Madrid Hospitals and Welfare in the Context of the Hapsburg Empire

Over the last twenty-five years, the tendency of historians to see extreme distinctions between Catholic and Protestant health care provision has faded away, mainly thanks to the works of Brian Pullan on Venice and Jean-Pierre Gutton on Lyons. It has become generally accepted that Catholic areas pursued efficient and highly selective welfare policies, especially as regards the control of public begging, in order to achieve long-term social improvement by giving the poor both an education and opportunities to work. In order to centralize and co-ordinate the resources available, welfare services were improved by the creation of institutions under the auspices of the Church and lay authorities. Public begging was prohibited, and relief was limited to deserving local inhabitants and restricted to the period before they could be set to work, while the itinerant poor were given only the temporary assistance they required. It has also been generally assumed that Madrid was included among the towns where a programme of reform led by lay elites following the guidelines of the poor law tract De subventione pauperum (On Assistance to the Poor) by Juan Luis Vives (1526) prevailed from the second to the fourth decades of the sixteenth century. In accordance with this programme, hospitals for beggars and other ‘‘undeserving’’ poor were founded, supposedly reaching a peak in the seventeenth century. In the confines of such institutions, unworthy individuals could be punished if they resisted the obligation to work.