ABSTRACT
A medieval foundation, the hospital had survived the English Reformation and had escaped the Great Fire of London. Yet by the closing decade of the seventeenth century it had become dilapidated and was seen as unfit for purpose. Supported by voluntary subscription, its governors paid for it to be refurbished and enlarged, to consist of three quadrangles and a number of subordinate buildings. Gregory of Nazianzus in Cappadocia, priest, rhetorician, and bishop, pronounced that injunction to visit a ‘new city’ in the course of his funeral oration for his friend, Basil, bishop of Caesarea. The ‘new city’ outside Caesarea, perhaps in its suburbs, was a complex of institutions that Basil had founded for the sick and needy. The philanthropic complex must have been quite sizeable. Gregory of Nazianzus continues his oration by likening it to the seven wonders of the world. Waqfs in general seemed to underlie a considerable proportion of all urban space in the major centres.
