281. CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 359
with its ascetic self-denial, its pious superstitions and utilitarian ingredients. He lived in that miserable transition period when the old Roman civilization was crumbling to pieces and the new civilization was not yet built up on its ruins. " We see nothing but sorrow/' he says, " we hear nothing but complaints. All, Home ! once the mistress of the world, where is the senate? where the people? The buildings are in ruins, the walls are falling. Everywhere the sword ! Everywhere death ! I am weary of life ! " But charity remained as an angel of comfort. It could not prevent the general collapse, but it dried the tears and soothed the sorrows of individuals. Gregory was a father to the poor. He distributed every mouth cart-loads of corn, oil, wine, and meat among them. What the Roman emperors did from policy to keep down insurrection, this pope did from love to Christ and the poor. He felt personally guilty when a man died of starvation in Rome. He set careful and con scientious men over the Roman hospitals, and required them to submit regular accounts of the management of funds. He furnished the means for the founding of a Xenodochium in Jerusalem. He was the chief promoter of the custom of dividing the income of the church into four equal parts, one for the bishop, one for the rest of the clergy, one for the church build ings, one for the poor. At the same time he was a strong be liever in the meritorious efficacy of almsgiving for the living and the dead. He popularized Augustin's notion of purgatory, supported it by monkish fables, and introduced masses for the departed (without the so-called thirties, /. c. thirty days after death). He held that God remits the guilt and eternal punish ment, but not the temporal punishment, of sin, which must be atoned for in this life, or in purgatory. Thus he explained the passage about the fire (1 Cor. 3: 11) which consumes wood, hay, and stubble, i. c. light and trifling sins such as useless talk, immoderate laughter, mismanagement of property. Hence, the more alms the better, both for our own salvation and for the relief of our departed relatives and friends. Almsgiving is the
360 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
wing of repentance, and paves the way to heaven. This idea ruled supreme during the middle ages.
Among the barbarians in the West charitable institutions were introduced by missionaries in connection with convents, which were expected to exercise hospitality to strangers and give help to the poor. The Irish missionaries cared for the bodies as well as for the souls of the heathen to whom they preached the gospel, and founded " Hospitalia Scotorum." The Council of Orleans, 549, shows acquaintance with Xeuodochia in the towns. There was a large one at Lyons. Chrodegang of Metz and Alcuin exhort the bishops to found institutions of charity, or at least to keep a guest-room for the care of the sick and the stranger. A Synod at Aix in 815 ordered that an infirmary should be built near the church and in every convent. The Capitularies of Charlemagne extend to charitable institu tions the same privileges as to churches and monasteries, and order that u strangers, pilgrims, and paupers " be duly enter tained according to the canons.
The hospitals were under the immediate supervision of the bishop or a superintendent appointed by him. They were usually dedicated to the Holy Spirit, who was represented in the form of a dove in some conspicuous place of the building. They received donations and legacies, and were made the trus tees of landed estates. The church of the middle ages was the largest property- holder, but her very wealth and prosperity became a source of temptation and corruption, which in the course of time loudly called for a reformation.
After we have made all reasonable deduction for a large amount of selfish charity which looked to the donor rather than the recipient, and for an injudicious profusion of alms which encouraged pauperism instead of enabling the poor to help themselves by honest work, we still have left one of the noblest chapters in the history of morals to which no other religion can furnish a parallel. For the regular gratuitous distribution of grain to the poor heathen of Rome, who under Augustus rose