“Therefore, I, Datheus, for the welfare of my soul and the souls of my associates, do hereby establish in the house that I have bought next to the church, a hospital for foundling children. My wish is that as soon as a child is exposed at the door of a church that it will be received in the hospital and confided to the care of those who will be paid to look after them.... These infants will be taught a trade and my wish is that when they arrive at the age of eight years they will be free from the shackles of slavery and free to come or go wherever they will.”[413]
In 1380 a similar institution was opened in Venice, and in Florence in 1421. There is no doubt that similar institutions were most frequent in the fifteenth century. Pontanus, a writer of that age, speaks of having seen nine hundred children in the one at Naples, and openly expresses his admiration for the liberal education that they received and the care bestowed on them by their teachers.[414]
The most purely religious institute appears to have been, according to the able Gaillard, that of the Bourgognes[415] in imitation of the charity of St. Marthe in her house in Bethany. An order, that of the chanoines réguliers du Saint Esprit, was founded, or at least encouraged by Guy of Montpellier about the end of the twelfth century for the express purpose of caring for poor and abandoned children. The same institution is also said to have had for its founder, Olivier de la Crau in 1010. In any case it was not until 1188, eight years after the foundation of the order ascribed to Guy of Montpellier, that the hospital of Marseilles was established.
The historians of Languedoc[416] do not justify the assumption that this same Guy was the son of the Count of Montpellier, and all that we know is that “Brother Guy” or “Master Guy,” as he was differently called,[417] apparently founded an asylum for sick men and abandoned children.
The success of this order was immediate. In 1197, Bernard de Montlaur and his wife left a substantial donation to the Hospital of Saint Esprit at Montpellier, and to Guy, its founder.[418] Public approval was followed by official approval, for the Senate of Marseilles, or the Honourable Council, as it was called, held its meetings in the hospital founded there by Guy in 1188 and began its deliberations always with a discussion about the condition of the poor.[419]
Following the efforts of Guy of Montpellier, at Montpellier and at Marseilles, the movement, under the auspices of the hospitaliers of Saint Esprit, spread so rapidly that before the end of the century there were institutions at Rome,[420] one at Bergliac, and one at Troyes, and others in different places.[421] The order founded by Guy was given the approval of the Holy See, and its founder was called to Rome by Innocent III. and placed in charge of the house of Santa Maria in Sassia, where the Pope wished the same spirit that had marked Guy’s own institution at Montpellier. Guy died in Rome, 1208.
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The house of Santa Maria in Sassia to which Guy was called was attached to the church of that name which had been founded by Gna, king of the later Saxons, in 715. It had undergone many disastrous changes, but in 1198 Innocent III., at his own expense, had it renovated and repaired for the sick and poor of Rome. In 1204, moved by the frequency with which the fishermen of the Tiber found in their nets the bodies of children that had been thrown into the river, the Pope dedicated part of the hospital to the care of abandoned children, and it was to this institution that Guy of Montpellier was called.
The humane movement spread rapidly, generally under at least the nominal guidance of the Order of Saint Esprit. Many institutions, however, were founded in the name of Saint Esprit where little attention was paid to children.