University of Western Australia: Institute of Advanced Studies/Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies Public Lecture 
“Public Welfare vs. Private Charity: Some Lessons from Medieval and Early Modern Europe”, Sharon Farmer, Professor of History, University of California Santa Barbara 

Date: 21 February 2013
Time: 6pm
Location: Webb Lecture Theatre (G21) Geography Building, UWA
Cost: Free, but RSVP essential. To register a place click here

A major tenet of twenty-first century conservatism is that, when it comes to taking care of those who cannot take provide for themselves, societies that rely on systems of private charity are far superior to those that rely on government sponsored systems of social welfare.

In this talk, Sharon Farmer will challenge this assumption by examining, first, evidence from 13th century Paris – a society that, indeed, had no politically supported system of social welfare. The ideology of giving alms to the poor permeated religious belief and practice in thirteenth-century Paris; and charitable institutions abounded. Nevertheless, nearly all poor people who were unable to work survived, for the most part, by begging in the streets.

In a second part of the talk, Farmer will turn to the early 16th century, when religious and political leaders throughout Europe rejected the medieval system of private charity, offering, instead, plans for government-sponsored systems of public welfare. These reformers – many of them leaders of the Protestant Reformation – were motivated, at least in part, not so much by empathy for the plight of the poor, but by the perception that the health and safety of society as a whole depended on an adequate system of poor relief, and that only a system that included public funds and was managed by public authorities could meet the minimum standards that they had in mind.
 
Sharon Farmer, Professor of History at the University of California (Santa Barbara), is a leading scholar of medieval gender and poverty research. She is author of Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (1991), Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology and the Daily Lives of the Poor (2001), and an editor of Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages (2002) and the exhibition catalogue Framing the Word: The Making of the Modern Bible, c. 1250-1611 (UCSB library’s department of Special Collections, May 15 – July 15 2011). Professor Farmer has a strong interest in public engagement through her research and has participated in the UCSB Humanities Centre’s series on “Public Goods”, speaking in conjunction with modern researchers on poverty.