Continuity and Change 3 (2), 1988, 145-151. Printed in Great Britain
Introduction
SPECIAL ISSUE
CHARITY AND THE POOR IN MEDIEVAL AND
RENAISSANCE EUROPE
This special issue of Continuity and Change is based in part on the
proceedings of a conference on poverty in Italy and England between 1300
and 1600, held at Somerville College, Oxford, on 20 September 1986.1 The
aim in adopting a comparative approach was to attempt to overcome the
common historiographical divide which has dominated most studies of
poor relief, between, on the one hand, northern and southern Europe and,
on the other hand, late medieval and early modern history.2 The objectives
of both the conference and this volume were largely the same. First, to look
at the changes in the main institutional systems of poor relief in Italy and
England; secondly, to examine other more informal systems of charity at
the local level of parish, family and kin; and finally to survey some of the
causes of impoverishment, and especially widowhood and ill health.
Brian Pullan and Marjorie Mclntosh examine some of the main
institutional forms of charity available to the poor in Italy and England
respectively. One of the main contributions of Pullan's piece is that he
moves away from the campanilismo ('love of the bell-tower') which
characterises so many Italian studies by comparing the 'traditions' of
charity in four great cities: Florence, Genoa, Rome and Venice.3 Pullan
explains also that there was no radical break after 1500 in the way charity
was provided; the poor continued to be served mainly by private lay
institutions of religious confraternities and hospitals, and later in some
places by the Observant Franciscan-inspired Monte di Pieta. However,
one must beware of over-simplifying a complex political picture for, as
Pullan shows, differing political structures could lead to different
approaches in dealing with the poor.
More drastic changes were afoot in sixteenth-century England, as is
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JOHN HENDERSON
made clear by Marjorie Mclntosh. The main institutional forms of poor
relief - fraternities, hospitals, and monasteries - were swept away between
1536 and 1547 by the Reformation.4 However, through her examination
of institutional charity before the Reformation we know that there was a
much greater continuity in the method of distributing poor relief than this
wholesale dismantling of the institutional fabric of medieval charity
implies. In both late medieval and early modern English towns and
villages the parish was one of the main sources of poor relief: before the
Reformation through the medium of the fraternities and afterwards as the
basic unit for the collection and distribution of poor rates.5 Moreover, this
institutional continuity was underlined by continuity of personnel; for
poor-law administrators tended to be drawn from the same social groups
which before the Reformation had run parish fraternities.
It should be stressed that this schematic division between English
dependence on the parish for the distribution of charity and Italian
reliance on large voluntary corporations is a vast over-simplification and
may have more to do with historical perceptions of administrative
structures than with the strict reality of poor relief at the local level.
Studies of the large charities of many medieval towns and cities leave the
impression that these institutions often only barely touched the surface of
a vast problem. This type of charity at best only provided temporary
rather than permanent relief to certain well-defined categories of the poor.
One is thus lead to consider how charitable institutions defined their role,
and why these definitions changed over time and place. But it also forces
us to consider how the poor managed to survive and therefore to
investigate the other types of help available to them. In order to do this,
it will be necessary to begin to look further at the other levels of charity
beyond the large institutions, and in particular at the neighbourhood and
kinship and family groups.
In Italy, for example, a fruitful line of enquiry may be to examine the
almost totally neglected subject of the urban parish as a potential source
of poor relief.6 In my own article on fourteenth-century Florence I have
analysed the charitable activity of one fraternity, the ' Company of the
Roast Chestnuts', during the decades surrounding the Black Death. The
members of this fraternity lived exclusively in this parish of S. Frediano
and the provision of free burial and alms to the local poor expressed their
sense of local identity. While it is true that this fraternity was particularly
well documented, it seems improbable that the parish of S. Frediano was
unique either to Florence or to cities in other parts of late-medieval Italy.
It may be simply that systems of Italian parish charity were not as well
defined as in England and therefore sources bearing on this subject have
proved more difficult to trace.
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INTRODUCTION
Evidently the more formalised mechanisms for distributing charity
varied from country to country. Thus the parish fraternity remained the
main system for subsidising the poor in the predominantly rural society of
England, whereas the large confraternities and hospitals dominated almsgiving in the towns and cities of northern and central Italy. But the ruralurban comparison is far from being the only explanation; late-medieval
London, for example, had a much larger number of parish-based
fraternities than a city such as Florence.7 Clearly, then, it is necessary to
move away from the more traditional focus of poor-relief studies and
attempt to place the findings of institutional historians more squarely
within the wider social context.8 Thus Peter Laslett in his wide-ranging
paper considers the relationship between the informal support of the
family and kin and that supplied by more formal charitable institutions or
the State. He asks whether the structure of the household might have
affected the availability of support systems. Were the poorer members of
a society where the nuclear family was dominant more likely to have
depended on the 'collectivity' than in a society characterized by multiple
households, where more than one generation lived under the same roof?
Studies of poor relief in areas of urban Italy and rural England, where
most families were nuclear in character, have indicated that administrators
of charitable funds paid particular attention to the victims of life-cycle
poverty. These included children or adolescents who had been orphaned
and were too young to work, recently married couples with very young
children, and the elderly who were too infirm or too old to support
themselves adequately.9
Among the worst casualties of life-cycle poverty were the elderly,
and especially widows. Isabelle Chabot shows in her study of fifteenthcentury Florence that in addition to a widow's relatively low earning
capacity and low social status, she was particularly disadvantaged by the
nature of the legal system and its inevitable delays. Her position was
exacerbated when she was faced either by obstructive relatives-in-law who
refused to return a dowry, or by her own kin who might deny her right to
tornata, which should have guaranteed her a place in her parental
household until such time as she was able to set up a household on her
own.10 Accommodation seems to have remained one of a widow's
constant problems and helps to explain their high dependence on
institutional support in Italy. It still remains a problem to understand how
widows managed to survive in early fifteenth-century Florence, especially
as, unlike England in the same period, they do not appear to have played
a significant role in the local economy.11 Many older women probably
patched together a living by a combination of charity from friends and
institutions, begging, and intermittent employment.
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JOHN HENDERSON
Another cause of poverty for the poor in general and the elderly in
particular was sickness, which led to an inability to earn a living. This
subject is examined by Margaret Pelling in her paper on morbidity as
recorded by the census of the English poor living in Norwich in 1570.
Pelling argues that the authorities were very concerned with sickness
among the poor. This concern becomes even more understandable when
it is realised that sickness was not simply a function of old age, but that
significant numbers of the working population were described in the
census as 'poor sick' and therefore excluded from the labour market.
About 1 in 14 of the adult poor in Norwich between the ages of 25 and
59 were recorded as sick or disabled in the census. Indeed the figure of 1
in 14 may be an under-estimate since the municipality tended to have a
very elastic definition of'able-bodied'; even a widow of 80, who was lame
and ' one-handed', came within this category.
The picture which has emerged from these essays has emphasised both
the similarities and differences in the ways in which charity was distributed
in Italy and England between 1300 and 1600. It is now evident, for
example, that there was much greater continuity in the basic mechanisms
for distributing alms between the late medieval and early modern periods
even in England, which saw the dismantling of the very system of
institutional charity which remained so important in Italy. Both countries
also experienced the same change in moral climate which was expressed
in the growing distinctions between the deserving and undeserving
poor.12 This led at best to what Brian Pullan has called a new ' redemptive'
role in charity with the establishment of nunneries for reformed
prostitutes, but at worst it led to the forcible confinement of syphilitics
in order to cleanse the streets from 'corruption'.13
If this volume has emphasised continuity over time, it has also
underlined what appears to have been a basic difference in terms of
English dependence on the parish and Italian reliance on large charities.
One of the goals of future research might be to blur this distinction by
exploring further the role of the larger charities in England and
mechanisms of poor relief at the local level in Italy. The Italian parish is
an obvious starting-point as a source of charity, especially as the
government of a number of Italian towns relied on parochial administration and personnel during crises of famine and plague.14 This should lead
us away from the formalised and institutional sources of support towards
that provided through more informal social networks. One way of
approaching this subject is through the relationship between charities and
the local community, as in the provision of free or highly subsidised
accommodation to the clients of such institutions as Orsanmichele of
Florence.15
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INTRODUCTION
Another important area which has emerged for future study is the
relationship between family and community, or relatives and institutional
charity. It is necessary to judge the significance of the help offered to the
poor by institutions against the apparent alternative of support by the
family.16 We might compare, as Peter Laslett has suggested, the supportive
roles of the extended with the nuclear household. This could be tested, for
example, in fifteenth-century Tuscany where there was a wide variety of
household types from solitaries (14 per cent), to simple conjugal families
(55 per cent) to the multiple households (19 per cent).17 This would also
serve to take research in this field away from the Italian town and into the
countryside to discover if there was, for example, a Tuscan equivalent to
the English 'maintenance contract' which guaranteed to the aged a basic
minimum livelihood.18
Mention of the aged leads us to one of the main areas which needs
further investigation: how far did the demographic regime of a given
society govern the choice of the type of pauper to subsidise? It is well
known that growing population pressure in the first half of the sixteenth
century led to a general development of poor-relief facilities in both Italy
and England. But a more specific study of the sex and age structure of
given populations in early modern Europe would help us to identify how
far regional variations in the categories of those most at risk were
mirrored in the types of people chosen as the main recipients of poor relief.
But also, as has been mentioned in relation to the financial position of
women, it is necessary to take into account the economic structures of
each society and the availability of work. The records of local institutions
must be placed more firmly within a wider social, demographic and
economic context in order to widen the scope of future studies in this
field.
JOHN HENDERSON
ENDNOTES
1 I am most grateful to Barbara Harvey of Somerville College, Oxford, for her
enthusiasm and efficiency in co-organising the conference, and to the Wellcome Trust
and the History Faculty, University of Oxford, for their generous financial support.
2 The main exceptions are C. Lis, H. Soly, Poverty and capitalism in pre-industrial Europe
(Sussex, 1979); B. Geremek, Mendicanti e miserabili nelVEuropa moderna (1350-1600)
(Paris, 1980), and Lapieta e laforca. Storia delta miseria e della carita in Europa (Rome,
Bari, 1986); and the collection of essays in T. Riis., ed., Aspects of poverty in early
modern Europe (Stuttgart, 1981).
3 See also Pullan's survey article 'Poveri, mendicanti e vagabondi (secoli XIV-XVII)', in
Storia d'Italia, Annali 1. Dal feudalismo al capitalismo (Turin, 1978), 981-1047; and in
the same volume: S. J. Woolf, ' La formazione del proletariate' (sec. XVIII-XIX)
1049-78; G. Politi, M. Rosa, F. della Peruta, eds., Timore e carita. I poveri neWItalia
moderna. Atti del convegno 'Pauperismo e assistenza negli antichi stati italiani'
(Cremona, 28-30 marzo 1980), (Cremona, 1982).
149
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JOHN HENDERSON
4 The standard work on English poor relief in this period is now: P. Slack, Poverty and
policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988).
5 For the role of the parish at the local level in seventeenth-century England see T. Wales,
'Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle: some evidence from seventeenth-century
Norfolk', in the important volume of essays: R. M. Smith, ed., Land, kinship and lifecycle (Cambridge, 1984) 386-87.
6 See, though, D. Romano, 'Charity and community in early renaissance Venice',
Journal of urban history 11 (1984) 63-81, and D. V. and F. W. Kent, Neighbours and
neighbourhood in renaissance Florence. The district of the red lion in the fifteenth century
(New York, 1982) 132. See also S. K. Cohn Jr.'s study of social relations within the
Florentine parish in his book: The laboring classes in renaissance Florence (New York,
London, 1980).
7 Cf. C. M. Barron, 'The parish fraternities of medieval London', in C. M. Barron, C.
Harper-Bill, eds., Essays in honour of F. R. H. Du Boulay (Suffolk, 1985) 13-37, and
J. Henderson, 'Confraternities and the church in late-medieval Florence', Studies in
church history 23 (1986) 69-83.
8 This has been one of the themes of the research project, entitled ' Work and family in
pre-industrial Europe', organised by C. Poni and S. J. Woolf at the European University
Institute, Florence.
9 On Florence see: A. Spicciani, "The "poveri vergognosi" infifteenth-centuryFlorence.
The first 30 years' activity of the Buonomini di S. Martino', Riis, ed., Aspects of
Poverty, 119-82, and S. J, Woolf, The poor in western Europe in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries (London, 1986) ch. 7; on England: R. M. Smith, 'Some issues
concerning families and their property in rural England 1250-1800', in Smith, ed.,
Land, kinship and life-cycle, 74-77, and Wales, 'Poverty, poor relief, in Ibid.,
351^*04.
10 See also C. Klapisch-Zuber, Women, family and ritual in renaissance Italy (Chicago,
1985) 117-31, and T. Kuehn, 'Some ambiguities of female inheritance ideology in the
renaissance', Continuity and change 1, 11-36.
11 On women's employment see D. Herlihy, C. Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their families.
A study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (New Haven, London, 1985), 124; KlapischZuber, Women, family and ritual, ch. 8; J. C. Brown, J.Goodman, 'Women and
industry in Florence', The Journal of Economic History 40 (1980), 73-80. Some recent
work on England includes P. J. P. Goldberg, ' Female labour, service, and marriage in
the late medieval urban north', Northern History, 11 (1986), 18-38; and B. A.
Holderness,' Widows in pre-industrial society: an essay upon their economic functions',
in R. M. Smith, ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle, 423-42.
12 For Italy see Pullan's paper above, and for England: Slack, Poverty and policy.
13 This was not simply moral corruption, but also the 'corruption' produced by disease
which infected the air. See, for example, the reactions in the early 1520s of Cardinal
Giulio de'Medici in Florence and the Health Board of Venice: G. Richa, Notizie
istoriche delle chiesefiorentine,divise ne' suoi quartieri (Florence, 1754-62), 7, 319, and
A. Corradi, 'Nuovi documenti per la storia delle malattie veneree in Italia dallafinedel
quattrocento alia meta del cinquecento', Annali universali di medicina e chirugia 269
(1884) 379.
14 Milan and Venice, for example: G. Albini, Guerra, fame, peste. Crisi di mortalita e
sistema sanitaria nella Lombardia tardomedioevale (Bologna, 1982) 85-7; B. Pullan,
' The famine in Venice and the new poor law, 1527-1529', Bollettino dell 'istituto di storia
della societa e dello stato Veneziano, 5—6 (1963-64), 173—74.
15 As suggested in my paper in this volume. For England see the Introduction to F. W.
Dendy, ed., Extracts from the records of the company of hostmen of Newcastle-upon-
150
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INTRODUCTION
Tyne, Publications of the Surtees Society 105 (1901), and for institutional-community
relations see S. Cavallo,' Strategie politiche e familiari intorno al baliatico. II monopolio
dei bambini abbandonati nel Canavese tra Sei e Settecento', Quaderni storici, 18 (1983)
391-420.
16 See the study for early nineteenth-century Florence by Woolf, The poor in western
Europe, ch. 7.
17 Herlihy, Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their families, 292; Table 10.1.
18 See E. Clark, 'Some aspects of social security in medieval England', Journal of Family
History 7 (1982) 307-20; R. M. Smith, 'The structured dependence of the elderly as a
recent development: some skeptical historical thoughts', Ageing and society 4 (1984)
409-428.
151
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