750 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
fourpence to keep them. The gild of St. Helena at Beverley cared constantly for 3 or 4 poor folk.^
Leprosy decreased during the last years of the Middle Ages, but hospitals for the reception of lepers are still extensively found, — the lazarettos, so called after Lazarus, who was reputed to have been afflicted with the disease. Houses for this malady had been established in England by Lanfranc, Mathilda, queen of Henry I. at St. Giles, by King Stephen at Burton, Leicestershire and by others till the reign of John. St. Hugh of Lincoln, as well as St. Francis d'Assissi distinguished themselves by their solicitude for lepers. But the disease seems to have died out in England in the 14th century and it was hard to fill the beds endowed for this class of sufferers. In 1434, it was ordered that beds be kept for 2 lepers in the great Durham leper hospital " provided they could be found in these parts." Originally the hospital had beds for GO. 2 Late in the 16th century there were still lepers in Germany. Thomas Platter wrote, " When we came to Munich, it was so late that we could not enter the city, but had to remain in the leperhouse."^
Begging was one of the curses of England and Germanyjg it con^iiiues^o Jje^of Southerg Eurnpe-tcuday. It was no disgrace to ask alms. The mendicant friars by their example consecrated a nuisance with the sacred authority of religion. Pilgrims and students also had the right of way as beggars.
1 In 1409 was founded an asylum for lunatics in Valencia, Lecky : Hist, of Europ. Morals, II. 94 sq. There were pest-houses in Oxford and Cambridge and Continental universities often had special hospitals of their own. Writing of the 16th century, Thomas Platter speaks of such a hospital at Breslau. The town paid 16 hellers for the care of each patient. These institutions were, however, far removed from our present methods of cleanliness. Of the Breslau hospital, Platter (Monroe's Life, p. 10.3 sq.) says, " We had good attention, good beds, but there were many vermin there as big as ripe hemp-seed, so that I and others preferred to lie on the floor rather than in the beds."
2Geo.Pernet: Leprosy in Quart. Bev., 1903, p. SSisqq. C. Creighton, Soc. Engl, II. 413. This Hist., Vol. V., I., pp. .395, 825, 894. For the fearful prevalence of cutaneous diseases and crime in England in the 13th century and as a cure for those who sigh for the fictitious happy conditions of mediaival society, see Jessopp, Coming of the Friars, p. 101 sqq.
3 Monroe : Thos. Platter, p. 107.
§ 79. WORKS OF CHARITY. 751
Sebastian Brant gave a list of the different ecclesiastical beggars who went about with sacks, into which they put with indiscriminate greed apples, plums, eggs, fish, chickens, meat, butter and cheese, — sacks which had no bottom.
Der Settler Sack wird nimmer voll ; Wie man ihn filllt, so hleibt er hohl.
In Germany, towns gave franchises to beg.^ The habit of mendicancy, which Brant ridiculed, Geiler of Strassburg called upon the municipality to regulate or forbid altogether. In England, mendicancy was a profession recognized in law.
With the decay of the monastic endowments and the legal maintenance of wages at a low rate, the destitution and vagrancy increased. The English statutes of laborers at the close of this period, 1495 and 1504, ordered beggars, not able to work, to return to their own towns where they might follow the habit of begging without hindrance. ^
At a time when in Germany, the richest country of Europe, church buildings were multiplying with great rapidity, many churches in England, on account of the low economic conditions, were actually left to go to ruin or turned into sheepcotes and stables, a transmutation to which Sir Thomas More as well as others refers. The rapacity of the nobles and abbots in turning large areas into sheep-runs deprived laborers of employment and brought social distress upon large numbers. On the other hand, parliament passed frequent statutes of apparel, as in 1463 and 1482, restricting the farmer and laborer in his expenditure on dress. The different statutes of laborers, enacted during the 15th century, had the effect of depressing and impoverishing the classes dependent upon the daily toil of their hands.^
In spite of the strict synodal rules, repeated again and
1 Uhlhorn, pp.433, 456. Such a license was issued in Vienna, 1442. Eberlin of 'Gunzburg went so far as to say that in Germany, 14 out of every 15 people lived a life of idleness.
2 Stubbs, ch, XXI. ; Social Engl, II. 548-550. Cunningham, p. 478 sq. ; Rogers, pp. 416-419.
3 See Traill : Soc. Engl, II. 388, 392-398. For the activity in churchbuilding in Germany, see Janssen, I. 180 sq. ; Bezold, p. 90 ; Ficker, p. 66.