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Tuesday 13 April 2010 16.30
U-4 SOC13 New Perspectives on Early Modern Poor Relief II
M207, Marissal
Network: Social Inequality Chair: Isabel Guimarães Sá
Organizers: - Discussant: Isabel Guimarães Sá
Thomas M. Adams : Juan Luis Vives and the Traditions of Welfare Reform
Vives’ tract of 1526 on the reform of urban charity and welfare, addressed to the citizens of Bruges, is a familiar landmark in the history of European social policy. Henri Pirenne viewed Vives’ tract and the reforms at Ypres in 1525 as evidence of a broader movement inspired ... (Show more)
Vives’ tract of 1526 on the reform of urban charity and welfare, addressed to the citizens of Bruges, is a familiar landmark in the history of European social policy. Henri Pirenne viewed Vives’ tract and the reforms at Ypres in 1525 as evidence of a broader movement inspired by “Erasmians, jurists, and capitalists.” Historians have generally recognized that sixteenth-century initiatives for welfare reform did not begin with Vives’ De Subventione Pauperum: sive de Humanis Necessitatibus, but they continue to assign significance to this text as the expression of a newly comprehensive conception of civic responsibility for poor relief. They note its reception by contemporaries such as the founders of the Aumône-Générale of Lyon in the 1530s.

This paper will focus on the Juan Luis Vives’ contribution to social thought as a product of his personal involvement in the intellectual, spiritual and political agenda of Christian humanism. To this movement he brought the experience of a converso merchant family from Valencia. Immersed in the urban milieu of Bruges and the scholarly precints of the University of Louvain, he gained a short-lived but intense introduction to Oxford and to the court of Henry VIII through the patronage of Thomas More.

The paper will make two claims for the significance of Vives’ positions on charitable reform. The first reaffirms the significant link that his thought establishes between religious reform and the spheres of politics and society in what might be termed “the Erasmian moment.” Drawing from Saint Augustine and Cicero, from the New Testament and the Old, he articulated a civic obligation to relieve human need through the legitimate exercise of civil authority and justified his argument from Scripture.

The second claim is that Vives’ distinctive development of Erasmian humanism in the domain of poor relief can serve as a point of reference for later epochs of European welfare reform. Although Vives’ language of Christian humanism finds no place in the secular framework of modern welfare states, the development of social citizenship owes a substantial debt to the ethos of governance articulated in the two parts of his treatise. (Show less)

Julie Marfany : Responses to poverty in Catalonia: hospitals, charitable funds and outdoor relief (c.1750-1820)
The focus of much work on poverty and welfare in southern Europe has been on urban institutions, usually in larger cities. Relatively little is known about how smaller towns and rural areas coped with poverty, despite evidence for well-established networks of smaller hospitals and other charitable institutions from the Middle ... (Show more)
The focus of much work on poverty and welfare in southern Europe has been on urban institutions, usually in larger cities. Relatively little is known about how smaller towns and rural areas coped with poverty, despite evidence for well-established networks of smaller hospitals and other charitable institutions from the Middle Ages onwards. The assumption is that such institutions were increasingly unable to cope with the burden of poverty over the course of the early modern period, and that in times of crisis, those in need inevitably migrated to the larger cities. Very little work has been done, however, on assessing the extent of relief provided outside of larger cities and how far rural areas were dependent upon urban charity. This paper therefore aims to address the question of rural poor relief in one area of southern Europe, Catalonia. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Catalonia was experiencing rapid economic change and the onset of industrialisation, changes that in turn resulted in increased social inequality and poverty. The paper will begin by establishing the extent of hospital provision across the region, using census data from two years, 1787 and 1813, and will try to assess the funding available to these institutions and the quality of the relief provided. While many institutions were struggling by the end of the eighteenth century to meet the needs of the local poor, it is clear that some were still able to function adequately and meet real need. Alongside this, the paper will also consider other types of relief available in rural areas and charitable initiatives undertaken by local authorities. The paper aims to show that not all rural areas were passive in the face of growing poverty, nor were institutions perceived as the only solution. These findings are contextualised within a growing debate in Catalonia and the rest of Spain over the ways in which authorities, secular and ecclesiastical, should respond to and manage poverty, a debate which echoes those taking place elsewhere in Europe (Show less)

Olga Salamatova : Ideology of ‘the common weal’ and Implementation of the Poor Law in Early Stuart England
For the first time common weal theory was called to advocate the strategies and means for management of poverty by the ideologists of Tudor monarchy. The paper seeks to explain this theory transformation from one of motivating factors for poor relief in Tudor period to the imperative of the Early ... (Show more)
For the first time common weal theory was called to advocate the strategies and means for management of poverty by the ideologists of Tudor monarchy. The paper seeks to explain this theory transformation from one of motivating factors for poor relief in Tudor period to the imperative of the Early Stuart ideology.
To the eve of 17th century commonwealth in the poverty problem context meant not only state governed for the common good, that is the governor’s duty, but responsibility of the subjects above all. From 1572 the Parliamentary statutes imported considerable element of compulsion into commonwealth idea. All sturdy poors ought to work and all non-poor subjects had to support disabled ones. Both demands fortified with a set of repressive measures. The same statutes appealing to common weal defined its enemies. In such a way common weal theory got the positive and repressive sides. It seems the use of common weal in this context helped to specify the idea itself.
Evidence drawn from the 16-17th centuries’ projects, diaries, tracts and sermons reveals wide use common weal in the same context by educated contemporaries. It supposes a ‘space’ for public discussion on this subject and opens up possibilities for study disparate treatment of welfare idea and for focusing on the authors’ conceptual framework.
Since implementation of governmental policy in the Early Stuart state depended on loyalty of local gentry and officers, examination different contemporary approaches can elucidate the relevance of common weal ideology for social practice. (Show less)



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