Analyze Attitudes and Responses Toward the Poor in Europe in Between 1450 and 1700.
After times of famine, war and economic dislocation, poverty increased with close to 80 percent of a region’s population was faced with possible starvation each day while almost 50 percent of Europe’s population were living on the subsistence level, barely having enough food and shelter to survive. The attitudes of those in the middle class and the more elite ranged from pity to distaste, proposing different solutions like punishing the poor, regulating them, or giving them help out of sympathy. Many of those higher on the social hierarchy believed the poor should be punished to help improve the society by ridding itself of vagabonds and the idle. Seeing the poor living day to day easily from alms, many workers stopped working and began to live like the beggars, going from house to house for food and money, stealing these from those that truly need them so they could live an easy going life. In an imperial decree for the Netherlands, Charles V stated “They and their children will abandon their trade or occupation for a wicked and contemptible life and condemn their daughters to poverty, unhappiness, and all manner of wickedness and vice” (Doc 4). Some towns began to create Poorhouses to house and care for the poor for free, but for rogues and the idle, they were marked upon their entrance because of the Poorhouse regulations. “Every strong rogue […] shall have 12 stripes with the whip on the bare skin and every young rogue or idle loiterer shall have 6 stripes in the same manner.” (Doc 7). This was to punish them for their acts and to put them in their place for taking advantage of the kind townspeople that assisted them. Another attitude towards the poor was that there should be certain regulations in place to maintain peace in the cities. After a town council in Dijon, France came to a result, they decided to care for the poor and their children by renting a barn for them to sleep in at night and to do their best to make sure they are treated fairly (Doc 2).