ion the medieval method of charity
completely broke down. In fact, with its many begging friars, with its
injunction of alms-giving as a good work most pleasing to God, and with
its respect for voluntary poverty, the church rather aggravated than
palliated the evil of mendicancy. The state had to step in to relieve
the church.

[Sidenote: State poor-relief, 1506]

This was early done in the Netherlands. A severe edict was issued and
repeatedly re-enacted against tramps ordering them to be whipped, have
their heads shaved, and to be further punished with stocks. An
enterprising group of humanists and lawyers demanded that the
government should take over the duty of poor-relief from the church.
Accordingly at Lille a "common chest" was started, the first civil
charitable bureau in the Netherlands. [Sidenote: 1512] At Bruges a
cloister was secularized and turned into a school for eight hundred
poor children in uniform. A secular bureau of charity was started at
Antwerp. [Sidenote: 1521]

Under these circumstances the humanist Lewis Vives wrote his famous
tract on the relief of the poor, [Sidenote: January, 1526] in the form
of a letter to the town council of Bruges. In this well thought out
treatise he advocated the law that no one should eat who did not work,
and urged that all able-bodied vagrants should be hired out to
artisans--a suggestion how welcome to the capitalists eager to {560}
draft men into their workshops! Cases of people unable to work should
also be taken up, and they should be cared for by application of
religious endowments by the government. Vives' claim to recognition
lies even more in his spirit than in his definite program. For almost
the first time in history he plainly said that poverty was a disgrace
as well as a danger to the state and should be, not palliated, but
extirpated.

While Vives was still preparing his treatise the city of Ypres
[Sidenote: 1525] (tragic name!) had already sought his advice and acted
upon it, as well as upon the example of earlier reforms in German
cities, in promulgating an ordinance. The city government combined all
religious and philanthropic endowments into one fund and appointed a
committee to administer it, and to collect further gifts. These
citizens were to visit the poor in their dwellings, to apply what
relief was necessary, to meet twice a week to concert remedial measures
and to have charge of enforcing the laws against begging and idlenes