§ 81. Christian Charity.
§ 81. Christian Charity.
See the Lit. in vol. II. § 88, p. 311 sq. Chastel: Études historiques sur l’influence de la charité (Paris 1853, English transl., Philad. 1857—for the first three centuries). Häser: Geschichte der christl. Krankenpflege und Pflegerschaften (Berlin 1857). Ratzinger: Gesch. der christl. Armenpflege (Freib. 1869, a new ed. announced 1884). Morin: Histoire critique de la pauvreté (in the "Mémoirs de l’ Académie des inscript." IV). Lecky: Hist. of Europ. Morals, ch. 4th (II. 62 sqq.). Uhlhorn: Christian Charity in the Ancient Church (Stuttgart, 1881; Engl. transl. Lond. and N. York 1883), Book III., and his Die Christliche Liebesthätigkeit im Mittelalter. Stuttgart, 1884. (See also his art. in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift för K. G." IV. 1). B. Riggenbach: Das Armenwesen der Reformation (Basel 1883). Also the articles Armenpflege in Herzog’s "Encycl."2 vol. I. 648–663; in Wetzer and Welte’s "Kirchenlex."2 vol. I. 1354–1375; Paupérisme in Lichtenberger X. 305–312; and Hospitals in Smith and Cheetham I. 785–789.
From the cruelties of superstition and bigotry we gladly turn to the queen of Christian graces, that "most excellent gift of charity," which never ceased to be exercised wherever the story of Christ’s love for sinners was told and his golden rule repeated. It is a "bond of’ perfectness" that binds together all ages and sections of Christendom. It comforted the Roman empire in its hoary age and agonies of death; and it tamed the ferocity of the barbarian invaders. It is impossible to overestimate the moral effect of the teaching and example of Christ, and of St. Paul’s seraphic praise of charity upon the development of this cardinal virtue in all ages and countries. We bow with reverence before the truly apostolic succession of those missionaries, bishops, monks, nuns, kings, nobles, and plain men and women, rich or poor, known and unknown, who, from gratitude to Christ and pure love to their fellow-men, sacrificed home, health, wealth, life itself, to humanize and Christianize savages, to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to entertain the stranger, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick, to call on the prisoner, to comfort the dying. We admire and honor also those exceptional saints who, in literal fulfillment or misunderstanding of the Saviour’s advice to the rich youth, and in imitation of the first disciples at Jerusalem, sold all their possessions and gave them to the poor that they might become perfect. The admiration is indeed diminished, but not destroyed, if in many cases a large measure of refined selfishness was mixed with self-denial, and when the riches of heaven were the sole or chief inducement for choosing voluntary poverty on earth.
The supreme duty of Christian charity was inculcated by all faithful pastors and teachers of the gospel from the beginning. In the apostolic and ante-Nicene ages it was exercised by regular contributions on the Lord’s day, and especially at the communion and the agape connected with it. Every congregation was a charitable society, and took care of its widows and orphans, of strangers and prisoners, and sent help to distant congregations in need.372
After Constantine, when the masses of the people flocked into the church, charity assumed an institutional form, and built hospitals and houses of refuge for the strangers, the poor, the sick, the aged, the orphans.373 They appear first in the East, but soon afterwards also in the West. Fabiola founded a hospital in Rome, Pammachius one in the Portus Romanus, Paulinus one in Nola. At the time of Gregory I. there were several hospitals in Rome; he mentions also hospitals in Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. These institutions were necessary in the greatly enlarged sphere of the church, and the increase of poverty, distress, and disaster which at last overwhelmed the Roman empire. They may in many cases have served purposes of ostentation, superseded or excused private charity, encouraged idleness, and thus increased rather than diminished pauperism. But these were abuses to which the best human institutions are subject.
Private charity continued to be exercised in proportion to the degree of vitality in the church. The great fathers and bishops of the fourth and fifth centuries set an illustrious example of plain living and high thinking, of self-denial and liberality, and were never weary in their sermons and writings in enjoining the duty of charity. St. Basil himself superintended his extensive hospital at Caesarea, and did not shrink from contact with lepers; St. Gregory Nazianzen exhorted the brethren to be "a god to the unfortunate by imitating the mercy of God," for there is "nothing so divine as beneficence;" St. Chrysostom founded several hospitals in Constantinople, incessantly appealed to the rich in behalf of the poor, and directed the boundless charities of the noble widow Olympias. St. Ambrose, at once a proud Roman and an humble Christian, comforted the paupers in Milan, while he rebuked an emperor for his cruelty; Paulinus of Nola lived in a small house with his wife, Theresiâ and used his princely wealth for the building of a monastery, the relief of the needy, the ransoming of prisoners, and when his means were exhausted, he exchanged himself with the son of a widow to be carried away into Africa; the great Augustin declined to accept as a present a better coat than he might give in turn to a brother in need; St. Jerome founded a hospice in Bethlehem from the proceeds of his property, and induced Roman ladies of proud ancestry to sell their jewels, silk dresses, and palaces, for the poor, and to exchange a life of luxurious ease for a life of ascetic self-denial. Those examples shone like brilliant stars through the darkness of the middle ages.
But the same fathers, it must be added, handed to the middle ages also the disturbing doctrine of the meritorious nature and atoning efficacy of charity, as "covering a multitude of sins," and its influence even upon the dead in purgatory. These errors greatly stimulated and largely vitiated that virtue, and do it to this day.374
The Latin word caritas, which originally denotes dearness or costliness (from carus, dear), then esteem, affection, assumed in the church the more significant meaning of benevolence and beneficence, or love in active exercise, especially to the poor and suffering among our fellow-men. The sentiment and the deed must not be separated, and the gift of the hand derives its value from the love of the heart. Though the gifts are unequal, the benevolent love should be the same, and the widow’s mite is as much blessed by God as the princely donation of the rich. Ambrose compares benevolence in the intercourse of men with men to the sun in its relation to the earth. "Let the gifts of the wealthy," says another father, "be more abundant, but let not the poor be behind him in love." Very often, however, charity was contracted into mere almsgiving. Praying, fasting, and almsgiving were regarded (as also among the Jews and Mohammedans) as the chief works of piety; the last was put highest. For the sake of charity it is right to break the fast or to interrupt devotion.
Pope Gregory the Great best represents the mediaeval charity with its ascetic self-denial, its pious superstitions and utilitarian ingredients. He lived in that miserable transition period when the old Roman civilization was crumbling to pieces and the new civilization was not yet built up on its ruins. "We see nothing but sorrow," he says, "we hear nothing but complaints. Ah, Rome! once the mistress of the world, where is the senate? where the people? The buildings are in ruins, the walls are falling. Everywhere the sword! Everywhere death! I am weary of life! "But charity remained as an angel of comfort. It could not prevent the general collapse, but it dried the tears and soothed the sorrows of individuals. Gregory was a father to the poor. He distributed every month cart-loads of corn, oil, wine, and meat among them. What the Roman emperors did from policy to keep down insurrection, this pope did from love to Christ and the poor. He felt personally guilty when a man died of starvation in Rome. He set careful and conscientious men over the Roman hospitals, and required them to submit regular accounts of the management of funds. He furnished the means for the founding of a Xenodochium in Jerusalem. He was the chief promoter of the custom of dividing the income of the church into four equal parts, one for the bishop, one for the rest of the clergy, one for the church buildings, one for the poor. At the same time he was a strong believer in the meritorious efficacy of almsgiving for the living and the dead. He popularized Augustin’s notion of purgatory, supported it by monkish fables, and introduced masses for the departed (without the so-called thirties, i.e. thirty days after death). He held that God remits the guilt and eternal punishment, but not the temporal punishment of sin, which must be atoned for in this life, or in purgatory. Thus be explained the passage about the fire (1 Cor. 3:11) which consumes wood, hay, and stubble, i.e. light and trifling sins such as useless talk, immoderate laughter, mismanagement of property. Hence, the more alms the better, both for our own salvation and for the relief of our departed relatives and friends. Almsgiving is the wing of repentance, and paves the way to heaven. This idea ruled supreme during the middle ages.
Among the barbarians in the West charitable institutions were introduced by missionaries in connection with convents, which were expected to exercise hospitality to strangers and give help to the poor. The Irish missionaries cared for the bodies as well as for the souls of the heathen to whom they preached the gospel, and founded "Hospitalia Scotorum." The Council of Orleans, 549, shows acquaintance with Xenodochia in the towns. There was a large one at Lyons. Chrodegang of Metz and Alcuin exhort the bishops to found institutions of charity, or at least to keep a guest-room for the care of the sick and the stranger. A Synod at Aix in 815 ordered that an infirmary should be built near the church and in every convent. The Capitularies of Charlemagne extend to charitable institutions the same privileges as to churches and monasteries, and order that "strangers, pilgrims, and paupers" be duly entertained according to the canons.
The hospitals were under the immediate supervision of the bishop or a superintendent appointed by him. They were usually dedicated to the Holy Spirit, who was represented in the form of a dove in some conspicuous place of the building. They received donations and legacies, and were made the trustees of landed estates. The church of the middle ages was the largest property-holder, but her very wealth and prosperity became a source of temptation and corruption, which in the course of time loudly called for a reformation.
After we have made all reasonable deduction for a large amount of selfish charity which looked to the donor rather than the recipient, and for an injudicious profusion of alms which encouraged pauperism instead of enabling the poor to help themselves by honest work, we still have left one of the noblest chapters in the history of morals to which no other religion can furnish a parallel. For the regular gratuitous distribution of grain to the poor heathen of Rome, who under Augustus rose to 200,000, and under the Antonines to 500,000, was made from the public treasury and dictated by selfish motives of state policy; it called forth no gratitude; it failed of its object, and proved, together with slavery and the gladiatorial shows for the amusement of the people, one of the chief demoralizing influences of the empire.375
Finally, we must not forget that the history of true Christian charity remains to a large part unwritten. Its power is indeed felt everywhere and every day; but it loves to do its work silently without a thought of the merit of reward. It follows human misery into all its lonely griefs with personal sympathy as well as material aid, and finds its own happiness in promoting the happiness of others. There is luxury in doing good for its own sake. "When thou doest alms," says the Lord, "let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father who seeth in secret shall reward thee."376
Notes.
Uhlhorn closes his first work with this judgment of mediaeval charity (p. 396 sq. of the English translation): "No period has done so much for the poor as the middle ages. What wholesale distribution of alms, what an abundance of institutions of the most various kinds, what numbers of hospitals for all manner of sufferers, what a series of ministrant orders, male and female, knightly and civil, what self-sacrifice and devotedness! In the mediaeval period all that we have observed germinating in the ancient Church, first attains its maturity. The middle ages, however, also appropriated whatever tendencies existed toward a one-sided and unsound development. Church care of the poor entirely perished, and all charity became institutional; monks and nuns, or members of the ministrant orders, took the place of the deacons—the diaconate died out. Charity became one-sidedly institutional and one-sidedly ecclesiastical. The church was the mediatrix of every exercise of charity, she became in fact the sole recipient, the sole bestower; for the main object of every work of mercy, of every distribution of alms, of every endowment, of all self-sacrifice in the service of the needy, was the giver’s own salvation. The transformation was complete. Men gave and ministered no longer for the sake of helping and serving the poor in Christ, but to obtain for themselves and theirs, merit, release from purgatory, a high degree of eternal happiness. The consequence was, that poverty was not contended with, but fostered, and beggary brought to maturity; so that notwithstanding the abundant donations, the various foundations, the well-endowed institutions, distress was after all not mastered. Nor is it mastered yet. "The poor ye have always with you" (John 12:8). Riggenbach (l.c.) maintains that in the middle ages hospitals were mere provision-houses (Versorgungshäuser), and that the Reformation first asserted the principle that they should be also houses of moral reform (Rettungshäuser and Heilanstalten).
Lecky, who devotes a part of the fourth chapter of his impartial humanitarian History of European Morals to this subject, comes to the following conclusion (II. 79, 85): "Christianity for the first time made charity a rudimentary virtue, giving it a leading place in the moral type, and in the exhortations of its teachers. Besides its general influence in stimulating the affections, it effected a complete revolution in this sphere, by regarding the poor as the special representatives of the Christian Founder, and thus making the love of Christ, rather than the love of man, the principle of charity .... The greatest things are often those which are most imperfectly realized; and surely no achievements of the Christian Church are more truly great than those which it has effected in the sphere of charity. For the first time in the history of mankind, it has inspired many thousands of men and women, at the sacrifice of all worldly interests, and often under circumstances of extreme discomfort or danger, to devote their entire lives to the single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity. It has covered the globe with countless institutions of mercy, absolutely unknown to the whole Pagan world. It has indissolubly united, in the minds of men, the idea of supreme goodness with that of active and constant benevolence. It has placed in every parish a religious minister who, whatever may be his other functions, has at least been officially charged with the superintendence of an organization of charity, and who finds in this office one of the most important as well as one of the most legitimate sources of his power."
Comp, Judges 5:6; 17:6.
"It would be difficult," says Gibbon of this period, "to find anywhere more vice or less virtue." The judgments of Hallam, Milman, and Lecky are to the same effect. Compare also the description of Montalembert, quoted above, p. 82 sq.
It seems incredible that there should have been an occasion for legislation against clergymen keeping houses of prostitution; and yet the Quinisexta or Trullan Synod of 692 enacted the canon: "He who keeps a brothel, if a clergyman, shall be deposed and excommunicated; if a layman, excommunicated." Hefele III. 341.
Capitulum, from the chapter of the Bible or of the monastic rules which were read in common every day. The name was applied both to the clerical brotherhood and to their habitation (chapter-house). The plural, Capitula or Capitularia designates codes of law ecclesiastical or civil, digested under chapters. See Martene, De Antiqu. Eccl. Ritibus, 1, IV. c. VI. § 4, and Haddan In Smith and Cheetham, I. 347.
Canonici, either because they were bound by canons, or enrolled on the lists of ecclesiastical officers. They occupied an intermediate position between the secular clergy and the monks. See Du Cange, and Smith and Cheetham, sub Canonici.
Hefele IV. 794.
Ibid. p. 373.
Ibid. p. 707.
For all these details see the scattered notices in vols, III. and IV. of Hefele.
See § 61, p. 275 sq.
De Civit. Dei, 1. XIX. c. 15. "Nomen [servus] culpa meruit, non natura … Prima servitutis causa peccatum est, ut homo homini conditionis vinculo subderetur quod non fuit nisi Deo judicante, apud quem non est iniquitas." He thinks it will continue with the duties prescribed by the apostles, donec transeat iniquitas, et evacuetur omnis principatus, et potestas humana, et sit Deus omnia in omnibus.." Chrysostom taught substantially the same views, and derived from the sin of Adam a threefold servitude and a threefold tyranny, that of the husband over the wife, the master over the slave, and the state over the subjects. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the schoolmen, " did not see in slavery either difference of race or imaginary inferiority or means of government, but only a scourge inflicted on humanity by the sins of the first man" (Balmes, p. 112). But none of these great men seems to have had an idea that slavery would ever disappear from the earth except with sin itself. Cessante causa, cessat effectus. See vol. III. 115-121.
Epist. X. 66; IX. 102. See these and other passages in Overbeck, Verhältniss der alten Kirche zur Sklaverei, in his "Studien zur Gesch. der alten Kirche" (1875) p. 211 sq. Overbeck, however, dwells too much on the proslavery sentiments of the fathers, and underrates the merits of the church for the final abolition of slavery.
Hefele IV. 670.
Synod of Clermont, a.d. 549. Hefele III. 5; comp. II. 662.
Fifth Synod of Orleans, 549; Synod of Aachen, 789; Synod of Francfurt, 794. See Hefele III. 3, 666, 691. If ordination took place without the master’s consent, he could reclaim the slave from the ranks of the clergy. Hefele IV. 26.
Hefele III. 574, 575, 611. The first example was set by Pope Callistus (218-223), who was himself formerly a slave, and gave the sanction of the Roman church to marriages between free Christian ladies and slaves or lowborn men. Hippolytus, Philosoph. IX. 12 (p. 460 ed. Duncker and Schneidewin). This was contrary to Roman law, and disapproved even by Hippolytus.
The 16th Synod of Toledo, 693, passed the following canon: "If a slave works on Sunday by command of his master, the slave becomes free, and the master is punished to pay 30 solidi. If the slave works on Sunday without command of his master, he is whipped or must pay fine for his skin. If a freeman works on Sunday, he loses his liberty or must pay 60 solidi; a priest has to pay double the amount." Hefele II. 349; comp. p. 355.
Hefele III. 103; comp. IV. 70. Balmes, p. 108.
Overbeck, l.c., p. 219.
Conc. Cabilonense, can. 9: "Pietatis est maximae et religionis intuitus, ut captivitatis vinculum omnino a Christianis redimatur." The date of the Council is uncertain, see Mansi, Conc. X. 1198; Hefele, III. 92.
Saxon Faehth, or Faeght, Danish feide, Dutch veede, German Fehde, low Latin faida or faidia. Compare the German Feind, the English fiend. Du Cange defines faida: "Gravis et aperta inimicitia ob caedem aliquam suscepta, and refers to his dissertation De Privatis Bellis.
Hefele III. 349.
IV. 655, 689.
Treuga Dei, Gottesfriede. See Du Cange sub. "Treva, Treuga, seu Trevia Dei." The word occurs in several languages (treuga, tregoa, trauva, treva, trêve). It comes from the same root as the German treu, Treue, and the English true troth, truce, and signifies a pledge of faith, given for a time to an enemy for keeping peace.
Rodull Glaber, a monk of Cluny, gives a graphic account of this famine and the origin of the Peace movement, in his Historia sui Temporis, lib. IV. c.4 and 5 (in Migne’s Patrol. Tom. 142, fol. 675-679). Hefele, IV. 698, traces the movement to Provence and to the year 1040 with a "perhaps," but Rodulf Glaber makes it begin "in Aquitaniae partibus anno incarnati Christi millesimo tricesimo tertio," from whence it spread rapidly "per Arelatensem provinciam, atque Lugdunensem, sicque per universam Burgundiam, atque in ultimas Franciae partes " (Migne, l. c. fol. 678). Comp. lib. V. 1 (fol. 693): "primitus inpartibus Aquitanicis, deinde paulatim per universum Galliarum territorium," etc. He also reports that the introduction of the Peace was blessed by innumerable cures and a bountiful harvest. "Erat instar illius antiqui Mosaici magni Jubilaei." Balderich, in his Chronicle of the Bishops of Cambray, reports that in one of the French synods a bishop showed a letter which fell from heaven and exhorted to peace. The bishop of Cambray, however, dissented because he thought the resolution could not be carried out.
See further details in Mansi XIX. 549 sq.; Kluckhohn; Hefele (IV. 696-702, 780); and Mejer in Herzog2 V. 319 sqq.
From the Anglo-Saxon ordael or ordela (from or=ur, and dael=theil): German: Urtheil or Gottesurtheil; Dutch: oordeel; French: ordéal; L. Lat.; ordalium, ordale, ordela. See Du Cange sub. ordela, aquae frigidae judicium, Duellum, Ferrum candens; Skeat (Etymol. Dict. of the Engl. Lang.) sub. Deal.
See the proof in Lea, who finds in the wide prevalence of this custom a confirmation of the common origin of the Aryan or Indo-germanic races.
Judicium aquae ferventis, aeneum, cacabus, caldaria. This is probably the oldest form in Europe. See Lea, p. 196. It is usually referred to in the most ancient texts of law, and especially recommended by Hincmar of Rheims, as combining the elements of water—the judgment of the deluge—and of fire—the judgment of the last day. The accused was obliged, with his naked arm, to find a small stone or ring in a boiling caldron of water (this was called in German the Kesselfang), or simply to throw the hand to the wrist or to the elbow into boiling water. See Lea, p. 196 sqq.
Judicium aquae frigidae. It was not known in Europe before Pope Eugenius II. (824-827), who seems to have introduced it. The accused was bound with cords, and lowered with a rope into a reservoir or pond, with the prayer (St., Dunstan’s formula): "Let not the water receive the body of him who, released from the weight of goodness, is upborne by the wind of iniquity." It was supposed that the pure element would not receive a criminal into its bosom. It required therefore in this case a miracle to convict the accused, as in the natural order of things he would escape. Lea (p. 221) relates this instance from a MS. in the British Museum In 1083, during the deadly struggle between the Empire and the Papacy, as personified in Henry IV. and Hildebrand, the imperialists related with great delight that some of the leading prelates of the papal court submitted the cause of their chief to this ordeal. After a three days’ fast, and proper benediction of the water, they placed in it a boy to represent the Emperor, when to their horror he sank like a stone. On referring the result to Hildebrand, he ordered a repetition of the experiment, which was attended with the same result. Then, throwing him in, as a representative of the Pope, he obstinately floated during two trials, in spite of all efforts to force him under the surface, and an oath was exacted from them to maintain inviolable secrecy as to the unexpected result." James I. of England was a strict believer in this ordeal, and thought that the pure element would never receive those who had desecrated the privileges of holy baptism. Even as late as 1836, an old woman, reputed to be a witch, was twice plunged into the sea at Hela, near Danzig, and as she persisted in rising to the surface, she was pronounced guilty and beaten to death. See Lea, p. 228 and 229.
Judicium ferri or ferri candentis. A favorite mode, administered in two different forms, the one by six or twelve red-hot plough-shares (vomeres igniti), over which the person had to walk bare-footed; the other by a piece of red-hot iron, which he had to carry for a distance of nine feet or more. See Lea, p. 201 sq.
The accused had to stretch his hand into a fire; hence the French proverbial expression: "J’en mettrais la main au feu," as an affirmation of positive belief. Sometimes he had to walk bare-legged and bare-footed through the flames of huge pyres. Petrus Igneus gained his reputation and surname by an exploit of this kind. See examples in Lea, p. 209 sqq. Savonarola proposed this ordeal in 1498 to his enemies in proof of his assertion that the church needed a thorough reformation, and that his excommunication by Pope Alexander VI. was null and void, but he shrunk from the trial, lost his cause, and was hanged and burned after undergoing frightful tortures. He had not the courage of Hus at Constance, or Luther at Worms, and his attempted reformation left nothing but a tragic memory.
Tacitus (German, cap. 7) reports of the heathen Germans: "[Deum] adesse, bellantibus credunt."
See Lea, p. 75-174. The wager of battle, as a judicial institution, must not be confounded with the private duel which has been more or less customary among all races and in all ages, and still survives as a relic of barbarism, though misnamed "the satisfaction of a gentleman." The judicial duel aims at the discovery of truth and the impartial administration of justice, while the object of the private duel is personal vengeance and reparation of honor.
De Gloria Martyrum I. 81. Lea, p. 198.
Judicium crucis, orstare ad crucem, Kreuzesprobe. A modification of it was the trial of standing with the arms extended in the form of a cross. In this way St. Lioba, abbess of Bischoffsheim, vindicated the honor of her convent against the charge of impurity when a new-born child was drowned in the neighborhood. Lea, p. 231.
Judicium offae, panis conjuratio, corsnaed, Abendmahlsprobe. Comp. Hefele IV. 370, 552, 735.
Liber adversus Legem Gundobadi (i.e. Leg. Burgundionum) et impia certarmina quae per eam geruntur; and Liber Contra Judicium Dei. See his Opera ed. Baluzius, Paris 1666, T. I. 107 sqq., 300 sqq., and in Migne’s Patrologia, Tom. CIV. f 113-126, and f. 250-258 (with the notes of Baluzius).
"At length, when the Papal authority reached its culminating point, a vigorous and sustained effort to abolish the whole system was made by the Popes who occupied the pontifical throne from 1159-1227. Nothing can be more peremptory than the prohibition uttered by Alexander III. In 1181, Lucius III. pronounced null and void the acquittal of a priest charged with homicide, who had undergone the water-ordeal, and ordered him to prove his innocence with compurgators, and the blow was followed up by his successors. Under Innocent III., the Fourth Council of Lateran, in 1215, formally forbade the employment of any ecclesiastical ceremonies in such trials; and as the moral influence of the ordeal depended entirely upon its religious associations, a strict observance of this canon must speedily have swept the whole system into oblivion. Yet at this very time the inquisitor Conrad of Marburg was employing in Germany the red-hot iron as a means of condemning his unfortunate victims by wholesale, and the chronicler relates that, whether innocent or guilty, few escaped the test. The canon of Lateran, however, was actively followed up by the Papal legates, and the effect was soon discernible." Lea, p. 272.
Tortura from torqueo, to twist, to torment. Ital. and Spanish: tortura; French: torture; Germ.: Folter.
"Their evidence was inadmissible, except when given under torture, and then by a singular confusion of logic, it was estimated as the most convincing kind of testimony." Lea, 283. "The modes of torture sanctioned by the Greeks were the wheel (trovco"), the ladder or rack (klivmax), the comb with sharp teeth (kuavfo"), the low vault (kuvfwn) in which the unfortunate witness was thrust and bent double, the burning tiles (plivnqoi) the heavy hog-skin whip (uJstriciv"),nd the injection of vinegar into the nostrils." Lea, p. 284. The Romans used chiefly the scourge. The instruments of torture employed during the middle ages were the rack, the thumbscrew, the Spanish boot, iron gauntlets, heated iron stools, fire, the wheel, the strappado, enforced sleeplessness, and various mutilations. Brace says (p. 182) that " nine hundred(?) different instruments for inflicting pain were invented and used." One tenth of the number would be bad enough. Collections of these devilish instruments may be seen in the London Tower, and in antiquarian museums on the Continent.
"La persona del home es la mas noble cosa del mundo."
Can. 33: "Non licet presbytero nec diacono ad trepalium ubi rei torquentur, stare." See Hefele III. 46.
Epist. VIII. 30.
Responsa ad Consulta Bulgarorum, c. 86. Hefele IV. 350. Lea, p. 305.
In the bull Ad extirpanda: "Teneatur potestas seu rector, omnes haereticos … cogere citra membri diminutionem et mortis periculum, tamquam vere latrones et homicidas animarum … errores suos expresse fateri et accusare alios haereticos quos sciunt, et bona eorum." … Innoc. IV. Leg. et Const. contra Haeret. § 26. (Bullar. Magn. in Innoc. IV. No. 9). Comp. Gieseler II. 564-569.
372 See vol. II. § 100.
373 They are called Xenodochium and Xenodochia (xenodocei'on) for strangers; ptochium or ptochotrophium (ptwcei'on, ptwcotrofei'on) for the poor; orphanotrophium (ojrfanoqrofei'on) for orphans; brephotrophium (brefotrofei'on) for foundlings house for the sick (nosokomei'a, valetudinaria); for the aged (gerontokomei'a); and for widows (chrotrofei'a); in Latin hospitium, hospitals, hospitalium (corresponding to the Greek xenodocei'on). See Du Cange. Such institutions were unknown among the heathen; for the houses near the temples of Aeculapius were only intended for temporary shelter, not for care and attendance. The Emperor Julian’s involuntary eulogy of the charity of the "Galilaeans " as he contemptuously called the Christians, and his abortive attempt to force the heathen to imitate it, are well known. See vol. III. 50.
374 See the numerous quotations from the fathers in Uhlhorn, p. 278 sqq. "Countless times is the thought expressed that almsgiving is a safe investment of money at good interest with God in heaven." He thinks that "the doctrine of purgatory, and of the influence which almsgiving exercises even upon souls in purgatory, determined more than anything else the charity of the entire mediaeval period" (p. 287). The notion that alms have an atoning efficacy is expressed again and again in every variety of form as the motive of almsgiving which is predominant above all others. Even Augustin, the most evangelical among the fathers, teaches "that alms have power to extinguish and expiate sin," although he qualifies the maxim and confines the benefit to those who amend their lives. No one had greater influence upon the Latin church than the author of the City of God, in which, as Uhlhorn says, "he unconsciously wrote the programme of the middle ages."
375 "There can be," says Lecky, (II. 78), "no question that either in practice nor in theory, neither in the institution, that were founded nor in the place that was assigned to it in the scale of duties, did charity in antiquity occupy a position at all comparable to that which it has obtained by Christianity. Nearly all the relief was a State measure, dictated much more by policy than by benevolence; and the habit of selling young children, the innumerable expositions, the readiness of the poor to enroll themselves as gladiators, and the frequent famines, show how large was the measure of unrelieved distress. A very few pagan examples of charity have, indeed, descended to us."
376 Matt. 6:3, 4. The word "openly" (ejn tw'/ fanerw'/) is omitted in the best MSS. and critical editions, and in the E. Revision.