medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
To Brenda Cook and others: Using the grade of the oblate,
Benedictine houses and the military orders normally looked after
pensioners for education and retirement as well as the dying. The
system amounts to a general system of old age care and pensions as
well as for the education of children. Emile Lesne long ago wrote
about this for the early middle ages in his history of ecclesiastical
property and I have contributed to it in an article on Toulouse
published in Traditio sometime ago which I am presently redoing. In
my judgment, the system was not restricted to the rich but, in
various guises, extended down to the poor. The admirable GG Coulton
also knew much about it, but tended to look on the financial
arrangements as yet another example of the meretriciousness of the
clergy, mistakenly I think. Obviously, since it overlaps with
insurance, it poses problems for the participants, but moralization
does not help to explain them.
Until the late middle ages and early modern times, hospitals and
orders generally did not specialize in medical categories, save, of
course, for leproseries. In the areas about which I read documents,
orphanages also appear around 1300. Yours, John Mundy
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