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in return for the alms received. The matriculce of the Frankish period seem originally to have belonged regularly to churches or monasteries. From the Rule of Chrodegang it is evident that episcopal churches possessed matriculcv also in the country. The development of the law of church property in the Franxish period made it poosi' le for individual matreculce to develop nto in,eoendent institutions under administrative heads. They were allowed to acquire their own property and to dispose of it, subject to the will of the bishop. Male adult paupers seem to have been cared for in the matriculce, sofar as may be determined.

Although the philanthropical institutions transmitted from the ancient Church continued in the Frankish Empire, and their number, perhaps, even increased, yet after the migration of

4. Decline nations the period of the institutions in the closed owing to the economical transMiddle formation of Europe. Commerce was Ages. interrupted, change of population ceased, industry was paralyzed, and cities emptied themselves into the agricultural districts; hence, the need of such institutions ceased with the exception of asylums for lepers and hospices on the mountain-passes. From the time of Charles Martel and his sons and the alienation of ecclesiastical property the independent xenodochium almost entirely disappeared, except in Italy. They existed in the passes of the Alps for the reception of pilgrims, also in the bishoprics of Modena, Arezzo, Aquileia, partly the possession of the bishoprics and partly of the king or the landed nobility. Although their purpose was still the care of the poor and the reception of strangers, the revenues were frequently not used for that purpose, or the institutions had fallen into decay; and the efforts on the part of the nobles for their restoration and the application of their means to their original object were in vain. Thus in Italy the historical continuity was almost though not quite broken; the hospital of the Middle Ages linked itself with the xenodochium of the early Church. North of the Alps, it is evident that the xenodochia as institutions became quite extinct, and in Britain the name does not occur. Into the gap, however, advanced the rising monastic philanthropy. This is already indicated in the rules of Benedict, and the restoration of monastical philanthropy was included in the reform of the monasteries under Charlemagne and Louis the Pious in the ninth century, succeeding that of decay. It is true, the monasteries again greatly degenerated in the latter times of the Carolingians, but the efforts of Charlemagne were not entirely futile. The statutes of Corbie, the property-list of Priim, and other sources indicate monasteries here and there in which strangers and poor people found refuge and assistance. But its very limited extent goes to show that institutional philanthropy at the beginning of the Middle Ages had lost its importance. The practise of hospitality in the monasteries indeed was more extensive, but this was in the least degree beneficent.

The further reform of the monasteries in the tenth and eleventh centuries and the foundation

the growth of monastical philanthropy. In every

well-arranged monastery there was

g. Rise of now an infirmary for the monks, a

Monastic hospital (hoapitale pauperum, elee

and mosynaria) in which a number of

Cathedral paupers were continuously supported

Hospitals. and needy travelers received refresh

ment, while well-to-do strangers were

cared for in a special hospice for clericals and

monks. But the support fell mainly to transients

and beggars and the aid to the permanently de

pendent was negligible. Uhich of Zell reports

that in the Lent season of 1085, at Clugny,

1,700 poor were fed, but at the same time,

the number of permanently aided people in the

eleemosynaria of this extraordinarily rich monas

tery amounted only to eighteen. To the hospitals of

the monasteries were then added those of the cathe

drals. Canon 141 of the rule of Aix-la-Chapelle

expressly prescribed that every cathedral should

have also a hospital for the poor. The necessary

expenses were to be provided from the property

of the churches, and the canons had to contribute

a tithe of their revenues. Although these ordinances

may not have been followed strictly by all cathe

dral churches, yet from that time in many of them

an asylum for the poor and numerous city hospitals

existed. The work in these hospitals was done in the

beginning by members of the monastery or the

cathedral, or at least taken in charge by them; at

a later time by the laymen of minor brotherhoods

and sisterhoods who crowded the monasteries and

cathedrals in great numbers. These formed a con

vent by themselves and developed in the course of

time into an order by adopting a rule, most fre

quently the so-called rule of Augustine, and receiv

ing a master or mistress. Thus there developed

from the monastical hospital the house of the hos

pital brotherhood. Many of these hospitals re

mained in the possession and under the supervision

of the monastery or cathedral to which they be

longed, others acquired independence and became

again mother-houses of new hospitals which were

consolidated with them. There arose hospital

orders, or monastical societies, the chief task of

which was the hospital service. The most famous

hospital orders are those of the knighthood. When

hospital service among the knights gradually re

ceded behind the service of arms and was left to

the half lay brethren and half sisters of the third

estate of the order, the common hospital orders

took up their work. The largest among them were

the Orders of the Cross who had settled chiefly in

Italy, the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star

hoods constituted the transition from the ecclesiastical to the municipal hospitals, whereby only these institutions again acquired a more general signifi-

cance for the promotion of social conditions. Municipal became most of the " Holy Spirit hospitals," which since the thirteenth century were founded in different places in Germany; they were the fruit