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Medieval Society

The Urban Poor

These fell into two categories, native-born and immigrants. The urban poor in the Middle Ages were much the same as the urban poor in any era: they were those who were either completely without work or who were so chronically under-employed that they were reduced to relying upon charity in one form or another. Some were people who had become disabled. Some were people whose trade failed them in one way or another ("gone out of business" in modern parlance). Some were born into poverty. Sometimes the poverty was transient, the result of economic shifts or warfare.

The cities generally recognized care of their own poor as a civic responsibility. The town's churches took the lead here, for the care of the poor was a historic duty of the Catholic Church. Some cities had established a dole, either permanently or to be used in times of crisis. And the guilds themselves often had a treasury that could be used to care for the sick, the unemployed, and the families of deceased guildsmen. By the late Middle Ages, such activity had become part of guild regulations in many cities, so that the guild acted as a relief agency for its members.

Cities were places of refuge for the countryside. In wartime, the peasants of the countryside fled to the city walls for protection. In famine they came to the cities for food. During economic crises, they came looking for work.

Cities typically tried to accommodate such refugees, provided such accommodation did not imperil the city itself. There was a complex relation with the countryside. Some towns exercised jurisdiction over neighboring villages and felt a particular obligation toward them, while other towns' authority ended at the city walls and so did their sense of obligation. Even the most magnanimous of cities, however, found occasions when it was necessary to get tough toward a flood of refugees. At such times, a city might order all non-native poor be expelled and the city gates shut behind them. There were also times when the city shut its gates ahead of time. This happened during war, when a city knew it would be besieged, and could not undertake to feed the fleeing peasant population along with its own.