The extent to which the practice of religious charity in medieval Europe was exclusively in the remit of the church is a question that has concerned historians over the last century. One view has been that the church had a monopoly on the practice and governance of religious giving, whereas the laity practised mainly secular charity. That view is disputed by Brodman in a book that does much to reveal the obscured or misunderstood nature of the early connections between charity and religion.
Brodman's excellently researched book examines spiritual and religious giving in the medieval age across Europe. His central thesis is that far from being a concept limited in scope and remit, religious and spiritual charity underpinned the work of the medieval church, its clergy and professed religious, but also extended to the practice of giving by the laity. He posits the view that from the Christian obligation to give came an obligation to act, and that the practice of religious charity across medieval Europe embodied both social action (vita activa) and a contemplative response (vita passiva). Brodman argues that this vita activa and vita passiva were based within a religious and spiritual ideology but were not solely governed by or within the church or its religious personnel.
In establishing his argument Brodman takes the reader on an extensively detailed thematic journey seeking out the ideological basis of medieval religious charity. In so doing, Brodman seeks to bring to the forefront of his study the role and importance of the concept of service to those in need, a concept at the heart of medieval Christian ideology but one which he argues has been traditionally overlooked by historians. This religious ideology to give and to act is set against shifting medieval concepts of the deserving/undeserving poor and of poverty, broadening out from monastic contemplative poverty to the more immediate material needs of the individual poor for ‘moral restitution’ (p 19). Examining the different approaches of medieval theologians, canonists as well as popes, particularly Pope Innocent III, towards charity, Brodman presents this argument as an ideological struggle of emerging concepts of religious obligation and the boundaries between contemplative and active spirituality.
The physical manifestation of much of this religious ideology towards charity principally came through institutions: through hospitals, military orders such as the hospitallers of St John and bridge builders protecting pilgrims, as well as through the purely hospitaller orders such as the Antonines, all of which were mainly led by or connected to the clergy and the church and were under episcopal governance. Brodman's discussion of these church-governed examples of religious charity is extensive, taking the reader through the practice and establishment of major as well as many minor orders across Europe. But Brodman's broader thesis that charity in Europe in the Middle Ages was not purely a religious community-delivered ideal is evidenced in his shorter discussion of the role of the laity in initiating, administrating and driving forward religious charity. Brodman argues that these lay connections to charity were more than merely passive and operated both within and without the remit of the church. For example his discussion of the Humilaiti in Northern Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the Beguines who originated in the Netherlands highlights the extensiveness of lay religious actions and their importance for the history of charity, a point picked up further in the largely lay character of parochial charity. More widespread, Brodman explains, were lay confraternities that operated across most European countries. The lay piety of these organisations was more informal and less institutional but equally significant to the dispensing of religious charity. For example, charity derived from lay-run confraternities could take many forms, from the butchers of Mâcon's donation to the sick and lepers of the entrails of slaughtered animals, the provision of subsidies for poor girls' dowries by the Laude de Sancte Maria de la Nocte in Siena, to the more extensive establishing of hospitals such as Holy Spirit confraternities in Arles.
Brodman's placing of the institutional practice of religious charity side by side with the religious charity professed by the laity forms the centrepiece of his narrative. In so doing he provides a fascinating insight into the scales of giving. The local community based practice of the lay-governed charitable endeavours stand in sharp contrast to the country-wide, indeed continent-wide religious giving of the church-governed military and hospitaller orders. The localism of one is complemented by the globalism of the other. But, as Brodman is at pains to point out, neither was organised or co-ordinated or able to be coalesced.
The achievement of Brodman's book lies in the way in which it brings together a wide range of primary sources from the full extent of the patristic, early medieval and the high middle ages periods (such as the statutes that governed medieval hospitals), across not just one country or one order, but across the whole of an otherwise disparate and divided set of countries in Europe. Along the way, there is much to entertain and spark the interest of the reader: King Alfonso X of Castile's laws on eligibility or criteria for giving, the ransoming of captives including the Mercedarian practice of parading ransomed prisoners before potential donors, Brodman's exposition of lay saints who worked for the poor, the role of the Orsanmichele in Florence and the penance set out in the Statutes of Troyes for professed religious serving in hospitals who displayed anger towards or otherwise complained about the sick, are just a handful of such delights. Of course there are also inevitable points of frustration for the reader caused by the scale of Brodman's endeavour; not least the fact that the broad scope of the work inhibits Brodman from fleshing out in more detail some of the claims that he makes, for example that the spread of hospitaller orders across Europe was demonstrative that religious charity reflected a ‘broader European culture’ (p 177). But that really isn't the purpose of this work. Brodman's book is one that goes back to basics – the what, the how and the why of the connection between religion, spirituality and charity – and in order to present his argument it is necessary to take a broad brush to the topic. It is a testament to the work that broad brush does not mean a one-dimensional uncritical account.
Such a short review cannot encapsulate the richness and depth of Brodman's scholarship, save to say that the book repays close reading and will be of interest to a wide range of scholars. Indeed this reviewer would suggest that Brodman's book should be compulsory reading not just for religious historians, but for anyone with a broad interest in charity and/or the development of religious society across Europe.
