(Freib. 1869, a new ed. announced 1884). Morin: Histoire critique de la pauvreté (in the
"Mémoirs de l’ Académie des inscript." IV). Lecky: Hist. of Europ. Morals, ch. 4th (II. 62 sqq.).
Uhlhorn: Christian Charity in the Ancient Church (Stuttgart, 1881; Engl. transl. Lond. and N.
York 1883), Book III., and his Die Christliche Liebesthätigkeit im Mittelalter. Stuttgart, 1884.
(See also his art. in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift för K. G." IV. 1). B. Riggenbach: Das Armenwesen
der Reformation (Basel 1883). Also the articles Armenpflege in Herzog’s "Encycl."2 vol. I.
648–663; in Wetzer and Welte’s "Kirchenlex."2 vol. I. 1354–1375; Paupérisme in Lichtenberger
X. 305–312; and Hospitals in Smith and Cheetham I. 785–789.
From the cruelties of superstition and bigotry we gladly turn to the queen of Christian graces,
that "most excellent gift of charity," which never ceased to be exercised wherever the story of
Christ’s love for sinners was told and his golden rule repeated. It is a "bond of’ perfectness" that
binds together all ages and sections of Christendom. It comforted the Roman empire in its hoary
age and agonies of death; and it tamed the ferocity of the barbarian invaders. It is impossible to
overestimate the moral effect of the teaching and example of Christ, and of St. Paul’s seraphic
praise of charity upon the development of this cardinal virtue in all ages and countries. We bow
with reverence before the truly apostolic succession of those missionaries, bishops, monks, nuns,
kings, nobles, and plain men and women, rich or poor, known and unknown, who, from gratitude
to Christ and pure love to their fellow-men, sacrificed home, health, wealth, life itself, to humanize
and Christianize savages, to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to entertain the stranger,
to clothe the naked, to visit the sick, to call on the prisoner, to comfort the dying. We admire and
honor also those exceptional saints who, in literal fulfillment or misunderstanding of the Saviour’s
advice to the rich youth, and in imitation of the first disciples at Jerusalem, sold all their possessions
and gave them to the poor that they might become perfect. The admiration is indeed diminished,
but not destroyed, if in many cases a large measure of refined selfishness was mixed with self-denial,
and when the riches of heaven were the sole or chief inducement for choosing voluntary poverty
on earth.
The supreme duty of Christian charity was inculcated by all faithful pastors and teachers
of the gospel from the beginning. In the apostolic and ante-Nicene ages it was exercised by regular
contributions on the Lord’s day, and especially at the communion and the agape connected with
it. Every congregation was a charitable society, and took care of its widows and orphans, of strangers
and prisoners, and sent help to distant congregations in need.^372
After Constantine, when the masses of the people flocked into the church, charity assumed
an institutional form, and built hospitals and houses of refuge for the strangers, the poor, the sick,
the aged, the orphans.^373 They appear first in the East, but soon afterwards also in the West. Fabiola
founded a hospital in Rome, Pammachius one in the Portus Romanus, Paulinus one in Nola. At the
(^372) See vol. II. § 100.
(^373) They are called Xenodochium and Xenodochia (ξενοδοχει̑ον) for strangers; ptochium or ptochotrophium (πτωχει̑ον,
πτωχοτροφει̑ον) for the poor; orphanotrophium (ὀρφανοθροφει̑ον) for orphans; brephotrophium (βρεφοτροφει̑ον) for foundlings
house for the sick (νοσοκομει̑α, valetudinaria); for the aged (γεροντοκομει̑α); and for widows (χηροτροφει̑α); in Latin hospitium,
hospitals, hospitalium (corresponding to the Greekξενοδοχει̑ον). See Du Cange. Such institutions were unknown among the
heathen; for the houses near the temples of Aeculapius were only intended for temporary shelter, not for care and attendance.
The Emperor Julian’s involuntary eulogy of the charity of the "Galilaeans " as he contemptuously called the Christians, and his
abortive attempt to force the heathen to imitate it, are well known. See vol. III. 50.