Material deprivation was the usual fate of most members of medieval society. It was certainly a structural problem and affected whole sections of the population who could never escape it. But the welfare of peasants and labourers could change overnight into outright destitution: sickness, infirmity, old age, being widowed or orphaned could make them ‘poor’, a term that had a vast array of meanings. References to ‘poverty’ certainly implied a precarious existence that bred hunger and destitution, but they could also describe the oppression of the poor by the powerful. Before 1200 this poverty was primarily a rural phenomenon, where it was widespread. Poverty was not yet synonymous with social exclusion, however, since destitute peasants could always benefit from the support of relatives, neighbours, or other members of the village community. In the thirteenth century, in contrast, it seems to have become a primarily urban phenomenon. Many of the rural poor abandoned the little they had in the country in order to take advantage of the emerging welfare institutions in the towns, while urban artisans and workers were vulnerable to economic crises and rapidly ended up unemployed. There were also many who outwardly attempted to disguise their decline into poverty but who were still willing to profit from their neighbours’ charity.
In the face of poverty, the Church, municipal authorities, and private benefactors responded by founding almshouses, which distributed food amongst the needy; hospitals, which welcomed the destitute, sick and dying, and pilgrims; and lazarhouses*, where lepers were locked up in isolation, even though, as the poorest of the poor, they merited the special respect that Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Louis, and others accorded them. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, evangelization and voluntary poverty became very popular, heightening townspeople’s awareness of the poor and needy. The ‘poor’ should not therefore be confused with those marginal figures whose degrading professions (mercimonia inhonesta, literally ‘dishonest trades’) invariably led to them being excluded from society. Butchers, slaughtermen, and executioners typically dwelt on the outside of the town walls and could not engage in normal social relations with their fellow citizens, owing to their contact with blood; the same was true to a lesser extent for all those who did dirty work—for example, dyers of cloth. Usurers and prostitutes faced still greater condemnation.
Minstrels and performers are a special case. They were certainly the object of ecclesiastical censure and much deplored for their unstable, itinerant lifestyle and lewd performances: ‘What hope is there for minstrels? None, for in the depths of their soul they are the servants of Satan. It is said that they have never known God and that God will spurn them: he shall laugh at those who now laugh,’ wrote Honorius Augustodunensis in the twelfth century.21 Some decades later, however, minstrels began to be rehabilitated, not least thanks to the mendicant orders (see Chapter 4), whose way of life and preaching to audiences had parallels with those of performers. Even Saint Francis of Assisi sang in public like a troubadour* and pretended to imitate a hurdy-gurdy player. When Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-74) sought to establish whether a minstrel’s life was moral, he reached a nuanced conclusion. It was a legitimate profession, he concluded, because its specific function was to enhance rest, when all those who worked could recuperate; it deserved to be reimbursed adequately; but it needed to be practised with moderation so that it did not excite unwholesome pleasures. This discourse was a world away from the doctrinaire condemnations of earlier ages that depicted minstrels as the devil’s henchmen. The reflections of Franciscan and Dominican theologians prepared the way for more general social acceptance of professional performers, who began to form confraternities, religious associations for mutual support, and guilds. Henceforth a place was reserved for them in the hierarchy of estates and the orders of Christian society. They even acquired their own training schools: one of the first to be attested was held by a certain Simon at the fairground of Ypres in Flanders in 1313.
E. Faral, Les Jongleurs en France au Moyen Age (3rd edn., New York, 1970), 277.
World History
