Le jeu de l'aumône au Moyen Âge

The Alms Game in the Middle Ages. Medieval charity was not always a sacred exchange making beggars the gateway to heaven; it was also the locus of a cruel game—true ritual mockery. Beyond the gestures and words we get a glimpse of in literature, the arguments in treatises on alms allow one to reconstitute the logic of the exchange of which they were a part, and to propose a model of ambivalence in charity and of perverse gifts, which more specifically characterizes the Medieval western world beginning in the 12th century in the history of piety. Mockery aimed not only at dismissing beggars, but on many occasions even accompanied gift giving. It was a way of getting around social constraints and escaping from the fever of piety. It did not so much announce the exclusion of beggars in the modem age as the inevitable underside of charity, defusing its merging power, putting everyone in his place and keeping misery at a safe distance.Roch Jean-Louis. Le jeu de l'aumône au Moyen Âge. In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 44ᵉ année, N. 3, 1989. pp. 505-527