Early Medieval Era (c.900 CE to c.1200 CE) *

Introduction *

The Spirit of the Time *

Gender and Sexuality *

Children *

Bodily Functional Difference *

Mental Difference - Mental Disorder *

Mental Difference- Mental Impairment *

Belief Difference *

Forensic Difference *

Norman England *

Social Difference *

Ethnic Difference *

Financial Difference *

The Aged *

Early Medieval Era (c.900 CE to c.1200 CE)

Introduction

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The Spirit of the Time

Within Christendom there were three divisions of society- those who prayed (clergy), those who waged war (nobles) and those who worked (peasants).

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The Crusades

Scheerenberger notes:

‘The doctrine of original sin, as spelled out in Gratian’s Decretum in 1150, was unofficially accepted by the church in that year and was to have a major impact on attitudes toward mental retardation. Gratian declared that "every human being who is conceived by coition of a man and a woman is born with original sin, subject to impiety and death, and therefore a child of wrath" (Durant W, The Age of Faith, New York: Simon & Schuster 1950, p820) The preaching of this doctrine caused many medieval Christians to feel a deep sense of inborn depravity and guilt. This concept, which received further emphasis during the Reformation in the sixteenth century, produced untold agony among parents of disabled children through the years.’

Scheerenberger notes:

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Scheerenberger notes:

Winzer:

‘Antiquity had no institutions for the care of disabled or indigent persons, and the early Christian era saw only scattered hospices and asylums established across Europe beginning in the fourth century. Public institutionalisation for health problems developed between the 6th and 13th century when leprosy became a major health concern. Leprosariums multiplied - they were perhaps as many as 19,000 spread across the Christian world (Foucault 1965).'

CAN THIS BE TRUSTED- Query Foucault's source.

Mora:

‘On the wave of the tradition of the temples devoted to Asclepios, where incubation was practiced, and of the Christian doctrine of charity, a variety of institutions for the poor, the foreigners, the aged, the orphans, and the sick flourished in the Eastern empire from the 5th to the 12th century under the joint auspices of religious and political authorities. Only in one case, however, in the Pantocrator in today’s Istanbul, is there evidence that a psychiatric clinic was in operation.’

Quoting Constantelos 1968

Jones and Fowles

‘When civilisation grew in the Western world in it grew behind walls - in a castles and monasteries and small crowded cities; and the outcasts lived in the forests - madmen and idiots, lepers and escaped slaves, outlaws and felons, some victims and some predators. The gate and the drawbridge were signs of safety, because freedom was dangerous. Then the position was reversed. The forests were felled, and the rule of the law was established; and the victims and the predators were in turn confined behind walls, in hospitals and asylums, in poor houses and workhouses, in gaols and bridewells.’

Alms giving in the Moslem world is a social obligation.

Deliberate maiming for alms reported as recently as 1973 in Sri Lanka DeSilva 1983. REFERENCE IN SCHEER AND GROCE

TO LATER SECTION

Gender and Sexuality

Source for droit de seigneur

Mary McLaughlin notes:

‘There is, in any case, considerable evidence, especially from the earlier medieval centuries, that wherever selective or neglective factors were at work,, they were likely to work to the disadvantage of girls, who were not highly valued in a predominantly military and agricultural society.’

Mary McLaughlin notes:

‘The possibility of female infanticide as a means of ‘population control’ in a ninth-century peasant community is suggested by Emily Coleman in an article based on a study of a polyptych of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and forthcoming in Annales. For this period and later there is evidence of female infanticide in particular, as well as infanticide in general, among pagan peoples before or in the process of conversion to Christianity.’

Transfer notes from Mate from last section

Women and the law pp26 27 in Culpin

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Children

Mary McLaughlin notes that:

‘…simple failure or refusal to nourish may well have been the most common form of infanticide.’

Mary McLaughlin notes that:

‘Throughout these centuries [9th-13th] most of our evidence of destructive practices comes from sources, chiefly ecclesiastical, whose purpose was to discourage, prevent, or suppress them, or to alleviate the sufferings of the victims, and such records cast some light both on the dimensions of the problem confronting authority and the effectiveness of various efforts to deal with it. From the early middle ages there is testimony of the law codes and the penitentials to attempts to prevent he exposure of infants and their "over-laying" , whether intentional or not; with the ninth century comes the first specific prohibition against the taking of infants into the parental bed. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the campaign against these practices seems to have grown in intensity, and sheer carelessness as well as evil intent on the part of parents was perceived as a cause of unfortunate "accidents".’

deMause notes:

‘Certainly when Vincent of Beauvais wrote in the thirteenth century that a father was always worrying about his daughter "suffocating her offspring", when doctors complained of children "found in the frost or in the streets, cast away by a wicked mother", and when we find that in Anglo-Saxon England the legal presumption was that infants who died had been murdered unless proved otherwise, we should take these clues as a signal for the most vigorous sort of research into medieval infanticide. (William Ellwood Craig, Vincent of Beauvais, On the Education of Noble Children UCLA PhD Thesis 1949 p368, John Thrupp Anglo-Saxon Home: A History of the Domestic Institutions and Customs of England. From the Fifth to the Eleventh Century (London 1862, p85, William Douglass A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Plantation, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North America, vol. 2 London 1760 p202)’

deMause notes p31:

‘Despite much literary evidence, however, the continued existence of widespread infanticide in the Middle Ages is usually denied by medievalists, since it is not evident in church records and other quantitative sources. But if sex ratios of 156 to 100 (c. 801 AD) and 172 to 100 (1391 AD) are any indication of the extent of the killing of legitimate girls (Referenced), and if illegitimates were usually killed regardless of sex, the real rate of infanticide could have been substantial in the Middle Ages.’

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Bodily Functional Difference

Scheerenberger notes of The Mansur Hospital in Cairo:

‘The Mansur Hospital, built during the early years of the Middle Ages, provided excellent and humane care. Facilities included a dispensary, library, chapels, and lecture halls. The fever wards were cooled with fountains. There were two nurses or attendants for each resident. In addition, the staff included reciters of the Koran, musicians to lull patients to sleep, and story-tellers, actors, and dancers who provided diversion and distraction. (Henry W, Mental Hospitals in Zilboorg 1941)’

(Mary) McLaughlin notes that Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambriensis) in the late twelfth century noted that in Ireland he had never seen:

‘…so many individuals who were born blind, so many lamed, maimed or having some natural defect. (The Topography of Ireland in The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis ed. Thomas Wright (London 1863) p147).’

Haj notes:

‘The organization of hospitals in the West was probably one of the results of the crusades. (George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins Co., 1927-1948 II, pp. 95, 245)’

Haj notes:

‘Europeans acknowledged the authority of the Arabs in the field of medicine and avidly translated their texts into Latin and practiced and prescribed according to these teachings.’

Haj notes that leprosy was:

‘Regarded as incurable in the West… [i]n the east on the other hand the disease was regarded as curable and therefore not particularly feared.’

Bromberg: Avicenna AD 980-1036 and Maimonides (AD 1135-1204) are prominent in medicine and madness in this period in the eastern world.

Maimonides is Jewish, ?? Avicenna- check

Maimonides-

BIOGRAPHY AND RESEARCH WRITINGS APPLICABLE

Bromberg: Maimonides ‘believed in the close relationship between physical and mental health…’

Avicenna: from WL Jones: ‘Avicenna (978-1036) Born in Bokhara, settled in Isfahan. Ethnic origin disputed by Persians, Turks and Arabs. His tomb is still a place of pilgrimage. He was appointed Court Physician at the age of 18. His Canon of Medicine was in use as a textbook in Europe and the East as late as the seventeenth century.’

Winzer notes:

‘The early legal code of nearly every European country imposed strict civil disabilities on disabled people- they were deprived of rights of inheritance, forbidden to testify in a court of justice, and not allowed to make a deed, contract, note or will.’ (Gaw 1906)

Oliver and Barnes:

‘…those people rejected by their families and without resources, relied on the haphazard and often ineffectual tradition of Christian charity…’

‘People with ‘severe’ impairments were usually herded together in one of the very small medieval hospitals in which were gathered ‘the poor, the sick and the bedridden’. The ethos of these establishments was ecclesiastical rather than medical’ (Scull 1984)

Wolf’s work- 1996 Cambridge Presentation EXPAND

Scull in The Most Solitary of Afflictions says:

‘In medieval England, the dependent classes relied principally on a haphazard and often ineffectual tradition of Christian charity and alms-giving. Poverty, particularly if it were voluntarily assumed, was a status invested with considerable religious significance and meaning. But neither the Church nor private individuals made any serious effort to match aid to need or to provide an organized response to specific problems of dependency. On the contrary, such a measured response was clearly foreign to a society where impulse to give was governed largely by the desire to ensure one’s own salvation.’

Mental Difference - Mental Disorder

Volkan notes:

‘Passages in the book written in Turkish in 1069 – Kutagdu-Bilig (the Kudatkebilik) – describe the efsuncu, who warded off jinns (demons) and occupied a role just below the hekim (physician) in the social hierarchy. The same book gives an account of disagreements between efsuncus who treated their patients by "suggestion" and those medical men who scorned such methods. It states that within one Turkish group, the Uygurs, physicians limited their concept of treatment to treatment by physical means.’

Lopez Ibor notes:

‘Among the philosopher-physicians who influenced medical practice in Spain during this early period was Avicenna (978-1036 (Ibn-Sinah, Ibn Ali Abdulla Ibn Sinai, his real name, was probably not Spanish by birth.)… In his treatise De Anima, he wrote about the relationship of body and soul in man and discussed the causes of melancholy.’

Lopez Ibor notes:

‘The Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides (1113-1205), lived in Cordova and studied under Arab scholars. From the psychological and psychopathological point of view, his treatise Guide of the Perplexed is even now of great interest, not only on account of its historic importance, but also for its contents. …"One should not consider as mentally ill those who run wild in the streets, throw stones, or wreck household goods, but those whose mind is clouded by a fixed idea, although they are normal in that which is not related to it."’

Lopez Ibor notes:

‘There have been many detailed controversies as to whether the first psychiatric hospital in the world was in Valencia. In many hospitals, the mentally ill were admitted to small isolated rooms, and insane patients were crowded together with others who were not so afflicted. In 1326, the Georges Hospital of Elbing, belonging to the order of Teutonic Knights, built a few cells, called Doll-haus, for the mentally-ill. Similar cells are mentioned in the documents of the Municipal Hospital of Hamburg in 1375. They could also be found in the great hospital of Erfurt, rebuilt in 1385.

‘In England, in France, and in Germany some general hospitals accepted a few mental patients, but the hospital in Valencia was the first in Europe dedicated to them exclusively. It is difficult to pinpoint whenpsychiatric hspitals as such originated….

‘There are some references to mental hospitals established by the Arabs in the 12th century…

One of the most important events in the history of Spanish psychiatry is the foundation of the first lunatic asylum in Valencia, in 1409. The story of its foundation is both curious and moving. On the 24th February of that year, Fray Juan Galiberto Jofre, a monk of the Order of Our Lady of Mercy, was going to preach in the Cathedral of Valencia on the feast-day of our Lady of the Helpless when he beheld a group of boys insulting and stoning a poor madman. He was so moved that he abbreviated the sermon he had planned and instead delivered a plea for the founding of a hospital for the mentally ill. Soralla – the great contemporary painter – has immortalized the scene. Descending from the pulpit of the Cathedral, he was accostd by various citizens who had been present during his sermon; led by Lorenzo Salom, they decided there and then to supply the means needed for the founding of the hospital, which was named Our Lady of the Innocents. King Martin I of Aragon granted permission for the project and, in 1410, Pope Benedict XIII issued a Papal Bull to the same end.’

Lopez Ibor notes:

‘In 1425 King Alfonzo V founded a hospital in Saragossa dedicated to Our Lady of Mercy … [a] part of this hospital was set aside for mentally ill patients…’

Lopez Ibor notes:

‘Saragossa Hospital was noted for introducing what ws later caed "moral treatment" for the mentally ill. In 1549 it housed nearly 100 mental patients. The following statement comes from Inverti: "Fresh water baths are employed for refreshment, although this kind of treatment is generally without results. This treatment is difficult to carry out under outbursts of madness; most of all it is hard to bleed them as patients may tear out their bandages; but continuous experience has demonstrated in this hospital that the most efficient treatment is providing the patients with occupation and work." The greater part of the patients were employed in workshops and were made to clean the house, with the exception of the wards; they carried water, coal, and firewood. They were also employed in the pharmacy and on the hospital farm: in threshing, harvesting grapes, and olives.’

Lopez Ibor notes:

‘In Granada during the Moslem rule (probably from 1356) a center existed for the confinement of anti-social individuals. As we can see by the information collected by Delgado Roig, the building of a hospital in Granada was begun in 1356, during the reign of Mohammed V, and was completed in 1367. It was erected in the suburbs, in a locality known as the Pleasure Place (Haxasir), and it was called "the house of the insane and the innocents."’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘St Augustine, who was the greatest introspective psychologist before Freud and who mercilessly exposed all that he felt as evil in himself, still doubted man alone, by self-scrutiny, could gain mastery over his carnal passions without seeking the superhuman aid of Divine Grace.’

Walker notes:

‘It is true by Bracton’s day the influences of Continental schools of medicine, and particularly of Salerno, ad introduced ideas which were both less superstitious and less unpleasant. Gilbert Angelicus (Comedium Medicinae Book 11 contemporary of Bracton) advises rest and careful diet instead of pilgrimages and purges. Bartholomaeus (Bartholomaeus Angelicus De Proprietatibus Rerum, an encyclopaedic work of the late thirteenth century) favours head-shaving and music, with purges and surgery only as last resorts. Neither mentions flogging. No doubt writers such as these were followed by physicians who had charge of wealthy or important patients. But as we shall see the old ideas died hard, and the treatment of the ordinary madman continued to be unscientific and brutal.’

Walker notes that there is a record from The Laws of Henry the First:

‘If a person be deaf and dumb, so that he cannot answer questions, let his father pay his forfeitures.

Insane persons and evildoers of a like sort should be guarded and treated leniently by their parents’

He further notes that this is probably a survival from Anglo-Saxon times.

Mora:

‘…the period between the fall of the Roman empire and the so-called early Renaissance of the 13th century represented in Italy a long era of invasions, migrations, famines, plagues, and wars. It is difficult to obtain an idea of the attitudes towards the mentally ill at that time. Some analogies between the lepers and the mentally ill have been put forward, as both were ostracized by society. However, it is possible that from a theocentric conception of the world, where man’s position had significance only in relation to his creator, the mentally ill may have enjoyed a certain degree of tolerance, if not sympathy. We know for sure that, like paupers, the cripples, and other outcasts of society, the mentally ill were often left begging and wandering the country and in places of worship, or abandoned in ships to an unknown destiny, as later immortalized in Sebastian Brandt’s The Ship of Fools’ (1494). It is also possible, though not proven, that in the Middle Ages episodes of collective psycho-pathology took place in Italy on a small scale, similar to the great epidemics of St. Vitus’ dance, of flagellationism, of lycanthropy, and often under the influence of peculiar religious sects and of superstitious beliefs.’ NO REFERENCES

Mora:

‘On the wave of the tradition of the temples devoted to Asclepios, where incubation was practiced, and of the Christian doctrine of charity, a variety of institutions for the poor, the foreigners, the aged, the orphans, and the sick flourished in the Eastern empire from the 5th to the 12th century under the joint auspices of religious and political authorities. Only in one case, however, in the Pantocrator in today’s Istanbul, is there evidence that a psychiatric clinic was in operation.’ Quoting Constantelos 1968

Scull, Most Solitary

‘… the deranged beggar was a familiar part of the medieval landscape, wandering from place to place, community to community, in search of alms. Other lunatics relied on their families as primary means of support.’

‘But in only a small minority of cases was any effort made to relieve the family of the burdens the insane imposed by gathering lunatics together in institutions.’

Mental Difference- Mental Impairment

Scheerenberger notes:

What treatment there was for physically and mentally afflicted individuals was based on a mixture of Christian scripture, doctrine, myth, legend, superstition, and custom. In some instances, attempts were made to cure or control mental retardation and epilepsy through the use of amulets worn around the neck or through the consumption of herbal concoctions. As one contemorary text states, "For idiocy and folly: Put into ale cassis and lupins, bishopwort, alexander, githrife, fieldmore, and holy water; and let him drink. (Tuke D, History of the Insane in the British Isles (Facsimile of the 1882 ed.) Amsterdam: EJ Bonnet, 1968 p4) Since the "lunatic", "witless", and "dull" were usually treated in a similar manner, it is reasonable to assume that many other of the other historical treatments described by Tuke were tried with mentally retarded individuals. These treatments included dunking or immersing in a sacred pool, whipping, tying the afflicted person to a pillar of a church, incarceration, and the use of fright.’

Scheerenberger notes:

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Haj notes:

‘The reason that in spite of much retardation the subject seldom appeared in literature, is the fact that not all of the retarded were recognized as disabled. The requirements of the agricultural society of the Middle Ages were few. The majority of the population were not called upon to learn to read and write, and the intellectual attainments necessary to get by in life were less rigorous than they are in the complex industrial society of the present. (Holowell Davis, Hearing and deafness, New ork Holy Rinehart and Co. 1960 p8; DG Pritchard Education and the Handicapped, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963 p9)’

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Belief Difference

Forensic Difference

Norman England

In 1066 the Normans took complete political power over the whole of Edward the Confessor’s kingdom by defeating his unsuccessful and short-lived successor Harold. The Normans introduced several immediate changes to the criminal laws of England, although much of the Anglo-Saxon law remained at least for the first century of Norman hegemony.

Briggs et al note:

‘up to one-third of England was designated "forest". In these areas "forest laws" applied. Thus, much of England, albeit the more sparsely populated areas, came under a newaw and new courts. Forest law was not true law, its rules were arbitrary and its introduction was deeply resented by the Anglo-Saxons.’

Briggs et al note:

‘Independent Church courts were established. This led in time to the separation of ecclesiastical and secular law. Church law went in one direction, closer to the old Roman law, state law went another. There was a sharp decline in slavery, that is, most men became subjects.’ TO SOCIAL DIFFERENCE

Briggs et al note:

‘The Normans introduced a new method of trial called trial by battle. In such a trial defendant and complainant fought either in person or by proxy through the use of a champion. Such champions could be used only in disputes over land. Where felonies such as murder were concerned, the defendant had to appear in person. The two combatants fought to a standstill. The loser, if not already killed in battle, was subsequently hanged. As in ordeals, the theory was that God gave the judgement. God would not permit an innocent man to be defeated, therefore the defeated man was guilty.’

Briggs et al note on the anarchy in King Stephen’s reign (1135-54):

‘… law and order broke down completely. Men were dispossessed of their lands; churches sacked; hostages taken; men murdered; women raped; heiresses abducted. Justice was virtually impossible to find; lawlessness ruled. The experience of this anarchy led to a desire for law and order. It was recognized, perhaps for the first time in English history, that a lawless society in the end benefited nobody.’

My note- given the anarchy possible in this part of Norman times, how firm was the grip of the king’s court or the lord’s court in dealing with ill-treatment meted out to the less powerful at other times? - expand.

Culpin notes on changes to English Law- Forest Laws, trial by battle, establishment of church courts, and the introduction of Norman-French as the language of court procedures, with Latin used for court records.

Culpin notes on ‘the over-mighty subject’ that a major problem was with barons and sheriffs becoming powerful beyond the law.

Culpin notes- introduction of King’s Peace (protecting the King and his court plus the main roads (the King’s Highway), and the powerless- women, Jews and foreigners.) Crimes committed within the King’s peace were treated more severely.

Culpin notes- introduction of travelling justices- justices in eyre- to distribute royal justice.

Culpin notes the formation of the jury system as ‘reporters’ (a Grand Jury), and the introduction of gaols in the Assize of Clarendon 1166:

‘King Henry [II], on the advice of all his barons, for the preservation of the peace and the maintenance of justice, has decreed that enquiry shall be made through all the counties and hundreds, through twelve men of the hundred, upon oath that they will speak the truth, whether there be in their hundred, any man accused or suspect of being a robber or murderer.

‘And in every county where there is no gaol, let such be made in a borough or some castle of the king, at the king’s expense and from his wood.’

Culpin notes the extension of Jury trial especially after trial by ordeal was abolished in 1215 when the Church refused to take part in them. Jury trial used a ‘Petty Jury’ as opposed to the reporting Grand Jury above.

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Culpin notes the origin of Justices of the Peace from 1361.

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Culpin notes the tension between the King’s justice and Church courts in the twelfth century.

Culpin notes that Church courts used shaming punishments- public penance, as did local courts- stocks or the pillory.

Culpin notes the Manor Court was very important in the life of the common person in the Middle Ages.

Culpin notes the rise of towns with charters from the King allowing Borough Courts.

Briggs et al note:

‘In 1194 … Richard 1 (1189-1199), … new county officers called coroners [were appointed]. … If an offence such as murder was alleged, the coroner had to inform the sheriff, who was then required to arrest and imprison the felon until the next eyre. The system was designed to ensure that all serious offences were brought to the attention of the court.’

This implies that there were previous difficulties with this.

Briggs et al note:

‘The coroner had another duty, to oversee the banishment of those felons who had taken sanctuary. If a felon could reach the sanctuary of a church, he came under the protection of the church for forty days (the same length of time that Christ spent in the wilderness). At the end of these forty days, the felon had two choices: either to surrender himself for trial or accept banishment. If, as most did, he opted for the latter, he was dressed in sackcloth, and given a wooden cross to carry (these were to identify him as a man who had been banished and was proceeding overseas); he was then sent by the shortest or most direct route along the king’s highway to the nearest port, where he had to embark on the first ship going to a foreign port.’

Briggs et al note:

‘The first English lawbook , titled ‘Glanvil on the laws and customs of England’, was written between 1187 and 1189.’

Briggs et al note:

‘What we would now call family law, sexual offences and testamentary affairs were the concern of the church courts. Thus, for example, if one had committed adultery, borne a bastard child, committed fornication, or had a dispute over a will, one appeared not before a secular court but before a church court.’

Briggs et al note:

‘For most people most of the time, the courts that most impinged on their lives were the local manor courts. … It is significant that these courts administered a mixture of private and public justice, that is they made their own laws but also enforced the king’s.’

Briggs et al note:

Briggs et al note:

Peters notes:

‘In the violent century following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, William I (1066-1087) and his successors attempted to impose their authority throughout the kingdom, but a strong public law and administration did not emerge until the second half of the twelfth century under Henry II (1154-89). Among the first steps toward a strengthened public law was the construction of the Tower of London by William I as the first royal prison in England, bult to hold the king’s enemies.’

Peters notes:

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Peters notes:

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Peters notes:

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Social Difference

Social difference was at the root of this society- classes were defined and relatively inflexible- expand

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Ethnic Difference

Foreigners

Jews

Celts

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Financial Difference

Geremek notes that in the early Middle Ages:

‘Poverty … was not thought to have any intrinsic value or to confer sanctity: wealth and power are bestowed on some by grace of God, while others are fated to be weak and poor; man must accept his destined condition with humility. Research on the writings of Gregory of Tours has shown that Merovingian society was hostile and contemptuous in its attitudes towards the poor. It was not until the eleventh and twelfth centuries, under the influence of the teachings of the Greek Church Fathers and the experiences of Eastern monasticism, that poverty began to be recognized as a spiritual value.’

Geremek notes that medieval charity:

‘… although motivated by genuine compassion, was at the same time the result of careful calculation: it was an excellent way of ‘buying’ salvation and an ostentatious way of demonstrating one’s wealth and Christian principles.’

Geremek notes that at the end of the medieval period and the early Renaissance there were efforts at reform of the charitable system in both the Protestant and Catholic traditions. The reformists felt that the charitable system:

‘represented a serious threat to society by making a life of begging attractive. The Reformists presented medieval charity as an intrinsically defective system which failed, not only because of embezzlement and misappropriation of funds on the part of individuals and institutions, but also because it was fundamentally flawed: the sums disbursed in charity were quite enormous; alms were given indiscriminately, not according to need; and the administration of charitable institutions was entirely in the hands of the clergy – the secular authorities and indeed all laymen being excluded from the organization of charity. The exaltation of poverty and alms giving that lay at the foundation of this system undermined or even denied the work ethic, which ought to be the fundamental principle guiding the work of the masses.’

However Geremek notes that Medieval literature and Church policy show that work was seen as a duty in this period and the Church denied alms to many of those seen as capable of work.

QUERY DATING OF THIS – DOES IT MEAN THE REFORMATION

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Geremek notes that in the medieval period:

‘The poor knew their place and their role in the social order: they were there to enable others to buy salvation through alms-giving.’

Geremek notes that:

‘A variety of doctrines developed concerning the idea of povert, but all were built on the social teaching of the gospels. …. humility and weakness are defining characteristics in the early Christian exaltation of poverty. Crucial to this doctrine was the belief that poverty, in order to be a virtue, must be voluntary … [as] the poverty of Christ was voluntary.’

Note that the poverty must be willed, not accidental, and desired, not opposed, for it to have high status.

Geremek notes that the classic formulation of the doctrine of Charity comes from the Life of St Eligius:

‘God could have made all men rich,, but He wanted there to be poor people in tis world, that the rich might be able to redeem their sins.’

Geremek notes that the above may easily have been reversed so that God wanted there to be rich people in the world to allow assistance to the poor- this more clearly justifying the existence the rich.

Geremek notes:

‘The Christian doctrine of poverty had little to do with social reality; poverty was treated as a purely spiritual value. Thus the medieval exaltation of poverty did not alter the fact that the pauper was treated not as a subject but as an object of the Christian community. … thus the criterion of poverty was not material wealth or its lack,, but rather power, privilege and social position. … Christianity radically overhauled its social ideology, adapting it to a new situation in which structures of domination had to be sanctioned, and in which relations of dependence based on land ownership played a primary role.’

The origin of the elevation of poverty is in Matthew 19:21 – 19:30:

‘Matthew 19:21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go [and] sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come [and] follow me.

Matthew 19:22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.

Matthew 19:23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 19:24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Matthew 19:25 When his disciples heard [it], they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?

Matthew 19:26 But Jesus beheld [them], and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

Matthew 19:27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?

Matthew 19:28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Matthew 19:29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

Matthew 19:30 But many [that are] first shall be last; and the last [shall be] first.’

Geremek notes that Tertullian (DATES fl 197ce)concurred:

‘Deus semper pauperus justicavit, divites praedamnat’ – (‘God has always looked with favour upon the poor and condemned the rich’)

WAS TERTULLIAN CHRISTIAN, WAS THE GOD HERE A CHRISTIAN GOD??

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Geremek notes:

‘The development of trade in the eleventh and twelfth centuries created a new situation which as Lester K Little has shown, transformed the ethos of poverty. In this new situation, wealth loses its former ‘social’ quality: it is no longer the result of privileges conferred by power, land ownership and military conquests. It is now based on money, and expressed solely in money.’

Geremek notes that this change in social and economic structure led to a new ethos of poverty which was institutionalised and managed solely by the Church. The wealthy were expected to endow the church with funds to allow the feeding of the poor and the giving of other charity. Geremek notes that this became ritualized and institutionalized. The outcome was that donations to the church in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for the upkeep of monasteries, hospitals and religious orders with the poor coming last on the list of actual beneficiaries.’

The Aged

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