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  • Charity and Religion in Medieval Europe
  • R. N. Swanson
Charity and Religion in Medieval Europe. By James William Brodman. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2009. Pp. xiv, 318. $59.95. ISBN 978-0-813- 21580-8.)

Much is packed into this extremely useful and informative introductory survey of Western European charitable institutions. While the title separates charity and religion, the book is essentially about what Brodman calls "religious charity"—a structured yet broad concern for the poor (with some other targets) as manifested mainly in hospitals, leprosaria, and charitable religious orders. Geographically, the net is widely cast, but with a focus on Spain, Italy, and France (the strong Spanish component reflects the author's earlier research and publications). Germany and England receive comparatively little attention—indeed, the English references are disappointing and occasionally insecure, but without undermining the strength of the general survey. Chronologically, the analysis appears strongest for the period 1100-1350, perhaps because those are the centuries of foundation and rule making, with the following years a time of continuation, consolidation, or decline.

The book's institutional focus is justifiable, and validated, but the title may raise expectations of a broader balancing of the charity and religion of the title, possibly disappointed as the institutional agenda becomes evident. The first chapter, "The Pious and the Practical: An Ideology of Charity," does encourage a broad appreciation, with charity as a core element in Catholic mentality—the caritas that, as a theological virtue, provided a basis for the religion's ideal social dynamic. From chapter 2 ("A Cascade of Hospitals") the institutions predominate. Chapter 3 deals mainly with care for pilgrims, provided by military orders and hospices; it also (somewhat oddly, even intrusively) considers brotherhoods established to maintain bridges. Chapter 4 is a valuable, if succinct, introduction to the continent-wide, nonmilitary hospitaller brotherhoods—St. Anthony of Vienne, St. James of Altopascio, Roncesvalles, and Santo Spirito in Rome. A change in direction takes chapter 5 to more localized and laicized works of charity. Here Brodman combines considerations of urban sainthood, local confraternities, and parish foundations (he avoids the word guild, which may explain the scant discussion of English charitable activity). Chapter 6 reverts to hospitals. Here the rules, even if not those of an order, created a regularly regulated life for those both caring and cared for, a "Charity that Sanctifies." "The Religious Dimensions of Care" follow, especially engaging with issues of selectivity when offering assistance, offering a forceful response to suggestions that selection reflected misogyny.

Challengingly titled "Between Two Worlds: An Elusive Paradigm," the conclusion provides a final opportunity for debate. Returning to fundamental [End Page 786] issues about the status and motivation of charitable care, Brodman rejects Kenneth Baxter Wolf's arguments to prioritize the contemplative over the active life and Teofilo Ruiz's conclusions on attitudes to charity reflected in Castilian wills. The latter rebuttal raises an unacknowledged issue: that conclusions on charity depend on the sources studied. Ruiz analyzes wills; Brodman deals with rules and institutions. Both examine charity and religion, but from different, possibly incompatible, perspectives. Both deal with only one aspect of how Catholicism and "charity"—itself only one element of caritas—were intertwined in medieval Europe, with the picture still incomplete.

This is a stimulating introduction to a broad field. Importantly, the volume gives an international perspective for institutions that, when viewed from local or national contexts and perspectives, can easily be marginalized or ignored precisely because of the international scale of their operations. This could easily have been a bigger book, possibly should have been. It certainly provides a strong foundation for appreciations of a core aspect of Catholicism's social role in medieval Western Europe.

R. N. Swanson
University of Birmingham, UK
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