CHARITY
001
CHARITY
question. Ratzinger says that grave abuses, such as
avarice, luxury, and a diminution of love fo. - the
poor, got into the richer monasteries, and he inti-
- i hat to some extent in the fourteenth, and to a
greater extent in the fifteenth, century, these abuses
were no longer mere exceptions; but he adds that no
other period can show as many foundations and
works of benevolence (op. cit.. p. 311). All that he
tells us in the second passage quoted is that the
multiplicity of charitable agencies — monasteries,
hospitals, orders, and associations — without any cen-
tralized directions, was less effective than the old
parish system, and was unable to overcome begging
(p. 397). Obviously these limited and qualified
statements are not equivalent to Professor Ashley's
sweeping assertion. It would seem that in spite of
his usual fairness, he is here unable to emancipate
himself from the long prevailing English tradition
concerning all pre-Reformation institutions. Similar
errors have no doubt been committed more fre-
quently by writers who are less competent and less
fair than Professor Ashley.
Assuming that the extreme view under discussion rests upon no sufficient Inundation, what conclusion concerning Catholic charity in the later Middle Ages seems to be justified by the evidence? Notwith- standing the well-recognized danger of generalizing from historical facts, it serins safe to say that the amount of culpable waste and of unwise and indis- criminate giving to the poor was considerable; but that the amount of distress that went unrelieved was not. relatively to economic resources and standards of living, greater than the unrelieved want of any age sine'. The first part of this conclusion seems to In' abundantly established by the investigations of Ratzinger (op. cit., pp. 311, 313, 315, 319, 323, 360, 362. 396-399, 437 sqq., and elsewdiere). Justice, however, requires that we make some qualifications. The prevalence of begging during the fifteenth cen- tury was due not so much to misdirected charity as to the breaking up of feudalism and to the agrarian changes, such as enclosures and sheep-farming (cf. Ashley, op. cit., p. 3.52), which deprived immense numbers of persons of all means of livelihood. The fact that the duty of discrimination in giving was not so generally preached and practised as to-day, is largely accounted for by a less developed apprecia- tion of the evil of social dependency. This was in- evitable in feudal society. In the third place, much of tie 1 inefficiency of tin- medieval agencies must be attributed solely to their lack of co-ordination and centralization. The second part of our generalization calls to mind the words of the Rev. Dr. Gibbins: " But poverty was neither so deep nor so widespread a< ir is now. nor as it soon became, and the monas- teries and guilds (when they did their duty) were pos- sibly quite as efficient as a modern Board of Guard- ians" (Industry in England, p. 195). Dr. Gibbins is not a Catholic. Dr. Ellwood maintains (Hender-
Modern Methods of Charity, foot-note, p. 167) that the dissolution of the English monasteries "revealed" rather than "caused" a large amount of
i ism and vagrancy. We may pertinently ask whether the Poor Law "covered", i. e. relieved, these conditions as fully and as humanely as the monastic system which it supplanted. Some of its early pro- visions for the repression of begging constitute a foul blot on the history of English legislation. Cruel as they were, these measures proved ineffective. Speaking of European conditions generally, Ratzinger declares that it wis precisely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the prohibition of begging was most severe, that the practice was most ex- tend,, (op. fit., p. I 15 I.
\fter more than two centuries of variations, during which the defects of the Statute of lilizal n't h had been corrected by the Settlement Law of Charles II, which,
in the words of Dr. Ellwood (Henderson, op. cit.,
p. 173) was "disastrous to rich and poor alike", the
English Poor Law went to that extreme of indis-
criminate liberality provided for by the Allowance
System of 1782. So demoralizing was this measure
that, to quote General Walker, "the condition of the
person who threw himself flat upon public charity
was better than that of the labourer who struggle,!
on to preserve his manhood in self-support" (cf.
Warner, American Charities, p. 15). Despite the
great reform which the law underwent in 1834, and
despite the intelligent administration which it ought
to receive at the end of the nineteenth century, Mr.
Thomas Mackay is constrained to write: "the Poor
Law as administered throughout the greater part of
the country is simply a disaster to the best interests
of the poorer classes, and succeeds in maintaining a
head of pauperism which, though it continues to decrease, is still a disgrace to the intelligence of the
country" (The State and Charity, p. 137). Now, if
the case be so with the English Poor Law, which
represents the most systematic, determined, and
long-continued endeavour to find an adequate sub-
stitute for pre-Reformation agencies; if not only in
England but in every other European country, the
amount of unrelieved want is still, relatively to na-
tional resources and standards of living, greater than
it was in the Middle Ages; if. as even Uhlhorn admits.
"no period has done so much for the poor as the
Middle Ages" (op. cit.. p. 397): if the possessors of
wealth of those days were imbued with saner ideas
as to its worth and a broader and more generous con-
ception of its uses, we can bear with some compla-
cency the knowledge that medieval charity is charge-
able with much injudicious distribution and even
with considerable misappropriation. Professor Pat-
ten, who is one of the leading authorities on econom-
ics and economic history in America writes: "The
economic aims of the Church w-ere also fairly well
realized. It provided food and shelter for the work-
ers, charity for the unfortunate, and relief from
disease, plague, and famine, which were but too
common in the Middle Ages. When we note the
number of the hospitals and infirmaries, the bounties
of the monks, and the self-sacrifice of the nuns, we
cannot doubt that the unfortunate of that time were
at least as well provided for as they are at the present.
If the workmen were well fed, warmly clothed, and
comfortably housed, surely the economic aims of the
age were fairly well realized" (The Development of
English Thought, pp. 90, 91).
5. From the End of the Fifteenth Century to the Present Time. — The great increase of distress which followed so soon upon the Reformation was due in some measure to the rapid decay of feudalism and the agrarian changes, but in greater measure to the con- tiscat ion of the monastic and other sources of Catholic charity, and to the substitution of an extortionate set of secular landlords for the monasteries and the churches. The last factor was especially harmful in England (cf. Gibbins. op. cit., pp. 203-205 but its evil results were considerable in all the regions where the Reformation triumphed (Ratzinger, op. cit., pp. 456-463). Luxury and selfishness tncri aa d among the wealthy, while charitable contributions decreased among all classes. Uhlhorn admits that the purer motives of giving, which were the gift of the Reforma- tion, did not lead to the expected results; "that our Church has in this reaped also, and perhaps most of all in this, come short in practice of what has been given her in knowledge" fop. cit.. p. 398). How far the practice of giving and the spirit of charity had declined since the advent of the new religion is suffi- ciently indicated by the litter complaints of Luther (cf. Ratzinger, op. cit., pp. 457, 458 1. As a necessary consequence the relief of the poor fell more and more to the care of the civil authorities, national, provin-
