THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
in return for the alms received. The matriculce of the Frankish period seem originally to have belonged regularly to churches or monasteries. From the Rule of Chrodegang it is evident that episcopal churches possessed matriculce also in the country. The development of the law of church property in the FranKish period made it poosi' le for individual matriculce to develop nto in^eoendent institutions under administrative heads. They were allowed to acquire their own property and to dispose of it, subject to the will of the bishop. Male adult paupers seem to have been cared for in the matriculce, sofar as may be determined.
Although the philanthropical institutions transmitted from the ancient Church continued in the Frankish Empire, and their number, perhaps, even increased, yet after the migration of 4. Decline nations the period of the institutions in the closed owing to the economical trans- Middle formation of Europe. Commerce was Ages. interrupted, change of population ceased, industry was paralyzed, and cities emptied themselves into the agricultural districts; hence, the need of such institutions ceased with the exception of asylums for lepers and hospices on the mountain-passes. From the time of Charles Martel and his sons and the alienation of ecclesiastical property the independent xenodochium almost entirely disappeared, except in Italy. They existed in the passes of the Alps for the reception of pilgrims, also in the bishoprics of Modena, Arezzo, Aquileia, partly the possession of the bishoprics and partly of the king or the landed nobility. Although their purpose was still the care of the poor and the reception of strangers, the revenues were frequently not used for that purpose, or the institutions had fallen into decay; and the efforts on the part of the nobles for their restoration and the application of their means to their original object were in vain. Thus in Italy the historical continuity was almost though not quite broken; the hospital of the Middle Ages linked itself with the xenodochium of the early Church. North of the Alps, it is evident that the xenodochia as institutions became quite extinct, and in Britain the name does not occur. Into the gap, however, advanced the rising monastic philanthropy. This is already indicated in the rules of Benedict, and the restoration of monastical philanthropy was included in the reform of the monasteries under Charlemagne and Louis the Pious in the ninth century, succeeding that of decay. It is true, the monasteries again greatly degenerated in the latter times of the Carolingians, but the efforts of Charlemagne were not entirely futile. The statutes of Corbie, the property-list of Prum, and other sources indicate monasteries here and there in which strangers and poor people found refuge and assistance. But its very limited extent goes to show that institutional philanthropy at the beginning of the Middle A<rcs had lost its importance. The practise of hospitality in the monasteries indeed was more extensive, but this was in the least degree beneficent.
The further reform of the monasteries in the tenth and eleventh centuries and the foundation
of the new orders had, no doubt, an influence upon the growth of monastical philanthropy. In every well-arranged monastery there was 5. Rise of now an infirmary for the monks, a Monastic hospital (hospitale pauperum, eleeand mosynaria) in which a number of Cathedral paupers were continuously supported Hospitals, and needy travelers received refreshment, while well-to-do strangers were cared for in a special hospice for clericals and monks. But the support fell mainly to transients and beggars and the aid to the permanently dependent was negligible. Ulrich of Zell reports that in the Lent season of 1085, at Clugny, 1,700 poor were fed, but at the same time, the number of permanently aided people in the eleemosynaria of this extraordinarily rich monastery amounted only to eighteen. To the hospitals of the monasteries were then added those of the cathedrals. Canon 141 of the rule of Aix-la-Chapelle expressly prescribed that every cathedral should have also a hospital for the poor. The necessary expenses were to be provided from the property of the churches, and the canons had to contribute a tithe of their revenues. Although these ordinances may not have been followed strictly by all cathedral churches, yet from that time in many of them an asylum for the poor and numerous city hospitals existed. The work in these hospitals was done in the beginning by members of the monastery or the cathedral, or at least taken in charge by them; at a later time by the laymen of minor brotherhoods and sisterhoods who crowded the monasteries and cathedrals in great numbers. These formed a convent by themselves and developed in the course of time into an order by adopting a rule, most frequently the so-called rule of Augustine, and receiving a master or mistress. Thus there developed from the monastical hospital the house of the hospital brotherhood. Many of these hospitals remained in the possession and under the supervision of the monastery or cathedral to which they belonged, others acquired independence and became again mother-houses of new hospitals which were consolidated with them. There arose hospital orders, or monastical societies, the chief task of which was the hospital service. The most famous hospital orders are those of the knighthood. When hospital service among the knights gradually receded behind the service of arms and was left to the half lay brethren and half sisters of the third estate of the order, the common hospital orders took up their work. The largest among them were the Orders of the Cross who had settled chiefly in Italy, the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star in Bohemia and Silesia (see Cross, Orders of), the Knights of St. Anthony (see Anthony, Saint, Orders of), and the Order of the Holy Spirit.
The houses of the hospital orders and brotherhoods constituted the transition from the ecclesiastical to the municipal hospitals, whereby only these institutions again acquired a more general significance for the promotion of social conditions. Municipal became most of the " Holy Spirit hospitals," which since the thirteenth century were founded in different places in Germany; they were the fruit