The building that illustrates these pages, built at the end of the Middle Ages in a polychrome flamboyant Gothic style, is a clear example of the spirit that permeated its time.
The striking and truly artistic roof allows the viewer to estimate the height of the ceiling in the interior rooms. One of these is also pictured here: its arched ceiling, stained-glass windows and beautiful altarpiece, arranged next to beds adorned with care, form a bewildering ensemble. Is it a chapel? A dormitory? … Or what?
If it is a monastery, how audacious of its inhabitants to have an altar with the Blessed Sacrament in the very place where they slept… But we are far from that. In fact, a nobleman named Nicolas Rolin built this “palace” to be… a hospital of charity for the impoverished! This is the Hôtel-Dieu of Beaune, a town in Burgundy, France, just one example of the spirit of charity that animated Christian civilization as a whole.
At first, the Christian sanatoriums were essentially intended to offer shelter to foreigners, but they also looked after the sick.1 Gradually, however, the latter purpose became the main one. The Order of the Knights of St. John, known as the Hospitallers, and the commodious hospice they founded in Jerusalem, had a great influence on this. According to the administrative rule of the place, written in 1150, every sick person who approached it had to receive the Sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist, then be taken to their bed and, regardless of their social status, treated as a lord.2
The hospital in Jerusalem soon inspired the creation of institutions in various parts of Christendom that would imitate its seriousness in caring for the sick and its concern for their physical and moral cleanliness. Not to mention the thousands of other charitable centres and prestigious chairs of Medicine that the love of God gave rise to in the Christian West and East.
However, charity was not destined to sit forever on the mythological throne of Aesculapius. In the modern period, medicine gradually “emancipated” itself from religion and its boundaries. This separation became cogent after the Industrial Revolution.
As some authors3 point out, the criteria of mass production gradually began to be applied to the field of health, in a process that has lasted until the present day. Painful proof of this is the depersonalization and massification of treatment, aimed at the strictly physical well-being of the sick person.
What is the solution to this problem? Instead of getting bogged down in theoretical considerations, let us turn directly to simple real-life experience.
A few months ago, for pastoral reasons, I had to visit a hospital. The establishment impressed me right from the entrance, where I was almost “forced” to pass in front of a well-appointed convenience store. Further on, there were new surprises: on the right, a shop of a franchise specializing in chocolates; on the left, the outlet of a famous delicatessen; and behind this, a charming bookshop… Had I come to the wrong address?
In fact, no. We had often heard that certain hospitals are trying to adopt a sui generis appearance, inspired by shopping centres, to distract their patients. The goal does not seem ill-conceived. After all, what could be objectionable about surrounding suffering with “positive” images, with a view to boosting patient morale? Furthermore, the “hospital-mall” has the advantage of bringing in juicy profits with its little shops…
To explain more precisely, from a biopsychosocial perspective – to use a term currently in vogue – health professionals are increasingly applying the concept that a patient’s successful recovery depends to a considerable extent on their environment.
But it must be said that this is not a modern discovery. As long ago as the 15th century, the Hôtel-Dieu in Beaune had the same purpose, with just one difference: While today it is necessary to disguise as a mall in order to cheer up the spirits, the medieval people found their solace in the dappled light of the stained-glass windows, in the company of religious and nuns of profound self-denial and virtue, and in the lenitive of the sacramental presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And it was precisely this “part” that the Hôtel-Dieu de Beaune offered its “guests”, administering physical health care in a monastery setting that was able to revitalize spiritual equilibrium.
Was medieval medicine therefore ahead of modern medicine? In certain respects, such as the one mentioned above, I would dare to answer in the affirmative. But the subject is too complex to be confined to a simple “yes” or “no”.
Perhaps another question leads to an easier answer.
If charity had continued to be the driving force behind human activity to this day, what level would contemporary medicine have reached? Or again, which model of hospital would prove more effective for healing even bodies: the shopping centre or the monastery? ◊
Notes
1 Cf. WOODS, Thomas E. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Washington, DC: Regnery, 2005, p.176.
2 Cf. RISSE, Guenter. Mending Bodies, Saving Souls. A History of Hospitals. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, p.141.
3 See, for example: SGRECCIA, Elio. Manual de Bioética. 2.ed. São Paulo: Loyola, 2004, v.II, p.18-19.
