Mendicant order

“ The parochial clergy are like those teachers whose reward depends partly upon their salary, and partly upon the fees or honoraries which they get from their pupils; and these must always depend, more or less, upon their industry and reputation. The mendicant orders are like those teachers whose subsistence depends altogether upon their industry. They are obliged, therefore, to use every art which can animate the devotion of the common people. The establishment of the two great mendicant orders of St Dominic and St. ”

“ They do not whine or fawn like ordinary beggars, but lift their voices in execration when their appeals are not readily met and with their naked slate-coloured 96 bodies raised to their full height, they cast dust into the air to emphasise their maledictions. Whether by alms or thefts, the mendicant leads an easy, lazy life, his needs are well cared for by the charitable who firmly believe they “acquire merit” by ministering to them. ”

“ The sexes are strictly separated, as is invariably the case in all the other Dutch and Belgian institutions. By the penal code, a mendicant once condemned to a depôt de mendicité for begging, may be kept there during the remainder of his life; but in practice, he is allowed to leave the establishment whenever the commission of superintendence are satisfied that he is disposed to labour for his subsistence, without resorting to mendicancy. ”

“ From the Nuremberg mendicancy regulations Johannes Janssen quotes certain highly practical enactments which belong to the latter half of the 14th century. The so-called “meat and bread foundations,” which had been enriched by the Papal Indulgences granted to benefactors, were not available for any public beggars, but only for the genuine poor. In 1478 the town council issued a more minute mendicant ordinance. Here we read: “Almsgiving is a specially praiseworthy, virtuous work, and those who receive alms unworthily and unnecessarily lay a heavy burden of guilt on themselves.” ”

“ They agreed, nevertheless, that in all extensive communities, such as ours, circumstances will occur in which an individual, by the failure of his ordinary means of subsistence, will be exposed to the danger of perishing; that to refuse relief, and, at the same time, to punish mendicity, when it cannot be proved that the mendicant could have obtained subsistence by labour, is repugnant to the common sentiments of mankind; that it is repugnant to them to punish even depredation apparently committed as the only resource against want. ”

“ It has been well said that one-half of the world does not know how the other half lives, and the history of mendicants of every degree would furnish the outside public with strange revelations, many of which would appear almost incredible.
The mendicant poor are in every way a different race of beings to the working population of this country. ”

“ In whatever part of London I might be, if I asked for the residence of a mendicant, it was pretty sure to be in a quarter very remote from the one in which he asked relief.
The next was, that—
Those mendicants who professed to want work and not charity, always belonged to trades in which it was scarcely possible to give them employment without trusting them with valuable property. ”

“ Indeed this shame of seeking alms from those who have known the mendicant in better days, is a proof that the absence of poor laws takes away from the poorer classes one of the strongest incitements to industry; for instance, if every Pauper in Ireland were confined to his own parish, and compelled to beg from his acquaintances, the sense of shame alone would, by stirring them up to greater industry, reduce the number of mendicants one-half. ”

“ If the master of the house passes his hand outside and puts a thing into the hand of the mendicant, or takes something out of the mendicant's hand and brings it into the house, the master of the house is culpable and the mendicant is free.2 If the mendicant extends his hand into the house and the master takes something out of it, or puts something into it which is drawn to the outside by the mendicant, they are both free. ”

“ The poor to whom the citizens here refer are beggars; the poor householders who remained at home are not considered. Moreover in describing the sturdy vagabonds the word beggars is used, thus showing that it was the mendicant class of whom the citizens were thinking, and that they so far had little conception of distinguishing between the beggars and other poor. The citizens go on to say, that the classes of sturdy beggars they have in their mind are "the child unapt to learning," "the sore and sick when they be cured," and "such prisoners as are quit at the sessions." ”

“ An article in the penal code sets forth, in fact, that “the beggar is sent to the station-house for mendicants not as a punishment but as a measure of police, to be exercised at the discretion of the administrative authority.” In the first place, the man who begs is presumably without resources. Nor is it in prison that he will be able to create new ones for himself. To throw him into prison, then, and afterwards set him free in the same condition as before, would be to expose him once more to the commission of the very act for which he had been incarcerated. ”

“ If the common man was saved from starvation only by support from the resources of the state, it was the necessary consequence of this mendicant misery—although it also reciprocally appears as a cause of it—that he addicted himself to the beggar's laziness and to the beggar's good cheer. ”

“ In general, the House of Refuge is intended for vagrants, mendicants, loafers, and dissolute persons who are not thought to deserve the treatment of incorrigible offenders. The voluntary inmates correspond very closely to the typical unemployed person who applies for task work in our English workhouses. In no case may detention exceed a year, unless with the detainee's acquiescence, and as in the case of the Beggars' Depots, the Minister of Justice may order the immediate discharge of any person whose further confinement may appear to him unnecessary. ”

“ One of the circumstances that first arrests attention on visiting Ireland, is the prevalence of mendicancy. It is not perhaps the actual amount of misery existing amongst the mendicant class, great as that may be, which is most to be deprecated; but the falsehood and fraud which form a part of their profession, and spread by their example. Mendicancy appeals to our sympathies on behalf of vice, as well as want; and encouragement is often afforded to the one, by the relief intended for the other. ”

“ And yet with all its rigors the law does not attain its ends.
"Our towns," says the parliament of Brittany,5335 "are so filled with beggars it seems as if the measures taken to suppress mendicity only increase it."—"The principal highways," writes the intendant, "are infested with dangerous vagabonds and vagrants, actual beggars, which the police do not arrest, either through negligence or because their interference is not provoked by special solicitations."
What would be done with them if they were arrested? They are too many, and there is no place to put them. ”

“ It is rather the contrary that takes place, since the army of vagrants and mendicants is now mainly composed of those who have not been able to find work. Vagabondage and mendicity are at present punishable because of the importunity of the mendicants, the losses experienced by persons living in the country especially, and also because of the danger to society from the fact that the dangerous criminals are partly recruited from this class. ”

“ Those who are destitute must be relieved somehow, and must have some way of making their wants known: and therefore we see no alternative between the allowance of mendicity, under some modification or other, and the establishment of the very system which is now bearing so oppressively down upon the country. And we do confess, that rather than have such a system, we would sit down under mendicity in its very worst form! ”

“ In times that were hard and wild and disordered, when there was no system of poor-relief save through the Church, the lot of widows and of women and girls who had no male protectors was exceedingly hard, and for such the mendicant associations had a clear attraction as a means of asylum and refuge. ”

“ Then I began to look for a bed, and asked another policeman where the City Lodging House was, as I was in need of shelter. He raised his hand and pointed through the alley to a bright light, the City Jail. And so in this city, amidst the “Latter-Day Saints,” men are compelled to lose their self-respect, and seek shelter in a vermin-infested city jail, or else become a common “Moocher.”
I did become a mendicant and went to the Y. M. C. A., but they could do nothing for me. I was about to enter the Salvation Army, when the lights went out and the place closed for the night. ”

“ In some cases, then, it is more profitable, and in all cases more easy, not to work. In consequence of these facts we read very often that the public ought not to give to these idlers. But the public cannot distinguish this class of mendicants from the others. It is certainly true that professional mendicity would diminish if nothing were given to mendicants; but on the other hand the great misery among the other poor would be aggravated still more. ”

“ All beggars are apprehended by the police; if able to work, they are sent to the penal colonies; if aged or infirm, or unable to perform out-door work, they are sent to the workhouses; and although the discipline of the workhouses is defective, and the management in many respects faulty, yet with the aid of the penal colonies they secure the repression of mendicancy.
“In the workhouses of the penal colonies to which the able-bodied mendicants are sent, one ward is used in common as a dormitory, refectory, and workshop. The inmates sleep in hammocks, and are very coarsely clad. ”

“ It would be a nice point to decide, whether the horrors of passing every day among the mendicant friars are more revolting than the pernicious riches of the other orders, which reduce so many families into mendicants. ”

“ All that I have just said demonstrates sufficiently, I believe, that the cause named above plays a considerable rôle in the etiology of mendicity and vagrancy. It is still necessary to give an answer to the question: do all the individuals who fall under the unfavorable conditions named under one and two, become vagrants or mendicants? It is evident that the answer must be negative. Three expedients offer themselves to one who has fallen into the blackest poverty; mendicity, theft, and suicide. ”

“ Mendicants.
Mendicity is not forbidden by law; every person who is considered unable to obtain by his own industry subsistence for himself and his family may station himself in the streets, and ask charity of the passers by. The government and the local authorities have often, but in vain, endeavoured to repress the innumerable abuses which have followed. But the regulations which have been made for this purpose have been ineffectual and even nugatory. The law, however, which forbids the poor to beg out of their parishes, is frequently put in force. ”

“ If he can prove that he has been driven to beg by poverty alone, he is recommended to the care of the poor authorities of his district. If he has been arrested several times before, he is taken immediately to a justice, by whom he is condemned to a punishment, varying, according to circumstances, from a month's to three months' hard labor in prison. These are only such beggars as have been caught in the act, so to speak, and have papers certifying to their identity. Those who are found without passports are taken in hand by the police alone. ”

“ The begging system of the Friars, perhaps more than any other cause, contributed to swell the ranks of vagabonds. These religious mendicants, who had long been increasing in number and dissoluteness, gavePg x to beggars sundry lessons in hypocrisy, and taught them, in their tales of fictitious distress, how to blend the troubles of the soul with the infirmities of the body. Numerous systems of religious imposture were soon contrived, and mendicants of a hundred orders swarmed through the land. ”

“ These mendicants live on public favour and contributions; they wear clothes, are deemed harmless, never ask alms, but are always willing to accept them, and have no laws of celibacy, as is the case with some wandering beggars in India, who are naked except the wrapper; sometimes they settle, making fresh converts, but many wander from city to city, always finding people disposed to administer to their necessities. They are distinguished from other sects, by each individual carrying a small tambourine, and wearing clothing of a deep buff colour. ”

“ To prevent all communication between the mendicants of different sexes and ages, the porter is ordered to keep locked the doors of the dormitories, the work-shops, the courts for recreation, and other places to which the inmates have access, as soon as they have quitted them, in pursuance of the regulations of the place. ”

“ I found many men who had served time in the jails for the crime of poverty. I was told by a citizen at the time of my visit that three hundred men from one of their prisons were compelled to put up ice for the city of Toledo, receiving no recompense for their work but a cell and prison fare,—slavery more damnable than ever cursed the South. These were then pushed out on to the world again to become mendicants and criminals. Facts calling for prison reform as told in romances carry a great weight for good, but enforced reform is what is demanded of us to-day. Let us not be slow to act. ”