Charity and welcome at the monastery

Abstract

The early medieval coenobitic tradition, starting from the ancient monastic rules, has developed a discipline on the practice of charity, which reflects social conditions and mentality proper to its time. The precept of love towards the others is also distinguished in the care for the sick in need of assistance, the guests who arrive at the monastery and the poor knocking at its door or wanderers asking to be housed.The Benedictine rule says that the guest is accepted by the prior or brothers with all charity and they pray together; the distribution of bread, food, wine and the assignment of a bed are contemplated. It is an evangelical command of monastic life.According to the Regula Benedicti handed down by Ildemaro of Corbie the hospitale pauperum is directed by the eleemosinarius monk, while the hospitale nobilium looks like lodgings in which to host the patrons of the Abbey, high prelates or influential characters, with whom the monks establishes useful public relations.The structure of the hospital of Santa Giulia, historically and archaeologically studied through unpublished documents, was wide and fit for this task. It included a central claustrum overlooked by the palacium or main building, equipped with court-distributed accommodations, the church dedicated to San Remigio, the domus consisting of accommodations, the curia communis and many other service sites.The nuns, sometimes assisted by a retrix hospitalis, performed their service into institutionalized charity in a hospital that was the largest and most important in Brescia, until the middle XV century.The aim of the research is to analyse the functions and interconnections with social and political life in a diachronic way, but also to show an example of institutionalized medieval charity.