The Byzantine Empire had an extensive network of social institutions supported by the state, the church, or private individuals. Already in the decisions of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea (4th century), the obligation of the bishops to maintain in every city an “inn” to serve travelers, the sick and the poor was noted. Naturally, the largest number of social institutions were concentrated in the capital, Constantinople, but many were also scattered in the countryside. The various sources (legislative acts, monastery typica, chronicles, lives, inscriptions, seals, etc.) speak of hundreds of charitable institutions, which are divided into the following groups:
• hospitals and inns – often in the sources they are used as synonyms, and in all probability they were used according to specific needs;
• shelters for the poor;
• nursing homes;
• homes for blind people;
• orphanages;
• homes for widows;
• baths for leprosy patients and baths for poor people;
• deaconies – especially common social centers in urban parishes; in Egypt they operated mainly for monasteries, while at the same time the monasteries supported other deacons in the cities; there they gave out food and clothes for the poor (new), but there were also deacons with a special purpose, such as care for the sick, for the elderly, baths for the poor and travelers;
• homes for the mentally ill (only church ones) – more information about these homes appears from the 10th century; a legislative act from the 10th century states: “A sick (mentally) woman should not leave, but it is the duty of her relatives to take care of her; if there are none, to enter the houses of the church”.
A large number of these public and ecclesiastical welfare homes were supported by monasteries or even housed there. They had a large bed base, which varied according to specific needs. Information about the larger ones is given in the sources. Thus, for example, we understand that some homes were two-story buildings – such as the hospital of St. Theophylact of Nicomedia, the inn of Macarius in Alexandria. For others, the number of beds is known, for example: the ecclesiastical hospital of Antioch in the time of Patriarch Ephraim (527-545) had over forty beds. Four hundred beds were available in the hospital for lepers at Phorcyda, the New Virgin Mary Inn in Jerusalem had two hundred beds, seven shelters in Alexandria had forty beds each, i.e. a total of two hundred and eighty, etc. n.
The life of St. Theophylact, Bishop of Nicomedia (806-840) gives a lot of information about his charitable work and especially about the work of the hospital he founded. In the two-story hospital, there was a chapel of Saints Cosmas and Damian the Silverless. The bishop assigned doctors and staff to care for the sick, and he himself went to the hospital daily and distributed food. Every Friday he served an all-night vigil in the hospital chapel, and then he himself washed the sick, as well as the lepers, for whom there was a special wing.
The hospitals in Angira, Paphlagonia, were staffed by monks. They have given day and night shifts. Palladius’ Lavsaica tells of a monk who interrupted his prayer during the service in the bishopric (where the sick had gathered) and helped a pregnant woman to give birth.
The life of St. Ravulas, bishop of the city (5th century), gives us many details about the social activity in Edessa. He built a hospital in the city and he himself saw to it that it was in order, that the beds had soft mattresses and that it was always clean.
The hospital was cared for by ascetics, companions of St. Ravulas, men and women. He considered it his highest duty to visit the sick daily and greet them with a kiss. For the maintenance of the hospital, he set aside several villages from the diocesan ones, and all the income from them went to the sick: he set aside about a thousand dinars annually.
Bishop Ravoulas also built a women’s shelter, which had been lacking in Edessa until then. In twenty-four years as a bishop, he did not build a single church, his life reports, because he thought that the money of the church belonged to the poor and the suffering. He ordered four pagan temples to be destroyed and the women’s shelter in question to be built with the material. Among the canons he compiled for the administration of his district was one that read: “To every church there should be a house where the poor can rest.”
For the lepers, who were hated at that time and lived outside the borders of the cities, he took special care with great love. He sent his trusted deacons to live with them and cover their many needs with church money.
We cannot fail to mention the famous Basiliad of St. Basil the Great (4th century) in Caesarea – a huge complex of social institutions, where a large place was dedicated to lepers. St. Basil had influence over the wealthy citizens of the district and they donated large sums to the welfare complex. Even the emperor, who was originally opposed to him, agreed to donate several villages for the benefit of lepers in Basiliad.
The brother of St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Naucratius founded a retirement home in a forest in Cappadocia where he cared for poor old people after he left his legal profession. He hunted in the nearby forest and thus fed the old people in the home.
Social institutions were supported by the state or the church, occasionally receiving donations from emperors or private individuals in money and property, so many of them had their own property. Some of them were private, as for example in Amnia, Paphlagonia, where the wife of St. Philaret (8th century) after his death built houses for the poor to help the area devastated by the Arab invasions. In addition to homes, she rebuilt destroyed temples and founded monasteries.
In certain areas, separate institutions for men and women functioned, such as in Cappadocia, Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, or they were mixed, but men and women were separated on different floors or wings of buildings, as was the case in the leper home in Alexandria. All of them had their own cemeteries. There were also special cases such as the inn of Ilia and Theodore in Melitini, Armenia. They were merchants who, now grown up, turned their home into an inn for travelers and the sick. Apart from them, however, other people also lived permanently in the home: virgins, old people, blind people, invalids, and they all led a monastic life of fasting and abstinence.
In cities such as Jerusalem, Jericho, Alexandria and others there were separate nomads for monks. In some cases, they were also used as a place of “conviction” for priests and monks serving punishment or exile. For example, on the island of Chios imp. Theodora built an inn especially for the Monophysite monks and exiled bishops. In Gangra, Paphlagonia, there was also a church inn, where in 523 the Monophysite Metropolitan Philoxenus of Hierapolis was exiled for the second time, where he died.
Emperors took special care of these establishments and there was a state policy for their development. In the life of St. Simeon the Pillar, it is mentioned that the abbot of the home for the poor in Lichnidos (now Ohrid) Domnin was accepted by imp. Justinian in Constantinople on some debts of the house. Justinian built or restored such homes in many fortresses of the empire, especially in its frontier regions. There are numerous inscriptions where his name is mentioned in connection with the restoration of social homes in Byzantium.
Until the end of the empire, the care of this particular type of establishment for society’s outsiders was among the state’s priorities in its domestic policy. For its part, the church looked at the “outsiders” in a way completely new in human history and gave them something that no social institution, however well maintained, could give: it restored their human dignity as has broken down the walls by which misfortune and disease have separated these people from society. Moreover, she looked at them as Christ Himself, according to His words: I tell you the truth: inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brothers, you did it to Me.
Illustration: Icon “The dinner of St. Joseph and St. Anna”, Wall painting from the Boyana Church (Bulgaria), XIII c.
