I think his point is that this was part of the growing tendency to
distinguish between the worthy poor and the unworthy poor. While formerly
all of the poor had been seen as the embodiment of the suffering Christ,
sometime around 1400 people came to see the WORKING POOR as the embodiment
of the suffering Christ--i.e., not those at the very bottom of the economic
ladder. The indigent and vagrant poor, in contrast, were seen as
predisposed by their circumstances to a life of sin. They were no longer
Christlike, having become instead a potentially socially destabilizing
menace.
This seems to be his claim. But I'd like some detail about the Christ the
worker and Joseph the worker iconography. Mollat is full of great ideas and
seductive generalizations but I want FOOTNOTES!
Willis
_____________________________________________________________________
Willis Johnson . Divinity School . Swift Hall . 1025 East 58th Street
University of Chicago . Chicago, IL 60637-1577 . [log in to unmask]
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