ABSTRACT
By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries social assistance had taken on a complex form, even to the point that we can discern the rough outlines of a “modern” policy of relief. Already social assistance entailed the classification and selection of recipients; efforts to organize such benefits rationally on a territorial basis; and a pluralism of responsible parties, whether religious or secular, “private” or “public,” centralized or local. The emergence in this era of two sorts of groups, the shameful poor and able-bodied beggars, suggests that these societies were already well-acquainted with the phenomena of downward mobility and underemployment (able-bodied workers confronting poverty). All this came to pass, however, as if they were forced to assimilate these populations to the categories of assistance: the dual criteria of residency and of an incapacity to work continue to be imposed (even if they were often bent in practice) as preconditions for receiving assistance. This doctrine remained in place until the end of the ancien régime. However, with the appearance of a new category of indigence characterized by the impossibility of finding work, the middle of the fourteenth century witnessed a transformation that most historians of assistance, in my opinion, have tended to overlook. This is because it no longer fits neatly within the framework of the problem of relief. With the case of vagabondage, the deeper question of the existence of the able-bodied poor takes on a new dimension.
