So the sheep gradually are separated from the goats. Some of the charlatans are chased away. Some of those who receive loaves of bread and broken meat are perhaps no more deserving than the rejected. But dare one really be too critical? After all, the reason why great folk give to beggars is to cancel sins. If the beggars are undeserving, that hardly diminishes the credit with the saints for Conon and Adela. It would be calamitous if there were suddenly to be no poor, worthy or unworthy, for how then, by parting with some of their abundance, could the rich buy peace for their souls? Fortunately, however, there is no such danger. Our Lord has directly said, "The poor ye have always with you," a most comforting word of Scripture. Poverty, then, is a blessed institution even for the fortunate in this world; it enables them to procure entrance to heaven by acts of charity. As for persons who are needy, of course, if they bear their lot with Christian resignation they accumulate a blessed stock of indulgence which will cut short their durance in purgatory.
Physical Severity of Mediaeval Life
The morning dole is a regular feature at St. Aliquis, as at every other castle and monastery. The amount of food given away is really very great. But there is next to no attempt on the part of the average seigneury really to remedy this mendicancy—to devise honest work within the capacities of the blind or the lame; to give systematic relief to the widow; to put the idiot lad in some decent institution. Every premium is placed upon the idlers, the impostors, and the low-browed rogues who prefer anything to honest toil. In the times of real famine, even, the temptation to cease prematurely struggling against hard times and to lapse into beggardom is very dangerous. Despite, therefore, much genuine kindness on the part of many donors, charity in the Feudal Age is allowed more than ordinarily to cover a multitude of sins—alike those of the givers and the receivers. Upon the St. Aliquis barony there is an astonishing number of unabashed drones and parasites.
These miserable folk, however, have some excuse. Conditions of life in the Feudal Age, even for the cavaliers, are very severe. Men and women begin the duties of life young, mature young, grow old young. Henry II of Anjou and England was only forty-seven when they began to call him "old." Philip Augustus was only fifteen when he was capable of assuming the actual duties of a responsible monarch. Many a baron is gray headed at forty. When he is fifty his sons may often be intriguing to supplant their superannuated father. If this is true of the nobility, what of the toiling peasantry? We have seen how Georges and Jeanne are aged before their time.
Grinding toil by weakening the body, of course, leaves it exposed to many ordinary diseases. But certainly conditions in castle and village open the doors to extraordinary plagues as well. The age is happily ignorant of sanitary precautions which more sophisticated mortals will consider a matter of course. The peasants "almost live on the manure heap." The clergy (though not themselves so uncleanly) seldom preach the virtues of bathing; indeed, their discourses on "despising the body" apparently discourage the practice. It is hard to keep meat any length of time unless it is salted, and the vast amounts of salt meat consumed everywhere are direct promoters of scurvy and gangrene. We have seen that nearly all the clothing worn close to the body is woolen. This retains filth, is hard to wash, and irritates the skin, another cause for frequent dermal diseases—scrofula, the itch, and things even worse.
Fearful Plagues and Mortality
A LEPER