Beggary

BEGGARY. - It is begging as a trade, one of the consequences of the phenomenon of pauperism. Generally accompanied by vagabondage, by the blunting of the moral sense and by neglect of the most elementary rules of hygiene, m[endicity] can represent a danger for the organized community; with regard to the individuals who practice it, mendicity represents a tragic situation of exclusion from social life, of social impossibility of any affirmation of the personality and of human dignity.

The principal causes of mendicity are: incapacity for work due to sex, age, physical or mental impairments congenital or supervening in the subject; the capacity for work not absorbed by society (involuntary unemployment); vice, which brings about illness, improvidence, voluntary unemployment; social prejudices that exclude certain categories from social life.

Mendicity was regarded differently in the various historical epochs, and consequently the measures taken for its mitigation or elimination were different.

In the Roman era the poor are generally considered as an instrument for exercising one's liberality, with political rather than charitable aims. The grandiose distributions of wheat (frumentationes), of oil, of meat, originally private munificences, are later a common form of state liberality. Nor are examples of laws repressive of mendicity lacking in Roman legislation either; a constitution of Gratian, later collected in the Code of Justinian, establishes in fact that able-bodied beggars become slaves of whoever denounces their begging (Cod., XI, 25).

With the spread of Christianity mendicity is considered under a new aspect: the concept of liberality is replaced by that of charity. The evangelical precept "Give alms of what remains" (Lk. 11, 41) informs the mentality of the first Christians and leaves deep traces throughout the Middle Ages. The Roman matron Fabiola, who was the first to establish a hospital for the poor sick; Pammachius, who created at Porto Romano a shelter for pilgrims; Belisarius, who in the 6th century founded in Rome a hospice for the poor, are the first examples of a tradition of almsgiving and of assistance to the beggar for the love of God that would become a characteristic of the Christian world of every age, adapting itself to the economic and social environment.

Throughout the Middle Ages the work of the Churches in favor of the poor expanded under the unitary direction of the papacy, but with the possibility of responding to the multiform aspects of poverty through the action of the various religious Orders and of confraternities with a professional basis. The Christian of the Middle Ages is concerned with the beggar rather than with the causes of mendicity, and seeks in every way to help him, not only because the beggar is a brother, but also because the beggar is a means by which the benefactor acquires supernatural merits.

With the blunting of the Christian spirit as a consequence of the spread of humanism and of the "Reformation," and with the increase in the number of beggars as a consequence of the structural modifications of the European economy, the work of the Church becomes insufficient. In France and in England there are the first examples of state intervention with the transformation of the administrative regime of the hospices, with control over donations, with the institution of taxes for the poor, with the punishment of unauthorized mendicity, etc. In the 16th and 17th centuries mendicity is considered a vice, and it is claimed that the problem can be solved by persecuting the beggar or obliging him to forced labor. In this regard the "poor law" issued under the reign of Elizabeth of England (1801) is significant, which established houses of forced labor and imposed very severe penalties on all those who were caught begging (mutilation of ears, branding, etc.). The horror of vagabonds also suggested grandiose works of state assistance, such as, for example, the famous Hôtel royal des invalides, founded in Paris by Louis XIV in 1674, and the Albergo dei poveri founded in Naples by Charles of Bourbon in 1751. In the Catholic countries, with the Catholic Reformation, there was a great reawakening of charitable action, with a series of new charitable institutions linked to the names of great saints, such as Camillus de Lellis, Vincent de Paul, Catherine of Genoa, Ignatius of Loyola, Gaetano Thiene, Philip Neri, etc.

With the Enlightenment first and with the French Revolution afterward, the conception of mendicity is modified once again: it is no longer considered a vice of the individual, but of society. The poor man has a right to assistance, which becomes a fundamental task of the State and only subsidiarily of the various religious or professional associations. This concept is expressed clearly in 1790 by the "Committee on Mendicity" of the French National Assembly, which for the first time speaks of preventive measures to be taken by the State for the elimination of mendicity.

In the Protestant nations state assistance is still prevalent today, while in the Catholic ones there is a tendency to reassess the important tradition of private charity and to see in the State only the coordinating and controlling body.

Italian legislation has repeatedly dealt with the problem of mendicity: the public security law of 20 March 1865 limited mendicity to the disabled only, provided with a certificate of indigence, issuable only by the communes, and lacking shelter for mendicity; the Crispi law of 1889 and the subsequent decree, which specifies its methods of implementation, restricts the possibility of granting such certificates, admitting shelter in another commune and establishing a ranking among the bodies on which the burden of shelter falls (opere pie, communes, State). Complementary to the public security provisions are those of the Penal Code, still in force, which punish with arrest the beggar without a certificate and those who employ for begging children under 18 years of age belonging to another family. The public security law of 22 July 1897 establishes the methods for the determination of the domicile of assistance, which is not necessarily the commune of origin, and that of 6 Nov. 1926 establishes in every commune a Congregazione di carità (later transformed into Ente comunale di assistenza, E.C.A.) to which is assigned the administration of all property destined for the poor. This last law modifies the ranking of the bodies on which the burden of shelter falls, mentioning first the communes, then the private charitable bodies and then the State.

Together with the direct measures taken by the authority with regard to mendicity, all the indirect forms of intervention must today also be taken into consideration (expansion of social insurance, assistance to childhood, improved hygienic conditions, etc.), which, acting on the causes of mendicity, have notably reduced its extent and gravity.

Francesca Duchini