The institution at Embeck[422] founded in 1274 made a special work of taking care of abandoned children in the name of Saint Esprit. We come now to the name of Enrad Fleinz,[423] that bourgeois of Nuremberg, who in 1331 founded in his natal town the first hospital where not only children might be left, but where women might go to be delivered, without regard to whether the offspring were legitimate or not. This, too, was in the name of Saint Esprit, and in the year 1362, a similar asylum for orphans was founded in Paris.
It was indeed under the auspices of this order that the movement which began with the imperial Brephotrophia in the sixth century grew, until the various institutions of one sort or another intended to prevent the outright murder of children or their abandonment in deserted places were dependent, not on the humanity of any one man or group of men, but on the new-born spirit that was then spreading throughout Europe and that continued to spread even when individualism and materialism as ruling forces had supplanted religion and asceticism. The history of charity, which, as Lecky says, is yet to be written, will doubtless reveal, when it comes to be written, the various unappreciated factors that went to produce the humane movement.
Some idea of how rapidly these institutions had multiplied may be obtained from a bull of Nicholas IV., containing a long enumeration of the various foundations, which includes places in Italy, Sicily, Germany, England, France, and Spain.[424]
Besides those enumerated by the Pope, there were however other institutions springing up where, either as an adjunct to hospital work or as an independent work itself, children were being cared for. As one of the original and most scholarly writers on this phase of the subject has pointed out, it is difficult to make positive statements about these foundations, for the men interested were intent on their work rather than on leaving a record of it behind. Perhaps in this connection, some future historian, in viewing the voluminous charitable records of our day, will assume that “social” egotism has been well saddled, and made to do more than the work of a timely charitable impulse.
SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL, FOUNDER OF THE FIRST PERMANENT ASYLUM FOR CHILDREN IN FRANCE
The conditions that led to the crusade of Vincent of Paul antedated that philanthropist by several hundred years. Where the religious spirit had failed to arouse interest in the problem of the welfare of parentless children, the large cities of Europe were themselves forced to take some action. Milan, in 1168, on the prayer of the Cardinal Galdinus, founded a hospital (which would indicate that the institution founded by Datheus had either fallen into disuse or was inadequate) and Venice in 1380 followed the example of Milan, while the magnificent hospital for foundling children in Florence (Spidale degl’ Innocenti) was founded, after a long deliberation in open council, on October 25, 1421.
Included in these governmental or municipal movements is that of St. Thomas of Villeneuve, Archbishop of Valence, who created an asylum in his own palace at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and gave orders that no children presented there should be turned away.
The Hotel-Dieu de Notre Dame de Pitié of Lyons, which by letters patent of 1720 was declared to be the oldest hospital of France, commenced in 1523 the same work, and in that year is recorded as having received nine children. On February 25, 1530, François the First recognized the right of the institution to take in these children.