BEGGING. – It is begging as a profession, one of the consequences of the phenomenon of pauperism. Generally accompanied by vagrancy, the weakening of moral sense and the neglect of the most elementary rules of hygiene, begging can represent a danger to organized society; with regard to the individuals who practice it, begging represents a tragic situation of exclusion from social life, of social impossibility of any affirmation of personality and human dignity.
The principal causes of begging are: inability to work due to sex, age, congenital or acquired physical or mental disabilities; work capacity not absorbed by society (involuntary unemployment); vice which causes illness, improvidence, voluntary unemployment; social prejudices which exclude certain categories from social life.
Begging was viewed differently in various historical periods and, consequently, different measures were taken to mitigate or eliminate II.
In the Roman era the poor were generally considered as instruments for exercising one’s generosity, with political rather than charitable aims. The grandiose distributions of wheat (frumentations), oil, and meat, originally private munificence, subsequently became a common form of state generosity. There are also examples in Roman legislation of laws repressing begging; a constitution of Gratian, later included in the Code of Justinian, in fact establishes that able-bodied beggars become slaves of whoever reports their begging (Cod., XI, 25).
With the spread of Christianity, begging is viewed in a new light: the concept of generosity 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 first established a hospital for the sick poor; Pammachius, who created an asylum for pilgrims at Porto Romano; Belisarius, who in the 6th century founded a hospice for the poor in Rome, are the first examples of a tradition of almsgiving and assistance to the beggar out of love for God which would become a characteristic of the Christian world of all time, adapting to the economic and social environment.
Throughout the Middle Ages the work of the Churches in favor of the poor extended under the unitary direction of the papacy, but with the possibility of addressing the multifarious aspects of poverty through the action of the various religious Orders and confraternities with a professional background. The Christian of the Middle Ages was concerned about the beggar more than about the causes of begging, and sought in every way to help him, not only because the beggar was a brother, but also because the beggar was a means by which the benefactor acquired supernatural merits.
With the weakening of the Christian spirit as a consequence of the spread of humanism and the “Reformation,” and with the increase in the number of beggars as a consequence of structural changes in the European economy, the work of the Church became insufficient. In France and England the first examples of state intervention appeared with the transformation of the administrative system of hospices, the control over almsgiving, the institution of poor taxes, the punishment of unauthorized begging, etc. In the 16th and 17th centuries begging was considered a vice and an attempt was made to solve the problem by persecuting the beggar or forcing him to work. In this regard, the “poor law” enacted during the reign of Elizabeth I of England (1801) is significant; it established houses of forced labor and imposed very severe penalties on all those caught begging (mutilation of ears, branding, etc.). The horror of vagrants also inspired grandiose works of state assistance, such as, for example, the famous Hôtel royal des invalides, founded in Paris by Louis XIV.