ABSTRACT
Historians have described the systems of poor relief emerging in the sixteenth century as 'the beginning of modern social welfare' and 'a radical departure from the beaten paths of medieval charity'. Emden's significance for the development of Reformed Protestantism in the Netherlands-as a city of refuge, a missionary centre, and a hub of printing, propaganda and advice-led to its designation as 'Moederkerk'. The limited centralisation in the administration of charity created many gaps in social welfare. Protestantism developed a much more rational form of state intervention in social welfare, one that was concerned with the welfare of the poor themselves. Emden's leaders imaginatively confronted newly emerging poor relief problems, yet their effective innovations were often tempered by continuity with traditional methods and institutions of provision-methods and institutions which first appeared in Emden's surviving sources around the turn of the sixteenth century.
