The mediaeval hospitals of England / by Rotha Mary Clay.

Clay, Rotha Mary

Date:: 1909

Credit: The mediaeval hospitals of England / by Rotha Mary Clay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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$plied, I will. This formula occurs in the Exeter Pontifical, compiled about nine hundred years ago, and is repeated in Osmund's Sarum Use. There were, of course, pilgrims among those who sojourned in early hostels. Englishmen have always loved travel. Not only did our Saxon forefathers journey to Rome (receiving shelter by the way in hospitals of English foundation), but they constantly visited their national shrines. Probably a fresh impetus was given to pilgrimage by the coming of the Normans. Monastic life was strengthened, and this was a guarantee of hos- pitality. Guests are to be received as if they were Christ Himself, said the rule of St. Benedict. In the century after the Conquest, as in those which preceded it, the chief works of mercy were done in the monastery. There was the hospitium within the abbey-gate, as at St. Mary's, York; and the Strangers' Hall at Winchester. Then followed the shelter outside the walls, as at Battle, referred to {circa 1076) as the house of the pilgrims which is called the hospital. During the twelfth century more indep^dent foun- dations became common. All sorts and conditions of men were lodged—wayfarers, invalids, and even lepers. About the year 1148, St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield, was the resort of sick pilgrims, of whom many and innumerable were schewid tokynnys of myracles. The patients who flocked to the famous shrine and hospital were langwissyng men greuyd with uariant sorys ; one sought remedie of his akynge hede, another suffered from bleriednes of yen (eyes), and yet another from ryngyng of his erys. Victims of the falling sickness$

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