Seek the Welfare of the City
Where does the concept of "philanthropy" come from? Where did we get the idea of erecting hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly and infirm? Today we might think that these institutions were created by billionaires who made their money off railroads, steel mills or the stock market, or perhaps the government dreamed them up. But the historical fact is that these institutions for the public well-being were created during the one-thousand-year-long Byzantine Christian Empire. Only later did these ideas take root in Western Europe, and from there to the rest of the world.When the people of Israel were carried away to Babylonian captivity because they had forsaken the Lord, many of them thought they should form their own closed cultural group to preserve their ethnic identity, having as little to do as possible with Babylon. But the prophet Jeremiah told them - "Seek the welfare of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its welfare you shall have welfare. ...For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope for your future. You shall call on me, and you shall go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart. I will be found of you, says the Lord, and I will return you from captivity". (Jer. 29:7, 11-14)
Thus the idea of seeking the welfare or well-being of society at large seeped from the Jewish nation to surrounding nations such as Babylon, Greece and Rome, but those nations limited such social programs to "their own kind," not sharing their wealth with other tribes and peoples. It took Christ's Great Commission to "Go into all the world and preach the Good News to all nations" before this idea of sharing one's well-being with others - even one's enemies - could take root.
For the first three hundred years Christians were "in captivity" of frequent persecutions, but still reached out in love to those around them. Why? Because Christ Himself was and is the great Philanthropos, the "Lover of Mankind." This divine love for mankind enables us to perform genuine philanthropy:
"The philanthropy of man is theologically grounded in the philanthropy of God. Although God is completely unknown in His nature, He becomes known through His revelation to mankind and in history as philanthropic and merciful. The philanthropy of God is apparent, among other signs, in the nature of man, in his destiny, and in his place in creation. Only man is created 'according to the image and likeness of God' (Gen. 1:26). Only he exists as a person who comes into communion with God. Only man has as his destiny an eternal progress, through a process of inner purification and sanctification, towards the attainment of the divine likeness." (Miltiadis Vantsos and Marina Kiroudi, "An Orthodox View of Philanthropy and Church Diaconia," Christian Bioethics, 13:251–268, 2007, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, p. 253)According to the Romanian scholar Cristian Petcu, "...the main social welfare institutions of the Early Church were the Brephotropia (nurseries for foundlings), Parthenocomia (shelters for spinsters), Gerocomia (homes for widows), and Orphanotropia (orphanage). The Orphanotropia was an outstanding achievement of the Early Church in the field of social welfare, which manifested Christian love of one’s neighbour. As early as the fourth and fifth centuries, the Church founded special establishments for orphans (both Christian and non-Christian), whose care was entrusted to the clergy under the guidance of a bishop, as attested by the archive documents. The earliest orphanage seems to have been the St. Zoticus Orphanage, from the time of Constantine the Great, Roman Emperor between 306 and 337, famous for his edict granting tolerance of the Christian faith. In the fourth century, St Sava, in chapter 48 of his Typikon, expressly lays out the duties of the abbot:
'It is fitting that the abbot should take care of healing the sick, be they those who dwell in the monastery, be they those who seek him out (…) Then let the abbot examine the patient and restore his health, and if he pay him no heed, then he is in great danger. And let it be binding upon him.'"These rules for monasteries, which had an organised framework, were a practical extension of the situation that had existed during the time of the Church’s persecution. Given that they were unable to organise themselves within a well-defined framework, the Christians of the first three centuries ended up in the strange situation of endangering their lives in order to help the sick. Thus, Ss. Cosma and Damian, St. Pantelimon, St Ermolaos, Ss. Cyrus and John, and St. Thalasius are known as wonderworking unmercenaries, great healers of the sick. The work of these martyrs was continued after the period of persecution by private persons, outstanding among whom was St. Melanie the Roman, whose donations to the poor and asylums are reckoned to have been enormous."
"By the fourth and fifth centuries we find a corps of Christians who tended to the sick in particular. These Parabolani were recruited from among the poor and humble and were skilled in caring for the sick and also had medical knowledge. It was the bishops who appointed the Parabolani. From the extant sources it appears that in the Early Church the Parabolani were a corps of Christians ready to sacrifice themselves for their neighbour and serve the common good, and were permanently exposed to the danger of being infected by those they treated.
"Every religious society engaged in social and charitable work as a means of consolidating and spreading Christianity in the ancient world. Thus, in the beginning, the residualist model was dominant in the beginning as short-term assistance, through the founding of orphanages, asylums, hospitals, and so on. But this kind of traditional charity work could not cope with the difficulties of the needy during times of war or in the post-war period in particular.
"In order to be materially and psychically independent and in order to make best use of his own resources, a person must attain a certain degree of maturity and have a developed personality and faculty of judgment. In Christianity, there is also the advantage of divine intervention. In fact, the development of the personality means the path towards likeness with God, the replacement of the old man with the new, who dwells in Christ. The role of social work is to make the recipient aware of the need to change and to assist him in the process of solving the problem." (Cristian Petcu, "Historical and Canonical Reflections on the Church’s Philanthropic Work," International Journal of Orthodox Theology 4:4 (2013) urn:nbn:de:0276-2013-4069, pp. 116-119)
Here we clearly see the goal of the social ministry of the Church: "The role of social work is to make the recipient aware of the need to change" - unless the poor or disabled person makes a commitment to change, our efforts to help may be in vain. In his oration "Who is the Rich Man that Will Be Saved?", Clement of Alexandria explained that when Christ told the rich young ruler to sell all that he owned and give to the poor, "Christ is not asking the young man to literally dispense with his possessions, but rather to become a free person by breaking his attachment to them, since the person who is concerned about acquiring or keeping wealth is not truly free. As Clement says, 'Christ does not, as some conceive off-hand, bid him throw away the substance he possessed, and abandon his property; but rather bids him banish from his soul his notions about wealth, his excitement and morbid feeling about it, the anxieties, which are the thorns of existence, which choke the seed of life.'" The attitude of the heart must change, both for the rich man and the poor man. Greed must be expelled.
Saint Basil of Caesarea, however, took the words of Christ to the rich young ruler quite literally. Basil was a wealthy young man who became a monk and later bishop of Caesarea. He donated all his wealth to the poor by constructing the "New City" just outside Caesarea. He devised a new approach for monastics: both monks and nuns should serve God by serving mankind. Basil's Basiliad or "New City" had a hospital, lodging for pilgrims, and housing for the poor and elderly along with the monasteries. Doctors and nurses were brought in to minister to the sick. "Basil explicitly rejects any attempt to formulate a two-tiered approach to the commandment. In Basil’s view, 'sell your possessions and give to the poor' is an expression of the law of love, and is therefore equally applicable to all, both monastics and non-monastics." (Paul Schroeder, "Building the New City: St. Basil’s Social Vision," http://incommunion.org/2008/12/07/building-the-new-city-st-basils-social-vision/)
Saint John Chrysostom, while he was Patriarch in the late fourth century, also had homes for the poor and hospitals built in Constantinople. Another man, "less well known than Basil and Chrysostom, was the fifth-century patriarch Attikos. Under his leadership, the Church of the capital extended its philanthropic programs to the poor of other ecclesiastical jurisdictions. The Church historian Socrates relates that Attikos “was so liberal that he not only provided for the poor of his own parishes, but transmitted contributions to supply the needs and promote the comfort of the indigent in the neighboring cities also.” On one occasion he sent to Kalliopios, a presbyter of the church in Nicaea, three hundred pieces of gold (nomismata) in order to assist him in his work among the poor.
"The following letter is an interesting source of information about the poor in Nicaea and the Church’s response to poverty. Attikos wrote to Kalliopios:
"I have been informed that there are in your city ten thousand needy persons whose condition demands the compassion of the pious. And I say ten thousand, designating their multitude rather than using the number precisely. Since I have received a sum of money from God who with a bountiful hand is eager to supply faithful stewards, take, my friend, these three hundred pieces of gold and dispose of them as you may think fit. It will be your care, I doubt not, to distribute to those who are ashamed to beg, and not to those who through life have sought to feed themselves at the expenses of others. In bestowing these alms make no distinction on religious grounds, but feed the hungry whether they agree with us in sentiment, or not."As the example of Attikos indicates, Churchmen were careful not to support professional beggars and those who refused to work. A second example is the deaconess Olympias, a very generous woman but also careless in her generosity. John Chrysostom wrote a letter advising her to use more discrimination in her contributions:
"I applaud your intentions; but would have you know that those who aspire to the perfection of virtue according to God, ought to distribute their wealth with economy…. You ought, therefore, to regard your wealth as belonging to your Master, and to remember that you have to account for its distribution. If you will be persuaded by me, you will in the future regulate your donations according to the wants of those who solicit relief. You will thus be enabled to extend the sphere of your benevolence."
Under the heading "The Hospital as Symbol of the Church" we learn that the Church should see herself as a hospital for both the sick and for sinners. By the eighth century, the great Christian Emperor Justinian rebuilt the Xenodochion, or hospital, of Sampson, located between the Hagia Sophia cathedral and the Church of Saint Irene, which had been functioning for some time, but had been burned down in the Nika revolt. "Justinian rebuilt it on a grander scale and endowed it with an annual income so that it could extend its range of services to the sick of the capital. From this time onward Byzantine hospitals began to function proactively as centers where doctors assembled together professionally to practice healing arts on sick who were brought to the hospital. It proved to be a major stimulus to the medical capacity and skill of the profession. In Byzantine hospitals, unlike many of their medieval western counterparts, the treatment of the inmate was undertaken with concerted action.
"As his own foundation, and that of Theodora [his wife, a former prostitute who had been rescued and converted to Christianity - ed.] Justinian also established the two Xenones, hospices, of The House of Isidore, and the House of Arcadios. It is recorded that he also constructed large hospitals at Antioch and at Jerusalem. In the latter case, he responded favorably to the petition of the ascetic St. Saba, which the pilgrimages to Jerusalem left many arriving visitors sick and exhausted and in need of special care. In this instance we know that Justinian supervised the building of a centre that contained two hundred beds and was endowed with an imperial gift of annual income of 1850 gold solidi for its maintenance (a very large sum of money)." (John McGuckin, "Embodying the New Society: The Byzantine Christian Instinct of Philanthropy," http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac%3A138606, p. 65)
The hospital of Sampson continued functioning up to the fall of Byzantium in the early 1400s. Thus we see just a few of the great philanthropic institutions of the thousand-year Byzantine Empire. It is not enough for us to have good intentions when practicing Christian charity: we must also be careful to ensure that those who are physically and mentally able make the efforts needed to be restored to wholeness. To read Part 2, click HERE. Also, you are encouraged to read the full text of these and many more articles on this topic online at Seek the Welfare of the City.
(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 05 Jun. 2016.)
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