Consistent with this is the social purpose. Love or friendship is not conceived by Aristotle except in relation to social life. Society is based on an interchange of services. This interchange in one series of acts we call justice; in another friendship or love. A man cannot be just unless he has acquired a certain character or habit of mind; and hence no just man will act without knowledge, previous deliberation and definite purpose. So also will a friend fulfil these conditions in his acts of love or friendship. In the love existing between good men there is continuance and equality of service; but in the case of benefactor and benefited, in deeds of charity, in fact, there is no such equality. The satisfaction is on one side but often not on the other. (The dilemma is one that is pressed, though not satisfactorily, in Cicero and Seneca.) The reason for this will be found, Aristotle suggests, in the feeling of satisfaction which men experience in action. We realize ourselves in our deeds—throw ourselves into them, as people say; and this is happiness. What we make we like: it is part of us. On the other hand, in the person benefited there may be no corresponding action, and in so far as there is not, there is no exchange of service or the contentment that arises from it. The “self” of the recipient is not drawn out. On the contrary, he may be made worse, and feel the uneasiness and discontent that result from this. In truth, to complete Aristotle’s argument, the good deed on one side, as it represents the best self of the benefactor, should on the other side draw out the best self of the person benefited. And where there is not ultimately this result, there is not effective friendship or charity, and consequently there is no personal or social satisfaction. The point may be pushed somewhat further. In recent developments of charitable work the term “friendly visitor” is applied to persons who endeavour to help families in distress on the lines of associated charity. It represents the work of charity in one definite light. So far as the relation is mutual, it cannot at the outset be said to exist. The charitable friend wishes to befriend another; but at first there may be no reciprocal feeling of friendship on the other’s part—indeed, such a feeling may never be created. The effort to reciprocate kindness by becoming what the friend desires may be too painful to make. Or the two may be on different planes, one not really befriending, but giving without intelligence, the other not really endeavouring to change his nature, but receiving help solely with a view to immediate advantage. The would-be befriender may begin “despairing of no man,” expecting nothing in return; but if, in fact, there is never any kind of return, the friendship actually fails of its purpose, and the “friend’s” satisfaction is lost, except in that he may “have loved much.” In any case, according to this theory friendship, love and charity represent the mood from which spring social acts, the value of which will depend on the knowledge, deliberation and purpose with which they are done, and accordingly as they acquire value on this account will they give lasting satisfaction to both parties.
St Paul’s position is different. He seems at first sight to ignore the state and social life. He lays stress on motive force rather than on purpose. He speaks as an outsider to the state, though technically a citizen. His mind assumes towards it the external Judaic position, as though he belonged to a society of settlers (πάροικοι). Also, as he expects the millennium, social life and its needs are not uppermost in his thoughts. He considers charity in relation to a community of fellow-believers—drawn together in congregations. His theory springs from this social base, though it over-arches life itself. He is intent on creating a spiritual association. He conceives of the spirit (πνεῦμα) as “an immaterial personality.” It transcends the soul (ψυχή), and is the Christ life, the ideal and spiritual life. Christians participate in it, and they thus become part of “the body of Christ,” which exists by virtue of love—love akin to the ideal life, ἀγάπη. The word represents the love that is instinct with reverence, and not love φιλία which may have in it some quality of passion. This love is the life of “the body of Christ.” Therefore no act done without it is a living act—but, on the contrary, must be dead—an act in which no part of the ideal life is blended. On the individual act or the purpose no stress is laid. It is assumed that love, because it is of this intense and exalted type, will find the true purpose in the particular act. And, when the expectation of the millennium passed away, the theory of this ideal charity remained as a motive force available for whatever new conditions, spiritual or social, might arise. Nevertheless, no sooner does this charity touch social conditions, than the necessity asserts itself of submitting to the limitations which knowledge, deliberation and purpose impose. This view had been depreciated or ignored by Christians, who have been content to rely upon the strength of their motives, or perhaps have not realized what the Greeks understood, that society was a natural organism (Arist. Pol. 1253A), which develops, fails or prospers in accordance with definite laws. Hence endless failure in spite of some success. For love, whether we idealize it as ἀγάπη or consider it a social instinct as φιλία, cannot be love at all unless it quickens the intelligence as much as it animates the will. It cannot, except by some confusion of thought, be held to justify the indulgence of emotion irrespective of moral and social results. Yet, though this fatal error may have dominated thought for a long time, it is hardly possible to attribute it to St Paul’s theory of charity when the very practical nature of Judaism and early Christianity is considered. In his view the misunderstanding could not arise. And to create a world or “body” of men and women linked together by love, even though it be outside the normal life of the community, was to create a new form of religious organization, and to achieve for it (so far as it was achieved) what, mutatis mutandis, Aristotle held to be the indispensable condition of social life, friendship (φιλία), “the greatest good of states,” for “Socrates and all the world declare,” he wrote, that “the unity of the state” is “created by friendship” (Arist. Pol. ii. 1262 b).
It should, however, be considered to what extent charity in the Christian church was devoid of social purpose, (1) The Jewish conceptions of charity passed, one might almost say, in their completeness into the Christian church. Prayer, the petition and the purging of the mind, fasting, the humiliation of the body, and alms, as part of the same discipline, the submissive renunciation of possessions—all these formed part of the discipline that was to create the religious mood. Alms henceforth become a definite part of the religious discipline and service. Humility and poverty hereafter appear as yoked virtues, and many problems of charity are raised in regard to them. The non-Christian no less than the Christian world appreciated more and more the need of self-discipline (ἄσκησις); and it seems as though in the first two centuries A.D. those who may have thought of reinvigorating society searched for the remedy rather in the preaching and practice of temperance than in the application of ideas that were the outcome of the observation of social or economic conditions. Having no object of this kind as its mark, almsgiving took the place of charity, and, as Christianity triumphed, the family life, instead of reviving, continued to decay, while the virtues of the discipline of the body, considered apart from social life, became an end in themselves, and it was desired rather to annihilate instinct than to control it. Possibly this was a necessary phase in a movement of progress, but however that be, charity, as St Paul understood it, had in it no part. (2) But the evil went farther. Jewish religious philosophy is not elaborated as a consistent whole by any one writer. It is rather a miscellany of maxims; and again and again, as in much religious thought, side issues assume the principal place. The direct effect of the charitable act, or almsgiving, is ignored. Many thoughts and motives are blended. The Jews spoke of the poor as the means of the rich man’s salvation. St Chrysostom emphasizes this: “If there were no poor, the greater part of your sins would not be removed: they are the healers of your wounds” (Hom. xiv., Timothy, &c., St Cyprian on works and alms). Alms are the medicine of sin. And the same thought is worked into the penitential system. Augustine speaks of “penance such as fasting, almsgiving and prayer for breaches of the Decalogue” (Reichel, Manual of Canon Law, p. 23); and many other references might be cited. “Pecuniary penances (Ib. 154), in so far as they were relaxations of, or substitutes for, bodily penances, were permitted because of the greater good thereby accruing to others” (and in this case they were—A.D. 1284—legally enforceable under English statute law). The penitential system takes for granted that the almsgiving is good for others and puts a premium on it, even though in fact it were done, not with any definite object, but really for the good of the penitent. Thus almsgiving becomes detached from charity on the one side and from social good on the other. Still further is it vulgarized by another confusion of thought. It is considered that the alms are paid to the credit of the giver, and are realized as such by him in the after-world; or even that by alms present prosperity may be obtained, or at least evil accident avoided. Thus motives were blended, as indeed they now are, with the result that the gift assumed a greater importance than the charity, by which alone the gift should have been sanctified, and its actual effect was habitually overlooked or treated as only partially relevant.
(3) The Christian maxim of “loving (ἀγάπη) one’s neighbour as one’s self” sets a standard of charity. Its relations are idealized according as the “self” is understood; and thus the good self becomes the measure of charity. In this sense, the nobler the self the completer the charity; and the charity of the best men, men who love and understand their neighbours best, having regard to their chief good, is the best, the most effectual charity. Further, if in what we consider “best” we give but a lesser place to social purpose or even allow it no place at all, our “self” will have no sufficient social aim and our charity little or no social result. For this “self,” however, religion has substituted not St Paul’s conception of the spirit (πνεῦμα), but a soul, conceived as endowed with a substantial nature, able to enjoy and suffer quasi-material rewards and punishments in the after-life; and in so far as the safeguard of this soul by good deeds or almsgiving has become a paramount object, the purpose of charitable action has been translated from the actual world to another sphere. Thus, as we have seen, the aid of the poor has been considered not an object in itself, but as a means by which the almsgiver effects his own ulterior purpose and “makes God his debtor.” The problem thus handled raises the question of reward and also of punishment. Properly, from the point of view of charity, both are excluded. We may indeed act from a complexity of motives and expect a complexity of rewards, and undoubtedly a good act does refresh the “self,” and may as a result, though not as a reward, win approval. But in reality reward, if the word be used at all, is according to purpose; and the only reward of a deed lies in the fulfilment of its purpose. In the theory of almsgiving which we are discussing, however, act and reward are on different planes. The reward is on that of a future life; the act related to a distressed person here and now. The interest in the act on the doer’s part lies in its post-mortal consequences to himself, and not either wholly or chiefly in the act itself. Nor, as the interest ends with the act—the giving—can the intelligence be quickened by it. The questions “How? by whom? with what object? on what plan? with what result?” receive no detailed consideration at all. Two general results follow. In so far as it is thus practised, almsgiving is out of sympathy with social progress. It is indeed alien to it. Next also the self-contained, self-sustained poverty that will have no relief and does without it, is outside the range of its thought and understanding. On the other hand, this almsgiving is equally incapable of influencing the weak and the vicious; and those who are suffering from illness or trouble it has not the width of vision to understand nor the moral energy to support so that they shall not fall out of the ranks of the self-supporting. It believes that “the poor” will not cease out of the land. And indeed, however great might be the economic progress of the people, it is not likely that the poor will cease, if the alms given in this spirit be large enough in amount to affect social conditions seriously one way or the other. When we measure the effects of charity, this inheritance of divided thought and inconsistent counsels must be given its full weight.
The sub-apostolic church was a congregation, like a synagogue, the centre of a system of voluntary and personal relief, connected with the congregational meals (or ἀγάπαι) and the Eucharist, The organization of the parish and endowed charities. and under the supervision of no single officer or bishop. Out of this was developed a system of relief controlled by a bishop, who was assisted chiefly by deacons or presbyters, while the ἀγάπαι, consisting of offerings laid before the altar, still remained. Subsequently the meal was separated from the sacrament, and became a dole of food, or poor people’s meal—e.g. in St Augustine’s time in western Africa—and it was not allowed to be served in churches (A.D. 391). As religious asceticism became dominant, the sacrament was taken fasting; it appeared unseemly that men and women should meet together for such purposes, and the ἀγάπαι fell out of repute. Simultaneously it would seem that the parish παροικία became from a congregational settlement a geographical area.
The organization of relief at Rome illustrates both a type of administration and a transition. St Gregory’s reforms (A.D. 590) largely developed it. The first factor in the transition was the church fund of the second period of Christianity, about A.D. 150 to after 208 (Tertullian, Apol. 39). It served as a friendly fund, was supported by voluntary gifts, and was used to succour and to bury the poor, to help destitute and orphaned children, old household slaves and those who suffered for the faith. This fund is quite different from the collegia tenuiorum or funeratica of the Romans, which were societies to which the members paid stipulated sums at stated periods, for funeral benefits or for common meals (J.P. Waltzing, Corporations professionnelles chez les Romains, i. 313). It represents the charitable centre round which the parochial system developed. That system was adopted probably about the middle of the 3rd century, but in Rome the diaconate probably remained centralized. At the end of the 4th century Pope Anastasius had founded deaconries in Rome, and endowed them largely “to meet the frequent demands of the diaconate.” Gregory two hundred years later reorganized the system. He divided the fourteen old “regions” into seven ecclesiastical districts and thirty “titles” (or parishes). The parishes were under the charge of sixty-six priests; the districts were eleemosynary divisions. Each was placed under the charge of a deacon, not (Greg. Ep. xi. and xxviii.) under the priests (presbyteri titularii). Over the deacons was an archdeacon. It was the duty of the deacons to care for the poor, widows, orphans, wards, and old people of their several districts. They inquired in regard to those who were relieved, and drew up under the guidance of the bishop the register of poor (matricula). Only these received regular relief. In each district was an hospital or office for alms, of which the deacon had charge, assisted by a steward (or oeconomus). Here food was given and meals were taken, the sick and poor were maintained, and orphan or foundling children lodged. The churches of Rome and of other large towns possessed considerable estates, “the patrimony of the patron saints,” and to Rome belonged estates in Sicily which had not been ravaged by the invaders, and they continued to pay to it their tenth of corn, as they had done since Sicily was conquered. Four times a year (Milman, Lat. Christ, ii. 117) the shares of the (1) clergy and papal officers, (2) churches and monasteries, and (3) “hospitals, deaconries and ecclesiastical wards for the poor,” were calculated in money and distributed; and the first day in every month St Gregory distributed to the poor in kind corn, wine, cheese, vegetables, bacon, meal, fish and oil. The sick and infirm were superintended by persons appointed to inspect every street. Before the pope sat down to his own meal a portion was separated and sent out to the hungry at his door. The Roman plebs had thus become the poor of Christ (pauperes Christi), and under that title were being fed by civica annona and sportula as their ancestors had been; and the deaconries had superseded the “regions” and the “steps” from which the corn had been distributed. The hospitium was now part of a common organization of relief, and the sick were visited according to Jewish and early Christian precedent. How far kindly Romans visited the sick of their day we do not know. Alms and the annona were now, it would seem, administered concurrently; and there was a system of poor relief independent of the churches and their alms (unless these, organized, as in Scottish towns, on the ancient ecclesiastical lines, were paid wholly or in part to a central diaconate fund). Much had changed, but in much Roman thought still prevailed.
On lines similar to these the organization of poor relief in the middle ages was developed. In the provinces in the later empire the senate or ordo decurionum were responsible for the public provisioning of the towns (Fustel de Coulanges, La Gaule romaine, p. 251), and no doubt the care of the poor would thus in some measure devolve on them in times of scarcity or distress. On the religious side, on the other hand, the churches would probably be constant centres of almsgiving and relief; and then, further, when the Roman municipal system had decayed, each citizen (as in Charlemagne’s time, 742-814) was required to support his own dependants—a step suggestive of much after-history.
The change in sentiment and method could hardly be more strongly marked than by a comparison of “the Teaching” with St Ambrose’s (334-397) “Duties of the Clergy” (De Officiis Ministrorum). For the old instinctive obedience to a command there is now an endeavour to find a reasoned basis for charitable action. Pauperism is recognized. “Never was the greed of beggars greater than it is now.... They want to empty the purses of the poor, to deprive them of the means of support. Not content with a little, they ask for more.... With lies about their lives they ask for further sums of money.” “A method in giving is necessary.” But in the suggestions made there is little consistency. Liberality is urged as a means of gaining the love of the people; a new and a false issue is thus raised. The relief is neither to be “too freely given to those who are unsuitable, nor too sparingly bestowed upon the needy.” Everywhere there is a doctrine of the mean reflected through Cicero’s De Officiis, the doctrine insufficiently stated, as though it were a mean of quantity, and not that rightly tempered mean which is the harmony of opposing moods. The poor are not to be sent away empty. Those rejected by the church are not to be left to the “outer darkness” of an earlier Christianity. They must be supplied if they are in want. The methodic giver is “hard towards none, but is free towards all.” Consequently none are refused, and no account is taken of the regeneration that may spring up in a man from the effort towards self-help which refusal may originate. Thus after all it appears that method means no more than this—to give sometimes more, sometimes less, to all needy people. In the small congregational church of early Christianity, each member of which was admitted on the conditions of strictest discipline, the common alms of the faithful could hardly have done much harm within the body, even though outside they created and kept alive a horde of vagrant alms-seekers and pretenders. Now in this department at least the church had become the state, and discipline and a close knowledge of one’s fellow-Christians no longer safeguarded the alms. From Cicero is borrowed the thought of “active help,” which “is often grander and more noble,” but the thought is not worked out. From the social side the problem is not understood or even stated, and hence no principle of charity or of charitable administration is brought to light in the investigation. Still there are rudiments of the economics of charity in the praise of Joseph, who made the people buy the corn, for otherwise “they would have given up cultivating the soil; for he who has the use of what is another’s often neglects his own.” Perhaps, as St Augustine inspired the theology of the middle ages, we may say that St Ambrose, in the mingled motives, indefiniteness, and kindliness of this book, stands for the charity of the middle ages, except in so far as the movement which culminated in the brotherhood of St Francis awakened the intelligence of the world to wider issues.
In Constantinople the pauperism seems to have been extreme. The corn supplies of Africa were diverted there in great part when it became the capital of the empire. This must have left to Rome a larger scope for the development of the civic-religious administration of relief. St Chrysostom’s sermons give no impression of the rise of any new administrative force, alike sagacious and dominant. The appeal to give alms is constant, but the positive counsel on charitable work is nil. The people had the annona civica, and imperial gifts, corn, allowances (salaria) from the treasury granted for the poor and needy, and an annual gift of 50 gold pounds (rather more than £1400) for funerals. Besides these there were many institutions, and the begging and the almsgiving at the church doors. “The land could not support the lazy and valiant beggars.” There were public works provided for them; if they refused to work on them they were to be driven away. The sick might visit the capital, but must be registered and sent back (A.D. 382); the sturdy beggar was condemned to slavery. So little did alms effect. And in the East monasticism seems to have produced no firmness of purpose such as led to the organization of the church and of charitable relief under St Gregory.
Another movement of the Byzantine period was the establishment of the endowed charity. The Jewish synagogue long served as a place for the reception of strangers—a religious ξενοδοχεῖον. Probably the strangers referred to in “the Teaching” were so entertained. The table of the bishop and a room in his house served as the guest-chamber, for which afterwards a separate building was instituted. In the East the Jewish charitable inn first appears, and there took place the earliest extension of institutions. There was probably a demand for an elaboration of institutions as social changes made themselves felt in the churches. We have seen this in the case of the ἀγάπη. Similar changes would affect other branches of charitable work. The hospital (hospitalium, ξενοδοχεῖον) is defined as a “house of God in which strangers who lack hospitality are received” (Suicerus, Thesaur.), a home separated from the church; and round the church, out of the primitive ξενοδοχεῖον of early Christian times and the entertainment of strangers at the houses of members of the community, would grow up other similar charities. In A.D. 321 licence was given by Constantine to leave property to the Church. The churches were thus placed in the same position as pagan temples, and though subsequently Valentinian (A.D. 379) withdrew the permission on account of the shameless legacy-hunting of the clergy, in that period much must have been done to endow church and charitable institutions. In the same period grew to its height the passion for monasticism. This affected the parish and the endowed charity alike. Under its influence the deacon as an almoner tends to disappear, except where, as in Rome, there is an elaborate system of relief. Nor does it seem that deaconesses, widows, and virgins continued to occupy their old position as church workers and alms-receivers. Naturally when marriage was considered “in itself an evil, perhaps to be tolerated, but still degrading to human nature,” and (A.D. 385) the marriage of the clergy was prohibited, men, except those in charge of parishes, and women would join regular monastic bodies; the deacon, as almoner, would disappear, and the “widows” and virgins would become nuns. Thus there would grow up a large body of men and women living segregated in institutions, and forming a leisured class able to superintend institutional charities. And now two new officers appear, the eleemosynarius or almoner and the oeconomus or steward (already an assistant treasurer to the bishop), who superintend and distribute the alms and manage the property of the institution. (In the first six books of the Apost. Constit., A.D. 300, these officers are not mentioned.) In these circumstances the hospitium or hospital (ξενών, καταγώγιον) assumes a new character. It becomes in St Basil’s hands (A.D. 330-379) a resort not only for those who “visit it from time to time as they pass by, but also for those who need some treatment in illness.” And round St Basil at Caesarea there springs up a colony of institutions. Four kinds principally are mentioned in the Theodosian code: (i) the guest-houses (ξενοδοχεῖα); (2) the poor-houses (πτωχεῖα), where the poor (mendici) were housed and maintained (the πτωχεῖον was a general term also applied to all houses for the poor, the aged, orphans and sick); (3) there were orphanages (ὀρφανοτροφεῖα) for orphans and wards; and (4) there were houses for infant children (βρεφοτροφεῖα). Thus a large number of endowed charities had grown up. This new movement it is necessary to consider in connexion with the law relating to religious property and bequests, in its bearing on the rule of the monasteries, and in its effect on the family.