The Medieval Hospitals of St John the Baptist at Oxford and St Bartholomew of London from Foundation to 1300

The Medieval Hospitals of St John the Baptist at Oxford and St Bartholomew of London From Foundation to 1300 Gillian Bridge B.A., University of Victoria, 1999 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of History O Gillian Bridge, 2005 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. Supervisor: Dr Timothy S. Haskett ABSTRACT A study of the medieval hospitals of St Bartholomew of Smithfield, London and St John the Baptist at Oxford from their foundations in the twelfth century to 1300. Charters, cartularies, papal bulls, episcopal letters, visitation records and other documents were examined to shed light on the endowments and functioning of these hospitals asking the questions: who gave to whom, and why; where were these hospitals located and how did their architecture correlate to the physical and spiritual goals of such institutions; what was the role played by these hospitals in their communities? Contemporary notions of charity were investigated to place the great generosity shown by so many individuals to these two hospitals during the twelfth and thirteen centuries within the spiritual context of the period. Evidence was sought but not found in the records for medical treatment or for the presence of physicians and surgeons at these hospitals. CONTENTS Acknowledgements List of abbreviations 1 Introduction 2 Formal Views of Charity in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Charity Purgatory and Suffrages Confraternities and Chanties The Testament 3 The Endowments of St Bartholomew's and St John's Hospitals Charters Endowments The Hospitals as Sources of Charitable Finance Benefactors and Trends in Giving 4 The Physical Environments Choosing the Sites The Precincts The Infirmary Halls Water Sources Burial Grounds 5 Founders and Functional Organization Founders and Refounders Rules Masters Staff - Brothers, Lay Brothers and Sisters Inmates Communal Life within the Community 6 Summary and Conclusions Epilogue Appendix I Tables and Graph Appendix I1 Maps and Illustrations Appendix 111 List of the Masters of the Hospitals of St Bartholomew and St John Bibliography ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I wish to thank my supervisor, Dr Timothy S. Haskett, for giving me the opportunity to undertake this journey, for his rigorous scholarship, his invaluable guidance and his unstinting generosity with that precious resource, time. My gratitude also goes to Emily Freer as I have greatly benefited from her Latin skills and from her constructive suggestions. I would also like to thank Professor Hamar Foster who clarified several points on Mortmain legislation despite his own heavy work commitments. Because of the distance between Canada and England, some aspects of my study would have been more diflicult without the expert long-distance assistance of Magdalen College archivist, Dr. Robin Darwall-Smith, and the archivists of St Bartholomew's hospital, Ms. Marion Rae and Ms. Samantha Farhall, who were all unfailingly helpful both by email and during my memorable visits to their archives. Finally, I would like to express my thanks to my family for their encouragement and support and to my husband for waiting out my grand obsession with two medieval hospitals. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BL British Library Cart. HSB Cartulary of the Hospital of St Bartholomew Cart. HSJB I, 11, III Cartulary of the Hospital of St John the Baptist, 3 vols. HIG Oxford, Magdalen archives, Hospitalium in Genere Mac Oxford, Magdalen archives, Macray Calendar of Deeds VCH Victoria History of the Counties of England (Victoria County History) CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION As knowledge of the human body and its workings down to the molecular level becomes more profound and as medicine and medical and surgical treatments become more and more complex, more invasive and more effective so the liklihood of a stay in hospital for all sections of the population of the Western world has increased. This was not true for people in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in England, the period and location of this study. The rich and sick person would have called in a physician to study and balance his humours with diet, emetics, clysters and bloodletting, to examine his pulse and his respiration, to analyse his urine, to cast his horoscope to determine the reason for his sickness and the optimum time for any treatments, and to supervise the barbersurgeon in any bloodletting considered necessary. Competant and less cornpetant midwives were available for birthing. The urban rich probably had a choice of physician to call, noble families retained their own. For the poor, it was a very different matter. They fell sick, endured, got better, or died in their homes, in the fields, on the streets, and a few did so in one of the large number of small hospitals scattered throughout the towns and countryside of medieval England. Unlike the secular hospitals of today, all the hospitals in this period were religious institutions and were frequently referred to in charters and chronicles as domus dei or maisondieu. The role of the hospital in the treatment of disease was small, largely confined to bed rest and a more nourishing diet; emphasis on the health of the soul was paramount. The hospital's role in society was multivalent and may be gauged by an examination of their foundation charters and their ordinances. For example, St Giles's Hospital in Nonvich founded by Walter Suffield, bishop of Norwich, in 1249 was to provide thirty beds for sick paupers, care for elderly priests unable to function because of infirmity and relief for the hungry outside the gates. Later in the century provision was also made for the schooling of seven poor but talented youths.1 Other hospitals like St Leonard's at York, the largest and wealthiest hospital in medieval England, provided for 225 poor and infirm in the late thirteenth century and also served as a children's home for those whose mothers had died giving birth to them in the hospital.2 St Thomas's hospital, Southwark, was founded as a house for converts and poor ~hildren.~Some hospitals were exclusive. The ordinances made by Bishop Joscelin of Bath and Wells in 1219 for St John Bridgwater banned the admittance of lepers, lunatics, persons having the falling sickness or any contagious disease, pregnant women, sucking infants or any 'intolerable person' even if poor or infirm.4 Yet other hospitals specialized, some served lepers such as Harbledown near Canturbury, others such as the hospital of St John the Baptist, Chester, founded in 1232 'for the sustentation of poor and silly persons' were for the treatment of the in~ane.~In the early fourteenth century, William Elsyng founded a hospital, St Mary without Cripplegate, for the care of 100 sick paupers, with preference being given to blind or paralysed priests.6 However, there was one featwe that hospitals almost always shared: an obligation to care for the poor and infirm, 'pauperes et infirmi' as they were identified in so many of the charters. One other common function of the medieval hospital can be guessed from the derivation of the word 'hospital.' Latin hospes means both host and guest, and hospitium a place where hospitality is both given and received. So one of the early hctions of the hospital was as hospice for poor wayfarers and pilgrims and as such it mirrors the services provided by monastic institutions. The military order of the Knights of St John took the additional name of Hospitallers from their work as protectors of a hospice and infirmary for pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Their dedication to the poor and infirm was written in ringing terms in 'Carole Rawcliffe, "'Gret criyng and joly chauntynge": life, death and liturgy at St Giles's hospital, Norwich, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,' Counties and Communities: Essays on East Anglian History, eds. Carole Rawcliffe, Roger Virgoe and Richard Wilson (Norwich: East Anglian Studies, 1996), 38-9. 2Patricia Cullum, 'Cremetts and conodies: care of the poor and sick at St Leonard's Hospital, York, in the Middle Ages,' Borthwick Papers (1 99 1): 10. 3~othaMary Clay, The Mediaeval Hospitals ofEngland ( London: Methuen, 1909), 22. 4Nicholas Orme and Margaret Webster, The English Hospital: 1070-1570 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1995) 58. 'Martha Carlin, Medieval Southwark (London: Hambledon, 1996) 33. 6~aroleRawcliffe, 'The Hospitals of Later Medieval London,' Medical History (1984): 18. the twelfth century. They were to serve '[their] lords the poor, [their] lords the sick.'7 The medieval understanding of the word 'hospital' can be seen to encompass four general types of institution: the hospital for the poor and infirm, almshouses, leperhouses and other specialist institutions, and hospices for the poor traveller and pilgrim.8 All these categories of medieval hospitals depended for their functioning upon the charity of their surrounding communities and were very vulnerable to both local and general political and economic events, and because the larger hospitals came to be landowners, they were also vulnerable to the business skills and probity - and conversely the ineptitude, dishonesty and greed - of their masters. This study will look at the functioning of two of the larger of such hospitals, St John the Baptist's at Oxford and St Bartholomew's of Smithfield in London. The function of one of these hospitals, St John's, became increasingly devoted to the maintenance of poor scholars and it was eventually subsumed into Magdalen College in the fifteenth ~entury.~The other, St Bartholomew's, remains one of the largest, most important and prestigious of the London hospitals to this day. These two hospitals have been chosen as they were both founded in the twelfth century, were similar in size, were both under Augustinian rule and both served urban populations, and were both recipients of considerable charitable donations in the form of both real estate and rents.

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