The institution at Embeck[422] founded in 1274 made a special work of
taking care of abandoned children in the name of Saint Esprit. We come
now to the name of Enrad Fleinz,[423] that bourgeois of Nuremberg,
who in 1331 founded in his natal town the first hospital where not
only children might be left, but where women might go to be delivered,
without regard to whether the offspring were legitimate or not. This,
too, was in the name of Saint Esprit, and in the year 1362, a similar
asylum for orphans was founded in Paris.
It was indeed under the auspices of this order that the movement
which began with the imperial _Brephotrophia_ in the sixth century
grew, until the various institutions of one sort or another intended
to prevent the outright murder of children or their abandonment in
deserted places were dependent, not on the humanity of any one man
or group of men, but on the new-born spirit that was then spreading
throughout Europe and that continued to spread even when individualism
and materialism as ruling forces had supplanted religion and
asceticism. The history of charity, which, as Lecky says, is yet to
be written, will doubtless reveal, when it comes to be written, the
various unappreciated factors that went to produce the humane movement.
Some idea of how rapidly these institutions had multiplied may be
obtained from a bull of Nicholas IV., containing a long enumeration
of the various foundations, which includes places in Italy, Sicily,
Germany, England, France, and Spain.[424]
Besides those enumerated by the Pope, there were however other
institutions springing up where, either as an adjunct to hospital work
or as an independent work itself, children were being cared for. As
one of the original and most scholarly writers on this phase of the
subject has pointed out, it is difficult to make positive statements
about these foundations, for the men interested were intent on their
work rather than on leaving a record of it behind. Perhaps in this
connection, some future historian, in viewing the voluminous charitable
records of our day, will assume that “social” egotism has been well
saddled, and made to do more than the work of a timely charitable
impulse.
[Illustration: SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL, FOUNDER OF THE FIRST PERMANENT
ASYLUM FOR CHILDREN IN FRANCE]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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