Activities
The care of the sick was the primary mission of the Order. The Rule required four physicians and two surgeons attached to the hospital. The Rule exhibits "an enlightened conception of the needs of the sick that would do credit to any modern institution". It laid down the principle of primum non nocere and even advised a "hearty diet" during Lent for the ill. For "our lords (domini, signori) the sick", as the Order's patients are called in the Rule, beds must be large with separate sheets and coverlets, each patient was to have fur cloak and woolen cap for use in the commons area (per andare ad luogo commune). Cribs and cradles were to be provided for newborns.
The Order was not an order of fratres pontifices ("pontifical, i.e. bridge-building, brethren") and was not heavily involved in bridge-building. Hélyot, in examining the origins of certain bridges associated with hospitallers in the Rhône valley, ascribed their construction to the Order of Altopascio, whose members he calls religieux hospitaliers pontifes ("bridge-building hospitaller religious"). Hélyot went so far as to associated the famous Saint Bénézet with the Altopascians. Henri Grégoire, writing in 1818, cast doubt on the thesis and Emerton rejected it as groundless while admitting that the Provençal hospitals may well have been associated with Altopascia. Besides the bridge at Fucechhio which is known from the imperial edict of 1244 to have been charged to the Order's care, other bridges may have been maintained in Italy where the Via Francigena crosses the Arda, the Elsa, the Taro, and the Usciana.
Read more about this topic: Order Of Saint James Of Altopascio
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“If it is to be done well, child-rearing requires, more than most activities of life, a good deal of decentering from one’s own needs and perspectives. Such decentering is relatively easy when a society is stable and when there is an extended, supportive structure that the parent can depend upon.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“That is the real pivot of all bourgeois consciousness in all countries: fear and hate of the instinctive, intuitional, procreative body in man or woman. But of course this fear and hate had to take on a righteous appearance, so it became moral, said that the instincts, intuitions and all the activities of the procreative body were evil, and promised a reward for their suppression. That is the great clue to bourgeois psychology: the reward business.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The old, subjective, stagnant, indolent and wretched life for woman has gone. She has as many resources as men, as many activities beckon her on. As large possibilities swell and inspire her heart.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)