Pauperes recreare: accoglienza e aiuto ai poveri nelle comunità monastiche (secoli VI-XI)

In early Middle Ages, the western tradition requested to those who wanted to enter a monastic community to choose poverty by renouncing to their earthly assets, and at the same time to maintain the awareness of the existence of the involuntary poor, embodying the image of Christ. Monastic rules and practice reveal that helping the poor was a marginal aspect in the monks’ life, which gave preminence to searching for a spiritual path to get closer to God, by means of fasting, praying, and daily labouring. However, hospitality functions in monasteries changed according to social classes, hospitale pauperum, hospitale divitum, hospitale religiosorum. The exclusion from the monasteries was balanced with, sometimes substantial, alms to the outside, thus confirming that the poor had only a symbolic and liturgical function in the monastic life. In the evolution of monasticism, the tendency is to delegate more and more to laymen the assistance to the poor, by means of a network of outside hospitals and xenodochia, controlled by the monasteries.