Preliminary Programme

Beginning in the late-fifteenth century, hospitals across Europe experienced financial crises that resulted in decreased incomes and increased expenses. In response, their administrators adopted practices, designed to cut costs and raise revenues. They sold or leased their landed estates, preferring to purchase rather than produce necessary goods and services. They invested in financial instruments to produce revenues streams to support their operations. And, they charged for services that had once been free. Rather than extend shelter and care at no cost to the indigent and elderly, they exacted fees that varied according to the quality of room and board to be given. The sale of corrodies, which endures to the present, represents a commercialization of charity, what one scholar called a “pure monetary transaction, detached from every form of benevolence that was not profitable“.

Traditionally, studies of poor relief have adopted what might be called a micro-historical approach to these developments, taking single institutions or communities as their focus, and attending less to the macro-historical context. More recently, scholars have expanded the conversation to include demographic factors, such as changes in family size or household composition, that affected the availability of resources to care for the aged. Cultural change has also come into consideration with studies of the ways in which religious change altered both the institutional landscape and the moral “imperative” of charity. Yet, relatively few have considered the ways in which financial developments that become visible in the late medieval and extend into the early modern period created new opportunities and constraints for ‘financing eldercare’.

This paper will attempt to address this lack by examining eldercare in the city of Augsburg. One of the leading industrial, commercial and financial centers of Europe in the late medieval and early modern periods, it was also a leading center of charitable activities with an unusually large number of public and private foundations devoted to the support of the needy. Throughout the same period, shifting political and economic circumstances radically altered the city’s financial institutions and markets. These changes had direct consequences both for the institutions that provided care and for those who sought it. By examining the financial records of various charities in Augsburg and comparing them to studies in other cities, this paper will demonstrate the range of possibilities available to the aged, their families and their communities. (Show less)

During the early-modern period, Stockholm experienced a tenfold increase in population, reaching close to 100.000 inhabitants by 1850. Urbanization and the subsequent increasing number of migrants in Stockholm are likely to have put pressure on family relations. It has been suggested that this led to the creation of extra-familial structures, among others to provide for old age (Lynch 2003). Such arrangements may have been important considering that premodern Sweden’s family structure was part of a broader European marriage pattern, with high ages at first marriage, high female celibacy, and low household complexity (Dennison & Ogilvie 2014). These factors have been associated with relatively weak family support systems.

Although scholars have addressed the provision of poor relief in premodern Stockholm, we know relatively little about strategies of aging individuals involving self-funded retirement. Firstly, using a new dataset based on wealth and income taxation in Stockholm, this paper demonstrates to what extent people in premodern Stockholm de facto worked less or retired entirely at old age. Secondly, the paper discusses the ability of different socio-economic groups to save for later and use their wealth to retire at institutions such as Danviken’s hospital, which allowed elderly individuals to purchase corrodies. (Show less)

Institutions throughout premodern Europe allowed individuals to purchase lifelong board and lodging by entering so-called corrodies. These were in particular attractive for elderly people looking to secure a carefree final couple of years.

Scholars have asked whether institutions asked prices high enough to cover the expenses they could expect when taking in a corrodian and agreeing to provide lifelong board and lodging. Some claim corrody prices were sufficiently high, others suggest these were too low. The issue of prices is connected to the question as to how we should regard institutions that admitted corrodians: did they look to profit from the retirement business, or not?

The paper discusses three practices that can be distinguished: corrodians either paid much more than the institutions could expect to spend on them, or they paid about what the institutions could reasonably estimate the cost of lifelong board and lodging to be, or, finally, they paid far less. The paper asks how to explain the coexistence of these three practices, and suggests which economic, social, and cultural factors played a role in deciding for either one. (Show less)