England under the Angevin Kings, Volume IINorgate, Kate
History
England under the Angevin Kings, Volume II
Norgate, Kate
Anjou, House of; England -- Civilization -- 1066-1485; Great Britain -- History -- Angevin period, 1154-1216
But the count-king did not build for himself alone. It was, above
all, with works of public usefulness that he delighted to adorn his
realms. His beneficence indeed took a different shape from that of
his predecessors. Church-building and abbey-founding met with little
sympathy from him; throughout his whole dominions, only six religious
houses, in the strict sense, could claim him as their founder; and
even one of these was as much military as religious, for it was a
commandery of knights Templars.[948] But no sovereign was ever more
munificent in providing for the sick and needy. Not only do the Norman
Exchequer-rolls contain frequent mention of sums set apart out of the
ducal revenues for the support of lazar-houses and hospitals in the
chief towns of the several bailiwicks;[949] nineteen years before the
completion of his own palace at Caen, he had founded an hospital for
lepers outside the walls of the town;[950] and a park and hunting-lodge
which he had made for himself in the same year, 1161, at Quévilly by
Rouen[951] were shortly afterwards given up by him to a colony of
monks from Grandmont in Aquitaine, to be converted under their care
into another great asylum for victims of the same disease.[952] At
his own native Le Mans, the great hall of an almshouse or hospital
outside the north-eastern boundary of the city, said to have been
reared by him for the reception of its poor and sick folk, is still
to be seen, though long since perverted to other uses. At Angers,
on the other hand, it is only within the last half-century that the
sick and disabled poor have exchanged for a more modern dwelling the
shelter provided for them by Henry Fitz-Empress. Some time in the quiet
years which followed the barons’ revolt, Stephen,[953] the seneschal
of Anjou, bought of the abbess and convent of our Lady of Charity at
Angers a plot of ground which lay between their abbey and the river,
and on which he designed to build an hospice for the poor. In the
last days of 1180 or the first days of 1181 the count-king took under
his own care the work which his seneschal had begun, granted to the
new hospital a rich endowment in lands and revenues, exempted it from
secular charges and imposts, and won from Pope Alexander a confirmation
of its spiritual independence.[954] Four priests were appointed to
minister to the spiritual needs of its inmates; the care of their
bodies was undertaken at first, it seems, by some pious laymen bound
by no special rule; some years later, however, the hospital became,
like most other establishments of the kind, affiliated to the Order of
S. Augustine.[955] The pretty little chapel--dedicated to S. John the
Baptist, and still standing,--the cloisters and the domestic offices
were all finished before Henry’s death;[956] while of the two great
pillared halls which now form the chief architectural glory of the
suburb, one, the smaller and simpler, is clearly of his building;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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