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Page 479
479 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Social Service
poor-relief actually attained its end, and there was no want within the Christian communities.
The triumph of ,the Church under Constantine, placing as it did large means at its disposal, at first tended to improve the condition of
s. The the poor. Freedom to receive bequests Post-Nicene attached the ever-increasing idea that
Church. almsgiving had a penitential efficacy and opened an abundantly increasing source of revenue. These means enabled the Church to extend its poor-relief to meet the growing need attending the economic decline of the empire. The poor-lists of the metropolitan churches now num bered thousands of names. At Antioch 3,000 widows and young women, and at Alexandria, in the time of Johannes Eleemon (q.v.), 7,500 poor were regularly cared for. At the same time there were poorhouses, orphan-asylums, hospitals, and guest-houses for pilgrims and strangers. All the great bishops of the period were true guardians of the poor. Yet with the expansion of the Church, the relief of the poor was more and more trans ferred from the parishes to the Church at large, or to institutions. The oblations in increasing meas ure lost their significance, the larger part of the funds being supplied by the Church estates. Grad ually the deacons, on account of the complicated administration of Church estates, made way for stewards as mediaries between them and the bishop. A considerable part of the work, attended to pre viously by the parishes was transferred to the in stitutions, and the care of the poor lapsed into a wholesale almsgiving. Christian charitas came to be very like the Roman liberalilas; the bishops took the place of the emperor as the great purveyors of alms. The organized poor-relief of primitive days ceased, and begging became more and more preva lent.The conditions amidst which the new Frankish kingdom came into being excluded the poor-relief of the congregation in the early times. This re-
quired a higher economic basis and 3. The higher development of the cities. In Middle stead of administration of money there Ages. was a return to the distribution of natural products. The unsuccessful attempt at the restoration of primitive poor-relief disappears with the dissolution of the Frankish Church. Charlemagne had not only enjoined the Church to bestow on the poor a portion of its tithes, but promulgated laws compelling landed proprietors in case of need to support their vassals. In the famine year of 779 he levied a formal poor-tax. Begging was expressly prohibited. No landed pro prietor was to suffer the poor to go begging on his domains. No one was to give to beggars who would not work. But after Charlemagne's death this scheme of poor-relief quickly fell to pieces. Dur ing the ensuing Dark Ages there was no organized poor-relief by either Church or State. The dictum that the property of the Church was the possession of the poor under the influence of the feudal sys tem lost its meaning. It was not the parishes that exercised benevolence, but isolated individuals or associations in asylums and cloisters. The funda mental reason why there was no organized poor-relief in the Dark Ages was that benevolence was primarily not to help the poor, but to secure one's own personal salvation. There was abundant almsgiving in individual cases and beneficiary funds of all sorts were established; there were institutions, orders, and associations; but no effort was made to reduce the whole to a well-ordered system, and there was neither coherency nor at bottom the primary aim to help the poor. The result was general mendicancy, which was looked upon not as a disgrace but as a kind of profession. There were gilds and brotherhoods of beggars, and towns levied a tax on the beggar gild as they did on others. The Liber roagatorum (Eng. transl., The Book of Vagabonds and Beggars,, London, 1860) which Luther republished, with an introduction, shows that frauds of every sort were associated with begging. Steps had to be taken against this state of things, though it would have been contrary to medieval views altogether to forbid it. Attempts were at least made to introduce some sort of order, to determine who might beg and how. These laws became numerous in the fifteenth century; and as these regulations of beggars precede the later administration of the poor, so they mark the first advent in the fifteenth century of communal poor-relief. This appears first as associational. Already the ancient work associations involved the duty of mutual aid. But now in the towns, independently of the gilds, which assisted their own poor when necessary, associations of citizens were formed for the care of the poor. At first these had no connection with the local government, which, from the fourteenth century, however, came to administer their affairs, and the associational relief became the communal. There had arisen, besides, a municipal poor-relief, an income being derived for that purpose from funds deposited by citizens with the authorities. As this work increased, special officers were appointed to superintend it.
These were, however, but beginnings. The Reformation awakened fresh motives of active charity, and set up new aims. By the doctrine
4. The of justification by faith, it struck at Reformation the motive of the merit of good works
Period. and replaced the same by that of lov ing gratitude. The new aim was not to secure personal salvation but primarily to relieve the poor. A new poor-relief was developed, the outlines of which had appeared in Luther's An. den Chrislliehen Adel deutscher Nation (Wittenberg, 1520). Begging was to be abolished not merely by prohibition but by local provisions for all the poor. All who could work were to do so, and relief was restricted to the necessaries of life. It was in effect the old parish poor-relief of the primitive churches. In place of ordinances regarding beggary, poor laws were passed; first, that of Augsburg (Mar. 21, 1522), more important that of Nuremberg (July 23, 1522). After the Peasants' War the poor-relief was reorganized with the reconstitution of the Church-system. Funds were collected in part through charitable endowments and in part through collections taken either in the churches or in house to-house visitation. Contributions were voluntary and the funds were administered by overseers known