Conviviality and charity in medieval and early modern England - response to Judith M. Bennett, Past and Present, no. 134, February 1992

Past & Present, Feb, 1997 by Maria Moisa

Anthropologists and sociologists have examined such exchanges in modern drinking circles of widely different societies, including Yorkshire. Their studies have noted the formation of methods of co-operation among drinking partners, the strengthening of personal bonds, the opening of credit relationships, the establishment of multiple reciprocity contacts through collective consumption, as well as the existence of strict rules which apply to the exchange of drinks.(31) The theory applied by anthropologists to these exchanges is based on the now classical one first formulated by M. Mauss, which is in turn almost identical with the medieval theory of the gift derived from Aristotle and the Old Testament, and conveyed to the Middle Ages by the Greek fathers of the church, such as John Chrysostom. It distinguished between gifts to men, which were to be reciprocated and which placed the receiver in debt, and gifts to God, or alsm.(32) These latter would also be reciprocated, but in the other world. These theologians devised an indirect form of reciprocity--donor [right arrow] poor [right arrow] God [right arrow] donor--in order to insert the poor into the web of exchanges from which they would otherwise have been excluded. As Mauss found, classical ideas on reciprocity did not clash with Germanic traditions. English peasants could keep the reciprocity web functioning in the usual manner, while simultaneously absorbing the Christian notions of charity and almsgiving to the poor put to them by the low clergy.(33)

Bennett's interpretation of help-ales as charity parties is based on two thirteenth-century synodal statutes, among the many which forbade scot-ales, `called by a change of name charity'.(34) The word `charity', which evidently did not fool bishops, may have been a Latin translation of the English word `love'. For more than a century after this, no special name other than `ale' or `scot-ale' was used in connection with drinking parties. When the fully-fledged help-ale emerged in the fifteenth century, neither the Latin `charity' nor the Anglo-Saxon `love' were mentioned. Quite wisely, the locals called it `help', leaving the manorial clerk at a loss to find a Latin term for it, let alone a declension (brasiavit unum helpale, brasiaverunt cerevisias vocatas les helpales, and so on). The lower strata of medieval English society might have already developed that distaste for the idea of receiving charity typical of the working class.(35) Roth, who without any evidence also assumed that the `help' meant that the profits of the parties went to the poor, was surprised to find in the court rolls a very different appraisal of the Wakefield gatherings, as they were portrayed as being not only against the statute, but also to the prejudice of the lord's tenants.(36)

Medieval help-ales were not the solution, even in part, to the mystery of the survival of the poor, because those whose lives were at risk were not involved. In times of general impoverishment, when survival was an issue for entire layers of peasant society, help-ales tended to disappear. They multiplied in good seasons and years, and benefited men--and a few women--whether honest or not, who had friends with some spare cash, and who were in a position to reciprocate. We do not know how poor--or how rich--these beneficiaries were or what sort of monetary needs they resolved by their whip-rounds. The Wakefield court rolls suggest that organizers and participants operated at various economic levels in distinct circles. Help-ales raised funds which could vary from the quite substantial to the very modest, according to the size of the party and the economic ability of the circle. The poor, and not just the disreputable poor, were excluded by the high prices charged for the ale. The `profit' obtained amounted to a number of gifts or loans which followed the rules of multiple-reciprocity exchanges within the group rather than the rules relating to almsgiving, as is clear from contemporary sources on the theory and the practice of both gift and help exchanges, and of charity and almsgiving. Only by a series of semantic shifts, from `help' to `aid' to `poor relief' to `charity' to `almsgiving', could we treat these concepts as if they were one and the same thing. Medieval people could and did distinguish, as we do, between different motives and actions, however blurred the boundaries between them might have been.