James W. Brodman

Ransoming captives in crusader Spain : the Order of Merced on the Christian-Islamic frontier

This volume examines a thirteenth-century order of friars that specialized in the ransoming of Christians captured in the wars and raids of the medieval Spanish reconquest.

Charity and welfare : hospitals and the poor in medieval Catalonia

Hospitals were broadly conceived in the Middle Ages as establishments that received pilgrims and travelers, tended to the poor, and, with the professionalization of medicine, increasingly came to provide care to the sick and dying. In Charity and Welfare, James Brodman surveys the networks of hospitals and charitable institutions in medieval Catalonia that gave food to the hungry, dowries to indigent women, shelter to the homeless, and palliative care to the ill. The book shows how, just as contemporary society struggles with the issues of welfare reform, managed health care, and assistance to the elderly, so did the people of the Middle Ages deal with questions of who to help and what criteria to use to make those decisions. In their assessments, they made a clear distinction between charity, aid given gratuitously and indiscriminately to others, and welfare, assistance targeted toward certain groups for particular, desired ends. The author concludes that Catalan hospitals depended upon the close collaboration of church and state, a mixture of voluntary and public funding, and a combination of religious and secular values.

Fable and royal power: The origins of the Mercedarian foundation story

The tradition that the Mercedarians, a Catalan ransoming order dating from the reign of Jaume I, was established by the monarchy is traced to the fourteenth century and seen within the context of church–state relations. The royal legend was originated by Jaume II for purely fiscal reasons, and was not intended as a challenge to papal prerogatives. For very different reasons, the legend was taken up and elaborated by Pere III just after the Black Death. At first the kings intention was merely to prevent a Mercedarian merger with the Trinitarians, a redemptionist order with strong roots in France and Castile. Soon, however, the king argued that this royal foundation gave the monarchy a ius patronus, and on this basis the king began to seek the nomination of loyalists to offices within the Order. At the same time, the king assumed extraordinary powers over individual Mercedarians, who as chaplains and familiars served as royal agents. This royal appropriation of the Mercedarians was part of a broader strate...

Unequal in Charity? Women and Hospitals in Medieval Catalonia

This study asks whether charity in Catalonia had, in fact, any basis in gender, how treatment here compared with what historians have found in Italy, and what all of this says about the role that gender played within Catalan society. Late medieval Catalan charities assisted both men and women, but in different ways. Orphans, the sick, and the homeless of both genders received shelter and care, but, to some degree, males in these categories received more benefits than females. Other charity, such as assistance to poor, single women and to prostitutes, targeted females specifically and had no male counterpart. Gender considerations in the calculation of Catalan authorities seem to reflect an interest in promoting and preserving families and a social consciousness that privileged the so-called deserving poor over their marginalized sisters and brothers.