ABSTRACT

The systems of charity and welfare established in the Italian city-states in the sixteenth century were ostensibly little different from those already in place. That is, the poor were helped through an intermeshing system of public welfare and private charity. The welfare of the State was provided at times of emergency caused by natural or man-made crises, most significant of which were plague, famine and war. Much of the relief of the poor in non-crisis periods remained the province of organisations inspired by Christian charity and run by devout lay men and women. The main types of corporations were the religious confraternity and the hospital, which had dominated poor relief systems ever since the demographic expansion of the thirteenth century had necessitated the foundation of charitable institutions to help the poor members of the new urban centres during periods of individual crisis caused by sickness and life-cycle poverty.1