| The hospital was the most common and successful pre-modern European charitable institution. Hospitals existed in all European states subscribing to Christian dogmas of charitable giving and represented their most ritualized expression. As such, hospital functions reflected, and were affected by, the social relations between donors and receivers of alms. Hospitals thus served as the mirrors of charity.; Unfortunately, English-language studies of European hospitals have so far concentrated only on the best known Western European institutions, almost entirely ignoring their Eastern European counterparts. At the same time, western historians have developed two seemingly irreconcilable explanations for the hospital phenomenon, imagining that charitable action derives either from socio-economic, or religious causes.; By introducing the phenomenon of Polish hospitals into the existing discussion, and exploring both the socio-economic and religious causes of hospital formation, this dissertation will in a small way help correct that historiographical imbalance. By analyzing the origins of hospitals in Poland, their development in cities and the countryside, the methods of their funding, their administrative practices, and, finally, the experiences of the sheltered poor, the present work suggests that Polish hospitals did not always follow western trends and that both economic and religious-inspired motivations combined to define the Polish society's interaction with its institutionalized poor.; While certain Pan-European events such as the Black Death only minimally affected Polish charitable practices, the Counter-Reformation, in contrast, had a tremendous impact on all aspects of Polish hospital care provisions. Previously, Polish hospital administration depended on interactions between Polish elites---principally the nobility, the church, and the municipal organizations. Conflicts between them translated into changes within the hospital environment. After the Council of Trent, however, the Catholic Church enlisted Polish hospitals to serve as weapons in the religious struggle. Ecclesiastical domination of hospital institutions lasted until governmental reforms of the eighteenth century.; This dissertation positions the history of pre-modern Polish hospitals within the larger patterns of European hospitalization. It adds new data from a neglected region to the current discussion of hospitalization by western European historians, and it shows how social interactions and religious assumptions both helped shape hospital development. |
