Responses To The Poor Between 1450 And 1700

Between 1450 and 1700, almost half of Europe was living in poverty. As famine, war, and economic dislocation grew rampant, there were regions where 80 percent of the population faced starvation daily. The massive poor population led to a myriad of attitudes and responses towards the poor, including that the poor were idle, that they needed to be regulated, that helping the poor was the moral thing to do, and that the poor should be helped because it will improve the life of the donor.

Some people thought that the poor were merely idle, and therefore did not deserve help. One such person was Emperor Charles V. In his 1513 imperial decree for the Netherlands, he declared that receiving money from charity leads to idleness, which, according

In a poorhouse in Suffolk County, England, the regulations state that when each poor individual came to the poorhouse for the first time, they should be whipped on their bare skin. They also required more stubborn people to wear heavy shackles, have more difficult work, and be given less food. These regulations were all created for the purpose of controlling the poor. Even worse than the terrible treatment of these people is the fact that they came to the poorhouse seeking refuge and safety. Instead, they were humiliated and abused. This demand of subservience was not, however, out of cruelty, but designed to regulate the poor. Cardinal Richelieu, a royal councilor in France, unofficially gave a statement on poverty in 1625. In this statement he said that the poor should be regulated and that there should be laws passed to regulate the poor because the food they receive from begging could have been otherwise donated to the sick. He felt that the poor should be confined and then given jobs building public works projects. As Cardinal Richelieu was giving an unofficial statement, this is most likely what he actually felt. While expressing this opinion, he would not have been under any pressure from the French government, the aristocracy, his peers, or, as he was a member of the clergy, the church. His idea that the poor needed to be regulated was one that came unaffected, showing that some people

Unfortunately, they did this for personal gain. One such person who wanted to get something out of helping the poor was Vincent de Paul. De Paul was a Catholic priest and founder of a religious order that ministered to the poor. In a 1658 speech to the members of his order in France he stated that he heard that one of the most important quality of bishops who became saints was their charity work. He thought that people would want to help the poor not because it was the right thing to do, but because it might have facilitated their personal ambitions of achieving sainthood. Although he might have actually believed this, it is possible that de Paul was simply bolstering the spirits of his order, which was comprised of poor people. By saying that better off people would want to help them because it would help them achieve their somewhat selfish dreams of forever being immortalized as a saint, he encouraged his poor congregation not to give up hope on the dwindling population of people who would readily give charity to the poor. Another French Catholic priest said in a sermon that the only reason worth giving charity was that it would help get people into heaven. He assured his congregation that giving money to the poor would go along way in the eyes of God in terms of the afterlife. Also, in a 1482 town council resolution from Dijon, France it was proposed that the poor of the city should be put in a barn to be cared