The Popes and Science / The History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time

by James J. Walsh

There are some curious historical details in these old documents, since they serve to show the method in use for designating houses at that time when, it must be recalled, street numbers had not as yet been invented. Most of the houses had on their facades some image or figure by which they were known. The Hotel Dieu, for instance, acquired during the thirteenth century the houses with the image of St. Louis, with the sign of the golden lion of Flanders, with the image of the butterfly with that of the wolf, with the images of the three monkeys, with the image of the iron lion, with the cross of gold, with the three chimneys, etc. A certain amount for the support of the hospital was allowed out of the city revenues, and a favorite method was to permit, in times of special stress upon the hospital, the collection of a tax on all of a certain commodity that came into the city. For a time, for instance, during an epidemic or other period of necessity, a hospital would obtain [{254}] permission to collect a tax on all the salt, or, occasionally, on all the wheat that entered Paris. This serves to show the renewed interest in city hospital affairs that had arisen mainly as the result of Papal initiative and encouragement.

In the smaller towns in France there was the same hospital movement as characterized the situation in Germany. In the south, the closeness of Montpelier made the example of the hospital of the Holy Ghost of that city especially forceful. In other portions of France it is well known that the Sisters of the Holy Ghost very early established separate hospitals from those founded by the Brothers of the Holy Ghost. There are records of such separate hospitals entirely under the control of Sisters in Bar-Sur-Aube, in Neuf-Chateau, and, according to Virchow, at many other places. At the same time, however, there still continued to be hospitals of the Holy Ghost as at Besancon, where the Brothers and Sisters of the Holy Ghost had their institutions in common, though there was a distinct separation of the communities and allotment of tasks. The Brothers cared rather for the surgical cases, while the care of the children and the pregnant women was confided to the Sisters. This of itself was rather an advantage, since the separation of the women and the children from the ordinary hospital patients, must have proved an important preventive of infection and an ameliorating factor as regards that hospital atmosphere especially likely to be unfavorable to these delicate, sensitive cases. We know now what hospitalism means for them.

That the influence of the movement initiated by Innocent III. was felt even in distant England is very clear, from the fact that practically all of the famous old [{255}] British hospitals date their existence as institutions for the care of the ailing from the thirteenth century. The famous St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London had been a priory founded at the beginning of the twelfth century, which took care of the poor and the destitute sick, but at the beginning of the thirteenth century it became, in imitation of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit at Rome, frankly a hospital in the modern sense of the word. St. Thomas's Hospital, which continues to be down to the present time one of the great medical institutions of London, was founded by Richard, Prior of Bermondsey, in 1213. Bethlehem, or as the name was softened in the English speech of the people, Bedlam, was founded about the middle of the thirteenth century. Originally it was a general hospital for the care of the sick of all kinds, though in later times it became, as its name has come to signify in modern English, a place exclusively for the care of the insane. Bedlam, in the fourteenth century, and probably also in the later years of the thirteenth, made provision for a certain number of the insane in addition to other patients, so that it presented the accomplishment of that desideratum for which we are striving in the twentieth century--a city general hospital with psychopathic wards. This arrangement, as we have said in the chapter on the Church and the Mentally Afflicted, has many advantages over the special hospital for the insane, entrance to which, as a rule, requires tedious formalities.

Bridewell and Christ's Hospital, the other two of the institutions long known as the five royal hospitals of London, were either actually founded or received a great stimulus and a thorough reorganization during the thirteenth century. In the succeeding centuries Bridewell [{256}] ceased to be a hospital and became a prison, while Christ's Hospital, though retaining its name, became a school. With some of these institutions the name of Edward VI. has become associated, but, as pointed out by Gairdner, the English historical writer, without any due warrant. Gairdner says in his History of the English Church in the Sixteenth Century, "Edward has left a name in connection with charities and education which critical scholars find to be little justified by fact." The supposed foundation of St. Thomas's Hospital, as he points out, was only the re-establishment of this institution, "and even when it was granted by Edward to the citizens of London, it was not without their paying for it." Many institutions, charitable and educational, had been destroyed by Henry VIII., and the crying need for them became so great under Edward's reign that the government was compelled to provide for their re-establishment.

It is no wonder, with all this activity of the hospital foundation movement, that Virchow should have been unstinted in his praise of the Pontiff and of the Church responsible for the great charity. He said: "It may be recognized and admitted that it was reserved for the Roman Catholic Church, and above all for Innocent III., not only to open the bourse of Christian charity and mercy in all its fulness, but also to guide the life-giving stream into every branch of human life in an ordered manner. For this reason alone the interest in this man and in this time will never die out."

Even this was not all that he felt bound to say, and in his admiration he quite forgot the constant opposition he manifested toward the Papacy on all other occasions. This happened to be the one feature of Papal influence [{257}] and endeavor that he had investigated most thoroughly, and one is tempted to wonder if like investigation in other directions would not have shown him the error of prejudiced views he harbored with regard to other phases of the beneficent influence of the Popes in history. More knowledge is all that is needed, as a rule, to overcome all the anti-Papal prejudices founded on supposed historical grounds.

Indeed, Virchow's tribute to Pope Innocent III. as the initiator of all this humanitarian work is so frank and outspoken that, coming as it does from a man whose sympathies with the Papacy were well known to be the slightest, it deserves to be recalled in its completeness, in order that another factor for the vindication of Innocent's character may be better known. The great pathologist said: "The beginning of the history of all of these German hospitals is connected with the name of that Pope who made the boldest and farthest-reaching attempt to gather the sum of human interests into the organization of the Catholic Church. The hospitals of the Holy Ghost were one of the many means by which Innocent III. thought to hold humanity to the Holy See. And surely it was one of the most effective. Was it not calculated to create the most profound impression to see how the mighty Pope, who humbled emperors and deposed kings, who was the unrelenting adversary of the Albigenses, turned his eyes sympathetically upon the poor and sick, sought the helpless and the neglected upon the streets, and saved the illegitimate children from death in the waters! There is something at once conciliating and fascinating in the fact, that at the very time when the fourth crusade was inaugurated through his influence, the thought of founding a great [{258}] organization of an essentially humane character, which was eventually to extend throughout all Christendom, was also taking form in his soul; and that in the same year (1204) in which the new Latin Empire was founded in Constantinople, the newly erected hospital of the Holy Spirit, by the old bridge on the other side of the Tiber, was blessed and dedicated as the future centre of this organization." [Footnote 31]

[Footnote 31: Virchow's article on the German hospitals is to be found in the second volume of his collection of essays on Public Medicine and the History of Epidemics, which is, unfortunately, not translated into English, so far as I know, but will have to be consulted in the original Gesammelte Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der Oeffentlichen Medicin und der Seuchenlehre von Rudolf Virchow, Berlin, 1879. August Hirschwald.]

The quotation from Virchow gives a good and quite comprehensive idea of the scope of these institutions. The ailing of all kinds were received beneath their hospitable roof. In many cases the regulations for the reception of pregnant women and for the care of the foundlings are still extant, besides the hospital rules for the care of the various kinds of patients. The department set aside for the foundlings was in most places rather an allied institution than an integral part of the hospital itself. While these were called findel or foundling houses in Germany, in Italy this harsh name was not used, but the institutions were termed hospitals for the innocents, thus emphasizing the most pitiable feature of the cases of the little patients, and not branding them for life with a name that suggested their having been abandoned by those who should have cared for them.

The regulations for the admission and care of patients are interesting as showing how much these medieval institutions tried to fulfill the ideal of hospital work. The people of the Middle Ages had not as yet suffered all [{259}] the disillusionments that come from the abuse of charity at the hands of those who least deserve help, and besides, the attendants at the hospitals were expected to do their work for its own sake and from the highest motives of Christian benevolence rather than for any lesser reward. At the beginning, at least, there seems to be no doubt that this lofty purpose was accomplished very satisfactorily; but men and women are only human, and after a time there was deterioration. Even Virchow, however, was so struck by the ideal conditions that existed in these early hospitals that he discussed the necessity for having in modern times hospital attendants with as unselfish motives as those of the medieval period. It seems worth while then to give some of the details of this supremely Christian management of hospital work.