Robert de Courson and the Northern Reformers

This chapter, the first study of hospital reform under papal legate Robert de Courson, offers a new picture of the legation in preparation for Lateran IV. Courson’s hospital decree is well-known from his councils of Paris (1213) and Rouen (1214). The chapter begins by exploring the origins of the decree, finding that it did not emerge from Courson’s own moral theology, nor from the Parisian theological circle of which he was a leading member. Documentary evidence reveals an earlier iteration of the same decree and unearths a lost first council under Courson, at Reims (1213). Further investigation reveals that the legation was not launched at Paris, as has always been assumed, but with a preaching tour of Flanders and Brabant in June 1213, followed by the council at Reims. The new geography offers a new source for the hospital reform, which is explored through the spread of hospital rules, westward out of Brabant, in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. It argues, finally, that the reform was closely tied to the beguine movement and, especially, to Jacques de Vitry. After Courson’s council at Rouen (1214), it was not adopted at any other council, including Lateran IV.

Managing a Hospital’s Property

This chapter demonstrates the surprising economic power of hospitals and their prominent role in the larger society, including their relationships and conflicts with other institutions. Champagne's largest and wealthiest hospitals received income from ovens and mills; the sale of grain and wine; various kinds of rents and tithes; the sale of arable land, vineyards, and forests; and the provision of interest loans. The diversity of these hospitals' holdings is remarkable, as is the degree to which these charitable and religious institutions were engaged in various kinds of markets. Those managing the properties belonging to hospitals were very much thinking about the long-term economic growth of their institutions. In the eyes of Jacques de Vitry and other church reformers, what these hospitals were doing with the alms they received was regarded as “hoarding,” since they were not immediately dispensing alms to those most in need, but investing in income-producing fiefs, arable land, vineyards, forests, houses, mills, and various kinds of rents. While it was certainly true that the alms given to hospitals were used for pittances of food and clothing for the sick poor or to pay a hospital chaplain who supplied what was thought to be life-saving sacramental medicine or the countless other needs these institutions had, the reality was that unlike some of the weak and vulnerable guests they served, some hospitals were powerful landlords and major players in the urban economy.