical authorities as long as they did not publicly proselytize. In the 1540s and 1550s attempts were made to introduce Catholic reforms. The central government in Brussels appointed an inquisitor to reform the clergy, more specifically to suppress concubinage and absenteeism. It also planned to strengthen ecclesiastical control through the erection of new episcopal sees in the Netherlands, among them one in the Frisian capital of Leeuwarden. Both approaches signally failed. Frisia was proud of its liberties and resented all foreign intrusions. The population at large was content with the traditional religious observance. Many Frisian parishes enjoyed the right to nominate their priests. They often preferred a concubinarian “family man” over a celibate priest, despite the lofty theological ideals of the advocates of Catholic Reform. Among the clergy, reform was not always considered incompatible with Catholic Christianity. A Leeuwarden parish priest experienced doubts on the doctrine of transsubstantiation, took a doctorate in theology at the Lutheran University of Heidelberg, and returned to the Habsburg-ruled Netherlands to become parish priest of nearby Groningen. A Frisian Premonstratensian monk studied in Lutheran Wittenberg, returned to his monastery, and subsequently became its abbot. With hindsight this situation can be construed as a rising tide of heresy, preparing the ground for the schism to come, but for most contemporaries all of this was still accommodated within an encompassing view of Christendom. There was some persecution, notably of the more radical Anabaptists, and a number of evangelicals left the province for Protestant parts of Germany, but on the whole Frisia was relatively unperturbed. Charles V on his acquisition of the province in 1515, had installed a central government structure, headed by his appointed governor, in which the Estates of Frisia were to be advised by a Provincial Court of Justice, composed of a new elite of humanist-educated lawyers and bureaucrats. This new elite was not Protestant—for service under the new ruler only men with a reputation for being soundly Catholic were acceptable—but neither was it prepared to support harsh policies for the suppression of what Trent and Brussels denounced as heresies but did not offend local sensibilities. This combination of a largely traditional population and a somewhat latitudinarian, Erasmian ruling class long delayed the polarization between “confessionalized” Catholics and Protestants, a process meticulously described and analyzed by Juliaan Woltjer. When in the spring of 1566 the regent, Margaret of Parma, showed a moment of weakness and conditionally allowed Protestant preaching, a number of Protestants came out of the woodwork in Frisia. In Leeuwarden the parish

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clergy publicly embraced the new doctrine, and with the help of the magistrate the town was reformed. When later that year, after the shock of a wave of iconoclasm throughout the Netherlands, the provincial governor ordered Catholic observance to be restored and punctually maintained, he met with unbelief at first. Eventually he was obeyed, but only reluctantly. Those who had openly declared themselves Protestants now had to recant or go into exile. For over ten years Protestantism was moribund in the province. Supported by the strong arm of the Duke of Alva, a bishop was finally appointed in Leeuwarden in 1570. It was only with the political Reformation, which hit Frisia in the wake of the Pacification of Ghent in 1577 and the proclamation of the Religious Peace in 1578, that Reformed congregations were hesitantly formed. When Catholicism was banned in 1580, as a reaction to the change of allegiance of Governor Rennenberg, who withdrew his support of the Revolt in favor of the King of Spain, the Reformed were a small minority in the province. Religiously, sixteenthcentury Frisia appears to have been a totally traditional region, touched only superficially by the reforms—Catholic, Protestant, and Radical—that transformed large parts of early modern Europe in the half century after Luther appeared on the scene.2 Reform of Poor Relief In the reorganization of poor relief there was a similar lack of sharp divisions.3 At the beginning of the sixteenth-century poor relief was in the hands of the parish, as tradition dictated. Towns had a parish endowment for the poor, which was administered by lay wardens of the poor under the nominal supervision of the parish priest. In Leeuwarden and Franeker, and perhaps also elsewhere, these wardens were gathered into a local Fraternity of the Holy Sacrament. They distributed alms to a restricted number of “deserving poor.” Apart from these officials each town had a small general hospital and some almshouses, usually founded by private donors. All of these institutions were administered by laymen, but charity to the poor was seen as an intrinsically religious activity, which generated merit for the souls of benefactors. The Fraternities of the Holy Sacrament were first of all chantries, providing memorial masses for deceased members, and their almsgiving was part of the good works that would aid their souls in Purgatory. The inmates of almshouses were expected to pray for the founders. The poor who were not

2 J. J. Woltjer, Friesland in hervormingstijd (Leiden, 1962); idem, “De zestiende eeuw,” in J. J. Kalma, J. J. Spahr van der Hoek, and K. de Vries, eds., Geschiedenis van Friesland (Leeuwardene, 1973), 257–300; Meindert Schroor, “Leeuwarden tussen middeleeuwen en nieuwe tijd,” in René Kunst et al., eds., Leeuwarden 750–2000. Hoofdstad van Friesland (Franeker, 1999), 78–105. 3 Most of what follows depends on Joke Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland 1500–1800. Publieke zorg en particuliere liefdadigheid in zes Friese steden: Leeuwarden, Bolsward, Franeker, Sneek, Dokkum en Harlingen (Hilversum, 1997). References to manuscript sources and specialist literature to be found there.

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supported by these institutions were allowed to beg and enjoyed occasional handouts from monasteries and at funerals and memorial masses in the parish churches, and of course here too charity was meant to gain merit for the donors. In the 1520s modern ideas on poor relief percolated into Frisia. This was most clearly visible in Leeuwarden. At the end of 1525 the municipal St. Anthony’s Hospital was designated as the sole provider of poor relief for the town. Both the Fraternity of the Holy Sacrament and a smaller, privately funded, hospital, the Hospital of St. Jacob, were liquidated, their effects sold and both the revenue and the charitable obligations transferred to St. Anthony’s Hospital. Sources are very sparse, but both the extent and the timing of the measures taken suggest the formation of a common chest administered by lay wardens, in this case the trustees of the hospital, under the direction of the magistrates.4 They may have chosen St. Anthony’s Hospital because it was the oldest, most respected institution—it also was the one that was already largely under their control. The prohibition of begging that usually complements the institution of a common chest is missing here, but as provincial laws against begging and vagrancy had been in effect since the later Middle Ages, this may have been considered unnecessary.5 These reforms found little support among the urban elite, however. Within a few years, before the end of 1528, the common chest was undone by new, private initiatives that ran counter to the centralizing policy of the magistrate. Shortly after the abolition of the Fraternity of the Holy Sacrament a new religious fraternity was formed, which provided both masses for the dead and alms for the poor. It was dedicated to the Sweet Name of Jesus. This new fraternity was evidently popular with the townspeople; it soon attracted gifts and bequests that enabled it to take over the support of the working poor from St. Anthony’s Hospital.6 Perhaps the distribution of outdoor relief from the hospital had been unworkable. We simply do not know. Evidently the citizens of Leeuwarden were not against provisions for the poor associated with the traditional economy of salvation, in which almsgiving conferred religious merit on the donor. Naming the new fraternity after the Sweet Name of Jesus, however, may indicate that they had become uneasy with the cult of the Holy Sacrament and the underlying doctrine of transsubstantiation, which had attracted controversy in recent years. Devotion to the Sweet Name of Jesus was unobjectionable for traditionalists and evangelicals alike.

4 Wopke Eekhoff, ed., Oorkonden der geschiedenis van het Sint Anthonij-gasthuis te Leeuwarden (Leeuwarden, 1876), nrs. 122, 126, 145, 156. 5 G. F. thoe Schwartzenberg en Hohenlansberg, ed., Groot placaat en charter-boek van Vriesland (Charterboek), 6 vols. (Leeuwarden, 1768–95), II, 625–26, 644, 689–90, 697–99, 714, 837, 868, etc. 6 Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland, 48–51.

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In 1534 an orphanage was created, the founding charter of which also shows a highly ambiguous attitude to the contemporary religious currents and the new forms of poor relief. The orphanage of Leeuwarden was one of the first in a spate of similar foundations in all the larger and most of the smaller towns of the northern Netherlands.7 These early modern orphanages usually catered only to full orphans of citizen birth, and assumed the full spectrum of parental responsibilities. They provided their charges with food, clothing and shelter, elementary schooling and vocational training. The upbringing of the children was entirely financed out of the endowment of the house and the donations it attracted, so that the children did not have to go begging. In fact begging was always expressly forbidden. When they left the orphanage—in the sixteenth century that would be somewhere in their teens—they were able to provide for themselves.8 These orphanages closely fitted the new welfare ideology. The foundress of the Leeuwarden orphanage may have been touched by this as well as by evangelical notions; she rejected the cult of the dead, as merely inspired by the greed of the clergy. Instead of further fattening them by bequeathing money to the Church for memorial services, she reserved her charity for the poor. She rejected, however, the humanist ideal of giving to those most in need, irrespective of the ties of blood and patronage. Orphans who could show blood-kinship, or else those born of Leeuwarder citizen rank were to be preferred. Also the foundress wanted the orphanage to preserve her memory, something the efficient but impersonal administration of relief according to humanist ideals made impossible. She expressly criticized the liquidation of St. Jacob’s Hospital nine years earlier, which ignored the wishes of the founders who, childless like herself, had created the hospital as a memorial to themselves and their families in perpetuity.9 Changing sensibilities in religion and in charity were closely intertwined in these years. In 1534 church wardens complained that donations to the cult of the saints, to the provision of memorial masses, and to monasteries had dried up, to the benefit of the poor.10 Criticism against clerical greed may have been inspired by Erasmian humanism, or by Lutheran or Anabaptist influence, reinforcing anticlerical tendencies as old as organized Christianity itself. Be that as it may, Frisians clearly continued to consider charity a thoroughly Christian duty

Hotso Spanninga, Rode en blauwe wezen. Wezenzorg in Leeuwarden (Leeuwarden, 1984), 4. 8 On Dutch orphanages in general; S. Groenveld, J. J. H. Dekker, and Th. R. M. Willemse, Wezen en boefjes. Zes eeuwen zorg in wees- en kinderhuizen (Hilversum, 1997). 9 G. Verhoeven and J. A. Mol, eds., Friese testamenten tot 1550 (Leeuwarden, 1994), nr. 137. Cf. Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland, 51–52. 10 J. van Leeuwen, ed., Beneficiaal-boeken van Friesland (Leeuwarden, 1850), 74; J. A. Mol, “Friezen en het hiernamaals. Zieleheilsbeschikkingen ten gunste van kerken, kloosters en armen in testamenten uit Friesland tot 1580,” in J. A. Mol, ed., Zorgen voor zekerheid. Studies over Friese testamenten in de vijftiende en zestiende eeuw (Leeuwarden, 1994), 175–214. 7

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that should reinforce traditional obligations to blood relatives and fellow citizens—a Bossy-esque mixture of familial piety and social miracle that survived all Reformations, because it had probably never needed Catholic doctrine regarding intercession for the souls in Purgatory in the first place.11 Both the Fraternity of the Sweet Name of Jesus and the new orphanage were private foundations, independent of the town magistrate, for these traditional purposes. These ambiguities thwarted the full implementation of the Edict of 1531, in which Charles V laid out a humanist strategy of containment and support for the poor. This Edict expressly forbade poor people to leave their parish to look for a better life elsewhere, except in a full-scale disaster like war, flooding, or fire. All the poor should apply for support to their own parish, and all parishes were put under a legal obligation to provide for their own poor. Under no pretext were poor people to be allowed to take to the road and live by begging. Only friars, prisoners, and lepers were henceforth allowed to beg for alms, all others had to work for their living or give due notice to the local wardens of the poor. Local funds for the poor had to be consolidated and revenue had to be supplemented by collections. Alms were to be distributed by the wardens of the poor to the truly indigent, only in so far as they could not provide the necessities of life for themselves. Wardens also had to take special precautions that the poor under their care led honestly sober lives and that the children of the poor were sent to school to be taught both a trade and the elementary tenets of their religion. In the execution of their duties and the administration of their funds they were responsible to the local magistrate.12 This Edict was unambiguously a tool for bridling labor-migration and suppressing begging and vagrancy. Beggars and vagrants were to be punished. Poor people were tied to their parishes, and parishes were ordered to hold on to them by providing for them locally. Supporting one’s neighbor in need was of course considered a Christian duty, but the emphasis of the Edict is on control, not on charity. The Edict was received and studied in the northern Netherlands, but nowhere fully executed.13 The middle years of the 1560s, with high foodprices and recurrent plague, compelled urban magistrates to take emergency measures, for which the Edict provided the legal basis. The Franeker magistrates invoked the Edict in so many words when they decided to reorganize the municipal wardens of the poor, augmenting their number and allotting specific wardens to each of the four town quarters, so that they could get to know the poor and their individual needs.14

John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1985). Charterboek, II, 594–604. 13 Christina Ligtenberg, De armezorg te Leiden tot het einde van de zestiende eeuw (’s-Gravenhage, 1908), 298–305. 14 A. Hallema, “Armenzorg vanwege kerk en staat in de 16e eeuw. Een pastoorkerkvoogd te Franeker in 1565,” Archief voor de geschiedenis van het aartsbisdom Utrecht 56 (1932): 81–96; Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland, 62–64. 11 12

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In Leeuwarden a similar reorganization of the Fraternity of the Sweet Name of Jesus was impossible, because it was not a municipal but rather a private foundation. The municipal Hospital of St. Anthony no longer provided outdoor relief at this time. Instead burgomasters organized a fund-raising campaign and distributed subsidized bread, not through the members of the fraternity, the official wardens of the poor, but by municipal officers, the overseers of the four quarters of the town. For the first time, they prohibited begging under a municipal regulation, complementing traditional relief with new humanist measures.15 Reordering Society The introduction of the Reformation was a turning point, but the new directions taken from 1578 were not recognizably Protestant. New provincial legislation compelled town magistrates to reform poor relief in conformity with the Edict of 1531. Each town or village was to set up adequate provisions for the local resident poor—citizens and those who could prove two, later five, years of residence without recourse to public welfare. Begging and vagrancy were to be harshly punished. The Estates of Frisia subsidized urban poor relief from the revenues of the rural monastic foundations that had been secularized in 1580. The larger part of these revenues went to finance the war effort; a smaller part was to be used for pious purposes. The provincial subsidies for urban welfare show a mixture of motives. The towns received the money specifically for the support of mercenary soldiers, disbanded during the winter season, in order to keep them quartered in the towns, where they could be controlled, instead of leaving them free to scourge the countryside. Monastic revenue thus went into the control of vagrancy, rather than toward a disinterested Christian charity.16 Over time the legislation laid down in the Edict of 1531 was augmented and refined by the Estates and the Provincial Court of Frisia, until at the end of the eighteenth century it had reached an almost Byzantine complexity, providing for every conceivable eventuality. Central in all this legislation remained the concern to tie the poor to their parish. Towns and villages were fully entitled to expel unwanted poor immigrants, and local sources amply demonstrate that they were keen on sending foreigners back to their parish of origin or latest settlement. This entire body of legislation bears evidence of a thoroughly practical, secular, and bureaucratic approach to the repression of beggary and vagrancy and the relief of poverty.17

Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland, 54–55. Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland, 71–99. 17 Legislation published in Charterboek V; 41–43; VI, 41–43; Statuten, ordonnantien, reglementen en costumen van rechte van Vriesland (Leeuwarden, 1770) Bk. I, § XXI, and Appendix. For learned commentaries and the evaluations and revisions ordered by Provincial Estates and Provincial Court of Justice, see Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland, 264–69. 15 16

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All this forceful regulation, backed by the considerable power of central government agencies in Frisia, however, could not prevent ambiguity about the meaning of poor relief. The system was introduced everywhere, and to all appearances worked admirably well. The population at large, and even more so the wealthy elite, may have approved of the new policy, insofar as it kept importunate beggars off their doorsteps, vagrants at bay, and the roads safe. They contributed without murmuration to the collections but appear to have considered this first and foremost as a civic, not a Christian, duty. In Sneek in 1585 the magistrate complained about the insistence of the Estates on the suppression of begging and the free distribution of alms, remonstrating that these represented a timehonored Christian custom—an argument one would expect from Catholic opposition, not from this Reformed body. In fact begging continued despite legislation because willingness to give alms appears to have remained fairly general. The elite continued to favor private foundations that did not support the poor according to their objective needs, as Grell’s “Protestant imperative” would have had it, but allowed donors and their descendants to bestow their charity upon the poor of their choosing, preferably relatives and clients, following traditional patterns of piety. In several towns this led to decades of conflict between magistrates, who wanted to gain control over local charity, and trustees of private foundations. In 1579 the Leeuwarden magistrate envisioned a coordinated municipal welfare system, consisting of St. Anthony’s Hospital, the orphanage, and the wardens of the poor. The magistrate assumed the responsibility to regulate and coordinate their activities, and designated a third of the property of the city’s monasteries to each institution, in order to put the new system on a solid financial basis. In the end, however, out of the pre-Reformation welfare institutions only St. Anthony’s hospital and the small leper asylum outside the walls, urban institutions from the start, could be made to comply. The Fraternity of the Sweet Name of Jesus flatly refused to accept both the government regulations and their share of monastic revenue. They retained their independence, and, interestingly, also the characteristics of a fraternity, no longer a chantry but with a mixture of Protestant and Catholic members, up to the present day. The magistrate instituted a new municipal board of wardens of the poor, which initially worked alongside the Fraternity of the Sweet Name of Jesus, but over time took full responsibility for all the urban working poor. In 1638 the fraternity stopped providing outdoor relief and completely dedicated itself to the direction of of a complex of almshouses.18 The Leeuwarden orphanage, also a private foundation, equally fiercely resisted its insertion into a municipal welfare policy. The magistrate wanted the orphanage accessible to all full orphans of the city, irrespective of blood ties with the foundress or citizen birth, despite stipulations to the contrary in her last will and testament, which served the institution as its charter. After long negotia-

18

Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland, 100–08, 122–24.

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tions the orphanage in 1596 accepted responsibility for the non-citizen orphans in exchange for their third share of the confiscated monastic property and subsidies from the urban treasury, but only grudgingly conceded the magistrate influence over their direction and administration of the house. This in time led to new conflicts, unwillingness on the side of the trustees to take in more non-citizen orphans and outrage from the magistracy at what they saw as a breach of contract. Emotions ran high, and in 1659 one of the trustees of the orphanage, himself a burgomaster, full member of the Reformed Church and childless, out of annoyance at the determination of his fellowmagistrates to gain control over the orphanage, instead of bequeathing a legacy to the orphanage, founded a complex of almshouses which was to bear his name, and appointed the members of the local Mennonite consistory as directors of his foundation in perpetuity to prevent the city ever claiming it for the urban poor.19 In 1675 the Leeuwarden magistracy founded its own orphanage for all full orphans born of residents but excluded from the old orphanage.20 In tandem with St. Anthony’s Hospital, the new municipal wardens of the poor and the new municipal orphanage covered the various needs of the towns resident poor, irrespective of religion. Private institutions, like the old orphanage, the Fraternity of the Sweet Name of Jesus, and almshouses complemented that system, but on their own terms. In 1598 a totally new institution was added: the House of Correction. In the course of the seventeenth century this house would develop into a penal institution, but initially it was considered a charitable institution for the rehabilitation of beggars, vagrants, and other nuisances, like alcoholics, wifebeaters, negligent parents, and petty thieves. Similar Houses of Correction had been built in Amsterdam and Leiden just a few years before. They were the newest instruments of social discipline. When other Frisian towns began to follow Leeuwardens example, the Provincial Estates, jealous of their jurisdiction, purchased the Leeuwarden House of Correction in 1609, and transformed it into a provincial institution. All other urban houses of correction had to be closed. The house was expressly intended not for punishment but to redeem its inmates through a sober, disciplined life. Work and corporal punishment for laziness, disobedience, or disorderliness were part of that regimen, but so were daily Bible classes and the opportunity to earn something towards a new start after release. Besides beggars, vagrants, and petty criminals the house also took in “black sheep”: spouses or children who embarrassed their families with financial or sexual debauchery. As involuntary, but paying guests they lived under

19 Joke Spaans, “Gereformeerden en doopsgezinden. Het proces over het Marcelis Goverts gasthuis te Leeuwarden 1687–1688,” in S. Zijlstra, G. N. M. Vis, and D. J. M. Zeinstra, eds., Vroomheid tussen Vlie en Lauwers. Aspecten van de Friese kerkgeschiedenis (Delft, 1996), 135–47. 20 Hotso Spanninga, De blauwe wezen van Leeuwarden. Geschiedenis van het Nieuwe Stadsweeshuis (Leeuwarden, 1988).

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a softer regime, befitting their social status. Initially, those who had never had the opportunity to learn a trade could enroll voluntarily to acquire skills and work experience in the house. The House of Correction proved a costly enterprise. It was closed for lack of funds from 1619 to 1660, only to be reopened to cope with what seems to have been new waves of labor migration into the Republic and a perceived threat from indigent fortune-seekers, trying to make a living for themselves in the prosperous towns of the province. The house was considered both part of the system of coordinated public welfare that had been built and expanded in the decades following the Reformation and a cornerstone in the enforcement of the legislation against begging and vagrancy that protected local welfare arrangements from being swamped by indigent outsiders.21 Church Welfare So far, what has been described here in some detail for Leeuwarden and has its parallels in other Frisian towns is the formation of a centralized system of poor relief of the type advocated by humanist reformers against fierce particularistic opposition from local elites. Direct influence of Protestant theology or from the Reformed consistories was nowhere evident. This process began before the introduction of the Reformation in Frisia, served first and foremost the interests of public order, and was only marginally helped forward by the redirection of confiscated ecclesiastical revenue. The Reformation did have important consequences for Frisian poor relief, but only from the second half of the seventeenth century, when the reforms were completed. With the introduction of the Reformation the deacons of the Reformed Church claimed their place as wardens of poor Church members. Magistrates intent on organizing a municipal system of welfare in their towns were not always happy with this new competitor. Reformed deacons, especially in the first years of the existence of their congregations, welcomed poor co-religionists fleeing the theaters of war on the shifting borders of the new Republic or from the Counter-Reformation offensive in the southern Netherlands. They helped them settle, tiding them over until they met the residency requirements—in fact they assisted subsistence migration of a kind the new system had been devised to curb. Magistrates could not prevent the public Reformed Church from supporting its poor members. The diaconate was an integral part of Reformed churchorganization. Urban magistrates all over the Republic negotiated with the deacons either to merge them with the urban wardens of the poor into one urban welfare board or to formulate criteria for a clear demarcation between church

On Dutch houses of correction in general, see A. Hallema, Geschiedenis van het gevangeniswezen, hoofdzakelijk in Nederland (The Hague, 1958). On the Frisian house, see Spaans, Armenzorg, 86–99, 269–72. 21

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poor and municipal poor and, so, to prevent poor families from taking advantage of two welfare agencies at once, unduly depleting the always limited supply of charity. As in most places the population was not entirely Reformed, giving the deacons of the public Church an overall responsibility for local welfare was usually not the most logical option. The preference of the Reformed churches to reserve charity for the household of the faithful jarred with the principles underlying the municipal welfare reforms advocated by the provincial government. In most Frisian towns the deacons preferred their independence but were forced to comply with the provincial legislation on settlement and removal of “foreign” poor, a process which largely took place between 1650 and 1675.22 In all other matters they retained their independence from municipal control, although the organization of the deacons and the type of welfare they provided mirrored those of the municipal welfare officers. This independence meant that the deacons were free to give all or some of their charges more than the necessary minimum of support. The magistratcy had no say whatsoever in the financial administration of the deacons and could not insist on strict frugality and minimal handouts, as it did with the municipal wardens of the poor. Once this division of labor between municipal wardens and deacons had been worked out toward the last quarter of the seventeenth century, both respecting provincial legislation on settlement and removal, urban magistrates started to put pressure on all tolerated Churches, the Catholics, the Mennonites, the Lutherans, the Jews, and even the Labadists, to organize welfare along these same lines for their poor members. This was a very curious development, as these Churches had no corporate rights, and so could hardly be compelled legally to share in the relief of the poor, which was after all a public service for which local government was legally responsible. Moreover, not having corporate rights, the tolerated Churches were forbidden to have corporate funds, own real estate, or receive legacies and bequests, which made it almost impossible for them to provide adequate support for the poor. The Mennonite and Labadist communities were closely knit. Mutual support was a long-standing habit with them and they actually welcomed the new policy, which gave some official recognition to their efforts. It was, however, hard on the Frisian Catholics, Lutherans, and Jews, whose congregations consisted in large part of poor immigrants from the German Empire. They too had probably managed until then to find some resources, with which to supplement the measured handouts of the municipal poor relief for those of their poor members that in their eyes merited some extra charity, but full support for all their poor was something quite different.

22 For Holland in general, see Charles H. Parker, The Reformation of Community. Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in Holland, 1572–1620 (Cambridge, 1998), 107–16. For Frisia, see Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland, 196–225.

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Despite legal wrangles and practical problems the magistrates everywhere insisted and carried the day. All Churches and the Jews organized diaconates for the poor members of their communities. In most cases the tolerated communities were too small and poor to build their own orphanages and almshouses, as their co-religionists did in the larger and more prosperous cities of Holland: the Mennonites had an orphanage in Harlingen and almshouses in Sneek, and a Catholic orphanage opened its doors in Leeuwarden in 1788. Usually the deacons of the tolerated Churches fostered orphans and the elderly out among their co-religionists. It took decades to get these diaconates of the tolerated Churches on their feet, but in 1755 the Estates of Frisia could cap their efforts by issuing a formal law that compelled all Churches to support all their poor members. Henceforth the municipal wardens of the poor retained only those poor who had no affiliation to any Church—in Frisia this was more than half of all the recipients of poor relief. These efforts resulted finally in the creation of a triple system of poor relief: (1) the humanist-inspired public welfare, which was controlled by local secular government and showed a strong emphasis on settlement and removal; (2) diaconates of all Churches; (3) private foundations controlled by wealthy families, mostly in the forms of almshouses and sometimes orphanages. In a certain sense this division of labor favored Protestant views on welfare, as it compelled all religious communities to adopt the forms of diaconal welfare traditionally practiced among Reformed and Mennonites. Under this new policy welfare was no longer a common Christian duty, for all practical purposes coterminous with civic solidarity with the local poor, as had been the case in the medieval parish and in the humanist proposals. Charity was delegated to corporations under the general direction of the magistracies. Churches were the most important of these corporations. For church members charity towards their co-religionists may have been a religious duty. Magistrates undoubtedly had other reasons for introducing the new system. Corporations appear to have been both more effective in raising money for their own poor and in disciplining those they supported. A Social Hierarchy For the poor themselves it came to matter a lot which welfare office they could apply to in case of need. In the early modern period poverty could befall almost anybody. Only the very few of solid wealth were truly immune. For all those dependent on their earning power, impaired health, physical or mental handicaps, the death of parents at a young age, abundant progeny, or old age could all lead to poverty.23 Poverty, however, was also a relative concept. Any decline in prosperity that entailed loss of social status was considered a decline into

23 On the causes of poverty and life on welfare, see also Ingrid van der Vlis, Leven in armoede. Delftse bedeelden in de zeventiende eeuw (Amsterdam, 2001).

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poverty meriting some form of support, which means that some poor were objectively not too badly off, whereas other poor lived in abject destitution. Life was hardest for recent immigrants, soldiers and sailors and those dependent on an ambulant profession. Immigrants had to support themselves and their families for a number of years before they could apply to either the municipal wardens or the church deacons in their new domicile. If they failed, they risked expulsion. If they were born or had settlement elsewhere in Frisia, that place of origin would be responsible for their support, so they had a place to go. If they came from outside the Republic or from Holland, where other provincial laws applied and towns were under no obligation to support former residents after they had been absent for one year, they had a serious problem. They could of course try their luck elsewhere. The traditional option of begging was outlawed and risky in the Republic, as was a life of crime.24 Soldiers and sailors moved from one garrison town or port to another, which made it difficult to gain settlement anywhere. Their families usually did not follow them around, and their wives were often hard-put to support themselves and their children between their husbands’ pay-days. Municipal wardens and church deacons were reluctant to support them, as they fell somewhat between the categories of resident and non-resident inhabitants, a status dependent on the—in these cases mostly absent—head of the family. Poor ambulant traders, artisans, musicians, and healers could apply for a passport from their local authorities, who vouched for their honesty and entitled them to handouts in every place they passed by in their wanderings. Those of citizen birth, or who had acquired citizen status by purchase or as a perquisite of office were most privileged. They could always fall back upon municipal welfare, but often this would be a last resort as society had something better in store for them. Many corporations had some sort of mutual insurance fund for members falling on hard times: magistrates in several Frisian towns had a “purse” which could provide them, their widows, and close associates with yearly pensions to mask financial decline and save face. Master artisans, who needed citizen status in order to trade or work, were backed by their guilds. Full membership in a Church meant entitlement to the care of the deacons instead of the municipal wardens. In case citizens died young, their children had access to the citizen’s orphanages, generally the oldest and most generously endowed, which offered good housing, food, and clothing and, most important of all, education and vocational training compatible with their pupils’ status as citizens. Citizens of some means could stave off the poverty caused by old age or poor health by buying into the sheltered housing and indoor care of the municipal hospital. If their means had been depleted they could be

On crime as a survival strategy, see Olwen Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth Century France 1750–1789 (Oxford, 1974); Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994). 24

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admitted in its poor ward or, if they enjoyed some patronage, to private or Churchadministered almshouses. For residents who lacked citizen status but were born locally or fulfilled the residency requirements, provisions were less generous. Most mutual insurance funds would be closed to them, except of course the diaconate of their Church, if they were full members. In most cases they would be dependent on municipal welfare. Municipal hospitals and private almshouses did not require citizen status. Their orphans would be taken care of in the municipal orphanage or, if they had been members, in an orphanage run by the diaconate of their Church. The municipal orphanages were often very crowded and less well endowed than the older institutions that catered only to children of citizen birth. Living conditions would be less comfortable, although still considerably better than in poor households, with the assurance of decent housing, food, and clothing, a basic education and vocational training.25 About the Frisian confessional orphanages too little is known to be able to assess their quality. Membership in a Church with its guarantee of support by the diaconate in case of decline into poverty could thus be very desirable, especially for resident inhabitants. In the eighteenth century this appears to have made religious communities wary of whom they admitted, especially the Lutherans, the Catholics, and the Jews, whose constituencies were to a large degree formed by poor immigrants from the German Empire. The burden of supporting their poor was often so heavy that on average their handouts were even smaller than those of the municipal wardens. Apparently poor immigrants sought church membership as a way to gain a social network, and churches and synagogues felt a moral obligation to accommodate them. Sometimes, however, churches had to ask local magistrates to evict newcomers they knew they could not support. The churches made up mostly of native Frisians, like the Dutch and Walloon Reformed, the Mennonites, the Arminians, and the Old-Catholics, were in a better financial position. They included more wealthy members, and their poor had stronger local roots and, thus, better chances for employment. Especially the Mennonites, Arminians, Walloon Reformed, and Old-Catholics could afford to be generous to their poorer sisters and brethren. There is more than a suggestion that these churches sometimes grew overzealous in excommunicating poor members for trifling offences, which further diminished the number of their poor and improved the prospects of those left.26

Comparison of a citizens’ and municipal orphanage in Anne E. C. McCants, Civic Charity in a Golden Age. Orphan Care in Early Modern Amsterdam (Urbana, 1997), Joke Spaans, “Early Modern Orphanages between Civic Pride and Social Discipline: Francke’s use of Dutch Models,” in Waisenhäuser in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Udo Sträter and Josef N. Neumann (Tübingen, 2003), 183–96. 26 Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland, 240–58, 272–78, 309–14. 25

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Conclusion Welfare reform started in Frisia in the early sixteenth century, following a common European pattern. The most likely inspiration came from civic humanism. The Edict of 1531, issued in the name of a ruler who was a staunch defender of Catholicism and who made it his life’s work to combat Lutheranism and any other heresy, became the foundation for its later development. Yet in Frisia the spirit of the humanist reform of poor relief was seriously compromised, to the point of perversion. The welfare program, which was so congenial to the Lutheran Reformation, advocated by Christian humanists as firmly founded on biblical authority and the example of the early Church, and which found considerable support in Catholic Reform, met widespread resistance in Frisia and in much of the Dutch Republic. Resistance focused on the element of support, according to need, irrespective of person. Deeply embedded in Christian culture was the notion that charity was due first to one’s dependents and closest relatives, second to fellowmembers of corporations and neighbours and only lastly to strangers.27 Charitable donors in Frisia wanted that order of pious obligation respected. This led to a spectrum of rather exclusive relief agencies, and a very uneven distribution of charity, strongly reinforcing early modern social hierarchies. In the end this may have been determined by economic factors. The mainly agricultural economy of the province, where trade and industry fought an uphill battle against the interests of its much more powerful neighbor, Holland, was ill equipped to absorb immigrants looking for work and a better life. A restrictive welfare policy offered a way to protect the vested interests of the Frisian urban populations. The Reformation did to some extent break welfare out of the institutional mold informed by Catholic practice and based on theological notions of meritorious works, but dispositions formed by traditional practice that had in their turn already molded this practice, were more tenacious. Under a Reformed regime, traditional values retained their validity. Although municipal welfare focused on the individual recipient of charity, in society at large charity upheld privilege, and served as a memorial to private donors. All churches—not only the Reformed—participated in the government-driven, humanist inspired reforms. For individuals, who regularly contributed to collections for the poor, or bequeathed a substantial donation in their wills or distributed trifling alms on the streets, the religious value of charity appears to have altered little from medieval usage. It was not so much Protestantism as religious diversity and the typically early modern social hierarchy that eventually determined the shape of Frisian poor relief under the Republic.

B. Tierney, Medieval Poor Law. A Sketch of Canonical Theory and Application in England (Berkeley, 1959), 57, 119. 27

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Charity was no longer seen as a way to ensure the salvation of individual benefactors’ souls in the hereafter. Despite the sixteenth century reforms, however, early modern Frisians appear to have been quite content with a traditional Christian moral order, in which welfare did not focus on the relief of the indigent to the exclusion of the interests of donors, but was used as an instrument to maintain the honor of the church, guild, or family, or even to suppress beggary. It was only around 1800 that the modern notions of poor relief that Grell and others associate with Protestantism gained ground, inspired by Enlightened ideals of the equal rights of citizens, rich or poor. Even then these ideals would have severe difficulties to break out of the hierarchical molds, both institutional and habitual, that had been formed under the ancien régime.28 Religion did influence welfare in the early modern period, but as a conservative, rather than as a modernizing force.

28

Joke Spaans, “Kerkelijke en publieke armenzorg voor en na de scheiding tussen kerk en staat,” in J. de Bruijn, et al., eds., Geen heersende kerk, geen heersende staat, De verhouding tussen kerken en de staat 1796–1996 (Zoetermeer, 1998), 127–44.

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MENNONITES AND SECTARIAN POOR RELIEF IN GOLDEN-AGE AMSTERDAM Mary S. Sprunger

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n 1608, a small English Separatist congregation led by John Smyth arrived in Amsterdam. Several years later, the group moved into a complex known as the Bakehouse, a former hard tack bakery with living quarters for the workers, owned by the Compagnie van Verre (the precursor to the Dutch East India Company). Jan Munter, a member of the Amsterdam Mennonite church known as the Waterlanders, had purchased the building. The Smyth Separatists lived and worshipped in the Bakehouse, presumably renting the facility from Munter. Gradually the group came to reject infant baptism and developed close ties to Munter’s Waterlander Mennonite church. In 1615, thirty-two English joined this church, although they continued to hold their own English-language services at the Bakehouse for almost twenty-five years. In England they had been mostly of “the middling sort,” or even well-off, but as refugees in a strange land, the Smyth followers found themselves mostly on the lower rungs of the economic ladder and some required poor relief for years. In 1635, they were still referred to as “the poor English Mennonites in the Bakehouse,” and the Bakehouse itself continued to be used as a Mennonite poorhouse, with twenty-three apartments to house poor widows and families.1 This case provides an example of a poor population who, as immigrants and religious nonconformists, might easily have fallen through the cracks of Amsterdam municipal charitable institutions. The city reserved the best welfare for its own citizens (not just residents) and the other largest poor relief agency, the Dutch Reformed Church, gave aid only to its church members.2 Embracing Mennonite

I. H. van Eeghen, “John Jorden, de Engelsman,” Amstelodamum. Maandblaad voor de kennis van Amsterdam. Orgaan van het genootschap Amstelodamum 55 (1968): 7–10; James Robert Coggins, John Smyth’s Congregation: English Separatism, Mennonite Influence, and the Elect Nation (Waterloo, 1991), 71–72; Keith L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism: History of English and Scottish Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden, 1982), chapter 3, passim. 2 For an overview of Amsterdam poor relief, see S. Groenveld, “‘For the Benefit of 1

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theology was certainly convenient for the struggling Separatists, because now they were part of a community committed to caring for its own poor. Even before officially joining the Mennonite church, the English group received assistance from the congregation’s poor chest, although the aid became more systematic after the English became members.3 The landscape of charity in Golden-Age Amsterdam, where various churches, synagogues, and religious institutions supplemented civic welfare, was complicated yet successful in relieving the misery of poverty. While multiple and overlapping civic and religious charitable institutions was not unique to Amsterdam, what was unusual here and elsewhere in the northern Netherlands was the policy of religious tolerance that allowed for many denominational groups to operate exclusively in their own spheres. Among the Mennonites alone, in the early decades of the seventeenth century, there were at least six separate churches that would take no responsibility for members of the other Mennonite sects in Amsterdam.4 Many studies of poor relief before and after the Reformation have raised questions about secular and religious impulses in the transformation of charity in early modern Europe. Did Reformation ideology contribute to the reorganization of poor relief or was rationalization already underway before the rise of Protestantism? Were the motivations of poor-relief reformers religious or secular?5 Most of these histories have been concerned with society-wide civic or religious systems within a city or region and overlook situations where various sects and denominations were allowed to coexist in pluralistic cities like

the Poor’: Social Assistance in Amsterdam,” in Peter van Kessel and Elisja Schulte, eds., Rome and Amsterdam: Two Growing Cities in Seventeenth-Century Europe (Amsterdam, 1997), 192–208. 3 Marritgen and Jannitgen, both referred to as “English widows” (Mary and Jane?), were given aid at least as early as 1613, two years before joining the church. Small sums of money were also given to “the English” as a whole. Gemeentearchief Amsterdam Particulier Archief (hereafter Penn.) 1120 nr. 140, “Kasboek” I (1605–20), 11/4/1613, 10/10/1613, 12/12/1613 and passim. All subsequent archival sources are from the Gemeentearchief Amsterdam. Examples of aid given to the English group shortly after joining the church, besides the regular assistance to three or four persons, include buying shoes for a widow’s children (3 guilders), boarding an orphan (18 guilders 15 stuivers per half year), paying for clothes to be sewed for “the English” (5 guilders 19 stuivers), paying for a surgeon to attend to “an accident of a daughter of an English widow” (7 guilders 1 stuiver), and even paying 30 guilders—a sizeable sum—for the widow Jane to return to England while the church continued to give support to her children. PA1120 nr. 140, 15/1/1615, 29/9/1616, 27/11/1616, 29/6/1616, 9/3/1617. 4 J. A. Oosterbaan, “Vlekken en rimpels: Over verdeeldheid en hereniging,” in S. Groenveld et al., eds., Wederdopers, menisten, doopsgezinden in Nederlands 1530–1980 (Zutphen, 1993), 72. 5 A few early and important studies include Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971); Natalie Zemon Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975), 17–65; Catharina Lis and Hugh Soly, Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-Industrial Europe (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1979).

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Amsterdam.6 As a sectarian group much concerned about caring for its poorer members, the Mennonites supplemented official welfare provided by the Dutch Reformed churches and municipal charitable institutions in seventeenthcentury Amsterdam. A study of their congregational welfare system will shed light on the problem of religious and secular impulses in the poor relief of a religious minority group. Amsterdam provides a unique setting for such research. It was the cosmopolitan commercial center of Europe in the seventeenth century, ruled by merchant magistrates. Rapid economic expansion in the late sixteenth century led to great prosperity in the seventeenth. The economic boom lured many of the poorer sorts to the city to make their fortunes or, more likely, to become unskilled laborers, low-level artisans, or sailors. Religious and intellectual tolerance drew refugees, including Jews, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Separatists, and Huguenots, from the southern Netherlands (today Belgium), France, England, and eastern Europe. The result was a remarkably cosmopolitan city with a thriving economy and diverse population. Religious tolerance meant that Amsterdam was a city characterized by pluralism. Calvinism was the public religion, but freedom of conscience was a founding principle of the Dutch Republic. While some members of the Amsterdam City Council promoted a Calvinist agenda, there was a general attitude that religious tolerance was necessary for the expanding economy. Non-official religious groups could gather for worship, but only in inconspicuous churches and synagogues.7 Two Mennonite groups had very large sanctuaries, able to hold hundreds of churchgoers apiece, although these were concealed behind rows of canal houses so as not to attract attention. Even this requirement of concealment

6 Such is the case with the two volumes edited by Grell and Cunningham on health care and poor relief in Protestant and Catholic areas of Europe. Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500–1700 (London, 1997) and Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe 1500–1700 (London, 1999). While impressive in their geographic scope, the thesis contained therein—that Reformation ideology played a large role in shaping new modes of charity—has not been applied to sectarian poor relief. In the chapters dealing with the Dutch, for example, while there is recognition of Reformed consistories working closely with city government, there is no mention made of other confessional poor relief systems: Jonathan I. Israel, “Dutch Influence on Urban Planning, Health Care and Poor Relief: The North Sea and Baltic Regions of Europe, 1567–1720,” in Grell and Cunningham, eds., Protestant, 66–83. Recent studies that have taken sectarian charity into account include Charles H. Parker, The Reformation of Community: Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in Holland, 1572–1620 (Cambridge, 1998) and Joke Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland 1500–1800: Publieke zorg en particuliere liefdadigheid in zess Friese steden Leeuwarden Bolsward, Franeker, Sneek, Dokkum en Harlingen (Hilversum, 1997). 7 For an overview of the relationship between church and government, see Arie van Deursen, “Church and City: Government in Amsterdam,” in Van Kessel and Schulte, Rome and Amsterdam, 175–79.

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was not fully enforced by the mid-seventeenth century (witness the Lutheran Church on the Singel Canal built in 1630 or the magnificent free-standing Portuguese synagogue built in 1675).8 Non-Calvinists were barred from government in most cities and were neither to study theology at university nor to teach school, but they participated freely in commerce and industry, even rising to high positions in guilds.9 Finally, the Dutch in general and Amsterdam in particular had an international reputation for prosperity and exemplary care of the unfortunate. For example, James Howell wrote: It is a rare thing to meet with a beggar here, . . . and this is held to be one of their best pieces of Government; for besides the strictness of their laws against mendicants, they have hospitals of all sorts for young and old, both for the relief of the one and the employment of the other, so that there is no object here to exercise any act of charity upon.10

By this Howell means there were no beggars on the streets asking for alms. Another foreigner, Sir William Temple, English ambassador to Holland, observed that any charities seemed to “be regulated by Orders of the countrey, and not usually moved by the common Objects of Compassion.”11 Amsterdam presented a contrast to visitors used to more squalor and overt misery on their own city streets. The relatively small number of vagrants on the streets of Holland did not mean, however, that Dutch cities were free of households in desperate financial situations. Nor did the government care for all of the poor, as Howell and Temple implied. Every church and synagogue contributed to the impression of general prosperity in Amsterdam by doing its part to keep its own members fed, sheltered, and clothed. The civic institutions were not extensive enough to cover the entire indigent population. In the seventeenth-century Dutch model of multi-confessional poor relief, only the Calvinist institutions received government funding. The Reformed consistory, in addition to donations, received grants from the City Council, and was

8 The Doopsgezinde Singelkerk (1632), one of these Mennonite churches, still stands as a magnificent example of a so-called schuilkerk. H. F. Wijnman, Historische gids van Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1971), 176, 367–68. 9 Rembrandt’s famous group portrait “The Syndics” (1662) illustrates this clearly: of the five syndics in the painting who oversaw cloth manufacture and trade in Amsterdam, two were Catholic, two Reformed and one, Volckert Jansz, a Mennonite. See Piet Visser and Mary Sprunger, Menno Simons: Places, Portraits and Progeny (Krommenie, the Netherlands, 1996), 140. 10 James Howell, Epistolae Ho-elianae or the Familiar Letters of James Howell, with an introduction by Agnes Repplier, 2 vols. (Boston, 1907), 20–21. 11 Sir William Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, ed. Sir George Clark (Oxford, 1972), 88. See also Jean de Parival, Les Delices de la Hollande (Leiden, 1662), 98, translated in Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches (Berkeley, 1988), 576.

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in turn supposed to help a broad spectrum of the needy. Dutch Calvinism had more sectarian tendencies than Calvinism elsewhere, however, and the Reformed diaconate in Amsterdam, in agreement with this conception of Christian community, supported only its own members.12 Similarly, the model Burgerweeshuis, or civic orphanage, received government funding. It only accepted children whose parents had been citizens for at least seven years, and required its wards to conform to the Reformed religion.13 Orphaned children of non-citizens, after 1613, could come under the care of the city almoners who boarded out orphans until the city built an orphanage for the growing number of these children in 1666 (the level of care was lower here than in the Burgerweeshuis). The almoners also supported adult members of the deserving poor who did not fit the requirements for other charitable institutions. Other municipal institutions included various homes for the aged, hospitals, and poor houses. As in other cities, Amsterdam’s patchwork of charity was complicated and the lines were sometimes fluid.14 There were problems to be sorted out when people of different faiths married. Some people tried to double-dip, or benefit from two sources of support. On occasion, the Reformed consistory gave alms to non-members (such as Reformed from elsewhere or veterans)15 and there is at least one case of Mennonite children entering the Burgerweeshuis.16 Like other confessional groups, the Mennonites made their own contribution to the relief of Amsterdam’s poor. While Mennonites, or doopsgezinden (baptism-minded) as they prefer to be called in the Netherlands, comprised only a small part of the population (probably four to eight percent), they were disproportionately wealthy by the mid-seventeenth century and were an influential subgroup in Amsterdam and elsewhere in the Dutch Republic.17 The sixteenth-century ancestors of the Mennonites were the Anabaptists, introduced into the Netherlands in 1530. A vibrant and large movement—the largest Dutch Protestant group for a time in some regions—Anabaptism had many manifestations, including some revolutionary and violent factions, such as those who in 1535 tried to take over the city hall of Amsterdam in a surge On sectarian tendencies, see Alastair C. Duke, Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (London, 1990), 275–77. On the Reformed consistory, see Parker, The Reformation of Community, 171–73. 13 Anne E. C. McCants, Civic Charity in a Golden Age: Orphan Care in Early Modern Amsterdam (Urbana, 1997), 19. 14 Groenveld, “Social Assistance,” 194–99. 15 Grell and Cunningham, “The Reformation and Changes in Welfare Provision in Early Modern Northern Europe,” in Grell and Cunningham, eds., Protestant, 1–42. 16 The three youngest children of Waterlander Mennonites Maria Biermans and Wybrant Robijn, in 1662. On this unusual case, see M. Sprunger, “Faillissementen. Een aspect van geestelijke tucht bij de Waterlands-doopsgezinde gemeente te Amsterdam in de zeventiende eeuw,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen new series 17 (1991): 118. 17 Mary S. Sprunger, “Rich Mennonites, Poor Mennonites: Economics and Theology in the Amsterdam Waterlander Congregation During the Golden Age” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 1993), 31–32; 85 n. 13. 12

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of militant chiliasm, inspired by more prolonged efforts at the short-lived Kingdom of Münster (1534–35).18 After the demise of Anabaptist Münster, most wederdopers came to a more peaceful understanding of their faith under the leadership of Menno Simons, who preached a message of following Christ in all areas of life and eschewing all forms of violence. Persecution, severe at times, necessitated clandestine activity and led to martyrdom for many. Once declarations of independence from Spain brought religious tolerance to the northern Netherlands (1579), the Mennonites were able to participate in the burgeoning Golden Age economy, becoming a relatively prosperous and respectable minority group in the new Dutch Republic, contributing significantly to commercial and cultural activity.19 Mennonite beliefs about poverty and charity were similar but not identical to mainline Protestant ideas. One of the important late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century shifts in thinking had to do with conceptions of the poor. The medieval church and society valued the poor as having an important salvific function: the poor were necessary objects of compassion so that the rich could get into heaven. By giving generously to the poor, the wealthy could save themselves from the theological problems associated with earthy riches. As poor relief became more rational and secular (that is, run by lay persons either in the church or in government), the goal was to eliminate begging and reduce poverty. The poor were now unfortunate rather than lucky, and it was a Christian duty to care for one’s neighbors in need. Ole Peter Grell attributes some of this shift in thinking to a Protestant emphasis on grace, as it was no longer appropriate to believe that being charitable contributed to one’s salvation.20 Anabaptist theology walked a fine line between justification by faith alone and works righteousness. While one could not earn salvation through the church or sacraments, faith without a corresponding change in behavior was inadequate. True Christians were to be diligent in their attempts to imitate Christ and shun worldliness, and they would therefore be different than those who were not Mennonites (“in the world but not of the world”). This separateness manifested itself in a strong brotherhood or community ethic. Caring for the poor was part of what it meant to be a true follower of Christ, but the strong separateness inherent in Anabaptism absolved Mennonites from caring for those who were not fellow believers.

18 Peter de Jong, “Can Political Factors Account for the Fact that Calvinism rather than Anabaptism Came to Dominate the Dutch Reformation,” Church History 33 (1964): 392–417; according to Wiebe Bergsma, in “Calvinismus in Friesland um 1600 am Beispiel der Stadt Sneek,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 80 (1989): 270, 275, around 1600, about ten percent of the population of Sneek, in Friesland, was Reformed, while about one-third was Mennonite. 19 Visser and Sprunger, part 3. 20 Brian Pullan, “Catholics and the Poor in Early Modern Europe,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 26 (1976); reprinted in Poverty and Charity: Europe, Italy, Venice, 1400–1700 (Aldershot, 1994), 15–34; Ole Peter Grell, “The Protestant Imperative of Christian Care and Neighbourly Love,” in Grell and Cunningham, eds., Protestant, 45–50.

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Another important Protestant change, closely related to the question of salvation, was the rejection of voluntary poverty or mendicancy. Poverty was no longer a desirable state; voluntary poverty even less so, as it took away from alms that might be given to the poor. While they were wary of riches and the negative effect they might have on one’s chances of salvation, like other Protestants, Dutch Anabaptists and Mennonites did not seek poverty or promote mendicancy. Menno Simons, whose personal leadership and publications gave shape and form to the post-Münsterite movement, wrote, “True Christians ought not to burden each other with unnecessary expense.”21 The shame of poverty comes across in the voices of the poor themselves. In a written appeal to the diaconate of the Amsterdam Flemish Mennonite church, Jan Jansen Kroock and Aeltie Tuenes asked for help because they could no longer support their five children due to severe illness, a difficult childbirth and lying in and “other unfortunate circumstances that can befall a household.” They carefully established themselves as both deserving and godly, since they had “not brought these bad circumstances upon [them]selves like so many others through sloth or drinking or other unlawful means as do many others.” Both were longterm church members who put their faith in God rather than “things of the flesh.” They had already pawned many of their possessions in an attempt to help themselves, but now they were desperate. Nevertheless, they only wanted help if it was discreet; while they reminded the deacons that God had created rich and poor alike, they were ashamed of their status and did not want others to know.22 Even though one Mennonite writer, a preacher, tried to reassure the poor that theirs was a “blessed state,”23 among the Golden Age Mennonites, poverty was not desirable. Being poor was embarrassing; this family did not want even fellow church members to know that they needed support from the congregation. Poverty was not a virtue, and Christians should not seek to become poor, but measures had to be taken to help the needy. Dutch Mennonite conceptions of how best to do this differed from other Protestants in a few areas. One major difference was the language of community of goods. Mennonites had to distance themselves from the radical expressions of forced communalism practiced for a short time in Münster and practiced still today by the Hutterites, a rural communal group founded in sixteenth-century Moravia. To assuage fears of Münsterite activity, Menno stressed that regenerated (“born again”) Christians

21 Letter from Menno Simons to some widows, 18 May [ca. 1549], in the Doopsgezinde Bibliotheek Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam. Translation from Menno Simons, The Complete Writings of Menno Simons c. 1496–1561, ed. J. C. Wenger, trans. Leonard Verduin (Scottdale, Penn., 1956), 1028. 22 PA 1120 nr. 26, “een otmoeidgh versoeck aende besorregers vande arreme der vlamsse doopsgesinde” by Jan Janse Kroock and Aeltie Tuenes, n.d. (seventeenth-century hand). 23 J[acob] P[ietersz], Inleydinge, Om te komen tot een recht gebruyck, van de tijdelicke goederen [Introduction to a proper use of temporal goods] (Wormerveer, 1649), 103–05.

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obeyed the biblical mandate to care for the poor and to offer food, shelter and clothing to strangers, enemies and anyone in need,24 but this was quite different from holding property in common. Nevertheless, seventeenth-century Mennonites such as long-term Amsterdam elder Reynier Wijbrantsz sometimes used the biblical model of voluntary community of goods to illustrate how Christians should give freely to those in need. In his 1640 catechism, Wijbrantsz explained that apostolic community of goods was not mandated, for, after all, Paul dictated that everyone must act according to their calling. Wijbrantsz appealed to a Christian “law of love” which required believers to help one another in times of need in every way possible and with everything they possess: [Thus] there is a community of goods among them, in as much that the one is not allowed to have an overabundance and the other to perish from hunger and affliction, but that the rich, from their abundance, come to the aid of the poor in their want, and fulfill their needs. And there is thus an equal distribution among the poor and the rich in times of need; property remains with the owner, but the enjoyment thereof is common according to need.25

God sanctioned wealth and prosperity as sources of the means to care for the poor, but only “in times of need.” In the early sixteenth century, a group of spiritualist Waterlander Mennonites in Amsterdam caused great consternation to most of the Mennonite leadership by promoting a community of goods ideal in which the rich church members were supposed to give all they had to the poorer members, some of whom refused to work for a living. Church leaders, who were trying to establish the Mennonites as a respectable people, soundly denounced this movement, inspired by questionable visions. Associating with fanatics preaching ideas that threatened the social order could only harm their reputation.26 A second difference between Mennonites and other Protestants was their emphasis on the brotherhood—a voluntary church of members, closed to outsiders and accountable to one another in all aspects of life. Becoming a part of the fellowship through adult baptism meant that one would be cared for by

Menno Simons, CW, 558–60. Reynier Wijbrantsz, Catechesis, Dat is, Onderwijsinge inde Christelijcke Religie, zijnde eene verklaringe van het Symbolum der Apostelen, gestelt by Vrage ende Antwoorde [Catechism, or Instruction in the Christian Religion, which is an Explanation of the Symbols of the Apostles, in Questions and Answers] (Amsterdam, 1640), 428–30. 26 I[an] T[heunisz], Der Hanssijtsche Menniste Gheest-drijveren Historie, Ofte kort Verhael van de ghepretendeerde Ghesichten, Inspraken, Openbaringen, ende haer Acten, by onse tijden. Voort-komende uyt de leeringe ende drijven van een invvendigh, ofte onbeschreven Woordt, van Hans de Rys. . . . [The History of Hansian Spirit-Driven Mennonites, or Short Account of the Pretended Visions, Inspirations, Revelations, and Their Acts in Our Time. Stemming from the Fanatical Teaching of Hans de Rys of an Inner, or Unwritten Word . . .] (Amsterdam, 1627). 24 25

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the congregation, if need arose. The sixteenth-century Anabaptist theologian, Dirk Philips, wrote that the fellowship of communion obliged the members of the community to look out for each other’s temporal as well as spiritual needs. Leaving church members to beg violated the true meaning of fellowship.27 Here the general sixteenth-century rejection of mendicancy was clearly linked to a community ideal. Furthermore, the Anabaptist conception of the true church as a closed fellowship separate from the rest of the world relieved Mennonites from having to make non-members objects of charity. Mennonites did not envision themselves as a majority group with responsibilities for the rest of the community; most of the world was beyond redemption. Some Mennonite scholars have used the term “mutual aid” to describe the kind of reciprocal giving and taking between members that the early Anabaptists might have envisioned and even practiced.28 The strong community ethic also led Mennonites such as preacher and author Jacob Pietersz van der Koog in 1649 to distinguish between simply the deserving poor, a widely-held concept in early modern Europe, and the poor who were both deserving and “godly,” that is, church members. Jacob Pietersz explained that there was not much difference between the rich and the godly poor, because “both are fed and sustained by the same God; the difference is just the manner: that is, the one receives his sustenance from his own effort, and the other from the means of another, but both through God’s guidance.” Thus the rich are humbled, the poor comforted, and the estates become equal in the community of the faithful.29 Due to their continual theological emphasis on following Christ and becoming Christ-like, Anabaptists and Mennonites were also less comfortable with wealth than mainline Protestants. They saw more ambiguity between the good Christian life and commerce. Was business a valid calling? Perhaps, but the dangers to salvation were many. Profits must be made for the good of the community. The righteous merchant (rechtvaardige koopman) does not hoard profits but uses these to fill hungry stomachs or otherwise help the poor.30 This differed somewhat

27 William Echard Keeney, The Development of Dutch Anabaptist Thought and Practice from 1539–1564 (Nieuwkoop, 1968), 136. 28 Sociologists have labled material assistance given within a community, where all contribute and then receive as needed, “mutual aid.” Mennonite theologians and sociologists have adopted this term to describe various economic practices in the church, ranging from Amish barn-raisings to insurance companies that are only for church members. Reciprocity is a key component to current understandings of mutual aid. See Willard M. Swartley and Donald B. Kraybill, Building Communities of Compassion: Mennonite Mutual Aid in Theory and Practice (Scottdale, Penn., 1998), 13 ff. 29 Jacob Pietersz, 103–05. 30 On koopmanschap, see Marijke Spies, ed., introduction to Twee zeevaart-gedichten. Hymnus, ofte Lof-Gesangh, over de wijdberoemde scheepsvaert der Vereenighde Nederlanden (1613). J. van der Vonder, ed., Het Lof der Zee-vaart, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1987), I, 40, 45–48, 114–18, 133–35.

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from other Protestant conceptions of vocation and stewardship. This idea is seen clearly in Jacob Pietersz’s essay on economics. He admonished the rich to shun luxuries like fancy dress and expensive imported goods, so that more of their money could go to help the less fortunate. Businessmen were not to drive others out of business in unbridled capitalist practices, and employers were to pay a living wage to workers. All were admonished to at least tithe and to stay away from brandy and tobacco as a waste of money.31 The poor were to work hard and be “slight, humble and plain in their consumption,” so as to minimize the burden on the church. They should recognize that “the donations and alms come as much from small earners and sober consumers as from those who keep house with splendor and abundance.” It was objectionable then if “those who receive are lazy and slothful in their obligation to work and labor yet extravagant and ample in their spending.”32 So much for theory, but it is practice that reveals true values. Seventeenthcentury Dutch Mennonites did not shun all luxuries or give sacrificially to the poor in a voluntary community of goods model. Some merchants became very wealthy and were conspicuous consumers, amassing fine art collections, building fine city houses and even finer country homes, as did some of their Reformed neighbors. They also would discover that financial constraints and practical concerns dictated, to a certain extent, the kind of aid they could give. Little is known of Anabaptist poor relief in the days of persecution other than that in Amsterdam there were three deacons helping needy believers and that demand for aid sometimes exceeded available funds among the 3,500 to 5,000 members in the city.33 By the early seventeenth century, urban Mennonites had more developed systems of welfare in place, which were very similar to Dutch Reformed poor relief. The rich documentation of one large Mennonite church in Amsterdam, the Waterlander Mennonite Church “by the Tower,” allows for a detailed overview of poor relief in practice. In 1658 this Mennonite church lists 152 households (365 individuals) in its Poor Book.34 While it is impossible to know the exact size of the church membership at this time (over 1,000 adults), best estimates put the poor at 15 to 18 percent of the congregation. A smaller proportion, maybe 10 percent, was considered rich by the standards of the day.35 In the 1650s, approximate yearly amounts spent on care of the

31

Jacob Pietersz, 12, 31–33, 38, 46–47, 64–69, 71–72. Jacob Pietersz, 101–03. 33 Gary K. Waite, David Joris and Dutch Anabaptism 1524–1543 (Waterloo, 1990), 28–31, 34–38; G. Grosheide, Bijdrage tot de Geschiedenis der Anabaptisten in Amsterdam (Hilversum, 1938), 75–85, 96. 34 PA 1120 nr. 136, first section: 0v–70v. 35 Mary Sprunger, “Waterlanders and the Dutch Golden Age: A Case Study on Mennonite Involvement in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Trade and Industry as One of the Earliest Examples of Socio-Economic Assimilation,” in Alastair Hamilton et al., eds., From Martyr to Muppy: A Historical Introduction to Cultural Assimilation Processes of a Religious Minority in the Netherlands: The Mennonites (Amsterdam, 1994), 135–36. 32

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poor ranged from 23,000 guilders to 38,000 guilders.36 While this appears a mere drop in the bucket compared to the Reformed diaconate, which dispersed 250,000 guilders in 1645,37 Waterlander Mennonite poor relief was generous and complete. In 1652 the Waterlander deacons described their main purpose in a kind of mission statement: “to provide for and serve the poor of the congregation in their daily needs, so that none shall suffer want.”38 Like other Protestants they cited Acts 6 as the biblical precedent for their office.39 The diaconate was comprised of ten reputable men, almost all wealthy merchants, who were assisted by three deaconesses (respectable widows) and a full-time servant.40 They administered a complete poor relief package for all deserving church members in need.41 To provide free housing, the church operated seven residential complexes, or hofjes, of different size and quality, providing about 70 apartments or rooms (including the Bakehouse, mentioned above, which must have been donated or sold to the church at some point). Some of these clusters of apartments were built or purchased by the church; wealthy Mennonite individuals founded others. The best known is the Anslohofje, (today the Claes Claesz Hofje), one of the oldest in Amsterdam, dating back to at least 1616. Its founder, Claes Claesz Anslo (d. 1632), was a prosperous cloth merchant and deacon. The deacons had the authority to choose who lived in the private hofjes,42 while they paid rent for some needy families who lived in other apartments. In addition to shelter, the deacons provided the have-nots of the congregation with basic foodstuffs, fuel and petty cash. The dietary staple was rye bread, and a few free loaves per week could go a long way toward relieving a family’s

36 The numbers are very approximate, as the deacons’ account book also included other expenses, such as upkeep on the church building. The figures were derived by trying to eliminate some of these other expenses where clear, and also subtracting the amount left in the poor chest from the end of year totals. PA 1120.143 (Kasboek): fo. 83 (1650) ca. 24,940; fo. 101 (1651) ca. 23,264; fo. 121 (1652) ca. 25,000–29,000; fo. 145 (1653) ca. 23,800; fo. 202 (1655) ca. 38,138. 37 Groenveld, “Social Assistance,” 200. 38 PA 1120 nr. 118: “Resolutieboek van de kerkeraad of diakenen,” article 1: 1. In 1652, the deacons set down in writing the policies and regulations of their office, which they had been practicing for many years. These 137 resolutions, dealing especially with poor relief and administration of funds, offer the modern reader a uniquely detailed picture of the deacons’ duties and an insight into the rationale behind many of their policies. 39 Seven men “of good repute” were ordained to “serve tables” and care for needy widows so that the disciples could focus their energies on preaching. Although these original seven men had broader responsibilities than financial duties and serving the poor, such as teaching—they thus functioned more like bishops or presbyters—most church traditions consider them to be the first deacons. 40 On the deaconesses’ duties, see PA 1120 nr. 118 arts. 102 ff., pp. 11 ff. 41 PA 1120 nr. 118, art. 14: 2. 42 Wijnman, 481.

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misery.43 Needy families were able to pick up an allotted amount of bread per week from a designated baker in their neighborhoods.44 The other food staples for the poor were distributed only once annually, in winter, when shorter days and harsh weather could mean less work and more illness. In 1663, the deacons distributed assorted dried peas, 2703 pounds of cheese, nine tons (1440 kilograms) of butter, fifty-six sides of bacon weighing 3034 pounds, and twentytwo sacks of groats.45 In the summer, the diaconate handed out turf (peat) for fuel.46 Finally, every Thursday, a household member would go to the church to pick up money allotments, or weekgeld, that was intended to supplement a family’s other sources of income from work.47 The church also provided some health care in its welfare package. Despite their relative ineffectiveness during the seventeenth century, medical services were expensive. In 1661, Annetie Meijnders received thirty guilders (a family of four might pay fifty-two guilders rent per year for humble quarters) from the deacons to pay a barber-surgeon to cut a stone from her four-year-old son, who died during the process. To minimize costs, the deacons sometimes had a surgeon in their service, who would be paid a flat fee for a year to treat the church’s needy. The barber-surgeon was to provide his own “salve, plasters, gargling fluid, waters and cooling-draughts,” while the deacons would pay for any other medicines that the poor might need from the apothecary.48 When the plague struck, such as in the early 1660s, the deacons hired a special person to tend to the sick.49 When it seemed as though grave circumstances called for a real medical doctor, the deacons tried to secure the services of a former or current church board member.50 Deacons placed orphans, the disabled, and the infirm, such as Blind Geesie or Jan Huijbertsen the Cripple, under the care of other poor members. An enterprising caregiver might take in several orphans or elderly infirm, for each boarder brought extra money into the household. In 1658 Trijntje Marttens was running her own little nursing home, a relatively lucrative venture. She earned over four hundred guilders annually (more than the deacons’ servant earned per year) for keeping an elderly widow, a single woman unable to live alone, and “a man very miserable of body” who had been bedridden for many years, but was “of pious heart and patient in his suffering.”51 Orphans were handled in much the same way as the infirm, until the 1670s when the Amsterdam Mennonites

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

PA 1120 nr. 134 (11 May 1656). PA 1120 nr. 118, arts. 88–91: 9–10. PA 1120 nr. 144. PA 1120 nr. 118, arts. 26–28: 4. Diaconal minutes: PA 1120 nrs. 133–35, passim. PA 1120 nr. 140, ff. ii (13 July 1617). PA 1120 nr. 134 (1 Nov. 1663, 16 Oct. 1664, 13 Nov. 1664). e.g., PA 1120 nr. 134 (6 Jan. 1656). PA 1120 nr. 136: 51, 50, 50v.

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founded two orphanages. Orphans cost more to board because practical training and some education were part of the arrangement.52 For example, in 1652 two young sisters were placed in different homes. Wittie Martens went to live with Trijntie Jans for seventeen guilders ten stuivers per quarter year, where she would also “be taught the handwork of sewing linen and reading,” while her sister, Kuier, was sent to live with a different woman. The quarterly payment of sixteen guilders was to include room and board as well as instruction in handwork and in washing. The deacons added an additional one and a half guilder so that she could learn to read.53 Beside these basics—money, bread, staples, fuel, linens, healthcare, burial, and shelter—the needy of the congregation requested and for the most part received a large amount of extra money and goods, such as shoes, underclothing, or bed linens. Sickness, weather, accident, unemployment, childbirth—all could put such extra strain on the household budget that a family required extra help from the deacons.54 Voluntary donations were the main source of funding for Mennonite poor relief. Church members could drop money into iron poor boxes in the church:55 give money directly to an individual deacon or elder56 or leave bequests in their final testaments, as did the medical doctor and elder, Johannes Reijersz, who in 1680 left 1,000 guilders to poor Mennonite orphans and 2,000 guilders to poor Amsterdam church-members.57 More modest folk also left money to the work of the diaconate, as the 1652 self-written will of Mennonite Englishman Robbert Pandert demonstrates: I ask that you give all that you find in my house, which is not for any children nor for any friends, but only for the congregation, and do not let one from all take this or that, but sell everything to the profit of the congregation. Everything that there is I earned with my work and because my child is dead I give also his earnings to the congregation.58

The deacons regularly paid for some needs out of their own pockets, such as the bulk foodstuffs. In addition, surplus money from the poor chest was invested, mostly via loans to businessmen in the church. Tensions common to any system of congregational poor relief in a pluralistic society emerged in Mennonite welfare. The diaconate was always concerned that those receiving poor relief be sincere members of the church. Thus they screened baptismal candidates to see “whether their request comes out of a just

52

PA 1120 nr. 118: 31 (7 and 12 March 1652). PA 1120 nr. 118: 31 (7 and 12 March 1652). 54 PA 1120 nrs. 133–35, “Resolutie van extraordinari assistentie aen den Armen,” 1649 and following. 55 PA 1120 nr. 118, arts. 33, 34, 40: 4–5. 56 PA 1120 nr. 118, art. 36: 5. 57 PA 1120 nr. 118, art. 37: 5; nr. 431: Will of Dr. Johannes Reijersz. (28 Sept. 1680). 58 PA 1120 nr. 172: bundle of wills; nr. 117: 36v (7 [?] Dec. 1619). 53

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fear of God, and whether they have good witnesses, and have brought them along, so that one understands and is assured that the matter does not revolve around bread.” Vigilance was necessary so that “through carelessness, one does not burden the congregation with unvirtuous people.”59 Mennonite “foreigners” (as the deacons put it, those “poor people from abroad, coming from Friesland or other lands, to live here, who cannot make it on their own”)60 had to undergo even more careful scrutiny than new converts, such that by mid-century the deacons implemented a one-year waiting period for receiving alms. The deacons advised some to return to their homes and would even pay travel expenses for those who did. Once having joined the church, Mennonites were accountable not only to God but to each other. The elders of the church strove to keep members in line, preferably through use of the “small ban” (temporary exclusion from the Lord’s Supper) or, for sinners who refused to show repentance, the “big ban” (excommunication).61 Sins included holding office, swearing oaths, carrying weapons, working on or owning shares in an armed ship, and marrying someone of a different faith, as well as the more general lapses such as going bankrupt, getting drunk, having domestic quarrels, or engaging in sexual relations outside of marriage.62 Together with the elders, the deacons were involved in making sure that poor relief recipients lived up to basic standards of morality and propriety. About one-third of the discipline cases to come before the elders involved members on poor relief, a significant over-representation of a group that comprised about 15 percent of the total congregation.63 It did not happen frequently, but the deacons could suspend or terminate alms when an indigent was banned.64 Poor relief was a privilege of membership rather than a social right. More often than not, the threat of losing alms was an incentive strong enough to produce repentance on the part of the wrongdoers.65 Other times, the deacons’ compassion

59

PA 1120 nr. 118, art. 116: 16. PA 1120 nr. 118, art. 92: 10. 61 PA 1120 nr. 131: Reinier Wybrantsz., “Wat reden datmen can by brengen, daer van datmen yemandt, die beispelyck is, vermaent dat hy vande tafel des heren voor een tyt sal blijuen” (n.d.). 62 Disciplinary notations are contained in the minutes of the congregation, PA 1120 nr. 117 (1612–41); minutes of the dienaren, nr. 116 (1612–20; 1640–68); and the socalled “ban book,” nr. 125 (1646–79). 63 PA 1120 nr. 118, art. 117: 13. 64 One of the elders of the church, Reynier Wijbrantsz. explained the relationship between alms and good conduct. Paul had instructed, “if any would not work, neither should he eat,” nor should anyone who “walketh disorderly” (2 Thessalonians 3:6, 14, 15). Therefore, concluded Reynier, some kind of “withdrawal” was necessary, from “the enjoyment of alms” or from “the community of the Lord’s Supper” until improvement occurs. PA 1120 nr. 131: [2]. 65 PA 1120 nr. 116, part B: 21 (12 June, 27 June 1652). 60

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got the better of them, such as was the case when in 1618 they ordered Freerck the Peat Porter and his wife Mijntie to move out of their apartment as soon as possible. They had a long history of quarreling and had made too merry at their daughter’s wedding, drinking to excess and dancing. The approaching winter was sufficiently harsh, however, that it moved the ministers to readmit Freerck and Mijntie to the congregational housing through May, at which time the couple would undergo reevaluation.66 Only in a few dire cases were alms recipients turned out on the streets, but it did happen.67 Another discipline problem was marriage to someone of a different faith. While all classes were banned for this violation of community, for poor women especially it could mean loss of alms, as it was the husband’s responsibility to support his family.68 Poor relief was not only contingent on proper conduct but also on proper stewardship of alms.69 Those who misused what they received were admonished to improve and instructed as to the proper use of their alms. The “ample housekeeping” (ruym huyshielden) of a bargeman and his wife caused the diaconate and elders great consternation, “because one does not intend the poor money to be spent thus.” The deacons revoked the couple’s weekly stipend and ordered them to move out of their apartment, although later, after they asked for forgiveness, the deacons agreed to reinstate their alms on the condition that their conduct remain acceptable.70 The church leadership cherished the good burgher values of thrift as well as cleanliness, orderliness, domestic harmony, chastity, and sobriety. This overview of Mennonite poor relief, as practiced and preached, now makes it possible to apply the problems raised by the sacred-secular dichotomy to sectarian welfare in Golden-Age Amsterdam. The Mennonites were a religious minority who wielded economic power but had no access to political power. Was their poor relief based on Christian compassion, or was it part of a broader effort to keep order and ensure that there was sufficient labor to maintain the prosperity of the city, as some have suggested about poor relief in general?71 When brought down to a congregational and individual level, dismissals of compassion and religious ideology as main factors in poor relief seem to be divorced from the real experiences of those involved in welfare activities. At the most foundational level, minority churches especially were primarily following religious guidelines to care for the poor among them, and exercise compassion for everyone in their community of faith. Yes, Mennonite poor relief was partially shaped by financial concerns, as are all institutions. As Anabaptists moved from a persecuted, clandestine church to a tolerated and even respected group,

66 67 68 69 70 71

PA 1120 116: 25v–26v (20 Sept. 1618 and 7 Feb. 1619). PA 1120 nr. 117: 53v (8 Feb. 1626). Sprunger, “Rich Mennonites,” 213–14. PA 1120 nr. 118, art. 7: 2. PA 1120 nr. 116, part B: [fo. 17] (24 Nov. 1649); B: [18] (12 Jan. 1650). McCants, 2.

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charity became more institutionalized, more concerned with practicalities and financial prudence. To keep the poor chest filled with adequate funds, “the law of love” had to be kept in check and deacons had to bring merchant knowhow to their office (bookkeeping, investments, wholesale buying in bulk, and even the production of their own linens).72 The Mennonite deacons in Amsterdam were good at what they did; the poor fund always had a surplus. Certainly, the wealthier Mennonites made it their business to keep the poor in line, and encouraged middle-class values in the process. As a religious minority with a radical past there was always concern about maintaining Mennonite respectability. In addition, business owners had an interest in a dependable and morally upright labor pool and indeed, some of the poor members worked for fellow church members.73 In this way Mennonite poor relief, along with other confessional welfare, contributed to the social control of the Amsterdam poor. While the Mennonites accepted that God had created both rich and poor, making complete elimination of poverty impossible, they worked to reduce levels of poverty in the congregation. This was probably related to their communal ethic, which seemed to drive Mennonite notions of helping out the less fortunate. Rather than charity, the Anabaptists used a language of community of goods and mutual assistance in the fellowship of believers. By the seventeenth century, even though poor relief in Dutch Mennonite churches had become institutionalized, the goal was still community well-being, based on their understanding of the New Testament church. The deacons paid for apprenticeships so that boys could learn decent trades, and they would often give donations or small loans to poor relief recipients trying to improve their wage-earning capabilities with another loom, or a barge.74 So while they did not have illusions that they could eliminate poverty, they hoped to break the generational cycle of indigence that was so common. Individual deacons may have had mixed motives in the exercise of their office: status, sociability, and increased opportunity for amassing capital. There was a marriage and business network among the families of deacons and elders, drawn from an increasingly closed circle of merchants and manufacturers. Barred from the regency by theological and statutory restraints, these families formed a kind of wealthy and respectable Mennonite elite. Besides marriage and partnership opportunities, deacons and elders could borrow money from the poor chest at low interest rates. The stated goal was to invest any surplus “money of the poor” since the merchant deacons knew that an idle penny was a wasted one,75 but the sums, which ranged from several hundred to several thousand

72

Sprunger, “Rich Mennonites, Poor Mennonites,” 169, 179–81, 191–92. PA 1120 nr. 136, fo. 17v (1 Jan. 1658), fo. 63 (1 Jan. 1658; 5 Aug. 1660); Sprunger, “Rich Mennonites, Poor Mennonites,” 109–10. 74 Sprunger, “Rich Mennonites, Poor Mennonites,” 215–22. 75 PA 1120 nr. 118, art. 38: 5. 73

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guilders, could be pumped into individual business ventures. These perks that deacons enjoyed came at great cost of time and money. Nor do these other motives preclude sincere Christian charity as a major factor in wanting to provide for the poor. It is ironic that while the Mennonites saw themselves as a special group, different from the rest of the world and with their own unique theology, their poor relief system was remarkably similar to that of the Dutch Reformed. Within the early modern urban setting, practical financial concerns and societal norms probably did not allow for much deviation in models. In caring for their own poor, out of their own funds, Mennonites and other confessional groups in Amsterdam helped relieve the city of some financial and administrative responsibility. The municipal institutions would have had to be more extensive to maintain Amsterdam’s reputation for model charity and general prosperity and, in fact, came to depend on the various churches to care for their own. In 1659 and several times in the following years, the magistrates even reprimanded the Lutherans for not doing enough to support their own poor members.76 But for the Mennonites at least, these were all by-products, unintended consequences of striving to follow religious mandates of community welfare. Dismissals of compassion and piety as a major motivator in early modern charity seem at odds with the mentalité of the early modern European.77 While perhaps not popular to do so in this more cynical day and age, it is rational, given the pluralism of seventeenth-century Amsterdam, to view the various confessional poor relief systems as sincere expressions of religiously motivated charity. Nevertheless, the theological necessity of taking care of one’s own community also served well the city’s interest in reducing indigence and maintaining order.

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Groenveld, “Social Assistance,” 203. An example of this kind of dismissal appears in a recent study of the Amsterdam Burgerweeshuis: “If we ignore for the moment the (unlikely) possibility that all transfers from the wealthy and powerful to the needy and politically inert are motivated solely by a compassion that can be neither modeled nor rationally explained, we are left with the task of finding those incentives for such a transfer, be they political, social, or economic, that are amenable to social-scientific analysis and prediction.” McCants, 2. 77

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CURING BODY AND SOUL: HEALTH CARE IN EARLY MODERN ORANGE S. Amanda Eurich

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n the late spring of 1673, the consuls of Orange deliberated after one of the rectors of the municipal hospital had detailed the discovery of a small baby girl, found at dawn on the last day of St. Eutrope’s fair at Martin’s Gate. A note attached to the child’s clothes indicated that she had already been baptized and given the name Catherine. The consuls lost no time in deciding that baby Catherine was almost certainly the product of an illicit union between a local distiller of eau-de-vie, Andre Aunet, and his servant Martha, who had fled under suspicious circumstances to the papal enclave of Avignon, less than a day’s ride away. Andre Pelet, a lawyer and one of the city’s four hospital rectors, was dispatched urgently to Avignon to extradite the presumed perpetrator and return her to Orange for prosecution. With a local judge and his secretary in tow, Pelet stormed Martha’s lodgings in Avignon a few days later only to be faced with a most disconcerting sight: the young woman was suckling an infant, which she claimed was her own, naming one Sieur Itier, an Avignonnais manufacturer of silk stockings, as the father. Friends and neighbors corroborated Martha’s story, and so Pelet returned to Orange, empty handed, without even demanding legal records of the proceedings from the judge’s secretary, “in order to avoid any more expense.”1 Over the course of the next month, the town consuls of Orange faced a veritable “epidemic” of illegitimate births as at least four other young mothers abandoned or threatened to abandon their infants to the city’s charge. Pledged to protect the community from moral pollution in any guise, the magistrates decided to take punitive action and ordered the three women who remained in protective custody in the municipal hospital to be tarred, feathered and driven from the city after they had given birth.2

1 AC-Orange, BB32/1, fos. 1–2. The records are silent on baby Catherine, who presumably remained in the hospital’s care, fed and clothed at municipal expense until the age of twelve, unless of course, she died in infancy, as frequently happened. 2 Ibid. It is unclear from the record if their children were expelled with them.

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This commonplace tale reveals the dual face of health care and poor relief in post-Reformation Europe, where the renewed spiritual imperative to provide for indigent, disadvantaged, and vulnerable members of society was matched by the equally earnest mandate to discipline and reform them.3 In the past two decades, early modern historians increasingly have emphasized the common moral agenda and social consequences of the sixteenth-century reformations— Catholic and Protestant. Thus, it comes as no surprise that in confessionally mixed communities, such as Orange, ruling elites across the religious divide collaborated so readily together as custodians of moral order.4 The shared administration of public relief programs and caritative resources suggests that bi-confessional cooperation was possible at the local level, although it was almost always a fragile achievement. Any change in the balance of power between the confessions threatened to compromise the practice of shared governance and the laws and municipal institutions that guaranteed it. Public welfare programs, moreover, represented only one sector—albeit a very dynamic one—of the richly varied terrain of early modern charitable economies. The modern paradigm of the rationalization and secularization of public health care program, under the aegis of royal and municipal authorities obscures the continuing vitality of private religious, charitable initiatives in early modern Europe. For both Catholics and Protestants, the dispensation of poor relief became an important medium of religious instruction and social discipline, inspiring a variety of charitable programs directed toward members of their own confessional communities. In mixed communities across the French Midi, poor relief also became a potent expression of confessional rivalries as churches and confraternities turned their own systems of charity into a vigorous competition for bodies and souls. In regions marked by bitter religious conflict, the late seventeenth century witnessed the confessionalization of health care and poor relief programs.5 The case of Orange is particularly instructive, since the evolution

3 For an overview of the religious impulses and ideologies behind poor relief programs, see Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor in Protestant Europe, 1500–1700 (London, 1997), esp. 1–65; idem, Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe (London, 1999); Robert Jutte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994), 101–25. 4 For other examples of bi-confessional cooperation and conflict, see Wilma Pugh, “Social Welfare and the Edict of Nantes: Lyon and Nîmes,” French Historical Studies 8 (1974): 351–76; Edwin Bezzina, “Charity and Confessional Difference in SeventeenthCentury France: The Maison de Charité of Loudun, 1648–1685,” Confraternitas 11 (2000): 3–26. 5 The literature on confessionalization is vast, beginning with the works of E. W. Zeeden, Wolfgang Reinhard, and Heinz Schilling, whose works have been cited by other scholars in the volume. Historians of early modern France have been less willing to adopt the confessionalization paradigm, or have argued for a more nuanced definition that emphasizes the process of establishing distinct confessional boundaries. For the most recent treatment of this scholarship, see Philip Benedict, “Confessionalization in France? Critical

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of charity in this small feudal principality suggests how confessional tensions reconfigured and revitalized poor relief in ways that reveal the complex interplay of religious ideology, political power, and economic necessity. Religious War and the Politics of Parity During the later half of the sixteenth century, the Dutch protectorate of Orange was the site of bloody confrontations between Catholics and Calvinists that repeatedly challenged efforts by the house of Nassau to impose regimes of pacification and parity upon its subjects.6 Contemporary chroniclers often described the tiny principality, located some twenty miles north of Avignon, as “un petit Genève” in the shadow of a puissant French Rome. While the constant exchange of men and material mediated tensions between the two principalities, Orange was a critical pays de refuge for Huguenots within the larger embattled landscape of the French Midi. In 1567, William of Nassau promulgated the first of many edicts of toleration, which mandated the shared governance of municipal institutions. From 1572 to 1598, however, with the support of resident Calvinist governors, Huguenots enjoyed a virtual monopoly over municipal governments in the two largest towns in the principality, Orange and Courthézon, and encouraged the fusion of church, consistory, and state that characterized the creation of stable Protestant regimes across Europe in the late sixteenth century. Thus, while the villages in the rural hinterland remained staunchly Catholic, the Calvinist military governor, working in close concern with local ministers, largely orchestrated the politics of the administrative center.7 In 1598, Henri IV confirmed Philip-William of Nassau, son of William the Silent, as sovereign of the principality of Orange. A devout Catholic, PhilipWilliam lost no time in ordering the reestablishment of Catholic worship and

Reflections and New Evidence,” in Andrew Spicer and Raymond Mentzer, eds., Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559–1685 (Cambridge, 2002), 44–62. 6 For the history of the religious wars in Orange, see Marc Venard, Réforme protestante, réforme catholique dans la province d’Avignon XVIe siècle (Paris, 1993), 108–09, 461–84; W. F. Leemans, La principauté d’Orange de 1470 à 1580: une société en mutation, 2 vols (Hilversum, 1986). 7 In the 1560s, Huguenots were ousted from parish churches in Courthézon, Jonquières, and Gigondas but given the right to assemble privately. By the early seventeenth century, only the Reformed community in Courthézon had managed to seize control of the local government. Nonetheless, the political activity of Reformed ministers in the principality extended far beyond the regulation of health, education, and social welfare. Sebastian Julian headed the diplomatic delegation in 1588 to negotiate with Lesdiguières to prolong the peace treaty between Orange and the Comtat Venaissin. Vincent Serre’s led the campaign to expel Catholics from the town council, lobbied to strengthen fortifications, and renegotiated the salt tax imposed upon the principality by the French. See L. Duhamel, Inventaire-sommaire des Archives muncipales antérieures à 1790 de la ville d’Orange (Orange, 1917), I: 77–82. On the politics of the radical core within the Huguenot party, see Leemans, La principauté d’Orange, I: 442–53.

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the creation of a bi-confessional parlement, a program which put the Dutch absentee prince at odds with his resident Calvinist governor, Alexandre de Blacons. Over the next decade Huguenot ministers supported Blacons’ vehement refusal to implement the full measure of Nassau’s decree. In 1606 at the insistence of the redoubtable Duc de Lesdiguières, working on behalf of Henri IV to restore order in Languedoc, Blacons finally agree to relinquish his governorship. A year later, Nassau visited his troubled principality and issued a new edict of toleration on 3 August 1607. The Edict of Toleration of 1607 reaffirmed the general guidelines for religious co-existence in Orange and reestablished at least the semblance of political parity between the two confessions. The edict ordered the bipartisan administration of municipal institutions, including the poor bureau, the restoration of ecclesiastical property and revenues sequestered during the Religious Wars, and the public recognition of a Catholic religious calendar and canon law. Two years later, the bishop of Orange returned from self-imposed exile and celebrated mass publicly in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth for the first time in thirty years, setting the stage for the full-scale restoration of Catholicism in the principality, including new religious orders and confraternities inspired by Tridentine reforms.8 Although the number of Catholic baptisms registered in Orange tripled in the early seventeenth century, Huguenots nonetheless remained a powerful and politically influential minority, comprising between thirty and forty percent of the total population.9 Under the leadership of Protestant governors, such as Christophe and Frederic Dohna (1630–59), the Huguenot community experienced periods of renewed vigor.10 From 1650 onward, however, the internecine struggles within the house of Nassau during the minority of William III revived sectarian tensions in the principality and provided the pretext for the French invasion and occupation from 1660 to 1665.11 Two successive periods of French rule between 1672 and 1678, and again from 1682 to 1697, further intensified the process of confessionalization in Orange, implicating civic institutions and programs, including poor relief, in the politics of religious distinction and violence.

8 For the official account of Jean de Tulles’ august entry into the episcopal city, see BM Avignon, Mss. 49.193, Relation véritable de l’ordre tenu à l’entrée de Monseigneur Reverendissime Jean de Tulles, évesque d’Orenges en la ville et en son église cathedrale dudict Orenge (Avignon, 1609). Huguenot ministers vehemently protested each public advance of Catholicism from the establishment of a Capuchin monastery in the ruins of the church of St. Florent at the northern edges of the town in 1611 to the assemblies of the Catholic clergy in 1614, see BM Avignon, Mss. 5238, fo. 741 and Mss. 5286, fo. 251. 9 For baptismal registers, see AC-Orange, GG1-4 (Catholic) and GG38 (Protestant). 10 Comte de Pontbriant, Histoire de la Principauté d’Orange (Avignon, 1981), 197–205. 11 Ibid.

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Recasting the Parameters of Urban Poor Relief The princes of Nassau shrewdly recognized that the practice of charity—public and private—could be a potent source of confessional resentment and conflict and guaranteed their subjects, whatever their religious allegiance, succor from the city’s health care system, notably its hospitals and poor bureau. In 1583, William of Nassau, in conjunction with the clergy and consistory of the Reformed Church, made the first attempt to introduce a centrally-administered system of poor relief, the bureau des pauvres, closely modeled on the reorganization of municipal poor relief in Holland and other Protestant states.12 A common chest, financed by funds from hospital, monastic properties, church revenues, and private legacies, was established and administered by a board of directors, comprised of the minister and deacons of the Reformed Church, two consuls, and two hospital rectors. In 1607, Philip-William reinstated the poor bureau, this time with a bipartisan administration that included the bishop of Orange and a consul and rector from each confession.13 Until the prolonged subsistence crises of the 1620s, however, city magistrates embraced these innovations half-heartedly and convened the poor bureau sporadically in response to acute harvest failures, outbreaks of the plague, and the consequent increases in mendicancy. After record bad harvests in 1615, 1617, and 1618, for example, the rectors of the hospital pleaded with the consulate to restore the poor bureau (“in accordance with the edit of 1607”) to regulate the growing flood of vagrants who threatened public order by begging door to door. Although a small fund was established under the direction of the hospital rectors,14 municipal deliberations suggest that the poor bureau only became a permanent feature of the institutional infrastructure in Orange after the plague epidemic of 1649. Other initiatives, such as the creation of a compulsory tax (the cinquain), and the commitment of certain public resources (the proceeds from the sale of mulberry leaves, manure and night soil) to the poor, assured small but consistent contributions to the poor fund. In general, city magistrates moved fitfully toward the centralization and reform of the public health system and poor relief. Projected programs and expansion plans for the city’s hospitals repeatedly collapsed due to a lack of stable funding, increasing demographic pressures, and the rising toll of vagrancy. By the mid-sixteenth century, the city’s various medieval charities and hospitals had been consolidated into two institutions, each specializing in distinct patient 12

BM Avignon, Mss. 5264, fos. 33–41. Municipal deliberations suggest the poor bureau may have predated this decree which confirmed its existence, AC-Orange, BB19, fo. 7. 13 Ibid., fo. 55–72. 14 AC-Orange, BB25, fos. 33, 189. In nearby Courthézon, the other bastion of Reformed tradition in the principality, the municipal deliberations suggest the same sporadic response to bureaucratic centralization. During the severe plague epidemic of 1629–30, for example, a bureau de santé was established only briefly and had to be recreated again in 1659. AC-Courthézon, BB3 and BB4.

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populations that reflected the increasing marginalization of the “undeserving” or foreign poor. The hôpital neuf housed the city’s indigent and sick, while St. Lazare, a medieval leprosarium beyond the city walls, attended to vagrants and plague victims.15 By the 1640s, both were sadly in need of repair but hospital funds were earmarked for even more pressing poor relief efforts. After a routine hospital inspection in 1642, newly appointed rectors reported the deplorable material conditions in the city’s chief charitable institution, where the lack of basic amenities, such as sheets and wood to heat the water to wash them, as well as slowly crumbling structure itself challenged even the relatively meager standards of health care practiced in most early modern hospitals.16 Attempts to enlist wealthy female benefactors to render charitable visits to the hospital and help with repairs and nursing duties apparently failed. Anticipated windfalls from testamentary legacies never materialized.17 As we shall see later, potential donors from both confessions were finding more agreeable channels for their charitable activities in church-based programs of poor relief. Seven years later the hospital was declared “totally ruined” the town council began making plans to sell the structure to pay expenses and taxes and start anew.18 For most of seventeenth century, the municipal government of Orange was directly involved in the administration of public charity and local hospitals, dispensing relief at a variety of levels to the resident and non-resident poor. The consuls worked closely with hospital rectors to regulate the distribution of bread to the needy, the care of abandoned and illegitimate children, and the dispensation of charity to the so-called agrégés de l’hôpital, maintained at municipal expense.19

15 In 1628, town consuls debated how to handle an outbreak of smallpox at the hospital of St. Lazare which they attributed to prostitutes housed there, suggesting that the institution had indeed become the dumping ground for the city’s unclean or “undeserving” poor. See AC-Orange, BB27. 16 AC-Orange, BB29/1, fos. 34–35. On conditions in hospitals in Ancien Régime France, see Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France (London, 1989), 1–2, 33. 17 AC-Orange, BB29/1, fos. 34–35. 18 Ibid., fo. 407. 19 On the distribution of bread to the needy as a common municipal response to endemic poverty in early modern France, see Natalie Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism and Heresy,” Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975), 62; Raymond Mentzer, “Organization Endeavor and Charitable Impulse in Sixteenth-Century France: The Case of Protestant Nîmes,” French History 5 (1991): 19–20. As in other cities, Orangeois magistrates divided the town into quartiers for administrative purposes, naming a neighborhood captain from among the municipal corps who supervised the bread dole along with the hospital rectors. Officials were subject to careful surveillance. In 1607, for example, consuls accused one of the rectors of corruption and negligence after it was reported that he had proffered loaves of moldy bread to the poor. An investigation eventually cleared both: the hospitalier’s wife who normally supplied the bread was behind in her task (the bread was kneaded by not yet in the ovens) and so offered his the six loaves of bread which she reserved for the servants, AC-Orange BB24, fo. 13.

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To preserve the bi-confessional nature of poor relief in municipal hospitals, the hospital board was composed each year of the four former city consuls, who served an additional term as rectors. The council also vetted the appointment of municipal medical officers to serve the needs of the city’s poor. By the midseventeenth century, these included a physician, a surgeon, and an apothecary as well as a number of lesser-paid para-professionals and subordinates, such as the hospitalier, a kind of concierge-cum-nurse who supervised daily operations, two mid-wives, and two chasse-coquins, who as their name implies quite literally chased away the undeserving riff-raff that showed up at the hospital looking for handouts. The town council rigorously observed the principle of bi-confessionality when appointing skilled medical professionals, rotating members of each confession annually where possible. Even unskilled hospital personnel, such as the hospitaliers and chasse-coquins, often recruited from among the ranks of the “deserving poor” themselves, were apparently not entirely exempt from the exigencies of confessional parity, although they served indefinite terms of office at the discretion of the consulate.20 When the Protestant hospitalier, Gédeon Rollan, died in 1641, consuls selected local Catholic day-laborer, Jean Blanc, as his replacement, noting with pleasure that Blanc’s wife was Protestant.21 It is difficult to trace the level of medical care dispensed by these municipal providers. Until the 1670s at least, municipal medical officers dispensed their services as needed to the city’s poor both inside and beyond the hospital’s walls without any significant increase in wages or fringe benefits.22 In 1679, for example, the small contingent of Protestant apothecaries in Orange refused to serve without a fifty-percent increase in wages and signal exemptions from various

Both were systematically enrolled among the agrégés de l’hopital, receiving small subventions in kind and species for their labor and exemption from local taxes and duties. See, for example, municipal deliberations concerning a municipal loan of thirty livres proffered to a newly-appointed hospitalier to permit him to purchase a mule for transporting the sick to and from the hospital, AC-Orange, BB29/1, fo. 48. Several years later the animal died, and the consuls decided to engage a servant girls instead at six écus or eighteen livres annually. The hospitalier, usually a married man in observation of public mores, often ministered to the institutionalized poor with the help of his wife, who was not formally remunerated for her services. The one exception to this rule was the payment made to the widow of Gédeon Rolland, who took over her husband’s office after his death in 1641 until a suitable replacement could be found. For extant hospital accounts and poor rolls, see AC-Orange, GG114 (1613–14), GG148 (1641–42), GG144 (1655), GG153 (1665–66), GG157 (1680). Chasse-coquins received a jacket embroidered with the town crest in addition to their wages of 50 sols. 21 AC-Orange, BB29/1, fos. 48, 330v. Both Blanc and his wife died in 1647, and rectors were ordered to search for a new concierge at their discretion. 22 The situation was much the same in Orange’s sister city of Courthézon, where surgeons and apothecaries defended themselves against charges of inadequate and indifferent treatment by explaining that their wages did not even cover their medical costs. The city council decided to reimburse medical officer for costs rather than increase wages. AC-Courthézon, BB3, fo. 228 (1651). 20

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municipal taxes. For three months, the town council negotiated unsuccessfully with counter-offers of their own until they finally broke the deadlock by threatening to open appointment to Catholics as well.23 Throughout the course of the seventeenth century, the town council rarely met without deliberating or disbursing some form of relief to resident and nonresident poor in the principality. The council routinely recused importunate members of the community, who appeared before them requesting reductions in hearth and poll taxes. They took pains to corroborate the poignant tales of woe constructed by petitioners.24 They also entertained petitions from local benefactors, seeking reimbursement for various voluntary acts of charity that had stretched the limits of their financial reserves or the bonds of family and friendship. Deliberations suggest that the Orangeois magistracy actively encouraged and compensated various care-givers, most often women, who orchestrated the extensive system of domestic health care operating at the margins of the municipal relief programs. In 1633, for example, Justine Scau was awarded a subvention for setting bones and performing minor surgical operations for poor day laborers and artisans.25 The petition of woman who agreed to nurse the child of a friend, who had promised to return after seeking seasonal employment but never reclaimed her child, is a powerful reminder of how crucial intra-familial and friendship networks were, especially among the poor, for survival.26 Why the magistrates refused to compensate David Sylvius, a prominent Reformed minister, for sheltering a poor young woman during the disastrous plague of 1629 is an intriguing problem—one that may suggest that the councilors themselves recognized the viability of church relief programs and expected clergy to tap their own resources.27 As elsewhere in France and in Europe generally, fiscal exigency shaped municipal policies toward the growing population of poverty-stricken transients who

23 AC-Orange, BB32/1, fos. 182–89. Deliberations suggest that the rotating appointment continued to be difficult as apothecaries of both confessions made common cause, refusing to bid for the post until the own council agreed to except them from both poll tax (fouage) and billeting troops and permanently limited responsibilities to the hospitalized poor in 1681. See AC-Orange, BB32/1, fo. 271v. 24 See for example, AC-Orange, BB24, fos. 18, 33; BB30/1, fos. 18–22, 25–28, 30, 36–38; BB33/1, fos. 90–91; BB34, fos. 205, 264–66. 25 AC-Orange, BB27, fo. 268. 26 AC-Orange, BB28. On the importance of self-help and kinship networks as a strategy for coping with illness, especially among the poor, see Martin Dinges, “Self-help and Reciprocity in the Parish Relief System,” in Peregrine Horden and Richard Smith, eds., The Locus of Care: Communities, Caring and Institutions in History (forthcoming); idem, “Health Care and Poor Relief in Regional Southern France in the Counter-Reformation,” in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and J. Arrizabalaga, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, (London, 1999): 242–43; Barbara BeckermanDavis, “Poverty and Poor Relief in Sixteenth-Century Toulouse,” Historical Reflections 17 (1991): 267–96. 27 AC-Orange, BB28, fo. 14v, 17v.

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threatened to overwhelm the charitable resources of municipalities across France. In administrative centers and economic crossroads, such as Orange, seasonal laborers, vagrants, discharged soldiers, and travelers, who came begging at the city gates and hospital for temporary assistance, accounted for 10 to 15 percent of all expenditures from the municipal poor chest. Not surprisingly, municipal governments throughout Europe focused on the relocation of the non-native poor to their communities of origin, even when pressed by the ethos of Christian charity to proffer some form of temporary relief. In cities throughout southern France, town councils authorized the distribution of one-time gifts, in kind and in specie, known as the passade, to importunate travelers and vagrants with the intention of hastening their journey to a new destination.28 The number of passades issued each year in Orange varied considerably in accordance with economic conditions. During turbulent periods of war, plague, or famine, guards were posted at the city gates to regulate the distribution of bread to passants and secure the city from dangers of these potential social pollutants.29 Even with such preventative measures, poor migrants still slipped through the gates (sometimes with the complicity of the guards themselves), where they became an increasingly heavy charge on local institutions and charitable revenues. As hospital records in Orange indicate, these wandering poor could severely tax local poor rolls, accounting for as much as twenty-five to thirty percent of socalled extraordinary, that is unexpected, charitable expenditures.30 Even more problematic, however, were those who managed to stay and become a permanent burden on the community. To combat the influx of economic exiles and religious refugees in Orange, the town council orchestrated periodic dragnets to identify non-native indigents, residing in the city, who were classified as gens inutiles and summarily ordered to leave the city.31 Even those with spouses and

28 See for example, AC-Orange BB25 (1614–21), fos. 23, 128v, 141, 204v; BB29/1, fo. 61. In 1690s, alarmed by the pressing number of refuges from neighboring provinces seeking aid and asylum, Orange’s consuls ordered the distribution of bread at Langes Gate, with the warning to recipient that any further demands for aid would be punished, BB35/1 fos. 44–52. For the practice of the passade in Bordeaux, see Dinges, “Huguenot Poor Relief,” 170–71. 29 At various points in time when not in the grips of French dragoons, Orange held an attraction as a pays de refuge for Huguenot refugees fleeing the increasingly repressive policies of the Bourbon monarchy. Consistories often provided the lion’s share of assistance for these religious travelers, see Martin Dinges, “Huguenot Poor Relief and Health Care in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” in Andrew Spicer and Raymond Mentzer, eds., Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559–1685 (Cambridge, 2002), 171. See also, Mentzer “Organizational Endeavor,” 13. 30 This figure is based upon a sampling of the so-called extraordinary expenditures of the poor rolls, where distributions to the passing poor were registered, AC-Orange, GG114 (December 1613), 16%; GG115 (December 1615), 24%; GG148 (1641), GG144 (1655). 31 After a series of bad harvests between 1617 and 1619 which threatened even the

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children in their charge, were rarely granted a stay of execution, although councilors demonstrated a measure of compassion by providing small discretionary sums for relocation expenses.32 From mid-century onward magistrates directed ever greater energies toward the expulsion and eradication of these problematic “foreigners,” including punitive tax schemes to drive the dwindling Jewish population out of the city.33 The evolution of this clearly articulated discourse of confinement, marginality, and exclusion is particularly evident in the magistrates’ treatment of unwed mothers and their illegitimate children. Illegitimate pregnancies drew the especial attention of authorities because they were manifestly visible signs of public disorder and immorality that they believed could be remedied by exemplary discipline. Unwed mothers played upon widespread anxieties associated with both gender and class, and the increasingly coercive policies of Orangeois magistrates toward them reveal the extent to which the moral, political, and fiscal imperatives behind early modern health care were inextricably linked. Even where rates of illegitimacy were relatively low, there is no question that the care of illegitimate and abandoned infants and children often represented the single most pressing line item on municipal poor rolls, often accounting for more than 40 percent of total expenditures in any given month.34 Outfitting a young infant could cost as much as four to five livres in tailor’s fees, while wet-nurses charged handsomely for their services, typically demanding three to four livres monthly for their charges. This sum was more than twice the amount hospital rectors paid birth mothers nursing their children in house.35 And as children grew older, professional wet-nurses, such as Jeanne Ridelle, doggedly pursued subventions to cover increasing costs.36 While the death toll among illegitimate children farmed out to the care of local midwives was extremely high, those who survived remained on the public dole until they reached the age of twelve when they were apprenticed to local artisans.37 Almost without exception the women who were apprehended for bearing children out of wedlock and/or abandonment were young, unmarried servants. resources of communal grain stores, for example, the consuls of Orange decided to draw up a list of “the great number of foreign poor with large family who cannot but challenge the resources of the public charity,” AC-Orange, BB25, fo. 211v. 32 See, for example the case of Nicolas of Picardy, who had married a woman from the Comtat Venaissin, settled in Orange, and fathered several children. Classified as inutile by the town council, he was ordered to return to Picardy or seek residence with his wife in the Comtat and given twenty sols for travel expenses, AC-Orange, BB29/1, fo. 61. 33 AC-Orange, BB31, fos. 96–97. 34 AC-Orange, GG114 (1613), 42%; GG144 (1655), 42%. 35 AC-Orange, GG114, GG144, GG148. Diane Moublette, for example, was paid thirty sols to nurse her child under hospital supervision. 36 See, for example, AC-Orange, BB29/1, fos. 40, 78. Ridelle also repeatedly pressure the city to give her tax exemptions accorded to other “municipal” functionaries. 37 See payments for “gray clothing” for “bastards” and orphans sustained at municipal expense, AC-BB32/1, fo. 123.

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Their life stories all too familiar tales of compromised virtue, concealment, and the dangerous boundaries of domestic work.38 Many of the women who came to the attention of the council were foreigners, seeking to preserve a semblance of honor and mobility by escaping the prying eyes of neighbors, family, and friends. Thus the social and geographic contours of illegitimacy in Orange placed a fiscal burden on the community, which explains the almost feverish effort to establish at least one responsible and solvent parent or relative to relieve the community of the charge. Poor, alone, and estranged quite literally from friends and family, single mothers rarely had the resources or social networks to care for themselves or their newborn infants. During the first half of the seventeenth century, the effort to reunite parent and child concentrated largely on forcing fathers (or in some cases other collateral relatives) to assume their paternal responsibilities to provide for their progeny. In 1636, for example, town councilors sent a hospital rector to Carpentras to force the purported father “to take charge and discharge hospital and community of expense.”39 Four year later, when a young woman sought refuge in hospital to give birth, the public defender was ordered to “find the father and pursue reparations so as to prevent similar disorders in the future.”40 As elsewhere across Europe, this vigorous pursuit of paternal identity was rooted in the bifurcated sexual economies of early modern communities in which men often possessed greater financial and social networks to care for their illegitimate progeny. Of course not all illegitimate pregnancies were concealed, especially when women still clung to the hope that their partners might normalize their position. Even where women (and presumably their sexual partners) attempted to hide their pregnancies, the dense social networks of early modern communities made it nearly impossible. The traffic in clandestine knowledge and illicit affairs was the basic grist of daily conversation, and a system of rewards encouraged informants to come forward. By 1670 the Orangeois consulate authorized rectors to pay sixty livres to any informant willing to denounce woman suspected of infanticide.41 Thus often within a few days or even hours of discovery, councilors felt sufficiently informed to authorize the public defender or other representatives of the law apprehend the suspect.

38 For recent discussions of illegitimacy in post-Reformation Europe, see Merry WiesnerHanks, Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice (London, 2000), 80–87, 119–24; Laura Gowing, “Secret Births and Infanticide in Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present 156 (1997): 87–115; David Cressy, Agnes Bowker’s Cat: Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 2000), 1–9, 76–92. For Orange, see AC-Orange, BB29/1, fos. 8, 261, 303v, 306; BB30/1, fos. 14–16, 27; BB33/1, fos. 31v, 66, 87, 1123, BB34, fos. 286, 366. 39 AC-Orange, BB28, fo. 141v. 40 AC-Orange, BB29/1. 41 AC-Orange, BB31/32.

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Single mothers, even those who had given birth publicly in the municipal hospital, were considered a serious flight risk and subject to strict surveillance by the hospital director and the midwives who attended them. Without resources to care for children or sufficient social capital to negotiate an honorable marriage, unwed mothers often were condemned to make an agonizing choice between a life of endemic poverty and shame or abandoning their children to reclaim a measure of honor and mobility. As Laura Gowing has argued, methods of abandonment varied enormously and are open to varying interpretations.42 In Orange, very few of the women charged with abandoning their newborn infants did so unceremoniously or with malicious intent. While concealing their identities was of paramount importance, single mothers often left their babies in highly trafficked public areas or in monasteries or churches with an established record of public assistance. It was not uncommon for infants to be found with notes tucked into their swaddling clothes, conveying information, such as their name and name and baptismal state, which may have been considered critical to determint the level of treatment the child might receive living or dead. The mother who left her daughter, Aurelia, on the altar in St. Blaise’s chapel may have been attempting to confer some aura of sanctity upon the life of her child.43 By the 1660s, the consuls of Orange increasingly targeted single mothers, or to use contemporary parlance, filles mals vivantes, as the source of moral disorder and social pollution. Initial efforts which focused on separation and confinement of these “loose living women” within hospital gradually gave way to much more strident calls for public prosecution and exemplary punishment, culminating in public spectacles to purge the body politic of these miscreants by tarring and feathering them and banishing them from the city. In 1663, councilors decided to seek bids from local carpenters to create two rooms in the hospital, with grilled windows, where “the insane and loose-living women,” could be confined and separated from the general population in the hospital. Two years later, the town council enjoined the public defender to take exemplary action against “loose living women and girls who are pregnant in the city . . . in order to purge the city of this filth.”44 By the 1670s, as rectors warned that the “hospital was full of bastards who consumed hospital revenues,” magistrates concocted several plans for a more systematic response to the problem, including the creation of public commissioner “to search and purse loose living women,” a general sweep of farms and outbuildings at edge of town where such women might seek refuge, and the hiring of a town crier to issue routine public warnings of potential dangers of harboring such criminals.45

42 43 44 45

Gowing, “Secret Births,” 96–104, 110–11. AC-Orange, BB28, fo. 141v. AC-Orange, BB31, fo. 132. AC-Orange, BB31, fos. 278, 299.

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Amid the tumult engendered by the incessant religio-political crises and general misery of the 1680s, new security measures were implemented which tightened municipal regulations and the dispensation of poor relief, subjecting both the “deserving” and the “undeserving” to closer scrutiny. Alarmed by the rising tide of unemployed migrants seeking work and religious refugees seeking asylum, the council approved a number of new initiatives to restore some semblance of order to the city streets and the municipal budget. They felt compelled to continue the periodic distribution of bread (the passade) at the city gates, but also required potential inmates at hospital to provide attestations of both their basic material need and acceptable civic standing, signed by rectors, before receiving hospital care. This practice was later extended to the general population, and all municipal residents were ordered to provide an “attestation de leur probité,” or face possible public shaming and expulsion.46 By the late seventeenth century, policing the city and cleansing it of its unsavory elements had become a routine feature of urban government. In an increasingly coercive and punitive series of measures, culminating in the enclosure or expulsion of unwed mothers, vagrants, Jews, and other marginals, city authorities demonstrated their commitment to the creation of ordered body politic through the establishment of a more discriminating system of public assistance and surveillance. Motivated by the increasing gravity of the economic and political situation as well as moral concerns, they began to require that all city residents demonstrate that they were productive and upright members of society. Those who could not were punished or expelled. While the periodic eviction of Jews, prostitutes, and beggars was certainly not a new phenomenon, it is the clear association that existed in the minds of magistrates between all forms of social deviancy and the necessity to eradicate them in a routine and organized fashion that is striking. Political pragmatism nonetheless forced magistrates to continue certain traditional charities, such as the passade, to protect the city from the even greater danger posed by wandering beggars and vagrants.47 In a number of ad hoc measures, they recognized the limitations of the new municipal institutions and programs they had created and continued to embrace a wide variety of solutions, including aid to private caregivers, to deal with the pressing problem of poor relief. The Sacralization of Charitable Initiatives The development of municipal poor relief programs in early modern Europe, largely at the expense of the Catholic Church and its privately endowed charitable foundations, has justifiably drawn the attention of historians. Municipal

46

AC-Orange, BB32. As Barbara Beckerman-Davis has argued in “Poverty and Poor Relief,” temporary aid to vagrants and other foreign unfortunates demonstrates magistrates’ “sense of responsibility extending to those who fell within their jurisdictional nets, even though the idea of community became more discriminating,” 292. 47

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deliberations reveal that the members of the Orangeois consulate—Catholic and Protestant—shared the same social ethic and vision in which the drive toward an orderly society conjoined religious and secular motivations. Changing testamentary patterns, however, suggest the extent to which this bi-confessional system of public welfare increasingly failed to stimulate the charitable impulses of local elites.48 Indeed, by mid-century, the most dynamic sectors of Orange’s charitable economy were church-based programs of poor relief, administered by the Protestant consistory and Catholic confraternities. Revenues for these programs came almost entirely from voluntary contributions, tithes, or testamentary legacies from a broad cross-section of the members of each confessional community,49 although the size of the actual donations varied enormously. Wealthy benefactors reinforced their social prominence and familial status by making large donations to the poor funds maintained by their respective churches, but they were motivated by more than mere selfinterest. The ideas and practices of spiritual renewal and reform—Catholic and Protestant—had penetrated deep into the local magistrature and royal officeholding elites of Orange, who found a reflection of their own deeply embedded social conservatism in the moral vision of early modern reformers. In the hands of these devout laymen and the clergymen who assisted them, poor relief became an important mechanism of confessionalization, social discipline, rehabilitation, and personal redemption. Both communities drew up carefully scrutinized lists of welfare recipients, sponsored apprenticeship programs, offered dowries and scholarships to poor girls and boys, and in general, encouraged more organized and efficient forms of giving to their poorer co-religionaries. In the process they reinforced confessional boundaries and identities as well as contemporary discourse and practices distinguishing the deserving from undeserving poor. As Martin Dinges has argued, poor relief was an integral feature of building community within Reformed churches. The shift from a works-based to a faithbased theology presented little threat to the charitable economies of Protestant communities, since ministers repeatedly emphasized that concern for the poor was a Christian duty as well as one of the surest signs of election. In all but the poorest, most isolated communities, relatively high levels of charitable giving encouraged healthy surpluses in the poor treasury, the so-called deniers des pauvres. Consistories administered the dispensation of financial and medical assistance to sick and indigent persons, and sometimes even paid pensions to families who offered to shelter and care for the poor. After 1650, this system

Between 1641 and 1680, the rentes and revenues of the poor declined precipitously from 1782 livres to 1053 livres. See AC-Orange, GG112 (1610), GG120 (1620), GG148 (1641), GG144 (1655), GG153 (1665), GG157 (1680). The evidence for this following section is based on a random sampling of some 1200 wills from notarial registers for Orange, housed in the departmental archives of the Vaucluse, series E. 49 Syndics in both churches increased the size of poor funds by investing in a variety of interesting bearing enterprises, including rentes (annuities) and municipal bonds. 48

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of “helping households” assumed a much more defensive function, especially in the areas of France where Catholic lay confraternities and nursing orders had insinuated themselves into key positions within municipal hospitals. Throughout the Midi, municipal hospitals were becoming a locus of confessional tension as Catholic orders, such as the Daughters of Charity at hospitals in Montpellier and later in Gex and Alès, targeted sick and destitute Protestants as an important feature of their ministry.50 In Orange, the bi-confessional regime set in place by the house of Nassau hindered the re-catholicization of hospital administration, although various members of the Confraternity of Our Lady of Mercy served on the hospital board in Orange in their political capacity as town councilors, sharing administrative duties with fellow Protestant councilors until the French occupation of 1685 drove Protestants out of office and out of the health care system. In Orange, wills offer compelling testimony of the shifting dynamics of charitable giving among a broad cross-section of Catholics and Protestants. In the sixteenth century, the reform of hospital governance and health care had a dramatic impact on patterns of charitable giving as Protestants became eager sponsors of a system of public assistance that symbolized their inclusion in the body politic. Between 1560 to 1599, over a quarter of all Calvinist testators made some charitable gesture toward the city’s hospital, often dividing their bequests between the new hospital and the poor. In Orange’s sister city of Courthézon, Marc Venard has argued that that gifts to the municipal hospital became a clear marker of Protestant sympathies as well, stimulating a Catholic riposte which also favored the local systems of public assistance.51 By the late sixteenth century, the convergence of civic consciousness and confessional identity had stimulated an outpouring of charitable legacies from both confessional communities in Orange as thirty-seven percent of all Catholic testators in Orange also stipulated some kind of legacy for the city’s hospitals. This burst of support for municipal hospitals, however, declined precipitously over the course of the seventeenth century as Orangeois testators increasingly directed their charitable impulses toward programs targeting members of their own confessional community. By mid-century, Orangeois Calvinists had all but abandoned the hospitals in favor of bequests to les pauvres de Dieu, a common shorthand for gifts to the poor fund administered by the consistory and deacons. By 1680s, eighty-five percent of all Protestant testators made some bequest, however modest, to their more unfortunate co-religionaries. While the absence of consistorial records makes it impossible to trace the evolution of poor relief

50 Dignes, “Huguenot Poor Relief,” 159–73; see also Kate Norberg, Rich and Poor in Grenoble, 1600–1814 (Berkeley, 1986), 65–80. 51 Marc Vénard, “Les legs charitables dans les testaments du XVI siècle à l’Isle sur la Sorge et Courthézon,” Provence historique (1984): 447–50.

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programs within the Reformed community in any detail,52 in all probability the consistory of Orange replicated the practices of other large, urban Calvinist churches, offering apprenticeships, scholarships, and subventions to the sick, widowed, and orphaned members of the community. By 1640s the charitable impulses of Orangeois Catholics were also increasingly directed toward church-based programs of poor relief. The resurgence of confraternal devotion became one of the key sources of poor relief efforts, and by the 1660s, more than two-thirds of Catholics testators making charitable bequests named one or more confraternities as primary beneficiaries of their discretionary fortunes.53 Many of these confraternities were relatively recent Tridentine creations, whose devotional and charitable activities transformed the practice of lay piety into a militant declaration of confessional distinction and allegiance. This was most certainly the case with the Confraternity our Lady of Mercy. Founded in 1629, thanks to a generous bequest from a pious gentlewoman, Marguerite d’Arzillier, the Marian association quickly fused with the highly selective Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament. Careful stewardship of the donation and a tide of testamentary bequests transformed d’Arzillier’s modest seed grant into the single most significant repository of private charity in Orange over the course of the seventeenth century. By 1650, the Confraternity had acquired a diversified portfolio, which generated revenues of almost five thousand livres. By the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the treasurer’s receipts had more than doubled again, reaching a peak of 12,044 livres in 1689. An increasingly aggressive and expansive charitable program among the city’s poor distinguished the Confraternity of Our Lady of Mercy from other confraternal institutions in Orange. Substantial legacies from several wealthy confreres, who comprised the nucleus of a militant Catholic party, helped fund these programs, which drew fire from their Calvinist opponents, who accused the Confraternity of funneling the monies from these legacies into a secret conversion fund that targeted poor Protestants in the hinterlands of the principality.54 Over the course of the seventeenth century, the Confraternity did devote an increasing share of its resources toward poor relief, consecrating half of its annual revenues toward such purposes by the 1670s. During the 1640s and 1650s, the most routine form of material assistance offered by the

52

As in Béarn, where confiscated ecclesiastical property financed pastors’ salaries, training expenses, and the physical maintenance of the temples, a royal donation of 2400 livres for church expenses in Orange allowed testators and consistory to focus on poor relief. 53 In Courthézon it is possible to trace a similar dynamic in among Catholic testators, where the Confraternity of the Black Penitents was a frequent beneficiary of Catholic legacies as well. See AC-Courthézon, 3E35/243, 254, 325, 342. 54 Jacques Pineton de Chambrun, Les Larmes de Jacques Pineton Chambrun (1688) (Paris, 1854), 10–11.

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Confraternity was the weekly distribution of a few sols to the dozen or so poor men and women who clustered inside the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth after Sunday vespers and petitioned the officers of the confraternity for poor relief.55 By 1664, the number of weekly recipients had increased to almost seventy, while the size of the stipend meted out to the needy each week almost doubled. Annual charitable expenditures by the Confraternity doubled over the next ten years from 1300 livres to 2,837 livres in 1675. By the 1680s, weekly distributions to the poor soared, and annual expenditures peaked almost 6000 livres in 1689–90.56 The legacy of the venerable Prévost Keremans, under whose leadership the Confraternity had flourished in its early years, provides a telling example of the confraternity’s increasingly active approach to the persistent problems of poverty and Protestantism in Orangeois society. In 1652, Keremans left 300 livres to fund six apprenticeships annually for deserving young boys or girls in useful trades. The recipients of Kereman’s funds were provided with a suit of clothes, thus rendering them respectable in appearance, if nothing else, before being apprenticed in the workshops of carefully selected Catholic masters. Nothing in the original bequest specified that Protestant youths were to be the principal beneficiaries of these funds; but by the 1670s and 1680s, the treasurer’s accounts reveal that the rectors of the Confraternity frequently chose to bestow these benevolent funds on young Protestant converts, who were often removed to the care of Catholic artisans in the Comtat Venaissin, far from the pernicious influence of Protestant family and friends. This paralleled efforts to oversee the reeducation of female converts, who were dowered and married to suitable Catholic partners or, more insidiously, relocated to a maison des converties in Avignon.57 Both programs were symptomatic of the deterioration of legal safeguards and local traditions of confessional co-existence and the emergence of a militant Catholic party in Orange intent on reasserting control over municipal institutions, including the hospitals. The French occupation of the principality in 1660s permanently altered the balance of power between Catholics and Protestants in Orange, thoroughly politicizing confraternities, such as Our Lady of Mercy, whose members seized the opportunity to realize even more fully their ambitions to eradicate Protestantism. Thanks to a generous bequest from Claude des Longes in 1670, the Confraternity also expanded its program of moral instruction and hired its own

55

AD-Vaucluse, H87/ 2EE10 (1645–46), 2E14 (1651), 2EE17 (1655), 2EE22 (1661–63). AD-Vaucluse, Hospices d’Orange, 2EE17, 2EE22, 2EE25, 2EE28, 2EE31, 2EE43, 2EE47, livres des distributions des pauvres. 57 See Françoise Chauzat, “La congrégation d’Avignon de la propagande de la foi et les converties au XVIIIe siècle,” Mémoires de l’Académie de Vaucluse VII (1998): 87–94. For the registre de réception kept by the nuns who supervised the entreprise, see ADVaucluse, H Congrégation de la propagande. 56

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priest, Balthezard Laugier, to catechize the poor.58 Over the next several years, Laugier applied himself enthusiastically to the task, dispensing spiritual guidance and education, saint’s medals and rosaries, bread and gruel weekly to the poor under his charge. He also became the principal agent of a secret conversion campaign that wrested young Protestant children and adolescents from their families and placed them in the protective custody of a Catholic guardian, convent, or safe house in nearby Avignon. Between 1674 and 1685, Laugier orchestrated at least seven such placements, funneled stipends to the new guardians from the Confraternity’s treasury, and directed funds from the Confraternity’s apprenticeship and dowry program toward young converts.59 While the conversion—forced or otherwise—of a dozen or so adolescents hardly threatened the demographic strength of the Protestant community in Orange, the challenge—both real and symbolic—that such activities posed to paternal authority transformed Laugier’s crusade into a singular inversion of the moral order and social hierarchies central to both religious confessions.60 As the minister Chambrun lamented, the Confraternity of Our Lady of Mercy had used its monies and influence “to lead children astray from the obedience they owed their fathers . . . and when they could not achieve their ends through gentleness and caresses, they resorted to the authority of the officers of the chateau to kidnap them by force.”61 While accusations of kidnapping are a commonplace of anti-Catholic polemic in early modern France, the relationship that Chambrun establishes between Catholic confraternities and military agents of the state reveals how pervasive fears of confessionalization were among the leaders of the Calvinist community. The Confraternity’s decision to employ a priest, such as Laugier, to reeducate new converts as well as to catechize the poor was just one feature of a much broader thrust to restore Catholic hegemony in the principality of Orange after the 1660s that marshaled the talents of secular and sacred elites. By the 1660s and 1670, the Confraternity had insinuated its members into key administrative positions within the hôpital neuf, a strategic move that effectively

58

AD-Vaucluse, Hospices d’Orange 2EE43. AD-Vaucluse, Hospices d’Orange 2EE31, 2EE37, 2EE41, 2EE43. In 1675, for example, Laugier received sixty livres to pay the nuns of the Convent of the Visitation in Avignon for lodging Dlle Clere Taudin, listed as convertie. Another eighteen livres was awarded to Monseigneur Plantat, cathedral canon and one of the rectors of the confraternity to purchase a chestnut bed for the two daughters of Mr de Lapise, who had been sent to a maison des converties in Avignon. Nine livres were paid to Laugier to clothe Guihaumete Miellon, daugher of Clement of Orange. 60 See Barbara Diefendorf, “‘Give Us Back Our Children’: Patriarchal Authority and Parental Consent to Religious Vocations in Early Counter-Reformation France,” Journal of Modern History (1996): 265–307. In the case of Protestant parents, the law was clearer after the 1660s, when French law and canon law both prescribed the removal of children to the custody of Catholic homes, see Norberg, Rich and Poor in Grenoble, 78. 61 Chambrun, Les Larmes, 11. 59

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allowed its officers to have an even greater impact on the organization of municipal relief programs.62 In 1671, the Confraternity also began retaining its own doctor, Maître Pierre Fanier, to attend to the sick and dying in the hospital.63 Five years later, the officers of the Confraternity decided to use the six hundred livres that Fanier had bequeathed to the society to provide systematic legal representation for the Catholic poor, appointing Jacques-Henri Aymard, the attorney general to the Parlement of Orange, to the position.64 The presence of lawyers in the Parlement and doctors in the hôpital neuf, bound by their confraternal oaths to protect indigent Catholics against the Protestant heresy, further compromised these two secular Orangeois institutions, ostensibly pledged to protect the regime of parity prescribed by the Edict of 1607. The third and final French occupation of Orange between 1684 and 1697 brought three decades of militant, missionizing charitable endeavors on behalf of the Catholic Church to a triumphant conclusion in Orange. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and all of the corollary decrees that followed its implementation in France, were applied with equal vigor in Orange. In the fall of 1685, Louis XIV ordered the sequestration of all consistorial treasuries to the benefit of local hospitals, a decree with effectively ended the bifurcation65 of poor relief in Orange. For the first time since the late sixteenth century, a corps of secular and ecclesiastical officials who shared the same religion administered the charitable institutions of Orange. In Orange, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes marked an important watershed in the history of the city’s charitable institutions. From 1685 to 1699, the administration of the hospital was conferred upon a newly reconstituted poor bureau, which met henceforth in the lower chambers of the episcopal palace under the direction of the most illustrious reverend Jean-Jacques Obeilh, the bishop of Orange. While the town council briefly contested Obeilh’s assertion of episcopal privilege over the appointment of hospital personnel, they acquiesced to his demands by 1687.66 For the Reformed community of Orange, nothing offered more poignant proof of the Catholic Church’s monopoly of hospital care than the sale of the portal of the Great Temple, one of the few material remains of the structure which had been demolished by royal decree on 26 October 1685, to hospital rectors for 86 livres. A few weeks later, workmen transported the door to the hospital, where it was integrated into the entry of the new chapel of the Hospital General.67 The restoration of Dutch rule in Orange after the Peace of Ryswick in 1697 renewed the struggle between the episcopal and municipal authorities over con-

62 63 64 65 66 67

AD-Vaucluse, Hospices d’Orange 1EE6 (1651), 1EE7 (1673). AD-Vaucluse, H87/2EE6. AD-Vaucluse, H87/2EE6, fo. 56. Here I am using a term first employed by Wilma Pugh. AC-Orange, BB33/1, fos. 178–80. AC-Orange, GG164/2.

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trol of the hospital and its revenues. Within two months, councilors demanded the restitution of hospital inventories and revenues conferred to Obeilh a decade earlier as a violation of ancient custom. In an almost jubilant tone, they divested episcopal appointees of their offices (accusing some of financial mismanagement) and farmed out hospital revenues anew. Sr Brunet, the exacteur des pauvres during Obeilh’s interregnum, was accused of mishandling funds “to the detriment of the poor,” and independent, outside council was employed “to regulate his accounts.”68 The bi-confessional council also hastened to make certain gestures of reconciliation toward the Reformed community and ordered that revenues from the new lease of the hospital’s mulberry trees (traditionally destined for poor relief ) should be divided equally between the hôpital neuf and the consistory.69 The repatriation of charitable funds ultimately was a long and drawn-out affair, with officials on both sides of the confessional divide claiming financial insolvency.70 Ultimately, however, these debates were cut short in 1714 when the principality of Orange was formally annexed to France, signaling the inexorable disappearance of the Reformed communities of Orange and Courthézon. Conclusion The example of the principality of Orange points in a number of important ways to inevitable nexus between religion, politics, and health care. The religious and economic crises of the sixteenth century broke the Church’s monopoly on public health care and opened the way for state-sponsored programs of poor relief. The consolidation of ecclesiastical charities and revenues, the creation of a common chest and poor bureau, and the outpouring of private charity toward the city’s municipal hospitals all encouraged the gradual centralization and rationalization of health care and public assistance in the principality. Public health care, nonetheless, was never the exclusive preserve of the municipal authorities, since Huguenot ministers, and later Catholic clerics, were members of the poor board, where their presence became yet another critical guarantee of the confessional parity scrupulously observed throughout the system. In the long run, municipal programs of poor relief failed to stimulate the philanthropic interests of local elites, precisely because their proceeds could not be limited in ways which reflected the spiritual imperatives behind charitable giving. By the seventeenth century, the most dynamic charitable programs in Orange had deep roots in spiritual communities, and in notions of spiritual community, that emphasized the personal obligations and benefits of physical and spiritual

68

AC-Orange, BB34, fos. 366–78. AC-Orange, BB34, fo. 378. 70 AC-Orange, BB34, fo. 394. In 1699, for example, the hospital treasury complained that he had still not secured control of revenues from the archbishop and had no monies to feed the poor. See also BB35, fos. 32–33, where Serres, a deacon in the Reformed church, petitions for the restoration of investments in rentes. 69

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assistance to needy co-religionaries. Even before the French invasions of the late seventeenth century challenged the political practice of confessional coexistence in Orange, Catholic and Protestants had established significant, churchbased programs of poor relief that reinforced the confessional boundaries and distinctions between them. The process by which the Catholic Church won back general and institutional influence over health care in Orange and in other Protestant strongholds in France proper was attenuated, although signal victories at the local level often were achieved long before the Bourbon state actually mandated the sequestration of Protestant revenues in 1685. In the former Protestant stronghold of Loudun, for example, Protestant city leaders may have been involved in the initial plans to establish a new maison de charité in response to the acute harvest crises of the 1640s, but the bishop of Poitiers refused to authorize any new foundation that allowed bi-partisan governance. Accordingly, Protestants were excluded from the hospital, except as patients, where they became targets of well-conceived conversion campaign. The conspicuous absence of any Protestant bequests to the institution between 1648 and 1685, in the face of considerable donations from members of the Catholic community, suggests clearly how public welfare had been compromised.71 In Nîmes, the resacralization of public welfare programs was a consequence of the Catholic offensive after the Peace of Alès. In 1635, the administration of the Hôtel Dieu was turned over to the local bishop; a year later Protestants were excluded from the hospital governing board. Amid complaints that their indigent co-religionaries were being mistreated, Protestants in Nîmes regained partial control of the hospital in 1653, securing half of the building and revenues until funds to support the construction of a separate building could be levied from the general population. Within fifteen years, however, the two hospitals were united again under episcopal control and staffed by the good sisters of the nursing order of Saint Joseph, who like their lay counterparts, the Daughters of Charity, assumed a critical role in the proselytization of Protestant inmates. Between 1668 and 1686, the hospital priest recorded fifty-four abjurations, which effectively transformed the institution into a “lieu de prosélytisme.”72 In Orange, three successive waves of French occupation and rule politicized the practice of poor relief and sanctioned an aggressive re-catholization campaign, which reconfigured the private and public practice of charity. Both Calvinists and Catholics believed that the increasingly strict implementation of French policies had changed the delicate balance of power between the confessions, compromised the practice of shared governance and religious coexistence, and implicated municipal and religious institutions in a critical battle

71

Edwin Bezzina, “Charity and Confessional Difference,” 3–11. Robert Sauzet, Contre-réforme et réforme catholique en bas-languedoc: le diocèse de Nîmes au XVIIe siècle (Louvain, 1979), pp. 275–77, 302–03, 390–91, 450–51. 72

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for control. In the heated confessional climate of the late seventeenth century, charity became a vital expression of political and confessional hegemony. By the 1670s, lay confraternities in Orange had transformed poor relief into a dangerous competition for souls, one whose success seemed guaranteed by the Bourbon state and its local agents. From 1685 to 1697, the centralization of health care programs and institutions in the hands of Catholic ecclesiastical and lay elites seemed to be certain proof of this. As Colin Jones has argued, the confiscation of Protestant properties, treasuries, and legacies in 1685 consolidated “the most significant program of poor relief in the wake of the Counter-Reformation” as authorities—secular and sacred—reconstructed the practice of poor relief “at the direct expense of the now-outlawed Protestant communities.”73 Throughout France, the 1670 and 1680s had witnessed concerted efforts by state and ecclesiastical authorities to reform and regulate health care and poor relief at the municipal level, culminating with the creation of the infamous hôpitaux-généraux. Part poor house, prison, and hospital, these new institutions targeted Protestants as well as the poor and infirm and aimed through their confinement to transform these marginal populations through spiritual instruction and hard labor into provident and productive Christian citizens.74 Many were staffed by Catholic lay orders, such as the Daughters of Charity, who assumed the administration of nursing and minor surgical tasks in hospitals across France, sowing fear in bi-confessional communities in the Huguenot Midi, where they were renowned for their evangelization efforts at Protestant bedsides.75 With the help of local bishops who eagerly spearheaded these new ventures, the Bourbon state effectively transferred control of poor relief programs from the hands of municipal elites to Catholic lay elites and officials. In so doing, Martin Dinges has argued, “the civic right to be hospitalized had been transformed into a confessional threat.”76

Jones, Charitable Imperative, 229. For a fuller discussion of this process, see Daniel Hickey, Local Hospitals in Ancien Régime France: Rationalisation, Resistance, Renewal (Montreal, 1997). 75 Jones, Charitable Imperative, 120–31, 190–92. 76 Dignes, “Huguenot Poor Relief,” 167. 73 74

C H A P T E R

E L E V E N

MOTIVATIONS FOR CHARITY MODERN FRANCE

IN

EARLY

Susan E. Dinan

I am too insistent, but we are truly at the point where we need help without delay, or else we must drop everything. Yesterday it was necessary to spend all the money we had . . . to have wheat for the children of Bicêtre. . . . We have no source of income for the coming months. There are twelve to thirteen children here, and there are not enough diapers to change them. Please, it is essential for the assembly of Ladies to do something about this matter tomorrow such as pass a resolution to collect alms in the parishes every Sunday . . . ask the Parish priests and preachers to recommend this act of charity, and take up a collection at Court. I believe that if someone went to speak to the Princess (Charlotte de Montmorency, Princess de Condé) about these extreme needs she would give something. It is pitiful that the Ladies go to so little trouble. Either they must believe that we have enough to support the children, or they want to force us to abandon everything.1

S

o wrote Louise de Marillac to Vincent de Paul in 1649. Sixteen years earlier the two had formally founded the Company of the Daughters of Charity to serve the needs of the sick and poor in and around Paris. In July of 1647 the Daughters’ benefactors, the Ladies of Charity, moved several Daughters into a home for all of Paris’s foundlings.2 For the past decade the Daughters had been caring for some of the foundlings in thirteen houses across Paris, but the Ladies believed that a centralized location would permit the

1 Louise de Marillac, Sainte Louise de Marillac: Ecrits Spirituels, Élisabeth Charpy, ed., (Paris, 1983), Lettre 263. Translations of de Marillac’s letters come from Spiritual Writings of Louise de Marillac, Louise Sullivan, ed., (New York, 1991). Page numbers of the two volumes do not correspond. References are given, therefore, by the number of the letter, so they can be found in either volume. 2 De Marillac, Lettre 30. In 1640 the Ladies of Charity had assumed responsibility for the foundlings at La Couche.

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Daughters to take better care of more foundlings.3 This enormous endeavor was to be underwritten by pious gifts and was undertaken with the expectation that it would mitigate the problem of foundling children in Paris by providing them all with shelter and care. As the quotation above highlights, however, there was no happy ending for the foundlings. Almost immediately the principal donor reneged on his offer of support, leaving the Ladies and Daughters to scramble to finance the institution.4 Help was slow in coming and ultimately proved insufficient to sustain the operation. Tragically, as the Daughters struggled to restore funding to the institution, hunger, and disease killed many of their young charges.5 Ultimately Bicêtre was abandoned and the Daughters of Charity returned the foundlings to their Parisian institutions. This experiment in charity had failed. Of course, historian can profitably examine the tragedy of Bicêtre to study the customs, attitudes, and suppositions that shaped French attitudes towards the poor, indigent, and needy. At a minimum, the fact that a donor pulled out of funding the operation, the fact that supplemental funding could not be found to compensate for the loss of a major donor, and the fact that the orphans were essentially abandoned by French society, suggests that French attitudes towards the foundlings were ambivalent at best. On a more specific level, however, it also highlights the fundamental problem that historians have in evaluating the reliability of sources. The Daughters did indeed seek to provide poor relief, and their patrons, the Ladies of Charity, agreed at least in principle that their goals were valid. The French Catholic Church supported such endeavors on paper, but not with resources. The history of the foundling home at Bicêtre is one that highlights the complex relationships between secular, lay, and religious interests, involved in providing poor relief in early modern France. The chateau of Bicêtre, which Louis XIII had built to house disabled and needy veterans had remained vacant and was loaned to the Daughters of Charity by the royal family. The chateau, located south of Paris, had the reputation of an unsavory place, frequented by men of ill repute, and Louise de Marillac did not support its becoming a foundling home.6 Although the royal family donated the space, it was not

3

De Marillac, Lettre, 113b and page 14. De Marillac, Lettre 196. 5 De Marillac, Lettre 203. In a letter from January 1648 de Marillac writes to de Paul, “Fifty-two children have died at Bicêtre since we have been there, and another 15 or 16 are not far from death.” 6 De Marillac, Lettre 125. “The difficulties in remaining at Bicêtre are first, the size of the building and the extent of the grounds. In better than two years it could not be half-filled. Second, the inconveniences that occur, when in Paris, when houses have been the dwelling place of persons of ill-repute. With even greater reason is this to be feared in a place, which has been for years a refuge for all sorts of wicked people who have hidden out night and day in the château and on the grounds. Third, the danger for the sisters on the roads, since they are often obliged to go to and from the city.” 4

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particularly concerned with the fates of the foundlings and was not an important benefactor of the institution. The decision to create a foundling home was made by a body of pious laywomen. Financial support was left in the hands of the laity, who were to be urged to contribute by their parish priests. Donations were often slow in coming because Bicêtre was outside the walls of Paris. What is more, once the foundlings were moved, they were no longer present on the streets of the capital and, thus, no longer visible as a body of needy children. The Ladies of Charity conducted intermittent appeals to raise funds for the foundling home. De Marillac makes clear, however, that she doubted the sincerity of their efforts. At Bicêtre the caretaking responsibilities fell to the Daughters of Charity, a confraternity of laywomen with a religious calling that resembled a religious order but never defined itself as such.7 Although not a religious foundation, Bicêtre was directed and staffed by women who belonged to a religious community. The institution reflected the work of a body of religiously motivated laywomen. As the history of the Bicêtre suggests, early modern French charity was a cooperative effort involving the state, the church, and a myriad of religious and lay bodies, including the Company of the Daughters of Charity. *

*

*

In the Middle Ages, local municipal and religious authorities typically administered poor relief, and this decentralized system tended to spring into action spasmodically.8 Individuals gave voluntarily, often through church collections or poor boxes. Along with this personal giving of alms, large facilities like the hôtelsDieu, which provided medical assistance to the sick and typically had religious roots, assisted the poor.9 As Michel Mollat points out, poverty was a permanent feature of the Middle Ages, and no one expected to eradicate it until the era of the Renaissance and Reformation.10 Medieval Christians understood charitable giving as a condition of their entry into heaven and the poor as people who would always be among them.11 Seventeenth century Europe witnessed an unprecedented growth in poverty as war, dearth, and epidemic drove people from their rural communities into

7 For a fuller discussion of the Confraternities of Charity see, Susan Dinan, “An Ambiguous Sphere: the Daughters of Charity between a Confraternity and a Religious Order,” in John Patrick Donnelly and Michael Maher, eds., Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France and Spain (Kirksville, Mo., 1999), 191–214. 8 Richard Francis Elmore, “The Origins of the Hôpital-Général of Paris,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1975), 19. 9 Daniel Hickey, Local Hospitals in Ancien Régime France: Rationalization, Resistance, Renewal, 1530–1789 (Montreal, 1997), xvi–xvii; Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France (London, 1989), 32. 10 Michel Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages an Essay in Social History (New Haven, 1986), 1. 11 Mollat, 38.

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larger towns.12 France was involved in civil and foreign wars during much of the first two-thirds of the seventeenth century. Early modern warfare proved especially dangerous for civilian populations, who suffered at the hands of marauding bands of soldiers living off the land.13 Moreover, as the tax burden increased, largely to fund these wars, people had fewer resources to buy food, which sold at inflated prices.14 War, incessant bad weather, and France’s dependence on traditional agricultural techniques all contributed to cycles of famine.15 These encouraged epidemics to spread in the middle and late seventeenth century. Together these scourges caused an explosion in the number of people desperate for assistance and caused those who provided aid to adapt their organizations. As the number of poor grew during the seventeenth century, traditional systems of poor relief based in rural parishes were overwhelmed.16 The poor, some of whom had left their villages in hope of finding work or charity in towns and cities, found municipalities with insufficient resources and a desire to assist only those who had been born within the parish.17 As strangers, the destitute were not welcome, where authorities were already short of reserves.18 Increasingly,

12 Pierre Goubert, “En Beauvais: Problèmes démographiques du XVIIe siècle,” Annales Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 7 (1952): 467–68. See also, Raymond Mentzer, “Organizational Endeavour and Charitable Impulse in Sixteenth-Century France: The Care of Protestant Nîmes,” French History 5/1 (1991): 4. For an examination of conditions in the countryside see, Daniel Hickey, “Changing Expressions of Charity in Early Modern France: Some Hypotheses for a Rural Model,” Renaissance and Reformation 1 (1978): 12–22. 13 Jean Jacquart, “La Fronde des Princes dans la région parisienne et ses conséquences matérielles,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 7 (1960): 265–70, 276–78. 14 Jean Meuvret, “Les ocillations de prix des céréals aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles en Angleterre et dans les payes du Bassin Parisien,” Revue d’histoire modern et contemporaine 16 (1969): 540. 15 Robin Briggs, Early Modern France 1560–1715 (Oxford, 1998), 36. 16 Briggs, 36. 17 Briggs, 46. 18 Historians often credit Juan Vives’ 1526 treatise, De subventione pauperum, which encouraged towns to establish common funds for poor relief and to distinguish between those worthy and unworthy of assistance, for bringing about this change in mentality about charity. Vives believed that governments should be the principal actors in poor relief by creating jobs, distributing alms, and building hospitals to contain some of the poor. Colin Jones points out Vives’ presumption that municipalities would devise and support poor relief establishments was unreasonable for France because many municipalities were devastated during the Wars of Religion. Towns often were too disorganized to assist the needy and, therefore, bishops and religious communities entered the void and provided relief. Jones’ assertion is not entirely convincing. According to Natalie Zemon Davis many towns did institute an aumône générale, such as that in Lyon, established by the Catholic government in 1534. H. C. M. Michielse stresses the cooperative nature of relations between Church and municipal officials when implementing new poor relief policies in, H. C. M. Michielse, “Policing the Poor: J. L. Vives and the Sixteenth-Century Origins of Modern Social Administration” Social Service Review 64 (1990): 1–21.

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crime became identified with the numbers of poor that were swelling urban centers. Thus, by the late medieval and early modern period, Christians of all persuasions increasingly perceived the poor as a dangerous social element.19 As Jean-Pierre Gutton explains, beggars became increasingly suspect and the state set strict limits on which people it allowed to beg.20 For Catholic and Protestant alike, the poor were no longer always worthy Christians who offered their social betters the opportunity for salvation through the practice of good works. Rather, the poor came to be seen as criminal and dangerous.21 Of course, not all of the poor could be thus written off. Equally, European perceptions of the value of acts of charity were not extinguished in one blow. People reorganized their efforts at poor relief along a moral continuum, reflecting an intellectual distinction made the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. The former consisted of children, the elderly, pregnant women or those with small children, and the disabled, people not expected to earn their own way.22 Institutions helped the “deserving” poor make ends meet by giving them food, money, and clothing. In France the “deserving” poor could also enter the national system of hôpitaux-généraux where they received food and shelter.23 Confraternities and other charitable providers also assisted the “shame-faced poor,” nobles and others, who had fallen on “hard times” and were unwilling to seek public assistance.24 To protect their honor, confraternities often aided them privately so as not to draw attention to their plight. The “undeserving” poor, on the other hand, were able-bodied adults, especially men, who authorities considered shirkers and inherently immoral.25 Authorities did not correlate the economic misery of their age with the inability of some people to find and keep work, instead seeing poverty as the result of the failings of the poor themselves. Authorities refused aid to the able-bodied; rather they punished many for their laziness, often imposing brutal corporal punishment or imprisonment in the hôpitaux-généraux that gradually became institutions of confinement over the course of the seventeenth century.26

19 Davis, 24. See also, Brian Pullan, “Catholics and the Poor in Early Modern Europe,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 26, 5 (1976): 17. 20 Natalie Zemon Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975), 26. 21 Jean-Pierre Gutton, La Société et les pauvres en Europe, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1974), 97. 22 Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994), 11. Robert Jütte defines “the poor by impotency” and “the poor by casualty.” 23 Jones, The Charitable Imperative; Olwen H. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford, 1974), 139–40. 24 Christopher Black, “The development of confraternity studies over the past thirty years,” in Nicholas Terpstra, ed., The Politics of Ritual Kinship: Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 2000), 24; Christopher Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1989), 147. 25 Jütte, 2. 26 Jütte, 169. There were always a fairly small number of inmates, however. Jones states

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Although the Council of Trent discussed the fate of poor parishes in its twenty-fourth session, it never directly addressed the fate of poor people. As in Protestant Europe, Catholic regions saw more institutionalized charity in the sixteenth century, but there was no coherent policy adopted by the Roman Church.27 Changes in Catholic policy toward the poor often came from the bottom up. They were implemented by people like de Paul and de Marillac who founded the Company of the Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Sick Poor. Early modern charitable giving changed at the parish level, and it was here that most relief was still given to those in need. Lay Catholics and the religious shifted their support to charitable institutions, reducing their earlier practice of distributing money and food directly to the needy and giving more to groups over which they could exercise more control. Robert Jütte insists, however, that donations to personal and institutional charity were complementary and not in competition with one another.28 Early modern people gave alms in many forms. In some instances traditional Catholic alms-giving confraternities reorganized the way they distributed charity. Members of the Company of the Holy Sacrament, for example, changed their benevolent activities from providing alms for local distribution to sponsoring large institutions like the Hôtel-Dieu, the main hospital responsible for the sick in Paris.29 They claimed that their goal was to make the distribution process more effective as well as to isolate the deserving sick and poor and administer assistance only to those they deemed worthy. Thus both on the institutional and local level, poor relief was becoming a reward for those who adopted appropriate modes of social behavior. Vincent de Paul was probably the seventeenth century’s most important innovator of Catholic charitable services. As the founder of the Company of the Daughters of Charity and the Congregation of the Mission he challenged the leaders of the Company of the Holy Sacrament who believed that the poor needed to be imprisoned to be saved. The priests of the Congregation of the Mission, known as Lazarists, evangelized throughout rural France with the goal of bringing Tridentine Catholicism to the common people. After the Lazarists that in 1791 there were about 120,000 people in France’s hospitals, out of a population of 20 million, of whom a third to a fifth were indigent. Clearly a very small portion of the poor lived within the hospitals. Jones, The Charitable Imperative, 8. 27 Jütte, 129. 28 “The Counter-Reformation made significant inroads into strategies of philanthropy. . . . [A]nother traditional agency of charity profited from the shift in pious donations after the early sixteenth century: the parochial relief organizations known since the later Middle Ages as ‘poor tables’ (maison de l’aumône). In terms of the scale of relief provided for the poor, these institutions undoubtedly gained in importance in the early modern period, but one should not forget that even in the post-Reformation period outdoor relief was still complementary and not in opposition to institutionalized charity”: Jütte, 129. 29 Elmore, 67; Emmanuel Chill, “The Company of the Holy Sacrament, 1660–1666: Social Aspects of the French Counter-Reformation,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1960), 122–24.

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preached they helped local villagers, usually women, create Confraternities of Charity; the first of which was founded in 1617. Wealthy married and single women comprised these organizations that served the local poor by collecting alms and bringing food to the needy.30 De Paul wanted the local confraternities to work closely with the clergy; relief of the poor was to be both physically and spiritually nutritive. In 1629, de Paul formalized the network of Confraternities of Charity that had sprung up in rural and urban areas when he appointed Louise de Marillac, a Lady of Charity who had been performing benevolent works under his direction for four years, as supervisor of the confraternities in and around Paris. Upon assuming these responsibilities, de Marillac faced a crisis; confraternity members were not reliable providers of aid; they often did not make food for the needy, requiring their servants to do it in their stead. De Marillac was therefore confronted with a serious quandary: how to preserve the position of the Ladies of Charity without losing the community’s direct religious devotion to the poor. Her solution was to admit poorer women from middling and peasant families to the confraternities to do the actual work and she gradually transformed the Ladies of Charity into a sort of board of directors. It was the poorer women who formed the ranks of the Daughters of Charity. The title confraternity was always used to describe the Daughters of Charity, because had de Marillac and de Paul defined them as a religious order of nuns, bishops committed to enforcing the decrees of Trent would have cloistered them. The Daughters of Charity maintained an ambiguous position, they were not nuns, because nuns were required to live within convent walls and this would have undermined their charitable vocation. The Daughters insisted that they were laywomen, members of a confraternity, but this was rather dubious. Daughters of Charity lived communally with one woman, serving as a superior, they wore a simple habit, and they took simple religious vows. This classification granted them freedom from enclosure. It also shows the murkiness of the lines between religious and lay. The Daughters of Charity had their feet in both worlds and navigated both well. They began their service in Paris’s parishes where they commonly brought food and medicine to the sick poor and ran a school for poor girls. Ladies of Charity, living in and around these parishes, financed the communities. As the Daughters’ mission expanded to include work in hospices, asylums, foundling homes, and hospitals they were more often supported by the institution employing them or by a group of Ladies who pooled their resources. In larger institutions the Daughters encountered lay and secular authorities, who supported and challenged their work. *

*

*

R. P. Chalumeau, “L’assistance aux malades pauvres au XVIIe siécle,” XVIIe Siécle 90, 1 (1971): 77. See also, Pierre Coste, Monsieur Vincent: le grand saint du grand siècle. Vol. I–III (Paris, 1934), I; 84. 30

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In the creation of France’s different charitable institutions there were religious, political, and social forces at play. In France, state-sponsored poor relief, which was certainly motivated by a desire to bolster social order, was often carried out by members of religious communities who were committed to the salvation of the poor and their benefactors. Many forces propelled and shaped early modern poor relief, and most charitable systems emerged from a combination of religious, moral (seeing the poor in need of correction), and sociopolitical (fearing popular disorder) stimuli. It is helpful to consider a distinction between secular and lay forces. Decision makers in the secular realm, like government bureaucrats, had a different understanding of almsgiving than did laypeople with strong religious affiliations, like members of confraternities. The Daughters of Charity always defined themselves as laywomen with a religious vocation, but their primary reasons for their good works were spiritual.31 There was no one body—religious, lay, or secular—that was responsible for implementing or overseeing France’s charitable institutions. According to Colin Jones, early modern French poor relief grew out of a “symbiotic relationship” between church, state, and local governments.32 While the French state and church acted cooperatively to generate a system of charity, it arose piecemeal nonetheless, and the resulting system was complex and often local in character. That is not to say that the system did not work. Indeed, despite its fragmented nature, actors from the Church and State created a network of poor relief services in France that helped a portion of the population survive a century of “crisis.”33 Nevertheless, the very complexity of the system makes it difficult to reach generalizations about the intentions motivating any one part of the whole. Early modern France was scarcely a model of spiritual and political hegemony. The monarchs did not consistently control all of the territories in their kingdom and the nation was divided along religious lines. France had a Huguenot minority that, although less than 10 percent of the total population, included nearly half the nobility and a good portion of skilled artisans.34 Equally, French Catholicism was fragmented internally. The Catholicism practiced by the majority was not homogenous, as local religious practices and strong Dévote and Jansenist movements divided the Catholic population.35 Moreover, there were

31

I would like to thank A. Lloyd Moote for stressing the critical distinction between secular and lay elements of the populations when he read a draft of this paper. 32 Colin Jones, “Perspectives on Poor Relief, Health Care and the Counter Reformation in France” in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Jon Arrizabalaga, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe (London, 1999), 215. 33 There has been an ongoing debate about whether historians can call the disasters of the seventeenth century a “general crisis.” For an argument against such a definition see the introduction in Geoffrey Parker and Lesley Smith, eds., The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (Boston, 1978). 34 Richard S. Dunn, The Age of Religious Wars, 1559–1715 (New York, 1970), 32. 35 For a fuller discussion of factions in sixteenth century Catholicism see, Barbara

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tensions between the Roman Church and the French bishops at a time when the bishops were eschewing ultramontane allegiances for their Gallican church. During the reign of Francis I the monarchy began to position itself in the delivery of poor relief, a process that continued throughout the early modern period. The king began a campaign that lasted well into the seventeenth century to close or consolidate small hospitals and to replace them with larger institutions under more centralized control.36 The crown’s motive was three-fold. First, France suffered from a series of famines, epidemics, and foreign and civil wars during the century and an increasing number of people needed assistance. The traditional local networks of charity could not provide for the swelling numbers of needy and an alternative system was sought. Despite the efforts of cities to meet the needs of the impoverished, the Wars of Religion crippled municipal investment in poor relief.37 Across sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France, control over charity fell out of local hands and into “supralocal agencies” like the state and church.38 Second, hospitals and other charitable institutions had the reputation of being corrupt and neglecting their duties toward the poor. Finally, over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the French monarchy gained increased control over judicial and municipal affairs, poor relief was one more way of extending the monarchs reach to the towns of France.39 Daniel Hickey also points out that the crown was anxious to get its hands on the money and land in the possession of local hospitals a well.40 In 1519 Francis I ordered the Grand Aumônier of France, the King’s personal chaplain, to regulate those poor relief efforts that the monarch perceived to be disorderly and corrupt. In 1536 the king issued an ordinance prohibiting begging and requiring all able-bodied poor to work.41 He issued the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1543, which was the crown’s first piece of comprehensive legislation enabling officials to examine hospitals and leprosaria for abuses, to submit their findings to the Grand Aumônier and the Parlement of Paris, and to replace corrupt ecclesiastical officials with lay directors. Two years later, in the Edict of Saint-Germaine-en-Laye, Francis I expanded his efforts to laicize charitable institutions, not just hospitals, by sending new directors to reform a

Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (Oxford, 1991). 36 See Hickey’s Local Hospitals for a full discussion of the competing forces surrounding early modern hospitals, his book examines the monarch’s campaign to centralize hospitals and the efforts of local populations to reinvigorate these institutions. 37 Jones, Charitable Imperative, 34. 38 Jones, “Perspectives on Poor Relief,” 221. 39 Leslie Henry Goldsmith, “Poor Relief and Reform in Sixteenth-Century Orleans” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin 1980), 24. 40 Hickey, Local Hospitals, 198. 41 Jütte, 117.

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myriad of corrupt or suspect foundations.42 Following in the footsteps of his grandfather and father, Charles IX sought to put all hospital administration into the hands of lay officials in 1561 with the Edict of Orleans.43 This laicization of poor relief was reiterated in the 1566 Edict of Moulins and the 1579 Edict of Blois.44 Despite the crown’s efforts to remove the religious from hospitals, much of French poor relief remained in ecclesiastical hands. In fact, the religious were not cast out of hospitals, although Article 10 of the Edict of 1580 limited their jobs to administering all aspects of spiritual life in the institutions and assisting in auditing accounts.45 These laws demonstrate how the French monarchy superimposed itself on a traditional charitable structure. The state did not entirely replace the religious backbone of poor relief institutions but dictated controls over structure and personnel that dramatically transformed some establishments. Daniel Hickey concludes that a “large percentage were effectively closed or expropriated in the period extended from 1530 to 1700.”46 However, he also notes that communities of religious women, like the Daughters of Charity, became an important presence in local and large hospitals rendering medical and other services to the poor.47 The Daughters of Charity’s work at the hospital in Angers shows that religious presence remained, as will be demonstrated below. The Edict of Moulins also stated that parishes should care for their own poor, so they would not wander to other regions in search of alms.48 In response several towns and cities, including Paris (the first in 1551) and Grenoble, imposed taxes that would be used to help their poor residents.49 There were also efforts afoot to regulate poor relief more systematically on the local level. In the sixteenth century, towns and cities created aumônesgénéraux, or bureaus of poor relief, that assumed control over charitable services by abolishing or consolidating older institutions.50 Laymen directed these bureaus with an eye toward rectifying crises caused by poverty, as was the case with the 1534 creation of the Aumône-Générale of Lyon. The city established the Bureau to offer poor relief to residents at a time when population and unemployment rates were growing dramatically. Natalie Zemon Davis stresses that the lawyers and businessmen who created the Aumône-Générale were Catholics and Protestant sympathizers who united to help their poorer neighbors, and

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Hickey, Local Hospitals, 21. Jones, “Perspectives on Poor Relief,” 219. Hickey, Local Hospitals, 23. Goldsmith, 30. Hickey, Local Hospitals, 200. Hickey, Local Hospitals, 204. Hickey, Local Hospitals, 23. Davis, 60; Jütte, 119. Goldsmith, 31.

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remained united during the years of religious war.51 Together they oversaw the distribution of alms, the education of poor children, the administration of orphanages and foundling-homes, the apprenticing of boys, and the dowering of girls.52 The aumônes-généraleaux also put healthy beggars to work on public works projects. For instance, Paris required all able-bodied poor to work on public projects, usually those requiring hard work for little pay.53 The monarch also expanded the state’s role in poor relief with the creation of hôpitaux-généraux. In 1657 the Hôpital-Général in Paris opened. Five years later, Louis XIV decreed that all major towns should have a hospital, although few could afford this expense. This legislation reinforced the Edict of Moulins in that it required communities to take care of their own poor and gave them the right to return beggars to their native villages. The mission of the hôpitauxgénéraux changed in 1724 with a royal edict in which Louis XV commanded the poor to return to their native villages or report to the nearest hospital within fifteen days.54 The hospitals put the able-bodied poor to work and used their profits to subsidize themselves.55 Throughout the early modern period French hospitals were a place of conflict between a monarch seeking centralization and localities seeking traditional services. As the state was beginning to mandate hôpitaux-généraux, “Catholic Reformation militants” were supporting efforts to intern the poor, but others in the church balked.56 According to Jones, some religious leaders in the seventeenth century found the poor increasingly dangerous, and by the 1630s the Company of the Holy Sacrament had made confining the poor its “official policy.”57 Vincent de Paul challenged the leaders of the Company of the Holy Sacrament, who believed that the poor needed to be imprisoned to be saved. Paris’ HôpitalGénéral was the site of a struggle between the Company of the Holy Sacrament, who wanted the needy forcibly confined, and Vincent de Paul, who wanted the institution to practice voluntary confinement. In fact, there was division within de Paul’s own faction as prominent Ladies of Charity supported the HôpitalGénéral while de Marillac objected to its punitive orientation. During a particularly heated exchange, when progress on the institution was stalled, the Duchess d’Aiguillon, Cardinal Richelieu’s niece, recalled that “some Ladies of Charity, and some of the members of the Company of the Holy Sacrament began to circulate letters to all those who promised to contribute to the Hôpital-Général

51

Davis, 34. Davis, 34. 53 Christian Paultre, De la repression de la mendicité et du vagabondage en France sous l’ancien régime (Geneva, 1975), 55. 54 Hickey, Local Hospitals, 70. 55 The 1724 Edict also reorganized the Royal constabulary in order to enforce the King’s law. 56 Jones, “Perspectives on Poor Relief,” 228. 57 Jones, “Perspectives on Poor Relief,” 228. 52

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urging them to transfer their donations to other works of charity, unless the hospital was soon established.”58 To some degree, The Daughters sought not to be associated with the mission of the hôpitaux-généraux to incarcerate the poor. As the hôpitaux-généraux became more successful in their efforts to contain the poor the Daughters of Charity increasingly distanced themselves from them. Only about 15 percent of the Daughter’s hospital communities were in hôpitaux-généraux.59 Moreover, in her 1645 draft of the rule for the Daughters serving at the Hôtel-Dieu of Saint-Denis, de Marillac asserted that “the Sister Servant must send those who are cured on their way, especially the idlers and the lazy” and this was a policy adopted by all communities serving in hospitals.60 The Company’s mission was to serve the sick and deserving, not to incarcerate or assist the able-bodied. The role of the Ladies of Charity in hospital development demonstrates, however, contradictory feelings about confinement. The Duchess d’Aiguillon, director of the Ladies of Charity, prominently supported developing an HôpitalGénéral in Paris.61 As a group, the Ladies of Charity raised a considerable sum for the project and were influential in its design. Furthermore, they insisted that the Daughters of Charity be the spiritual guides to the confined women.62 D’Aiguillon herself was the most active Lady of Charity in this endeavor and she worked with Anne of Austria in the 1650s to obtain the right to buildings in Paris and to guarantee funding for the project.63 The Duchess donated a considerable sum to the institution.64 Despite the fact that de Marillac did not want her Daughters serving in the Hôpital-Général it is clear that some prominent Ladies of Charity thought otherwise. Although the Daughters did not assume the role of spiritual guides for women in the Hôpital-Général, they did care for the foundlings in the hospital’s Enfans-Trouvées after their efforts to establish a home at Bicêtre failed. This was not a radical organization in that the Daughters did not challenge assumptions about which of the needy were worthy of help. They dedicated most of their resources to those deemed “deserving” and worked within existing

58

Elmore, 91. Jones, The Charitable Imperative, 174. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 139–40. Hufton argues that de Paul supported the creation of hôpitaux-généraux as voluntary institutions in which the wealthy would contribute and the poor would enter freely. De Paul believed that the hôpitaux-généraux should provide food, shelter, and employment for orphaned children, the disabled, and the old. 60 De Marillac, “Manière de traiter les malades à l’Hôtel-Dieu de Saint-Denis,” 745. 61 Elmore, 76. 62 Elmore, 79. 63 Raymond Darricau, “L’action charitable d’une reine de France: Anne d’Autriche,” XVIIe Siècle, 90–91 (1971): 120. 64 Elmore, 88, 90, 117. D’Aiguillon contributed 100,000 ecus to establish the HôpitalGénéral when the project was in danger of failure; she also conducted extensive negotiations with the factions on the planning committee to keep the project afloat. 59

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institutions of relief. Ultimately, the Daughters of Charity delivered the message of the Catholic Church to the sick and poor, they were providers of charity with an evangelical mission; they were not revolutionaries. Missionary activities were central to the vocation of the Daughters of Charity because their religious calling informed their works. For instance, the Daughters instructed the poor how to lead a devout Catholic life by establishing primary schools for poor girls commonly known as petites écoles.65 They were educators of girls, whom they expected to mature into pious Catholic wives and mothers. The Daughters provided a personal connection between girls and women and the Church. Since nuns lived in cloisters, the Daughters were an unusual extension of women religious who reached poor families. They made the instruction of poor girls one of their central duties. Each parish community had at least two Daughters, one of whom was literate so that she could run a school—a goal compatible with the Twenty-Fourth Session of the Council of Trent: “in each parish the children should learn, at least on Sundays and feast days, the principles of their religion and the obligations of a Christian faith.”66 The Daughters of Charity pursued a second avenue of their missionary vocation through their work in hospitals.67 In 1640, the Daughters of Charity first entered hospital service when they became the nursing and administrative staff at the Hôtel-Dieu in Angers. Their work in this municipal institution provides an example of the complexity of lay and religious relations in poor relief provisioning. The introduction of the Daughters of Charity to l’hôpital St. Jean l’Evangeliste in 1640 underscores the inherent ambiguities involved in the operation of charitable institutions in the early modern period. Originally Augustinian friars ran l’hôpital St. Jean l’Evangeliste from its construction in 1175 through the Middle Ages. However, after a period of administrative corruption and at the urging of the Town Council, the Parlement of Paris issued decrees in 1548 and 1559 placing four bourgeois in charge of the hospitals under the title, “Fathers of the Poor.” As Timothy Fehler points out, this change was not unusual. In France and across Europe in the sixteenth century, reform statutes commonly placed social welfare institutions under the control of the laity.68 Thus, an insti-

65

For a broader discussion of the evolution of female teaching communities see Elizabeth Rapley, The Dévotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Montreal, 1990); Linda Lierheimer, “Redefining Convent Space: Ideals of Female Community among Seventeenth-Century Ursuline Nuns,” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 24 (1997): 211–20; idem, “Preaching or Teaching? Defining the Ursuline Mission in Seventeenth-Century France” in Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker, eds., Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity (Berkeley, 1998), 212–26. 66 H. J. Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford, Ill., 1978) 196. 67 For an overview of the nursing work of the Daughters of Charity from their formation through the reign of Louis-Philippe see, Jones, The Charitable Imperative, 89–205. 68 Timothy G. Fehler, Poor Relief and Protestantism: the Evolution of Social Welfare in Sixteenth-Century Emden (Aldershot, 1999), 11.

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tution that began with an explicitly religious mission was partially laicized by the French political establishment. From this point on the Fathers of the Poor oversaw the hospital, and they maintained a staff that was both religious and secular. In 1640 the institution underwent another change, as the Fathers of the Poor contacted de Marillac and requested a group of Daughters of Charity to administer and staff the hospital.69 L’hôpital St. Jean l’Evangeliste maintained a large staff of religious and lay employees. In 1645 there was one doctor, one surgeon and three aids employed at the hospital to work along with the eight Daughters of Charity, who formed the bulk of the professional staff.70 In addition there were forty-six servants (including cooks, butchers and gardeners), twenty washerwomen, twenty-five vineyard workers and an every-changing body of day laborers.71 This large staff took its direction from the Fathers of the Poor; however, the Daughters were also under the guidance of their Motherhouse. In the case of Angers the Parlement of Paris put the hospital under lay control, the city funded the establishment, but its nursing staff, those upon whom the success of the institution largely rested, were a body of women religious. *

*

*

The case of the Daughters of Charity in Angers demonstrates that it is hard to tease out the strands of religious, lay and secular influences on poor relief because they were closely intertwined. The Daughters’ works of charity were informed by Catholic teachings, and to a certain extent, the Counter-Reformation, but the actors in Angers did not have a uniform notion of religious mission. The goal of the government and the administrators was to improve the quality of healthcare in a time of war and famine, and while doing so bolstering the faith of local Catholics. The administrators at Angers were interested in the Daughters of Charity because they possessed medical training and administrative expertise. During their novitiate, all Daughters received medical instruction at the Motherhouse where they learned to make medicinal teas and remedies and learned how to bleed and perform other minor surgical operations. Their education did not end when they left the Motherhouse; there was extensive discussion of healing practices in the correspondence between de Marillac and the Daughters in communities across France. Their initial instruction and continued education made the Daughters skilled medical practitioners. In many ways, the Fathers

Archives Nationales, S. 6160, Deux requestes des Echeuines d’Angers presentées l’une au Roy et l’autre a Mr l’Evesque d’Angers le 4e novembre 1639. See also, Frances Wilkens, Six Great Nurses (London, 1962), 24. 70 Philippe Rabate, “Les malages de l’hôpital Saint-Jean de 1598–1688” (Memoire de Maîtrese d’Histoire Moderne, Université d’Angers, 1996), 55. 71 Archives Departmentales Maine-et-Loire, 1 Hs A 3 and 1 Hs F 6. See also, Aude Guillon, “La vie religieuse a l’Hôpital Saint Jean de 1634 a la veille de la Revolution” (Memoire de maîtrise d’Histoire religeuse. Université d’Angers, 1996), 68. 69

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of the Poor were hiring the cheapest and best-qualified workforce, as opposed to hiring a workforce with certain doctrinal training. The Daughters demonstrate how a religious community performing Christian services was also fundamentally engaged in the world and no doubt their motivations for helping the poor were both religious and worldly. That does not mean, however, that the hospital administrators did not see religious or moral benefits to employing young and zealous women. Along with improving the patients’ physical health, the Daughters were also responsible for the condition of their souls. Hospital directors benefited from the Daughters’ dual vocation because the Daughters not only nursed the sick, they also created a moral environment of renewal and made the hospital a place of sacred activity. For example, those who died in the hospitals of the Daughters of Charity often did so after careful preparation for their salvation. According to their rules, the Daughters of Charity were to try to convince each patient to make a general confession and to receive communion, but they were not to be too pushy. The Daughters had to take into account the physical, mental, and spiritual state of each individual. For example, when addressing the duties of the Sister Servant at the hospital in Saint-Denis de Marillac wrote, “The Sister Servant shall try herself to get others to try to move all those sick who have not made a general confession to do so as soon as possible. . . . Fear should be instilled in those who have need of it and confidence in those who are too fearful.”72 Ultimately, the Daughters were to prepare the very sick to die well. They encouraged the gravely ill to make frequent confessions, to detach themselves from the things of this world, and to cultivate a desire for paradise. Whether this spiritual benefit was important to the hospital administrators is difficult to prove; that it was critical to the Daughters they employed at the hospital is obvious. The French state may also have realized indirect political benefits in permitting this religious mission to occur in Angers. In 1660, shortly before her death, de Marillac reflected upon the spiritual service of the Daughters to the sick poor. She praised her simple Daughters for turning many away from sin and heresy. She wrote, “How many heretics have been converted since the Daughters of Charity have been working in the hospitals? Recall that, in 1659, . . . [at] the hospital of Saint-Denis, five or six heretics were converted, including the son of a Protestant minister, without counting several previous conversions.”73 Proselytizing to the Huguenots was an important duty in Angers, a city that had been a Protestant stronghold in the sixteenth century.74 Employing a staff of Daughters of Charity assured hospital directors in Angers that patients

72

De Marillac, 744–47. De Marillac, 821. 74 J. H. M. Salmon, Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975), 132, 146. 73

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in their care were receiving competent medical service as well as intensive spiritual guidance. The Daughters, serving as missionaries, also served the French state in that they defended Catholic orthodoxy, and supported the monarch’s agenda for a Catholic France. *

*

*

Lay and religious Catholics administered, staffed, and funded many of France’s charitable institutions, and they expressed their religious devotion through these works. The Daughters of Charity were one of the most important bodies of social servants and nurses in seventeenth-century France, quickly growing to direct a large number of hospitals and other charitable institutions. According to Elizabeth Rapley: . . . the[se] active congregations became an integral part of modern France. The vast majority of schoolgirls in the Old Regime were educated by them. The hospitals depended on them absolutely. Society grew up around them, to the degree that it developed no alternative sources for the services which they provided.75

In the wake of the Daughters of Charity many other active religious communities of women developed using their community as a model.76 Religious women, notably Augustinian nuns, had been involved in hospital work in the Middle Ages; in the early modern period the Daughters of Charity were the women most associated with nursing work. The Daughters of Charity prioritized making hospitals clean and safe places that met both the physical and spiritual needs of the sick and poor. They were proficient providers of charitable relief and health care. It is beyond doubt that the primary motivations that lay behind the Daughter’s acts of charity were religious ones. The fact that religion exerted a powerful influence over the initiation and shape of poor relief, however, does not logically obligate the historian to ignore the fundamental fact that poor relief could not have been sustained without the support of a broader institutional framework. Indeed, the framers of the edicts of the Council of Trent realized that enforcement of their decrees would require “the aid of the secular arm.”77 Representatives of the church and state had to work together to implement the changes that characterized early modern Catholicism. It seems that the major issue confronting the founders of the company of the Daughters of Charity was how they could circumvent the dictates of the Council of Trent, and create an institution that was worldly enough to attend to the real, material needs of the poor. It thus should strike us that while the

75 76 77

Rapley, 8. For the case of Brittany, for example, see Hickey, Local Hospitals, 169. Schroeder, The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 221.

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ideology of Trent can serve as a starting place for understanding institutions, institutions must also be studied to understand how their actors, and the audience they served, both act to reshape and reinterpret the institutions to best serve their interests. For instance, Kathryn Norberg has pointed out that local officials often brought religious women into charitable institutions in order improve the quality of healthcare, rather than to strengthen the church.78 It is important to realize that both objectives were realized and if motive was improved healthcare, using women religious was a solution that proved very successful.

78

Martin Dinges, “Health Care and Poor Relief in Regional Southern France in the Counter-Reformation,” in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Jon Arrizabalaga, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe (London, 1999), 258.

CONCLUSION Thomas Max Safley

S

omething indeed happened to charity in early modern Europe. Allowing for local variations in accordance with local circumstances, these studies give evidence of closely similar developments. State or lay engagement in the provision of poor relief was expanded. Resources were centralized. Functions were regularized, made more efficient, in short, rationalized. None of this had much to do with the Reformation, however. The processes began far earlier. Nor did these processes achieve completion or perfection. The reasons for change were complex. Economic efficiency and social discipline were frequently mentioned, but so too were Christian charity and “brotherly love.” Though their rationales might seem irreconcilable, there is no reason to doubt the word of magistrates or laymen, who claimed repeatedly that they were moved by all four. Questions remain, however. Secularization, in the narrower sense of lay administration, certainly occurred. Clerical participation was limited to care of souls and ecclesiastical institutions. Was the sacred character of charity lost or compromised, therefore? Rationalization, the deliberate, planned pursuit of specifically defined ends, as Weber understood it, requires that religious precepts be set aside in favor of more utilitarian behaviors.1 If anything, religious precepts became a rhetoric for validating rational ends. Did religion become toute simple nothing more than the tool of rationality? Though administration increasingly passed into secular hands and those laymen strove for greater efficiency, alms-giving persisted, despite prohibitions, as did explicit reference to the Christian motivation that inspired it. Protestants and Catholics alike were encouraged to see in the poor an image of Christ, a metaphor of the soul’s relationship to God. Did they actually do so? The general pattern of development conforms in most places to a greater or lesser degree to the pattern of rationalization and bureaucratization, identified over a century ago. Yet, it precedes the religious reformation and retains a self-consciously religious inspiration.

1

Weber discussed rationality almost strictly in economic terms. Thus, rationality characterized any economic action that involved the conscious, systematic application of appropriate means, as defined by the agent’s experience or reflection, to the acquisition of consciously chosen utilities or advantages. See Max Weber, Economy and Society, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1978), I, 63–74, 85–86, 107, 161–64.

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When magistrates wrote, “there should be no beggars among Christians,” when merchants donated their private wealth to the poor “for the good of [their] soul,” should these explanations and justifications be read transparently? Perhaps the changes that should interest us are not only institutional, important though they are, but also ethical. If changing social circumstances encouraged people to view poverty ambivalently—as a threat rather than a misfortune— then changing religious perceptions might encourage people to view charity differently—as exclusive rather than universal. Do poverty and charity assume a new value or meaning? Answers are not to be found in the mechanical application of ideal types. If these local studies demonstrate anything, they prove conclusively that particular variations are at least as significant as universal similarities. We must attend to the confluence of local factors: cultures, histories, resources, structures, and powers. These essays testify to the secularization of institutions but not of their functions. Secularization must be understood exactly, if it is to be at all applicable. In this case, it means the conversion of ecclesiastical institutions or property to the relief of poverty or the delivery of healthcare in the hands or under the direction of laymen. It does not refer to the giving of a secular or non-sacred character or direction to that poor relief or healthcare. Secular authorities played a leading role in the slow reorganization of charity in cities like Memmingen and Wangen, gradually assuming oversight of ecclesiastical institutions and contributing their cities’ resources. They did not, however, see themselves simply as secular magistrates in the process, as Weber would have it, but rather as Christian magistrates, charged with worldly and religious responsibilities. And, indeed, the foreign observer, Alexander Berner, praised the charities of both cities highly, not only for their efficiency but also for their piety. The same can be said for Treviso and Florence, Emden and Orange, or Holland and France. Elites saw in charitable engagements, whether in the administration of institutions or in the participation in confraternities, an opportunity both for worldly advancement and for religious satisfaction. Commoners, too, wherever their intentions can be deduced from their words or works, clung to the notion that succoring the needy brought social and spiritual benefits in like measure. Indeed, our contributors are unanimous in their insistence that early modern charity retained its sacred character and religious signification, regardless of secularization or rationalization. We can speak of the rationalization of resources, but we must not assume the irrationality of religion. The signs of a rational approach to poor relief appear everywhere. Resources were centralized. Administration was standardized. Services were planned. Thus, we see at least an attempt at the “instrumentally efficient pursuit of given ends.”2 From around 1520, a wide-ranging

2 Jon Elster, Rationalities of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (New York, 1999), 102, 285.

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“reorganization and rationalization” of poor relief occurred in the Kingdom of France as in the Holy Roman Empire. This process spanned the confessional divide, centralizing charitable resources under civil or royal administrations and offering work schemes and home relief as well as a notable disciplinary tendency to the deserving poor. Treviso and Florence, not unlike Venice, offered a broad spectrum of public and private initiatives that underwent a process of centralization and rationalization, though less consequently pursued than north of the Alps, perhaps. Dutch cities resemble their Italian counterparts in the multiplicity of institutions and initiatives, and they resemble other multi-confessional cities— Augsburg comes immediately to mind—in the confessional character of their charities. Institutional arrangements varied according to local power structures, but everywhere that same process of rationalization is present, if not as a result of governmental fiat, then as a result of tough-minded negotiation. By the end of the sixteenth century, a tripartite system had emerged in most places with the division of labor and the distribution of resources clearly defined: public welfare controlled by magistrates; church welfare controlled by deacons; private foundations controlled by elites. We must avoid Weberian polarities, however, whereby religious concerns functioned only in the context of the diaconate and elites sought to rationalize their charities by exercising direct control over them. The bureaucratic relief of poverty is not solely a civic or secular duty; we see Waterlander Mennonites using many of the same techniques as Amsterdam syndics or German city councilors. Neither diaconates nor confraternities signalled a survival of or a return to non-bureaucratic structures and personal relations in the relief of poverty. Christian charity need not be personal and, therefore, “irrational.” It is worth recalling that Catholic bishops and abbots were among the most rational managers of economic resources in the Middle Ages, providing a wide range of social services to their communities. Calvinist deacons and Catholic Daughters saw “no dichotomy” between economic rationalization and religious motivation. Apart from confessional orientation, nothing distinguished the reformed Catholic emphasis on providing physical and spiritual assistance to the needy from, say, the reformed Calvinist teachings on the same topic. It is time to recognize the rationality of religious groups, both in the consistent teaching of religious doctrine and in the consequent pursuit of social ends. Religion was no mere rhetoric in poor relief. We can—indeed must—speak of the spirituality of poverty without presuming its felicity or losing sight of its misery. Early modern Europeans understood it as both a material and a moral state. Even the earliest secular discussions of poverty captured its complexity. Feudal texts spoke of potens and pauper, the relationship between which provides the etymological basis for our definition of poverty, not in the sense of wealth and poverty but rather in terms of power and impotence.3 Religious teaching and imagery emphasized physical need

3

Karl Bosl, “Potens und Pauper. Begriffsgeschichtliche Studien zur gesellschaftlichen

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coupled with spiritual humility. Jesus and, later, St. Francis, embodied this essential combination of qualities and elevated it to the level of metaphor: need and humility characterize the state of poverty and symbolize the soul’s relationship to God. The importance of this complexity resides in the simple fact that it created a fundamental tension that confounded not only early modern poor relief but also modern studies of it. Early modern authorities—both secular and religious—determined to treat both the material and the spiritual ramifications of need, saw that determination as a legitimate expression of their secular and religious responsibility. The turn toward a combination of relief and discipline— whether labor, social, or confessional—was no less religious than social in its inspiration; the increasing numbers of people in need as well as the decreasing piety of their manner made it necessary. Dutch poor relief remained to a large extent church-based, reserved for communicating members and expressing the self-consciousness of confessional groups. What is more charity became an instrument of confessional strife, a means of luring souls from one confession to another and tipping the political balance between them. The situation is not unique, however. The developments in Orange and Emden conform well to Colin Jones’ description4 of a reformed confessional group seizing local institutions for their own purposes. When the civic right to poor relief is transformed into a confessional threat, to paraphrase Martin Dinges,5 the motivations are both religious and worldly. Likewise in Italian states, where poor relief seems more variegated and complex than in other parts of Europe, the secular and the sacred are seldom separable. Over the course of time, many of these institutions came to share a more “aggressive, militant, and evangelical approach” to religious charity, using it not only to relieve material suffering but also to promote moral behavior and social discipline.6 The secular and the sacred are indistinguishable in the structure and function of early modern poor relief. The church—no less than the state—provided charity for political as well as religious reasons. The dichotomy of secular and sacred concerns begins to resemble a question mal posée. In early modern Europe, the spiritual nature of poverty, far from being lost, complicates the relief of it. We can speak of the motivations of charity but not of their simplicity. As should be clear by now, these do not submit easily to the broad generalizations of ideal types. Indeed, they may not submit at all. Again the question, are such statements of reason and intention as survive in historical documents to be read transparently? While we cannot discount them—they are, after all, all we

Differenzierung im frühen Mittelalter und zum ‘Pauperismus’ des Hochmittelalters,” in idem, Frühformen der Gesellschaft im mittelalterlichen Europa (Vienna, 1964), 106–34. 4 Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France (London, 1971). 5 Martin Dinges, “Huguenot Poor Relief and Health Care,” in R. Mentzer and A. Spicer, eds., Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559–1685 (Cambridge, 2001), 167. 6 Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice, 635.

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have—ought we to take them at face value? The evidence itself seems ambiguous and multivalent. Benefactors gave for the aid of the needy, for the good of their souls, for the advancement of their careers, for the reputation of their families, and for the safety of their communities. They gave because their religion taught it and because their circumstances demanded it. They gave out of compassion as well as out of compulsion.7 And once we admit that compassion for the poor and the sick survives, then we cannot discount religious motivations, no matter how secular the structure or function of the charity. Attending to these complex, seemingly contradictory motives, we cannot readily admit the validity of simple dichotomies—rational/irrational, secular/sacred, material/ spiritual—or ideal types. Recently, intellectual fashion has dictated a cynical response to the testimony of the past. What one historian called “a hard core of theorists under the spell of Marx and Foucault” interprets poor relief as a means by which “the rich tranquilize the poor.”8 So understood, poverty becomes a consequence of the social relations of production, and elites seek to control rather than improve it. Requiring a ready reserve of labor, capitalist enterprise enlists the state to police the poor. Charity in nothing more than an instrument of subjugation, therefore, all religiously couched expressions of sympathy or generosity notwithstanding. Yet, the truth of capitalist exploitation or proletarian suffering does not render false the humane concern of capitalists. These essays remind us that a desire to police or employ the poor did not preclude a genuine concern for their material and spiritual well-being. By the same token, expressions of spiritual purity did not preclude a cynical intention to employ that spirit to worldly ends. In the Venetian terrafirma, the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic, and the Kingdom of France, poverty became an excuse for policing, and conformity became the price of charity. Relief was denied to strangers; children were kidnapped from their parents; the fear of death was used as a goad toward a conception of life. But, at the same time, exceptions were made, rules observed in the breach. Across the boundaries of community and confession, strangers were assisted, children sheltered, and the dying were comforted. It is not that human motivation should be read transparently but rather that it should be set in the context of human action. We can speak of the meaning of poor relief but only in local context. It is tempting to allege that early modern poor relief became increasingly particular and exclusive rather than universal and inclusive. Given the nearly ubiquitous insistence that poor relief be limited to the deserving members of one’s own

7 Colin Jones well-received notion of a “charitable imperative” tends, at least implicitly, to obscure the degree to which the giving of alms or the relief of poverty—among Protestants as well as Catholics—was freely given. Though it became the responsibility of every Christian, it was one that many seem to have embraced readily and freely. See Jones, The Charitable Imperative, passim. 8 Frank Prochaska, “Charitable Motives,” Times Literary Supplement 4804 (1995): 27.

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community or church and given the no less ubiquitous intention to deny assistance to the undeserving and foreign, this alone would seem a remarkable observation. Yet, like so many other generalizations about early modern poor relief, it collapses under the weight of unexamined assumptions. The apparent exclusivity of poor relief can be viewed as nothing more than a logical outcome of attempts to discriminate between the honorable and the dishonorable, the able and the disabled, or the local and the foreign. Such restrictions, driven in part by economic exigencies and social expectations and in part by biblical scholarship and religious conviction, are taken to mark a fundamental departure from earlier charity. That is, in and of itself, an unexamined assumption; the records of medieval charity are too sparse to allow any categorical conclusion about its inclusivity. Moreover, they are taken to reflect daily practice. Once again, it seems to me, we are trapped by a reliance on prescriptive sources and normative statements, when we need descriptions of the daily routines of charity. In confessionally uniform communities, such as the cities of Paris, Treviso, Florence, Memmingen, and Wangen, exclusivity vaguely describes a situation that was far more fluid. Foreigners regularly entered these cities to beg and, no less regularly, received alms from citizens and magistrates, statutory laws notwithstanding. In multi-confessional communities, such as the cities of the Dutch Republic or the territory of Orange, exclusivity was not prescribed at one time but rather negotiated on a daily basis. It was based not a fixed set of requirements but an on-going reconciliation between institutional structures and human needs. Confessionalization,9 for example, clearly influenced the relief of poverty by compounding religious and political motives. The question that must be asked of these cities and their authorities is whether the restriction of relief to the poor members of one’s own community—an essential restriction in the definition of a Christian, if not in the practice of Christianity—signals a fundamental change in the basic understanding of charity. When “charity” becomes the privilege of the few instead of the right of all, does it cease to be charity? Diaconates and all church-affiliated forms of poor relief deliberately sought to care for their own and weaken their opponents at the same time. Still,

9 The term refers to two related but distinct historical processes. In its original form, it describes the gradual emergence as early as the 1520s of confessions as self-conscious groups, defined by distinctive modes of devotion and behavior. More recently, it has come to describe the politicization of Protestant and Catholic Reformations that resulted from the Religious Peace of Augsburg in 1555. See R. P. Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe, 1550–1750 (London, 1989); W. Reinhard, “Zwang zur Konfessionalisierung? Prolegomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 10 (1983): 257–77; H. Schilling, “Die ‘Zweite Reformation’ als Kategorie der Geschichtswissenschaft,” in idem, ed., Die reformierte Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland— Das Problem der ‘Zweiten Reformation’ (Gutersloh, 1986), 387–401; E. W. Zeeden, Die Entstehung der Konfessionen: Grundlagen und Formen der Konfessionsbildung im Zeitalter der Glaubenskämpfe (München, 1965); idem, Konfessionsbildung: Studien zur Reformation, Gegenreformation und katholischen Reform (Stuttgart, 1985).

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changing notions of who the poor are and what they are due may constitute a more fundamentally unique characteristic of early modern poor relief than do the processes of rationalization or secularization. The degree to which this is true, however, cannot be generalized about Europe as a whole. Rather, it must be applied place by place and tested against the specificities of each locale. Charities were local; they reflect the communities that create them. They express something of local culture and history; they are shaped by local social hierarchies and political relations; they are influenced by social tensions and ideological conflicts. They cannot, therefore, be completely understood in isolation or in general. Without reference to specific conditions, one can conclude neither that “without the Reformation the centralization and increased accountability of poor relief which took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would have been unimaginable”10 nor “the foundering of the postulate of brotherly love in its collision with the loveless realities of the economic domain.”11 Normative statements and ideal types must be tested carefully against quotidian realities and local circumstances. Theory must be set in discourse with practice. By doing so, these studies recapture the richness and humanity of early modern poor relief, the danger and desperation of its poverty as well as the calculation and generosity of its charity. They preserve the dignity of the past, and they present its significance in the present.

10 Ole Peter Grell, “The Protestant Imperative of Christian Care and Neighbourly Love,” in Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, 1500–1700 (London, 1997), 43–65. 11 Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley, 1978), 589.

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INDEX abandonment, 163–64 absenteeism, 122 Acts 4:32, 16 Acts 6, 48 Aldemari, Taddeo, 40 Admonitions of St. Francis, 19 Aleandro, Girolamo, 35 alms, 47 alms chest (See also common chest), 88 alms-giving, 12 almshouse, 123, 132 Altieri, Baldassare, 35 Alva, Duke of, 123 Amsterdam, reputation for charity, 140–41 Anabaptists, 21, 100, 122, 141–42 Anna, Countess of Frisia, 100–01 Anne of Austria, 187 anslohofje, 147 anticlericalism, 125 Antoniter, 76, 77 Arcangelo Raffaello, Confraternity of, 57 Arminians, 134 Augustine of Hippo, 16 Augustinian Order, 34 Augustinian Synod (1520), 34–35 aumône-générale, 185–86 Bakehouse, in Amsterdam, 137 ban, 150 barber-surgeon, 85, 87, 148 Baron, Hans, 10 Baudelaire, 2 beggars, sturdy (See poor, the: undeserving.) begging, 19–20, 84–85, 124, 158; attitudes toward, 6, 7; prohibition of, 126, 127, 180; regulation of, 87–88, 110 Benedict of Nursia, 16 Benedictines, 76 Bernardino da Feltre, 41, 42 Bernardino of Siena, 20, 41 Berner, Alexander, 74, 80, 194 Bicêtre, 176, 177, 178, 187 Blattern, 81 Blatternhaus, 70

Blessed Sacrament, Confraternity of the, 169 Blois, Edict of (1579), 185 Bossy, John, 126 Brand, Ursula, 88 Brown, Peter, 65, 104–105 brotherhood, 144–45 Bucer, Martin, 115 Bugenhagen, Johann, 94–97, 106 Buonomini di San Martino, Confraternity of, 56 bureau des pauvres, 158 bureaucracy, 1 bureaucratization, 193 Calvin, John, 115 Calvinism, 9, 120, 139 Calvinists, 2; Dutch, approaches to poor relief, 114–15, 116–20 Campagnie van Veere, 137 capitalism, 197 capitalization, 4 capitoli, 45, 52–53, 54, 55, 60 Capponi, Ludovico, 47, 49, 57 Casa del Soccorso (in Venice), 10 Catholics, as tolerated church, 131 celibacy, 23 centralization, 11, 14, 112, 119, 124, 158 chantry, 123 charity, 1; as civic institution, 45; attitudes toward, 49; church-state cooperation, 183; civic function of, 116–17; community-based, 135; contrast between medieval and early modern, 1, 13–14, 48–49; in Golden-Age Amsterdam, 138–39; in Italian city-states, 32; in Late Antiquity, 65, 114; inadequacy of, 6; influence of confessionalization on, 109; influence of Reformation on, 45; local nature of, 199; motives for, 60–61, 114, 196–97; parish-based, 12; private, 12, 128; reform of, 45; relationship to lay piety, 10, 109; religious motives for, 126, 136, 178; role of discipline in, 54–55; sacred and secular aspects of, 41, 44, 48–49; 113;

202

INDEX

spiritual functions of, 10, 50–51; state control of, 5, 132; symbolic and ritual function of, 49–50, 55 Charity, Confraternities of, 182 Charles V, 82, 126 Charles IX, 185 children, abandoned, 37 Chrisman, Miriam, 73–74 churches, tolerated, 131 City Council (See state) citizens, as recipients of poor relief, 133 common chest, 7, 106, 124, 158 communalization, 3 community, as a motive for charity, 12–13 compassion, as a motive for charity, 48, 61 concubinage, 122 confessionalization, 12, 107, 157–58 confinement, as an element of poor relief, 186–87 confraternities, 178, 180; as elements of Renaissance Catholicism, 30–31; as providers of charity, 30–46, 47–62; as providers of poor relief, 169–73; charity toward members, 57–58; civic function of, 51–52; continuity of 98; forms of charity provided by, 58–59, 60; in Emden, 97–98; role of, in Savonarolan reforms, 56–57; renewal of, 169; scholarship on, 49–50 conservatori (See also monte di pietà), 42, 43 consistory, 167–69 Constitution, Caroline (1552), 88 converties, maison de, 170 convertite, 34 Counter-Reformation, 50; influence on charity, 30–32 crisis, subsistence, 5, 126–27, 158 Cunningham, Andrew, 31 Daughters of Charity, Company of the, 14, 168, 174–75, 176–92, 195 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 108, 85–86 d’Aiguillon, Duchess, 186–87 d’Arzillier, Marguerite, 169 da Settimo, Matteo, 40 da Trento, Pietro, 40 de Blacons, Alexandre, 157 de Marillac, Louise, 176, 177, 178, 181, 182, 186, 187, 189, 190 de Montmorency, Charlotte, Princess de Condé, 176 de Paul, Vincent, 176, 181, 182, 186

de Soto, Domingo, 8 deacons, 101, 106, 114, 130, 147–51, 168–69, 195 dearth, 126–27; influence of, on poor relief in Memmingen, 69–72; influence of, on poor relief in Wangen, 86–87 depot de mendicité, 13 deprivatization, 3 diaconate, 12, 14, 101–04, 107, 109, 112, 115–20, 130–32, 134, 198; conflict involving, 103–04; disciplinary function of, 149–54; haussitzende, 101, 102, 104; fremdlinge, 101; independent, 118, 131; function of, in state-controlled poor relief, 117; state control of, 118–19; Waterlander, 147–51 Die Spend, 79 Dinges, Martin, 167, 175, 196 discipline: as an element of poor relief, 126, 129–30; role of, in poor relief, 101–04, 105; social, 1, 152 Dohna, Christophe, 157 Dohna, Frederic, 157 donations, 149, 167 dowry, 39, 58 Duke, Alastair, 115 Dutch East India Company (See Campagnie van Veere) Dutch Revolt, 13 écoles, petites, 188 Edict of 1531, 126, 135 Edict of 1580, 185 Edict of Nantes, Revocation of, 169, 172 Edict of Toleration (1607), 157 Edzard I, Count of Frisia, 94 elites, charitable activities of, 43–44 Ellenbog, Ulrich, 78 Emiliani, Girolamo (Miani), 35–36 Enfans-Trouvés, 187 Enno, Count of Frisia, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 35, 122 Fanier, Pierre, 172 Fehler, Timothy, 188 Fischer, Thomas, 67–68 Flagellant Movement (1260), 36 Florence, as model of civic charity, 57 Fontainebleau, Edict of (1543), 184 foodstuffs, 147 Foscari, Marco, 57 fostering, 148 Foucault, Michel, 8, 197 foundations: pious, 5; private, 195 foundlings, 176–77, 178

INDEX

Francis I, 184 Francis of Assisi, 10, 18–21, 196 Franciscans: Observant, 96, 99–101; poverty practiced by, 20–21; Spiritual, 20 Franco, Niccolò (Bishop of Treviso), 42 Franeker, 123, 126 Friedrichs, Christopher, 63 Friess, Peer, 70 gastald, 38–39 Gasthäuser (See also hospital), 97, 99, 103 Ghent, Pacification of (1577), 123 Gombrich, Ernst, 61–62 goods, community of, 143–44 government: state, municipal, or civic (See state) Gowing, Laura, 165 grand aumônier, administration of French poor relief by, 184–85 Grell, Ole Peter, 4, 31, 63, 92, 121, 128, 142 Großspend, 66–67, 74 guilds, 5 Gürsching, Heinrich, 75 Gutton, Jean-Pierre, 3, 180 gypsies, 77 Hackfurt, Lucas, 73 Haus der Sondersiechen am Sattel (in Wangen), 84 Hausarmen (See also poor, the: deserving; shame-faced), 84 Halwell, Edmund, 35 healthcare, 148; spiritual aspects of, 190–91 Heidelberg, University of, 122 Heilig-Geist-Spital (in Wangen), 83 helping households (See also households of the faith), 168 Henderson, John, 32, 44, 49, 50, 52 Henri IV, 156 hermits, 16 Hickey, Daniel, 184, 185 Hildegard of Bingen, 77 Hinderofen, Onofrius, 82–83, 86, 89 Holy Sacrament, Company of the, 181, 186 Holy Sacrament, Fraternity of the (See also confraternity), 123, 124 home, foundling, 5 honour, as element of charity, 60 hôpitaux (See also hospital), 13; généraux, 175, 180, 186, 187; neuf,

203

159, 171–72; St. Jean l-Evangeliste, 188–89 hospital, 5, 32, 36–41, 57, 77, 79, 97, 123, 141, 188; confessionalization in, 168–73 hospitality, 2 hôtel-dieu, 13, 174, 181, 187, 188 House of Correction, 129–30 Household of Faith, 101–04, 115 housing, free, 147 Huguenot, poor relief offered by, 183–84 humanism, civic, influence on poor relief, 121, 135 humility, 17, 23, 25, 146 Hutterites, 143 huusdelinge, 96 illegitimacy, 154–55, 163 imitatio Christi, 16, 18, 20 individualism, in poor relief (See also, poor, the: examination of; discrimination among), 53–54, 57–58 indulgence, plenary, 38 infanticide, 164 Inquisition, Roman, 32 industrialization, 4 Innocent VIII, 38, 42 Jews, as tolerated church, 131 Johanniter, 76 John of Chrysostom, 19 Jones, Colin, 13, 175, 183, 196 Jütte, Robert, 3, 92, 181 Kahnemann, Daniel, 2 Kießling, Rolf, 3 Klump, Anton, 78 Kunzelman Almosen (in Memmingen), 67 Labadists, as tolerated church, 131 Ladies of Charity, Company of, 176, 177, 178, 182, 186–87 laicization, 184–85 Lasco, Johannes a, 100, 115 Lateran IV, 21 Laugier, Balthezard, 171 Lazarists (See also Mission, Congregation of the), 181 League, Swabian, 69 Leeuwarden, 121–36 passim Leo X, 50 Leprosarium, 79, 81, 154 Lesdiguières, Duc de, 157 Lindau, Imperial Diet of (1497), 9, 77, 80

204

INDEX

Lis, Catherine, 3 Louis XIII, 177 Louis XIV, 172, 186 Luther, Martin, 11, 35, 70, 74, 88, 94, 97 122 Lutheranism, as tolerated church, 131 magistrates (See state) maison de charité, 174 Margaret of Parma, 122–23 marriage, 39, 151 Martz, Linda, 3 Marx, Karl, 8, 197 massaro (See monte di pietà), 42 Mathew 19, 16–24 medical care (See also healthcare), 160–61 Medici, 17; Giulio de (Pope Leo X), 35 membership, church, as means of access to poor relief, 134 Memmingen, Begging Order of (1527), 70, 71 mendicancy, Protestant criticism of, 143 Mennonites, 13, 116, 117, 122, 129, 134, 137, 138, 139–40, 137–53 passim; as tolerated church, 131; Waterlander, 116, 137–53, 195 mentalités, 61, 153 midwife, 85, 86, 163 Mission, Congregation of the, 181–82 modernization, 1 Moeller, Bernd, 64 Mollat, Michel, 178 monasticism, 16; Benedictine, 16–17, 19; Cistercian, 17, 19; Cluniac, 19 moneylenders, Jewish, 41 monte di pietà (See also pawnshop), 10, 11, 32–33, 36, 41–43, 44–46; procedures of, 42; administration of, 42–43 More, Thomas, 21 mothers, unwed, 163 motivations: complexity of, in poor relief, 197 Moulins, Edict of (1566), 185 Munster, Anabaptist Kingdom of, 122, 142 Nuremberg, Poor Law of (1522), 7, 70, 75 Obeilh, Jean-Jacques, 172, 173 Old-Catholics, 134 orders, monastic, 5 ordinance: begging, 68, 69–70, 72, 73,

80; church, specifications for poor relief in, 94–97 Ordinance: Church, of Lubeck (1531), 106; Hospital, of Überlingen (1571), 80; Imperial Police (1548), 81; Syphillis, in Überlingen (1581), 81 Orio, Hieronimo, 42 Orleans, Edict of (1561), 185 orphanage, 5, 125, 128, 129, 132, 141, 149 orphans, 37, 84, 148–49 Orsanmichele, Confraternity of, 52 ospedale (See also hospital), 11 Our Lady, Confraternity of, 98 Our Lady of Mercy, Confraternity of, 165, 169 Padua, University of, 40 Pandert, Robbert, 149 passade, 162, 166 Passional Christi und Antichristi (1521), 24–29 Paul II, 38 pauper, 195 pauvres, deniers de, 167 pawnshop (see also monte de pietà), 5 Peace, Religious (1578), 123 Peasant Wars (1525), 21, 69, 70, 82 Pelt, Johann, 94 Pepe, Senior, 343 Pfründhäuser, 68–69 Philip-William of Nassau, 156–57, 158 Philips, Dirk, 145 physician, 85–86 Pisani, Francesco (Bishop of Treviso), 34 plague, 86–87, 126–27 Polanyi, Karl, 1n Ponzone, Domenico, 42 poor, the, 1; as image of Christ, 55, 193; attitudes toward, 5, 179–80; confinement of, 163; deserving, 6, 58, 88, 123, 126, 143, 149–50, 180; discrimination among, 8, 166; examination of, 7; exclusion of, 8, 163; foreign (See also poor, the: undeserving), 101–04; identification of, 8, 104; increase in numbers of, 77, 161–62; marginality of, 163; ritual function of, 52–53; shame-faced (See also poor, the: deserving), 6, 37, 52, 180; self-sufficiency of, 8; undeserving, 6, 88, 159, 180; vulnerability of, 16 Poor, Fathers of the, 189 poor house, 141 Poor Laws, 22–23

INDEX

Poor of Lyon, 18 poor relief: bi-confessional, 160; centralization of, 105, 126, 130; church-based, 101–04, 159, 167, 196, 198–99; church-state control of, 109–10; church control of, 13; coercion in, 166; comparison of, between Catholics and Protestants, 87–88; comparison of, between Mennonites and other Protestants, 153; confessionalization of, 155–56, 167, 168; cooperation between church and state in, 153; consolidation of, 185–86; continuity of, 106; corruption of, 184; development of, in Holland, 110–13; disciplinary aspects of, 13, 167, 181; economic motivations of, 151–52; effects of crisis on, 106, 158–59, 184; enclosure in, 166; exclusivity of, 135, 197–99; expanding state control of, 184–85; expulsion in, 166; for foreign poor, in Orange, 162–63; for illegitimate children, in Orange, 163–66; for unwed mothers, in Orange, 162–63; in Late Antiquity, 104–05; in Middle Ages, 178; in multi-confessional communities, 155; influence of confessionalization on, 116; influence of Reformation on, 99, 108; laicization of, 90; lay administration of, 110–11; Mennonite approaches to, 146–51; missionary aspects of, 188; motivations of, 9, 49, 63, 74–75, 79, 84, 89, 151–53, 173–75, 183, 193; multi-confessional, 140–41; multiple influences on, 189; municipal administration of, 126, 159–61; non-sectarian quality of, 89; omnicompetent, 13; parish-based, 13, 123, 126, 127, 181; pragmatic motivations of, 83; private foundations of, 132; rationalization of, 4, 7, 105; re-Catholicization of, in Orange, 174–75; reform of, 45, 123–27, 158–66; relationship of, to labor supply, 152; religious motivations of, 108, 112–23, 142, 151–52, 153, 166–73, 185, 191; re-organization of, in France, 178–92; sacred and secular functions of, 11, 13, 52, 90–91, 92, 138; secular motivations of, 101; secularization of, 89–90; social motivations of, 152; specialization of, 7; state control of, 1, 77, 113, 173–74, 183, 184; survival of medieval

205

practices in, 96–97, 97–99; tripartite system of, 12, 132, 195 potens, 195 poverty, 4, 132–33, as embodied by Francis of Assisi, 19; as a lack of status, 21; attitudes toward, 143–44; economic relief of, 14; growth of, in seventeenth century, 178–80; images of, 23–29; multivalency of, 16; spiritual significance of, 5, 22–23, 25; spiritualization of, 195 property, 10, 17 Pullan, Brian, 4, 10, 32, 44, 50, 56, 61, 108 Rapley, Elizabeth, 191 rationalization, 2, 11, 12, 14, 138, 142, 155, 193, 194, 195 Reformation, 82; criticism of, on mendicancy 22; in cities, 64; in Emden, 93, 94–97; in Frisia, 121–23; in Orange, 156–57; influence of, on poor relief, 3, 6, 12, 63–64, 68, 72, 73, 78–79, 91, 92, 105, 119–20, 121, 127–30, 135, 138, 155, 163, 193 Reformed, Dutch, 134, 137–78; Walloon, 134 refugees, Dutch, 101–04 Religion, Wars of, 184 Renaissance, 62 Rennenberg, 123 residents, as recipients of poor relief, 134 residency, as a requirement of poor relief, 113 Richelieu, Cardinal, 186 Rossi, Bernardo (Bishop of Treviso), 33–34 Rule, Benedictine, 16 Ryswick, Peace of (1697), 172–73 Salinguerra, Tommaso, 40 salvation, charity linked to, 11 sanatarium, 5 San Frediano, in Florence, 52 San Giovanni Battista, Confraternity of (Scalzo), 54, 59 San Sebastiano, confraternity of, 55, 59 Sant’ Andrea de Purgatorio, Confraternity of, 60 Sant’ Agnese, Confraternity of, 53, 58, 59 Santa Maria delle Neve, Confraternity of, 52–53 Santa Maria dei Battuti, in Treviso (See also hospital), 36–41, 43

206

INDEX

St. Anna, Confraternity of, 98 St. Anthony, Hospital of (See also hospital), 124, 127, 128, 129 St. Clement, Confraternity of, 99 St. Eligius, Confraternity of, 84 St.-Germaine-en-Laye, Edict of (1545), 184 St. Gertrude, Gasthaus of, 99 St. Jacob, Hospital of (See also hospital), 124, 125 St. Joseph, Order of, 174 St. Lazare, 159 St. Sebastian, Confraternity of, 84 Savonarola, 56–57 Schenck, Simprecht, 74 scholarships, 40 Scuole Grandi, in Venice, 10 secularization, 4, 10, 13–14, 22, 112, 142, 155, 193, 194 self-interest, as a motive of charity, 114 Seelhaus, 70, 72, 79, 86, 87 Seelgerät, 66–67 Separatists, English, 137–38 service, domestic, 39 Sigbert of Gembloux, 76 Simons, Menno, 122, 142, 143, 144 Sixtus IV, 38 Smyth, John, 137 Sneek, 128 soldiers, as recipients of poor relief, 133 Soly, Hugo, 3 Somaschi, 36 Spital (See also hospital), 65–75 state, 1; administration of poor relief, 10, 67–68, 72–73, 80, 81, 86–87, 88, 89; administration of healthcare, 85–86, 89; control of religious practices, 7; in Memmingen, 64–65; in Treviso, 33; regulation of begging, 7–8, 85 statements, normative, 4, 82, 199 Stepp, Robert, 75 Stift, Conrad Stüdlins, in Memmingen, 67 Sweet Name of Jesus, Confraternity of the, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129 Temple, Sir William, 140 Terpstra, Nicholas, 97 tertiary, 21–22 theology: Anabaptist, relationship of, to

poor relief, 142; Protestant, relationship of, to poor relief, 130 Tierney, Brian, 97 Timann, Johann, 94 tithe, 71 toleration, 139–40, 157 Toleration, Edict of (1607), 157 Trent, Council of, 32, 34, 181, 188, 191 type, ideal, 4, 194, 199 Usury, 41 vagabond (See vagrant) vagrant, 71, 72, 77, 80, 86, 140, 158 vagrancy, 127, 158 Van der Koog, Jacob Pietersz, 145 Venard, Marc, 168 Vergerio, Pier Paolo, 40 Vives, Juan Luis, 10 Vöhlin Corporation, 71 Von der pfründtmarckt der Curtisanen und Tempelknechten (1521), 24 warfare, as cause of crisis and poverty, 178–79 Waterlander (See Mennonites) wealth, moral ambiguity of, 145 Weber, Max, 1–4, 10, 22, 193–94 Welfare (See also charity, poor relief): attitudes toward, 74; development of, in Emden, 93–94; church-based, 130–32; confessional, 152; congregational (See also poor relief, parish-based), 139; foundations, in Memmingen, 66–68; ideology, 125; religious motives of, 75; public, 12, 195; social, 1; state-controlled, 65, 132, 195 Welser, 71 William of Nassau, 14, 156, 158 William III, 157 Winckelmann, Otto, 3, 73, 74 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1 work, as element of poor relief, 180–186 works, good, 112 Woltjer, Juliaan, 122 Zechpflegschaft, 3 Zwingli, Huldrych, 11, 22, 70, 88