ABSTRACT
Social attitudes to poverty changed radically throughout the sixteenth century, culminating in a negative appraisal of poverty which, unlike the medieval concept, deemed those in need to be a menace and danger to society. This change has been upheld from very different viewpoints by all the authors dealing with this subject, who consider it to be the outcome of multiple and converging reasons found in both the Catholic and Protestant worlds.1 As mentioned by Michel Cavillac, in the 1580s the differences between the repression system established in the Protestant area and the organised ‘protection’ found in certain Catholic countries were subtle, since although they were based on different theoretical premises, the resulting practice was very similar.2 In any case poverty was no longer deemed to be an ethical ideal from either standpoint, a fact which had far-reaching consequences in the measures taken to fight poverty, and also when creating and founding new hospitals in the area which concerns us here: the Crown of Aragon. I believe it necessary to point out that two separate questions are involved: healthcare for the sick, and the measures to curb and attempt to control the increasing problem of poverty. It must be remembered that in the sixteenth century, the medieval hospital began to diverge into two separate institutions: (a) hospitals in the strict sense of the word providing medical care for the sick and generally associated with taking in orphans, and (b) hostels or shelters for the poor.3 To a certain extent however, both questions were none the less closely linked by the fact that both were community matters dealt with, not in theory but in practice, by the city authorities at a time when the Modern State was being built and had not yet assumed all its future functions. It must be borne in mind that as occurred in Reformation Europe, in the Crown of Aragon, at least in the cities of Barcelona and Valencia, the notion that poor relief, including medical care,
was a community and not a church responsibility was definitely established during this period. Those who wished to bring some order into the areas of welfare and health, were guided by the same principles and were oriented to the same goals: elimination of all beggary, and unification of all facilities and resources (hospitals, domiciliary relief and the like) in the hands of municipal or national authorities.4 Measures of this nature were taken almost exclusively by the city authorities in the Crown of Aragon due to its institutional structure and the survival of a political system under which cities enjoyed considerable autonomy from monarchical power and also had a well-developed capacity for self-government.
