(247–328), may be regarded as having most brilliantly inaugurated the
era of Christian charity in the Middle Ages. Simple and modest, kind
to the suffering and to the needy, she tended and consoled the poor
with maternal solicitude; her fortune was exclusively devoted to their
relief. When, in her extreme old age, this pious lady went to visit the
Holy Places in Palestine, she made most munificent gifts to the sick
soldiers, whom the imperial government left without relief; also to the
places where the inhabitants were poor; and to the religious houses
and churches, whose mission it was “to succour the suffering members
of Jesus Christ” (Fig. 265), according to the figurative expression
which the new faith used to characterize human misery. She recalled the
exiles, ransomed the captives, released from the mines the unfortunate
men who had been condemned to labour underground, and obtained for them
the means of living in open daylight, thus causing them to bless her
name and that of her God. Her daughter Constance also devoted herself
to works of charity; she was accompanied by a band of maidens whom she
animated with her example--and this was, in fact, the first school of
Sisters of Charity.
Despite the religious disputes of this century, Christian charity
did not stop here; it received a further impulse during the reign of
Theodosius, thanks to Placilla his wife, and to Pulcheria his daughter,
both of whom were canonised after death. Placilla and Pulcheria were
the guardian angels of the imperial palace, Placilla especially
being full of compassion for all those who were in distress. She
would go, without attendant, to visit the poor in their hovels; she
passed whole days with the sick in the infirmaries attached to the
canonical churches and convents, never shrinking from any charitable
service, however repugnant it might be. Pulcheria, a worthy rival of
her mother, was associated with her in all these good works by their
eloquent panegyrist, St. Gregory of Nyssa. She was, nevertheless,
outdone by another Pulcheria, grand-daughter of the great Theodosius,
who was called _augusta_, and who already, at the death of her
father the Emperor Arcadius, though at that time only sixteen, was a
model of piety and wisdom; she established so severe a rule of life
and such complete asceticism around her, that her palace was commonly
“the convent” (_asceterium vulgo diceretur_). For forty years she
reigned like a saint and a great empress, and this period was for the
Church a golden age.
[Illustration: Fig. 267.--The Holy Brothers, Cosmas and Damianus
(end of the Third Century), visiting a sick man and relieving
him.--Picture on wood, by Francesco Peselli, in the Louvre
(Fifteenth Century).]
Many other heroines of Christian charity descended from an illustrious
family at that time exiled in the forests of Pontus, were also
distinguished by the same virtues; to wit, Emmelia, mother of St.
Basilius, Macrina his aunt, and Macrina his sister, who were true
servants of the poor, undertaking as they did long journeys to
discover unknown suffering, with a view to its relief. Anthusa,
mother of St. John Chrysostom, suffered great privations in order to
give away as much as possible, whilst Olympiade, widow of a prefect
of Constantinople, and heiress of an immense fortune, distributed
her money with ungrudging freedom. The emperor, who was anxious to
marry Olympiade to a member of his own family, deprived her of the
management of her property, but afterwards restored it to her, knowing
what a noble use she would make of it. Olympiade visited the sick, the
orphans, the widows, and the aged, gave alms to the prisoners and the
exiles, and ransomed the captives, for her liberality knew no bounds;
she was, moreover, seconded in her works of charity by ecclesiastical
virgins (_vierges ecclésiastiques_), devoted to the service of
God. Never was woman’s apostolic mission more effective, nor had
charity more zealous servants.
The wonderful influence which Olympiade and her companions exercised
in the Christian world, towards the close of the fourth century, was
derived from their ardent charity, which radiated from Constantinople
throughout the whole empire, and awoke a sympathetic response at Rome,
Milan, Lyons, Trèves, Rheims, &c. Thus Melanie, the elder daughter of
the Consul Marcellinus, Proba, Falconia, St. Juliana, St. Demetriada,
St. Paula, mother of St. Ambrose, and her daughter St. Marcellina,
Roman ladies of the highest rank, were endowed with the heroism of
the Roman character purified by the Christian religion. St. Ambrose,
who has given us so touching an account of their good works, calls
them “the august brides of Jesus Christ.” They dwelt with their own
families, but passed nearly all their time in workshops, where they
laboured together for the benefit of the poor, leaving off their
occupations only to sing hymns, recite psalms, attend church for the
hearing of God’s word, sharing with each other the task of instructing
the people, distributing alms to the poor, and giving succour to the
weak. Thus was prepared the way for the first charitable institutions
which were called into existence at the bidding of Melanie the Younger,
Fabiola, St. Paulina, and St. Pammachius, thanks to the help given by
a great number of Roman ladies whose lives set an example of all the
Christian virtues.
Whilst St. Melanie the Younger was exciting the enthusiasm of
the Catholic world by her ardent charity, St. Marcella, the most
illustrious of the gifted daughters of St. Jerome, was the pride and
admiration of the Roman aristocracy. Gifted in the very highest degree
both in respect to birth, wealth, grace, and beauty, at a time, too,
when these rare endowments were rendered such a source of peril, owing
to the capture of the Eternal City by Alaric (410), she had withdrawn
to a modest dwelling on the Aventine Hill, with Principia, a young
maiden recommended to her by St. Jerome. Here she had to submit to
every kind of outrage, without permitting her zeal to be lessened by
this cruel trial. She afterwards opened a fresh centre of charity,
having founded not far from Rome the Convent of the Relieving Virgins
(_Vierges Secourables_), which was taken as a model for many
similar institutions throughout Italy.
[Illustration: Fig. 268.--Robert I., Duke of Burgundy, having
slain his father-in-law, builds the Church of Sémur to
expiate the crime, and has the parricide represented on the
building.--Tympan in the portico of the Church of Sémur (Eleventh
Century).]
Her friend St. Paula, who was Roman by birth, and a descendant of the
Scipios, whose daughters were saints, whose theatre of action was in
the East, whose tomb was at Bethlehem, and whose panegyrist was St.
Jerome, followed in her footsteps. A widow at thirty, she effected a
sweeping change in her own household and property, set all her slaves
at liberty, and devoted herself to doing good; then shrouding herself
in an incomparable modesty, and breaking off all her social ties, she
emigrated to Palestine, where she worked miracles of charity. Long
before her death, in 404, she had distributed all her worldly wealth
to the poor. She had herself become so needy that it was necessary to
borrow money to pay for her funeral, and her beloved daughter, who
closed her eyes, inherited nothing but her faith and charity.
The marvels of charity wrought by the Christian ladies for two
centuries were imitated in the fifth by many bishops, who had in
turn become missionaries and dispensers of alms. St. Paulinus, the
illustrious Bishop of Nolo, who died in 431 at the age of eighty,
after having for forty years fed, clothed, and comforted the poor of
his diocese, after having released the insolvent debtors from prison,
ransomed the captives, and allowed himself to be sold as a slave to
the barbarians in order to rescue from their hands the son of an
unfortunate widow, is the most perfect type of the prelates of this
remarkable epoch. Amongst his many other remarkable contributions to
literature, must be cited his “Discourse on Almsgiving,” which is an
eloquent exposition of his doctrine. St. Paulinus, by his teaching and
his example, had formed an eminent school of disciples, amongst them
Sulpicius Severus (363–420), who, in concert with some pious ladies of
the Roman aristocracy, seems to have been desirous of inaugurating a
new era of things in the reign of Gregory the Great.
The ransom of the captives was the most urgent of the works of charity
in the sixth century, for the wars and invasions of the barbarians had
reduced whole populations to slavery; and so the Church devoted all its
resources and efforts to this work of redemption, Pope Gregory deeming
no sacrifice too great for furthering it. He was, moreover, powerfully
seconded by the earnest efforts of women who constituted themselves
the humble handmaids of Jesus Christ. The Empress Constantina, her
sister-in-law Theodissa, St. Sopatra, and St. Damienna, all of whom
were imperial princesses, sent him enormous sums from Constantinople;
the Empress Leontia, Theodelinda, Queen of the Lombards, and her
son Theodoaldus acted in a similar manner. As Christianity extended
westward, the bright light of charity radiated in the same direction.
St. Adelberga, wife of the first Christian King of England, and her
daughter Bertha, wife of Ethelbert, King of Kent, were zealous in the
cause of benevolence upon their conversion to the faith.
This impulse given to the Christian spirit did not slacken: St.
Clotilda, Queen of the Franks, who was guided by the counsels of the
Archbishop of Rheims, the eminent doctor St. Remigius; St. Albofleda,
sister of Clovis; St. Radegonda of Thuringia, wife of King Clotaire,
who founded a hospital at Athies, and a monastery at Poitiers; and St.
Bathilda, of noble birth, who, after degrading herself to the humble
condition of slavery, shared the throne of Neustria as the wife of
Clovis II., were so many heroines of charity. Bathilda, in the course
of a long and wise administration of affairs (645–680), was the good
angel of the unfortunate. The abbot St. Gènes was her almoner, and
her privy councillors were St. Eloi, St. Owen, St. Leger--venerable
prelates whose active and pious co-operation was in perfect harmony
with the prompting of her own heart. She founded abbeys, and, what was
even more useful, increased the number of hospitals which were built
in every direction. The royal abbey of Chelles, near Paris, founded by
Queen Clotilda and rebuilt by Bathilda, and another monastery which
she constructed after the same plan, were establishments of religious
education, literary instruction, and benevolence.
[Illustration: Fig. 269.--Works of Charity.--Reduced Fac-simile
of a Drawing of the Fifteenth Century, attributed to Savonarola,
in the National Collection of Drawings. The artist shows the
practice of works of mercy being carried on in each of the
detached cottages, the mottoes recalling the texts in which
Christ intimates that at the Last Judgment the exercise of
Charity will weigh heaviest in the scale. In No. 1, the sick are
being tended in their beds or picked up in the streets; in No.
2, the people are being clothed; No. 3 represents travellers who
are being given to drink; No. 4, the hungry receiving bread; No.
5, pilgrims being sheltered; No. 6, a dead body being prepared
for burial; No. 7, the visiting of prisoners. The last scene is
a sanctuary in which the divine sacrifice--the true source of
Christian charity--is being celebrated, whilst a penitent is
obtaining the remission of his sins because he has practised
charity. In the foreground rich men are throwing their money into
a heap, and the poor are receiving their share of it. The monk
whose bust is seen to the left is perhaps Bernardin de Feltri,
preaching in encouragement of this good work.]
During the eighth and ninth centuries, a great number of hospitable
houses were built upon the high-roads leading from France to Italy,
from France to Spain, and also from Spain to the confines of civilised
Germany. The Carlovingian kings, beginning with Charlemagne and ending
with Charles the Bald, with the view of facilitating international
commerce throughout the vast extent of their empire, ordered the
establishment of a number of free houses of which travellers might
make halting-places, and in which they could count upon finding not
only security, but any assistance which they might require. The
establishment of lazar-houses or lazarettos, the origin of which dates
from the fifth century, seems to have been less a work of charity
than a sanitary measure of precaution against leprosy, a terrible and
incurable malady which was generally looked upon as a punishment from
heaven. These lazar-houses increased in the West, as the relations of
Europe with the East became more general. It is from this period also
that may be dated the foundation of many _Hôtels-Dieu_, religious
asylums, most of which were constructed in close proximity to the porch
of the cathedral churches, taking the place of the ancient canonical
infirmaries. Such was the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, the origin of which is
lost in the obscurities of the Middle Ages.
After an interval of dejection and selfishness which must be attributed
to the misfortunes that overwhelmed the peoples and ruined the Church,
Christian charity, though permanent and persistent in each diocese,
though too often ineffectual, was the distinguishing characteristic of
several contemporary sovereigns. Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the
Great (900–925), surnamed in the Roman breviary “the father of the poor
and of the orphan,” must be mentioned as the first of them, for the
various benevolent institutions which he created were never a burden
upon his subjects, the whole cost coming out of his private revenues.
Canute I., leader of the Danes, converted to Christianity by a French
princess to whom he was married, did as much good at the close of his
reign as he had done evil in the early part of it by his persecution
of the Christians (1016–1036). Olaus or Olaf of Sweden, and Olaus of
Norway, King of the Scandinavians, founders of two Christian monarchies
in the North, intermixed works of charity with dogmatic principles,
and rendered the religion of Christ popular by making it contribute
to the welfare of their subjects. But the two noblest types of the
Christian Church in Northern Europe during the eleventh century were
Queen Margaret, wife of Malcolm, King of Scotland (1070–1095), and St.
Matilda their daughter, wife of Henry I. of England.
Margaret, the mother of the poor, the consoler of the afflicted,
looking upon her subjects as a large family committed to her charge
by providence, underwent constant privations that she might have more
to distribute in alms; she relieved sufferers before they had time to
ask for help; inquired into hidden distress; sought out the insolvent
debtors in order to free them from their liabilities; ransomed the
prisoners of war, and visited constantly the hospitals which she had
endowed or founded. Before sitting down to table, she washed the
feet and dressed the wounds of the sick poor, while nine orphans and
twenty-four widows or aged persons were always partakers of her meals.
During Advent and Lent she had as many as three hundred at her table.
Her daughter Matilda, who was also canonised, survived her more than
twenty-six years (1118). She founded two hospitals in London, and took
great pleasure in visiting them, and tending the inmates with her own
hands.
[Illustration: Fig. 270.--St. Elizabeth of Hungary, going to
relieve the poor, suddenly sees the folds of her cloak covered
with roses in full bloom.--From a Painting by Fra Angelico in the
Academy of Fine Arts at Perugia (Fifteenth Century).]
Before her day there was another St. Matilda, who was early instructed
in the exercise of charity, first by her august mother, and afterwards
by her grandmother, abbess of a convent at Erfurt, where she spent
several years: she was a woman of true piety. She married the Emperor
Henry, surnamed the Fowler, and owing to the wars in which her husband
was constantly engaged, the regency was often entrusted to her. When
she had resigned these high functions, which were very burdensome to
her, she again became the influential adviser of the emperor, the
counsellor of justice, the minister of clemency, and the friend of
the unfortunate. Left a widow, she retired, when her son succeeded his
father on the throne, to her favourite convent of Northausen, a vast
charitable foundation in which three thousand maidens belonging to the
first families of Germany passed their lives in holy meditation, and in
the relief of human suffering. Her three children, the Emperor Otho I.,
the Archbishop Bruno, the apostle of Germany, and Queen Gerberga, wife
of Louis d’Outremer, King of France, reflected the virtues of their
mother; but the memory of St. Matilda of Germany was still more vividly
awakened in the person of her grand-daughter St. Adelaide, and of her
great-grand-daughter Emma, wife of King Lothair.
Under the Emperor Henry II., surnamed the Pious, and the Empress
Cunegunda, charitable establishments, hospitals, houses of relief, and
places of refuge increased very largely, and when Conrad came to the
throne at the death of Henry II., the empress-regent retired to the
convent of Kaffung, which she had founded in the diocese of Paderborn,
and devoted herself to the service of the poor and the sick who were
under the special care of this institution.
Dambrooka, daughter of the despotic Boleslav, Duke of Bohemia, and
wife of a duke of Poland whose hardness of heart she succeeded in
softening, afterwards mother of Boleslav the Great, together with the
Princess Adelaide of Poland, mother of St. Stephen I., the most famous
of the Hungarian kings, were both celebrated for their charity and
self-devotion, and, with St. Margaret of Scotland, Matilda of England,
Matilda of Germany, and Adelaide of Germany, they prepared the way
for St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207–1231), who reflected so faithfully
the angelic disposition of her aunt Hedwiga, the patron-saint of the
kingdom of Poland. It would seem, indeed, as if they all followed the
same programme of benevolence. St. Hedwiga, daughter of the Duke of
Carinthia, who by her marriage with Boleslav the Modest became Duchess
of Poland and Silesia, created a new kind of charitable institution
which was calculated to bring about the best results. She founded a
convent of the Carthusian order at Trebnitz, of which her daughter
Gertrude became an inmate, with the view of devoting it specially
to the education, the marriage, and the dowry of girls who had been
left unprovided for. She enriched it with very large donations, and
a thousand needy persons were fed there every day, exclusive of the
abundant alms and relief in kind which the community distributed
without its walls.
At this epoch, the Abbey of Longchamps, near Paris, began its
existence with the modest and touching title of “the Humility of our
Lady.” Isabella, the only sister of Louis IX., whom the saintly monarch
made the minister of his bounty and kindness to the suffering, was the
foundress of this institution. The nuns at Longchamps educated and
maintained poor girls, and distributed the rest of their revenues in
alms. Their rules, a model of good sense, wisdom, and charity, approved
of by St. Bonaventura, were copied by several similar establishments.
Isabella, who had consecrated herself to the service of God by taking
the veil, besides instructing, caring for, and feeding the poor, also
worked for them with her own hands. She established in the abbey a kind
of workshop in which ladies of the highest rank, while singing hymns
and reciting prayers, spun wool and made garments for the poor.
The Crusades, what with the additional calls which they made on public
charity, and the epidemic diseases which they brought, had rendered
greater development of works of mercy absolutely indispensable. Works
of charity are, in fact, the most marked characteristics of the reigns
of Louis VII., Philip Augustus, and Louis IX. (1179–1270); most notably
of the last, in which the saint-king set all his contemporaries such
an example of Christian self-denial. We possess, under the title
_Etablissements de Saint Louis_, a collection of the laws and
ordinances framed by this great monarch, and forming an administrative
code which displays wonderful sagacity, firmness, and forethought. His
saintly mother, Blanche of Castille, to whose counsels he perhaps paid
too little heed, seems to have taken a prominent part in the drawing up
of this admirable code, which seems to breathe the true spirit of the
Gospel. In St. Louis’s numerous and important charitable foundations,
such as the Quinze-vingts, the Maison-Dieu, enlarged and endowed in
Paris, the Hostelleries des Postes, in the chief towns of the kingdom,
we recognise the collective work of this great king and his mother, who
threw their love for humanity into the scale of politics (Fig. 271).
The angel of charity spread its wings over the West and the East, and
whatever might be the final result of so many distant wars which were
on that account the more perilous, they could not fail to bring about
an infinite increase of benevolent institutions. The most important,
in point of utility, was the extension of the hospitaller order of St.
Lazarus.
[Illustration: Fig. 271.--St. Louis serving a Repast to the
Poor.--Miniature from the “Petites Heures” of Anne of Brittany,
which belonged to Catherine de Medicis (beginning of the
Sixteenth Century), in the Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.]
The Lazarists had two hospitals in Jerusalem, when Godfroi de Bouillon
entered the holy city with the Crusaders (1099). Subsequently Louis
VIII., having induced these monks to send some of their brethren to
France, settled them outside Paris at the extreme end of the Faubourg
St. Denis, in the lazaretto originally founded by Queen Adelaide, wife
of Louis le Gros. These monks were also endowed with a rich domain at
Boigny, near Orleans (1154), which afterwards became the head-quarters
of their order. Louis VII., who had seen female communities in the
East devoted to the tending of lepers, and who wished to create similar
ones in France, founded a house at La Saussaie, near Villejuif, where
nuns had charge of leprous women, and he assigned them, as a revenue,
the tithe on the wine brought into Paris, which belonged by right to
the king and queen. This establishment rapidly became rich: Philip
Augustus bequeathed to it at his death all his gold and silver seals,
on condition that prayers should be said on behalf of himself and
the members of his family; other sovereigns gave it the privilege of
claiming, at the death of a king or a prince of the house of France,
his linen, his mules, the state-horses, and all the other horses used
at his funeral, together with all the mourning harness and drapery.
These privileges were so fully recognised, and the rights of the nuns
so completely understood, that, a century and a half later, after
the death of King John in England, eight hundred pounds (800 livres
parisis) were paid to this convent as an indemnity for the horses
which, owing to the death of the insolvent monarch in captivity, had
not been bequeathed. Charles VI. paid the convent 2,500 livres to buy
back the horses belonging to his father, Charles V.
A lazar-house had also been established by Louis VII. at Etampes, in
an ancient hospital for indigent lepers, and the monks of this house,
being entitled to call themselves _maîtres_ and _frères_,
were authorised to hold chapters and to sign their own capitulary
documents. Their founder assigned them valuable property, with right of
petty and ordinary justice, with right of toll, of market, &c. Several
institutions of a similar kind were also set up in different parts of
France, for the public health required that persons afflicted with
leprosy should be provided with asylums where they could not come in
contact with any one. Henry II., King of England and Duke of Normandy
(1133–1189), founded one house at Rouen for lepers and for the monks
in charge of them, and another in the forest of Rouvrai, not far from
Rouen, for leprous women, with the condition that their nurses should
be ladies of noble birth. Henry II., moreover, in founding a number of
lazarettos in England, did for his kingdom what Louis VII. had done for
France upon a much smaller scale. Both were seconded by the aristocracy
of their respective countries, as the progressive development of a
disease which science deemed incurable was beginning to cause great
alarm.