Pobreza y marginación en la Castilla Bajomedieval. Notas sobre el ejercicio de la caridad en Cuenca a fines de la Edad Media

Abstract

In the city and diocese of Cuenca, a whole process of attention to the poor was developed during the low Middle Ages. This process can be com­pared to the one that was happening in the rest of Castile and in the Medieval West. The hospital network was developed specially in the XIV and XV centuries, but it had some precedents from earlier times. It played an im­portant role like the lay confraternities in the city of Cuenca. Among them we might point to the "St. Francis, St. Peter and St. Paul" guild. But the institution called the Arca de la Limosna, which depended on the cathedral chapter, was the one that played a very significant role during the XV cen­tury and, later, during all the Ancien Régime. From several Cuenca wills, we know that the economic support of this institution was possible thanks to the gifts made by ecclesiastics, specially by members of the cathedral chapter, and by some laymen in a lesser way. In short, all this created support for the later development of attention to the poor during the Mo­dern Age.