Dissertation Information for Jennifer L. GreenNAME:
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SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: MPACT Status: Fully Complete Title: Charity to the poor in medieval Spain: The Catalan diocese of Girona, 1180-1285 Abstract: This archivally-based study examines the development of charitable institutions in the thirteenth-century Catalan diocese of Girona, in the Crown of Aragon. Its major focus is on changes in the nature of almsgiving charities and hospitals for the poor. Prior to the thirteenth-century, Girona's charitable institutions had been entirely under ecclesiastical administration. During the period under study, organized charity in Girona, as elsewhere in western Europe, began to come increasingly under the influence of prosperous members of the urban laity. A detailed analysis of the nature of the increasing lay involvement in Girona's charities, a comparison to similar changes occuring in other parts of the Crown of Aragon and Occitania based on secondary sources, and suggestions as to why Catalan charitable institutions developed as they did in that period, are provided. The interpretive approach used to analyze the archival data emphasizes the significance of the needs and desires of providers of charity in determining the path of institutional development in Girona. The changing needs of the poor are not discounted, but surviving records provide information primarily about the providers of charity, rather than the recipients, so that to a large extent the study's focus is determined by the exigencies of the data. It is found that although lay benefactors, who began to participate in organized philanthropy in thirteenth-century Girona, attempted to model their charitable endeavors after traditional ecclesiastical models, they subtly--or at times substantially--changed the charities with which they became involved. The changes are explained, in part, by reference to the now-current theory of the widespread influence of new forms of popular piety that emphasized the importance of charity to the poor, especially for urbanites tainted by striving after financial profits. Simultaneously, however, the changes are found to provide evidence of an increasing alienation of prosperous urbanites from those who lacked material wealth, as shown by the development of institutions that distanced wealthy givers from the poor who received their largesse. |
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