GROWTH OF THE HUMANITARIAN MOVEMENT THROUGHOUT EUROPE—IN
THE DARK AGES—CHURCH TAKES UP THE HUMANITARIAN WORK IN
THE SEVENTH CENTURY—SALE OF CHILDREN COMMON—STORY OF
SAINT BATHILDE—CHILDREN SOLD FOR FATHER’S DEBTS—DATHEUS
THE FIRST TO OFFER CHILDREN A HOME—APPEAL OF POPE
INNOCENT III.
In the Eastern Empire it was always a fight with the Church on the
one hand and barbarian customs on the other for the humanization of
the rapidly developing peoples. We may now look at the Dark Ages in
a very different spirit from that which animated our fathers. We now
know that whatever may have been the faults of the priests or the
rulers, the world was making progress, and new and inherently strong
peoples were developing as fast as they could assimilate a superior
civilization.[404]
The Church, very early in the history of the Christian era, became the
avowed protector of the parentless children and it soon became a custom
to confide infants to the Church when mothers felt that they were
unable to raise their offspring. The gain made by the Church by this
step was immeasurable, for however much those opposed to Christianity
might argue, the onward march was irresistible when religion rested
itself on the mother instinct and, without accusation or attempted
retribution, willingly assumed the ties that maternity was obliged to
forego.
By the door of the churches it became the custom to have a marble
receptacle in which mothers placed the children that they were forced
to abandon. The newly born was received by the _matricularii_ or
by the priest, who, following the form prescribed, asked those who
assisted at the adoption ceremonies if there was any known person who
would consent to take charge of the infant. These formalities had
to receive the sanction of the bishop. Not infrequently the priest
succeeded in finding among the parishioners of his church someone who
would adopt the infant, but if he did not, the church always assumed
the responsibility and took care of the orphan. In some places the
children that had been abandoned by their mothers were, by the order
of the bishop, shown at the door of the church for ten days following
their abandonment, and if any one recognized and was able to declare
who the parents were, he made such a declaration to the ecclesiastical
authorities—a dangerous custom as many unfortunate though innocent
people discovered.
In the case where some person not officially connected with the church
assumed the responsibility of bringing up the abandoned child, such
a person (_nutricarii_) received with the charge, a document wherein
the fact of adoption was set forth, the circumstances under which the
child was found, and the right of the adoptive parent to hold the child
henceforth as a slave. In this connection it must be remembered that
the Code of Justinian, which had put an end to this custom in the East,
had no force in the West. The result was that in the European States
which succeeded to the Western Roman Empire it was an almost general
custom that abandoned children grew up in slavery. Indeed, so general
was this custom that even the Church placed the newly born as among
its assets, the church of Seville in Spain enumerating the number of
abandoned children taken in as among its revenues.
At the Council of Rouen, held in the seventh century, the priests of
each diocese were enjoined to inform their congregations that women
who were delivered in secret might leave their infants at the door of
the church. The church thereby attended to the immediate care of the
newly born, and while the fact that the children were brought up in
slavery was bad, it was a great improvement over the conditions in Rome
and Greece. At least, if brought up in slavery, they were brought up
with no criminal purpose and as far as the ecclesiastical authorities
were able to regulate their lives, they were not condemned to lives of
immorality.
So bad, however, were the conditions in the seventh century, and so
miserable and poor were the people, that despite the example and the
preachings of the Church, thousands of children were thrown on the
highways or left in deserted places to perish of starvation. Among
the Gauls, before the domination of the Franks, the heads of families
that lacked food, or the means to obtain it, took to the market their
children and sold them as they would the veriest chattels.[405] This
traffic was not only common but it took place publicly, and not only in
ancient France but in Germany, in Flanders, in Italy, and in England.
Northern Europe was colder, more swampy, and more desolate then than
it is now and across the bleak and uncultivated country, country such
as one finds nowhere in Europe today but on the professional and bleak
battlefields of Bulgaria and Servia, the half-starved peasants tramped,
each with his group of children to place on sale when the coasts of
Italy or France were reached.
It was in this way that Saint Bathilde, afterward the wife of King
Clovis II., became the slave of the mayor of the palace, Archambault.
Bought by the latter, she was working as a slave in his household when
the King saw her and fell in love with her.[406]
Moved by such great misery and such odious traffic, holy men went,
purse in hand, to the places where these infants were being sold and
purchased the unfortunates, giving them later their liberty. In this
manner, Saint Eunice was purchased by an Abbé du Berry and Saint Thean
by Saint Eloi.
The poverty led to even worse crimes than the selling of their own
children for when it was found by the shiftless and impoverished that
they could sell their own children and the foundlings that they picked
up, not infrequently they robbed more fortunate parents of children
that were being well taken care of.
Similar distress and want had led to similar conditions in the fifth
century. In 449 A.D., the times were so hard and the people were in
such a famished condition in Italy and Gaul that parents sold their
children to middlemen even though they knew the children were to be
resold to the Vandals in Africa. Two years later Valentinian broke up
this practice, declaring that the person who sold a free person for the
purpose of having that person sold to the barbarians would be fined six
ounces of gold.[407]
This traffic was carried to such an excess in the British Islands that
it became the principal object of an apostolic mission of Gregory who
became Pope in 590.
“Our Divine Redeemer,” he wrote, “has delivered us from all servitude
and has given unto us our original liberty. Let us imitate his example
by freeing from slavery those men who are free by the laws of nature.”
The attitude toward children in England under the Anglo-Saxon
kings[408] is shown by the fact that a boy’s accountability, his
capability of bearing arms and of the management of his property began,
according to the earlier laws, in his tenth, but according to the laws
of Æthelstan, in his twelfth year.[409] “The accountability of children
was extended even to the infant in the cradle, whereby, in the case of
theft committed by the father, they, like those of mature age, were
consigned to slavery, but this cruel practice was by a law of Cnut
strictly forbidden.[410] This premature majority of the Anglo-Saxon
youth accounts for the early accession to the throne of some of the
kings, as Edward the Martyr, who was crowned in his thirteenth year.
Majority at the age of ten is not mentioned in any other Germanic laws,
excepting in favour of the young testator, or the son whose father
could not or would not support him. The beginning of the thirteenth
year as that of majority is strictly and universally Germanic.”[411]
“The doctrines of the Church,” say Terme and Monfalcon, “were indeed
admirable—they breathed the purest, the finest morality and the most
ardent love of humanity, but they were unable to prevail against the
ignorance of the people and the barbarity of their morals.”
Coming to the first attempts at organized effort to save children by
the Church we find that Article 70 of the Council of Nicaea instructed
the bishop to establish in each city a place to which travellers,
the sick and the poor, might appeal for aid and shelter. The
_Xenodocheion_, as it was called, is to this day the word for “hotel”
in modern Greece, where the traveller in Europe will conclude there is
little evidence of improvement since the ecclesiastical foundation.
These places were also used as the asylums for children, a fact that
led them to be called _Brephotrophia_.[412]
In the West a similar movement sprang up, and in the life of Saint
Gour, contemporary of Childebert, it is said that at Trèves there was
something like a systematic endeavour to protect children. A great
obscurity hangs around this foundation, and it is equally difficult to
determine positively what is the exact character of the institution
ascribed to Saint Marmbœuf, who died in Angers in 654.
Of the efforts of Datheus, however, there are no doubts, though
interesting is the fact that no biographical encyclopædia contains even
his name. He was Archbishop of Milan, and the first institution to
take care of helpless children was founded by him in 787.
“An enervating and sensual life,” declared Datheus in founding the
asylum, “leads many astray. They commit adultery and do not dare show
the fruits in public and therefore put them to death. By depriving the
children of baptism they send them to hell. These horrors would not
take place if there existed an asylum where the adulterer could hide
her shame, but now they throw the infants in the sewers or the rivers
and many are the murders committed on the new-born children as the
result of this illicit intercourse.
“Therefore, I, Datheus, for the welfare of my soul and the souls of my
associates, do hereby establish in the house that I have bought next to
the church, a hospital for foundling children. My wish is that as soon
as a child is exposed at the door of a church that it will be received
in the hospital and confided to the care of those who will be paid to
look after them.... These infants will be taught a trade and my wish is
that when they arrive at the age of eight years they will be free from
the shackles of slavery and free to come or go wherever they will.”[413]
In 1380 a similar institution was opened in Venice, and in Florence in
1421. There is no doubt that similar institutions were most frequent
in the fifteenth century. Pontanus, a writer of that age, speaks of
having seen nine hundred children in the one at Naples, and openly
expresses his admiration for the liberal education that they received
and the care bestowed on them by their teachers.[414]
The most purely religious institute appears to have been, according
to the able Gaillard, that of the Bourgognes[415] in imitation of
the charity of St. Marthe in her house in Bethany. An order, that of
the _chanoines réguliers du Saint Esprit_, was founded, or at least
encouraged by Guy of Montpellier about the end of the twelfth century
for the express purpose of caring for poor and abandoned children. The
same institution is also said to have had for its founder, Olivier de
la Crau in 1010. In any case it was not until 1188, eight years after
the foundation of the order ascribed to Guy of Montpellier, that the
hospital of Marseilles was established.
The historians of Languedoc[416] do not justify the assumption that
this same Guy was the son of the Count of Montpellier, and all that
we know is that “Brother Guy” or “Master Guy,” as he was differently
called,[417] apparently founded an asylum for sick men and abandoned
children.
The success of this order was immediate. In 1197, Bernard de Montlaur
and his wife left a substantial donation to the Hospital of Saint
Esprit at Montpellier, and to Guy, its founder.[418] Public approval
was followed by official approval, for the Senate of Marseilles, or the
Honourable Council, as it was called, held its meetings in the hospital
founded there by Guy in 1188 and began its deliberations always with a
discussion about the condition of the poor.[419]
Following the efforts of Guy of Montpellier, at Montpellier and at
Marseilles, the movement, under the auspices of the _hospitaliers_ of
Saint Esprit, spread so rapidly that before the end of the century
there were institutions at Rome,[420] one at Bergliac, and one at
Troyes, and others in different places.[421] The order founded by Guy
was given the approval of the Holy See, and its founder was called to
Rome by Innocent III. and placed in charge of the house of Santa Maria
in Sassia, where the Pope wished the same spirit that had marked Guy’s
own institution at Montpellier. Guy died in Rome, 1208.
[Illustration: FILLING CHRISTMAS BASKETS FOR POOR CHILDREN—MOTHERS’
HELPING HAND CLUB, NEW YORK CITY]
The house of Santa Maria in Sassia to which Guy was called was attached
to the church of that name which had been founded by Gna, king of the
later Saxons, in 715. It had undergone many disastrous changes, but
in 1198 Innocent III., at his own expense, had it renovated and
repaired for the sick and poor of Rome. In 1204, moved by the frequency
with which the fishermen of the Tiber found in their nets the bodies of
children that had been thrown into the river, the Pope dedicated part
of the hospital to the care of abandoned children, and it was to this
institution that Guy of Montpellier was called.
The humane movement spread rapidly, generally under at least the
nominal guidance of the Order of Saint Esprit. Many institutions,
however, were founded in the name of Saint Esprit where little
attention was paid to children.
The institution at Embeck[422] founded in 1274 made a special work of
taking care of abandoned children in the name of Saint Esprit. We come
now to the name of Enrad Fleinz,[423] that bourgeois of Nuremberg,
who in 1331 founded in his natal town the first hospital where not
only children might be left, but where women might go to be delivered,
without regard to whether the offspring were legitimate or not. This,
too, was in the name of Saint Esprit, and in the year 1362, a similar
asylum for orphans was founded in Paris.
It was indeed under the auspices of this order that the movement
which began with the imperial _Brephotrophia_ in the sixth century
grew, until the various institutions of one sort or another intended
to prevent the outright murder of children or their abandonment in
deserted places were dependent, not on the humanity of any one man
or group of men, but on the new-born spirit that was then spreading
throughout Europe and that continued to spread even when individualism
and materialism as ruling forces had supplanted religion and
asceticism. The history of charity, which, as Lecky says, is yet to
be written, will doubtless reveal, when it comes to be written, the
various unappreciated factors that went to produce the humane movement.
Some idea of how rapidly these institutions had multiplied may be
obtained from a bull of Nicholas IV., containing a long enumeration
of the various foundations, which includes places in Italy, Sicily,
Germany, England, France, and Spain.[424]
Besides those enumerated by the Pope, there were however other
institutions springing up where, either as an adjunct to hospital work
or as an independent work itself, children were being cared for. As
one of the original and most scholarly writers on this phase of the
subject has pointed out, it is difficult to make positive statements
about these foundations, for the men interested were intent on their
work rather than on leaving a record of it behind. Perhaps in this
connection, some future historian, in viewing the voluminous charitable
records of our day, will assume that “social” egotism has been well
saddled, and made to do more than the work of a timely charitable
impulse.
[Illustration: SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL, FOUNDER OF THE FIRST PERMANENT
ASYLUM FOR CHILDREN IN FRANCE]
The conditions that led to the crusade of Vincent of Paul antedated
that philanthropist by several hundred years. Where the religious
spirit had failed to arouse interest in the problem of the welfare of
parentless children, the large cities of Europe were themselves forced
to take some action. Milan, in 1168, on the prayer of the Cardinal
Galdinus, founded a hospital (which would indicate that the institution
founded by Datheus had either fallen into disuse or was inadequate) and
Venice in 1380 followed the example of Milan, while the magnificent
hospital for foundling children in Florence (Spidale degl’ Innocenti)
was founded, after a long deliberation in open council, on October 25,
1421.
Included in these governmental or municipal movements is that of St.
Thomas of Villeneuve, Archbishop of Valence, who created an asylum in
his own palace at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and gave
orders that no children presented there should be turned away.
The Hotel-Dieu de Notre Dame de Pitié of Lyons, which by letters patent
of 1720 was declared to be the oldest hospital of France, commenced in
1523 the same work, and in that year is recorded as having received
nine children. On February 25, 1530, François the First recognized the
right of the institution to take in these children.
In 1596 the city of Amsterdam began to make provision for the abandoned
children.
The beginning of the movement in Paris, we learn, was the result of
the terrible conditions that followed the war in 1360, 1361, and
1362.[425] Poverty and misery were everywhere, and a large number of
orphans practically lived and died in the streets, says Breuil in his
_Antiquités de Paris_. Various charitable people took in some of these
unfortunates, the Hotel-Dieu being overrun; but, as the conditions were
but little ameliorated, on February 7, 1362, a group of citizens went
to the “Reverend father in God, Messire Jean de Meulant, 88th Bishop
of Paris,” and discussed with him the frightful conditions of the poor
boys and girls of Paris. The evils attending the homeless condition of
the latter were especially considered. We are told that the result of
the conference was that the Bishop gave them permission to institute
and erect a hospital of Saint Esprit and bestowed on each one of the
conferees forty days’ indulgence.
The institution that arose as a result of this conference has been
criticized as being narrow in its purpose, inasmuch as the rules
declared that only legitimate children, born of parents in Paris,
were to be admitted; but the restriction, it must be understood, was
necessary, in view of the small funds in hand.
But humanitarian feeling was growing; and people were beginning to
be proud of being thoughtful and kind. It was no longer a mark of
superiority to be lustful of blood. Botterays, in a Latin poem on
Paris,[426] spoke of the splendid way in which the orphan children of
Paris were brought up, referring to the Hospital of Saint Esprit and
the House of the Enfants-Dieu. After long years of nominal acquiescence
in its teachings, the barbarians of the North were really beginning to
accept the Christianity of Christ.