Introduction: Poverty and Charity in Past Times

Studies of medieval poverty and charity have heretofore tended to concentrate on Christendom. Interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to the ideas and practices of particular Jewish, Christian, and Islamic communities, however, afford new insights into how each viewed poverty and practiced charity, as well as how their cultures sometimes interacted and influenced each other. Interdisciplinary approaches also help to bring the structural elements of poverty and charity into greater relief across time and place.