Today, the Heilig Geist in Mainz is an airy restaurant, a few blocks away from the Rhine. For centuries, however, this building, located between the cathedral and the city hall, was devoted to the care of the sick. The earliest list of those who resided in Mainz's oldest hospital dates to 1487, two decades after the hospital had been returned to the control of the cathedral chapter in the aftermath of a bitter dispute over the archiepiscopal see. The hospital master and the chaplain are listed first, followed by Peter, “a poor priest,” and one man and a married couple who had purchased corrodies in the house, ensuring that they would be cared for in their old age. The six other men listed by name appear to have been vowed staff. There were also six sick persons receiving care, three laywomen who cared for them, and a man to bury the dead. What bound those people together in that place?

The complexity of medieval hospital history has been the subject of frustration and confusion, as well as admiration. The late medieval intensification of debates over hospital administration has been observed by numerous historians, but it has rarely been interpreted as a sign of tension over hospitals’ status in canon law, and the implications of that status. Comparative work on late medieval hospitals can be facilitated by an examination of how hospitals’ religious status was understood and debated.