This chapter hath exceeded the due limits, but how important are the disclosures which we have derived from it! Here we have seen whole generations impressed with a practical conviction, that neither fortune hath any thing better than the power, nor nature than the will to show mercy to as many men as possible,-and, what should move a true lover of wisdom still more, whole generations taught to consider and understand profoundly all the deep mysteries of Providence in the order of rich and poor, and all the secrets of evangelic grace in the salvation of both by charity. Perhaps some hapless wanderer through the wastes of modern speculation may be awakened by these memorials of ancient faith to a sense of the position in which the propagators of error have placed him; for here he has seen enough to be convinced, if he do not act treacherously towards himself, that the spirit of men in Catholic ages was to acknowledge no other religion as true and undefiled before God, but what the Apostle describes," to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, and to keep themselves unspotted from the world;" which is only expressed in more detail in that rule of St. Benedict, to the influence of which so many hearts under a secular habit, were daily subjected, as in the instances expressly

recorded of Lewis the Emperor, and Cosmo de Medicis, and which commands all subject to it, pauperes recreare, nudum vestire, infirmum visitare, mortuum sepelire, in tribulatione subvenire dolentem consolari a sæculi actibus se facere alienum. Such was the code of the middle ages.

Ah, where is the reader now with breast so steeled against all stings of conscience and salutary fear of God's terrific judgment, as to feel any longer uppermost in his thoughts the phrases of men, who talk of dark ages, superstition, and ignorance, when alluding to Catholic states, to generations which feared nothing but that judgment, and which sought with such acuteness to avert it by charity to the poor! Fearful, though sublime and admirable task, would that it had been in abler hands, to expose a history comprising sixteen centuries, of which the most pervading and striking phenomenon must remain for ever inexplicable to human genius, however penetrating, without one key to render it intelligible, and that the parable of Dives, and the words read in the Gospel, with which Christ will judge those on his right hand and those on his left, in presence of the hosts of heaven!

Reg. S. Ben. c. 4.

O describe all the various institutions of mercy which existed during the middle ages, would be an endless task; and to impart an adequate idea of their merits, by citing didactive pieces, without, as it were, a local and minute inspection of what was established, is impossible; for it is in such works that one perceives the truth of what an ancient French writer remarks, that the heart is more ingenious than the understanding. Charity rendered the rich man and the poor like Ulysses, Toλvμnxavos,* fertile and subtle inexpedients; not indeed like the Homeric hero, to extricate himself from the perils of life, but to remove or alleviate the multiplied wants and calamities of his fellow-creatures. Amor Jesu nobilis, ad magna operanda impellit, et ad desideranda semper perfectiora excitat. In cities, therefore, in deserts, amidst which cloistered brethren dwelt in happier days, wherever we direct our steps, within the realms that faith once illumined, Catholicism has left some memorial, by which we know that the blessed merciful have passed,—some monument, vital with mind, attesting the subtle action of a most loving heart, which, to an ordinary traveller, may seem only some rude wall, perhaps, or broken trophy, but on which a poet, with the tender penetration of a Wordsworth, may describe his fastening "an eye tearglazed." Johnson used to say, that the real criterion of civilization consisted in the degree of provision made for the happiness of the poor; and if that proposition be admitted, we must conclude that the middle ages were more entitled to the praise to which the modern communities lay claim, than any other period in the history of man. To win the beatitude of the merciful, there were, it must be remembered, other virtues required in regard to the poor besides ministering to their corporal necessities; and truly, in fulfilling the spiritual works of mercy towards them, the devotion of men in the middle ages was admirable, and such as can never be suffi

⚫ Od. i. 285.

ciently praised; but having already had occasion to witness their respect for the poor, their meekness in relation to them, their readiness to console, their assiduity to counsel and instruct them, it will not be necessary to give any further illustrations; though, were time and space allowed, it would not be an unpleasant field for reminiscences. Poets who sing so often the interceding grace of a St. Elmo, to whose prayers the Spanish and Portuguese sailors commend their bark in tempests, would not be ungrateful to an historian who should remind them that this saint was known in history as St. Peter Goncalez, who had exchanged the honours and pleasures of a court for the privilege of teaching the Catechism to the poor children of the fishermen and sailors on the coasts of the Peninsula. One might write a large book upon the education which was given to the poor in the middle ages by the charity of the rich. The parents of the celebrated Lewis of Grenada were indigent, obscure persons, but the marquis de Mondejar supplied them with means for educating their son.† Similar instances are innumerable.

In the sixteenth century, in the public grammar school of Padua, founded by Annibal Rugerio, the boys and youths of the city were taught gratuitously both Greek and Latin. But there yet remains unnoticed an order of facts more striking still, as attesting the passage of the blessed merciful upon earth, to the examination of which we must now proceed. If we open the annals of apy city, and examine the rise and progress of its charitable foundations, we cannot but feel surprise and admiration at the prodigious and persevering activity of the principle which has produced such effects. What a series of institutions, directed to some purpose of love and mercy, is presented in the history of Paris alone; and what a multitude of all ranks and estates of men co-operated with one heart and mind to conceive, establish, and perpe

Touron, Hist. des Hom. Illust. de l'Ord. S. Dom. tom. i. + Id. tom. iv. liv. 30. Bern. Scard. De Antiq. Patavii, Lib. ii. 5.

tuate them! Kings and queens, princes, nobles, bishops, priests, magistrates, citizens tradesmen, and even mendicants, all conspired in the same direction, and with such comprehensive and subtle skill, that no kind of misery was forgotten, or left unprovided with the fitting means to remove or alleviate it. De Bourgueville, speaking of the charitable foundations at Caen, observes, that posterity will be able easily to judge that their predecessors were very faithful to God, charitable to the poor, and firm in their hope in his mercy, when it will remark the foundations which they have left to the value every year of three thousand livres.

No ancient legislator ever proposed a hospital for the poor and infirm, or a hospice for the stranger and destitute.

When peasants, or any wanderers from the country, came into Rome, if they did not leave it after the market, they had no resource but to pass the night in the arcades, and about the forum, or in the porches before the temples. The Greeks were ignorant even of the name of an hospital; the word "nosocomium" was first employed by St. Jerome and St. Isidore. It is true, in the Prytaneus at Athens there was provided subsistence for the wives and children of those who had suffered for their country, but there was no asylum in sickness. The infirm and sick are wholly overlooked in the institutions of Lycurgus, as in those of all other legislators of Greece, although the father of medicine, Hippocrates, with a solemn oath swears, that he will visit all his life the poor gratuitously. In ancient Rome there was the same neglect and indifference in regard to the poor. Numa made no provision for them; and during the republic the bounties of the state were given only to those who were in health. The emperors were not more humane, though it is true certain baths, or thermes, were consecrated to the use of the people. The rich used to give daily to their poor clients the sportula, of which Juvenal so often speaks; but there was no public asylum for the poor, and in sickness they were left to expire under their own miserable tiles, which afforded no shelter from sun or rain. The slaves were left unburied; so that Horace speaks of the Esquiline hill as whitened with the number of bones collected by carniverous birds. Cato, whom Plutarch praises for living familiarly with his slaves as if his companions in the labours of husbandry, never thought of providing for them in sickness or old age; and in his book of instructions, De Re Rusticâ, he

prescribes, as an important point of domestic economy, to sell off old slaves, in order not to nourish, he says, useless persons. Neither the religion nor the philosophy of Greece and Rome tended to comfort the poor. The divinities were cruel; the stoic affected to despise the sufferings of the indigent; the Epicurean took no thought of them. In this respect Paganism was everywhere the same. Throughout the vast re

gions of Mogul, India, and China, the use of hospitals is unknown to this day. In no country did Christianity find such institutions existing. It seems incredible, though it is most true, that it was only in the thirteenth century the custom of putting to death old infirm persons was abolished in Poland by Albert the Great, who was sent there as legate of the Holy See, so little prepared were those nations for constructing vast palaces expressly for the aged and infirm. In respect to institutions of mercy, all countries which had not beheld the light of faith were equally destitute. It seems unaccountable, therefore, that so grave an historian as Niebuhr should seize the occasion, when speaking of building the Lateran hospital, in the twelfth century, to denominate that epoch, the midnight of barbarism at Rome. Truly it was a blessed night which beheld such foundations, even though their walls may have been built with fragments of statues, and other works of Grecian art! The history of their rise and progress can be traced in few words. In the year 380 the first hospital in the West was founded by Fabiola, a devout Roman lady, without the walls of Rome. St. Jerome says expressly "that this was the first of all."* And he adds, "that it was a country house, destined to receive the sick and infirm, who before used to lie stretched on the public ways." The Pilgrim's hospital at Rome, built by Pammachius, became also celebrated. In 330, the priest Zotichus, who had followed Constantine to Byzantium, established in that city, under his protection, a hospice for strangers and pilgrims. This house was built on the plan of the hospice at Jerusalem, which Hircan had erected there one hundred and fifty years before Christ, in expiation for having opened and plundered the tomb of David, and in order to convert the riches he had found there to a benevolent purpose; but it is supposed by Mongez that this hospice was only opened during the feast of the passover. St. Isidore says, in his Etymologies, "that this was the

* Ad Oceanum de Fabiola.

first ξενοδοκεῖον, or hospice for strangers. St. Basil, who founded the first hospitals of Asia, mentions a house for the reception of the sick and of travellers, built on a spot formerly uninhabited, near the city of Cesarea, which became afterwards the ornament of the country, and like a second city. St. Basil used frequently to visit it, in order to instruct and console the poor. St. Chrysostom built several hospitals at Constantinople. Justinian, in the year 350, erected at Jerusalem the famous hospital of St. John; and his example was followed by his successors with such zeal, that according to Ducange, in his Commentary, on the Byzantine History, there were thirty-five establishments of charity in that city alone: there was the Nosocomium, or asylum for the sick; the Xenodochium, for pilgrims and strangers; the Ptochium, or hospice for the poor; the Brephotrophium, or house of education for poor children; the Orphanotrophium, or house for orphans; the Gerocomium, or asylum for the aged; the Pandochreum, or gratuitous inn; and the Morotrophium, or house for lunatics.

St. Augustin says, "that hospitals have their origin in the truth of religion." In a material sense, too, they owed their existence to the ministers of religion; for, in fact, the first hospitals were the bishops' houses. But as the episcopal resources proved insufficient, the Church decreed, that the canons should give the tenths of their revenues and oblations to maintain the sick poor. In early times the hospitals were always under the direction of priests: thus St. Isidore presided over that at Alexandria, in the time of the Patriarch Theophi

It was determined by Charlemagne, in 816, that at each see one of the canons should always govern the hospital; and that this asylum should be everywhere near the cathedral, in order that the clergy might easily visit it. The consequence of this early discipline can be seen at Paris, where the Hotel Dieu is in the place before the cathedral, and at Brussels, where the great hospital adjoins the church of St. John, which is one of the oldest in that city. Lanfranc, and many other great English prelates, are recorded to have signalized the first year of their episcopacy by erecting houses for the reception of the sick. However, in subsequent times, it became often necessary to change this locality, for

Sainte-Foix, Essais Historiques sur Paris, tom. ii. Jaillot, Recherches sur Paris, i. 103.

in

consequence of the confined space which resulted, and the increase of cities, the physical disadvantages in consequence were found to be great. Tenon, in his elaborate work on the hospitals of Paris, proves that, in consequence of the circumstances resulting from its position, the mortality in the Hotel Dieu at Paris, in the last century, was greater than in any other hospital. In a very early age, however, hospitals were not exposed to this inconvenience of locality, for churches being rarely built within the walls of cities, their site was, consequently, in every respect advantageous. Most Basilicas, as we before remarked, were raised over the tombs of martyrs, which were always without the walls, and it was formerly forbidden to bury bodies within their enclosure.* The clergy, however, were not the sole authors of these monuments of mercy: many hos pitals owed their foundation to lay persons. Pammachius established, at his own expense, a hospital at Porto; and St. Gallican, a Roman patrician and consul, who suffered martyrdom under Julian, after enjoying the honours of a triumph, and the friendship of the great Constantine, might be seen serving the sick poor, and washing the pilgrims' feet, in the hospital which he had built at Ostia, to which place he retired, along with Hilarion, in consequence of hearing that there were collected there many thousand miserable persons without assistance.

It was by similar establishments that the piety of the first French kings became distinguished. Still the religious connec tion was always seen. Thus, though Paris was become the seat of empire, yet in consequence of the antiquity of the church of Lyons, Childebert erected the first hospital in that city. The fifth Coun cil of Orleans, in the middle of the sixth century, speaks of this hospital as surpassing all others in extent and salubrity. Rheims and Autun pretend that their hospitals are of equal antiquity, but it is thought, without sufficient ground. Soon after these three foundations, about the year 638, Paris enjoyed a similar advantage. The statutes of this hospital, composed in 1220, are still extant, from which

it appears, that great attention was paid to the morals of the persons who served it. The capitularies of succeeding monarchs bear testimony to their zeal in multiplying

Gallia Christiana, tom. ii. 230. † Clavareau. Mém. sur les Hôpit. 29.

these great establishments. The eighth and ninth centuries were particularly distinguished in the west for the number of hospitals and other institutions of mercy, which were founded. At that time every monastery had a house adjoining it for the poor and the stranger.* Thus, in the ninth century, St. Anselm, Abbot of Nonantula, built a Xenodochium, with a chapel served by monks, where the poor were daily nourished, and where every person that presented himself was received to hospitality, and fed; and on all the kalends, two hundred poor people used to be entertained.+

The sick were even frequently lodged in a building adjoining, for whom. the monks prepared medicines, as we find in Italy at the present day, where the dispensary is always in a monastery. The Senior, who explains to a disciple the rule of St. Antony, reminds him that it is the duty of monastic superiors to receive old sick men, blind and paralytic, and to love them, although they can render no other service to the house but what is spiritual. And that the western monks in later times were anxious to relieve and console the sick and infirm, is proved by many records. Orderic Vitalis says, "that originally the abbey of Ouches nourished seven lepers, each of whom received daily a portion equal to that of a monk." Walafried Strabo mentions, in his life of St. Othmar, abbot of St. Gall, that this holy man built a hospital for lepers near the monastery, and that at night he used often to walk to it, in order to comfort and tend these poor creatures. Frequently when he went abroad he used to return without a tunic or cap, having given what he wore to the poor. In 1377 there was founded a hospital for the sick near the great abbey of Auriliac, in the diocese of Clermont. During the Pontificate of Innocent III. the Count of Blancoburg founded, adjoining the Cistercian abbey of St. Michael, in the diocese of Halberstad, a hospital for the sick and poor, in honour of the Holy Ghost; and the pope, in his letter to the Abbot, says, our dear son, the noble count, in giving a portion of his best land for this purpose, and one

66

hundred marks of silver, desires that the hospital should be constructed, not in his,

⚫ Joan. Devoti Instit. Canonic. Lib. ii. tit. xii. §. 1. Vita ejus apud Mabil, acta S. Ord. S. Bened. iv. 1.

Exposit. Sent. S. Antonii Ab.

Hist. Nor. liv. iii.

Gallia Christ. tom. ii. 499.

but in our name. At the abbey of Monte Cassino also there was a hospital in ancient times, the support of which was one of the works of piety for which that monastery had been celebrated.+ About

the year 1240 there was erected, in front of the Benedictine monastery of St. Maximinus, in the suburbs of Treves, under the Abbot Henry a Broich, and with the unanimous consent of the whole convent, a vast hospital, which was dedicated under the invocation of St. Elizabeth, to which the said abbot and convent granted the third part of all the revenues and goods of the abbey at that time, which was thenceforth for ever to be devoted to the sole use of the poor, the weak, and the sick; which foundation was, at their petition, confirmed by pontifical diploma of Innocent IV. and enriched to an incredible extent by letters of indulgence from Henry and Arnold, Archbishop of Treves, granted to all the faithful who, through Christian charity, should make donations to the hospital. The rector was always chosen from the bosom of the convent, but the Counts of Manderscheid were the temporal advocates and patrons. The abbatial constitutions, during the fourteenth and two succeeding centuries, evince the greatest zeal to provide against the possibility of any abuse in the employment of its funds: the words are, "We beseech and exhort our successors, the abbots and brethren in the bowels of Christ and of his holy Mother, to take care that the goods of this hospital, magnificently endowed, shall be always applied according to the foundation to the use of the poor and sick, and never alienated for any other purpose; but if the contrary should ever take place, we execrate the perpetrators, and desire that they may be struck with anathema and excommunication." In 1442, when the monastery was obliged to yield some of its possessions on pledge, the letters expressly except the revenues due from them to the hospital; and in 1610, when Attilius, the apostolic nuncio, visited it, the charter of his visitation provides, that the hospital should continue to be well governed, and its goods applied, as before, to the use of the poor and sick. Later in the seventeenth century, however, abuse crept in, so that the Abbot, Alexander Henn, styled in the

* Inn. III. Epist. Lib. xi. 69. + Id. Epist. Lib, xii. 182. Hist. Hospit. S. Elisab. Trev.