bibliog

You will find at http://www.florilegium.org/files/RELIGION/med-charity-lnks.html a number of quite helpful summaries of web articles on Charity etc. These are pretty good models of the kind of thing which this Collective Bibliography will want on the articles and books you discover. You may need a little more space for books, but we busy people only need some indication of what we shall find and whether it is worth our time, not a comprehensive account of everything the author has said.

The proceedings of an excellent recent historical conference on Poverty, with a broader compass than most are to be found in a special issue of Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35 (2005). Especially worth reading perhaps are the papers by the organizer, Mark Cohen, and by Peter Brown ("Remembering the Poor and The Aesthetic of Society") and Peregrine Hordern on Byzantine Hospitals.

K.B. Wolf, The Poverty of Riches: St. Francis...Reconsidered (Oxford, 2003), reviewed Amanda Power "Franciscan Advice to the Papacy in the Middle Ages ", History Compass 5 (2007), 1550–1575 ,also in Religion & Theology 11 (2004), 166–168.

The goal of this lively, clear, and ambitious, little book (really only 90 pp. of text) is to show how different the "historiocultural" context of Franciscan poverty was from that of modern views on poverty. Part one (possibly the more immedieately useful here) shows by close readings of texts that Francis and his brethren were if anything competitors for alms from the involuntary poor. Part two tries to recover the milieu within which this makes sense. Chap. 6 goes far to explaining how Christianity was not set up in a way that put a premium on actual poor relief. Chap. 7 highlights Italian holy men contemnporary with Francis who did more for the involuntary poor. Overall the book speaks to misgivings which standard accounts (such as Little) may leave in readers with a coincern for our contemporary problem of poverty. There is also thought-provoking material on, for example, the way that NT might shape attitudes toward poverty to any medieval reader. [PRH]

Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona, “Ave Charitate Plena”: Variations on theTheme of Charity in the Arena Chapel, Speculum 76, No. 3 (2001): 599-637.

This article discusses images of charity displayed in a chapel built and decorated in Padua at the very beginning of the 14th century and dedicated to Santa Maria della Carita. The chapel’s founder, Enrico Scrovegni, came from a family of usurers and himself probably engaged in usury (601-2). The authors argue that the chapel’s depictions of caritas and its opposites display Scrovegni’s desire to expiate the sin of usury, seen as an example of envy (invidia) and avarice (avaritia), and specifically as a sin against caritas. The authors survey theological literature on caritas , giving examples of how it bears a threefold meaning of man’s love for God, God’s love for man, and man’s love for his neighbor. The image of Caritas personified in the chapel represents at least two of these as she is depicted giving her heart to God and holding a basket of food to distribute to the needy, while standing on a pile of money bags to show disdain for earthly goods. In the chapel, she stands directly across from invidia, represented as grasping at a bag of money, an image the authors believe is also representative of avaritia (631-2, 637). Other oppositions within the chapel display the connections between caritas and giving and avaritia/invidia and taking. In the image of the presentation of Jesus at the temple, for instance, Mary makes an ostentatious show of handing her child over to the priest. On the opposite wall, an image of Judas’ betrayal shows Judas grasping Christ and enveloping him in his cloak (632). The article implies that, even in the early years of the 14th century, caritas could be associated specifically with giving rather than love in a more general sense. [TJM]

Miscellaneous Notes

Hilton review of Mollat 1978: The English Historical Review, Vol. 94, No. 370 (Jan., 1979), pp. 116-118

Little review of Etudes sur l'histoire de la pauvreté (Moyen Age-XVIe siecle), ed. Mollat (1974) BV4647.P7 M72, Speculum, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 370-373

Reviews of Little by Bynum in The Journal of Religion, Vol. 60, No. 3 (Jul., 1980), pp. 347-349; Galpern Journal of Social History, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 154-157. Also Amazon customer reviews!

Lynn Nelson, Lecture on the Medieval Pauper http://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/paupers.html or http://www.the-orb.net/textbooks/nelson/paupers.html.

Virginia Cole’s PhD was on "Royal Almsgiving in Medieval England: The Administrative and Ritual Construction of Kingship.".

Gerhard JARITZ (Ed.), The Sign Languages of Poverty (International Round Table-Discussion Krems an der Donau October 10 and 11, 2005) (ISBN 978-3-7001-3788-7
Print Edition ISBN 978-3-7001-3967-6 Online Edition Forschungen des Institutes für Realienkunde des Mittelalters GOid 0xc1aa500d 0x00162b4e 2007) = http://hw.oeaw.ac.at/3788-7inhalt?frames=yes.

Blurb: Medieval and early modern sources dealt regularly with the problem of "poverty". The term poverty often referred to members of widely divergent groups in society. Various groups of objects, gestures, behaviour, and other cultural aspects were drawn on to express and characterise the "poverties" being described. Independent of the status of the persons or groups of people being described, those characteristics could, on one hand, be identical to each other or based on similar patterns of argumentation; on the other hand, they also could be very different. Such questions were the topic of an international workshop held in the autumn of 2005 at the Institute for the Material Culture of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Scholars from nine countries met to discuss the importance of the medieval "sign languages of poverty", as well as patterns and differences therein, analysing them comparatively and critically. The interdisciplinary approach offered new insights with regard to these significant questions about medieval material life and its depiction in medieval sources. The publication contains the results of this meeting.

Brundage, “Legal Aid for the Poor...”, J. Legal history 8 (1988), 169-79, ? reprinted in The profession and practice of medieval canon law [KBR160 .B78 2004]

The canonist Ricardus Anglicus, a contemporary of Gratian’s, specified that the testimony of the upper social classes was generally more reliable than that of the lower, as people of higher rank were generally better educated and more aware of the civic and religious duty to tell the truth. He also insisted that the rich were more likely to be honest than paupers, since they were less likely to be tempted by bribes or other material incentives. [Citing Bryson, “ Witnesses: A Canonist’s View,” The American Journal of Legal History, (1969), 59]

James William Brodman, Charity And Welfare: Hospitals And The Poor In Medieval Catalonia http://libro.uca.edu/charity/cw1.htm.

The Life of St. Eligius (588-660) (well translated http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/eligius.html) frequently refers to the poor.

Sigrun Kahl, "The Religious Roots of Modern Poverty Policy" , esp. pp. 95-6 (on medieval) but with good source list.

James Brodman, "Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt" (review of Mark Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt, 2005) Shofar: , 25. 2 (Winter 2007,) pp. 188-190 [Muse]

Judith M. Bennett, "Conviviality and Charity in Medieval and Early Modern England", Past & Present 134, (February 1992),followed by debate incl. Maria Moisa, P&P
From the late 13th century oinwards, the thought of Aristotle was immensely influential. Educated peoplke should at least read his Ethics and Politics, each of which (if one does not regard them both as lectures on and around the same topics) contains thought about poverty. What reached the later middle ages was of course in one of the Latin translations. Among a vast literature, Susan M. Babbit, Oresme's Livre de Politiques and the France of Charles V (1985, Google Books), chap. VI discusses the view of Nicholas Oresme (1323-82) of Aristotle's treatment of some very pertinent matters, including voluntary poverty and the meaning of "poor".

Readings in Social Ethics: this site includes a number of extracts from patristic sermons on wealth and poverty, and much modern discussion too.

Bonaventure, Defense of the Mendicants, tr. J. De Vinck (Works, vol. 4, 1966) [= Apologia Pauperum, 1260]

                   From Ionutz:     Camporesi, Piero. Bread of dreams: food and fantasy in early modern Europe. Trans. David Gentilcore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.. I whole-heartedly                                                             recommend it; it is a highly original study.

                                             Also, two articles on the image of the poor peasant in the Middle Ages, both based on the sorts of texts we mentioned in class, fabliaux and medieval dramas:

                                                Herman Braet, 'A Thing Most Brutish: The Image of the Rustic in Old French Literature', in Agriculture in the Middle Ages: Technology, Practice, and                                                                                       Representation:191-204, ed. Del Sweeney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).
                                                Jane B. Dozer-Rabedeau, 'Rusticus: Folk-Hero of Thirteenth-Century Picard Drama', in Agriculture in the Middle Ages: 205-226..

Some Advice about Online Materials (Ionutz)

A good intro to palaeography and diplomatics can be found in the 'Techniques pour l'Historien en Ligne : Études, Manuels, Exercices' section: http://theleme.enc.sorbonne.fr/.
It really is worth taking the time to explore it at length. The bibliographies - accessible from the menu on the right upper corner of the page - give a good sense both of the primary sources available on a variety of topics and of some of the printed guides to these sources - many of which are available at Cornell. This online bibliography really helped me jump start my dissertation research a few years ago - just a little testimonial to convince you that this product really works... :) Also, do not miss the 'Dossiers documentaires' section - it's a great intro to medieval diplomatics and the interactive ( yes, interactive) facsimiles are a lot of fun. Not sure what the parts of a medieval charter are (what is the 'arenga', anyway)? Here you'll find your answers!

Equally useful is the section dedicated to online editions of medieval texts (Éditions en ligne de l'École des chartes): http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/

The obituary of Saint-Mont abbey (no. 8 on their list: http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/obituairesaintmont/) could be quite relevant for our seminar. I took a look over the entries and so far I haven't been able to find any date in their calendar when services for the poor were held. I've only looked briefly - did I mention that I'm having my diss. defense tomorrow? :) - but so far it looks that the monks were performing commemorative services only for the people who had made donations to the abbey. So, it would seem that the poor were excluded... But someone who would have the time to go through this text could amend my preliminary observations... The poor are bound to be mentioned at some point in this sort of text.

Lastly, since someone was mentioning wills: the (searchable, apparently!) facsimiles of cartularies from the Ille de France (http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/cartulaires/) include a 'Liber testamentorum Sancti Martini de Campis' (http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/cartulaires/smchamps/) - it might be worth a look.

Urban Poor/Poverty:

N. Gonthier, Lyon et ses pauvres au moyen age (1978)
J. Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (1994)
D. Nicholas, The Domestic Life of ... C14 Ghent (1985)
C. Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City...Coventry & the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (1979)
Frank Rexroth, Deviance and Power in Late Medieval London ( Cambridge UP, 2007) is not yet in Olin, but there is an extract online.
http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/culture/towns/florilegium/community/cmreli17.html is Dick Whittington's Will.
B. Geremek, The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris (1987)

Richard Trexler, "Charity & the Defense of Urban Elites in the Italian Communes", in The Rich, the Well-Born, and the Powerful, ed. F.C. Jaher (Urbana, Ill., 1973), 64-109.

The Church and Wealth ( = Studies in Church History, vol. 24), ed. W.J. Shields and D. Wood (1987) includes J.T. Nelson, "Making Ends Meet: Wealth and Poverty in the Carolingian Church". [ BRI . S96, v. 24]

Peter Brown comments on attitudes to wealth in the poetry of Paulinus of Nola, and shows how wealth could be justified within a society 
in which charity towards the poor was increasingly defined as a social duty, in Hayes-Healy, Stephanie ed. Medieval Paradigms: Essays in Honor
of Jeremy Duquesnay Adams, vol. 1. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave, 2005. .

Piers Plowman:

C Text (eg Pearsall edn.), Prologue and Passus, 5, 9, 22.

Pearsall, Derek, "Poverty and Poor People in Piers Plowman", in Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane, ed. E. Kennedy et al. (Wolfsboro, N. H., 1988.), pp. 167-85. PR251 .M462 1988

David Aers, Community, gender, and individual identity : English writing, 1360-1430 (1988), chap. 1. PR275.I34 A25 1988

Poor Women and Children in the European Past, ed. John Henderson and Richard Wall (Routledge: London & New York, ) includes Elaine Clark, "Mothers at Risk of Poverty in the Medieval English Countryside" (chap. 6), and Henderson, "Women, Children and Poverty in Florence at the Time of the Black Death" (chap. 7). HV4084.A3 P66x 1994, extracts online at http://books.google.com/books?id=WmaVVbasEPQC&pg=RA1-PA26&lpg=RA1-PA26&dq=tierney+medieval+poor+law&source=web&ots=WdXQfNc2uj&sig=2vSxgMFvY5hs2QuspUUi0Psfq9s#PPR5,M1

P. H. Cullum, "Gendering charity in medieval hagiography", Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and Saints in Late Medieval Europe. Ed. Samantha E.J. RICHES and Sarah SALIH (Routledge: London, 2002), 135-151

COLETTI, Theresa, "Paupertas est donum Dei: hagiography, lay religion, and the economics of salvation in the Digby Mary Magdalen.", Speculum 76 (2001), 337-78.

MOISÀ, Maria, "The rotten gift: caro data fuit pauperibus.", Medieval Yorkshire 26 (1997), 6-10. Discusses the practice of giving "forbidden meat" to the poor.

F. Chatillon, "Au dossier de la caritas ordinata",RMAL 4 (1948), 65-6., F. Guimet, 'Caritas ordinata et Amor discretus dans la theologie trinitaire de Richard de Saint-Victor', Revue du Moyen-Age latin 4 (1948).

Xavier de la Selle, Le Service des ames a la cour: Confesseurs et aumoniers des rois de France du XIIIe au XVe siecle (Paris, 1995) BX1529 .L13 1995
reviewed by Kathryn A. Edwards, Church History, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 341-342

Giovanni Ricci, "Naissance du pauvre honteux: Entre l'histoire des idées et l'histoire sociale," Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations 38 (1983):168-69

Brian Pullan, " 'Support and Redeem': Charity and Poor Relief in Italian Cities from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century," in Brian Pullan, Poverty and Charity: Europe, Italy, Venice, 1400-1700 (Aldershot, England, 1994), 5: 181.

Janet Coleman, "Property and Poverty" in The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, ed. J.H. Burns (Cambridge, 1988), 607-48.

Diana Wood, Medieval Economic Thought (2002), chap. 2: "Wealth, beggary, and Sufficiency". HB79 .W66 2002

For the maxim "Necessitas legem non habet", see Pennington at http://classes.maxwell.syr.edu/his311/Maxims1.html.

Some random reading recommended to me on Recent Views of Poverty (in addition to Sen):

The Evolution of Thinking about Poverty: Exploring the Interactions (1999) is by Ravi Kanbur and Lyn Squire. Kanbur runs the Poverty, Inequality and Devlopment Initiative here at Cornell, and has a very clear, sensible approach to his material. This might be a good non-specialists' introduction to Development thinking on Poverty. .
Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty? HC79. P6. J66 2004 A fairly polemical take by a modern historian.
The Savage Wars of Peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap by Alan Macfarlane (2003) HB3585 .M33x 1997,
Doctrines of Development edited by M. P. Cowen and R. W. Shenton (1996)
S. Subramanian, Measurement of Inequality and Poverty (OUP)

As for Sen himself, Google Books presents portions of Development and Freedom online with a whole num,ber of reviews. The one at First Things looks to me more interesting than most.

Charity:
charité, charitee, charitet; carité; cherité (charrté; charté S Eust2 2255)

s. 1 charity, Christian love: E[n] son quer cherité […] crut e fust diffus S Rich ANTS 827; par charité, c’est par seinte amur de son prome Jerarchie 77; fei e esperance e cherité

Secr1 2324; ♦ act of charity: Oiez […] De la dame grant charité Mir N-D 173.60; 2 tip, gratuity: La charité lui enveia, & le munestral receu l’a Man pechez 4375; 3 burden, need for charity: Jete sur le seignur ta charitet (Latin: charitatem)

Camb Ps 54.24;
en ovre de charité, 1 as an act of charity: En cherité dont il prie remedie Rot Parl1 ii 16; un denier en ovre de charrté (l. charité)

Test Ebor i 198; 2 (law) a standard formula ending a legal petition: e ceo prient les ditz Communez en oevre de charité King’s Bench iii.cxxi; Et ceo vous pleise faire pur Dieu et en oevere de charité Goldsmiths’ Reg Deeds f. 375r; […] demaundent pur Dieux et en oevere de charité Guildhall MS 7363 → cherté

On-line entry partially revised after the print version of AND² went to press vcd (2007-04-12)
© 2006-7 The Anglo-Norman Dictionary. All rights reserved. [via http://www.anglo-norman.net/]
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom
Session S6296751189950536. Retrieved on Tue Sep 25 19:31:56 BST 2007

The Middle English Dictionary entry for charit (n.) Also chearite, cherite & carite, kariteð & cherte, chierte, charte is too long to cite in full. Sense # 2 is our target. Enter at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mec/ and search for "charit*".

Famine:

David Arnold, Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (Oxford, 1988). HC79.F3 A75 or HC79.F3 A75 1988 (Mann)
Peter Garnsey, Famine and food supply in the Graeco-Roman world: responses to risk and crisis (Cambridge U.P., 1988) HD9015.G82 G23, also available online.

H. Lio, "Finalmente rintracciata la fonte del famoso testo patristico: 'Pasce fame morientem . . ."' Antonianum 27 (1952): 349-66. This is the text attributed to Ambrose, De Officiis, I. 30.