Go and Do Likewise: Christianity and the Social Safety Net in Late Antiquity
It may surprise some Christians today that the publicly funded social safety net associated by many with socialism and Marx, actually has its roots much further back in time, long before the industrial revolution and modern economic theories and ideologies, in the mandate and example given to the early Church[1] by its Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. Desiring to be faithful to their master's mandate to show mercy, to help those in need, to give freely and abundantly, and make no social or national distinctions in that giving and help, the Christians of the first seven centuries of the Church laid the foundations for a wide-ranging social safety net that was, after the legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire in 314, at times wholly, at times partially supported, funded or endowed by the imperial authorities.
In this essay I will lay out the development of this earliest of wide-ranging and organized social safety nets from its roots in the New Testament to its demise in the chaos of the Middle Ages. I will demonstrate that for people of the Christianized Roman Empire, to be a Christian nation meant to take care of the vulnerable and needy in its midst. I will also point out how the wealthy took the lead in developing this social safety net, often taking literally their Master's injunction to give what they had to the poor in order to follow him. I will also demonstrate how in the Middle Ages, that impulse to have the wealthy and powerful support this outreach became somewhat skewed and sidelined as western lords and kings—but also Byzantine emperors and magnates—came to show their piety by endowing monasteries rather than hospitals (xenodocheia, nosokomeia), orphanages (orphanotropheia),[2] hostels for the homeless poor (ptochotropheia) and for the destitute elderly (gerokomeia) of the earlier era.[3]
The Biblical Roots
In Deuteronomy, the people of Israel are given this commandment and warning:
If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community...do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbour. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought thinking, "The seventh year—the year when all debts are cancelled—is near," and therefore view your neighbour with hostility and give nothing. Your neighbour might cry to the LORD against you and you would incur guilt. Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you: Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land! (Deuteronomy 15:7-11)
This was the Torah[4] context for Jesus to say things like:
[To a pious rich man] You lack one thing: go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. (Matthew 10:21-22)
...and...
Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. (Luke 6:30)
...and to tell the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:21-46) in which the righteous are welcomed with the words:
Come, you the are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I hungered and you gave me to eat; I thirsted and you gave me to drink; a stranger was I, and you took me in; without clothing[5] and you clothed me; sick and you visited me; in prison and you came to me. (Matthew 25:34b-36)
In this parable Jesus calls all those who are deprived in these ways his brothers and sisters, but then goes further and identifies himself directly with each of them when he says:
...Amen, I say to you, in what you did to one of these, the very least of my brothers and sisters,[6] you did it to me. (Matthew 25:40)
And just as in the Deuteronomy passage those who do not help "incur guilt", so Jesus says that those who withhold help from the needy "will go away into eternal punishment." (Matthew 25:46)
In Deuteronomy, the people of Israel are also instructed as follows:
For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the Great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves foreigners[7], providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:17-19)
This was the Torah context for Jesus to show kindness to the centurion (Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10), the Canaanite/Syrophoenecian woman (Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30), and possibly the Gerasene or Gadarene demoniac(s) (Matthew 8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39).[8] It is also the context for Jesus to tell the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) in which the hero of the story (the Samaritan) is a "mixed race" and heretical outsider despised by those who would have been hearing Jesus tell this story. Jesus concludes this parable by instructing his listeners to emulate the actions of this outsider with the words, "Go and do likewise."
Inspired by this, the first community of Christians who gathered after their master Jesus had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven did the following:
All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. (Acts 3:44-45)
...and...
Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed personal ownership of any possessions, but everything they had was held in common...There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what had been sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. (Acts 4:32, 34-35)
How long this communal form of living continued among the believers in Jerusalem is impossible to say. It may have continued until the destruction visited on Jerusalem by the Roman legions during the Roman-Jewish War (AD 66-72), or it may have broken down sooner. There may also be some connexion between the manner of life of the Jerusalem church and Paul's fundraising among the Macedonians and Corinthians to support the Christians in Jerusalem (II Corinthians 8 - 9). However, signs of trouble emerge almost immediately. In Acts 5:1-11 we read of Ananias and Sapphira, a couple who want the status of having given everything, but who secretly hold back money for themselves. This is, of course, the underlying problem with a purely communal system: human ego and greed will inevitably undermine the lofty ideals of the group.
Nevertheless, what the first congregation of Christians had done was to innovate a new way of helping those in need by pooling their resources rather than relying on individual-to-individual giving or help. Acts tells us that despite any problems, the distribution of food and clothing to the needy—especially to widows—continued afoot such that seven individuals were set aside to free the apostles from the mechanics of sharing things out so that they (the Apostles) could concentrate on the preaching and healing side of the community's ministry (Acts 6:1-7).
While Paul did not seem to attempt to recreate the communal aspect of the Jerusalem church in the congregations he founded, he did, nevertheless, teach his people that a key part of the "life of the spirit" (as Paul often refers to the Christian manner of living) is sharing with those in need. An interesting window on this aspect of the Pauline congregations is this comment from Ephesians:
Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labour and work honestly with their own hands so as to have something to share with the needy. (Ephesians 5:28)
Here we see 1) the rehabilitative side of entering a life of faith; 2) how difficult it can be to break old habits; 3) how patient this Christian community was with sinners; and 4) that the purpose of earning money is to share with those in need. Point 4 is the one that is germane to this discussion, but the others are also related, for human need is not merely material but also spiritual and emotional. As we shall see below, the xenodocheia and other institutions of the 4th century and beyond ministered to physical, spiritual, and emotional needs.
This verse from Ephesians also helps to elucidate the often misused verse from II Thessalonians that says, "Anyone unwilling to work should not eat" (II Thessalonians 3:10). All too frequently this verse is used as a blanket statement and excuse for not helping those in need. A closer examination of the surrounding verses combined with the understanding from Ephesians 5:28 (that the spiritual purpose of earning money is to share that money with those in need) helps to make clear that II Thessalonians 3:10 is specifically addressed to members of the Christian community who are living off the largesse of their fellow Christians while not contributing to the outreach to those in need. If you can work you ought to work; and what you earn you ought to share with those in need. It is a sort of double standard: Christians are expected to work in order to help those in need. In other words, it is not by mere words that Christians are to set an example, but by their actions of mercy, as expressed, for example, in James:
If a brother or sister is without clothing and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So, faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. (James 2:15-17)
Note that in this passage, helping those in need is understood as a sign of a living faith, and a general failure to help is a sign of a dead faith. Or, to put it another way, faith produces active compassion; where that active compassion is lacking, faith is dead.
In the following two centuries, Christians would earn a reputation for sharing with all in need, and not only with their fellow Christians. This was because helping the poor and destitute was a central tenet of Christian teaching. Take, for example, The Shepherd of Hermas, a 2nd century document probably composed in Italy, widely circulated among western Christians. It presents a series of visions that come to a young Christian man named Hermas. In these visions, various metaphorical figures appear to Hermas, instructing him in the good way. The salient feature of these instructions is the latent asceticism of early Christianity. However, woven in among the personal disciplines of repentance, self-control, humility, and self-denial is the recurring theme that those who have enough and more than enough are obliged by God to help those who are in need. Not to do so is associated with greed and lack of love and is therefore considered a sin. For example:
Practice goodness; and from the rewards of your labours, which God gives you, give to all the needy in simplicity, not hesitating as to whom you are to give or not to give. Give to all, for God wishes his gifts to be shared amongst all. They who receive will render an account to God why and for what they have received. For the afflicted who receive will not be condemned, but they who receive on false pretences will suffer punishment. He, then, who gives is guiltless. For as he received from the Lord, so has he accomplished his service in simplicity, not hesitating as to whom he should give and to whom he should not give. This service, then, if accomplished in simplicity, is glorious with God. He, therefore, who thus ministers in simplicity, will live to God. Keep therefore these commandments, as I have given them to you, that your repentance and the repentance of your house may be found in simplicity, and your heart may be pure and stainless. (Shepherd of Hermas, Book 2, Commandment 2)
And here as part of a call to holy living:
Give ear unto me, O Sons: I have brought you up in much simplicity, and guilelessness, and chastity, on account of the mercy of the Lord, who has dropped His righteousness down upon you, that ye may be made righteous and holy from all your iniquity and depravity; but you do not wish to rest from your iniquity. Now, therefore, listen to me, and be at peace one with another, and visit each other, and bear each other's burdens, and do not partake of God's creatures alone, but give abundantly of them to the needy. For some through the abundance of their food produce weakness in their flesh, and thus corrupt their flesh; while the flesh of others who have no food is corrupted, because they have not sufficient nourishment. And on this account their bodies waste away. This intemperance in eating is thus injurious to you who have abundance and do not distribute among those who are needy. Give heed to the judgment that is to come. You, therefore, who are high in position, seek out the hungry as long as the tower[9] is not yet finished; for after the tower is finished, you will wish to do good, but will find no opportunity. (Shepherd of Hermas, Book 1, Vision 3, Chapter 9)
And here in conjunction with fasting:
But do thus: having fulfilled what is written, during the day on which you fast you will taste nothing but bread and water; and having reckoned up the price of the dishes of that day which you intended to have eaten, you will give it to a widow, an orphan, or to some one in want, and thus you will be humble-minded, so that he who has received benefit from your humility may fill his own soul and pray to the Lord for you. If you observe fasting as I have commanded you, your sacrifice will be acceptable to God, and this fasting will be written down; and the service thus performed is noble and sacred and acceptable to the Lord. (Shepherd of Hermas, Book 3, Similitude 5, Chapter 3)
The attitude expressed in the Shepherd of Hermas is consistent with the other Christian writings of this period.
At this point, of course, the young and loosely organized Church was on its own without any wider social or political support, and Christians did what they could to fulfil this high standard of generosity. Besides moral injunctions, The Shepherd of Hermas is also replete with references to those who have suffered and died for their faith. Even charitable acts could draw the attention of the Roman authorities to the Christian community. In a letter written to Emperor Trajan around the year AD 107, Pliny the Younger, who was both a personal friend of Trajan and was serving as governor of Bithynia, on the Asian side of the Bosporus, wrote to his imperial friend seeking advice about how to deal with the Christians. Pliny describes how he has been proceeding and wonders if Trajan approves or has any other suggestions. The letter is too long to include here in its entirety, but this excerpt gives an idea of what Christians were up against:
Soon accusations spread, as usually happens, because of the proceedings going on, and several incidents occurred. An anonymous document was published containing the names of many persons. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ—none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do—these I thought should be discharged. Others named by the informer declared that they were Christians, but then denied it, asserting that they had been but had ceased to be, some three years before, others many years, some as much as twenty-five years. They all worshipped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ. They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not to falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food—but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition. (Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.6)
The two deaconesses would have been a key part of the distribution system for food and clothing going to the poor. Already in the New Testament, women in the Christian community applied their skills in spinning, weaving, and sewing to produce clothing for the poor, as we see in Acts 9:36-43 where we read that "a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas...was devoted to good works and acts of charity," and when she had died "all the widows stood...weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them."
A rather spectacular window on this ministry is provided for us by a document that records what was confiscated from a church in Cirta, Numidia in the year 303, during the reign of Diocletian (born 244, reigned 284-311), at the beginning of the "Great Persecution" of 303-311.[10] According to Eusebius of Caesarea (260/265 - 339/340), Diocletian ordered...
...the razing of the churches to the ground and the destruction by fire of the Scriptures and proclaiming that those who held high positions would lose all civil rights, while those in households, if they persisted in their profession of Christianity, would be deprived of their liberty. (Eusebius, Church History, Book 8, Chapter 5)
The list of confiscated items from the church in Cirta includes, "82 women's tunics, 38 capes, 16 men's tunics, 13 pairs of men's shoes, 47 pairs of women's shoes, and 19 plain cloaks."[11] The preponderance of women's clothing probably points to the fact that widows were one of the primary recipient groups of the Church's benevolence.
With the end of the Great Persecution and the legalization of Christianity in 314, Christians could come out from the shadows and practice their religion openly, without fear of reprisal. They also had an advocate in the new emperor, Constantine, who had reunited the Roman Empire after a civil war and seemed to be looking to the church to help him in that reunification effort by way of its broad social reach among most peoples and classes of the empire. This meant that individual Christians and the organized church within the empire could express their philanthropic values in bolder and larger ways. Constantine's new capital at Nova Roma (which quickly came to be called Constantinople, "the city of Constantine")[12] soon became a showcase for Constantine's vision for his empire. Constantinople eventually boasted over 40 charitable institutions of the kind I am describing in this essay. From this point for the next several centuries we see a burgeoning of these new types of institutions to carry out the mandate of the New Testament to give to those in need, to heal the sick, and to help the widow and the orphan.
Types of Institutions and Their Purpose[13]
At the beginning of this essay, I listed the main types of institutions that were established over the course of the 4th through 7th centuries. Here I will go over the terminology to give a sense of the purpose and target group of each of them.
xenodocheion
In Matthew 25:35 when Jesus says, "I was a stranger and you took me in," the Greek word for "stranger" is xenos, which, like the Hebrew word ger in Deuteronomy 10:18, also means foreigner. For early Christians the word xenos was associated with the larger narrative of hospitality toward strangers as expressed in such passages as:
Contribute to the needs of the saints, extend hospitality to strangers. (Romans 12:13)
Do not forget to show hospitality, for in this way some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:2)
This last passage is interesting for, while it does not have the word xenos per se, it has two key words built on xenos: hospitality (philoxenias, literally, "love of strangers or foreigners"), and "to entertain strangers or foreigners" (xenizein, literally "to stranger").
The xenodocheion (plural: xenodocheia) was a place for receiving (dochein) strangers (xenos; plural xenoi). The term was borrowed from earlier Greek and repurposed. Originally it meant an inn in the ordinary sense where strangers paid for food and lodging. Under the influence of Christianity, it came to mean a place where the needs of travelling strangers were attended to free of cost, in the way that the Good Samaritan paid for the injured Jewish traveller in Jesus' parable.
Xenodocheion was transliterated into Latin as xenodochium. The continued use of Greek terms, even in Latin, testifies to the origin of this and related institutions in the more heavily Greek speaking eastern part of the Roman Empire. Two hundred years after the legalization of Christianity, these terms were enshrined in Roman law with a series of legal definitions in the Latin translation of the Justinian Code. A xenodochium is defined as "a venerable/reverent (venerabilis) place in which strangers are received," (Julian Code 1.3.45 of AD 530 and Julian Novella 131 of 545). The other terms I will be looking at below are similarly defined: The ptochotrophium is "a venerable/reverent (venerabilis) place in which the poor are nourished." The nosochomium is "a venerable/reverent (venerabilis) place in which sick people are cared for."
The adjective venerabilis is important. The Christian xenodocheia were not the same as the inns that existed across the Roman Empire, where one paid for food and lodging. All of the “venerable institutions” were classed under the Roman legal category of piae causae, "pious causes" (or in modern terms, religious charitable endeavours), the same category applied to churches and monasteries. In other words, they were part of an empire-wide network of institutions and facilities associated with the church. At the same time, many of them were also founded, funded, or endowed by the imperial or provincial authorities; but more on that below.
The purpose of the xenodocheion was to offer hospitality to the traveller, the person from away, the stranger to the town or city, especially those who were poor. But these facilities quickly came to fill numerous societal needs. As religious undertakings, xenodocheia served as stopovers for pilgrims. They offered daily prayers at fixed times, which guests were expected to participate in, as much as they were able. In this way xenodocheia ministered not only to the body, but also to the soul. Xenodocheia also served as an alternative to the standard inns and roadhouses, which had a reputation for being seedy places of drunkenness and other vices where criminals and prostitutes congregated. The xenodocheion was a clean, safe, quiet place, where one received simple food, kind hospitality, and spiritual nurture.
At the same time, travelling could be a dangerous undertaking, and as most people who were not from the wealthier classes walked, injuries were common. Thus, xenodocheia could also serve as emergency clinics; after all, as the Parable of the Good Samaritan demonstrates, hospitality might require rendering medical assistance. In this way we see many xenodocheia in the documentary record described as what we might call hospitals. A very famous one of these was the Sampson Xenon[14] in Constantinople, which was "devoted to those who were at once destitute and suffering from serious illness, those who were, namely, suffering in loss of both property and health." Emperor Justinian I, after being treated and cured by Sampson, the founder of the Xenon, offered to give him a reward. Sampson asked that the Xenon be enlarged and improved, which Justinian did, (Patria of Constantinople III, The Buildings). When this facility burned down during the fire that broke out in the city during the Nika Riots of 532, Emperor Justinian had it rebuilt, (Prokopios of Caesarea, On the Buildings of Justinian, 1.2.13-16).[15] Thus the Sampson Xenon became, in effect, a long-term care facility for the destitute built with public funds.[16]
nosokomeion
This brings us to the nosokomeion ("place for the sick"), a type of facility specifically dedicated to providing medical care for those in need.[17] Medicine in the late antique Middle East and Roman world was professionalized, and there was a class of trained physicians. The dominant medical model was the Galenic system based on balancing the humours (not unlike balancing the elements in Chinese medicine), but these physicians were also surgeons and there are many accounts of successful surgeries from those times. These physicians usually treated patients in their "offices" (the doctor's home), or in the patient's own home, and expected to be paid, for this was their livelihood. However, prior to the Christian xenodocheia and nosokomeia, there were no public facilities where the suffering or recovering patient could stay until they were well enough to go home. In this way the hospital as we now think of it was an innovation of this period, arising out of the Christian concern to provide hospitality and help to those in any need. The nosokomeion in particular was seen as a natural outgrowth of the healing ministry of Jesus and the Apostles.[18]
The most famous, extensive, and significant nosokomeion that served as a model for others was the Basileias: a complex of hospital buildings established sometime in the 370's just outside Cappadocian Caesarea (modern Kayseri, Turkey) by Basil (later called Basil the Great), the bishop of that city. Unlike xenodocheia, the Basileias was strictly a medical facility. It employed a permanent staff of physicians aided by a group of medical assistants corresponding to modern nurses, and it provided a home for those who could not be healed (i.e., extended care). Basil used his influence with the emperor to gain an imperial endowment for the Basileias. The work of this astonishing institution continued into the 7th century, some 400 years beyond its founder's lifetime. It became a model for numerous nosokomeia throughout the Roman Empire, but also across the eastern border in the Persian Empire. In fact, the percentage of completely medicalized nosokomeia (versus the more general hospitality of xenodocheia, where medical help was provided to strangers by bringing in help as needed) was notably higher in the Syriac speaking parts of the eastern fringe of the Roman Empire and in the region across the border under Persian control than elsewhere in the Roman Empire.[19]
ptochotropheion
The creation of numerous ptochotropheia ("places for caring for the destitute poor"; sometimes shortened to ptocheia) highlights the fallout from the economic, social, and military situation of the period. The 3rd century had been a time of poor leadership, economic decline, and military disasters. Both Diocletian and Constantine tried to bring stability by way of various administrative and economic reforms. They eliminated the old aristocratic senatorial bureaucracy based on status and personal connexions in favour of a centralized bureaucracy staffed by trained individuals, based on ability and merit. Constantine scrapped the old silver currency and brought in the gold solidus (nomisma in Greek), with lower silver and bronze denominations serving the needs of merchants and ordinary people.[20] Yet for all of these beneficial reforms, the world was changing in ways that the people of that time, without modern economic and social analytical tools, could not understand. Foreign peoples who had lived in relative peace along the Roman Empire's north-eastern frontier began to press in, feeling the push of nomadic hordes coming from the east. Pestilence and famine were causing a decline in the empire's population and whole areas were becoming depopulated. Centuries of deforestation and erosion had degraded the agricultural land in many areas. The archaeological record shows that while villages were disappearing, cities were growing, indicating a flight from the countryside to the city. In order to try to put depopulated regions back into food production and tax remittance, emperors invited Germanic peoples to settle these areas in a kind of ancient homesteading scheme. The significant difference from modern homesteading was that these Germanic peoples came as intact tribes including their armed warrior elites. This was done intentionally because the Roman military system, strapped for recruits, needed these warrior elites to serve as auxiliaries. Thus, during this time, the Roman military was coming to rely increasingly on these foreign settler auxiliaries. Sometimes these German auxiliaries turned on their masters in rebellion when the promised pay or other benefits were not forthcoming. For example, the Gothic sack of Rome in 410 was not a sudden invasion of people from outside the empire, but an uprising of a people, recently settled in the Balkans, who had been repeatedly denied the remuneration they had been promised.[21]
Whenever there is this kind of chaos, the poorest suffer the most. In the language of the day a distinction was made between the working poor or peneis (those who were poor but had a means of growing food or earning money) and the destitute poor or ptochoi (those who, for whatever reason, were dependent on the generosity of others). While for rural areas the flight from the country to the city meant depopulation, for the cities it meant crowding and the presence of large numbers of ptochoi. Thus, we see in this period numerous ptochotropheia springing up in response to the need.
Many ptochotropheia are mentioned in the sources. An example is the one in the port city of Ephesus founded by the pious Bassianus who says, "From my youth I have lived for the poor; I founded a ptochotropheion and put seventy beds in it and housed all the sick and injured" (from the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon). Here we also see that many of those who were ptochoi were so because they were sick or injured in some debilitating way, which meant that Bessianus' ptochtropheion also had to provide medical help. His description tells us the capacity of his facility—large even by modern standards for homeless shelters.
gerokomeion
One of the earliest helping institutions built with imperial support was a gerokomeion (elder care place) in the new capital of Constantinople. Helena, the mother of emperor Constantine, founded this institution. Numerous other gerokomeia were established in the capital over the next several centuries, the names of these institutions coming down to us in the written record: the Anthimiou (named for its founder, the magistrate Anthimios), the Prasina (thus named because it was next to the stables for the Greens chariot team), the Isodorou (named for its founder Isodoros), the Petrou (named for the Patriarch Petros who founded it), and so on. There were gerokomeia across the empire. Some were attached to monasteries to house elderly monks, but many, like Helena's and the others mentioned above in Constantinople, were general places, either free standing or attached to a church, where the elderly who lacked family support were taken care of. The new capital may have had more than its share of these institutions because it was a city to which people moved from elsewhere to seek their fortunes, and so, as in our world today, there may have been many individuals without families to look after them.
orphanotropheion
The word orphanotropheion means, "a place to feed or care for orphans." The pagan world into which Christianity had emerged only had legal mechanisms for protecting orphans who were heirs to land or other significant property. For these, the courts appointed legal guardians. For orphans from poor or destitute families, the death of their parents usually meant being taken in by other poor or destitute relatives, and/or, as often happened, being sold into slavery to help alleviate the poverty of their relatives. Furthermore, it was common for poor parents to abandon their unwanted infants by the road to either be taken in by someone else or to die by wild animal or exposure. Emperor Constantine, influenced by his Christian mother, made one of his first decrees a program to hand out monetary grants to poor families so that they would keep and raise their children—a program that was renewed and enriched once, but does not seem to have been continued by his successors.
Meanwhile, local Christian communities and their bishops had long been taking in these abandoned children and buying the freedom of slaves as part of their ministry to care for orphans and to free captives. The taking in of orphans had been happening on an informal basis, but once Christianity was legalized, this ministry of the church could take on a more formal configuration in the establishment of orphanotropheia. While one would expect there to have been nearly as many orphanotropheia as xenodocheia, ptochotropheia, and nosokomeia, the record of the period reveals only a handful of them, namely in Constantinople, Stadion, Apamea, Jerusalem, and Caesarea Maritima. However, there is evidence that xenodocheia and ptochokomeia sometimes doubled as orphanages, as with the example of a ptochokomeion in Jerusalem whose founder Passarion is described as "feeder of the poor and raiser of orphans," or the example of Euphrosyne of Alexandria who gave her wealth to support, "ptocheia, gerokomeia, xenones, monasteries, widows, orphans, strangers, the maimed, and prisoners." Perhaps in those places where the number of orphans did not warrant a specialized facility they were grouped in with the category of "strangers and the destitute."
The most famous of the orphanotropheia of this period was the great Orphanotropheion of Constantinople, originally established by the 4th century imperial official Zotikos who is also associated with establishing a lepresarion or home for lepers. [22] In the 6th century, the Orphanotropheion was renewed or expanded or augmented in some way in conjunction with the construction of St. Paul's Church by Emperor Justin and Empress Sophia with the assistance of an imperial official also named Zotikos. It was again renewed and renovated in the late 11th century by the Emperor Alexios I.
In its heyday the Orphanotropheion was one of the key institutions of the city. Its grammar school was considered the best in Constantinople, employing the finest teachers. The school's reputation was such that wealthy families paid to have their children educated there with the orphans. The Orphanotropheion also offered practical skills for the less academically inclined. Orphans served in at least some of the gerokomeia and xenodocheia of the city ministering to the needs of others. The Orphanotropheion's grammar school further served as a preparatory school for the Pandidakterion or "university" attached to the imperial palace where future bureaucrats and jurists were trained. Music was a key part of the orphans' education, and the orphan choir was one of the chief choirs of Hagia Sophia, the main church of the city, and performed for official functions in the palace. This musical side of the program served as a model for the orphanage in Rome founded by Pope Gregory the Great around the year 600 that would come to be called the Schola Cantorum.[23] The Orphanotropheion continued on to the 13th century when the attack and sack of Constantinople by the forces of the Fourth Crusade seem to have spelled its end, as well as that of most or all of the other social institutions in Constantinople which had relied on palace support to carry out their ministries.
The End of an Era
We could call the period 313 - 642[24] the golden age of Christian care for the needy. It was a time when the Christian call to care for the needy and vulnerable meshed well with the newly Christian imperial authorities' desire to implement a Christian way of being an empire. The great need arising from the economic decline and attendant social dislocation of the 3rd century meant that there were more than enough people in need of help. One can even speculate that one of the many complex reasons Constantine decided to lean on the church for support may have been that it was the one social network or institution in the empire that had the will and experience to respond to the societal needs at hand. There was simply no one else to call upon.
A number of factors came together to mark the end of this era. During the 5th and 6th centuries, various Germanic tribes had carved up the Western Roman Empire into their own kingdoms: the Ostrogoths and later the Lombards in Italy, the Vandals in North Africa (the region re-conquered under Justinian in the 6th century), the Visigoths on the Iberian Peninsula, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in Britain, and most significantly the Franks in the former Roman region of Gaul. And yet, this in and of itself did not spell the end of the joint effort of rulers and church to provide for those in need through these types of institutions. The Frankish nobility of the Merovingian era (late 5th century to 751) founded dozens of such institutions; and one of the best preserved xenodocheia in the archaeological record is in the city of Emerita Augusta (modern Mérida), a facility founded under Visigothic rule.
Another factor was the Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. These affected especially Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Visigothic Spain (marking the end of Visigothic rule). But the Arab conquests also put great pressure on the rump Roman Empire (often referred to as the Byzantine Empire) that survived in Anatolia, the Aegean, and the Balkans. The imperial treasury was drained, and all remaining resources went into preserving what was left. In such a context, ordinary people are often left to their own devices. In the areas conquered by the Arabs, these institutions did continue for a time, but there was no interest on the part of the new Muslim rulers to support Christian outreach, so the xenodocheia and ptochotropheia probably withered. Orphans would have been seen as potential new Muslims; thus, such a ministry would not have long been left in the hands of the church. The gerokomeia attached to monasteries continued but essentially served the aging monks and nuns of those places. The Arabs were most interested in the nosokomeia, contributing greatly in the following centuries to improvement in medicine. As the Carolingians took over from the Merovingians in Gaul, it seems that the memory of the old Roman way of doing things faded and increasingly we see what we would call a medieval way of doing things. Churches, monasteries, and convents became the go-to recipients of largesse from the nobility. Which is not to say that there was a complete end to hospitals and orphanages, merely that these seem to have depended on the patron of the day and often disappeared once the founder died. In other words, the old continuity of imperial support was missing to keep institutions going beyond the lives of their founders.
As the Western Roman Empire fell under the rule of various Germanic warlords in the 5th century, there was a reversal of the flight to the cities which those regions had seen in the 3rd and 4th centuries. As the structures of empire fell away, so too did the capacity to support large urban populations. Thus, there was a process of de-urbanization in the west that culminated in the almost completely rural character of the Middle Ages in Western Europe. Even in eastern regions still under imperial control, towns and cities got smaller. As the security of empire gave way to the uncertainty of local strong men and the old Roman system of roads began to decline, travel became more dangerous. In this setting there was no place for something like a xenodocheion. Indeed, many of the functions of the earlier standalone institutions were taken over by monasteries and convents insofar as it was appropriate for them to run such outreach. This was perhaps as much a reason as any for the shift of patronage toward monasteries and convents. However, in the process, the impulse to support the needy was diluted. Church leaders, monks, and nuns continued to preach the importance of helping the poor, but in Western Europe, for many centuries, almost everyone was abjectly poor. Under the circumstances, the practical application of helping the poor and needy was difficult beyond the handing out of alms now and then. And thus, certain practices came about that were perhaps the best that one could expect under the circumstances, such as the begging licence, authorizing needy individuals to beg at certain places, and the custom of distributing the "bread plates"[25] from the feasts of the nobility to the poor people waiting outside.
The one notable exception in this picture was the city of Constantinople. As much as they were able, emperors continued to sponsor xenodocheia, nosokomeia, ptochotropheia, and gerokomeia in the city. The crown jewel of charitable institutions was the Orphanotropheion. Indeed, the status of the great orphanage was such that the office of the person in charge of it, the Orphanotrophos, was elevated to one of the highest offices of the court—eventually the fourth highest. With this elevation in rank, the Orphanotrophos seems to have been given general responsibility for the charitable institutions of the city.
The Orphanotropheion was seen as the heart of the Christian empire because it embodied all the core virtues of Christianity: charity, mercy, care for orphans, care for widows (through the orphans' ministrations in the gerokomeia), love for neighbour, and so on. But this late remnant from the golden age of Christian care for the needy was brought to a sudden end—not by Turkish invaders as one might expect—but by the forces of the Fourth Crusade who, in 1204, took and sacked the city of Constantinople for their own enrichment. The Latin dynasty which they established in Constantinople allowed the plunder of city's ancient treasures while neglecting the city's charitable institutions. When, after seventy years of rule, the Latins handed Constantinople back to the Greeks, the position of Orphanotrophos was revived, but it seems to have been a largely honorific and ceremonial position. The Orphanotropheion was gone, as were the school and the related charities once aided by the orphans. Greed had triumphed over generosity.
While in later centuries the church would once again establish hospitals, orphanages, and other forms of charitable outreach, it would be centuries before a "Christian" nation would embark on creating a social safety net through government sponsorship. The seeds of a renewal of the ancient Christian ideal came when Dr Martin Luther convinced his prince to use the money from the sale of church lands to fund a "community chest" to help the needy. In 1559, Duke Christoph of Württemberg expanded this model in his Große Kirchenordnung (Great Church Order/Ordinance). Unlike some Protestant rulers, Christoph did not sell off church lands or gift them to his political allies. Rather, he channelled the feudal revenues from these lands to fund the new Lutheran Church of Württemberg and its programs, which included a universal system of primary education, and a secondary education system for boys to become pastors, bureaucrats, and to feed the duchy’s university at Tübingen. Included in the Great Church Order of 1559 was a system of community chests (Casten) in every city, town, and village, administered by men chosen by the community who were considered above reproach—much in the way the earliest Christian community described in Acts had chosen the first deacons. The new law also put a number of doctors, surgeons, and pharmacists on retainer in key cities and towns to provide health care, free of charge. Beyond the provision of funds for those in need, there were also residences for the homeless and the elderly who had no one to care for them.
Christoph’s system was a step toward creating a universal social safety net, but strictly speaking, it was not all publicly (i.e., government) funded. The money for the Casten came from redirected church monies which previously would have gone toward candles, eternal lights, holy pictures, vestments, oils, and liturgical implements, combined with free-will offerings solicited from the community by the men chosen to oversee the Casten. Beyond the education system and the medical professionals, ducal patronage only extended to enshrining the system in law. Christoph’s legislation became the model for other Lutheran jurisdictions, among them Saxony and Sweden.
Ultimately and ironically, a social safety net to match or exceed that of the Late Roman Period would come about through pressure on governments from often anti-church socialist and labour circles, pressure that eventually led to the modern welfare state. At the same time, one can see how the prior existence of Lutheran state church systems modelled on that of Württemberg might have pre-disposed someone like Otto von Bismark to agree to implement some of the programs demanded by the Social Democratic Party, or how a country like Sweden could have easily jumped into the forefront of establishing what became a model social safety net in the mid to late 20th century.
All of this is important to bear in mind because it upends the assumptions of some modern Christians who like to dismiss the welfare state as something un-Christian. One could even say that God may have had a hand in establishing these modern publicly funded social safety nets. After all, God chooses whom God chooses (Exodus 33:19; Romans 9:15). If those who claim the name of Christ do not do what they are called to do, God will find others to do it instead. As Jesus warned:
"...'I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, lacking clothing and you gave me no clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me...Amen, amen, I say to you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life." (Matthew 25:42-43, 45-46)
[1] Note on the capitalization of the word "Church": When it is not part of proper nouns such as Eastern Orthodox Church or Roman Catholic Church, I use "Church" with capital "C" to refer to the Church in its broadest sense, transcending borders and specific authorized hierarchies. I use lower case "c" church to refer to the church in a more proscribed way. For example, the church within the framework of the Roman Empire following Constantine's Edict of Milan in 313 was affected by his and his successors' official interventions in the affairs of that church, but these interventions had no legal impact on the independently run churches within the frameworks of the Armenian, Georgian, or Ethiopian polities; yet, all four of these—Roman, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopian—would be part of the larger category of Church.
[2] There is one notable exception in Constantinople, which I will touch on below.
[3] For the historical details of these institutions, I am indebted to Timothy S. Miller and his book, "The Orphans of Byzantium: Child Welfare in the Christian Empire" (© 2003), and Mark Alan Anderson and his dissertation, "Hospitals, Hospices and Shelters for the Poor in Late Antiquity" (May 2012), both exhaustive and detailed analyses of the available documentary and archaeological evidence for these institutions.
[4] Torah: The Hebrew word for the Pentateuch or first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The word is often translated as "law" but actually has more of the sense of "guidance". The Torah is the most important part of the Bible in Judaism, and it is the interpretation of the Torah that is the central focus of the oral tradition of debate that would eventually be gathered together in the 6th century as the Talmud. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is often weighing in on this debate and giving his interpretation of the meaning of passages from the Torah.
[5] The Greek word here is gymnos, traditionally translated as naked, and sometimes used in this way in ancient Greek literature, but probably referring to a state of poverty in which the person has only a loincloth or some rag to cover him or herself. Thus "without clothing" or "lacking clothing" might be better translations.
[6] The Greek word here is adelphoi (brothers), which Jesus is using in the generic sense of "siblings", for in his ministry Jesus did not restrict his help to men. I have chosen "brothers and sisters" because in English the word "siblings" is not used as commonly in this kind of discourse as "brothers and sisters".
[7] The Hebrew word here is ger, which is variously translated as sojourner, stranger, or foreigner. The sense of the word is someone from another country living among you; or conversely, you are the ger when you are living in another country. Thus, other possible translations are "resident alien" or "immigrant". I have chosen the word "foreigner" to lift up the sense of someone from another national or ethnic group than one's own.
[8] The description of the tombs being on the way into the city and the presence of a herd of swine suggest that Gedara or Gerasa was a Roman colony with a temple to Jupiter, as the pig was the sacred animal of Capitoline Jupiter. A Jewish settlement would have tucked the tombs away at the back of the city, and there would not have been any pigs. Also, the fact that the demons call themselves "Legion" suggests that the sufferer or sufferers are traumatized Roman veterans. Roman colonies were commonly established by the Roman state by seizing land from conquered peoples to settle retired legionaries and their families, or they were built over the ruins of conquered cities.
[9] Vision 3 is of a tower under construction, which serves as an analogy for the Church, each stone representing a person. When the tower is complete the final judgment will come.
[10] Christians were persecuted off and on from the very beginning, but this was usually localized and dependent on the governor of the province and the mood of the local populace. It was a governor's task to keep his region paccata atque quieta, "peaceful and settled". Thus, should there be any local agitation against this or that group, the governor would be inclined to act so as to appease the majority in order to avoid riots or mob violence—something that may explain Pontius Pilate's actions toward Jesus. These persecutions came in waves, and so they became associated with the emperor of the day, such as Nero (reigned 54-68), Domitian (89-96), Trajan (98-117), Marcus Aurelius (161-180), and Septimius Severus (193-211). Decius (249-251) ordered the first official empire wide persecution in a decree in 250. The next came under Valerian (253-260) who, in two letters to the Senate in 257 and 258, gave instructions to target Christian clergy and Christians in high civil positions (the latter indicating that some in the higher echelons of society were becoming Christian). The most extensive and intense period of persecution came under Diocletian, who also went after the Manicheans, a philosophical-religious group whose teachings originated in Persia with the prophet Manes.Diocletian was the last Roman emperor to persecute Christianity.
[11] From a legal document called the Acts of Munatius Felix, dated May 19, 303.
[12] Nova Roma or Constantinople was an ambitious enlargement of the already existing and ancient city of Byzantion (Byzantium in Latin). The term "Byzantine" is derived from the name Byzantium.
[13] Beyond the four major types discussed here in the main text there is also evidence for several kinds of specialized institutions: the lochokomeion (place for the care of birthing women), brephotropheion (place for the nurture of infants, i.e., abandoned infants), typhlokomeion (place for the care of the blind). There are also references to at least two cherotropheia (places for the care of widows) in the city of Cyzicus, on the Sea of Marmara, near Constantinople. These isolated references to this last type of institution at first seems odd, given the importance of generosity toward widows. But this must be seen against the backdrop of a very large number of gerokomeia (places for care of the elderly) where both men and women were being cared for. It must also be remembered that widows formed an important part of the church's active care workforce, and so were cared for in part by their work as deaconesses. The fact that there are at least two specialized cherotropheia mentioned at a specific time under a specific bishop (Eleusis) might indicate that in Cyzicus there were significantly more women than men who needed care (Cyzicus was a port city and thus would have had a significant number of households tied to fishing and shipping) or that Eleusis had a peculiar policy in this regard.
[14] Xenon was a commonly used shorter form of xenodocheion.
[15] Which of these public construction phases for the Xenon came first is unclear.
[16] Indeed, Justinian I (reigned 527-565) was one of the most prolific founders and supporters of hospitals of this period. He is credited with founding seven (five of them in Constantinople, all of which he co-founded with his wife, the empress Theodora), and rebuilding eight others.
[17] In the literature of the day the words xenodoecheion/xenon and nosokomeion were used somewhat interchangeably, and one often has to read the context to know which type is being referred to. This attests in part to the novelty of these institutions and that the nomenclature in ordinary use had not yet settled into a clear pattern. But it also testifies to the fact that a common part of the hospitality of a xenodocheion was to provide assistance to injured or sick travellers, again, echoing the Parable of the Good Samaritan. In the main text of this essay I have chosen to use the more precise definitions of the 6th century Justinian Code for the sake of clarity and simplicity.
[18] The traditional New Testament healing using prayer and the laying on of hands (cf. James 5:13-18 and the many examples in the Gospels and Acts) was also practiced into the 5th century, but the legalization and bureaucratization of the church seems to have pushed this type of healing to the margins. In later centuries, in the west, the rites used with healing would devolve into the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, used only to heal the soul prior to the death of the body. In the meantime, the locus for healing in response to prayer and faith shifted to shrines and churches where the bones of martyrs were entombed, miraculous healings being associated with many of these. There are also accounts from this period of particularly holy individuals facilitating healing in those who sought them out.
[19] The higher percentage of purely medical facilities in these regions may have played a part, following the Arab conquest of the Levant and Mesopotamia, in pushing the Muslim world to the forefront of medical practice in western Eurasia. By the same token, Syriac speaking Christian scholars were the ones who translated the ancient Greek science texts into Arabic for their new overlords.
[20] This tri-partite coinage would remain the standard currency of the Roman Empire into the 11th century and served as the model for currencies in both the Christian west and the Islamic world. The old British pound-shilling-pence system was a late echo of Constantine's monetary reform.
[21] Since Edward Gibbon published his landmark multivolume work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empireover the course of the years 1776-1788, it has been usual to speak of the "fall of the Roman Empire." However, modern historical and archaeological research has shown that the unravelling of imperial authority and institutional cohesion in the western part of the Roman Empire was not so much a "fall" as a long process of economic and demographic decline. To this must be added that while in the west the civil and military structures of empire gave way to localized authority run by Germanic warlords (often called dux"leader, commander, chief" and sometimes rex "king"), in the east, imperial authority and the rule of law continued uninterrupted in what we now call the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire. From the point of view of the emperor and functionaries operating from Constantinople, the loss of control over the western provinces was hardly a collapse of civilization. It was rather more a significant loss of territory. Rather than call this process "the fall of the Roman Empire," it might be more accurate to refer to it as "the territorial diminishment of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity" or some such descriptive phrase.
[22] Zotikos is a saint in the Orthodox Church. He was one of the first people to talk about the poor (in his case specifically a group of lepers he was helping) as the true treasure of the Church.
[23] Centuries later, the girls’ orphanage in Venice called the Hospidale della Pietà—the orphanage for which Antonio Vivaldi composed music—was organized on a similar musical-educational model.
[24] These years refer to the legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire in the Edict of Milan (313) and the conquest of Egypt by the Arabs (642) following their conquest of Syria and Palestine.
[25] In lieu of actual plates, medieval feasters were given large slabs of bread on which they placed their bits of meat and other foods, the juices from these dishes soaking into the bread. On leaving the feast, it was customary for the guests to take their bread slabs with them and give them to the waiting poor.
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