SOME RANDOM QUESTIONS AND READINGS ON
POVERTY AND THE POOR
What causes Poverty and how is it to
be eradicated?
Geremek calls
these the 2 most vital questions. Do we agree? Is Poverty something
that can be
eradicated?
Two of
the recent attempts to tackle these questions historically.are
Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty? (HC79. P6 J66 2004) and
Jeffrey Sachs, The
End of Poverty:
Economic Possibilities for Our Time
Lexicography and Definitions
Can there be a
single definition for all time?
"Pauper":
The
"surname" Le Poer
can perhaps denote (relative) poverty (as a
variant of OFr "povre"?), but
likely indicates a younger brother according to David Crouch, The
Beaumont Twins (Cambridge, 1986), 9, n. 26.
Mollat, 2-5:
"the usual sense of destitution" -
"a person
who...found himself in a situation of weakness, dependence or
humiliation. characterized by privation of the means
of power and social esteem".
Essentialist
references to "true" or "real" poverty
Poverty "Line"?
Relative
Deprivation. The 1966 book of this name by W.G. Runciman analyzed its
content and significance, but there is now a fair sized literature on
it, as can be seen from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_deprivation
and (int. al.) http://www.malcolmread.co.uk/JockYoung/relative.htm.
Famine as the limiting case? Was it
unusual or endemic?
W.C.
Jordan, The
Great Famine : Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century (1996)
[Electronic resource]
When did CARITAS
(love) come to mean charity? and why?
The
proverb "charity begins at home" goes back to at least the 14th century
in England. Since this seems to cover a perceived truth (Farmer, 91), it might be interesting to seek
medieval precursors.
Poverty is more than Hunger
Much writing about poverty starts from the special case" of Famine
But Poor Relief in the Middle Ages is as much about Clothing the Naked as Feeding the Poor
And in Northern Europe that should surely be extended to include Shelter in general
Yet there seems to be less literature on the naked and homeless than on the starving
Why do people give to charity at all?
There has been a flurry of very recent interest in the science etc. of charitable altruism. See New York Times Magazine, Sunday March 9, 2008
(an issue totally devoted to the question) and the April 2008 Discover Magazine , p. 14.
Bible Teachings on the Poor
Compare Mt., xxvi. 11 (Jesus that the
poor are always with us) with Deuit., xv. 4 (moral duty to end
poverty), and check glosses or at least the Glossa Ordinaria
Mt., v. 3 in the beatitudes should be compared with Luc., vi. 20. Which
kind of poor did Jesus really want to bless because the kingdom of
Heaven was theirs?
Vulgate Bible word search for words like "pauper", "dives", maybe
"potens" etc., followed by searches for commentary on those texts in
Patrologia, CETEDOC etc.
Luc., xvi. 19-23 for the Story of Lazarus
In support of free giving (of alms, loans), as a kind of
reciprocity, even Gift Exchange, with God, Luc.,
vi and II Cor., ix.
J. Hanska, "And the
Rich Man also Died and he was Buried in Hell": The Social Ethos in
Mendicant Sermons (1997)
D.R. Lesnick, Preaching in Medieval Florence
(1989).
Moissac
Capitals illustrate the story
Luc
xii. 33-4: Luke 12:33,34: "Sell your
possessions and give to charity; make yourselves purses which do not
wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near,
nor moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be
also."
Both
the Latin Vulgate and the
English Douai-Rheims versions of the Bible are among the 50 online and
searchable bible texts available at http://www.biblegateway.com/.
Poverty and Gender
Women's chances of being poor must
have been substantially higher than men's.
To what extent did moralists distinguish by gender in their treatment
of poverty?
Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris gives some references to literature
Periodization? What are the times of great change?
Much
turns on our estimate of the legacy from Antiquity.
Mollat sees a turning point c. 980,
with the end of the potens/pauper opposition etc. This sounds very like
Duby's mutation. If so, how
well does
it stand up to the criticisms of the ajoustmentistes?
Rise of the Profit Economy from c. 1050
Black Death and state intervention into wages, prices, employment
You get the idea!
Pauper/Potens Opposition
How
come this image became so popular when the Bible already opposes Dives
to Pauper?
Why did it lose prominence and when? (c. 980+?) Explanations?
Bosl,
Karl: Potens und Pauper, - Frühformen der Gesellschaft
in mittelalterlichen Europa, München 1964, V, 106-134, from
bibliog for RB on
Paupertas at
http://www.osb.org/rb/rbbib/b2paupertas.html.
O.G. Oexle, “Potens und Pauper im Frühmittelalter”, in W.
Harms & Speckenbach (eds.), Bildhafter Rede im Mittelalter und
Neuzeit
(Tübingen, 1992), 131-50.
Robert C. Figueira, “Potens et Pauper: charity and authority
in jurisdictional disputes over the poor in medieval Cologne”, in Plenitude
of Power:
The Doctrines and
Exercise of Authority in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of
Robert Louis Benson, ed. Robert C. Figueira (Ashgate: 2006)
Protection of "Pauperes under the
Carolingians and in the Peace Movement
The
Carolingians recogniuzed the support and protection of the pauperes
as one fo the duties of the king. R. le J. Hennebique, “Pauperes
et paupertas dans l’occident carolingienne aux ixe et
xe siècles”, Revue
du Nord 50 (1968), 169-87. What about the Anglo-Saxons? Dufermont’s
article, ibid, 189-201 on England
is very thin. How much more did the Peace of God movement do to this
ideological
requirement than merely shift the onus from kings to bishops? Head, Thomas Peace and Power
in France
Around the Year 1000 Essays in Medieval Studies - Volume 23, 2006,
pp. 1-17
Comparison of Poverty with Serfdom
Sen's
"capabilities" theory of poverty maps closely on to the disabilities of serfdom
This provides a historian's context for Sen's use of freedom and some
of the criticisms he faces
Hypothesis:
Servitude allows the lord to take a higher rent (portion of the alleged
surplus) than from freemen. This inhibits wealth accumulation.
But does custom shelter serfs from market forces?
Rise
of a "Profit Economy"
How
can this be characterized?
Money (economists' defintions) and the Market (progressively accepted
by the schools, then deemed "natural", even good, with Aristotle's help)
Alexander
Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (1978!) [available elctronically] offers
in its first half its own account of the rise of a profit economy
(for my money [!] more subtle than Little's) with a second half
on , int. al., the nobility of most saints, that has important
implications for the hopes of involuntary poor too.
Explain it in terms
of contemporary changes, eg emergence of the Three Orders image of
society, Peace Movement (whose declared aim was to protect the poor
from violence), both about the right time
New understandings of Property rights and legal definitions round
Ownership must figure somewhere
Diverse Effects of the Religious
Poverty
Did the notion of
religious as "Pauperes Christi" divert attention from the involuntary
poor?
"not in
order to take worldly care of other people's physical needs but for the
eternal welfare of our own souls" (Guigo)
Friars:
Poverty more central for Francis than Dominic. Dominicans soon found
ways to own priories etc.
Almost all monastic recruits came from the
nobility before 1100.
Among the routes for non-noble, non-rich recruits to enter religion
before the friars were groups of hermits etc. some of which were termed
heretical. But the "lay brothers" ("conversi") attached to new orders
like the Cistercians gave access to the relatively poor. Study of conversi
in this context could be instructive; cf. the shift to their repression
by the "real" monks and in some cases violent revolt.
The friars shared the life of the
poor, which must have at least conveyed guilt feelings!
But they also competed with the poor for alms, and glorified a
voluntary renunciation which the involuntary poor were in no position
to make.
K.B. Wolf, The
Poverty of Riches: St. Francis...Reconsidered (Oxford,
2003) looks interesting to me and right on topic.
F. Lambert, Franciscan
Poverty...1210-1323 (Revd. edn., 1998) [NB the edition is
important] treats the fate of the Doctrine
of Absolute Poverty among Franciscans from the origins until it
was declared heretical.
Janet Coleman, "Property and Poverty" in The
Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, ed. J.H.
Burns (Cambridge, 1988), 607-48.
Religion
among the Poor themselves
How
much did the Church's teaching reach the poor at all?
Presum,ably the friars mark a real
change, but in what direction?
A. Murray, ""Religion among the Poor
in 13th-cent. France", Traditio 30 (1974)
Poor
Relief mostly a personal exercise for the good of the donor's soul?
The Development Community these days act
suspicipus of the whole notion of "relief" as an impediment to
development.
Better to convey fishing skills than to offer the starving a few fish.
But alms were always first a penitential
exercise for the good of your soul. How you gave was as important as
what.
Can you give unjust acquisitions? Can prostitutes give Notre Dame
a rose window?!
The
Institutionalization of Poor Relief
Tithes.
Why does Mollat say so little
about a 10% tax on all Christians?
Try Googling the word to see what present-day Christians think on the
subject!
The standard rule was that 1 part in 4 should go to the poor.
Matricularii
(whom Mollat's translator calls "churchwardens")
Michel
Rouche, "La matricule des pauvres. Evolution d'une institution
de charité du Bas Empire jusqu'à la fin du Haut Moyen
Âge," in Mollat, Études
sur l'histoire de la pauvreté, 1:83-110.
Monasteries
Why and how did charity become a
monastic monopoly? How did this cease?
C12 hermit: "coenobitic cloisters...exclude as much as possible the
poverty that Christ the pauper preached"
Almoners/Almonries
- distance yourself from the nasty
business!?
Hospitals - How
prominent was poor relief among their aims?
S. Watson, “The Origins of
the English
Hospital”, TRHS
6th s.
16 (2006), 75-94.
M. Rubin, Charity
&
Community in Medieval Cambridge
(1987)
N. Orme & M. Webster, The
English Hospital 1070-1570 (1995)
S. Sweetinburgh, The
Role of the Hospital in Medieval England: Gift Giving &
the
Spiritual Economy (2004)
“Medieval Hospitals in Britain”
(2003) http://www.buildinghistory.org/Articles/Heritage.htm.
Timothy
S. Miller, "The Knights of Saint John and the Hospitals of the Latin
West,"
Speculum 53 (1978): 709-17
Gilds
Ben
McRee, "Charity & Gild Solidarity in Late Medieval England", J. British Studies
32 (1993), 195-225
Confaternities, "Poor
Tables", Monti di Pieta
State Intervention
Was
the role of the poor always to be passive?
Mollat, chap. 7 allows
them an active role from C13.
Friars still counsel patience = acceptance of their lot
Begging as profession,
with alms for prayers contract in l. m. ages (Geremek)
Why did people so dislike, even fear beggars? Check out the devastating
epigraph to Wolf, Poverty of Riches.
Geographical mobility: If their families etc. could not
look after them, the disabled sometimes take off and seek saintly
relief from shrines up to hundreds of miles away.
Elaine Clark,
"Institutional
and Legal Responses to Begging in
Medieval England
", Social Science History,
26. 3, (2002), pp. 447-473 [MUSE]
Stephen
R Munzer (1999) , Beggars of God: The Christian Ideal of
Mendicancy Journal
of Religious Ethics 27 (2), 305–330
Jean Dufournet,
Le Garcon et l'aveugle ( PQ1383.G2 D85
1989 and 2005) edits and translates a C13 play on the subject of
begging, with a number of other possibly relevant texts on the blind in
French translation (including ones like the regulations for the
"Quinze-vingts" used by Sharon Farmer) in an appendix,
Do
the poor have any rights?
C12-3 developments in canon law and theology say that in
destitution they have the right to take of other's goods!
Some relevant legal texts
on the necessity argument(TJM)
This might have been used as a defense to to theft and robbery in
secular courts. Was it ?
Compare the use of necessity to justify land sales, taxation etc.
Gilles
Couvreur, Les
pauvres ont-ils des droits? Recherches sur le vol en cas d’extrême
nécessité depuis la Concordia de Gratien (1140) jusqu’à Guillaume
d’Auxerre (+1231) (Rome, 1961) [Law Library or Annex]
Scott G. Swanson, "...John Locke's Theory of Natural Rights: Rights of
Subsistence and the Principle of Extreme Necessity", History of Political Thought 18.
3
(1997), esp. 395-423
Virpi Makinen & Heikki Pihlajamaki, ""The Individualization of
Crime in Medieval Canon Law", Journal of the History of Ideas
? (2005), 525-42) [MUSE]
Pauper Superbus
In De Duodecim
Abusivis Saeculi [Concerning the Twelve
Abuses of the Age], the
lesson of the
eighth abuse, pauper superbus,
emphasizes the proper humble
acceptance of poverty as the key to attaining heaven. ed.
Siegmund
Hellmann, “Pseudo-Cyprianus De XII
Abusivis Saeculi,” Texte und
Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 34 (1909), pp.
49-51. For the date, 630x700, see pp. 1-3. These sentiments take as
Biblical
support Matt. 5.3-5 and 1 Tim. 6.17-19.
Robin Hood: Robbing the Rich to feed the Poor!
Moralists are not encouraging here.
When
did the social goal enter the stories?
J.C. Holt, Robin
Hood, 8, 38-9, 183-5, 194-6.;
R.B. Dobson and J. Taylor, Rymes of Robin
Hood.
"Forte aliquis cogitat et
dicit: 'Multi sunt christiani divites, avari, cupidi; non pecco si
illis abstulero et pauperis dedero. Unde enim illi non bene agunt,
mercedem habere potero.' Sed hujusmodi cogitatio ex diaboli calliditate
suggeritur; nam, si totum tribuat quod abstulerat, auget potius
peccatum quam minuat." (Roberrt of Flamborough, Liber Poenitarius, ed., J.J.F. Firth, Toronto, 1971, 257
from Gratian, Decretum, 14. 5. 3
(Augustine).
The Law is like the Ritz Hotel, Open to Rich and Poor Alike!
The Roman Law
ideal of equal treatment was known and repeated
English court
amercements (fines) were sometimes pardoned "quia pauper est", which
did not when checked imply destitution
Is poverty "natural" or can humans
hope to eliminate it?
Mollat, 106-7 that "all" agree it is
unnatural. But some see prosperity in this world as trivial beside
hopes of salvation for the next.
One diagnosis attributes it to human selfishness
How do the arguments here jibe with the Aristotelian idea that wealth
& property were natural or even good?
Elaine Clark, "Social
Welfare and Mutual Aid in the Medieval Countryside", The
Journal of British Studies, 33, No. 4, (1994), pp. 381-406
[JSTOR]
Vilborg A. ÍSLEIFSDÓTTIR, "Paupers
and Vagrants: Poor relief in the late Middle Ages and its collapse", Saga 41:2
(2002)
What other views of Poverty and the Poor were available to
Western Christians in the Middle Ages?
Jews lived
in and among Christians, concentrated in towns too
Mark R. Cohen, Poverty and Charity in
the
Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt
Could Islam have given ideas to the West
on this subject?