What does the experience of the Mercedarians add to our understanding of organized charity during the High Middle Ages? First and foremost, it suggests the kind of circumstances that preface the foundation of a medieval caritative movement. The impulse to succor the needy, if our Mercedarian example is typical, was a manifestation of popular religion. The first Mercedarians were laymen who, despite our own ignorance of their individual biographies, appear simply to have begun to assist captives on their own initiative. There is no evidence that Pere Nolasc was moved to begin his ministry by anything other than a personal sympathy for this particular group of unfortunates. Allegations that either King Jaume I, or Bishop Berenguer de Palou of Barcelona, or the Dominican Ramon de Penyafort were instrumental in inaugurating the Order of Captives have been shown to be without foundation. Furthermore, the sort of social consciousness that seems to have motivated Pere Nolasc's actions was urban in origin, the product of a new and more mobile society in which the traditional supports of clan and family had become weaker. Consequently, associations like the Order of Ransom were the direct result of the effort of townsmen to cope with such pressing contemporary problems as leprosy, disease, indigence, and captivity.

    The virtually universal decision to place these caritative associations within some sort of religious context betrays a mentality that accepted as a Christian obligation the assistance of the needy and believed that this was personally redemptive. Pere Nolasc moved quickly, perhaps within five or six years, to transform his informal brotherhood into a recognized order of the Church. What were his motives for doing this? The formulae of the documents obscure his exact reasons, but surely he was seeking a framework of institutional support and protection. Municipalities were as yet too immature institutionally to have provided this framework,⁽¹⁾  and his particular work, in any case, transcended the jurisdiction of any one locality. Charity, furthermore, was not the direct responsibility of the king, although he did contribute to its support. Certainly by the twelfth century, however, the poor had come to be universally accepted as the Church's special concern, since these were the "poor of Christ."⁽²⁾ [118] Thus, from the late eleventh century various historians have noted in the towns of southern Europe a proliferation of hospitals, each operated under the aegis of the bishop or his chapter, a religious order, or a confraternity. Despite the ransoming of the odd viscount,⁽³⁾ the Mercedarians themselves professed as their vocation the assistance of Christ's poor, those without funds of their own. Thus, the spiritualization of charity that had occurred would naturally impel any disciple of charity toward the religious life.

    The integration of the work of mercy into the Church, as normal and logical as this must have seemed in the early thirteenth century, was nonetheless not without its pitfalls. There existed a tension that was almost inevitable between, on the one hand, movements that were spontaneous in origin and generally laic in organization and, on the other, an ecclesiastical edifice that was increasingly clerical and legalistic. The Mercedarian experience shows the resulting problem to be twofold in nature. Lacking the education and disclpline of clerics, the lay founders of the Order suffered a great deal of difficulty in erecting an effective government for their growing movement. Perhaps these small and widely scattered communities of lay brothers led a life insufficiently differentiated from that of ordinary laymen. Certainly there were problems in putting aside the interests of family. The result, as we have seen, was the unexplained resignation of several masters and ultimately the promulgation of constitutions that acknowledged past corruption, larceny and betrayal. Thus, without the reinforcement of canonical discipline, the transition from the fervor of purpose that characterized the foundational generation to a state of laxity and even of corruption appears to have been quite rapid.

    A second source of tension arose from the number of clerics who came to be recruited into the Order. These, undoubtedly influenced by the institutional values of the Church's hierarchy, came to regard the religious status of their laic colleagues to be inferior, thus making them unworthy to hold positions of authority. Improprieties in the laic regime only added weight to their argument that lay masters and commanders must be replaced. The Order's own need for religious ministers, the eager complicity of the papacy, and the laics' own administrative vulnerability guaranteed the clergy 's eventual victory.

    Despite irregularities in discipline and the feuding among brothers, the Order did accomplish something new and important: the organization of ransoming as a charitable work of the Church. To [119] do this, the early Mercedarians drew together the two heretofore separate activities of procuring ransoms and of liberating captives. The act of redemption itself required from the brothers skill and no little measure of courage. In particular, the brothers were required to develop expertise not common among religious: commercial and diplomatic negotiation, money and property management, and contract law. While the precise character of their ransoming activities in the medieval era can only be sketched, we do know that, in addition to providing subsidies as aid to the ransoming efforts of others, they began to travel on a regular basis to Muslim towns in Spain and in North Africa to buy back as many Christian captives as their alms could purchase. As a result, these Mercedarian missions offered virtually the only hope for freedom for those captives whose families lacked the resources or influence to bring about their own release.

    After the actual ransoming of captives, the collection of alms and endowments in support of this charitable work was next in importance for Nolasc and his successors. This task, however, proved to be infinitely more complex than first envisioned by the founder. The latter, who began to ransom captives during a time of crisis, namely the wars of King Jaume, had little difficulty in attracting support for his work. The king, his crusaders, and even the secular clergy were willing givers. Once this time of crusade had passed, and with it the enthusiasm that it had generated, alms and land grants became more difficult for Mercedarians to attract. The Order of Ransom then became simply one of the many worthy institutions competing for charitable alms. Certainly a measure of general concern for the plight of captives endured; this is amply attested by the wills of the later thirteenth ccnturv that continued to designate small sums for captives.⁽⁴⁾ But the Order's reliance upon the public's almost automatic empathy with captives was no longer completely sufficient. In order to maintain the flow of alms and endowments, Mercedarians now had to court the personal and religious needs of their patrons by offering them special affiliation, participation in their spiritual benefits, confraternal association, and even personal protection and financial security. None of this had anything to do with captives, and in fact forced the brothers to develop new expertise as preachers and chaplains. The prudent acquisition of a permanent endowment also turned these ransomers into financial managers and landlords. The members' ability to master these tasks speaks well of the Order's continuing vitality and certainly explains its success in becoming a permanent fixture on the caritative landscape. This diversion [120] of the Order's attention to managerial and sacerdotal tasks, however, must have detracted from the work of captives. In fact, these new preoccupations help to explain how ransomers could have been drawn into feuds with the secular clergy, the mendicants, landlords and tenants, and even fellow Mercedarians. These new functions also began to blur the lines that distinguished the Order of Ransom from the other urban orders, since each of these, despite the singularity of its individual vocation, was similarly engaged in the pursuit of patrons and profits.

    Finally, the Order of Merced, as the product of the distinctive warfare along the Spanish frontier, was a regional order of the Church. Certainly the basic impulse to help the needy is universal in character, but the particular work to be performed by a medieval charitable association grew out of local circumstances. Mercedarians thus confined their ministry and alms activities to those frontier provinces of Europe where residents experienced the threat of capture. When their fellow redemptionists, the Trinitarians, ventured beyond this zone, it was as hospitallers, not as ransomers.⁽⁵⁾ Consequently the caritative movement, given the essential linkage between community needs and the creation of a house of charity spawned no great international orders like the mendicant phenomenon. Instead, it consisted of a large number of generally small local or regional associations, of which the Brothers of Ransom were typical.

    Organized charity was therefore a complex and highly varied phenomenon within thirteenth-century society. Its clientele varied from lepers to orphans and undowered virgins and to widows and travellers. Given the ubiquity of disease and indigence, there is a certain sameness to many of the hospitals and hospices that came to dot the urban landscape; yet where special needs existed, highly indivdualized associations like the Order of Captives, or the various bridge confraternities of the Rhône valley arose to meet them. Whoever the particular objects of charity happened to be, there is a general purpose that seems common to all medieval caritative institutions. First of all, they existed to alleviate the human suffering that this otherwise-prosperous society discovered in its midst. Secondly, by convincing those who themselves suffered no serious physical needs that the works of charity were both socially necessary and spiritually redemptive, caritative associations gave lay society not only a measure of spiritual solace but also an opportunity to participate as associates in these works of Christian renewal. The urban caritative orders thus betray the deep penetration of religious values into the [121] lay society that spawned and nurtured them. Also evident in these movements is the adaptability of the organized religious life to a very diverse range of activities. If some of these particular experiments exhibited flaws of organization or discipline, it should not detract from the authenticity of their initial religious inspiration. In any case, as the ultimately successful reform of the Mercedarian Order proves, such problems were capable of resolution. Thus, in the Order of Merced, and in those other orders that were also able to survive the obstacles to institutionalization, we see the origins of organized religious charity.
 

1. In the Occitan, for example, direct municipal direction over caritative associations appears to date from the mid to late thirteenth century. A study of hospitals of the Biterrois shows that municipalities began to absorb them after 1230, while at Avignon the bridge confraternity was placed under town supervision before 1278: Monique Gramain, "Les institutions charitables dans les villages du Biterrois aux XII^e et XIII^e siècles," in Vicaire, Assistance et charité, 112; Daniel Le Blevec, "Une institution d'assistance en pays rhodanien: les Frères pontifes," ibid., 95.

2. The twelfth-century Rule of the hospitaller-military Order of St. John, for example, begins: "I, Raymond, by God's grace servant of the poor of Jesus Christ and guardian of the hospital of Jerusalem . . .": "Regula militum hospitalis Sancti Johannis," in Codex regularum, 2: 445.

3. One of the captives liberated from Bône and Collo in 1366 is identified as Padrutso, viscount of the place called Trapani in Sicily: ACA, Monacales, 2703, perg. 4..

4. See, for example, Batlle and Casas, "Caritat de Barcelona," in Riu, La pobreza en Cataluña, 1: 184-86.

5. For example, when a hospital at Compiègne was transferred in 1265 to the Trinitarians, there was an explicit prohibition against using any of its revenues for the ransoming of captives: Layettes du trésor de chartes, series inventaires et documents, ed. Élie Berger (Paris, 1863-1909), 4.:150, no. 5089.