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E-book The Medieval Economy of Salvation : Charity, Commerce, and the Rise of the Hospital

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Penilaian

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It was a cold winter evening in 2010, and I had just arrived in Paris for a short research trip. The tiny hotel where I would be staying was on the fifth floor of the ophthalmological wing of the hôtel-Dieu (or hospital) just across from the cathedral of Notre Dame. 1 Given the subject of the book I was in France to research, it seemed appropri-ate that I should stay in a “hospital-hôtel,” especially since some medieval hospitals not only housed the sick and poor but also functioned as hotels that charged their guests based on the length of their visits. As the TripAd-visor reviews warned, guests in this hotel often shared the elevator with patients in wheelchairs or on gurneys. When I arrived at the entrance to the hospital, however, what struck me was the large number of homeless Parisians who were using the hospital’s heated foyer as a shelter for the night. I remember thinking that if this had been the thirteenth century, these homeless people, rather than relegated to the foyer, would have been admitted to the hôtel-Dieu and given a bed and a meal after they had con-fessed their sins. A few days later, I was sitting in an archive in Dammarie-lès-Lys (in the southeastern suburbs of Paris), just down the street from the hauntingly beau-tiful ruins of Le Lys, the royal Cistercian abbey for women, founded in 1251. The archive’s holdings include two large cartularies for the main hospital of Provins, a martyrological obituary with the names of donors and members of the hospital personnel, and hundreds of original single-sheet charters that were subsequently copied into the cartularies. A testament from 1253 for Alice la Pelée, a bourgeois woman from Provins, records her bequests to the hospital of houses, land, a vineyard, her bedding, and the sum of 60 livres ( l .). She also stipulated that bread should be distributed to the poor on the day of her death. In her testamentary bequests, Alice was more generous to the main hospital of Provins than to any churches, monasteries, houses of friars, or other hos-pitals or leprosaria. Did she have some connection to this hospital during her lifetime, I wondered? 2 Another testament found in the same archive, this one from 1260, came from Guillaume, a priest who served as the curate of Sceaux (in the Loiret) and the dean of Gâtinais. He also showed a strong propensity to give to various hospitals and leprosaries, particularly the main hospital of Provins. 3 His bequests included leaving a small sum for the marriage portion for ten poor girls in Sceaux and ten girls in Sourdun (near Provins), as well as funds to feed the poor in these towns and to buy them shoes. In his testament of 1219, Jacques de Hongrie, who served as sergeant to Countess Blanche, made bequests to a long list of religious and charitable institutions, includ-ing the brothers of Saint John of Jerusalem (the Hospitallers), the lepers of Crolebarbe (near Provins), a planned domus Dei in Provins for poor students, and various churches and monasteries.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

909.5 DAV t

Penerbit

USA : Cornell University Press., 2019

Deskripsi Fisik

336 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781501742118

Klasifikasi

909.5

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

World History 16th Century, 1500 - 1599

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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