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of either private or municipal initiative, to meet the emergent needs of the rapidly growing cities, but were in the least degree hospitals

ipal ministration and care of inmates were Hospitals. as a rule in the hands of a corporation like an order, while others were under the direct administration of the municipal council which installed the hospital officers and in every case guarded the administration of the property. The inmates bought a place in these institutions for old age or were received through the favors of those having charge of the funds. Besides these, strangers, travelers, paupers, and the sick found in them a temporary refuge. Hospitals in the real sense there were none. Many cities beside the hospitals provided also a house for lepers before the gates. In France in 1225 there were 2,000 houses for lepers, in England 115. A special order was organized, the Order of the Brethren of the House of Lepers of St. Lazarus in Jerusalem, or, as it called itself at a later time, the Knighthood of St. Lazarus (see LAzARmT8). After the thirteenth century there were numerous houses for the support and burial of destitute pilgrims, and Alpine hospices, and orphans and foundlings were received in hospitals. Foundling-hospitals were numerous in Romance countries, but rare in Germany. The Elsingspittel in London was designed for the blind; in Paris Louis the Pious founded an institution for 300 blind people. Insane asylums are met with only toward the end of the Middle Ages, but they were penitentiaries rather than sanitariums. Fallen girls found refuge in the houses of the Order of St. Mary Magdalen and the Sisters of Penitence. The tendency toward municipal control increased until in the fifteenth century the appearance of civil, communal poor-relief, which took place first in the hospitals. Local councils proceeded from the control of purely municipal foundations to that of the ecclesiastical, made necessary by their decline. The members of the hospital orders had become rich lords and the funds for the poor had become diverted to their luxury or to ecclesiastical objects, frequently not without fraud; as a result of which the cities took over the hospitals for their reform and administration.

At first the Reformation seems to have had a destructive rather than constructive influence upon philanthropy and philanthropical institutions, be-

cause of a sudden the old motives of 7. The almsgiving ceased before the appearReformation. ance of the new of spontaneous be-

nevolence (ut sup.). With the new stimulus the Lutheran Reformation revived the aim of communal poor-relief. The institutional for the time retired into the background. The process of secularizing was to be carried out everywhere, the older hospitals were to be reorganized or incorporated with the communal poor-relief, or new ones, essentially asylums for the sick, were to be erected. In spite of the renewed motive, the abundant charitable activity, and the wide multiplication of institutions, the worthy aim of the Reformation, which was the sufficient care of communal poor and the suppression of mendicancy, fell short

of realization and went down in the Thirty-Years' War. More, however, was accomplished in the Reformed Church. In Zurich and Geneva, poor-relief was turned over wholly to the municipalities. By the restoration of the office of deacons the Reformed churches in the Netherlands and in France succeeded in calling to life a philanthropy that was in many respects exemplary; especially the excellently managed orphanages in the former, which had a great influence upon charitable work in Germany, in particular upon August Hermann Franeke and in the nineteenth century upon Theodor Fliedner (qq.v.). In England medieval ecclesiastical philanthropy was replaced by the parish care of the poor under the authorization of the State. The principle of the " work-house " (ut sup.) established in England is still in force, but it has been supplemented by the foundation of special institutions; especially, for poor children (the district and parochial schools) and for the destitute sick (the infirmaries and convalescent homes). In the Roman Catholic Church, the Council of Trent commended the medieval type of the institutions to the special care of the bishops, but communal poor-relief was not restored, and philanthropy continued preeminently institutional. It is to the credit of that Church that after the Reformation great service has been rendered; new institutions and new orders have been added, especially in France, Italy, and Spain. The main defects to be pointed out are the diversion of funds to prelates and nobles, and the want of systematic efficiency and unity. The Lutheran Church received a new impetus from Pietism. The orphans' home in Halle, the great work of Francke, gave rise to many similar foundations; but the zeal soon slackened contemporaneously with State assumption of the entire sphere of poorrelief. By an edict of July, 1774, the government of Prussia was entrusted with the supervision of the pious bodies and all benevolent institutions, especially hospitals, orphanages, and poorhouses. Consequently numerous philanthropical institutions of the Church were secularized.

The humanism of the Enlightenment presented the first idea of a rational philanthropy, revolutionizing the same not only in Protestant-

8. Human- ism but caught up as the keynote also ism and in Roman Catholic domains. The inModera terest aroused by an abundant humanPhilan- istic current literature toward the close thropy. of the eighteenth century resulted in numerous establishments, beginning with the general charitable institution at Hamburg in 1788. Orthodox Christianity was stimulated by the influence and began to develop a more strenuous activity. The Society of Christianity of Basel, founded in 1780, cultivated not only the distribution of Bibles and tracts, but also the care of the poor and sick, training-institutions, and the like. The distress on account of the wars of French conquest and liberation called to life institutions of various kinds for the alleviation of pain and dis. tress, and with the reawakening of the Christian sense, with the gradual invigoration of churchly life, there went hand in hand a revival of philanthropy which called into existence a multitude of