Medieval Communities and Neediness

Hello Everyone!

Today's topic is reflecting on some of the things we have learned about medieval communities responding to neediness. I think this is such an interesting topic and I had trouble forming what to write about because there were so many things we learned about.

One of the examples that stuck in my mind was what we learned about last week; hospitals. Hospitals were initially put in place to house the poor and take care of people with Leper and who were too sick to be anywhere normal. This is something that is worth emulating because, well, it's obvious hospitals are still extremely relevant. The hospital by my house, in the 16 years I have lived on Meade St, Appleton Medical Center has grown in size quite a bit. When we moved there, I believe it was just a small building, one structure. Now, it is a large hospital and it has many additions to it. This kind of shows that hospitals are still relevant and that the medieval times have stuck with us.

The manors are another thing that I thought of when I thought about responding to neediness. This wasn't a direct kind of thing, but they helped out the peasants in the fact that these manors housed them. The Lords gave the peasants land in exchange for working the land. I think this was important back then since there was famine, lots of death, and the weather was quite unpredictable. In today's class, we learned that the rain in England started one day and continued for the entire summer, for two whole years. The grain rotted because of this. So for these people to be able to work on the land they live in and still be able to live there was an incredible feat. This doesn't happen too often anymore. The people who have this kind of situation are able to get discounted housing with foodstamps. We don't really do the whole manor kind of system anymore. One thing that we do is we have shelters where the homeless and the poverty stricken families can go and in order to stay in those places, they are able to do chores to live there.

Until Next Time,
~Amanda