ABSTRACT
Charity, while a part of Christian practice since the Apostolic Age, was not a subject of much discussion in western Europe between the end of the patristic era and the onset of the Gregorian Reform movement of the late-eleventh century. This latter era saw new efforts to define and refine the role of the clergy in a society that was becoming larger, more prosperous and somewhat less rural. Structurally, this age saw the birth of many new institutions of charity: hospitals and shelters for the sick, the elderly, the dying, abandoned children and pilgrims; agencies that dispensed food and clothing to those suffering famine or episodic economic difficulties; religious orders that ransomed captives, tended to the victims of ergotism or aided reformed prostitutes; and countless laic confraternities that saw to the needs of neighbors. The resulting system of charity had to be supported both ideologically and financially. Canon lawyers and moral theologians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries sought to define society’s obligation toward the unfortunate, the so-called “miserable people.” At the same time, a mechanism for supporting these works had to be created. For example, in an important treatise on alms-giving written c.1202–3, during a time of severe famine, Pope Innocent III stresses the universality of the obligation to give alms, their importance as a tool for achieving salvation and the role that the Church plays as intermediary between donors and the recipients of charity. 1 From this perspective arose an infrastructure for alms collection that was supported by a combination of local social responsibility, a belief that such work was meritorious in the eyes of God, and spiritual rewards in the form of indulgences meted out by popes and bishops.
