ABSTRACT
Heidegger’s lyrical observation about ‘passage’ points, like bridges, which ‘gather’ and ‘escort’ travellers to ‘other banks’, seems particularly resonant in relation to descriptions of the location of hospitals in the borders of medieval and early modern towns. Fertile wooded valleys containing hot or cold springs, rivers and caves have long been associated with good spirits, cleansing powers and healing divinities – Asclepius of Thessaly most famously. Well-to-do town and court dwellers such as monarchs, lords and ladies, merchants, ambassadors, knights and dignitaries might contribute to this gift-giving economy by founding and maintaining hospitals on their borders, while travellers supplied additional alms for their day-to-day needs. In Saxon England, Archbishop Egberht of York is linked to a significant Church canon that ‘bishops and priests shall have a hospice not far from the church’, and when the rule of St Benedict spread to British monasteries, care of poor strangers became one of their key functions.
