Bull of Nicholas IV.

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to do more than the work of a timely charitable impulse.

The conditions that led to the crusade of

that philanthropist Where the religious

Vincent of Paul antedated by several hundred years. 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.

In 1596 the city of Amsterdam began to make provision for the abandoned children.

The beginning of the movement in Paris, we learn, was the result of the terrible conditions that followed the war in 1360, 1361, and 1362.1 Poverty and misery were everywhere, and a large number of orphans practically lived and died in the streets, says Breuil in his Antiquités de Paris. Various charitable people took in some of these unfortunates, the Hotel-Dieu being overrun; but, as the conditions were but little ameliorated, on February 7, 1362, a group of citizens went to the "Reverend father in God, Messire Jean de Meulant, 88th Bishop of Paris," and discussed with him the frightful conditions of the poor boys and girls of Paris. The evils attending the homeless condition of the latter were especially considered. We are told that the result of the conference was that the Bishop gave them permission to institute and erect a hospital of Saint Esprit and bestowed on each one of the conferees forty days' indulgence.

The institution that arose as a result of this conference has been criticized as being narrow in its purpose, inasmuch as the rules declared that only legitimate children, born of parents in Paris, were to be admitted; but the restriction, it must be understood, was necessary, in view of the small funds in hand.

But humanitarian feeling was growing; and people were beginning to be proud of being 1 Ramcle, p. 40.

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thoughtful and kind. It was no longer a mark of superiority to be lustful of blood. Botterays, in a Latin poem on Paris, spoke of the splendid way in which the orphan children of Paris were brought up, referring to the Hospital of Saint Esprit and the House of the Enfants-Dieu. After long years of nominal acquiescence in its teachings, the barbarians of the North were really beginning to accept the Christianity of Christ.

Cited by de Breuil.

CHAPTER XXI

CRUELTY TO CHILDREN IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ATTEMPT AT REGULATION -DEFORMING CHILDREN FOR MOUNTEBANK PURPOSES ANECDOTE OF VINCENT DE PAUL-HIS WORK AND HIS SUCCESS.

F

ROM Datheus to Vincent de Paul the general history of the child in Europe moves as

from one mountain peak to another with a long valley of gloom in between. Datheus has received no credit; Vincent de Paul has been justly recognized as a deserving contemporary of that list of brilliant men who went to make up the Golden Age of France. Golden Age that it was, with its highly polished manners, there, under the reign of the elegant Mazarin and the delicate Anne of Austria, it was no uncommon sight to see a child lying dead on the pavements, while others died of misery and hunger under the very eyes of the passers-by. Not a day passed, say the chroniclers, when the men who had charge of the sewers or the police did not draw out at least the body of one child.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century Europe, and France especially, was war-ridden.

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During the sixteenth century, the religious and charitable impulses had suffered, first through the national war, then by the factional wars, and finally by religious wars.

I

"The religious war," said the historian of Languedoc, "almost entirely destroyed the Hospital of Montpellier and even the order of Saint Esprit was dying out throughout France."

It was a curious and disjointed society, that of the France of that day. Kingdoms there were within the royal domain; the laws of the large city frequently clashing with those of the province within which it was located; here and there provinces following their own laws rather than the laws of the kingdom itself. In some provinces the Church dominated; in others the nobles; elsewhere, the two classes were beginning to melt into the body of the nation which occasionally overrode both. 2

At Aix, for instance, it was the custom to place the abandoned child in a religious home where, as in the rest of Provence, the unknown bastard was charged to the nearest hospital. Practically the same law was observed in Bretagne.

At Poitiers, a decree on September 15, 1579, "condemning the provision by which religious orders nourished infants found at their door," ordered that the monasteries and ecclesiastic chapters of the place should be called on to regu• Histoire de Languedoc, tome iii., p. 43.

Ramcle, p. 63.