Work · Renaissance & Humanism
On Assistance to the Poor
A proposal to the city of Bruges that the civic authority register the poor, provide work and education, and organise relief instead of leaving it to begging and private alms.
Introduction
Vives wrote “On Assistance to the Poor” in Bruges in 1526 and dedicated it to the city’s magistrates. Begging, disease and vagrancy were growing in the towns of the Low Countries, and several cities were reorganising relief. The first book grounds the duty of help in human need and Christian charity; the second turns to practice. The city should register the poor in every parish, distinguish those able to work from the sick and old, find work for the able, even for the blind, care for the sick in hospitals, educate abandoned children and fund all this from the revenues of foundations and gifts managed under public supervision. Begging is to end, but no one is to be left without support. The book was widely debated; in Spain Domingo de Soto objected in 1545 that the poor must keep their freedom to beg and to move. It is read today as an early design of municipal welfare.
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