le, was the charge of the church. The church strengthened the
feeling of kindness for those in want, widows, orphans and the sick. It
lessened the degradation of the "actresses," and, co-operating with
Stoic opinion, abolished the slaughter of the gladiatorial shows. It
created a popular "dogmatic system and moral discipline," which paganism
failed to do; but it produced no prophet of charity, such as enlarged
the moral imagination of the Jews. It ransomed slaves, as did paganism
also, but it did not abolish slavery. Large economic causes produced
that great reform. The serf attached to the soil took the place of the
slave. The almsgiving of the church by degrees took the place of
_annona_ and _sportula_, and it may have created pauperism. But
dependence on almsgiving was at least an advance on dependence founded
on a civic and hereditary right to relief. As the _colonus_ stood higher
than the slave, so did the pauper, socially at any rate, free to support
himself, exceed the _colonus_. Bad economic conditions and traditions,
and a bad system of almsgiving, might enthral him. But the way, at
least, was open; and thus it became possible that charity, working in
alliance with good economic traditions, should in the end accomplish the
self-support of society, the independence of the whole people.

PART V.--MEDIEVAL CHARITY AND ITS DEVELOPMENT

It remains to trace the history of thought and administration in
relation to (1) the development of charitable responsibility in the
parish, and the use of tithe and church property for poor relief; and
(2) the revision of the theory of charity, with which are associated the
names of St Augustine (354-430), St Benedict (480-542), St Bernard
(1091-1153), St Francis (1182-1226), and St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).
(3) There follows, in reference chiefly to England, a sketch of the
dependence of the poor under feudalism, the charities of the parish, the
monastery and the hospital--the medieval system of endowed charity; the
rise of gild and municipal charities; the decadence at the close of the
15th century, and the statutory endeavours to cope with economic
difficulties which, in the 16th century, led to the establishment of
statutory serfdom and the poor-laws. New elements affect the problem of
charity in the 17th and 18th centuries; but it is not too much to say
that almost all these headings represent phases of thought or
institutions which in later forms are interwoven with the ch