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Ole Peter Grell has
challenged us to examine how, in an age dominated by faith, religion shaped
public and private approaches to poor relief. His thesis is twofold.
Ideologically, Protestantism changed the purpose of charity Ñ from a
benefit to the souls of donors in the hereafter to the relief of the
indigent in the present. In terms of practice, without the Reformation the
speed and extent to which poor relief was centralized in the seventeenth
century would have been unimaginable. The role of civic humanism is
relegated to a second place: humanists proposed reform as an option, for
good Protestants it was an obligation.
The Dutch Republic shows a much more
complex configuration of ideologies and practices. Although the Reformed
Church was the established Church, the population remained confessionally
very diverse, and the Church was not in a position to shape the culture and
morality of society. The Dutch Republic boasted a renowned system of poor relief,
in which local and provincial governments, various churches and wealthy
individuals all played a part, each with their own priorities. Locally
welfare arrangements differed widely. This article focuses on Frisia, one
of the northern provinces of the Netherlands, the wealthiest after Holland.
Where in Holland power rested with the cities, in Frisia the gentry
dominated the Provincial Estates and cities were relatively weak. How, in
these circumstances, did religion influence welfare?
A reluctant Reformation
The Reformation was slow to win Frisia.
This was not for want of
evangelical influences. In the 1520s LutherÕs books found an
audience, mainly among the educated elite, both clerical and lay. The 1530s
saw a considerable amount of Anabaptist activity. After the suppression of
the Anabaptist Kingdom in Munster they were harshly persecuted for a while,
but the Frisian pastor Menno Simons led the movement away from radicalism.
From the later 1550s, it was no longer seen as a threat to Christian
society. Like those pastors and humanists who were influenced by the
teachings of Luther and Erasmus, Mennonites were largely ignored by secular
and ecclesiastical authorities as long as they did not publicly
proselytize.
In the 1540s and 1550s attempts were made to
introduce Catholic reforms. The central government in Brussels appointed an
inquisitor to reform the clergy, more specifically to suppress concubinage
and absenteeism. It also planned to strengthen ecclesiastical control
through the erection of new episcopal sees in the Netherlands, among them
one in the Frisian capital of Leeuwarden. Both approaches signally failed.
Frisia was proud of its liberties and resented all foreign intrusions.
The population at large was content with
traditional religion. Many Frisian parishes enjoyed the right to nominate
their priests. They often preferred a concubinarian Ôfamily manÕ over a
celibate priest, despite the lofty theological ideals of the advocates of
Catholic Reform. Among the clergy, reform was not always considered
incompatible with Catholic Christianity. A Leeuwarden parish priest
experienced doubts on the doctrine of transsubstantiation, took a doctorate
in theology at the Lutheran University of Heidelberg, and returned to the
Habsburg-ruled Netherlands to become parish priest of nearby Groningen. A
Frisian Premonstratensian monk studied in Lutheran Wittenberg, returned to
his monastery and subsequently became its abbot.
With hindsight this situation can be
construed as a rising tide of heresy, preparing the ground for the schism
to come, but for most contemporaries all of this was still accommodated
within an encompassing view of Christendom. There was some persecution,
notably of the more radical Anabaptists, and a number of evangelicals left
the province for Protestant parts of Germany, but on the whole Frisia was
relatively unperturbed. Charles V on his acquisition of the province in
1515, had installed a central government structure, headed by his appointed
governor, in which the Estates of Frisia were to be advised by a Provincial
Court of Justice, composed of a new elite of humanist-educated lawyers and
bureaucrats. This new elite was not Protestant Ñ for service under the new
ruler only men with a reputation for being soundly Catholic were acceptable
Ñ but neither was it prepared
to support harsh policies for the suppression of what Trent and Brussels
denounced as heresies, but did not offend local sensibilities. This
combination of a largely traditional population and a somewhat
latitudinarian, Erasmian ruling class long delayed the polarization between
ÔconfessionalizedÕ Catholics and Protestants, a process meticulously
described and analyzed by Juliaan Woltjer.
When in the spring of 1566 the regent Margaret of Parma showed
a moment of weakness and conditionally allowed Protestant preaching, a
number of Protestants came out of the woodwork in Frisia. In Leeuwarden the
parish clergy publicly embraced the new doctrine, and with the help of the
magistrate the town was reformed. When later that year, after the shock of
a wave of iconoclasm throughout the Netherlands, the provincial governor
ordered Catholic observance to be restored and punctually maintained, he
met with unbelief at first. Eventually he was obeyed, but only reluctantly.
Those who had openly declared themselves Protestants now had to recant or
go into exile. For over ten years Protestantism was moribund in the
province. Supported by the strong arm of the Duke of Alva, a bishop was
finally appointed in Leeuwarden in 1570.
It was only with the political Reformation,
which hit Frisia in the wake of the Pacification of Ghent in 1577 and the
proclamation of the Religious Peace in 1578, that Reformed congregations
were hesitantly formed. When Catholicism was banned in 1580, as a reaction
to the change of allegiance of Governor Rennenberg, who withdrew his
support of the Revolt in favor of the King of Spain, the Reformed were a
small minority in the province. Religiously, sixteenth-century Frisia
appears to have been a totally traditional region, touched only
superficially by the reforms Ñ Catholic, Protestant and Radical Ñ that
transformed large parts of early modern Europe in the half century after
Luther appeared on the scene.
Reform of poor relief
In the reorganization of poor relief there
was a similar lack of sharp divisions. At the beginning of the sixteenth century poor relief was in the
hands of the parish, as tradition dictated. Towns had a parish endowment for
the poor, which was administered by lay wardens of the poor under the
nominal supervision of the parish priest. In Leeuwarden and Franeker, and
perhaps also elsewhere, these wardens were gathered into a local Fraternity
of the Holy Sacrament. They distributed alms to a restricted number of
Ôdeserving poorÕ. Apart from these wardens each town had a small general
hospital and some almshouses, usually founded by private donors.
All of these institutions were administered
by laymen, but charity to the poor was seen as an intrinsically religious
activity, which generated merit for the souls of benefactors. The
Fraternities of the Holy Sacrament were first of all chantries, providing
memorial masses for deceased members, and their almsgiving was part of the
good works that would aid their souls in Purgatory. The inmates of
almshouses were expected to pray for the founders. The poor who were not
supported by these institutions were allowed to beg and enjoyed occasional
handouts from monasteries and at funerals and memorial masses in the parish
churches, and of course here too charity was meant to gain merit for the
donors.
In the 1520s modern ideas on poor relief
percolated into Frisia. This was most clearly visible in Leeuwarden. At the
end of 1525 the municipal St. AnthonyÕs Hospital was designated as the sole
provider of poor relief for the town. Both the Fraternity of the Holy
Sacrament and a smaller, privately funded, hospital, the Hospital of St. Jacob, were liquidated,
their effects sold and both the revenue and the charitable obligations
transferred to St. AnthonyÕs Hospital. Sources are very sparse, but both
the extent of the measures taken and their timing suggest the formation of
a common chest administered by lay wardens, in this case the trustees of
the hospital, under the direction of the magistrates. They may have chosen St. AnthonyÕs Hospital because it was the
oldest, most respected institution Ñ it also was the one that was already
largely under their control. The prohibition of begging, that usually
complements the institution of a common chest, is missing here, but as
provincial laws against begging and vagrancy had been in effect since the
later Middle Ages this may have been considered unnecessary.
These reforms found little support among
the urban elite, however. Within a few years, before the end of 1528, the
common chest was undone by new, private initiatives that ran counter to the
centralizing policy of the magistrate. Shortly after the abolition of the Fraternity of the
Holy Sacrament a new religious fraternity was formed, which provided both
masses for the dead and alms for the poor. It was dedicated to the Sweet
Name of Jesus. The new fraternity was evidently popular with the
townspeople: it soon attracted gifts and bequests which enabled it to take
over the support of the working poor from St. AnthonyÕs Hospital. Perhaps the distribution of outdoor relief from the hospital had
been unworkable: we simply do not know. Evidently the citizens of
Leeuwarden were not against provisions for the poor associated with the
traditional economy of salvation, in which almsgiving conferred religious
merit on the donor. Naming the new fraternity after the Sweet Name of
Jesus, however, may indicate that they had become uneasy with the cult of
the Holy Sacrament and the underlying doctrine of transsubstantiation,
which had attracted controversy in recent years. Devotion to the Sweet Name
of Jesus was unobjectionable for traditionalists and evangelicals alike.
In 1534 an orphanage was created, the founding
charter of which also shows a highly ambiguous attitude to the contemporary
religious currents and the new forms of poor relief. The orphanage of
Leeuwarden was one of the first in a spate of similar foundations in all
the larger and most of the smaller towns of the Northern Netherlands. These early modern orphanages usually catered only to full orphans
of citizen birth, and assumed the full spectrum of parental
responsibilities. They provided their charges with food, clothing and
shelter, elementary schooling and vocational training. The upbringing of
the children was entirely financed out of the endowment of the house and
the donations it attracted, so that the children did not have to go
begging. In fact begging was always expressly forbidden. When they left the
orphanage Ñ in the sixteenth century that would be somewhere in their teens
Ñ they were able to provide for themselves.
These orphanages closely fitted the new
welfare ideology. The foundress of the Leeuwarden orphanage may have been
touched by this as well as by evangelical notions: she rejected the cult of
the dead, as merely inspired by the greed of the clergy. Instead of further
fattening them by bequeathing money to the Church for memorial services,
she reserved her charity for the poor. She rejected, however, the humanist
ideal of giving to those most in need, irrespective of the ties of blood
and patronage. Orphans who could show blood-kinship, or else those born of
Leeuwarder citizen rank were to be preferred. Also the foundress wanted the
orphanage to preserve her memory, something the efficient but impersonal
administration of relief according to humanist ideals made impossible. She
expressly criticized the liquidation of St. JacobÕs Hospital nine years
earlier, which ignored the wishes of the founders who, childless like
herself, had created the hospital as a memorial to themselves and their
families in perpetuity.
Changing sensibilities in religion and in
charity were closely intertwined in these years. In 1534 church wardens
complained that donations to the cult of the saints, to the provision of
memorial masses, and to monasteries dried up, to the benefit of the poor. Criticism against clerical greed may have been inspired by Erasmian humanism, or by
Lutheran or Anabaptist influence, reinforcing anticlerical tendencies as
old as organized Christianity itself. Be that as it may, Frisians clearly
continued to consider charity a thoroughly Christian duty that should
reinforce traditional obligations to blood relatives and fellow citizens Ñ
a Bossy-esque mixture of familial piety and social miracle that survived
all Reformations, because it had probably never needed Catholic doctrine
regarding intercession for the souls in Purgatory in the first place. Both the Fraternity of the Sweet Name of Jesus and the new
orphanage were private foundations, independent of the town magistrate, for
these traditional purposes.
These ambiguities thwarted the full
implementation of the Edict of 1531, in which Charles V laid out a humanist
strategy towards the containment of and support for the poor. This Edict
expressly prohibited poor people to leave their parish to look for a better
life elsewhere, except in a full-scale disaster like war, flooding or fire.
All the poor should apply for support to their own parish, and all parishes
were put under a legal obligation to provide for their own poor. Under no
pretext were poor people to be allowed to take the road and live by
begging. Only friars, prisoners and lepers were henceforth allowed to beg
for alms, all others had to work for their living, or give due notice to
the local wardens of the poor. Local funds for the poor had to be
consolidated, and revenue supplemented by collections. Alms were to be
distributed by the wardens of the poor to the truly indigent, only in so
far as they could not provide the necessities of life for themselves.
Wardens also had to take special precautions that the poor under their care
led honestly sober lives, and that the children of the poor were sent to
school to be taught both a trade and the elementary tenets of their
religion. In the execution of their duties and the administration of their
funds they were responsible to the local magistrate. This Edict was
unambiguously a tool for bridling labor-migration and suppressing begging
and vagrancy. Beggars and vagrants were to be punished. Poor people were
tied to their parishes, and parishes were ordered to hold on to them by
providing for them locally. Supporting oneÕs neighbor in need was of course
considered a Christian duty, but the emphasis of the Edict is on control,
not on charity. The Edict was received and studied in the Northern
Netherlands, but nowhere fully executed.
The middle years of the 1560s, with high
foodprices and recurrent plague, urged urban magistrates to take emergency
measures, for which the Edict provided the legal basis. The Franeker
magistrates invoked the Edict in so many words when they decided to
reorganize the municipal wardens of the poor, augmenting their number and
allotting specific wardens to each of the four town quarters, so that they
could get to know the poor and their individual needs. In Leeuwarden a similar reorganization of the Fraternity of the
Sweet Name of Jesus was impossible, because it was not a municipal but a
private foundation. The municipal Hospital of St. Anthony no longer
provided outdoor relief at this time. Instead burgomasters organized a
fund-raising campaign and distributed subsidized bread, not through the
members of the fraternity, the official wardens of the poor, but by
municipal officers, the overseers of the four quarters of the town. For the
first time, they prohibited begging under a municipal regulation,
complementing traditional relief with new humanist measures.
Reordering society
The introduction of the Reformation was
something of a turning point, but the new directions taken from 1578 were
not recognizably Protestant. New provincial legislation compelled town
magistrates to reform poor relief in conformity with the Edict of 1531. Each town or village was to set up
adequate provisions for the local resident poor Ñ citizens and those who
could prove two, later five, years of residence without recourse to public
welfare. Begging and vagrancy were to be harshly punished. The Estates of
Frisia subsidized urban poor relief from the revenues of the rural monastic
foundations that had been secularized in 1580. The larger part of these
revenues went to finance the war effort, a smaller part was to be used for
pious purposes. The provincial subsidies for urban welfare show a mixture
of motives. The towns received the money specifically for the support of
mercenary soldiers, disbanded during the winter season, in order to keep
them quartered in the towns, where they could be controlled, instead of
leaving them free to scourge the countryside. Monastic revenue thus went
into control of vagrancy, rather than into disinterested Christian charity.
Over time the legislation laid down in the
Edict of 1531 was augmented and refined by the Estates and the Provincial Court
of Frisia, until at the end of the eighteenth century it had reached an
almost Byzantine complexity, providing for every conceivable eventuality.
Central in all this legislation remained the concern to tie the poor to
their parish. Towns and villages were fully entitled to expel unwanted poor
immigrants, and local sources amply demonstrate that they were keen on
sending fortune-seekers back to their parish of origin or latest
settlement. This entire body of legislation bears evidence of a thoroughly practical,
secular, and bureaucratic approach to the repression of beggary and
vagrancy and the relief of poverty.
All this forceful regulation, backed by the
considerable power of the central government agencies in Frisia, however,
could not prevent that ambiguity about the meaning of poor relief remained.
The system was introduced everywhere, and to all appearances worked
admirably well. The population at large, and even more so the wealthy
elite, may have approved of the new policy, insofar as it kept importunate
beggars off their doorsteps, vagrancy at bay and the roads safe. They
contributed without murmuration in the collections but appear to have
considered this first and foremost as a civic, not a Christian, duty. In
Sneek in 1585 the magistrate complained about the insistence of the Estates
on the suppression of begging and the free distribution of alms,
remonstrating that these represented a time-honored Christian custom Ñ an
argument one would expect from Catholic opposition, not from this Reformed
body. In fact begging continued despite legislation because willingness to
give alms appears to have remained fairly general.
The elite continued to favor private
foundations that would not support the poor according to their objective
needs, as GrellÕs ÔProtestant imperativeÕ would have had it, but allowed
donors and their descendants to bestow their charity upon the poor of their
choosing, preferably relatives and clients, following traditional patterns
of piety. In several towns
this led to decades of conflict between magistrates, who wanted to gain
control over local charity, and trustees of private foundations. In 1579
the Leeuwarden magistrate envisioned a coordinated municipal welfare system
consisting of St. AnthonyÕs Hospital, the orphanage and the wardens of the
poor. The magistrate assumed the responsibility to regulate and coordinate
their activities, and destined a third of the property of the city
monasteries to each institution, in order to put the new system on a solid
financial basis. In the end, however, out of the pre-Reformation welfare
institutions only St. AnthonyÕs hospital and the small leper asylum outside
the walls, urban institutions from the start, could be made to comply.
The Fraternity of the Sweet Name of Jesus
flatly refused to accept both the government regulations and their share of
monastic revenue. They retained their independence, and, interestingly,
also the characteristics of a fraternity, no longer a chantry but with a
mixture of Protestant and Catholic members, up to the present day. The
magistrate instituted a new municipal board of wardens of the poor, which
initially worked alongside the Fraternity of the Sweet Name of Jesus, but
over time took full responsibility for all the urban working poor. In 1638
the fraternity stopped providing outdoor relief and completely dedicated
itself to the direction of of a complex of almshouses.
The Leeuwarden orphanage, also a private
foundation, equally fiercely resisted its insertion into a municipal
welfare policy. The magistrate wanted the orphanage accessible to all full
orphans of the city, irrespective of blood ties with the foundress or
citizen birth, despite stipulations to the contrary in her last will and
testament, which served the institution as its charter. After long
negotiations the orphanage in 1596 accepted responsibility for the
non-citizen orphans in exchange for their third share of the confiscated
monastic property and subsidies from the urban treasury, but only
grudgingly conceded the magistrate influence over their direction and
administration of the house.
This in time led to new conflicts,
unwillingness on the side of the trustees to take in more non-citizen
orphans and outrage from the magistracy at what they saw as a breach of
contract. Emotions ran high,
and in 1659 one of the trustees of the orphanage, himself a burgomaster,
full member of the Reformed Church and childless, out of annoyance at the
determination of his fellow-magistrates to gain control over the orphanage,
instead of bequeathing a legacy to the orphanage, founded a complex of
almshouses which was to bear his name, and appointed the members of the
local Mennonite consistory as directors of his foundation in perpetuity to
prevent the city ever to claim it for the urban poor. In 1675 the Leeuwarden magistracy founded its own orphanage for
all full orphans born from residents but excluded from the old orphanage. In tandem with St. AnthonyÕs Hospital, the new municipal wardens
of the poor and the new municipal orphanage covered the various needs of
the towns resident poor, irrespective of religion. Private institutions,
like the old orphanage, the Fraternity of the Sweet Name of Jesus, and
almshouses complemented that system, but on their own terms.
In 1598 a totally new institution was added:
the House of Correction. In the course of the seventeenth century this
house would develop into a penal institution, but initially it was
considered a charitable institution for the rehabilitation of beggars,
vagrants, and other nuisances, like alcoholics, wifebeaters, negligent
parents, and petty thieves. Similar Houses of Correction had been built in
Amsterdam en Leiden just a few years before. They were the newest in
instruments for social discipline. When other Frisian towns began to follow
Leeuwardens example, the Provincial Estates, jealous of their jurisdiction,
purchased the Leeuwarden House of Correction in 1609, and transformed it
into a provincial institution. All other urban houses of correction had to
be closed.
The house was expressly intended not for
punishment but to redeem its inmates through a sober, disciplined life.
Work, and corporal punishment for laziness, disobedience or disorderliness
were part of that regimen, but so were daily Bible classes and the
opportunity to earn something towards a new start after release. Besides
beggars, vagrants and petty criminals the house also took in Ôblack sheepÕ:
spouses or children who embarrassed their families with financial or sexual
debauchery. As involuntary, but paying guests they lived under a softer
regime, befitting their social status. Initially those who had never had
the opportunity to learn a trade could enroll voluntarily to acquire skills
and work experience in the house.
The House of Correction proved a costly
enterprise. It was closed for lack of funds from 1619 to 1660, only to be
reopened to cope with what seems to have been new waves of labor migration
into the Republic and a perceived threat from indigent fortune-seekers,
trying to make a living for themselves in the prosperous towns of the
province. The house was considered both part of the system of coordinated
public welfare that had been built and expanded in the decades following
the Reformation, and a cornerstone in the enforcement of the legislation
against begging and vagrancy that protected local welfare arrangements from
being swamped by indigent outsiders.
Church welfare
So far, what has been described here in
some detail for Leeuwarden, and has its parallels in other Frisian towns,
is the formation of a centralized system of poor relief of the type
advocated by humanist reformers against fierce particularistic opposition
from local elites. Direct influence of Protestant theology or from the
Reformed consistories was nowhere evident. This process went back to before
the introduction of the Reformation in Frisia, served first and foremost
the interests of public order, and was only marginally helped forward by
the redirection of confiscated ecclesiastical revenue. The Reformation did
have important consequences for Frisian poor relief, but only from the
second half of the seventeenth century, when the reforms were completed.
With the introduction of the Reformation
the deacons of the Reformed Church claimed their place as wardens of poor
Church members. Magistrates intent on organizing a municipal system of
welfare in their towns were not always happy with this new competitor.
Reformed deacons, especially in the first years of the existence of their
congregations, welcomed poor co-religionists fleeing the theaters of war on
the shifting borders of the new Republic or from the Counter-Reformation
offensive in the Southern Netherlands. They helped them settle, tiding them
over until they met the residency requirements Ñ in fact they assisted
subsistence migration of a kind the new system had been devised to curb.
Magistrates could not prevent the public
Reformed Church from supporting its poor members. The deaconate was an
integral part of Reformed church-organization. Urban magistrates all over
the Republic negotiated with the deacons to either merge them with the
urban wardens of the poor into one urban welfare board, or to formulate
criteria for a clear demarcation between church poor and municipal poor, to
prevent poor families from taking advantage of two welfare agencies at
once, unduly depleting the always limited supply of charity. As in most
places the population was not entirely Reformed, giving the deacons of the
public Church an overall responsibility for local welfare was usually not
the most logical option. The preference of the Reformed churches to reserve
charity for the household of the faithful jarred with the principles
underlying the municipal
welfare reforms advocated by the provincial government.
In most Frisian towns the deacons preferred their independence,
but were forced to comply with the provincial legislation on settlement and
removal of ÔforeignÕ poor, a process which largely took place between 1650
and 1675. In all other matters they retained their independence from
municipal control, and although the organization of the deacons and the
type of welfare they provided mirrored those of the municipal welfare
officers, this independence meant that the deacons were free to give all or
some of their charges more than the necessary minimum of support. The
magistrate had no say whatsoever in the financial administration of the
deacons, and could not insist on strict frugality and minimal handouts as
it did with the municipal wardens of the poor.
Once this division of labor between
municipal wardens and deacons, both respecting provincial legislation on
settlement and removal, had been worked out towards the last quarter of the
seventeenth century, urban magistrates started to put pressure on all
tolerated Churches, the Catholics, the Mennonites, the Lutherans, the Jews
and even the Labadists, to organize welfare along these same lines for
their poor members. This was a very curious development, as these Churches
had no corporate rights, and so could hardly be compelled legally to share
in the relief of the poor, which was after all a public service for which
local government was legally responsible. Moreover, not having corporate
rights, the tolerated Churches were forbidden to have corporate funds, own
real estate or receive legacies and bequests, which made it almost
impossible for them to provide adequate support for the poor. The Mennonite
and Labadist communities were closely knit. Mutual support was a
long-standing habit with them and they actually welcomed the new policy,
which gave some official recognition to their efforts. It was, however,
hard on the Frisian Catholics, Lutherans and Jews, whose congregations
consisted in large part of poor immigrants from the German Empire. Probably
they too had until then managed some resources with which to supplement the
measured handouts of the municipal poor relief for those of their poor
members that in their eyes merited some extra charity Ñ but full support
for all their poor was something quite different.
Despite legal wrangles and practical problems
the magistrates everywhere insisted and carried the day. All Churches and
the Jews organized deaconates for the poor members of their communities. In
most cases the tolerated communities were too small and poor to build their
own orphanages and almshouses, as their co-religionists did in the larger
and more prosperous cities of Holland, but the Mennonites had an orphanage
in Harlingen and almshouses in Sneek, and a Catholic orphanage opened its
doors in Leeuwarden in 1788. Usually the deacons of the tolerated Churches
fostered orphans and impotent elderly out among their co-religionists.
It took decades to get these deaconates of
the tolerated Churches on their feet, but in 1755 the Estates of Frisia
could cap their efforts by issuing a formal law that compelled all Churches
to support all their poor members. Henceforth the municipal wardens of the
poor retained only those poor who had no affiliation to any Church Ñ in
Frisia this was more than half of all the recipients of poor relief. All
this resulted in the end in a triple system of poor relief: 1. the
humanist-inspired public welfare, which was controlled by local secular
government and showed a strong emphasis on settlement and removal; 2.
deaconates of all Churches; 3. private foundations controlled by wealthy
families, mostly in the forms of almshouses and sometimes orphanages.
In a certain sense this division of labor
favored Protestant views on welfare, as it compelled all religious
communities to adopt the forms of deaconal welfare traditionally practiced
among Reformed and Mennonites. Under this new policy welfare was no longer
a common Christian duty, for all practical purposes coterminous with civic
solidarity with the local poor, as had been the case in the medieval parish
and in the humanist proposals. Charity was delegated to corporations under
the general direction of the magistracies. Churches were the most important
of these corporations. For church members charity towards their
co-religionists may have been a religious duty. Magistrates undoubtedly had
other reasons for introducing the new system. Corporations appear to have
been both more effective in raising money for their own poor and in
disciplining those they supported.
A social hierarchy
For the poor themselves it came to matter a
lot which welfare office they could apply to in case of need. In the early
modern period poverty could befall almost anybody. Only the very few of
solid wealth were truly immune. For all those dependent on their earning
power, impaired health, physical or mental handicaps, the death of parents
at a young age, abundant progeny or old age could all lead to poverty. Poverty, however, was
also a relative concept. Any decline in prosperity that entailed loss of
social status was considered a decline into poverty meriting some form of
support Ñ which means that some poor were objectively not too badly off,
whereas other poor lived in abject destitution.
Life was hardest for recent immigrants,
soldiers and sailors and those dependent on an ambulant profession.
Immigrants had to support themselves and their families for a number of
years before they could apply to either the municipal wardens or the
deaconate of their Church in their new domicile. If they failed, they
risked expulsion. If they were born or had settlement elsewhere in Frisia,
that place of origin would be responsible for their support, so they had a
place to go. If they came from outside the Republic or from Holland, where
other provincial laws applied and towns were under no obligation to support
former residents after they had been absent for one year, they had a
serious problem. They could of course try their luck elsewhere. The traditional option of begging
was outlawed and risky in the Republic Ñ as was a life of crime.
Soldiers and sailors moved from one
garrison town or port to another, which made it difficult to gain
settlement anywhere. Their families usually did not follow them around, and
their wives were often hard-put to support themselves and their children
between their husbandsÕ pay-days. Municipal wardens and deacons were
reluctant to support them, as they fell somewhat between the categories of
resident and non-resident inhabitants Ñ a status dependent on the, in these
cases mostly absent, head of the family. Poor ambulant traders, artisans,
musicians and healers could apply for a passport with their local
magistrate, which vouched for their honesty and entitled them to handouts
in every place they passed by in their wanderings.
Those of citizen birth, or who had acquired
citizen status by purchase or as a perquisite of office were most
privileged. They could always fall back upon municipal welfare, but often
this would be a last resort as society had something better in store for
them. Many corporations had some sort of mutual insurance fund for members
falling on hard times: magistrates in several Frisian towns had a ÔpurseÕ
which could provide them, their widows, and close associates with yearly
pensions to mask financial decline and save face. Master artisans, who
needed citizen status in order to trade or run a workshop, were backed by
their guilds. Full membership in a Church meant entitlement to the care of
the deacons instead of the municipal wardens. In case citizens died young,
their children had access to the citizenÕs orphanages, generally the oldest
and most generously endowed, which offered good housing, food, and clothing
and, most important of all, education and vocational training compatible
with their pupilsÕ status as citizens. Citizens of some means could stave
off the poverty caused by old
age or poor health by buying into sheltered housing and indoor care of the
municipal hospital. If their means had been depleted they could be admitted
in its poor ward or, if they enjoyed some patronage, to private or Church-administered
almshouses.
For residents who lacked citizen status but
were born locally or fulfilled the residency requirements, provisions were
less generous. Most mutual insurance funds would be closed to them, except
of course the deaconate of their Church if they were full members. In most
cases they would be dependent on municipal welfare. Municipal hospitals and
private almshouses did not require citizen status. Their orphans would be
taken care of in the municipal orphanage or, if they had been members, in
an orphanage run by the deaconate of their Church. The municipal orphanages
were often very crowded and less well endowed than the older institutions
that catered only to children of citizen birth Ñ living conditions would be
less comfortable, although still considerably better than in poor
households, with the assurance of decent housing, food and clothing, a
basic education and vocational training. About the Frisian confessional orphanages too little is known to
be able to assess their quality.
Membership of a Church with its guarantee
of support by the deaconate in case of decline into poverty could thus be
very desirable, especially for resident inhabitants. In the eighteenth
century this appears to have made religious communities wary of whom they
admitted, especially the Lutherans, the Catholics and the Jews, whose
constituencies were to a large degree
formed by poor immigrants from the German Empire. The burden of
supporting their poor was often so heavy that on average their handouts
were even smaller than those of the municipal wardens. Apparently poor
immigrants sought church membership as a way to gain a social network, and
churches and synagogues felt a moral obligation to accommodate them Ñ but
sometimes churches had to ask local magistrates to evict newcomers they
knew they could not support.
The churches made up mostly of native
Frisians, like the Dutch and Walloon Reformed, the Mennonites, the
Arminians and the Old-Catholics, were in a better financial position. They
numbered more wealthy members and their poor had stronger local roots and
thus better chances for employment. Especially the Mennonites, Arminians,
Walloon Reformed and Old-Catholics could afford to be generous to their
poorer sisters and brethren. There is even more than a suggestion that
these churches sometimes grew overzealous in excommunicating poor members
for trifling offences, which further diminished the number of their poor
and improved the prospects of those left.
Conclusion
Welfare reform started in Frisia in the
early sixteenth century, following a common European pattern. The most likely inspiration came from
civic humanism. The Edict of 1531, issued in the name of a ruler who was a
staunch defender of Catholicism and who made it his lifeÕs work to combat
Lutheran and any other heresy, became the foundation for its later
development. Yet in Frisia the spirit of the humanist reform of poor relief
was seriously compromised, to the point of perversion.
The welfare program, which was so congenial
to the Lutheran Reformation, advocated by Christian humanists as firmly
founded on biblical authority and the example of the early Church, and
which found considerable support in Catholic Reform, met widespread
resistance in Frisia Ñ and in much of the Dutch Republic. Resistance
focused on the element of support strictly according to need, irrespective
of person. Deeply embedded in Christian culture was the notion that charity
was due first to oneÕs dependents and closest relatives, second to
fellow-members of corporations and neighbours and only lastly to strangers. Charitable donors in Frisia wanted that order of pious obligation
respected. This led to a spectrum of rather exclusive relief agencies, and
a very uneven distribution of charity, strongly reinforcing early modern
social hierarchies. In the end this may have been determined by economic
factors. The mainly agricultural economy of the province which in trade and
industry fought an uphill battle against the interests of its much more
powerful neighbor Holland was ill equipped to absorb immigrants looking for
work and a better life. A restrictive welfare policy offered a way to
protect the vested interests of the Frisian urban populations.
The Reformation did to some extent break
welfare out of the institutional mold informed by Catholic practice based
on theological notions of meritorious works, but dispositions formed by
traditional practice, that had in their turn already molded this practice,
were more tenacious. Under a Reformed regime traditional values retained
their validity. Although municipal welfare focused on the individual
recipient of charity, in society at large charity upheld privilege, and
served as a memorial to private donors. All churches Ñ not only the
Reformed Ñ participated in the government-driven, humanist inspired
reforms. For individuals, who regularly contributed to collections for the
poor, or bequeathed a substantial donation in their wills or distributing
trifling alms on the streets, the religious value of charity appears to
have altered little from medieval usage. It was not so much Protestantism as religious diversity
and the typically early modern social hierarchy that eventually determined
the shape of Frisian poor relief under the Republic.
Charity was no longer seen as a way to ensure
the salvation of individual benefactorsÕ souls in the hereafter. Despite
the sixteenth century reforms, however, early modern Frisians appear to
have been quite content with a traditional Christian moral order, in which
welfare did not focus on the relief of the indigent to the exclusion of the
interests of donors, but was used as an instrument to maintain the honor of
the church, guild or family, or even to suppress beggary. It was only
around 1800 that the modern notions of relief that Grell associates with
Protestantism gained ground, inspired by Enlightened ideals of equal rights
of individual poor as citizens of the nation. Even then these ideals would
have severe difficulties to break out of the hierarchical molds, both
institutional and habitual, that had been formed under the ancien regime. Religion did influence welfare in the early modern period, but as
a conservative, rather than as a modernizing force.
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