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Religion and Mendicity in Seventeenth-Century France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Emanuel Chill
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From the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, as absolutism emerged in its classic development, the lower classes of western Europe experienced great insecurity and hardship. The Hundred Years' War, the end of serfdom, the quickening of economic activity, the secular price advance, and the explosion of religious conflict shattered traditional social bonds, produced widespread destitution, and uprooted large numbers of peasants who took to the roads in a desperate nomadism. These vagrant populations, existing on theft, brigandage and, mainly, begging, evoked severe governmental repression which was to prove generally unpopular and, in the long run, ineffective. In seventeenth-century France certain private groups also were to take up the cause of repressing vagabondage through a systematic program of confinement in workhouses – a program which, while complementing royal policy, would draw its main inspiration from the ascetic spirituality of the French Counter Reformation. These hôpitaux généraux are of interest as concrete expressions of the convergence of social problems, absolutist political tendencies, and religious attitudes.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , December 1962 , pp. 400 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1962

References

page 400 note 1 I.e., the Ordinance of 1350, esp. title I, Des Mandians (Isambert, , Recueil Générale des Anciennes Lois Françaises, IV, pp. 576–77Google Scholar), and in England, the Ordinance of Laborers of 1349. For the general problem see Paultre, C., La répression de la mendicité et du vagabondage en France sous l'ancien régime, (Paris, 1906)Google Scholar. Uncritical, diffuse in its presentation, this thesis in law is valuable for its copious documentation and abundant quotations from sources. Unfortunately there appears to be no work comparable to that of the Webbs on the continental poor laws and institutions in the early modern period. I have found their comparative discussions in English Poor Law History (London, 1927), Part I, and Ashley's, W. J.An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory (New York, 1893)Google Scholar, Part II, useful.

page 401 note 1 Vives', J. L.De subventione pauperum (Bruges, 1526)Google Scholar was a plan for centralized support of the native poor requested and adopted by the town council of Bruges. It aroused wide interest in other municipalities. Luther's Ordinance for a Common Chest (1525) “supplied to the municipal authorities of many a city, not merely of Germany itself, but also of the Netherlands and elsewhere, a model for their dealings with the problem of the relief of destitution” (Webb, op. cit., p. 31). For late medieval efforts by German towns to deal with the increase of mendicants, see Uhlhorn, G., Die Christliche Liebesthätigkeit im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1884), pp. 450–57Google Scholar. For details of the dissemination of such schemes, see Ashley, op. cit., esp. II, pp. 343, 346–49.

page 401 note 2 Moulins, art. 73, Blois, art. 65 (Isambert, , Recueil, XIV, pp. 209, 399Google Scholar). The whole legislation is reviewed by von Reitzenstein, F., Die Armengesetzgebung Frankreichs, in: Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich, ed. Schmoller, G., Vol. 5 (1881), esp. pp. 125–128.Google Scholar

page 402 note 1 Doucet, R., Les institutions de la France au XVIe siècle, (Paris, 1948), II, p. 523Google Scholar. Although the Tudors probably took the lead in these areas the French authorities were not far behind – in their pronouncements at any rate. Thus, for example, in 1635 (March 30) an ordinance of the civil lieutenant on the general police of Paris ordered all “vagabonds, even all apprentice barbers and tailors, and all others [without employment] and all debauched girls and women to find work within 24 hours, and if not, to leave this town and faubourgs of Paris, under summary penalty for men of being put on the chain and sent to the galleys, and for girls and women, of being whipped, shaved and banished in perpetuity” (Isambert, XVI, p. 424).

page 402 note 2 For a suggestive presentation of the labor problem under “early capitalism” see Sombart, W., Der Moderne Kapitalismus (Munich, 1921), IGoogle Scholar, chap. 53, “Die Arbeiternot”, esp. pp. 788, 800.

page 403 note 1 Sombart, op. cit., I, p. 821.

page 404 note 1 Statuts Pour les Hospitaux des pauvres enfermez (Paris, 1611), arts. 19–21, 29–30; reproduced in Cimber, M. L. & Danjou, F., Archives Curieuses de l'histoire de France (Paris, 1837)Google Scholar Ire série, vol. 15, pp. 273–81.

page 404 note 2 Lallemand, L., Histoire de la charité (Paris, 1910), IV, Pt. I, pp. 248–49Google Scholar; Paultre, op. cit., pp. 140–51, 161–62.

page 404 note 3 Mémoire concernant les pauvres… (as reproduced in Cimber & Danjou, op. cit., Ire série, vol. 15, p. 248).

page 404 note 4 ibid., p. 250.

page 404 note 5 ibid., pp. 245, 268.

page 404 note 6 ibid., pp. 260, 269.

page 405 note 1 See ibid., pp. 263, 266.

page 405 note 2 The basic document on the Company is the Annales de la Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement… (Bibliothèque Nationale, ms. No. 14, 489, fonds français). I refer to the published edition by Beauchet-Filleau, H., Annales de la Compagnie du St-Sacrement par le Comte René de Voyer d'Argenson (Marseille, 1900)Google Scholar. A comparison of Beauchet-Filleau's edition with a microfilm copy of the original manuscript has revealed only minor discrepancies. Since the rediscovery of the “cabale des débvots” in the late nineteenth century, a number of articles have appeared, and there are numerous references to it in modern literature on the period. The basic study of the Company's inner history and program remains Raoul Allier's La Compagnie du très Saint-Sacrement de l'autel: La “cabale des dévots” (Paris, 1902). Since the publication of the Annales a few volumes of other documents have appeared; these are cited where relevant.

page 406 note 1 The list of members of the main Parisian group has disappeared. I have reconstructed a roll of some 200 names from references in the Annales, death notices and other citations in the published correspondence.

page 406 note 2 Annales, , p. 26.Google Scholar

page 406 note 3 Quoted in Lallemand, op. cit., Vol. IV, Pt. 1, p. 250.

page 406 note 4 Annales, , p. 41.Google Scholar

page 407 note 1 Institution de l'Aumosne Générale (Lyon, 1662), pp. 1–7; Kleinclausz, A., Histoire de Lyon (Lyon, 1939–1952), II, pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

page 407 note 2 Institution de l'Aumosne Générale, pp. 28–30.

page 408 note 1 Letter of April 2, 1646 (Allier, R., La Compagnie du Très-Saint-Sacrement de l'autel á Marseille, Documents [Paris, 1909], pp. 225–28).Google Scholar

page 408 note 2 Rébelliau, A., La Compagnie secrète du Saint-Sacrement. Lettres du groupe Parisien au groupe Marseillais, 1632–1662 (Paris, 1908), p. 13.Google Scholar

page 408 note 3 E.g., Paultre, op. cit., p. 260.

page 408 note 4 Allier, Marseille, p. 510.Google Scholar; Paultre, op. cit., p. 260.

page 409 note 1 Allier, Marseille, pp. 149n.Google Scholar, 150.

page 409 note 2 Annales, , p. 120.Google Scholar

page 409 note 3 ibid., p. 87.

page 409 note 4 Aulagne, J., La réforme catholique du dixseptième siècle dans le diocèse de Limoges (Paris, 1908), pp. 558–59.Google Scholar

page 409 note 5 Lagier, , La Compagnie du St.-Sacrement de Grenoble, in: Bulletin de la Sociètè d'Archéologie de la Drome, L (1916), pp. 155–56.Google Scholar

In Lyon, although the renowned Notre Dame de la Charité was considerably older than the Company, at least six of the rectors of the Aumône Géne´rale appear in the membership roll of the local dévots (Guigue, op. cit., pp. 70, 80, 81, 87, 89, 90).

By the middle of the eighteenth century there were considerably more than 100 general hospitals. Of the oldest of these (i.e., the ones founded in the mid-seventeenth century, before the activity of the Jesuits in this field) a score or more were established in towns where there already existed branches of the Holy Sacrament. For example, in Poitiers, the Company was established in 1642, discussions on a hospital began two years later, and 200 poor were enclosed in 1657 (Paultre, op. cit., p. 304). In Noyon the dévots were organized in 1656; letters patent for a general hospital were issued in the following year (Lallemand, op. cit., IV, pt. 1, p. 261). In Dijon, a chapter of the Company and a general hospital were both established in 1643 (Paultre, op. cit., p. 292).

page 409 note 6 Reproduced in Auguste, A., La Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement á Toulouse; Notes et Documents (Paris, 1913), pp. 47–59.Google Scholar

page 410 note 1 Auguste, op. cit., pp. 41–45.

page 410 note 2 Allier, , Une Société Secrète au XVII Siècle: la Compagnie du Très Saint Sacrement à Toulouse (Paris, 1914), pp. 14–18Google Scholar. This was done by looking for the names of well disposed capitouls, parlementaires, and cathedral clergy, as well as for directors of the General Hospital in the Parisian company's printed obituary circulars. See Rébelliau, op. cit., passim.

page 410 note 3 Auguste, op. cit., p. 39

page 410 note 4 ibid., p. 47.

page 410 note 5 ibid., pp. 48–9.

page 411 note 1 ibid., pp. 50–51, 55,58.

page 411 note 2 ibid., pp. 54,56,57.

page 411 note 3 Which he had probably drawn up. See Auguste, op. cit., pp. 41, 75; but also, Allier, Toulouse, p. 20.Google Scholar

page 411 note 4 Thus in 1713 it was deemed necessary to create a “Bureau of Charity” to press for the confinement of mendicants (Paultre, op. cit., p. 278).

page 412 note 1 Auguste, op. cit., p. 72.

page 412 note 2 ibid., pp. 72–73. “This pious Princess knew of the great good which the Company had procured in the Kingdom; she therefore favored it powerfully during her Regency; she frequently commended herself to the prayers of the honorable people who composed it and who were honored by her friendship” (Annales, p. 179). “This pious Princess knew the most important members” (Annales, p. 205).

page 412 note 3 Auguste, op. cit., pp. 98–100. Especially since the Annales refer to Ciron's participation in another favorite cause of the Holy Sacrament, the war against the compagnonnage during the same period (November 1655) (Annales, , p. 155).Google Scholar

page 413 note 1 Rébelliau, op. cit., p. 98; Annales, , p. 239.Google Scholar

page 413 note 2 Feillet, A., La misère au temps de la Fronde et Saint Vincent de Paul (Paris, 1886), esp. pp. 125–53Google Scholar, 177–203, 253–73, 357–64, 402–23, 463–75. Jacquart, J., La Fronde des Princes dans la Région parisienne et ses conséquences matérielles, in: Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, VII (Oct.-Dec. 1960), pp. 257–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 413 note 3 Levasseur, E., La population française (Paris, 1889–1892), III, p. 117.Google Scholar

page 413 note 4 Annales, , pp. 120, 127.Google Scholar

page 413 note 5 ibid., pp. 132, 150.

page 413 note 6 Annales, , p. 136Google Scholar. Du Plessis-Montbard was an avocat au parlement. Certain “principal magistrates” are usually credited with having met during the 1640's to lay the basis of the General Hospital (H. Sauval, Histoire et Recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris [Paris, 1724] I, p. 526, followed, among others, by Paultre, op. cit., pp. 154–55, who was apparently ignorant of the Company of the Holy Sacrament). The first president Pomponne de Bellièvre is also frequently cited as leader of the project, although without any substantiation beyond contemporary allusions which associated him with the “rêverie des dévots” and the fact that he contributed large sums to the Hospital (e.g., Lallemand, op. cit. IV, pt. I, p. 254). The Company of the Holy Sacrament was very well represented in the upper Paris magistrature; but beyond this its initiative is clear from the Annales, which recount the establishment of a committee of eight to work for the General Hospital as early as 1636 (p. 26).

page 414 note 1 Annales, , p. 163Google Scholar (Sept. 28,1656).

page 414 note 2 ibid., p. 170; Allier, , Cabale, pp. 65Google Scholar, 26n.

page 414 note 3 Sauval, H., Antiquités de Paris, I, pp. 525–36.Google Scholar

page 414 note 4 Edit du Roi (April, 1656) art. 1 (as contained in l'Hospital Général de Paris [Paris, 1676], p. 19).

page 414 note 5 Edit du Roi, arts. 31, 35, 38, 39, 40, 41. Husson, A., Etude sur les hôpitaux (Paris, 1862), pp. 515–16Google Scholar. Parturier, L., L'assistance à Paris sous l'ancien régime et pendant la Revolution (Paris, 1897), p. 141.Google Scholar

page 415 note 1 Art. 12 of founding edict (Edit du Roi, in Hosp. Gén. de Paris, p. 22).

page 415 note 2 Arts. 9, 14, 18, 22 (op. cit., p. 19).

page 415 note 3 See Lallemand, op. cit., IV, pt. I, p. 258n. for examples of contemporary reactions.

page 415 note 4 Paultre, op. cit., p. 185.

page 415 note 5 Edit du Roi (Apr. 1656), art. 13.

page 416 note 1 “Règlement que le roy veut estre observé pour l'Hospital Général de Paris,” arts, xvii and xxiv (in L'Hospital Général de Paris).

page 416 note 2 Paultre, op. cit., pp. 185–89; also “Règlement” of 1656, art. xix.

page 416 note 3 Monnier, A., Histoire de l'assistance publique dans les temps anciens et modernes (Paris, 1866), p. 351.Google Scholar

page 416 note 4 Lavisse, E., Histoire de France, VII, pt. I, p. 308.Google Scholar

page 417 note 1 The preamble to the Edict of August, 1661, against mendicants announced that the mendicity of able-bodied persons had “always been so odious to all peoples that none have been found willing to suffer it; and all states have ordained punishments for those who wish to live in idleness without contributing something of their work or their industry to the public” (Isambert, Recueil, XVIII, 5).

page 417 note 2 “Since the establishment of the General Hospital, the Courts of miracles… no longer depend on the Grand Coesre, [and] daily his subjects and officers are removed and imprisoned in Bicêtre and in La Salpêtrière” (Sauval, Antiquités de Paris, I, 514). See also Paultre, op. cit., p. 310.—“Coesre (grand). Mot d'argot. Chef des gueux.” Huguet, Dictionnaire de la langue française du 16me siècle.

page 417 note 3 Between the rue Montorgueil and the rue Saint-Denis (Sauval, op. cit., I, pp. 511–12).

page 417 note 4 It is of passing interest to note that La Reynie's successor, Marc-Renè de Voyer de Paulmy d'Argenson, was the son of the Holy Sacrament's annalist.

page 417 note 5 Clément, P., La Police sous Louis XIV (Paris, 1866), pp. 134–55.Google Scholar

page 417 note 6 Monnier, op. cit., p. 350. An ordinance of 1669 (Oct. 10) attributed the large number of mendicants in the streets to the general hostility to the archers of the General Hospital, who had difficulty in arresting beggars “because of the protection given them by the domestics of persons of quality, by bourgeois, artisans, soldiers, and the common people…” (quoted in Paultre, op. cit., pp. 195–96).

page 418 note 1 Oct. 10, 1657. On Vincent de Paul's reluctance to associate himself with the General Hospital see his letters to the duchess d'Aiguillon, in Coste, P., (Ed.), de Paul, Saint Vincent: Correspondance, Entretiens, Documents (Paris, 1920–1925), VI, pp. 245Google Scholar, 250–51, 257. Coste, , in Le grand sain du grand siècle: Monsieur Vincent (Paris, 1932), II, pp. 501–507Google Scholar, describes Vincent de Paul's disapproval of the General Hospital but avoids connecting this disapproval to his refusal to supply priests. See, however, Lallemand, op. cit., IV, pt. 1, pp. 254–55, and Feillet, op. cit., pp. 522–23.

page 418 note 2 Quoted in Paultre, op. cit., p. 193.

page 419 note 1 Edict of June 1662 (Isambert, XVIII, pp. 18–19). The confinement of the “foreign” poor in the General Hospital of Paris was, however, authorized by a governmental decree: “The streets and churches are crowded with them, and mendicity has become as common as it was before the establishment of the General Hospital. “The Directors of the General Hospital] propose to do all in their power to shelter the poor from the countryside and to provide their subsistence…until the beginning of the harvest…” (quoted in P. Bondois, La disette de 1662, in: Revue d'histoire économique et sociale, 12th yr. [1924], p. 105).

page 419 note 2 Around the turn of the eighteenth century, and chiefly in the south of France. These “charités” were largely the work of the itinerant Jesuits Chaurand, Guevarre, and Dunod. See Joret, C., Guevarre, Le P.et les Bureaux de Charité au XVIIIe siècle, in: Annales du Midi, I (1889), pp. 340–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Paultre, op. cit., pp. 219–304.

page 419 note 3 Paultre, op. cit., p. 206.

page 419 note 4 A lettre de cachet of Oct. 10, 1669, in execution of the ordinance of that date against mendicity, complains that the directors of the General Hospital release vagrant mendicants too readily and provides that pauvres valides caught begging a second time be permanently incarcerated (reproduced in L'Hospital Gélnéral de Paris, pp. 108–109).

page 419 note 5 Bondois, art. cit., relates the famine of 1662 to the “shackles of the feudal system” which the old regime was incapable of loosing (p. 117). “Almost the only remedies… for the profound misery of the people…were enterprises of ‘charity’ which had perhaps a high moral value but which, despite the object of social pacification which they sought and generally attained … could not really palliate the irremediable evils caused by the lack of basic subsistence” (p. 57).

page 420 note 1 Paultre, op. cit., pp. 197–99, 203–204.

page 420 note 2 Bloch, C., L'Assistance et l'Etat en France à la veille de la Révolution (Paris, 1908), p. 161.Google Scholar

page 420 note 3 ibid., pp. 431–49.

page 421 note 1 L'Hospital Général de Paris, p. 2.

page 422 note 1 A convenient selection of Bérulle's spiritual writings is G. Rotureau's Le Cardinal de Bétulle, opuscules de piété (Paris, 1944). The best study of the man and his doctrine is Dagens, J., Bérulle et les origines de la restauration catholique (N. p., 1952).Google Scholar

page 422 note 2 Faillon, , Vie de M. Olier (Paris, 1875), I, pp. 54–56.Google Scholar

page 422 note 3 He also used a hair shirt, an iron belt with sharp studs to torment the flesh, and a heavy bronze crucifix carried around the neck and equipped with nails for the same purpose. It took the visionary, Sister Marguerite of the Holy Sacrament (of the Carmel at Beaune), herself a noted ascetic, to persuade Renty to relax these austerities somewhat (Jure, J. B. Saint, Vie de Monsieur de Renty [Paris, 1652] p. 50).Google Scholar

page 422 note 4 Allier, Cabale, pp. 113Google Scholar, 117, 122–23; Saint-Jure, op. cit., pp. I53–54.

page 423 note 1 “De l'Esprit de la Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement”, No. 10 (Annales, p. 195).

page 423 note 2 Among the disorders which the Company combatted most vigorously for over a generation was the “scandal” of the exercise of “the so-called reformed religion”. In the meeting of November 18, 1655, on the eve of the foundation of the General Hospital of Paris, “It was proposed that the Huguenot hospital in the parish of Saint-Etienne du Mont be destroyed…” (Annales, , p. 154Google Scholar).

page 423 note 3 In his Considerations Chrétiennes et pratiques sur le dessein de Dieu dans l'institution de la société civile – one of the rare expressions of the social thought of the French Counter Reformation – J.-J. Olier held that men are divided and separated from each other by original sin, but brought together by civil society. “For if the rich person cannot live without being served, and without having a number of poor who assist him and give him their labor: the poor person on his side cannot live if the rich man does not give him sustenance and save him from his extremity.” Since all of this is arranged through Divine Providence, when we receive goods from a merchant it should be “with thanks and obligation toward God…” The merchants should also feel the spirit of the master “who has chosen them for this ministry of his mercy and his love…” We should act with charity “in these encounters” since God acts with charity to all, giving each his own (reprinted in Faillon, op. cit., II, pp. 405–407).

page 423 note 4 Oeuvres, , (Paris, 1852), II, p. 575.Google Scholar

page 424 note 1 The highly repressive criminal ordinance of 1670 retained torture, but said nothing of methods. Pussort maintained that the description of torture “would be indecent in an ordinance” (Lavisse, , Hist, de France, VII, pt. 1, p. 292Google Scholar).

page 425 note 1 During the middle of the seventeenth century the members of the Company of the Holy Sacrament of Lyon discussed the idea of enclosing sturdy beggars in public workshops “in order to make them labor as is done in Holland” (Guigue, op. cit., p. 118).