It is sometimes asserted that the almsgiving of the Middle Ages was done from a selfish motive, namely, that spiritual benefits might be reaped by the donor. Indeed it is possible that the giver then, like some religious people in every age, was apt to be more absorbed in the salvation of self than in the service of others; but the testimony of deeds and charters is that the threefold aim of such a man was to fulfil at once his duty towards God, his neighbour, and himself. That he was often imbued with a true ministering spirit is shown by his personal care for the comfort of [p086] inmates. Doubtless the hidden springs of charity were as diverse as they are now: not every name on a modern subscription list represents one that “considereth the poor.” No one could imagine, for instance, that Queen Maud and King John had a common motive in their charity to lepers; or that the bishops Wulstan and Peter des Roches were animated by the same impulse when they provided for the wants of wayfarers.
The alleged motives of some benefactors are revealed in documents. Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, refers to St. Cross—“which I for the health of my soul and the souls of my predecessors and of the kings of England have founded . . . that the poor in Christ may there humbly and devotedly serve God.” Herbert, Bishop of Salisbury, in making a grant to clothe the lepers of a hospital in Normandy, says that:—“Among all Christ’s poor whom a bishop is bound to protect and support, those should be specially cared for whom it has pleased God to deprive of bodily power,” and these poor inmates “in the sorrow of fleshly affliction offer thanks to the Lord for their benefactors with a joyous mind.” Matthew Paris writes of Henry III that “he being touched with the Holy Ghost and moved with a regard to pity, ordained a certain famous hospital at Oxon.”
In the case of Rahere, the foundation of St. Bartholomew’s was an act of gratitude for deliverance from death, and the practical outcome of a vision and a sick-bed vow. While Rahere tarried at Rome,
“he began to be uexed with greuous sykenesse, and his doloures, litill and litill, takynge ther encrese, he drew to the extremyte of lyf. . . . Albrake owte in terys, than he auowyd yf helthe God hym wolde grawnte, that he myght lefully returne to his contray, [p087] he wolde make and hospitale yn recreacion of poure men, and to them so there i gaderid, necessaries mynystir, after his power.”