ABSTRACT
We know that in the Middle Ages there was no government-administered relief, neither in the kingdoms and the feudal territories nor in the Italian city-states. The only assistance given by governments to the needy took the form of tax exemptions for the poorest and, in times of famine or war, deferment of taxes and debt repayments, prohibition of the export and hoarding of grain, and the supervision of its market price. (In the Italian city-states all the over-sixties were exempted from head-tax, and in France from the tallage, regardless of their economic situation.)1 The public body which organized poor relief and incorporated it in a legal code (i.e. canon law) was the Church. Giving to charity from the surplus-that is to say, from whatever was not needed for the maintenance of a person’s living standard according to his status, and that of his family and dependentscounted as an act of justice (iustitia). Only that which was given not from the surplus counted as an act of Christian love and mercy. The theological view that this world is essentially flawed, being the outcome of Original Sin and the Fall of Man, coupled with the limited means of production
and resources, meant that poverty was seen as an unavoidable component of human society. ‘Ye have the poor always with you.’ Society was hierarchical, the resources were in the hands of a privileged minority, of which the Church was a part, and no attempt was made to deal with the immediate causes of poverty, such as the low wages of labourers or the fact that the holdings of many peasants were too small to provide a subsistence. Hired labourers did not count as deserving poor, whom it was a Christian duty to assist, except in periods of extreme economic hardship or if they had small children to feed. The awareness of poverty was coupled with the duty of charity.
