Saint-Esprit in Montpellier, recommended by the pope as a model for all Christendom.
By the 15th century, many institutions passed under royal or municipal control and were
governed by lay committees. The best-preserved example of this type is the Hôtel-Dieu
of Beaune, built between 1443 and 1459 by Nicolas Rolin, chancellor of Burgundy.
If the modern “health-care facility” is focused on the operating room, the heart of the
medieval hospice was the sick ward, or salle. The great hall was over 300 feet long in the
Hôtel-Dieu of Paris and in the one founded at Tonnerre by Marguerite, the wife of
Charles of Anjou. While benefactors could claim private quarters, most residents were
lodged communally. Two often shared one bed, particularly in the smaller dormitories;
curtains would screen each bed in the larger, draftier, and more crowded wards. Some
hospitals had isolation wings for contagious patients, the disruptive insane, or children;
others, like Saint-Jacques of Valenciennes, turned away incurable patients. Special
foundations sheltered lepers, the mentally ill, the old, or, as in the case of the hospice
“des Quinze-Vingts” erected by Louis IX in Paris, the blind. In many instances, care and
conditions declined from the late Middle Ages on, with the aging of early foundations,
the fading of charitable impulses, the overcrowding in epidemics and wars, and—
paradoxically—the transition to official control.
Luke Demaitre
[See also: BEAUNE; HEALTH CARE; TONNERRE]
Caille, Jacqueline. Hôpitaux et charité publique a Narbonne au moyen âge. Toulouse: Privat, 1978.
Imbert, Jean, and Michel Mollat. Histoire des hôpitaux en France. Toulouse: Privat, 1982.
Mundy, John H. “Hospitals and Leprosaries in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Toulouse.” In
Essays on Medieval Life and Thought Presented in Honor of Austin P.Evans, ed. John H.Mundy
and R.W.Emery. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955.
Quynn, D. “A Medieval Picture of the Hôtel-Dieu of Paris.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine
12(1942):118–28.
Wickersheimer, Ernest. “Médecins et chirurgiens dans les hôpitaux du moyen âge.” Janus
32(1928):1–11.
HÔTEL DU ROI
. The term hotel du roi (Lat. hospitium regis) was applied in the period after ca. 1200 to
the innermost part of the royal household, or familia, comprising those departments
(ministeria or métiers) whose members were still engaged largely in domestic rather than
political duties. By 1261, when its organization was first set down in a household
ordinance, the hotel consisted primarily of six métiers: the paneterie, or pantry; the
échansonnerie, or butlery; the cuisine, or kitchen; the fruiterie, or fruitery; the écurie, or
stable; and (replacing the chambre after 1257, though the latter effectively remained part
of the hotel) the fourrière, or foragery. In 1315, a new department was created, the
argenterie, under the direction of an argentier du roi, to supervise the provision of
clothing and furnishings to the king. All of these departments, and such nondepartmental
personnel as the chamberlains, chaplains, physicians, ushers, porters, launderers,
messengers, and other minor functionaries in the king’s personal service (a total of 165
persons in 1291), were initially placed under the immediate supervision of two officers
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