There's being poor, and then there are attitudes about the poor. Modern society hasn't exactly figured out the appropriate attitude, and neither did medieval society. By modern standards, all medieval people were poor, lacking the material goods we take for granted, but people then didn't think so. This meant those who considered themselves wealthy or at least well off had to decide what to think about poor people.
For starters, medieval people couldn't decide whether poverty was a sign of holiness or the result of sin. As I discussed earlier, voluntary poverty was considered very holy in the late Roman Empire and in the High Middle Ages, times of (relative) economic prosperity and wealth, when renouncing wealth was a sign of devotion to God. After all, the New Testament depicts Jesus as without possessions or even a house. Many twelfth-century churches deliberately sought to be simple and undecorated--but not all, showing the basic division of opinion. Saint Francis in the thirteenth century said he was wed to Lady Poverty.
But even at other times (the early and late Middle Ages), when life was a lot tougher for a lot more people and holiness became equated with wealth, poor people were not automatically spurned. Although theologically it made sense that poverty was a product of sin, this did not mean then that poor people were specifically sinful. Rather, Original Sin, everybody's sinful nature, meant that there was poverty in the world. (Original Sin is a great explanation for all sorts of things.) "The poor we have always with us," says the Bible. This meant the wealthy were always responsible for trying to help them.
Giving alms, helping the poor, was considered a religious duty. Both laypeople and churches sought to help poor people. The wealthy in lay society and those monasteries that did not go in for extreme simplicity themselves would distribute leftover food at the back door after every meal. The poor did especially well if there was a feast.
Some monasteries had what were essentially official poor people, those who were fed daily, got new clothes once or twice a year, and had their feet washed on Maundy Thursday. In all of this, the emphasis was not on the poor people themselves. The emphasis was on the wealthy or comfortable. It was their Christian responsibility to help poor people, which meant they would establish official poor folks living nearby if they had to, so that they could help them.
There was still ambiguity about poor people. Sure, you were supposed to help them, but suppose they were scary and dangerous? Dirty, unkempt people are always scary, and it's easy to be dirty and unkempt if you have nowhere decent to sleep, no good clothes, and no way to bathe. And yet the scariest people were not the poor but the powerful. A knight might be clean and well-dressed, but he also had a sword and a short temper. Overall, the poor were those to be pitied and helped.
Things changed in the fourteenth century, when over-population and a string of bad harvests (always a bad combination) led to famine. Now there were a lot of poor people, most of whom were poor not for religious reasons but because they had lost their livelihood. Their numbers overwhelmed the charities that had supported the poor for the last few centuries--after all, they too now had less food to distribute.
Really for the first time the well to do started making distinctions between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, those who deserved to be helped and those who didn't. Thieves and bandits could be easily classified as undeserving, even if they'd stolen only to keep from starving. Children with big eyes got to be deserving.
The twenty-first century has the fourteenth century's distinction between deserving and undeserving poor. But we draw the line somewhat differently. The fourteenth century wanted to know if the poor people being helped were moral people. Today the concern is that they not be goof-offs. There is a very strong assumption that many poor people choose poverty so that they can avoid work and get freebies, which is why they have to be very carefully vetted before receiving benefits, and food stamps can't be spent on certain foods that they "don't deserve." Many would change their attitude if they suddenly had nothing.
© C. Dale Brittain 2017
Showing posts with label Poverty in the Middle Ages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poverty in the Middle Ages. Show all posts
Saturday, August 26, 2017
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Voluntary poverty
Everyone today, except for the truly homeless, would be considered rich by medieval standards, because of everything they own or have access to, from electricity to plumbing to furnaces/air conditioning to cars to TV to refrigerators to phones. But as I discussed earlier, there were plenty of people considered wealthy in the Middle Ages, and gradations of wealth down to the destitute.
Too often today one hears suggestions that those poor in the modern world somehow chose not to have enough money, being lazy and shiftless people who prefer to survive with handouts. This isn't particularly true now, but in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there really were people who deliberately chose to be poor and to live by handouts. They were considered holy.
In the New Testament, Jesus is described as wandering from place to place, without having any sort of permanent home, preaching as he went and accepting food and hospitality. The apostles followed him, and indeed the Bible notes that Jesus said that others should do the same. Now I personally (but I am not a minister!) think a person can be a good Christian without wandering barefoot around the Sea of Galilee, but the Bible is remarkably explicit on this point.
Following this example, there were a number of people in the High Middle Ages who deliberately gave up all material possessions and comforts, either to live a life of prayer as hermits separate from the world, or, increasingly commonly, to wander around and preach. Monks had been around in the West since the fifth century, people who lived in groups and who shared all their possessions (following the Acts of the Apostles) while leading deliberately simple lives. Hermits were rarer but still found, men who lived a solitary life of simplicity and prayer, far from human habitation, although they had to be close enough to humans for people to come and make offerings.
But wandering preachers were different. They were disruptive and meant to be. They considered themselves to be following the New Testament, including all the indications that Jesus was considered threatening by the well-established religious leaders of his time. For that matter, the secular governors (the Romans in first-century Palestine) considered him disruptive enough to execute him.
With any self-proclaimed holy disruptive person, the question is always are they genuinely inspired by God or genuinely a crackpot. The bishops of the twelfth century tended toward the latter explanation. Wandering preachers would come into town, preaching about salvation and damnation, and leave with a new group of followers, often disproportionately women. Now a lot of these new followers would quietly return home within a couple days, realizing that not having much to eat and sleeping out in the rain was not a comfortable lifestyle in spite of the promised salvation. But some would stick it out.
The bishops wanted these preachers to settle down and become monks, and especially they wanted to make sure they got a good religious education, because it was unclear what their message of salvation and damnation was based on. Some of these preachers spent much of their lives skating along the edge of heresy, promising to settle down and be monks and then heading off cross-country as soon as the bishop's back was turned.
But absolute poverty and wandering preaching became officially accepted by the organized church with the Franciscans (founded by Saint Francis), recognized by the pope in 1215. They took voluntary poverty to a new level, living entirely by begging, refusing to touch money, not even saving an apple over from one day to the next--eat it if you're hungry, if not give it to someone who is. People were stunned by their holiness and similarity to Christ and the original apostles, a connection made explicit when Francis received the stigmata. The absolute poverty he adopted started being modified shortly after his death—it really was an almost impossible standard. Later in the thirteenth century, those Franciscans who said they were sticking with Francis's original message got embroiled in an apocalyptic heresy, which sort of ended that branch, but the ideal of holy voluntary poverty long persisted.
© C. Dale Brittain 2017
Too often today one hears suggestions that those poor in the modern world somehow chose not to have enough money, being lazy and shiftless people who prefer to survive with handouts. This isn't particularly true now, but in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there really were people who deliberately chose to be poor and to live by handouts. They were considered holy.
In the New Testament, Jesus is described as wandering from place to place, without having any sort of permanent home, preaching as he went and accepting food and hospitality. The apostles followed him, and indeed the Bible notes that Jesus said that others should do the same. Now I personally (but I am not a minister!) think a person can be a good Christian without wandering barefoot around the Sea of Galilee, but the Bible is remarkably explicit on this point.
Following this example, there were a number of people in the High Middle Ages who deliberately gave up all material possessions and comforts, either to live a life of prayer as hermits separate from the world, or, increasingly commonly, to wander around and preach. Monks had been around in the West since the fifth century, people who lived in groups and who shared all their possessions (following the Acts of the Apostles) while leading deliberately simple lives. Hermits were rarer but still found, men who lived a solitary life of simplicity and prayer, far from human habitation, although they had to be close enough to humans for people to come and make offerings.
But wandering preachers were different. They were disruptive and meant to be. They considered themselves to be following the New Testament, including all the indications that Jesus was considered threatening by the well-established religious leaders of his time. For that matter, the secular governors (the Romans in first-century Palestine) considered him disruptive enough to execute him.
With any self-proclaimed holy disruptive person, the question is always are they genuinely inspired by God or genuinely a crackpot. The bishops of the twelfth century tended toward the latter explanation. Wandering preachers would come into town, preaching about salvation and damnation, and leave with a new group of followers, often disproportionately women. Now a lot of these new followers would quietly return home within a couple days, realizing that not having much to eat and sleeping out in the rain was not a comfortable lifestyle in spite of the promised salvation. But some would stick it out.
The bishops wanted these preachers to settle down and become monks, and especially they wanted to make sure they got a good religious education, because it was unclear what their message of salvation and damnation was based on. Some of these preachers spent much of their lives skating along the edge of heresy, promising to settle down and be monks and then heading off cross-country as soon as the bishop's back was turned.
But absolute poverty and wandering preaching became officially accepted by the organized church with the Franciscans (founded by Saint Francis), recognized by the pope in 1215. They took voluntary poverty to a new level, living entirely by begging, refusing to touch money, not even saving an apple over from one day to the next--eat it if you're hungry, if not give it to someone who is. People were stunned by their holiness and similarity to Christ and the original apostles, a connection made explicit when Francis received the stigmata. The absolute poverty he adopted started being modified shortly after his death—it really was an almost impossible standard. Later in the thirteenth century, those Franciscans who said they were sticking with Francis's original message got embroiled in an apocalyptic heresy, which sort of ended that branch, but the ideal of holy voluntary poverty long persisted.
© C. Dale Brittain 2017
Monday, February 29, 2016
Medieval poverty
By modern standards, everyone was dirt poor in the Middle Ages. Even the wealthiest lacked the "things" that everyone but the truly homeless now take for granted: electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating and air conditioning, telephones, washing machines, automobiles. There were no TVs or movies, no radios or CD players, no subways or buses, no supermarkets.
Nonetheless, there were always gradations of wealth, with some people considered very rich. Their wealth was based more on the power to command than on their bank accounts, but those considered rich did have much nicer clothing (and more outfits), better houses and furniture, and on average better food than those considered poor. Everyone, as is the case now, would have liked to be rich.
During the early Middle Ages especially, wealth was rare. During this time holiness and wealth were often equated. God was referred to as the King of Kings, and He was worshipped in churches that might, by later standards, be cramped and dark, but on the inside there was plenty of precious metal on the vessels and silken hangings on the walls. Bishops lived like princes, which was considered entirely appropriate.
It was clearly understood by everyone that helping the poor was a good Christian duty. There were however so many poor people that those with wealth essentially gave up. When most of the population was trying to scratch out a subsistence living, it was hard to know where to start.
But with the economic upturn of the twelfth century, it actually became possible to climb out of poverty. Merchants could make enough money to rival the nobility in their possessions and lifestyle. Some peasants became wealthy enough to hire other peasants to do their farm chores for them. Young men tired of trying to farm unsuitable ground could move to the rapidly growing cities to "make their fortunes" (or at least get a little ahead).
At this time, holiness became defined not with wealth but with poverty, in particular voluntary poverty. Monks had always lived more simply than bishops, but now the new monastic orders sought to give up all personal possessions and live austere lives: vegetarian diets, undecorated churches, hard manual labor. The King of Kings became instead the itinerant preacher of the New Testament, begging for a living. The new monastic orders liked to point out that they were much humbler and poorer than bishops or older monasteries, and hence holier, even though (as they recognized themselves) it was hard to avoid being proud of how humble they were.
Older monastic orders, although not adopting poverty quite so radically, still sought to assure that their monks had only collective property, not individual property. All of them continued gifts to the poor. For example, any food left after the monks had eaten was distributed to beggars. Some monasteries had a group of official poor people living outside the gates, to whom such alms were given and whose feet would be washed on Maundy Thursday.
Today no one voluntarily chooses to be poor (though you might think so, based on the punitive nature of some supposedly anti-poverty programs). But voluntary poverty was greatly admired in the High Middle Ages (see more here). The most extreme example was the thirteenth-century Saint Francis (whose name the current pope took), who urged his followers to live by wandering and begging, not even keeping an apple overnight to eat the next day--eat it if you're hungry, but otherwise give it away. The Franciscan order, unable to maintain this rigor after his death, ended up living essentially like austere monks.
Poverty as a real threat, not just something to be avoided--or chosen--came back in the fourteenth century. Europe was becoming over-populated, at the same time as the climate was worsening. Famines broke out on a scale not seen for several centuries, and desperate bands of hungry people might roam the countryside, looking for food.
It was at this time that the distinction between "deserving" and "undeserving" poor was first made. Now donors wanted to know if the poor they were asked to help really deserved it, were honest, hard-working people who had suffered disasters, or if they were shiftless bums (and probably drunks) who got what was coming to them. This is a distinction the modern world still makes.
The fourteenth century was also the time of the Black Death and the outbreak of the Hundred Years War. It was also the beginning of the Renaissance. A bad time all around.
© C. Dale Brittain 2016
For more on medieval poverty and other aspects of life in the Middle Ages, see the ebook, Positively Medieval, available from Amazon.
Nonetheless, there were always gradations of wealth, with some people considered very rich. Their wealth was based more on the power to command than on their bank accounts, but those considered rich did have much nicer clothing (and more outfits), better houses and furniture, and on average better food than those considered poor. Everyone, as is the case now, would have liked to be rich.
During the early Middle Ages especially, wealth was rare. During this time holiness and wealth were often equated. God was referred to as the King of Kings, and He was worshipped in churches that might, by later standards, be cramped and dark, but on the inside there was plenty of precious metal on the vessels and silken hangings on the walls. Bishops lived like princes, which was considered entirely appropriate.
It was clearly understood by everyone that helping the poor was a good Christian duty. There were however so many poor people that those with wealth essentially gave up. When most of the population was trying to scratch out a subsistence living, it was hard to know where to start.
But with the economic upturn of the twelfth century, it actually became possible to climb out of poverty. Merchants could make enough money to rival the nobility in their possessions and lifestyle. Some peasants became wealthy enough to hire other peasants to do their farm chores for them. Young men tired of trying to farm unsuitable ground could move to the rapidly growing cities to "make their fortunes" (or at least get a little ahead).
At this time, holiness became defined not with wealth but with poverty, in particular voluntary poverty. Monks had always lived more simply than bishops, but now the new monastic orders sought to give up all personal possessions and live austere lives: vegetarian diets, undecorated churches, hard manual labor. The King of Kings became instead the itinerant preacher of the New Testament, begging for a living. The new monastic orders liked to point out that they were much humbler and poorer than bishops or older monasteries, and hence holier, even though (as they recognized themselves) it was hard to avoid being proud of how humble they were.
Older monastic orders, although not adopting poverty quite so radically, still sought to assure that their monks had only collective property, not individual property. All of them continued gifts to the poor. For example, any food left after the monks had eaten was distributed to beggars. Some monasteries had a group of official poor people living outside the gates, to whom such alms were given and whose feet would be washed on Maundy Thursday.
Today no one voluntarily chooses to be poor (though you might think so, based on the punitive nature of some supposedly anti-poverty programs). But voluntary poverty was greatly admired in the High Middle Ages (see more here). The most extreme example was the thirteenth-century Saint Francis (whose name the current pope took), who urged his followers to live by wandering and begging, not even keeping an apple overnight to eat the next day--eat it if you're hungry, but otherwise give it away. The Franciscan order, unable to maintain this rigor after his death, ended up living essentially like austere monks.
Poverty as a real threat, not just something to be avoided--or chosen--came back in the fourteenth century. Europe was becoming over-populated, at the same time as the climate was worsening. Famines broke out on a scale not seen for several centuries, and desperate bands of hungry people might roam the countryside, looking for food.
It was at this time that the distinction between "deserving" and "undeserving" poor was first made. Now donors wanted to know if the poor they were asked to help really deserved it, were honest, hard-working people who had suffered disasters, or if they were shiftless bums (and probably drunks) who got what was coming to them. This is a distinction the modern world still makes.
The fourteenth century was also the time of the Black Death and the outbreak of the Hundred Years War. It was also the beginning of the Renaissance. A bad time all around.
© C. Dale Brittain 2016
For more on medieval poverty and other aspects of life in the Middle Ages, see the ebook, Positively Medieval, available from Amazon.
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