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Article: Poverty
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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POVERTY
POVERTY.
Poverty in early modern Europe was not well understood
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at least outside of the biblical conception that the poor will always be with us
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and the extent of poverty in the centuries leading up to the industrial revolution has not been well mapped
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not by historians, and certainly not by the contemporaries who were confronted by the hungry and diseased, the homeless and fatherless, on their doorsteps. Yet there can be no doubt that both the threat and the reality of poverty were pervasive throughout the early modern period.
The material and spiritual needs of the poor were the subject of endless clerical rumination, which sometimes resulted in actual ...