 |
 |
>On Tue, 1 Dec 1998, Willis Johnson wrote: > >> 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. Well documented and useful for this discussion is a book by our member Jussi Hanska based on mendicant sermons and penitential materials of the 13th/14th centuries, _"And the Rich Man also died; and He was buried in Hell": The Social Ethos in Mendicant Sermons_, Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1997 (= Bibliotheca Historica, 28), ISBN 951-710-076-0, see esp. chapters 3.4 (The Poor as Good Christians) and 4.2 (Turning the Tables - the Virtuous Rich and the Sinful Poor) Otfried ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Otfried Lieberknecht, Schoeneberger Str. 11, D-12163 Berlin phone & fax: ++49 +30 8516675, E-mail: [log in to unmask] Homepage for Dante Studies: http://members.aol.com/lieberk/welcome.html Listowner of Italian-Studies: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/italian-studies/ Listowner of Medieval-Religion: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%