VOLUME V SLICE VIII Chariot to Chatelaine (continued 2)

If we compare this with the early church we find the following sources of relief: (1) The Eucharistic offerings, some consumed at the time, some carried home, some reserved for the absent (see Hatch, Early Church, p. 40). The ministration, like the Eucharist, was connected with the love feast, and was at first daily (Acts ii. 42, vi. 1, and the Didache). (2) Freewill offerings and first-fruits and voluntary tithes (Ap. Con. ii. 25) brought to the bishop and used for the poor—orphans, widows, the afflicted and strangers in distress, and for the clergy, deaconesses, &c. (3) Collections in churches on Sundays and week-days, alms-boxes and gifts to the poor by worshippers as they entered church; also collections for special purposes (cf. for Christians at Jerusalem). Apart from “the corners,” &c., the sources of relief in the Christian and Jewish churches are the same. The separate Jewish tithe for the poor, which (Maim. vi. II, 13) might be used in part by the donor as personal charity, disappears. A voluntary tithe remains, in part used for the poor. We do not hear of stripes and distraint, but in both bodies there is a penitential system and excommunication (cf. Jewish Life, p. 52), and in both a settlement of disputes within the body (Clem. Hov. iii. 67). In both, too, there is the abundant alms provided in the belief of the permanence of poverty and the duty of giving to all who ask. As to administration in the early church (Acts vi. 3), we find seven deacons, the number of the local Jewish council; and later there were in Rome seven ecclesiastical relief districts, each in charge of a deacon. The deacon acted as the minister of the bishop (Ep. Clem, to Jam. xii.), reporting to him and giving as he dictated (Ap. Con. ii. 30, 31). He at first combined disciplinary powers with charitable. The presbyters also (Polycarp, Ad Phil. 6, A.D. 69-155), forming (Hatch, p. 69) a kind of bishop’s council, visited the sick, &c. The bishop was president and treasurer. The bishop was thus the trustee of the poor. By reason of the churches’ care of orphans, responsibilities of trusteeship also devolved on him. The temples were in pagan times depositories of money. Probably the churches were also.

3. Great stress is laid by the Jews on the duty of gentleness to the poor (Maim. x. 5). The woman was to have first attention (Maim. vi. 13). If the applicant was hungry he was to be fed, and then examined to learn whether he was a deceiver (Maim. vii. 6). Assistance was to be given according to the want—clothes, household things, a wife or a husband—and according to the poor man’s station in life. For widows and orphans the “gleanings” were left. Both are the recognized objects of charity (Maim. x. 16,17). “The poor and the orphan were to be employed in domestic affairs in preference to servants.” The dower was a constant form of help. The ransoming of slaves took precedence of relief to the poor. The highest degree of alms-deed (Maim. x. 7) was “to yield support to him who is cast down, either by means of gifts, or by loan, or by commerce, or by procuring for him traffic with others. Thus his hand becometh strengthened, exempt from the necessity of soliciting succour from any created being.”

If we compare the Christian methods we find but slight difference. The absoluteness of “Give to him that asketh” is in the Didachē checked by the “Woe to him that receives: for if any receives having need, he shall be guiltless, but he that has no need shall give account, ... and coming into distress ... he shall not come out thence till he hath paid the last farthing.” It is the duty of the bishop to know who is most worthy of assistance (Ap. Con. ii. 3, 4); and “if any one is in want by gluttony, drunkenness, or idleness, he does not deserve assistance, or to be esteemed a member of the church.” The widow assumes the position not only of a recipient of alms, but a church worker. Some were a private charge, some were maintained by the church. The recognized “widow” was maintained: she was to be sixty years of age (cf. 1 Tim, v. 9 and Ap. Con. iii. 1), and was sometimes tempted to become a bedes-woman and gossipy pauper, if one may judge from the texts. Remarriage was not approved. Orphans were provided for by members of the churches. The virgins formed another class, as, contrary to the earlier feeling, marriage came to be held a state of lesser sanctity. They too seem to have been also, in part at least, church workers. Thus round the churches grew up new groups of recognized dependents; but the older theory of charity was broad and practical—akin to that of Maimonides. “Love all your brethren, performing to orphans the part of parents, to widows that of husbands, affording them sustenance with all kindliness, arranging marriages for those who are in their prime, and for those who are without a profession the means of necessary support through employment: giving work to the artificer and alms to the incapable” (Ep. Clem, to James viii.).

4. The Jews in pre-Christian and Talmudic times supported the stranger or wayfarer by the distribution of food (tamchui); the strangers were lodged in private houses, and there were inns provided at which no money was taken (cf. Jewish Life, p. 314). Subsequently, besides these methods, special societies were formed “for the entertainment of the resident poor and of strangers.” There were commendatory letters also. These conditions prevailed in the Christian church also. The Xenodocheion, coming by direct succession alike from Jewish and Greek precedents, was the first form of Christian hospital both for strangers and for members of the Christian churches. In the Christian community the endowment charity comes into existence in the 4th century, among the Jews not till the 13th. The charities of the synagogue without separate societies sufficed.

We may now compare the conceptions of Jews and Christians on charity with those of the Greeks. There are two chief exponents of the diverse views—Aristotle and St Paul; for to simplify the issues we refer to them only. Greek, Jewish and Christian thought. Thoughts such as Aristotle’s, recast by the Stoic Panaetius (185-112 B.C.), and used by Cicero in his De Officiis, became in the hands of St Ambrose arguments for the direction of the clergy in the founding of the medieval church; and in the 13th century Aristotle reasserts his influence through such leaders of medieval thought as St Thomas Aquinas. St Paul’s chapters on charity, not fully appreciated and understood, one is inclined to think, have perhaps more than any other words prevented an absolute lapse into the materialism of almsgiving. After him we think of St Francis, the greatest of a group of men who, seeking reality in life, revived charity; but to the theory of charity it might almost be said that since Aristotle and St Paul nothing has been added until we come to the economic and moral issues which Dr Chalmers explained and illustrated.

The problem turns on the conception (1) of purpose, (2) of the self, and (3) of charity, love or friendship as an active force in social life. To the Greek, or at least to Greek philosophic thought, purpose was the measure of goodness. To have no purpose was, so far as the particular act was concerned, to be simply irrational; and the less definite the purpose the more irrational the act. This conception of purpose was the touchstone of family and social life, and of the civic life also. In no sphere could goodness be irrational. To say that it was without purpose was to say that it was without reality. So far as the actor was concerned, the main purpose of right action was the good of the soul (ψυχή); and by the soul was meant the better self, “the ruling part” acting in harmony with every faculty and function of the man. With faculties constantly trained and developed, a higher life was gradually developed in the soul. We are thus, it might be said, what we become. The gates of the higher life are within us. The issue is whether we will open them and pass in.

Consistent with this is the social purpose. Love or friendship is not conceived by Aristotle except in relation to social life. Society is based on an interchange of services. This interchange in one series of acts we call justice; in another friendship or love. A man cannot be just unless he has acquired a certain character or habit of mind; and hence no just man will act without knowledge, previous deliberation and definite purpose. So also will a friend fulfil these conditions in his acts of love or friendship. In the love existing between good men there is continuance and equality of service; but in the case of benefactor and benefited, in deeds of charity, in fact, there is no such equality. The satisfaction is on one side but often not on the other. (The dilemma is one that is pressed, though not satisfactorily, in Cicero and Seneca.) The reason for this will be found, Aristotle suggests, in the feeling of satisfaction which men experience in action. We realize ourselves in our deeds—throw ourselves into them, as people say; and this is happiness. What we make we like: it is part of us. On the other hand, in the person benefited there may be no corresponding action, and in so far as there is not, there is no exchange of service or the contentment that arises from it. The “self” of the recipient is not drawn out. On the contrary, he may be made worse, and feel the uneasiness and discontent that result from this. In truth, to complete Aristotle’s argument, the good deed on one side, as it represents the best self of the benefactor, should on the other side draw out the best self of the person benefited. And where there is not ultimately this result, there is not effective friendship or charity, and consequently there is no personal or social satisfaction. The point may be pushed somewhat further. In recent developments of charitable work the term “friendly visitor” is applied to persons who endeavour to help families in distress on the lines of associated charity. It represents the work of charity in one definite light. So far as the relation is mutual, it cannot at the outset be said to exist. The charitable friend wishes to befriend another; but at first there may be no reciprocal feeling of friendship on the other’s part—indeed, such a feeling may never be created. The effort to reciprocate kindness by becoming what the friend desires may be too painful to make. Or the two may be on different planes, one not really befriending, but giving without intelligence, the other not really endeavouring to change his nature, but receiving help solely with a view to immediate advantage. The would-be befriender may begin “despairing of no man,” expecting nothing in return; but if, in fact, there is never any kind of return, the friendship actually fails of its purpose, and the “friend’s” satisfaction is lost, except in that he may “have loved much.” In any case, according to this theory friendship, love and charity represent the mood from which spring social acts, the value of which will depend on the knowledge, deliberation and purpose with which they are done, and accordingly as they acquire value on this account will they give lasting satisfaction to both parties.

St Paul’s position is different. He seems at first sight to ignore the state and social life. He lays stress on motive force rather than on purpose. He speaks as an outsider to the state, though technically a citizen. His mind assumes towards it the external Judaic position, as though he belonged to a society of settlers (πάροικοι). Also, as he expects the millennium, social life and its needs are not uppermost in his thoughts. He considers charity in relation to a community of fellow-believers—drawn together in congregations. His theory springs from this social base, though it over-arches life itself. He is intent on creating a spiritual association. He conceives of the spirit (πνεῦμα) as “an immaterial personality.” It transcends the soul (ψυχή), and is the Christ life, the ideal and spiritual life. Christians participate in it, and they thus become part of “the body of Christ,” which exists by virtue of love—love akin to the ideal life, ἀγάπη. The word represents the love that is instinct with reverence, and not love φιλία which may have in it some quality of passion. This love is the life of “the body of Christ.” Therefore no act done without it is a living act—but, on the contrary, must be dead—an act in which no part of the ideal life is blended. On the individual act or the purpose no stress is laid. It is assumed that love, because it is of this intense and exalted type, will find the true purpose in the particular act. And, when the expectation of the millennium passed away, the theory of this ideal charity remained as a motive force available for whatever new conditions, spiritual or social, might arise. Nevertheless, no sooner does this charity touch social conditions, than the necessity asserts itself of submitting to the limitations which knowledge, deliberation and purpose impose. This view had been depreciated or ignored by Christians, who have been content to rely upon the strength of their motives, or perhaps have not realized what the Greeks understood, that society was a natural organism (Arist. Pol. 1253A), which develops, fails or prospers in accordance with definite laws. Hence endless failure in spite of some success. For love, whether we idealize it as ἀγάπη or consider it a social instinct as φιλία, cannot be love at all unless it quickens the intelligence as much as it animates the will. It cannot, except by some confusion of thought, be held to justify the indulgence of emotion irrespective of moral and social results. Yet, though this fatal error may have dominated thought for a long time, it is hardly possible to attribute it to St Paul’s theory of charity when the very practical nature of Judaism and early Christianity is considered. In his view the misunderstanding could not arise. And to create a world or “body” of men and women linked together by love, even though it be outside the normal life of the community, was to create a new form of religious organization, and to achieve for it (so far as it was achieved) what, mutatis mutandis, Aristotle held to be the indispensable condition of social life, friendship (φιλία), “the greatest good of states,” for “Socrates and all the world declare,” he wrote, that “the unity of the state” is “created by friendship” (Arist. Pol. ii. 1262 b).

It should, however, be considered to what extent charity in the Christian church was devoid of social purpose, (1) The Jewish conceptions of charity passed, one might almost say, in their completeness into the Christian church. Prayer, the petition and the purging of the mind, fasting, the humiliation of the body, and alms, as part of the same discipline, the submissive renunciation of possessions—all these formed part of the discipline that was to create the religious mood. Alms henceforth become a definite part of the religious discipline and service. Humility and poverty hereafter appear as yoked virtues, and many problems of charity are raised in regard to them. The non-Christian no less than the Christian world appreciated more and more the need of self-discipline (ἄσκησις); and it seems as though in the first two centuries A.D. those who may have thought of reinvigorating society searched for the remedy rather in the preaching and practice of temperance than in the application of ideas that were the outcome of the observation of social or economic conditions. Having no object of this kind as its mark, almsgiving took the place of charity, and, as Christianity triumphed, the family life, instead of reviving, continued to decay, while the virtues of the discipline of the body, considered apart from social life, became an end in themselves, and it was desired rather to annihilate instinct than to control it. Possibly this was a necessary phase in a movement of progress, but however that be, charity, as St Paul understood it, had in it no part. (2) But the evil went farther. Jewish religious philosophy is not elaborated as a consistent whole by any one writer. It is rather a miscellany of maxims; and again and again, as in much religious thought, side issues assume the principal place. The direct effect of the charitable act, or almsgiving, is ignored. Many thoughts and motives are blended. The Jews spoke of the poor as the means of the rich man’s salvation. St Chrysostom emphasizes this: “If there were no poor, the greater part of your sins would not be removed: they are the healers of your wounds” (Hom. xiv., Timothy, &c., St Cyprian on works and alms). Alms are the medicine of sin. And the same thought is worked into the penitential system. Augustine speaks of “penance such as fasting, almsgiving and prayer for breaches of the Decalogue” (Reichel, Manual of Canon Law, p. 23); and many other references might be cited. “Pecuniary penances (Ib. 154), in so far as they were relaxations of, or substitutes for, bodily penances, were permitted because of the greater good thereby accruing to others” (and in this case they were—A.D. 1284—legally enforceable under English statute law). The penitential system takes for granted that the almsgiving is good for others and puts a premium on it, even though in fact it were done, not with any definite object, but really for the good of the penitent. Thus almsgiving becomes detached from charity on the one side and from social good on the other. Still further is it vulgarized by another confusion of thought. It is considered that the alms are paid to the credit of the giver, and are realized as such by him in the after-world; or even that by alms present prosperity may be obtained, or at least evil accident avoided. Thus motives were blended, as indeed they now are, with the result that the gift assumed a greater importance than the charity, by which alone the gift should have been sanctified, and its actual effect was habitually overlooked or treated as only partially relevant.

(3) The Christian maxim of “loving (ἀγάπη) one’s neighbour as one’s self” sets a standard of charity. Its relations are idealized according as the “self” is understood; and thus the good self becomes the measure of charity. In this sense, the nobler the self the completer the charity; and the charity of the best men, men who love and understand their neighbours best, having regard to their chief good, is the best, the most effectual charity. Further, if in what we consider “best” we give but a lesser place to social purpose or even allow it no place at all, our “self” will have no sufficient social aim and our charity little or no social result. For this “self,” however, religion has substituted not St Paul’s conception of the spirit (πνεῦμα), but a soul, conceived as endowed with a substantial nature, able to enjoy and suffer quasi-material rewards and punishments in the after-life; and in so far as the safeguard of this soul by good deeds or almsgiving has become a paramount object, the purpose of charitable action has been translated from the actual world to another sphere. Thus, as we have seen, the aid of the poor has been considered not an object in itself, but as a means by which the almsgiver effects his own ulterior purpose and “makes God his debtor.” The problem thus handled raises the question of reward and also of punishment. Properly, from the point of view of charity, both are excluded. We may indeed act from a complexity of motives and expect a complexity of rewards, and undoubtedly a good act does refresh the “self,” and may as a result, though not as a reward, win approval. But in reality reward, if the word be used at all, is according to purpose; and the only reward of a deed lies in the fulfilment of its purpose. In the theory of almsgiving which we are discussing, however, act and reward are on different planes. The reward is on that of a future life; the act related to a distressed person here and now. The interest in the act on the doer’s part lies in its post-mortal consequences to himself, and not either wholly or chiefly in the act itself. Nor, as the interest ends with the act—the giving—can the intelligence be quickened by it. The questions “How? by whom? with what object? on what plan? with what result?” receive no detailed consideration at all. Two general results follow. In so far as it is thus practised, almsgiving is out of sympathy with social progress. It is indeed alien to it. Next also the self-contained, self-sustained poverty that will have no relief and does without it, is outside the range of its thought and understanding. On the other hand, this almsgiving is equally incapable of influencing the weak and the vicious; and those who are suffering from illness or trouble it has not the width of vision to understand nor the moral energy to support so that they shall not fall out of the ranks of the self-supporting. It believes that “the poor” will not cease out of the land. And indeed, however great might be the economic progress of the people, it is not likely that the poor will cease, if the alms given in this spirit be large enough in amount to affect social conditions seriously one way or the other. When we measure the effects of charity, this inheritance of divided thought and inconsistent counsels must be given its full weight.

The sub-apostolic church was a congregation, like a synagogue, the centre of a system of voluntary and personal relief, connected with the congregational meals (or ἀγάπαι) and the Eucharist, The organization of the parish and endowed charities. and under the supervision of no single officer or bishop. Out of this was developed a system of relief controlled by a bishop, who was assisted chiefly by deacons or presbyters, while the ἀγάπαι, consisting of offerings laid before the altar, still remained. Subsequently the meal was separated from the sacrament, and became a dole of food, or poor people’s meal—e.g. in St Augustine’s time in western Africa—and it was not allowed to be served in churches (A.D. 391). As religious asceticism became dominant, the sacrament was taken fasting; it appeared unseemly that men and women should meet together for such purposes, and the ἀγάπαι fell out of repute. Simultaneously it would seem that the parish παροικία became from a congregational settlement a geographical area.

The organization of relief at Rome illustrates both a type of administration and a transition. St Gregory’s reforms (A.D. 590) largely developed it. The first factor in the transition was the church fund of the second period of Christianity, about A.D. 150 to after 208 (Tertullian, Apol. 39). It served as a friendly fund, was supported by voluntary gifts, and was used to succour and to bury the poor, to help destitute and orphaned children, old household slaves and those who suffered for the faith. This fund is quite different from the collegia tenuiorum or funeratica of the Romans, which were societies to which the members paid stipulated sums at stated periods, for funeral benefits or for common meals (J.P. Waltzing, Corporations professionnelles chez les Romains, i. 313). It represents the charitable centre round which the parochial system developed. That system was adopted probably about the middle of the 3rd century, but in Rome the diaconate probably remained centralized. At the end of the 4th century Pope Anastasius had founded deaconries in Rome, and endowed them largely “to meet the frequent demands of the diaconate.” Gregory two hundred years later reorganized the system. He divided the fourteen old “regions” into seven ecclesiastical districts and thirty “titles” (or parishes). The parishes were under the charge of sixty-six priests; the districts were eleemosynary divisions. Each was placed under the charge of a deacon, not (Greg. Ep. xi. and xxviii.) under the priests (presbyteri titularii). Over the deacons was an archdeacon. It was the duty of the deacons to care for the poor, widows, orphans, wards, and old people of their several districts. They inquired in regard to those who were relieved, and drew up under the guidance of the bishop the register of poor (matricula). Only these received regular relief. In each district was an hospital or office for alms, of which the deacon had charge, assisted by a steward (or oeconomus). Here food was given and meals were taken, the sick and poor were maintained, and orphan or foundling children lodged. The churches of Rome and of other large towns possessed considerable estates, “the patrimony of the patron saints,” and to Rome belonged estates in Sicily which had not been ravaged by the invaders, and they continued to pay to it their tenth of corn, as they had done since Sicily was conquered. Four times a year (Milman, Lat. Christ, ii. 117) the shares of the (1) clergy and papal officers, (2) churches and monasteries, and (3) “hospitals, deaconries and ecclesiastical wards for the poor,” were calculated in money and distributed; and the first day in every month St Gregory distributed to the poor in kind corn, wine, cheese, vegetables, bacon, meal, fish and oil. The sick and infirm were superintended by persons appointed to inspect every street. Before the pope sat down to his own meal a portion was separated and sent out to the hungry at his door. The Roman plebs had thus become the poor of Christ (pauperes Christi), and under that title were being fed by civica annona and sportula as their ancestors had been; and the deaconries had superseded the “regions” and the “steps” from which the corn had been distributed. The hospitium was now part of a common organization of relief, and the sick were visited according to Jewish and early Christian precedent. How far kindly Romans visited the sick of their day we do not know. Alms and the annona were now, it would seem, administered concurrently; and there was a system of poor relief independent of the churches and their alms (unless these, organized, as in Scottish towns, on the ancient ecclesiastical lines, were paid wholly or in part to a central diaconate fund). Much had changed, but in much Roman thought still prevailed.

On lines similar to these the organization of poor relief in the middle ages was developed. In the provinces in the later empire the senate or ordo decurionum were responsible for the public provisioning of the towns (Fustel de Coulanges, La Gaule romaine, p. 251), and no doubt the care of the poor would thus in some measure devolve on them in times of scarcity or distress. On the religious side, on the other hand, the churches would probably be constant centres of almsgiving and relief; and then, further, when the Roman municipal system had decayed, each citizen (as in Charlemagne’s time, 742-814) was required to support his own dependants—a step suggestive of much after-history.

The change in sentiment and method could hardly be more strongly marked than by a comparison of “the Teaching” with St Ambrose’s (334-397) “Duties of the Clergy” (De Officiis Ministrorum). For the old instinctive obedience to a command there is now an endeavour to find a reasoned basis for charitable action. Pauperism is recognized. “Never was the greed of beggars greater than it is now.... They want to empty the purses of the poor, to deprive them of the means of support. Not content with a little, they ask for more.... With lies about their lives they ask for further sums of money.” “A method in giving is necessary.” But in the suggestions made there is little consistency. Liberality is urged as a means of gaining the love of the people; a new and a false issue is thus raised. The relief is neither to be “too freely given to those who are unsuitable, nor too sparingly bestowed upon the needy.” Everywhere there is a doctrine of the mean reflected through Cicero’s De Officiis, the doctrine insufficiently stated, as though it were a mean of quantity, and not that rightly tempered mean which is the harmony of opposing moods. The poor are not to be sent away empty. Those rejected by the church are not to be left to the “outer darkness” of an earlier Christianity. They must be supplied if they are in want. The methodic giver is “hard towards none, but is free towards all.” Consequently none are refused, and no account is taken of the regeneration that may spring up in a man from the effort towards self-help which refusal may originate. Thus after all it appears that method means no more than this—to give sometimes more, sometimes less, to all needy people. In the small congregational church of early Christianity, each member of which was admitted on the conditions of strictest discipline, the common alms of the faithful could hardly have done much harm within the body, even though outside they created and kept alive a horde of vagrant alms-seekers and pretenders. Now in this department at least the church had become the state, and discipline and a close knowledge of one’s fellow-Christians no longer safeguarded the alms. From Cicero is borrowed the thought of “active help,” which “is often grander and more noble,” but the thought is not worked out. From the social side the problem is not understood or even stated, and hence no principle of charity or of charitable administration is brought to light in the investigation. Still there are rudiments of the economics of charity in the praise of Joseph, who made the people buy the corn, for otherwise “they would have given up cultivating the soil; for he who has the use of what is another’s often neglects his own.” Perhaps, as St Augustine inspired the theology of the middle ages, we may say that St Ambrose, in the mingled motives, indefiniteness, and kindliness of this book, stands for the charity of the middle ages, except in so far as the movement which culminated in the brotherhood of St Francis awakened the intelligence of the world to wider issues.

In Constantinople the pauperism seems to have been extreme. The corn supplies of Africa were diverted there in great part when it became the capital of the empire. This must have left to Rome a larger scope for the development of the civic-religious administration of relief. St Chrysostom’s sermons give no impression of the rise of any new administrative force, alike sagacious and dominant. The appeal to give alms is constant, but the positive counsel on charitable work is nil. The people had the annona civica, and imperial gifts, corn, allowances (salaria) from the treasury granted for the poor and needy, and an annual gift of 50 gold pounds (rather more than £1400) for funerals. Besides these there were many institutions, and the begging and the almsgiving at the church doors. “The land could not support the lazy and valiant beggars.” There were public works provided for them; if they refused to work on them they were to be driven away. The sick might visit the capital, but must be registered and sent back (A.D. 382); the sturdy beggar was condemned to slavery. So little did alms effect. And in the East monasticism seems to have produced no firmness of purpose such as led to the organization of the church and of charitable relief under St Gregory.

Another movement of the Byzantine period was the establishment of the endowed charity. The Jewish synagogue long served as a place for the reception of strangers—a religious ξενοδοχεῖον. Probably the strangers referred to in “the Teaching” were so entertained. The table of the bishop and a room in his house served as the guest-chamber, for which afterwards a separate building was instituted. In the East the Jewish charitable inn first appears, and there took place the earliest extension of institutions. There was probably a demand for an elaboration of institutions as social changes made themselves felt in the churches. We have seen this in the case of the ἀγάπη. Similar changes would affect other branches of charitable work. The hospital (hospitalium, ξενοδοχεῖον) is defined as a “house of God in which strangers who lack hospitality are received” (Suicerus, Thesaur.), a home separated from the church; and round the church, out of the primitive ξενοδοχεῖον of early Christian times and the entertainment of strangers at the houses of members of the community, would grow up other similar charities. In A.D. 321 licence was given by Constantine to leave property to the Church. The churches were thus placed in the same position as pagan temples, and though subsequently Valentinian (A.D. 379) withdrew the permission on account of the shameless legacy-hunting of the clergy, in that period much must have been done to endow church and charitable institutions. In the same period grew to its height the passion for monasticism. This affected the parish and the endowed charity alike. Under its influence the deacon as an almoner tends to disappear, except where, as in Rome, there is an elaborate system of relief. Nor does it seem that deaconesses, widows, and virgins continued to occupy their old position as church workers and alms-receivers. Naturally when marriage was considered “in itself an evil, perhaps to be tolerated, but still degrading to human nature,” and (A.D. 385) the marriage of the clergy was prohibited, men, except those in charge of parishes, and women would join regular monastic bodies; the deacon, as almoner, would disappear, and the “widows” and virgins would become nuns. Thus there would grow up a large body of men and women living segregated in institutions, and forming a leisured class able to superintend institutional charities. And now two new officers appear, the eleemosynarius or almoner and the oeconomus or steward (already an assistant treasurer to the bishop), who superintend and distribute the alms and manage the property of the institution. (In the first six books of the Apost. Constit., A.D. 300, these officers are not mentioned.) In these circumstances the hospitium or hospital (ξενών, καταγώγιον) assumes a new character. It becomes in St Basil’s hands (A.D. 330-379) a resort not only for those who “visit it from time to time as they pass by, but also for those who need some treatment in illness.” And round St Basil at Caesarea there springs up a colony of institutions. Four kinds principally are mentioned in the Theodosian code: (i) the guest-houses (ξενοδοχεῖα); (2) the poor-houses (πτωχεῖα), where the poor (mendici) were housed and maintained (the πτωχεῖον was a general term also applied to all houses for the poor, the aged, orphans and sick); (3) there were orphanages (ὀρφανοτροφεῖα) for orphans and wards; and (4) there were houses for infant children (βρεφοτροφεῖα). Thus a large number of endowed charities had grown up. This new movement it is necessary to consider in connexion with the law relating to religious property and bequests, in its bearing on the rule of the monasteries, and in its effect on the family.

The sacred property (res sacra) of Roman law consisted of things dedicated to the gods by the pontiff with the approval of the civil authority, in turn, the people, the senate and the emperor. Things so consecrated were inalienable. Apart from this in the empire, the municipalities as they grew up were considered “juristic persons” who were entitled to receive and hold property. In a similar position were authorized collegia, amongst which were the mutual aid societies referred to above. Christians associated in these societies would leave legacies to them. Thus (W.M. Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, I. i. 119) an inscription mentions a bequest (possibly by a Christian) to the council (συνέδριον) of the presidents of the dyers in purple for a ceremonial, on the condition that, if the ceremony be neglected, the legacy shall become the property of the gild for the care of nurslings; and in the same way a bequest is left in Rome (Orelli 4420) for a memorial sacrifice, on the condition that, if it be not performed, double the cost be paid to the treasury of the corn-supply (fisco stationis annonae). No unauthorized collegia could receive a legacy. “The law recognized no freedom of association.” Nor could any private individual create a foundation with separate property of its own. Property could only be left to an authorized juristic person, being a municipality or a collegium. But as the problem of poverty was considered from a broader standpoint, there was a desire to deal with it in a more permanent manner than by the annona civica. The pueri alimentarii (see above) were considered to hold their property as part of the fiscus or property of the state. Pliny (Ep. vii. 18), seeking a method of endowment, transferred property in land to the steward of public property, and then took it back again subject to a permanent charge for the aid of children of freemen. By the law of Constantine and subsequent laws no such devices were necessary. Widows or deaconesses, or virgins dedicated to God, or nuns (A.D. 455), could leave bequests to a church or memorial church (martyrum), or to a priest or a monk, or to the poor in any shape or form, in writing or without it. Later (A.D. 475) donations of every kind, “to the person of any martyr, or apostle, or prophet, or the holy angels,” for building an oratory were made valid, even if the building were promised only and not begun; and the same rule applied to infirmaries (νοσοκομεῖα) and poor-houses (πτωχεῖα)—the bishop or steward being competent to appear as plaintiff in such cases. Later, again (A.D. 528), contributions of 50 solidi (say about £19, 10s.) to a church, hostel (ξενοδοχεῖον), &c., were made legal, though not registered; while larger sums, if registered, were also legalized. So (A.D. 529) property might be given for “churches, hostels, poor-houses, infant and orphan homes, and homes for the aged, or any such community” (consortium), even though not registered, and such property was free from taxation. The next year (530) it was enacted that prescription even for 100 years did not alienate church and charitable property. The broadest interpretation was allowed. If by will a share of an estate was left “to Christ our Lord,” the church of the city or other locality might receive it as heir; “let these, the law says, belong to the holy churches, so that they may become the alimony of the poor.” It was sufficient to leave property to the poor (Corpus Juris Civilis, ed. Krueger, 1877, ii. 25). The bequest was legal. It went to the legal representative of the poor—the church. Charitable property was thus church property. The word “alms” covered both. It was given to pious uses, and as a kind of public institution “shared that corporate capacity which belonged to all ecclesiastical institutions by virtue of a general rule of law.” On a pia causa it was not necessary to confer a juristic personality. Other laws preserved or regulated alienation (A.D. 477, A.D. 530), and checked negligence or fraud in management. The clergy had thus become the owners of large properties, with the coloni and slaves upon the estates and the allowances of civic corn (annona civica); and (A.D. 357) it was stipulated that whatever they acquired by thrift or trading should be used for the service of the poor and needy, though what they acquired from the labour of their slaves in the labour houses (ergastula) or inns (tabernae) might be considered a profit of religion (religionis lucrum).

Thus grew up the system of endowed charities, which with certain modifications continued throughout the middle ages, and, though it assumed different forms in connexion with gilds and municipalities, in England it still retains, partially at least, its relation to the church. It remained the system of institutional relief parallel to the more personal almsgiving of the parish.

Monasticism, in acting on men of strong character, endowed them with a double strength of will, and to men like St Gregory it seemed to give back with administrative power the relentless firmness of the Roman. In the East it produced the turbulent soldiery of the church, in the West its missionaries; and each mission-monastery was a centre of relief. But whatever the services monasticism rendered, it can hardly be said to have furthered true charity from the social standpoint, though out of regard to some of its institutional work we may to a certain degree qualify this judgment. The movement was almost of necessity in large measure anti-parochial, and thus out of sympathy with the charities of the parish, where personal relations with the poor at their homes count for most.

The good and evil of it may be weighed. Monasticism working through St Augustine helped the world to realize the mood of love as the real or eternal life. Of the natural life of the world and its responsibilities, through which that mood would have borne its completest fruit, it took but little heed, except in so far as, by creating a class possessed of leisure, it created able scholars, lawyers and administrators, and disciplined the will of strong men. It had no power to stay the social evils of the day. Unlike the friars, at their best the monks were a class apart, not a class mixed up with the people. So were their charities. The belief in poverty as a fixed condition—irretrievable and ever to be alleviated without any regard to science or observation, subjected charity to a perpetual stagnation. Charity requires belief in growth, in the sharing of life, in the utility and nobility of what is done here and now for the hereafter of this present world. Monasticism had no thought of this. It was based on a belief in the evil of matter; and from that root could spring no social charity. Economic difficulties also fostered monasticism. Gold was appreciated in value, and necessaries were expensive, and the cost of maintaining a family was great. It was an economy to force a son or a brother into the church. The population was decreasing; and in spite of church feeling Marjorian (A.D. 461) had to forbid women from taking the veil before forty, and to require the remarriage of widows, subject to a large forfeit of property (Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, ii. 420). Monasticism was inconsistent with the social good. As to the family—like the moderns who depreciate thrift and are careless of the life of the family, the monks, believing that marriage was a lower form of morality, if not indeed, as would at times appear, hardly moral at all, could feel but little enthusiasm for what is socially a chief source of health to the community and a well-spring of spontaneous charitable feeling. By the sacerdotal-monastic movement the moralizing force of Christianity was denaturalized. Among the secular clergy the falsity of the position as between men and women revealed itself in relations which being unhallowed and unrecognized became also degrading. But worse than all, it pushed charity from its pivot. For this no monasteries or institutions, no domination of religious belief, could atone. The church that with so fine an intensity of purpose had fostered chastity and marriage was betraying its trust. It was out of touch with the primal unit of social life, the child-school of dawning habits and the loving economy of the home. It produced no treatise on economy in the older Greek sense of the word. The home and its associations no longer retained their pre-eminence. In the extreme advocacy of the celibate state, the honourable development of the married life and its duties were depreciated and sometimes, one would think, quite forgotten.

We may ask, then, What were the results of charity at the close of the period which ends with St Gregory and the founding of the medieval church?—for if the charity is reflected in the social good the results should be manifest. Economic and social conditions were adverse. With lessened trade the middle class was decaying (Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, p. 204) and a selfish aristocracy rising up. Municipal responsibility had been taxed to extinction. The public service was corrupt. The rich evaded taxation, the poor were oppressed by it. There were laws upon laws, endeavours to underpin the framework of a decaying society. Society was bankrupt of skill—and the skill of a generation has a close bearing on its charitable administration. While hospitals increased, medicine was unprogressive. There were miserable years of famine and pestilence, and constant wars. The care of the poorer classes, and ultimately of the people, was the charge of the church. The church strengthened the feeling of kindness for those in want, widows, orphans and the sick. It lessened the degradation of the “actresses,” and, co-operating with Stoic opinion, abolished the slaughter of the gladiatorial shows. It created a popular “dogmatic system and moral discipline,” which paganism failed to do; but it produced no prophet of charity, such as enlarged the moral imagination of the Jews. It ransomed slaves, as did paganism also, but it did not abolish slavery. Large economic causes produced that great reform. The serf attached to the soil took the place of the slave. The almsgiving of the church by degrees took the place of annona and sportula, and it may have created pauperism. But dependence on almsgiving was at least an advance on dependence founded on a civic and hereditary right to relief. As the colonus stood higher than the slave, so did the pauper, socially at any rate, free to support himself, exceed the colonus. Bad economic conditions and traditions, and a bad system of almsgiving, might enthral him. But the way, at least, was open; and thus it became possible that charity, working in alliance with good economic traditions, should in the end accomplish the self-support of society, the independence of the whole people.

Part V.—Medieval Charity and its Development

It remains to trace the history of thought and administration in relation to (1) the development of charitable responsibility in the parish, and the use of tithe and church property for poor relief; and (2) the revision of the theory of charity, with which are associated the names of St Augustine (354-430), St Benedict (480-542), St Bernard (1091-1153), St Francis (1182-1226), and St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). (3) There follows, in reference chiefly to England, a sketch of the dependence of the poor under feudalism, the charities of the parish, the monastery and the hospital—the medieval system of endowed charity; the rise of gild and municipal charities; the decadence at the close of the 15th century, and the statutory endeavours to cope with economic difficulties which, in the 16th century, led to the establishment of statutory serfdom and the poor-laws. New elements affect the problem of charity in the 17th and 18th centuries; but it is not too much to say that almost all these headings represent phases of thought or institutions which in later forms are interwoven with the charitable thought and endeavours of the present day.

Naturally, two methods of relief have usually been prominent: relief administered locally, chiefly to residents in their own homes, and relief administered in an institution. At the time of Charlemagne (742-814) the system of The parish and charitable relief. relief was parochial, consisting principally of assistance at the home. After that time, except probably in England, the institutional method appears to have predominated, and the monastery or hospital in one form or another gradually encroached on the parish.

The system of parochial charity was the outcome, apparently, of three conditions: the position and influence of the bishop, the eleemosynary nature of the church funds, and the need of some responsible organization of relief. It resulted in what might almost be called an ecclesiastical poor-law. The affairs of a local church or congregation were superintended by a bishop. To deal with the outlying districts he detached priests for religious work and, as in Rome and (774) Strassburg, deacons also for the administration of relief. Originally all the income of the church or congregation was paid into one fund only, of which the bishop had charge, and this fund was available primarily for charitable purposes. Church property was the patrimony of the poor. In the 4th century (IV. Council of Carthage, 398) the names of the clergy were entered on a list (matricula or canon), as were also the names of the poor, and both received from the church their daily portion (cf. Ratzinger, Geschichte der kirchlichen Armenpflege, p. 117). There were no expenses for building. Before the reign of Constantine (306) very few churches were built (Ratzinger, p. 120). Thus the early church as has been said, was chiefly a charitable society. By degrees the property of the church was very largely increased by gifts and bequests, and in the West before St Gregory’s time the division of it for four separate purposes—the support of the bishop, of the clergy, and of the poor, and for church buildings—still further promoted decentralization. Apart from any special gifts, there was thus created a separate fund for almsgiving, supervised by the bishop, consisting of a fourth of the church property, the oblations (mostly used for the poor), and the tithe, which at first was used for the poor solely. The organization of the church was gradually extended. The church once established in the chief city of a district would become in turn the mother church of other neighbourhoods, and the bishop or priest of the mother church would come to exercise supervision over them and their parishes.

In France, which may serve as a good illustration, in the 4th century (Ratzinger, p. 181) the civic organization was utilized for a further change. The Roman provinces were divided into large areas, civitales, and these were adopted by the church as bishop’s parishes or, as we should call them, dioceses; and the chief city became the cathedral city. The bishop thus became responsible in Charlemagne’s time both for his own parish—that of the mother church—and for the supervision of the parishes in the civitas, and so for the sick and needy of the diocese generally. He had to take charge of the poor in his own parish personally, keep the list of the poor, and houses for the homeless. The other parishes were at first, or in some measure, supported from his funds, but they acquired by degrees tithe and property of their own and were endowed by Charlemagne, who gave one or more manses or lots of land (cf. Fustel de Coulanges, Hist, des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France, p. 360) for the support of each parish priest. The priests were required to relieve their own poor so that they should not stray into other cities (II. Counc. Tours, 567), and to provide food and lodging for strangers. The method was indeed elaborated and became, like the Jewish, that contradiction in terms—a compulsory system of charitable relief. The payment of tithe was enforced by Charlemagne, and it became a legal due (Counc. Frankfort, 794; Arelat. 794). At the same time two other conditions were enforced. Each person (unusquisque fidelium nostrorum or omnes cives) was to keep his own family, i.e. all dependent on him—all, that is, upon his freehold estate (allodium), and no one was to presume to give relief to able-bodied beggars unless they were set to work (Charlem. Capit. v. 10). Thus we find here the germ of a poor-law system. As in the times of the annona civica, slavery, feudalism, or statutory serfdom, the burthen of the maintenance of the poor fell only in part on charity. Only those who could not be maintained as members of some “family” were properly entitled to relief, and in these circumstances the officially recognized clients of the church consisted of the gradually decreasing number of free poor and those who were tenants of church lands.

Since 817 there has been no universally binding decision of the church respecting the care of the poor (Ratzinger, p. 236). So long ago did laicization begin in charity. In the wars and confusion of the 9th and 10th centuries the poorer freemen lapsed still further into slavery, or became coloni or bond servants; and later they passed under the feudal rule. Thus the church’s duty to relieve them became the masters’ obligation to maintain them. Simultaneously the activity of the clergy, regular and secular alike, dwindled. They were exhorted to increase their alms. The revenues and property of “the poor” were largely turned to private or partly ecclesiastical purposes, or secularized. Legacies went wholly to the clergy, but only the tithe of the produce of their own lands was used for relief; and of the general tithe, only a third or fourth part was so applied. Eventually to a large extent, but more elsewhere than in England (Ratzinger, pp. 246, 269), the tithe itself was appropriated by nobles or even by the monasteries; and thus during and after the 10th century a new organization of charity was created on non-parochial methods of relief. Alms, with prayer and fasting, had always been connected with penance. But the character of the penitential system had altered. By the 7th century private penance had superseded the public and congregational penance of the earlier church (Dict. Christian Antiquities, art. “Penitence”). To the penalties of exclusion from the sacraments or from the services of the church or from its communion was coupled, with other penitential discipline, an elaborate penitential system, in which about the 7th century the redemption of sin by the “sacrifice” of property, payments of money fines, &c., was introduced. (Cf. for instance Conc. Elberti:—Labbeus i. 969 (A.D. 305), with Conc. Berghamstedense, Wilkins, Conc. p. 60 (A.D. 696), and the Penitential (p. 115) and Canons (A.D. 960), p. 236.) The same sin committed by an overseer (praepositus paganus) was compensated by a fine of 100 solidi; in the case of a colonus by a fine of 50. So amongst the ways of penitence were entered in the above-mentioned Canons, to erect a church, and if means allowed, add to it land ... to repair the public roads ... “to distribute,” to help poor widows, orphans and strangers, redeem slaves, fast, &c.—a combination of “good deeds” which suggests a line of thought such as ultimately found expression in the definition of charities in the Charitable Uses Act of Queen Elizabeth. The confessor, too, was “spiritualis medicus,” and much that from the point of view of counsel would now be the work of charity would in his hands be dealt with in that capacity. For lesser sins (cf. Bede (673-735), Hom. 34, quoted by Ratzinger) the penalty was prayer, fasting and alms; for the greater sins—murder, adultery and idolatry—to give up all. Thus while half-converted barbarians were kept in moral subjection by material penances, the church was enriched by their gifts; and these tended to support the monastic and institutional methods which were in favour, and to which, on the revival of religious earnestness in the 11th century, the world looked for the reform of social life.

To understand medieval charity it is necessary to return to St Augustine. According to him, the motive of man in his legitimate effort to assert himself in life was love or desire (amor or cupido). “All impulses were only Medieval revision of the theory of charity. evolutions of this typical characteristic” (Harnack, History of Dogma (trans.), v. iii.); and this was so alike in the spiritual and the sensuous life. Happiness thus depended on desire; and desire in turn depended on the regulation of the will; but the will was regulated only by grace. God was the spiritualis substantia; and freedom was the identity of the will with the omnipotent unchanging nature. This highest Being was “holiness working on the will in the form of omnipotent love.” This love was grace—“grace imparting itself in love.” Love (caritas—charity) is identified with justice; and the will, the goodwill, is love. The identity of the will with the will of God was attained by communion with Him. The after-life consummated by sight this communion, which was here reached only by faith. Such a method of thought was entirely introspective, and it turned the mind “wholly to hope, asceticism and the contemplation of God in worship.” “Where St Augustine indulges in the exposition of practical piety he has no theory at all of Christ’s work.” To charity on that side he added nothing. In the 11th century there was a revival of piety, which had amongst its objects the restoration of discipline in the monasteries and a monastic training for the secular clergy. To this Augustinian thought led the way. “Christianity was asceticism and the city of God” (Harnack vi. 6). A new religious feeling took possession of the general mind, a regard and adoration of the actual, the historic Christ. Of this St Bernard was the expositor. “Beside the sacramental Christ the image of the historical took its place,—majesty in humility, innocence in penal suffering, life in death.” The spiritual and the sensuous were intermingled. Dogmatic formulae fell into the background. The picture of the historic Christ led to the realization of the Christ according to the spirit (κατὰ πνεῦμα). Thus St Bernard carried forward Augustinian thought; and the historic Christ became the “sinless man, approved by suffering, to whom the divine grace, by which He lives, has lent such power that His image takes shape in other men and incites them to corresponding humility and love.”

Humility and poverty represented the conditions under which alone this spirit could be realized; and the poverty must be spiritual, and therefore self-imposed (“wilful,” as it was afterwards called). This led to practical results. Poverty was not a social state, but a spiritual; and consequently the poor generally were not the pauperes Christi, but those who, like the monks, had taken vows of poverty. From these premisses followed later the doctrine that gifts to the church were not gifts to the poor, as once they had been, but to the religious bodies. The church was not the church of the poor, but of the poor in spirit. But the immediate effect was the belief for a time, apparently almost universal, that the salvation of society would come from the monastic orders. By their aid, backed by the general opinion, the secular clergy were brought back to celibacy and the monasteries newly disciplined. But charity could not thus regain its touch of life and become the means of raising the standard of social duty.

Next, one amongst many who were stirred by a kindred inspiration, St Francis turned back to actual life and gave a new reality to religious idealism. For him the poor were once again the pauperes Christi. To follow Christ was to adopt the life of “evangelical poverty,” and this was to live among the poor the life of a poor man. The follower was to work with his hands (as the poor clergy of the early church had done and the clergy of the early English church were exhorted to do); he was to receive no money; he was to earn the actual necessaries of life, though what he could not earn he might beg. To ask for this was a right, so long as he was bringing a better life into the world. All in excess of this he gave to the poor. He would possess no property, buildings or endowments, nor was his order to do so. The fulness of his life was in the complete realization of it now, without the cares of property and without any fear of the future. Having a definite aim and mission, he was ready to accept the want that might come upon him, and his life was a discipline to enable him to suffer it if it came. To him humility was the soul making itself fit to love; and poverty was humility expanded from a mood to a life, a life not guarded by seclusion, but spent amongst those who were actually poor. The object of life was to console the poor—those outside all monasteries and institutions—the poor as they lived and worked. The movement was practically a lay movement, and its force consisted in its simplicity and directness. Book learning was disparaged: life was to be the teacher. The brothers thus became observant and practical, and afterwards indeed learned, and their learning had the same characteristics. Their power lay in their practical sagacity, in their treatment of life, outside the cloister and the hospital, at first hand. They knew the people because they settled amongst them, living just as they did. This was their method of charity.

The inspiration that drew St Francis to this method was the contemplation of the life of Christ. But it was more than this. The Christ was to him, as to St Bernard, an ideal, whose nature passed into that of the contemplating and adoring beholder, so that, as he said, “having lost its individuality, of itself the creature could no longer act.” He had no impulse but the Christ impulse. He was changed. His identity was merged in that of Christ. And with this came the conception of a gracious and finely ordered charity, moving like the natural world in a constant harmonious development towards a definite end. The mysticism was intense, but it was practical because it was intense. In that lay the strength of the movement of the true Franciscans, and in those orders that, whether called heretical or not, followed them—Lollards and others. Religion thus became a personal and original possession. It became individual. It was inspired by a social endeavour, and for the world at large it made of charity a new thing.

St Thomas Aquinas took up St Bernard’s position. Renunciation of property, voluntary poverty, was in his view also a necessary means of reaching the perfect life; and the feeling that was akin to this renunciation and prompted it was charity. “All perfection of the Christian life was to be attained according to charity,” and charity united us to God.

In the system elaborated by St Thomas Aquinas two lines of thought are wrought into a kind of harmony. The one stands for Aristotle and nature, the other for Christian tradition and theology. We have thus a duplicate theory of thought and action throughout, both rational and theologic virtues, and a duplicate beatitude or state of happiness correspondent to each. On the one hand it is argued that the good act is an act which, in relation to its object, wholly serves its purpose; and thus the measure of goodness (Prima Secundae Summae Theolog. Q. xviii. 2) is the proportion between action and effect. On the other hand, the act has to satisfy the twofold law, human reason and eternal reason. From the point of view of the former the cardinal factor is desire, which, made proportionate to an end, is love (amor); and, seeking the good of others, it loses its quality of concupiscence and becomes friendly love (amor amicitiae). But this rational love (amor) and charity (caritas), the theologic virtue, may meet. All virtue or goodness is a degree of love (amor), if by virtue we mean the cardinal virtues and refer to the rule of reason only. But there are also theologic virtues, which are on one side “essential,” on the other side participative. As wood ignited participates in the natural fire, so does the individual in these virtues (II. II.ae lxii. l). Charity is a kind of friendship towards God. It is received per infusionem spiritus sancti, and is the chief and root of the theologic virtues of faith and hope, and on it the rational virtues depend. They are not degrees of charity as they are of (amor) love, but charity gives purpose, order and quality to them all. In this sense the word is applied to the rational virtues—as, for instance, beneficence. The counterpart of charity in social life is pity (misericordia), the compassion that moves us to supply another’s want (summa religionis Christianae in misericordia consistit quantum ad exteriora opera). It is, however, an emotion, not a virtue, and must be regulated like any other emotion (... passio est et non virtus. Hic autem motus potest esse secundum rationem regulatus, II. II.ae xxx. 3). Thus we pass to alms, which are the instrument of pity—an act of charity done through the intervention of pity. The act is not done in order to purchase spiritual good by a corporal means, but to merit a spiritual good (per effectum caritatis) through being in a state of charity; and from that point of view its effect is tested by the recipient being moved to pray for his benefactor. The claim of others on our beneficence is relative, according to consanguinity and other bonds (II. II.ae xxxi. 3), subject to the condition that the common good of many is a holier obligation (divinius) than that of one. Obedience and obligation to parents may be crossed by other obligations, as, for instance, duty to the church. To give alms is a command. Alms should consist of the superfluous—that is, of all that the individual possesses after he has reserved what is necessary. What is necessary the donor should fix in due relation to the claims of his family and dependants, his position in life (dignitas), and the sustenance of his body. On the other hand, his gift should meet the actual necessities of the recipient and no more. More than this will lead to excess on the recipient’s part (ut inde luxurietur) or to want of spirit and apathy (ut aliis remissio et refrigerium sit), though allowance must be made for different requirements in different conditions of life. It were better to distribute alms to many persons than to give more than is necessary to one. In individual cases there remains the further question of correction—the removing of some evil or sin from another; and this, too, is an act of charity.

It will be seen that though St Thomas bases his argument on a duplicate theory of thought, action and happiness, part natural, part theologic, and states fully the conditions of good action, he does not bring the two into unison. Logically the argument should follow that alms that fail in social benefit (produce remissionem et refrigerium, for instance) fail also in spiritual good, for the two cannot be inconsistent. But in regard to the former he does not press the importance of purpose, and, in spite of his Aristotle, he misses the point on which Aristotle, as a close observer of social conditions, insists, that gifts without purpose and reciprocity foster the dependence they are designed to meet. The proverb of the “pierced cask” is as applicable to ecclesiastical as to political almsgiving, as has often been proved by the event. The distribution of all “superfluous” income in the form of alms would have the effect of a huge endowment, and would stereotype “the poor” as a permanent and unprogressive class. The proposal suggests that St Thomas contemplated the adoption of a method of relief which would be like a voluntary poor-law; and it is noteworthy that his phrase “necessary relief” forms the defining words of the Elizabethan poor-law, while he also lays stress on the importance of “correction,” which, on the decline and disappearance of the penitential system, assumed at the Reformation a prominent position in administration in relation not only to “sin,” but also to offences against society, such as idleness, &c.

On this foundation was built up the classification of acts of charity, which in one shape or another has a long social tradition, and which St Thomas quotes in an elaborated form—the seven spiritual acts (consule, carpe, doce, solare, remitte, fer, ora), counsel, sustain, teach, console, save, pardon, pray; and the seven corporal (vestio, poto, cibo, redimo, tego, colligo, condo) I clothe, I give drink to, I feed, I free from prison, I shelter, I assist in sickness, I bury (II. II.ae xxxii. 2). These in subsequent thought became “good works,” and availed for the after-life, bringing with them definite boons. Thus charity was linked to the system of indulgences. The bias of the act of charity is made to favour the actor. Primarily the benefit reverts to him. He becomes conscious of an ultimate reward accruing to himself. The simplicity of the deed, the spontaneity from which, as in a well-practised art, its freshness springs and its good effects result, is falsified at the outset. The thought that should be wholly concerned in the fulfilment of a definite purpose is diverted from it. The deed itself, apart from the outcome of the deed, is highly considered. An extreme inducement is placed on giving, counselling, and the like, but none on the personal or social utility of the gift or counsel. Yet the value of these lies in their end. No policy or science of charity can grow out of such a system. It can produce innumerable isolated acts, which may or may not be beneficent, but it cannot enkindle the “ordered charity.” This charity is, strictly speaking, by its very nature alike intellectual and emotional. Otherwise it would inevitably fail of its purpose, for though emotion might stimulate it, intelligence would not guide it.

There are, then, these three lines of thought. That of St Bernard, who invigorated the monastic movement, and helped to make the monastery or hospital the centre of charitable relief. That of St Francis, who, passing by regular and secular clergy alike, revived and reinvigorated the conception of charity and gave it once more the reality of a social force, knowing that it would find a freer scope and larger usefulness in the life of the people than in the religious aristocracy of monasteries. And that of St Thomas Aquinas, who, analysing the problem of charity and almsgiving, and associating it with definite groups of works, led to its taking, in the common thought, certain stereotyped forms, so that its social aim and purpose were ignored and its power for good was neutralized.

We have now to turn to the conditions of social life in which these thoughts fermented and took practical shape. The population of England from the Conquest to the 14th century is estimated at between 1½ and 2½ Charity and social conditions in England. millions. London, it is believed, had a population of about 40,000. Other towns were small. Two or three of the larger had 4000 or 5000 inhabitants. The only substantial building in a village, apart perhaps from the manor-house, was the church, used for many secular as well as religious purposes. In the towns the mud or wood-paved huts sheltered a people who, accepting a common poverty, traded in little more than the necessaries of life (Green, Town Life in the 15th Century, i. 13). The population was stationary. Famine and pestilence were of frequent occurrence (Creighton, Epidemics in Britain, p. 19), and for the careless there was waste at harvest-time and want in winter. Hunger was the drill-sergeant of society. Owing to the hardship and penury of life infant mortality was probably very great (Blashill, Sutton in Holdernesse, p. 123). The 15th century was, however, “the golden age of the labourer.” Our problem is to ascertain what was the service of charity to this people till the end of that century. In order to estimate this we have to apply tests similar to those we applied before to Greece and Rome and the pre-medieval church.

The Family.—Largely Germanic in its origin, we may perhaps set down as elemental in the English race what Tacitus said of the Germans. They had the home virtues. They had a high regard for chastity, and respected and enforced the family tie. The wife was honoured. The men were poor, but when the actual pressure of their work—fighting—was removed, idle. They were born gamblers. Much toil fell upon the wife; but slavery was rather a form of tenure than a Roman bondage. As elsewhere, there was in England “the joint family or household” (Pollock and Maitland, English Law before Edward I. i. 31). Each member of the community was, or should be, under some lord; for the lordless man was, like the wanderer in Homer, who belonged to no phratry, suspected and dangerous, and his kinsfolk might be required to find a lord for him. There was personal servitude, but it was not of one complexion; there were grades amongst the unfree, and the general advance to freedom was continuous. By the 9th century the larger amount of the slavery was bondage by tenure. In the reign of Edward I., though “the larger half of the rural population was unfree,” yet the serf, notwithstanding the fact that he was his lord’s chattel, was free against all save his lord. A century later (1381) villenage—that is payment for tenancy by service, instead of by quit-rent—was practically extinguished. So steady was the progress towards the freedom and self-maintenance of the individual and his family.

The Manor.—In social importance, next to the family, comes the manor, the organization of which affected charity greatly on one side. It was “an economic unit,” the estate of a lord on which there were associated the lord with his demesne, tenants free of service, and villeins and others, tenants by service. All had the use of land, even the serf. The estate was regulated by a manor court, consisting of the lord of the manor or his representative, and the free tenants, and entrusted with wide quasi-domestic jurisdiction. The value of the estate depended on the labour available for its cultivation, and the cultivators were the unfree tenants. Hence the lord, through the manor-court, required an indemnity or fine if a child, for instance, left the manor; and similarly, if a villein died, his widow might have to remarry or pay a fine. Thus the lord reacquired a servant and the widow and her family were maintained. The courts, too, fixed prices, and thus in local and limited conditions of supply and demand were able to equalize them in a measure and neutralize some of the effects of scarcity. In this way, till the reign of Edward I., and, where the manor courts remained active, till much later, a self-supporting social organization made any systematic public or charitable relief unnecessary.

The Parish and the Tithe.—The conversion of England in the 7th century was effected by bishops, accompanied by itinerant priests, who made use of conventual houses as the centres of their work. The parochial system was not firmly established till the 10th century (970). Then, by a law of Edgar, a man who had a church on his own land was allowed to pay a third of his tithe to his own church, instead of giving the whole of it to the minister or conventual church. Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury (667), had introduced the Carolingian system into England; and, accordingly, the parish priest was required to provide for strangers and to keep a room in his house for them. Of the tithe, a third and not a fourth was to go to the poor with any surplus; and in order to have larger means of helping them, the priests were urged to work themselves, according to the ancient canons of the church (cf. Labbeus, IV. Conc. Carthag. A.D. 398). The importance of the tithe to the poor is shown by acts of Richard II. and Henry IV., by which it was enacted that, if parochial tithes were appropriated to a monastery, a portion of them should be assigned to the poor of the parish. At a very early date (1287) quasi-compulsory charges in the nature of a rate were imposed on parishioners for various church purposes (Pollock and Maitland, i. 604), though in the 14th and 15th centuries a compulsory church rate was seldom made. Collections were made by paid collectors, especially for Hock-tide (q.v.) money—gathered for church purposes (Brand’s Antiquities, p. 112). But there must have been many varieties in practice. In Somersetshire the churchwardens’ accounts (1349 to 1560) show that the parish contributed nothing to the relief of the poor, and it seems probable that the personal charities of the parishioners, and the charities of the gild fellowships and of the parsonage house sufficed (Bishop Hobhouse, Churchwardens’ Accounts, 1349-1560, Somerset Record Society). Many parishes possessed land, houses and cattle, and received gifts and legacies of all kinds. The proceeds of this property, if given for the use of the parish generally, might, if necessary, be available for the relief of the poor, but, if given definitely for their use, would provide doles, or stock cattle or “poor’s” lands, &c. (Cf. Augustus Jessopp, Before the Great Pillage, p. 40; and many instances in the reports of the Charity Commissioners, 1818-1835.) Of the endowments for parish doles very many may have disappeared in the break-up of the 16th century. There were also “Parish Ales,” the proceeds of which would be used for parish purposes or for relief. Further, all the greater festivals were days of feasting and the distribution of food; at funerals also there were often large distributions, and also at marriages. The faithful generally, subject to penance, were required to relieve the poor and the stranger. In the larger part of England the parish and the vill were usually coterminous. In the north a parish contained several vills. There were thus side by side the charitable relief system of the parish, which at an early date became a rating area, and the self-supporting system of the manor.

The Monasteries.—As Christianity spread monasteries spread, and each monastery was a centre of relief. Sometimes they were established, like St Albans (796), for a hundred Benedictine monks and for the entertainment of strangers; or sometimes without any such special purpose, like the abbey of Croyland (reorganized 946), which, becoming exceeding rich from its diversorium pauperum, or almonry, “relieved the whole country round so that prodigious numbers resorted to it.” At Glastonbury, for instance (1537), £140 16s. 8d. was given away in doles. But documents seem to prove (Denton, England in Fifteenth Century, p. 245) that the relief generally given by monasteries was much less than is usually supposed.

The general system may be described (cf. Rule, St Dunst. Cant. Archp. p. 42, Dugdale; J.B. Clark, The Observances, Augustinian Priory, Barnwell; Abbot Gasquet, English Monastic Life). The almonry was usually near the church of the monastery. An almoner was in charge. He was to be prudent and discreet in the distribution of his doles (portiones) and to relieve travellers, palmers, chaplains and mendicants (mendicantes, apparently the beggars recognized as living by begging, such as we have noted under other social conditions), and the leprous more liberally than others. The old and infirm, lame and blind who were confined to their beds he was to visit and relieve suitably (in competenti annona). The importunity of the poor he was to put up with, and to meet their need as far as he could. In the almonry there were usually rooms for the sick. The sick outside the precincts were relieved at the almoner’s discretion. Continuous relief might be given after consultation with the superior. All the remnants of meals and the old clothes of the monks were given to the almoner for distribution, and at Christmas he had a store of stockings and other articles to give away as presents to widows, orphans and poor clerks. He also provided the Maundy gifts and selected the poor for the washing of feet. He was thus a local visitor and alms distributor, not merely at the gate of the monastery but in the neighbourhood, and had also at his disposal “indoor” relief for the sick. Separate from the rest the house there was also a dormitory and rooms and the kitchen for strangers. A hospitularius attended to their needs and novices waited on them. Guests who were laymen might stay on, working in return for board and lodging (Smith’s Dict. Christian Antiq., “Benedictine”).

The monasteries often established hospitals; they served also as schools for the gentry and for the poor; and they were pioneers of agriculture. In the 12th century, in which many monastic orders were constituted, there were many lavish endowments. In the 14th century their usefulness had begun to wane. At the end of that century the larger estates were generally held in entail, with the result that younger sons were put into religious houses. This worldliness had its natural consequences. In the 15th century, owing to mismanagement, waste, and subsequently to the decline of rural prosperity, their resources were greatly crippled. In their relation to charity one or two points may be noted: (1) Of the small population of England the professed monks and nuns with the parish priests (Rogers, Hist. Agric. and Prices, i. 58) numbered at least 30,000 or 40,000. This number of celibates was a standing protest against the moral sufficiency of the family life. On the other hand, amongst them were the brothers and sisters who visited the poor and nursed the sick in hospitals; and many who now succumb physically or mentally to the pressure of life, and are cared for in institutions, may then have found maintenance and a retreat in the monasteries. (2) Bound together by no common controlling organization, the monasteries were but so many miscellaneous centres of relief, chiefly casual relief. They were mostly “magnificent hostelries.” (3) They stood outside the parish, and they weakened its organization and hampered its development.

The Hospitals.—The revival of piety in the 11th century led to a large increase in the number of hospitals and hospital orders. To show how far they covered the field in England two instances may be quoted. At Canterbury (Creighton, Epidemics, p. 87) there were four for different purposes, two endowed by Lanfranc (1084), one for poor, infirm, lame and blind men and women, and one outside the town for lepers. These hospitals were put under the charge of a priory, and endowed out of tithes payable to the secular clergy. Later (Henry II.), a hospital for leprous sisters was established, and afterwards a hospital for leprous monks and poor relations of the monks of St Augustine’s. In a less populous parish, Luton (Cobbe, Luton Church), there were a hospital for the poor, an almshouse, and two hospitals, one for the sick and one for the leprous. The word “leper,” it is evident, was used very loosely, and was applied to many diseases other than leprosy. There were hospitals for the infirm and the leprous; the disease was not considered contagious. The hospital in its modern sense was but slowly created. Thus St Bartholomew’s in London was founded (1123) for a master, brethren and sisters, and for the entertainment of poor diseased persons till they got well; of distressed women big with child till they were able to go abroad; and for the maintenance, until the age of seven, of all such children whose mothers died in the house. St Thomas’s (rebuilt 1228) had a master and brethren and three lay sisters, and 40 beds for poor, infirm and impotent people, who had also victual and firing. There were hospitals for many special purposes—as for the blind, for instance. There were also many hospital orders in England and on the continent. They sprang up beside the monastic orders, and for a time were very popular: brothers and sisters of the Holy Ghost (1198), sisters of St Elizabeth (1207-1231), Beguines and Beghards (see Beguines), knights of St John and others.

The Mendicant Orders.—The Franciscans tended the sick and poor in the slums of the towns with great devotion—indeed, the whole movement tells of a splendid self-abandonment and an intensity of effort in the early spring of its enthusiasm, and with the aid of reform councils and reformations it lengthened out its usefulness for two centuries.

As in the pre-medieval church, the system of relief is that of charitable endowments—a marked contrast to Medieval endowed charities. the modern method of voluntary associations or rate-supported institutions.

(1) The Church as Legatee.—The church building among the Teutonic races was not held by the bishop as part of what was originally the charitable property of the church. It was assigned to the patron saint of the church by the donor, who retained the right of administration, of which his own patronage or right of presentation is a relic. Subsequently, with the study of Roman law, the conception of the church as a persona ficta prevailed; and till the larger growth of the gilds and corporations it was the only general legatee for charitable gifts. As these arise a large number of charitable trusts are created and held by lay corporations; and “alms” include gifts for social as well as religious or eleemosynary purposes. (2) Freedom from Taxation and Service.—Gifts to the church for charitable or other purposes were made in free, pure and perpetual alms (“ad tenendum in puram et perpetuam eleemosynam sine omni temporali servicio et consuetudine”). Land held under this frankalmoigne was given “in perpetual alms,” therefore the donor could not retract it; in free alms, therefore he could exact no services in regard to it; and in pure alms as being free from secular jurisdiction (cf. Pollock and Maitland). (3) Alienation and Mortmain.—To prevent alienation of property to religious houses, with the consequent loss of service to the superior or chief lords, a licence from the chief lord was required to legalize the alienation (Magna Carta, and Edw. I., De viris religiosis). Other statutes (Edw. I. and Rich. II.) enacted that this licence should be issued out of chancery after investigation; and the principle was applied to civil corporations. The necessity of this licence was one lay check on injurious alienation. (4) Irresponsible Administration.—Until after the 13th century, when the lay courts had asserted their right to settle disputes as to lands held in alms, the administration of charity was from the lay point of view entirely irresponsible. It was outside the secular jurisdiction; and civilly the professed clergy, who were the administrators, were “dead.” They could not sue or be sued except through their sovereign—their chief, the abbot. They formed a large body of non-civic inhabitants free from the pressure and the responsibilities of civil life. (5) Control.—Apart from the control of the abbot, prior, master or other head, the bishop was visitor, or, as we should say, inspector; and abuses might be remedied by the visit of the bishop or his ordinary. The bishop’s ordinary (2 Henry V. i. 1) was the recognized visitor of all hospitals apart from the founder. The founder and his family retained a right of intervention. Sometimes thus an institution was reorganized, or even dissolved, the property reverting to the founder (Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vi. 2. 715). (6) Cy-près.—Charities were, especially after Henry V.’s reign, appropriated to other uses, either because their original purpose failed or because some new object had become important. Thus, for instance, a college or hospital for lepers (1363) is re-established by the founder’s family with a master and priest, quod nulli leprosi reperiebantur; and a similar hospital founded in Henry I.’s time near Oxford has decayed, and is given by Edward III. to Oriel College, Oxford, to maintain a chaplain and poor brethren. Thus, apart from alienation pure and simple, the principle of adaptation to new uses was put in force at an early date, and supplied many precedents to Wolsey, Edward VI. and the post-Reformation bishops. The system of endowments was indeed far more adaptable than it would at first sight seem to have been. (7) The Sources of Income.—The hospitals were chiefly supported by rents or the produce of land; or, if attached to monasteries, out of the tithe of their monastic lands or other sources of revenue, or out of the appropriated tithes of the secular clergy; or they might be in part maintained by collections made, for instance, by a commissioner duly authorized by a formal attested document, in which were recounted the indulgences by popes, archbishops and bishops to those who became its benefactors (Cobbe, p. 75); or, in the case of leper hospitals, by a leper with a “clapdish,” who begged in the markets; or by a proctor, in the case of more important institutions in towns, who “came with his box one day in every month to the churches and other religious houses, at times of service, and there received the voluntary gifts of the congregation”; or they might receive inmates on payment, and thus apparently a frequent abuse, decayed servants of the court and others, were “farmed out.” (8) Mode of Admission.—The admission was usually, no doubt, regulated by the prior or master. At York, at the hospital of St Nicholas for the leprous, the conditions of admission were: promise or vow of continence, participation in prayer, the abandonment of all business, the inmate’s property at death to go to the house. This may serve as an example. The master was usually one of the regular clergy. (9) Decline of the Hospitals.—It is said that, in addition to 645 monasteries and 90 “colleges” and many chantries, Henry VIII. suppressed 110 hospitals (Speed’s Chronicle, p. 778). The numbers seem small. In the economic decline at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries many hospitals may have lapsed.

In the 15th century the towns grew in importance. First the wool trade and then the cloth trade flourished, and the English developed a large shipping trade. The towns grew up like “little principalities”; and for the advancement Gild and municipal charities. of trade, gilds, consisting alike of masters and workmen, were formed, which endeavoured to regulate and then to monopolize the market. By degrees the corporations of the towns were worked in their interests, and the whole commercial system became restrictive and inadaptable. Meanwhile the towns attracted newcomers; freedom from feudal obligations was gained with comparative ease; and a new plebs was congregating, a population of inhabitants not qualified as burghers or gild members, women, sons living with their fathers, menial servants and apprentices. There was thus an increasing restriction imposed on trade, coupled with a growing plebs. Naturally, then, lay charities sprang up for members of gilds, and for burghers and for the commonalty. Men left estates to their gilds to maintain decayed members in hospitals, almshouses or otherwise, to educate their children, portion their daughters, and to assist their widows. The middle-class trader was thus in great measure insured against the risks of life. The gilds were one sign of the new temper and wants of burghers freed from feudalism. Another sign was a new standard of manners. Rules and saws, Hesiodic in their tone, became popular—in regard, for instance, to such a question as “how to enable a man to live on his means, and to keep himself and those belonging to him.” The boroughs established other charities also, hospitals and almshouses for the people, a movement which, like that of the gilds, began very early—in Italy as early as the 9th century. They sometimes gave outdoor relief also to registered poor (Green i. 41), and they had in large towns courts of orphans presided over by the mayor and aldermen, thus taking over a duty that previously had been one of conspicuous importance in the church. As early as 1257 in Westphalian towns there was a rough-and-ready system of Easter relief of the poor; and in Frankfort in 1437 there was a town council of almoners with a systematic programme of relief (Ratzinger, p. 352). Thus at the close of the middle ages the towns were gradually assuming what had been charitable functions of the church.

While a new freedom was being attained by the labourer in the country and the burgher in the town, the difficulty of obtaining a sufficient supply of labour for agriculture must have been constant, especially at every visitation of Statutory wage control. plague and famine. In accordance with a general policy of state regulation which was to control and supervise industry, agriculture and poor relief and to repress vagrancy by gaols and houses of correction, the state stepped in as arbiter and organizer. By Statutes of Labourers beginning in 1351 (25 Edw. III. 135), it aimed at enforcing a settled wage and restraining migration. From 1351 it endeavoured to suppress mendicity, and in part to systematize it in the interest of infirm and aged mendicants. Each series of enactments is the natural complement of the other. In the main their signification, from the point of view of charity, lies in the fact that they represent a persistent endeavour to prevent social unsettlement and in part the distress which unsettlement causes, and which vagrancy in some measure indicates, by keeping the people within the ranks of recognized dependence, the settled industry of the crafts and of agriculture, or forcing them back into it by fear of the gaol or the stocks. The extreme point of this policy was reached when by the laws of Edward VI. and Elizabeth the “rogue, vagabond or sturdy beggar” was branded with an R on the shoulder and handed over as a bondman for a period to any one who would take him. On the other hand, it was desired that relief should be a means of preventing migration. In any time of general pressure there is a desire to organize mendicity, to prevent the wandering of beggars, to create a kind of settled poor, distinguished from the rest as infirm and not able-bodied, and to keep these at least at home sufficiently supported by local and parochial relief; and this, in its simpler form all the world over, has in the past been by response to public begging. The argument may be summed up thus: We cannot have begging, which implies that the beggar is cared for by no one, belongs to no one, and therefore throws himself on the world at large. Therefore, if he is able-bodied he must be punished as unsocial, for it is his fault that he belongs to no one; or we must make him some one’s dependant, and so keep him; or if he is infirm, and therefore of no service to any one—if no one will keep him—we must organize his mendicity, for such mendicity is justified. If he cannot dig for the man to whom he does or should belong, he must beg. Then out of the failure to organize mendicity—for relief of itself is no remedy, least of all casual relief—a poor-law springs up, which, afterwards associated with the provision of employment, will, it is hoped, make relief in some measure remedial by increasing its quantity by means of compulsory levies. This argument, which combined statutory wage control and statutory poor relief, seems to have been firmly bedded in the English legislative mind for more than two centuries, from 1351 till after 1600; and until 1834 these two series of laws effectually reduced the English labourer to a new industrial dependence. To people imbued with ideas of feudalism the way of escape from villenage seemed to be not independence, but a new reversion to it.