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Pious Endowments in Medieval Christianity and Islam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

William R. Jones
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The endowment of religious, charitable, and educational enterprises by the establishment of trusts in land, the income from which could be devoted to such uses, was an immensely popular form of pious expression in both medieval Christendom and the Islamic world. The motives for, and applications of such endowments differed markedly, however, between the two religious cultures. The endowment of prayers and masses for beneficiaries, living and dead, exemplified the sacramental and sacerdotal quality of pre-Reformation Christianity. This ritualistic and ecclesiastical use of endowments in Latin Christian Europe and the Orthodox East, a use dependent on the existence of a sacramental system and an institutional church, contrasted sharply with the broader application of the Muslim waqf, by means of which pious individuals and groups sponsored a wide variety of charities, explicitly life-oriented and quite unconnected with a corporate clerical establishment. The infinite multiplication of private acts of charity by devout Muslims manifested the moralistic bent of Islam, which aspired to recast society according to the norms of the Qur'an and sacred law. The contrasting uses to which the two religious systems put the gifts and legacies of the faithful reflected the operation of fundamentally different religious premises, whereas the institutionalization of these premises in a shared legal fiction, the trust, assured their enforcement in society and life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 28 , Issue 109 , March 1980 , pp. 23 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

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2 Demetrios J. Constantelos, Byzantine Philanthropy and Social Welfare, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1968; Michel Rouche, "La matricule des pauvres," in Études sur l'histoire de la pauvreté, ed. Mollat, pp. 83-110; Pierre Gillet, La personalité juridique en droit écclésiastique spécialement chez les Décrétistes et les Décrétalistes, Malines, 1927; R.M. Clay, The Medieval Hospitals of England, London, 1909; Jean Imbert, Les hôpitaux en droit canonique, L'ÉgIise et l'état au Moyen Age, t. VIII, ed. H.-X. Arquillière, Paris, 1947; Émile Lesne, Histoire de la propriété écclésiastique en France, Mémoires et travaux des Facultés Catholiques de Lille, fasc. 6, Lille-Paris, 1910, t. I, pp. 370ff.

3 Art. "Waqf," Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. H.A. Gibb and J. H. Kramers, Ithaca, New York, pp. 624-28; Claude Cahen, "Réflexions sur le Waqf ancien," in Studia Islamica, XIV, 1961, pp. 37-56; Joseph Schacht, "Early Doctrines on Waqf," in Fuad Köprülü Armagani/Mélanges Fuad Köprülü, Istanbul, 1953, pp. 443-52; Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law, Oxford, 1964, p. 19; W. Montgomery Watt, Islam and the Integration of Society, London, 1961, p. 191; N.J. Coulson, A History of Islamic Law, Edinburgh, 1964, p. 28; Henry Cattan, "The Law of Waqf," Law in the Middle East, ed. Majid Khadduri and Herbert J. Liebesny, t. I: Origin and Development of Islamic Law, Washington, D.C., 1955, p. 203; Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Muslim Institutions, tr. John P. MacGregor, London, 1950, p. 144.

4 Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, p. 626a. I am indebted to my colleague Professor John O. Voll for guidance in the bibliography of Islamic history.

5 Gustave E. von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam, Chicago-London, 1946, p. 108.

6 Ibid.

7 Art. "Zakat," Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, p. 654a; Maulana Muhammad Ali, The Religion of Islam, New Delhi, n.d., pp. 457ff. The Aramaic-Arabic word "Qurban," signifying a "pleasing" gesture or an "approach" to God and implying an act of "charity," was used by Christian Arabs to designate the eucharistic service.

8 Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, tr. Philip S. Watson, New York-Evanston, 1953, pp. 476ff.

9 K.L. Wood-Legh, Perpetual Chantries in Britain, Cambridge, 1965; W.R. Jones, "English Religious Brotherhoods and Medieval Lay Piety," in The Historian, XXXVI, 1974, pp. 646-59.

10 For chantry schools, see Wood-Legh, op. cit., pp. 269-70; A.W. Parry, Education in England in the Middle Ages, London, 1920, pp. 157-69; Nicholas Orme, English Schools in the Middle Ages, London, 1973, pp. 6, 194ff; and for the religious role of the university teacher, A.B. Cobban, The Medieval Universities, London, 1975, pp. 124-25; E.F. Jacob, "Founders and Foundations in the Later Middle Ages," in Essays in Later Medieval History, New York, 1968, p. 157.

11 Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Chicago, 1974, II, p. 337.

12 Ibid., p. 338.

13 Ibid.

14 This has been the focus of the work of Émile Lousse, La société d'ancien régime: Organisation et représentation corporatives, Paris-Louvain, 1943.

15 Hodgson, op. cit., pp. 342 ff.

16 Ibid., p. 347.

17 A sensitive description of the structure of Mameluke urban society is given by Ira Lapidus, Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967, pp. 107 ff. Cfr. Hodgson, op. cit., II, 62-151.

18 George Makdisi, "Madrasah and University in the Middle Ages," in Studia Islamica, XXXII, 1970, pp. 255-64; "The Madrasah as a Charitable Trust and the University as a Corporation in the Middle Ages," in Ve Congrès Interna tionale d'Arabisants et d'Islamisants: Correspondance d'Orient, No. 11, Brussels, 1970, pp. 329-37; "Law and Traditionalism in the Institutions of Learning of Medieval Islam," in Theology and Law in Islam, ed. G.E. von Grunebaum, Wiesbaden, 1971, pp. 75-88.

19 For the development of the European college in the late middle ages, see Cobban, op. cit., pp. 122-59; Astrik L. Gabriel, "The College System in the Fourteenth Century Universities," in The Forward Movement of the Fourieenth Century, ed. Francis Lee Utley, Columbus, Ohio, 1961, pp. 79-124.

20 J.A.F. Thomson, "Piety and Charity in Late Medieval London," in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XVI, 1965, pp. 178-95; Cissie C. Fairchilds, Poverty and Charity in Aix-en-Provence: 1614-1789, The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 94th series, Baltimore-London, 1976; Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice, Cambridge, 1971; W.K. Jordan, Philanthropy in England: 1480-1660, New York, 1959; E.H. Gombrich, In Search of Cultural History, Oxord, 1969, pp. 49-50; Paul S. Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships, Stanford, 1970; Phyllis Allen, "Scientific Studies in the English Universities of the Seventeenth Century," in Journal of the History of Ideas, X, 1949, pp. 225-27, 239, 245; Mark H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition: 1558-1642, Oxord, 1959, pp. 70-71.