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Miri Rubin
Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge
379 pages. Cambridge University Press, 2002. £26.00 ($37.99)
ISBN-10: 0521893984; ISBN-13: 9780521893985
Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge
379 pages. Cambridge University Press, 2002. £26.00 ($37.99)
ISBN-10: 0521893984; ISBN-13: 9780521893985
Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge by Miri Rubin is part of the ‘Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought’ series and was re-published as a paperback by CUP in 2002. It is a study of the charitable institutions of Cambridge from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, placing them in the context of similar institutions elsewhere in Europe as well as in their specific intellectual context.
Rubin’s work is very useful as an introduction to the realities and the ‘ideal’ of charitable giving in the Middle Ages, and in particular, to the circumstances surrounding donations to hospitals. It also makes an important contribution as a local study to our knowledge of charitable institutions in medieval England. Rubin provides a ‘case study’ of the Hospital of St. John and her research sheds new light on this particular institution, its founders and benefactors, in the three centuries before it was re-founded as a college within the University of Cambridge. She shows that this hospital was not originally an ecclesiastical foundation, but was the initiative of a burgess of Cambridge; it was built with the cooperation of the town for the relief of sick and poor people at an unknown date in the late twelfth century.
There was only a limited period when the Hospital of St. John was primarily concerned with its original task of treating and sheltering the sick (p.176). In fact, Rubin’s work highlights the changing realities of charity in Cambridge across more than three centuries; her conclusions (summarized in the Epilogue) are mainly concerned with these changes. She observes that the Hospital of St. John ‘proceeded from the care of the sick and poor and intercession for benefactors to a role increasingly confined to chantry services, and the maintenance of token almspeople and distributions’ (p.183). It received most of its large bequests in the first half of the thirteenth century, i.e. when it was still a ‘new’ institution, and by the mid-thirteenth century a fall in donations was already noticeable (p.213). By the fifteenth century, it housed only one or two almspeople, by which time, ‘the burgess community and substantial villagers in whose ranks founders and benefactors were to be found, had lost interest in the maintenance of a religious community offering indiscriminate help to poor and sick folk’ (p.236). The composition of the hospital’s inmates gradually changed. Its Rule stated that care was to be given to the sick and the weak (pp.157, 300-301), but by the 1280 there were already poor scholars residing there (p.182). The nature of its provision also changed: while initially donations were given to provide for the sick, they came increasingly (especially in the fourteenth century) to be made to maintain external ‘chantries,’ i.e. a chaplain in a church or chapel outside the hospital whose role was to pray for the benefactor (p.188). This change was already in evidence by the late thirteenth century (p.187). Over-all, Rubin concludes, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the high-point of charity to the poor: ‘the degree of self-dispossession, of involvement with the fortunes of the weaker members of society through whom merit and peace were originally sought, declined dramatically in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’ (p.296).
Rubin’s work raises the question of whether changes in charitable practices reflect changes in attitudes to the poor. She does not give a definitive answer to this question. At some points she seems to argue that this is the case, i.e. that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw a corresponding hardening in attitudes towards the poor (e.g. pp. 98, 291-293). Yet she does not identify any changes in the attitudes towards the poor articulated in sermons and works of theology concerned with charity (Chapter 3). Moreover, she accepts that external factors, such as the extent and degree of poverty, e.g. the number and visibility of those unable to help themselves, affected charitable practices. In this way, her thorough study of the charitable institutions of medieval Cambridge invites further research into the factors influencing the ‘reality’ of charitable giving in the Middle Ages (in particular, the interaction between attitudes to the poor and economic factors).
Rubin’s work is very useful as an introduction to the realities and the ‘ideal’ of charitable giving in the Middle Ages, and in particular, to the circumstances surrounding donations to hospitals. It also makes an important contribution as a local study to our knowledge of charitable institutions in medieval England. Rubin provides a ‘case study’ of the Hospital of St. John and her research sheds new light on this particular institution, its founders and benefactors, in the three centuries before it was re-founded as a college within the University of Cambridge. She shows that this hospital was not originally an ecclesiastical foundation, but was the initiative of a burgess of Cambridge; it was built with the cooperation of the town for the relief of sick and poor people at an unknown date in the late twelfth century.
There was only a limited period when the Hospital of St. John was primarily concerned with its original task of treating and sheltering the sick (p.176). In fact, Rubin’s work highlights the changing realities of charity in Cambridge across more than three centuries; her conclusions (summarized in the Epilogue) are mainly concerned with these changes. She observes that the Hospital of St. John ‘proceeded from the care of the sick and poor and intercession for benefactors to a role increasingly confined to chantry services, and the maintenance of token almspeople and distributions’ (p.183). It received most of its large bequests in the first half of the thirteenth century, i.e. when it was still a ‘new’ institution, and by the mid-thirteenth century a fall in donations was already noticeable (p.213). By the fifteenth century, it housed only one or two almspeople, by which time, ‘the burgess community and substantial villagers in whose ranks founders and benefactors were to be found, had lost interest in the maintenance of a religious community offering indiscriminate help to poor and sick folk’ (p.236). The composition of the hospital’s inmates gradually changed. Its Rule stated that care was to be given to the sick and the weak (pp.157, 300-301), but by the 1280 there were already poor scholars residing there (p.182). The nature of its provision also changed: while initially donations were given to provide for the sick, they came increasingly (especially in the fourteenth century) to be made to maintain external ‘chantries,’ i.e. a chaplain in a church or chapel outside the hospital whose role was to pray for the benefactor (p.188). This change was already in evidence by the late thirteenth century (p.187). Over-all, Rubin concludes, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the high-point of charity to the poor: ‘the degree of self-dispossession, of involvement with the fortunes of the weaker members of society through whom merit and peace were originally sought, declined dramatically in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’ (p.296).
Rubin’s work raises the question of whether changes in charitable practices reflect changes in attitudes to the poor. She does not give a definitive answer to this question. At some points she seems to argue that this is the case, i.e. that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw a corresponding hardening in attitudes towards the poor (e.g. pp. 98, 291-293). Yet she does not identify any changes in the attitudes towards the poor articulated in sermons and works of theology concerned with charity (Chapter 3). Moreover, she accepts that external factors, such as the extent and degree of poverty, e.g. the number and visibility of those unable to help themselves, affected charitable practices. In this way, her thorough study of the charitable institutions of medieval Cambridge invites further research into the factors influencing the ‘reality’ of charitable giving in the Middle Ages (in particular, the interaction between attitudes to the poor and economic factors).
Katie Chambers, U. of Cambridge
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