THE LIBRARY OF IBERIAN RESOURCES ONLINE
CHARITY AND WELFARE:
HOSPITALS AND THE POOR IN MEDIEVAL CATALONIA
JAMES WILLIAM BRODMAN
[28] Shelter for the temporarily homeless, whether or not they were
needy in the modern sense, was as typical a charity in the towns and villages
of medieval Europe as was providing food to the hungry. The Rule of Saint
Benedict, as well as local Hispanic customs, imposed the obligation of hospitality
upon monasteries.(1)
Likewise, in the reviving towns of the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
there was a need to provide beds for those who were not householders. Urban
hospices served a diverse lot: pilgrims wending their way to a shrine like
Santiago, clergy and others in town on business, wandering beggars, and the
local poor. Increasingly, those with means seem to have secured their own
accommodation in inns or residences, while paupers sought out the more public
shelters operated by churches, monasteries, town government, and even private
individuals. By the thirteenth century, every town of size in Europe, including
Iberia, had several of these shelters. The texts describe these institutions
as hospitals or, less frequently, by the old Byzantine term xenodochium
. While they functioned primarily as shelters, these hospitals would at
times offer other forms of care because their guests needed refreshment
and might also require medical assistance.(2)
Hospitals Outside the Catalan Lands
The earliest known hospital in Christian Iberia was the xenodochium established by Bishop Masona at Mérida in 580, but, in post-Visigothic times, the stimulus of urban development and the pilgrim road to Santiago gave rise to many hospitals in the northern portion of the peninsula. This was a new development of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Studies at León, for example, have demonstrated that older benefactions to its cathedral would [29] form no part of the endowments of the caritative shelters that began to appear just before 1100.(3) These shelters served the local poor and sick, but especially pilgrims who were often in as much need of care as shelter, given the dangers of the journey and the preexisting illnesses that motivated many pilgrimages. Thus, in 1052 King García Sánchez III of Navarre established the hospice of Santa María de Nájera; at León, in 1084 Bishop Pelayo opened a place near the cathedral for the sick, lame, blind, deaf, and hungry, as well as for pilgrims, and, twelve years later, Bishop Pedro moved it to a larger site just outside of town; Archbishop Gelmírez of Santiago in the early twelfth century followed this precedent. Elsewhere along this pilgrim route, we find the Hospital de San Juan in Oviedo, where the feet of pilgrims were washed, the late tenth-century Hospital de la Trinidad de Arre, near Pamplona, the eleventh-century Hospital de San Esteban at Astorga, the Hospital de Santa Cristina at the pass of Somport, and the early twelfth-century hospices at Aubrac and Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees.(4) In Burgos, among some thirty known hospitals, were the Hospital del Rey, the Hospital del Emperador, and the Hospital de Santa María la Real, all of which specialized in sheltering pilgrims on the Santiago road, the Hospital de San Lucas that housed invalids, and a capitular hospice near the cathedral for the local paupers. Other, smaller institutions served the needs of specific parishes or those of individual confraternities. (5) Elsewhere, Astorga had twenty hospitals and Salamanca twenty-eight. (6) León's first hospital was the episcopal Hospital de San Juan (1084), and by 1250 it was joined by eight others . At Valladolid, the Hospital de Esgueva, which dated from the end of the eleventh century, was but one of twenty institutions in the fifteenth century. Seville, a Castilian town only after 1248, had five hospitals by 1300 that included pilgrim hospices established by King Alfonso X and another by Aragonese settlers in the region; five others were founded in the fourteenth century, including that of San Bernando for poor, elderly residents of the town. (7) Córdoba counted at least thirty-three hospital establishments founded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.(8) Valencia, another "new" city, saw a half dozen hospitals established in the immediate decades after its conquest, most under ecclesiastical governance, and by the fifteenth century this number had risen to fourteen. Thirteenth-century Saragossa had eleven hospitals and Toulouse more than a dozen. (9) In Portugal, there were over forty-seven hospices just north of the Douro, and another twenty-five leprosaria; the town of Porto itself had eight hospitals. (10)
The Iberian phenomenon was typical of the situation elsewhere in Europe. In Paris, there was the large Hôtel-Dieu near Notre Dame Cathedral [30] for transients and the sick, as well as other hospices for lepers, pilgrims, orphans, ex-prostitutes, and the blind. Paris itself had about sixty hospitals in all, and the smaller towns of Narbonne, and Arles had fifteen and sixteen. (11) The chronicler Giovanni Villani reports that Florence had about thirty hospitals at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and a century later there were ten more. In 1350 Rome counted twenty-five.(12) In the Low Countries, there is record of pilgrim hospices from 1137 and of urban hospitals from 1090 (at Louvain).(13) In 1154, England had 113 known hospitals, and more than 700 by 1300, not counting monastic infirmaries, establishments of the Hospitallers of Saint John and the ubiquitous small, undocumented establishments. (14) Thus, the phenomenon of public shelters was one that Catalonia shared with the rest of Europe.
Catalan Hospitals
While the oldest hospital in Catalonia will likely never be identified, two of the earliest were the hospices for pilgrims and travelers located at the Benedictine monasteries of Sant Pere de Rodes, which dates from the late tenth century, and of Sant Pere de Casserres, which was founded in the eleventh century. Both were constructed outside the monastic walls as simple two-storied hostels. At around the same time, the count of Cerdanya in 965 established a hospice for travelers at the Coll de la Perxa, a deserted spot on the road from Cerdanya to the Conflent, which was served by a community of lay brothers and servants. (15) There were other refuges at the Hills of Puymorens and Arnés, and at Sentillà and Santa Cecília de Rella. In the valley of Clusa three other hospices for pilgrims depended on the monasteries of Sant Hilarde Rasez, Arlés and Soreda. Instances of other such shelters, located in towns, villages, and rural locales, proliferate during the eleventh century. At Barcelona, Bishop Deodat donated to a hospital for the poor in 1024, and another named "En Guitard" was established circa 1045, the same year someone named Arnau opened a hospital for the poor next to the cathedral at Urgell; Girona possibly had a hospital within the old Roman fortifications in the tenth century. Another hospital was established at Cardona in 1083, and in 1068 Arsendis, the wife of Arnau Mir of Tost, asked her spouse to establish shelters for the infirm poor at Tost as well as at Algar, Montmagastre, and Artesa. In the eleventh century Vic had an Albergueria, located behind the cathedral, that served as a residence for clergy as well as a hospital. At the beginning of the next century, in 1101, the chapter of Ager [31] established a shelter for travelers, and, in 1116, Count Arnau de Roselló instituted a shelter for Christ's poor at the Church of Sant Joan at Perpignan. (16) Throughout Catalonia, as indeed throughout Christian Iberia and western Europe,(17) bishops, chapters, confraternities, prosperous and perhaps pious individuals, and eventually even municipalities established a myriad of such shelters to house and, at times, offer various types of material assistance to an assortment of temporarily or permanently homeless persons: travelers and pilgrims, the old, the sick and the dying, and the destitute. (18) Here we shall endeavor not only to chronicle this hospitaller explosion, but also attempt to fathom the social forces that created the phenomenon.
The Hospitals of Barcelona
Barcelona possessed one of the earliest of the cathedral shelters in Catalonia,(19) but dating the Hospital of the See, sometimes called En Guitard, is difficult. One tradition connects its foundation to a legacy of land on Montjuic given in 938 to the sacristan of the cathedral; legacies from 995 and 1011 confirm the existence of shelter for the poor and pilgrims. Another tradition argues that the hospital was founded by the chapter and Bishop Deodat in 1023, perhaps as part of the town's reconstruction after al-Mansr's raid, or perhaps earlier in 1009 when the chapter itself was established. A third version attributes an early foundation to a viscount of Barcelona named Guitard, which was reendowed in 1045 by Count Ramon Berenguer I. Whatever the actual date of its foundation, the construction of a new Romanesque cathedral, consecrated in 1058, disrupted its operation and it is little mentioned in the sources until after a reconstruction in 1090. In the twelfth century, it acquired an endowment of lands in Sarrià, Las Cortes, and Reixac, and after 1133, at the behest of Archbishop Oleguer, received the beds and linen of all deceased clergy. The hospice was overseen directly by the bishop and chapter until 1175 when its supervision passed to the chaplain of the altar of Sant Nicolau, who was named custos of the xenodochium . Just as the bishop and chapter collectively attended to their obligation of feeding the poor in only a ritualistic fashion, as we have seen, so also they do not seem to have placed any great priority upon the operation of the cathedral hospital. It did not benefit from the considerable wealth of the bishop and canons, who were not only the largest landowners in Barcelona but also lords of a considerable rural patrimony. The hospice's lack of [32] adequate endowment, in fact, led to its suppression and merger into a newly established hospital of En Colom.(20)
Joan Colom was an important member of the cathedral chapter; he oversaw capitular finances for the month of December, often served as a judge and arbitrator, and may have been a treasurer for King Jaume I. He was also a contemporary of Bishop Berenguer de Palou, whose benefaction was so essential for the cathedral's Pia Almoina. This hospital was established and endowed in 1229, just before the redaction of Colom's will. It was located on land abutting property of the Knights of Saint John, in the Raval, a yet undeveloped agricultural district across the modern Ramblas, near the future site of the Hospital of Santa Creu and on the modern Carrer de l'Hospital. This was the least desirable suburban district of the city, an area of poor drainage that was thought to be unhealthy.(21) The small establishment, with a house and a chapel, was placed under the administration not of the chapter or bishop but of a kinsman, Berenguer de Plan, and three nephews. In 1236, Berenguer agreed to its merger with the Hospital of the See, but because he retained the usufruct of Colom's goods, he acquired control over the unified hospital. But the bishop and chapter considered the new institution as a continuation of the cathedral hospice and thus diocesan property. The merger document of 1236 speaks of the hospital's mission to serve the poor, vagabonds, and pilgrims, which suggests that this served as a temporary shelter rather than an asylum. (22) But a census of inmates conducted in 1307 also reveals individuals whose term was likely more extended: ten sick persons, four abandoned children around the age of five, eight children still being nursed, and two poor boys being given academic instruction by the rector. All in all, in the early fourteenth century the hospital had a patient population of some twenty-seven persons and a staff of sixteen or more. (23)
Pere Desvilar was another canon of Barcelona's cathedral who founded a hospital in the thirteenth century. Under the patronage of Sant Macià, this institution was also located in the Raval district, close to that of En Colom and the leper hospice. Unlike Colom, Desvilar played no direct role in the establishment of the hospital, but instead left the task to his manumissors or executors. The will of August 1256 directed that Desvilar's goods be used to establish a hospice and chapel, to be directed at first by his executor, Pere de Sales, and thereafter by a rector nominated by the chapter. Desvilar instructed that any income derived from lease renewals and transfers, laudesimos, be dedicated to expanding the initial endowment; notices of additional gifts and bequests commence in 1269. The donor requested that the hospital [33] provide care for the poor but specified a special preference for "men of the sea," sailors who were too old or sick to provide for themselves. (Valencia, another port town, would in the fourteenth century have a hospice for fishermen.) (24) In addition, he guaranteed lifetime support for his friend Pere de Sales, in sickness and in health, reserved a portion of the hospital's income to endow a memorial lamp for himself, and required support, until her death, for his maid Maria.(25) As illustrated in 1278 by Bishop Arnau's nomination of Bernat Ferrer to be administrator of Sant Macià, the overall responsibility for the hospital passed to the bishop. The terms of this particular appointment, however, because they required Bernat to transfer some eight parcels of land to the hospital, suggest that the diocese's commitment to its financial support was limited.(26)
The first important hospital established by a layman was that of Bernat Marcús, a rich resident of the parish of Santa Maria del Mar. (27) Endowed with urban houses and land on Montjuic, the hospital, chapel, and cemetery were located on the entry road into Barcelona from France. According to the donor's will of 1166, the hospital was meant to serve pilgrims, abandoned children, and the sick poor. The foundation's history illustrates the pitfalls of private foundations. While Bernat's sons, Bernat and Ramon, completed construction of the chapel and hospice that their father had begun, the family's patronage ceased in the next generation, whose only members were the three daughters of the younger Bernat. Future administrators, it seems, were nominated by the bishop of Barcelona, eventually with some participation by the Consell de Cent, Barcelona's municipal council, as well. By the end of the thirteenth century, the initial endowment provided by Bernat Marcús's family proved inadequate for the hospital's needs and presumably there was no new infusion of family funds. Consequently, Pere Bertran as administrator was forced in 1281 to borrow two hundred sous just to maintain the hospital's operation. The economic crisis of the later 1330s finally brought En Marcús to the verge of insolvency, and its administrators were forced to sell the hospital to the Consell de Cent for one hundred sous, making it the first hospital in Barcelona to be governed by the municipality. (28)
Pere Desvilar, not to be confused with the thirteenth-century canon, was another Barcelona layman who founded a hospital, but unlike Bernat Marcús, he conferred its governance directly upon the Consell de Cent, much the same way his contemporary in Valencia, the merchant Bernat dez Clapers, entrusted a hospital for infirm paupers to the "honored citizens" of Valencia. (29) While the origin of Pere's hospital may predate 1300, we know [34] of it only from the document transferring it to city control in 1308. The property then consisted of a small building and chapel (dedicated to Sant Pere and Santa Marta) in the Ribera district, which is along the shore and near the modern Ciutadella Park. Desvilar's will of 1311 left an endowment sufficient to feed and shelter twelve paupers, but four of these places were reserved for his own kinsmen. Pere Desvilar oversaw his foundation until his death, and, perhaps because the needy here included his own relations, even specified the type and amount of food to be served. Afterward, his place was taken by a son, Jaume, but thereafter the administrator and chaplain were appointed by municipal authorities.(30)
Outside and to the east of Barcelona, near the modern Ciutadella, another hospital of the poor was established at the old monastery of Santa Eulàlia. Founded in the tenth century, the cloister was reformed by Bishop Oleguer in the 1120s as a community of Augustinian canons. By 1212, the date of a legacy, there existed a hospital on the site, located alongside the monastery. It seems that two laypeople, Berenguer Canet and his wife Pereta, perhaps as members of an unnamed confraternity, purchased this land in 1210 to build a hospital for the poor. Because it was located within the domain of Santa Eulàlia, Berenguer promised not to construct either a chapel or a cemetery, which would infringe upon the monastery's rights. What follows becomes somewhat convoluted. In 1213, in response to a series of disagreements between the canons and the hospital concerning the former's fiscal rights, the prior renounced any rights over the hospital. In 1221, however, when the hospital was definitely in operation along with a chaplain and oratory, and in what has the tenor of a testamentary bequest, Berenguer returned lordship over the hospital to the monastery. Presumably at some point in the preceding decade, Berenguer had obtained the right to build a chapel, whose chaplain was to be selected from among the canons of Santa Eulàlia. In return, Berenguer was made an oblate of the monastery with its attendant material and spiritual benefits. But, in 1237, his daughter, Berenguera de Rubí, hinting at serious scandal of some sort, complained that the monastery was unable to provide a fit chaplain. (31) Thereupon, she appointed a secular priest as chaplain, and eventually, presumably after Berenguera's death, Bishop Arnau de Gurb intervened and, at a date unknown, appointed two canons of the cathedral as the hospital's administrators. Episcopal supervision, however, could not have been strict, because the priest Bartomeu Descoll, who became rector in 1297, was able to destroy the hospital's reputation. A pastoral visit conducted by Bishop Ponç de Gualba in March 1305 found that Bartomeu had embezzled funds, [35] raped a twelve-year-old female patient, and committed public scandal by bearing arms and playing musical instruments. There were no sheets on the beds (they had been pawned!), and the chaplain lacked food. Despite the bread alms from Barcelona sufficient to feed fifteen persons a day, and over one thousand sous in rental income and alms, patients and staff lacked adequate amounts of food. Furthermore, the rector evidently had refused admission to new patients since on the date of the visitation only six of the thirty places available were actually occupied. The lengthy suit that followed a second visitation in 1307 only reconfirmed the decadence into which the hospital had descended.(32)
Another hospital on the fringes of Barcelona was established at Olesa de Bonesvalls, near Vilafranca del Penedès, along a well-traveled route, to serve traveling Franciscan and Dominican friars and pilgrims. Its initial endowment came from the will of Guillem de Cervelló in 1262. Up until the seventeenth century, its rector was named by the pastor of the Church of Sant Pau and confirmed by the superiors of the two mendicant communities in Barcelona.(33) At Vilafranca del Penedès were the Hospital de Sant Valentí, in operation in 1141, and the Hospital de Santa Maria, which belonged to the Trinitarians in the fourteenth century. (34) Other hospitals in the diocese of Barcelona were located at Arraona-Sabadell, Piera, Cubelles, Vila-Rodona, Cornellà, Terrassa, Sant Celoni, Hospitalet, Subirats, Caldes d'Estrac, Sant Cugat del Vallès, and Cervelló. A hostel at La Garriga in 1287 had seventeen beds. (35) Manresa had two hospitals in the thirteenth century, and in 1300 Pere Salvatge added a chapel to serve the infirm of Sant Andreu, which was administered by the town council. At Granollers, Bertran de Seva established a hospital circa 1325, but this too was transferred to municipal authorities by his descendants.(36) And at Sitges, Bernat de Fonollar's will of June 9, 1306, endowed a shelter for poor pilgrims, orphans, the sick, and other needy. (37)
Public shelters were not confined to the Christian community of Barcelona. In 1277, Abraham of Alexandria and his son, Astruc, the founder of the almoina for the Jewish community of Barcelona, endowed a hospice for the poor and travelers in a house of the call (or Jewish quarter) that had been established earlier by Rabbi Samuel ben rabí Isaac Ha-Sardí, a native of Cerdanya. At the end of the fourteenth century, it was known as the hospital of the poor Jews, and was governed by four hospitallers or proctors. A document of 1385 records the gift of a bed made from four boards, a mattress, a bolster, and associated bedding. Despite such gifts, however, this and other charities in Jewish aljamas were actually funded by an informal [36] system of taxation, in which each man was expected to pay stated assessments and also make voluntary contributions. The destruction of the Jewish quarter in the riots of 1391, however, probably eliminated the hospital.(38)
An unusual association is revealed in the notarial records of fifteenth-century Barcelona: the confraternity of the Holy Spirit for the Lame, Blind, and Poor of the City of Barcelona, also called the confraternity of Sant Andreu. In 1442, Joan de Mayo, a blind man, and Jaume Blavi, a beggar, were its rectors, and its treasury included the cash amount of 139 sous. It also rented a modest house, received legacies and presumably alms. The record does not show how the confraternity helped its members, but one can assume that modest material assistance and burial would have been important priorities; there is no evidence that the confraternity was able to operate a shelter, although it does appear that Barcelona's blind beggars were confined to certain sections of the city.(39)
The Hospitals of Urgell
The hospitaller phenomenon that we have seen in the region of Barcelona was replicated, albeit on a smaller scale, throughout Catalonia. In the north of the principality, at the Seu d'Urgell, the earliest institutions of charity focused on the local poor, travelers who fell ill, and pilgrims to the Virgin of Urgell and its cathedral relics. Throughout the Pyrenean passes there were shelters for pilgrims, such as that at the Benedictine monastery of Sant Serni de Tavèrnoles which guarded the bridge of Sant Esteve over the Valira River. Within Urgell itself, the first mention of a hospital for the poor, or albergueria, is found in a will of 1059.(40) Many parishes and locales in the diocese eventually followed the example of the cathedral, and similar hospitals were established at Organyà in 1156, Agramunt circa 1175 and Sanaüja before 1201. The will of Bishop Guillem Arnau de Montferrer in 1096 suggests that Urgell's hospital shared quarters with its almoina, both being dependencies of the chapter. Twelfth-century residents bequeathed the hospital gifts of money, clothing, blankets, and beds; as at Barcelona, it became the custom for local clergy to will their bedding to this institution. Eventually an endowment of lands and rents was assembled. While the bishop originally had the title of proctor of the house of charity, by the later twelfth century this position devolved upon the prior of the church of Sant Miquel, and in the thirteenth upon the precentor of the chapter. The proctor in turn appointed a hospitaller and the other staff of the institution.(41)
[37] First mentioned in 1247 is a second or new hospital that seems to have been established by the municipality itself. It was located in the old church of Santa Eulàlia at the Cerdanya gate; the apse remained a chapel for its inmates, separated by two doors from the nave that in the fifteenth century contained five beds. The first hospitaller was a woman named Aledis, but the fourteenth-century hospitallers who are known were male. The hospital was primarily a place of shelter or residence; there is no evidence of any ties with Urgell's small medical community. Beds, along with mattresses and bed linen, were the most frequent material gifts; money donations in wills averaged a mere six diners. In most instances, the identities of the inmates and the duration of their stay is unknown, although its proximity to the local cemetery suggests that some individuals came here to die. In any case, the local and transient poor became the responsibility of the town. The property itself was transferred to the Dominicans in 1364, but it is unclear whether the Town Hospital, as it was now called, remained or was moved elsewhere.(42)
By 1258, the old hospital of Urgell had been renamed the Hospital of the Chapter or that of Poor Clerics, and it now served old or enfeebled clergy without means or those whose benefice was inadequate to support both a curate and a pension. This problem of impoverished clergy was universal, and Urgell, or Catalonia, was not unique in making such provision for retired clerics. (43) The custom of local clergy donating beds and linen to the older hospital continued to be mandated by the bishop until 1299, when it was replaced with a diocesan annuity of sixty sous, but some clerics continued the practice into the fourteenth century. Because the laity had transferred its charity to the municipal hospital, the clergy, and a few pious women, were now the only financial support for what had become a clerical old folks home. (44)
Then, during the early fifteenth century, both of these hospitals were consolidated into a single unit. While the chapter and bishop evidently continued their subsidy to the merged hospital, the burden of its support fell upon the town consuls; certainly the endowment of rents and land, along with private alms, provided a diminished proportion of the budget. The popular nature of the institution itself was reinforced by the new custom of electing two or three proctors as its governors at an annual assembly of all heads of household.(45)
At Solsona, south of Urgell, the custom of private hospitaller foundations continued into the fifteenth century. For example, Francesca, the daughter of a local merchant and the wife of a noble, endowed in her will of [38] 1411 the Hospital of Llobera, a gothic structure, as a shelter for the poor. The charity remained a family enterprise for a century, since the position of administrator descended through several generations of male descendants.(46)
The Hospitals of Girona
The earliest known hospital in Girona is the Hospital of Sant Pere of the See, also known as the Old Hospital, the Hospital of the See, and the Hospital of the Capellans. It was located next to the church of Sant Nicolau, between the plaza and the monastery of Sant Pere de Galligans. Although the first reference to it dates only from 1228, it must be considerably older since a "new" hospital had been founded by the confraternity at the church of Sant Martí in 1211. In fact a legacy to a "hospice" for the poor is extant from 1095.(47) Documents of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries establish the old hospital as the responsibility of the bishop and chapter, who appointed the hospitaller and took at least some financial responsibility for its support. The ceremonial nature of the charity dispensed here is evidenced by the hospitaller's responsibility to attend not just the poor but also its benefactors. (48) The New Hospital, on the other hand, was a lay foundation that, according to reforms of 1317, was governed by a commander, selected by the jurats of the city, and by three consuls drawn from each of the town's social orders. Both hospitals had endowments of rural properties, but the municipal hospital was clearly favored by townspeople, if the evidence from testaments is representative.(49) In addition to these two hospitals, there was a hospice located on a bridge over the Rio Onyar for those on pilgrimage to Santiago. Evidence for its existence dates back to the twelfth century, and in 1386 it was governed by two "good men" selected in the same manner used for municipal and diocesan alms collectors.(50)
The Hospitals of Vic
At Vic, only a hospice to the rear of the cathedral predates the twelfth century. This hospitaleria for the poor and sick existed in 1133, when the bishop entrusted its care to the abbot of l'Estany; testamentary references to such a hospice, however, date from 1054 and 1063. (51) In the thirteenth century, with the construction of a chapel, this establishment became known as Sant Jaume dels Malalts or, in the fourteenth century, as Sant [39] Jaume's house of lepers, and was served by a small male confraternity. By this time, at least three additional hospitals were in operation: En Cloquer established in 1217 outside the walls and at the foot of the bridge into Vic; a shelter for travelers, vagrants, and the elderly at the church of Sant Bartomeu, which was founded in 1246 (but soon absorbed by En Cloquer); and the Hospital de la Santa Trinitat established by Ramon de Malla in 1275. These structures, however, were more than mere shelters for the poor, that is, the homeless, because they also served lepers (who elsewhere were usually more segregated) and victims of the plague. In the next century, the Hospital de la Santa Creu was established by a wealthy citizen, Ramon de Terrades, who bequeathed six hundred pounds in his will of 1338 to build a traditional shelter for pilgrims, the sick, and abandoned children. It began to function with twelve beds in 1384, and in 1441 gained a chapel.(52)
The Hospitals of Lleida
The roots of organized charity at Lleida are found in the Aragonese town of Roda, whose bishop was transferred to Lleida in 1149. He brought with him an almoner and infirmarian, whose offices at Roda have been documented in the late eleventh century.(53) Within the reconquered city itself, the care of needy clergy was an early and prominent concern (manifested here a century before Urgell) that gave rise to several foundations. One was an infirmary established in the cloister by Bishop Guillem Pérez de Ravidats, circa 1174, for invalid canons because the chapter at this stage was still living a community life. At around the same time, other clergy, presumably those who did not belong to the chapter, established a confraternity to support and shelter the needy within their ranks. These acquired their own hospice opposite the cathedral. The cathedral also maintained a shelter for outsiders, the Casa de la Caritat, first mentioned in a document of 1180. Initially it served as an inn for visiting canons from Lleida's sister see of Roda and their attendants, as well as a more general constituency of traveling clerics, pilgrims, almoners, and others. But by 1237, it functioned exclusively as a hostel for traveling ecclesiastics and their entourages.(54) The work of sheltering the nonclerical poor, which was elsewhere an episcopal or capitular responsibility, was initiated here by a lay couple, Guillem Nicolau and his wife Falerna. Shortly after the city's reconquest in 1149, but before 1156, the couple established a shelter for the sick, travelers, and pilgrims, along the banks of the Segre River and near the bridge into the town from [40] Barcelona and Bellpuig. The hospice was directed by Guillem as its proctor and master, and endowed with the tithes owed by his lands, which would otherwise have accrued to the bishop. Guillem and Falerna were also joined by others who formed a small community of brothers in service of the poor, assisted by a confraternity of townsmen. Because of the quasi-religious nature of the establishment and the application of episcopal tithes, the hospital itself was deeded to the diocese; a document of 1162, which records the relocation of the hospital from a flooded site to higher ground, notes Guillem's pledge of obedience to the bishop. The bishop in turn sanctioned a chapel with two bells in which the community and the poor could hear mass, providing that the bells, and presumably the masses, did not compete with those at the cathedral. There was also a cemetery for the hospitaller community and for inmates who died there.(55)
Pere Moliner, a knight who had profited from the conquest of Lleida, established a hospital for the sick. It was destroyed by flood, circa 1170; a document of 1179 notes its re-establishment in houses acquired from the Templars outside the walls near the monastery of Sant Antoni Abat, the municipal slaughterhouse, and the Gardeny gate. Unlike Guillem Nicolau, Pere Moliner did not deed his establishment to the bishop; as late as 1384 his heirs maintained the right to name the hospital's proctor. In the mid-fifteenth century, on the eve of its merger with five other hospitals to form the Hospital General de Santa Maria, its patrons numbered members of the cathedral chapter and municipal council.(56)
Several other of the original settlers of Lleida also established shelters or hospitals of some sort, although little is known of them. Among these are the Hospital of Pere Tarasco, first cited in 1225, and that of Pedro Belvis, which was donated to the bishop in 1201, and perhaps to the Trinitarians in 1204.(57) Other hospitals, like that of Santa Maria Magdalena, directed by the confraternity of weavers, a hospital of the furriers, the Hospital de la Vista, the parochial Hospital of Sant Martí, and that of Sant Tomàs, are little more than names that appear in the odd document.(58) Institutions like the Hospital of the Toulousains, which was destined to shelter travelers from that region, probably never functioned at all. In this case, the presumptive founder, Hugo of Toulouse, willed money for this purpose should he die without sons, but the birth of an heir made the bequest moot.(59)
Better known are the establishments founded by or for religious orders. There is the hospital of the Knights of Saint John, in existence by 1185. A canon, Gerald de Zacozola, may have established two hospitals, one in 1213 in service of the poor, the infirm, and Christian captives, and granted in his wills of 1216 and 1222 to the Trinitarians, and another in 1214 for the [41] poor and sick granted to the Templars. (60) A will, redacted by Bernarda, the wife of Tomàs de Sant Climent, bequeathed fifty mazmodins to the "hospital of my father located on the other side of the Segre River (at Cap Pont) that is held by the Brothers of the Holy Trinity," but it is unclear whether this is the same or a second redemptionist hospice.(61) The Antonines, who were dedicated to the care of those with major skin disorders, especially ergotism, had a hospice in Lleida by 1271; a shelter for abandoned children may have been founded as early as 1166 but was eventually (by 1214) ceded to the Order of the Holy Spirit.(62)
The Hospitals of Cervera
In Cervera, on the road between Barcelona and Lleida, the first notices of hospitals date from the early thirteenth century. Besides the Hospital of Santa Magdalena, dedicated to the service of lepers, the will of Joan de l'Hospital and his wife Ermesinda in 1235 set aside two houses as support for a small shelter that could serve two paupers. In 1328, another couple, Domènech Aguilar and Guilleuma, established the Hospital de les Onze Mil Verges for the traveling poor, which prospered under the patronage of such prominent voyagers as Infante Joan d'Aragó, the archbishop of Tarragona. Financial problems in the difficult years of the early fifteenth century, however, forced its administration to turn to the town government for help. The municipality itself, in 1356, already supervised three hospitals and a leprosarium, all located within the city walls. (63)
The Hospitals of Tarragona and Its Region
In the archiepiscopal see of Tarragona, reconquered and resettled in the years after 1129, no reference is made to a cathedral hospice for the poor before the will of Archbishop Huc de Cervelló in 1171 that bequeathed a hundred morabetins for the construction of such a hospital at the gate of the cathedral near an ancient cemetery. A papal bull of 1184 notes that the income and tithes of two churches, Sant Miquel and Sant Lleonart, had been assigned by the chapter to the "Hospital of the Poor." Archbishop Ramon de Rocaberti made additional donations in 1214. In 1220, there was a hospitaller, a canon named Ramon. An interesting document from 1246 tells us that residents objected to the hospital's practice of appropriating the beds (and bed linen) belonging to all the deceased of the town. This was [42] evidently done immediately after the body had been transferred from the bedstead, on which it had been conveyed to the cemetery, to the grave. In an effort to mediate between the sensibilities of heirs and relatives and the hospital's economic needs, Archbishop Joan of Aragon arranged a compromise by which the hospital forswore its claim to these beds in return for an annual cash subsidy from town residents. As at Girona and Lleida, the chapter had its own infirmary that was served by canons as hospitallers and infirmarians. César Martinell cites, but then discounts, an anonymous source which argued that the former hospital served town residents, while the latter was reserved for poor clergy and their family and servants. Tarragona's town council was established in 1255, but it was not until 1362 or 1370 that a municipal hospital, the hospital nou, was founded, with a priest as its first administrator. In 1372, it was given the quarters of an old leprosarium that had been built between 1174 and 1214. Given its poor state of repair, however, the city had to construct a new and larger structure in the 1390s. Hard times during the troubles of the early fifteenth century led to its merger in 1464 with the cathedral hospital as the Hospital of Sant Pau and Santa Tecla, but a new building was not provided until 1588. (64)
South of Tarragona, near the village of Cambrils, Queen Blanca's will of 1310 established the Hospital de l'Enfant, named for Jaume II's son, Pere, count of Prades. It was at first administered by the monks of Santes Creus, but later by the Hospitallers of Saint John.(65) The nearby monastery of Poblet, the necropolis of the count-kings, had its own hospices for monks, travelers, and pilgrims, and in the nearby village of l'Espluga del Francolí there was a hospital belonging to the Knights of Saint John.(66) Nearby, at the Cistercian monastery of Santes Creus the Hospital of Sant Pere dels Pobres was established in the early decades of the thirteenth century and is known from a series of endowments granted it in 1229 by aristocratic patrons.(67)
In the later thirteenth century places of shelter appeared at Montblanc, where a will of 1266 mentions the Hospital de Santa Magdalena and the Hospital de Sant Bartolomeu. The former was an extramural establishment on the Tarragona-Lleida road that belonged to the confraternity of the Poor of Jesus Christ. A fourteenth-century church was built on the site of what might have been an earlier twelfth-century hospital; and the Hospital de Santa Magdalena built alongside the river was a two-storied rectangle, surrounding a courtyard. Of the Hospital de Sant Bartolomeu virtually nothing is known except its association with the Franciscans. A third institution, the Hospital de Sant Marçal, was established for the poor in the mid-fourteenth century alongside the town wall with proceeds from the will of [43] Jaume Marçal who had died in 1339. In addition to a chapel with three altars, there was a simply constructed arched hall. (68) There was also a pilgrim hospice next to the sanctuary of La Serra that was served by two priests and two boys (acolytes); in 1397 the priests received protection as familiars of the royal household.(69)
The Hospital de Sant Joan at Reus, near Tarragona, was constructed in the mid-thirteenth century to serve the sick. The administrators were chosen annually at the final meeting of the town council and were given charge of the hospital and its patrimony, the poor, and the hospitaller church; thus, these officials were frequently called the sacristans of Sant Joan. By the fourteenth century, however, the terms of office were much longer and frequently were held by married couples. The hospital's receipts from its lands (which grew wheat, grapes, and olives) must have been substantial, since in 1379 it paid a tax assessment of 112 sous and 3 diners to the lord of Reus, the archbishop of Tarragona. (70) The hospital itself was situated in the new town, near the walls, and mostly likely was a two-storied structure built around a central patio. There is no evidence of any medical staff before the sixteenth century. (71)
The Hospitals of Tortosa
The first notice of the Hospital de Santa Maria, or the Hospital of the See, in Tortosa is in a document of 1172. As is typical, its function was the care of the poor and infirm, and its governance capitular. Tortosa's Code of Customs of 1279 mentions a municipal hospital, that of la Grassa, which functioned under a hospitaller who was also a cathedral canon, but one commentator suggests that this might just have been an inn or hostel. In the early fourteenth century, there was also a hospice for feeding the poor eight kilometers away in the hamlet of Hospitalet de l'Infant. (72)
The Hospitals of Majorca
At Palma on Majorca, soon after its conquest, three hospitals were quickly opened, perhaps spurred on by the outbreak of the plague in January 1230, just weeks after the capitulation of the city. Nunyo Sanç, the nephew of Ramon Berenguer IV and the count of Roussillon and Cerdagne, endowed the Hospital de Sant Andreu. Located in the moat of the citadel, the Almudaina, Sant Andreu contained twenty beds for the sick and poor and was [44] served, under the supervision of the bishop and chapter, by a rector, priest, sacristan, serving woman, and seven laborers for fieldwork, some of whom were slaves. Provisions and freshly baked bread were supplied by farms located in the village of Santa Eulàlia.(73) During the same decade, and certainly before 1248, two other hospitals were also established. The first, Sant Antoni Abat, resulted from a land grant given by Jaume I to the Augustinian canons; the second, that of Santa Magdalena, was the gift of Pons Huc, the son of Count Huc of Empuriès who was the most prominent victim of the 1230 plague. The first hospital designated specifically for the poor did not appear until the foundation of Santa Catarina dels Pobres in 1345.(74)
The Jewish community of Majorca, like its counterpart in Barcelona, established a network of beneficial institutions. In addition to an almoina or house of alms, Moisés Cabrit established a shelter in Santa Coloma de Queralt by for the unfortunate and Sayt Mill established a hospital in the Jewish quarter of Palma in 1377 with five beds and endowment for bread and clothing. (75)
The Hospitals of Valencia
The city of Valencia, like Majorca, only came under Christian lordship during the reign of Jaume I who first entered the city on October 9, 1238. Over the next several years, its lands were given out to a myriad of Christian settlers, as recorded in the famous Repartiment de València , which meant that whatever hospitaller tradition that had existed under Muslim rule ceased and had to be rekindled by the city's new masters. Here the situation would be similar to that which we have already seen in Lleida and Majorca. With the bishop and his chapter preoccupied with establishing their own institutional apparatus, the initiative for establishing houses of charity fell to individuals who had profited from the conquest and to religious orders who were attracted into the new realm by grants of land and property. A case in point is the Hospital of Sant Guillem, founded in 1242 by the wealthy settler Guillem Escrivá, and entrusted to the care of the Order of the Trinity, a group recently founded in France to ransom captives and shelter the poor. The Hospitallers of Saint Mary of Roncesvalles, who were established in 1132 to provide shelter to pilgrims and the sick traversing the Navarrese pass, also operated a small shelter within the city, as did the Knights of Saint John. The important royal hospital, with its accompanying church and shrine, was that of Sant Vicent, which Jaume I established in 1238 to honor the patron saint of the new kingdom. It was entrusted to [45] monks of the powerful Aragonese monastery of Saint Victorian, and briefly to the Catalan ransoming order of Santa Eulàlia (or Merced). All of these sheltered the poor, and Sant Vicent a group of royal corodians or pensioners.(76) There were several significant foundations in the fourteenth century. Queen Constance, the widow of King Pere II, left a bequest to establish a hospital, formally called Santa Llucia, but more commonly Hospital de la Reyna. The royal endowment, however, was inadequate because the Franciscans, to whom the hospital had been entrusted, were forced to seek a municpal subsidy in the famine year of 1333 and to cede all control to the city council in 1379. In 1311, the burgher Bernat dez Clapers established an eponymous hospital, formally dedicated to Santa Maria, that under municipal governance became the principal hospital within the city. Between 1333 and 1340, the Antonines established a shelter for victims of ergotism; and in 1334 Ramon Guillem Català founded a hospital for the Beguins, a lay penitential group, which shared its governance with municipal authorities. The clergy of the diocese organized a confraternity to support a shelter for poor priests in 1356. A hospice for poor migrants, particularly Castilians, was established in 1377 near the N'Avinyó gate by the confraternity of Sant Jaume, with the support of the municipal council. In the 1390s, an apothecary, Francesc Conill endowed a hospital for the sick, and a burgher, Pere Bou, a shelter for invalid fishermen.(77)
The Llibre del Repartiment de València mentions a hospital for the poor in Xàtiva in 1248 that served as the major hospital in the region until the fifteenth century. At first, it was entrusted by King Jaume I to the Friars of the Sack, and after their dissolution it was operated by the confraternity of the Mare de Deu de la Asunción. A second hospice seems to have been established by Pere Soler in 1265 with a grant of land from the king, and in the early fourteenth century Bernat de Bellvís, a friend of Valencian philanthropist Bernat dez Clapers, donated five hundred pounds toward the foundation of yet another.(78) In the northern part of the kingdom, Castelló de la Plana in the thirteenth century possessed only a small shelter for the sick. The first mention of this town hospital is in a will of 1290 that granted a vineyard to the institution. A century later, when Guillem de Trullols left an endowment of three hundred sous, the hospital contained ten beds. (79)
* * *
If the idea of the public shelter, whose purpose was to assist anyone
who needed lodging, germinated shortly after the year 1000, it came to bloom
and flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when towns, [46]
large and small, and rural locales as well, supported one or more of
these establishments. The initiative for their creation was for the most
part episcopal, but by the twelfth century wealthy individuals, clerical
and laic, and religious communities also served as sponsors and patrons.
A century later, municipal governments began to assume some responsibility
for sheltering the poor. Those establishments in rural locales and in the
smaller towns tended to retain more of their initial character as shelters
for travelers and pilgrims, as well as the local poor. Urban hospices, on
the other hand, seemed to have paid as much attention to needy residents
as to transients. By the fourteenth century, the idea that the primary purpose
of a hospital was the provision of bed and board would be on the wane, with
the appearance of new institutions who saw their function in narrower terms,
to treat disease and other physical ills. The earlier concept of serving
all of the poor, however, was not entirely lost. This evolution of function
can be seen in the admission policies of Valencia's Hospital of En Clapers.
Founded by a merchant in 1311, it served various classes of the sick but
refused entry to those whose disability was merely material. Nonetheless,
the poor were not entirely ignored by En Clapers, because small alms, handfuls
of pennies, were dispensed to those who came begging for food.
(80)
As for travelers with means, however, the provision of shelter increasingly
became a commercial enterprise, as private homes, hostels, and taverns began
to take in paying guests.(81)
Notes for Chapter Three
1. The Rule of Benedict states: "All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ. . . . The kitchen for the abbot and guests ought to be separate, so that guests -- monasteries are never without them -- need not disturb the brothers when they present themselves at unpredictable hours. . . . The guest quarters are to be entrusted to a God-fearing brother. Adequate bedding should be available there." RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict , ed. Timothy Fry (Collegeville, Minn., 1981), 53.1,16, 21, 255-59. The Spanish Rules of San Fructuoso and Isidore of Seville mandated that a third of monastic goods be reserved for the poor. The Benedictine Rule called upon the monastic porter to welcome all regardless of class, but by the ninth century this function was frequently divided between a limosnero who welcomed the poor, and a custos hospitum who had charge of those of higher estate (López Alonso, Pobreza en la España medieval , 421-23).
2. For a general discussion of the functions of early hospitals, see Timothy S. Miller, "The Knights of Saint John and the Hospitals of the Latin West," Speculum 53 (1978): 709-17.
3. Gregorio del Ser Quijano, "Algunos aspectos de la caridad asistencial altomedieval. Los primeros hospitales de la ciudad de León," Studia historica 3 (1985): 160. The earliest reference to pilgrims in Aragonese documentation was an exemption from customs duty given them by Sancho Ramírez (1076-94) (Ubieto Arteta, "Pobres y marginados,"17).
4. López Alonso, Pobreza en la España medieval, 410-13; Gérard Jugnot, "Deux fondations augustiniennes en faveur des pèlerins: Aubrac et Roncevaux," in Assistance et charité (Toulouse, 1978), 323; Narciso Hergueta, "Noticias históricas del maestre Diego de Villar . . ., de los hospitales y hospederías en la Rioja en los siglos XII y XIII, y de la villa de Villar de Torre," Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos 11 (1904): 433; Ubieto Arteta, "Pobres y marginados," 18; Antonio Durán Gudiol, El hospital de Somport entre Aragón y Béarn (Saragossa, 1986).
5. Martínez Garcia, "Asistencia material," 1:349-50; Ser Quijano, "Primeros hospitales," 161ff.
6. López Alonso, Pobreza en la España medieval, 449.
7. Juan Ignacio Carmona García, El sistema de hospitalidad publica en la Sevilla del antiguo Regimen (Seville, 1979), 26, 49-51. Rucquoi, "Hospitalisation et charité," 399-400.
8. García del Moral, Hospital Mayor, 39.
9. Rubio Vela, Pobreza, enfermedad y asistencia, 29-30, 41; Mercedes Gallent Marco, "Aproximación a un modelo medieval de institución sanitaria: el Hospital de la Reyna," Saitabi 31 (1981): 76; José Sanchez Herrero, "Cofradías, hospitales y beneficencia en algunes diócesis del valle del Duero, siglos XIV y XV," Hispania 34, no. 126 (1974): 34.
10. C. A. Ferreira de Almeida, "Os caminhos e a assistência no norte de Portugal," A pobreza, 51-52.
11. Geremek, Margins of Society, 169-75; Jacqueline Caille, "Assistance et hospitalité au Moyen Âge," Bulletin de la Société des Études Littéraires, Scientifiques et Artistiques du Lot 102 (1981): 297.
12. Villani is cited in George Rosen, "The Hospital: Historical Sociology of a Community Institution," in The Hospital in Modern Society, ed. Eliot Freidson (New York, 1963), 9. Henderson's recent study counts thirty-three Florentine hospitals in the fifteenth century; see his Piety and Charity , 375. Pullan, "Support and Redeem," 5:188.
13. Bonenfant, "Hôpitaux et bienfaisance," 13-15.
14. Edward J. Kealey, Medieval Medicus: A Social History of Anglo-Norman Medicine (Baltimore, 1981), 83.
15. Joan-Albert Adell i Gisbert, "L'hospital de pobres de Santa Magdalena de Montblanc i l'arquitectura hospitalària medieval a Catalunya," Acta historica et archaelogoica mediaevalia 4 (1983): 240.
16. Manuel Riu, "Presentación," in La pobreza, 1:10-11; Junyent, Vic, 404; Martinell, "Hospitals medievals catalans," 110-12; Sanahuja, Beneficencia en Lérida, 28.
17. One estimate counts 113 hospitals in England in 1154, and 700 in the fourteenth century, excluding monastic infirmaria and the many small institutions for which no documentary evidence survives. Of these twenty-one were established prior to the twelfth century; ninety-two others date from 1100-1154 (Kealey, Medieval Medicus, 83).
18. Documents from the territory of Roda in Aragon use names like limosnas , pías almoines, limosnerías, hostalet and hospitalet to describe such shelters; similar terms were commonly found elsewhere as well. See Francisco Castillón Cortada, "El limosnero de la catedral de Roda de Isábena (Huesca)," Cuadernos de Aragón 21 (1990): 66.
19. Catalonia, lying within the Carolingian sphere of influence, may have responded to the decree of the Council of Aachen (816), which decreed that shelters for the poor be established by cathedral chapters and other religious communities. Elsewhere in the Carolingian world such hospices began to appear between the ninth and eleventh centuries (Rosen, "Historical Sociology," 7).
20. Baucells, "Pia Almoina," 84-86; Batlle and Casas, "Caritat privada," 1:121-22; Tómas Sivilla, "Apuntos históricos sobre el hospital de Barcelona," Memorias de la Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 3 (1880): 48-50. Legacies for this hospice are extant for 995, 1011, 1038, 1077, 1082, 1087, and 1092. See Pierre Bonnassie, La Catalogne du milieu du X e à la fin du XI e siècle, croissance et mutations d'une société (Toulouse, 1975-77), 172, 304, 955-56. See also Batlle, L'assistència, 28. On the wealth of the Barcelona church, see Bensch, Barcelona, 50-53. The clerical obligation to donate bedding persisted until at least the mid-fourteenth century to judge by a suit brought by the cathedral hospital against the estate of a deceased canon in 1349. See Richard Gyug, The Diocese of Barcelona during the Black Death: The Register Notule Communium 15 (1348-1349) (Toronto, 1994), 341, no. 905.
21. There is evidence that a couple, Pere Prim and his wife, had already been using one of the small houses on the property as a shelter for the indigent sick. See Dolors Pifarré Torres, "Dos visitas de comienzos del siglo XIV a los hospitales barceloneses d'en Colom y d'en Marcús," in La pobreza, 2: 83; Batlle, L'assistència, 29-34; Bensch, Barcelona, 36.
22. For example, in 1286 Guillem Ribau, a nonresident of Barcelona, died here, and with enough possessions to make a will (Batlle, L'assistència , 23, 41).
23. Batlle and Casas, "Caritat privada," 1:123-32, 168-71, no. 3; Pifarré, "Dos visitas," 2: 84-9; Batlle, L'assistència, 42, 44. There are many examples elsewhere in Europe of assistance, in the form of room and board, being given to students. See Rosalina Manno Tolu, "La «Domus pauperum scolarium Italorum» a Parigi nel 1334," Archivo Storico Italiano 146 (1988): 49-56.
24. This was established in 1396 by Pere Bou, a member of a Valencian burgher family: Rubio Vela, Pobreza en la Valencia, 38-9, 46. The Crown of Aragon, however, generally did not have the sort of specialized shelters that appeared in Italian municipalities like Florence, which had institutions that served specific trade groups like porters (San Giovanni Decollato), dyers (Sant'Onofrio), and shoemakers (Santissima Trinità). See Katherine Park, "Healing the Poor: Hospitals and Medical Assistance in Rensaissance Florence," in Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State, ed. Jonathan Barry and Colin Jones (London, 1991), 31.
25. Batlle and Casas, "Caritat privada," 1:132-35; for Pere Desvilar's will, see 171-73, no. 4.
26. Ibid., 1:176-78, no. 6.
27. The family, as owner of extensive lands in the city's suburbs, farms and gardens in the surrounding region, and a share of the royal mint, was Barcelona's wealthiest. Bernat's son, also named Bernat, received in 1178 the office of mostolaf from King Alfons I, which gave him exclusive right to exchange Muslim and Christian captives, a license for which he was willing to pay the king five hundred sous of Barcelona: Stephen P. Bensch, "From Prizes of War to Domestic Merchandise: The Changing Face of Slavery in Catalonia and Aragon, 1000-1300," Viator 25 (1994): 73, 87; Bensch, Barcelona , 162-63.
28. Batlle and Casas, "Caritat privada," 1:137-41; Pifarré, "Dos visitas," 2:83-90; Batlle, L'assistència, 52-59.
29. For the Hospital of En Clapers, see Rubio Vela, Pobreza, enfermedad y asistencia, 25-26, 41.
30. Batlle and Casas, "Caritat privada," 1:135-37, 178-80, no.7; Batlle, L'assistència, 51. In 1348, the hospital had two administrators; a priest in that year was given the benefice in the chapel of Santa Marta upon nomination of Romeus Lulli, a conseller of the city (Gyug, Diocese of Barcelona, 87, no. 27, 164, no. 298).
31. For the documents of 1210, 1213, 1221, and 1237, see Lluís G. Feliu, "L'hospital de Santa Eulàlia del Camp," Analecta sacra Terraconensia 11 (1935): 299-305.
32. Batlle and Casas, "Caritat privada," 1:141-44; Feliu, "Santa Eulàlia del Camp," 291-306; Batlle, L'assistència, 60-64.
33. Martinell, "Hospitals medievals catalans," 120.
34. Ibid., 112-13; Gyug, Diocese of Barcelona, 363, no. 966.
35. Baucells, "Pia Almoina," 1:79-80.
36. Josep Danon, Visió històrica de l'Hospital General de Santa Creu de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1978), 17.
37. Ignasi Aragó, Els hospitals a Catalunya (Barcelona, 1967), 174.
38. A. Cardoner Planes, "El 'hospital para judios pobres' de Barcelona," Sefarad 22 (1962): 373-75; Batlle and Casas, "Caritat privada," 1:147-49; Abraham A. Neuman, The Jews in Spain: Their Social, Political and Cultural Life during the Middle Ages (New York, 1969), 2:163.
39. Nùria Coll Julià, "Documentación notarial relativa a los pobres en la Cataluña del siglo XV," in La pobreza, 2:294-96. Barcelona had no equivalent of Paris's Quinze-Vingts, a hospice established by Saint Louis that housed three hundred blind persons born in Paris (Geremek, Margins of Society, 172-73). Kings Pere the Ceremonious, in 1353, and Martí, 1408, did attempt to restrict the blind and other physically handicapped individuals to certain sections of Barcelona (Vinyoles, Vida quotidiana, 119). For examples of material assistance rendered by confraternities at Valladolid to members and their families, see Rucquoi, "Hospitalisation et charité," 397-98.
40. Fermín Hernández Iglesias ties the establishment of hospitals in the eleventh century to the construction of bridges and the development of pilgrim traffic to sites like Santiago de Compostela. Bishop Ermengol of Urgell, for example, constructed a bridge over the Segre. See his Beneficencia en España, 1:16. The earliest legacy for the poor that is extant here dates from 1048, with others from 1068, 1084, and 1092/3 (Bonnaissie, Catalogne, 955-56).
41. Batlle, Urgell medieval, 108-18; B. Marquès, "Fundació d'un hospital a Organyà en 1156," Església d'Urgell 108 (1982): 7-8.
42. Batlle, Urgell medieval, 126-32.
43. In England, at least three such hospices were in operation in the thirteenth century, and in 1312 what turned out to be the largest, to house a dozen clerics, was established by the bishop of Exeter. See Nicholas Orme, "Medieval Almshouse for the Clergy: Clyst Gabriel Hospital near Exeter," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 39 (1988):1-3. Fourteenth-century Valencia had its Hospital of Poor Priests, established before 1356 by the cathedral's confraternity of Santa Maria, and, in addition, the hospital of En Bou served the clergy; on Majorca, a will of 1475 endowed the Hospital of Sant Pere and Sant Bernat for indigent priests. See Rubio Vela, Pobreza, enfermedad y asistencia, 35, 46; and Santamaría, "Asistencia a los pobres en Mallorca," 387.
44. Batlle, Urgell medieval, 137-38.
45. The election took place on Christmas Eve before 1440, when it was moved to New Year's Day (Batlle, Urgell medieval, 149-50).
46. Coll Julià, "Documentación notarial," 2:287-94.
47. Sanahuja dates the old hospital, which he calls the Hospital de Sacerdotes, from the twelfth century; see his Beneficencia en Lérida, 28. See also Bonnassie, Catalogne, 955-56.
48. The hospitaller had to remember the anniversaries of some sixty priests and distribute alms to the poor in remembrance of several others. Additional support almost certainly came from alms, since in 1321 the hospitaller was obliged to distribute coins in remembrance of one Guillem de Lafone and to observe other anniversaries. Batlle Prats, "Inventari dels Bens," 55-60.
49. Guilleré, Girona medieval, 89. Of the seventy-three testaments studied for the decade 1320-30, 40 percent contained legacies for the new hospital, but only 10 percent for the episcopal establishment (Guilleré, "Charité à Gérone," 1:197-99). The reforms of the previous decade or the worsened conditions after 1330 resulted in even greater support for the new hospital. It was remembered in 60 percent of the wills that survive from the years 1330-47, in 67 percent of those from 1348, the year of the plague. At the same time, approximately a fifth of wills redacted in the countryside also contributed to the hospital (Guilleré, "La peste noire à Gerone," 52).
50. Maria-Mercè Costa i Paretas, "Els antics ponts de Girona," Anales del instituto de Estudios Gerundenses 22 (1974-75): 139-40.
51. Bonnassie, Catalogne, 955-56; Danon, Visió històrica , 17.
52. Junyent, Vic, 87-88, 124; Martinell, "Hospitals medievals catalans," 115, 122-23; Ollich, "Les entitats eclesiastiques de Vic," 92-93; Sanahuja, Beneficencia en Lérida, 28-29.
53. Castillón, "Limosnero de la catedral de Roda," 63.
54. José Fernando Tarragó Valentines, Hospitales en Lérida durante los siglos XII al XVI (Lérida, 1975), 19-21, 72-74; José Trenchs Odena and Federico Lara Peinado, "La casa de caridad y la cofradia de los clerigos pobres, dos instituciones medievales leridanas," Ilerda 36 (1975): 8-17. Similarly, in the early thirteenth century the monks of the Cistercian monastery of Grandselve transformed a hospital that had been given them within the city of Toulouse into a residence for traveling monks. See John H.Mundy, "Charity and Social Work in Toulouse, 1100-1250," Traditio 22 (1966): 213-15.
55. Tarragó, Lérida, 22-24. The provisions of this agreement seem to exclude from any right of burial a secular oblate, that is, a benefactor who in return for monetary donation would be granted status as a religious of the house. See Josep Ferran Tarragó i Valentines, Noves aportacions a l'historia dels antics hospitals de Lleida (Lleida, 1977), 7-9.
56. Tarragó, Lérida, 24-29; Federico Lara Peinado and José Trenchs Odena, "Documento inedito sobre la venta del Hospital de Pedro Moliner de la ciudad de Lerida (1459)," Ilerda, 37 (1976): 59-68.
57. Tarragó, Lérida, 45, 48.
58. Ibid., 39, 44, 47. The first documents referring to the latter two are of the early thirteenth century (Tarragó, Noves aportacions , 12, 14, 18, 21).
59. Tarragó, Lérida, 69.
60. The Trinitarians were required to maintain a chantry in the see of Lleida, with the obligation to be enforced by the chapter. Gerald, on the other hand, consented to the requirements of the Trinitarian Rule that divided all income into three parts -- for maintenance, for the poor, and for the ransoming of captives. Tarragó, Noves aportacions, 16-18; Arxiu de la Corona d'Aragó (hereafter, ACA), Gran Priorat, pergs., arm. 28, no. 264.
61. Tarragó, Noves aportacions, 18.
62. Tarragó, Lérida, 30, 58-60, 65-66; Josep Lladonosa i Pujol, La pediatria als antics hospicis de Lleida (Lleida, 1978), 8.
63. Augustí Duran i Sanpere, Llibre de Cervera (Barcelona, 1977), 213-14, 223-24; Danon, Visió històrica, 16.
64. César Martinell, "L'antic hospital de Santa Tecla, de Tarragona," Butlleti arqueologic 3, no. 49 (1934): 390-96. See also José María Miquel Parellada and José Sánchez Real, Los hospitales de Tarragona (Tarragona, 1959), 24-43, 149-51; and Martinell, "Hospitals medievals catalans", 116-18.
65. Martinell, "Hospitals medievals catalans," 121.
66. Danon, Visió històrica, 16.
67. E. Fort i Cogul, "Sant Bernat Calvó i l'Hospital de Pobres de Santes Creus," Miscel.lània Història Catalana: Homenatge al Pare Jaume Finestres, Historiador de Poblet (Abbey of Poblet, 1970), 181-213.
68. Adell i Gisbert, "Montblanc," 240, 244-54.
69. Martinell, "Hospitals medievals catalans," 127.
70. The hospitallers in 1329 and 1339 were Guillem Cayró and Ferrera, his wife. In 1368 Pere de Bellvy and his wife Geralda directed the hospital; the same pattern holds true for the fifteenth century. See Vilaseca, Hospitales medievals de Reus, 26-29, 33, 38, 60-61.
71. Ibid., 52, 55, 65.
72. Bayerri, Historia de Tortosa, 7:579-82; Marc-Aureli Vila i Comaposada, Tortosa al segle XIII: vida i costums dels tortosins (Barcelona, 1986), 115. A will of 1183 bequeaths 2 morabetins each to the infirm of Tortosa, and to the Hospital of the Poor. See L. Pagarolas, La comanda del Temple de Tortosa (Tortosa, 1984), 255-56, no. 80.
73. Pablo Cateura Bennasser, Sobre la fundación y dotación del Hospital de San Andrés, en la Ciudad de Mallorca, por Nuño Sans (Palma, 1980), 16-22.
74. Santamaría, "Asistencia a los pobres en Mallorca," 385, 399.
75. Pons, Judios del reino, 2:126, 134-35. Santamaría gives 1387 as the date for the endowment of Sayt Mill's foundation: "Asistencia a los pobres en la Mallorca," 387.
76. For an overview of Valencian hospitals in the thirteenth century, see Burns, Crusader Kingdom, 1:188, 237-43, 282-94.
77. Rubio Vela, Pobreza, enfermedad y asistencia, 25-47; Jill R.Webster, Els Menorets: The Franciscans in the Realms of Aragon from Saint Francis to the Black Death (Toronto, 1993), 94-96.
78. Vicente Pons Alós, El archivo histórico del Hospital "Major de Pobres" de Xàtiva: Catálogo y estudio (Valencia, 1987), 10-16; Llibre del Repartiment de València, ed. Antoni Ferrando i Francés (Valencia, 1979), 290, no. 3048.
79. Luis Revest Corzo, Hospitales y pobres en el Castellón de otros tiempos (Castellón de la Plana, 1947), 16-37.
80. Rubio Vela, Pobreza, enfermedad y asistencia, 136.
81. A recent study of the expense accounts of the small fleet that protected the waters off the island of Majorca during the first half of the fourteenth century, for example, shows that sailors were regularly housed in private homes, hostels and taverns, some large enough to accommodate as many as one or two dozen boarders. See Gabriel Llompart, "La hostelería mallorquina en el siglo XIV," in XIII Congrés d'història de la Corona d'Aragó, Comunicacions (Palma de Mallorca, 1990), 2:83-93.