cnn1200015 199..239


Funding and founding private charities:
Leiden almshouses and their founders,

1450–1800

HENK LOOIJESTEIJN*

ABSTRACT. This article presents a case study of the founders of almshouses for
the elderly in the Dutch city of Leiden during the late middle ages and the early
modern age. First, an overview of Leiden’s almshouses is given and an assessment
made of their importance for the elderly. Next, a prosopography of Leiden’s alms-

house founders is presented, and reasons for founding almshouses discussed, focusing
on religion, status, and the support of one’s nearest and dearest. This is followed by
an analysis of the social class of almshouse inhabitants. This article contends that via

almshouse foundations the wealthy and privileged upper classes of Dutch society
looked after (distant) family members, employees and other dependants in their
patronage orbit, and that almshouses thus in practice served mostly as a respectable

way out of open and disgraceful poverty for members of the lower middle class and
the class of wage-dependants.

1. I N T R O D U C T I O N

Dutch charity has been literally monumentalised in a great number of
buildings with a charitable purpose, such as hospitals, orphanages and old
people’s homes as well as almshouses. Frequently, these ‘many and various
hospitals’ were the wonder of foreign visitors such as Sir William Temple,
who wrote that these buildings ‘are in every man’s curiosity and talk that
travels their Countrey’.1 Many of these institutions were founded and
funded with private money. From the late middle ages onwards, wealthy
private persons founded hospitals, orphanages, a few madhouses and
even an occasional reformatory.2 Mostly, however, they established
almshouses to allow elderly, honest people of modest means to live out

* International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

Continuity and Change 27 (2), 2012, 199–239. f Cambridge University Press 2012
doi:10.1017/S026841601200015X

199



their lives with dignity, preventing their descent into disgraceful poverty
through failing strength and diminishing resources. Almshouses were
founded in great numbers throughout the early modern age from the late
fourteenth century onwards. They could be found in most Dutch cities
and even in some villages.

Almshouses for the elderly poor were not confined to the Dutch
Republic. They could also be found in, for example, Ireland, England,
Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Italy.3 Though almshouses
were a recurring feature of charitable endeavour throughout Europe,
they have long been neglected as an object of academic historical study.4

Nevertheless, enough is known to be able to say that in the Dutch
Republic as well as in other European countries, founding an almshouse
was an established form of charity amongst wealthy benefactors.

These wealthy almshouse founders have, within the context of the
Giving in the Golden Age (GIGA) project, been selected to systematically
study what could have motivated the private funding and founding
of large-scale philanthropic institutions in the seventeenth century;
the Dutch Golden Age. Central questions are: who could afford to spend
so much money on a charitable endeavour? Why, and for whom, would
one do so? In order to answer these questions, the Dutch Almshouse
Database (DAD) has been created. Its purpose is to chart the almshouses
established on the territory of the present-day Kingdom of the
Netherlands, from the earliest on record until today. Currently, the
database contains 563 entries of different Dutch almshouses, giving in-
formation such as locality, province, year of foundation and/or termin-
ation of the almshouse, number of residents, requirements for residency
and on the founders of the almshouses. It is quite certain that more
almshouses existed, since many that were short lived tend to be over-
looked due to the lack of physical remains or archives. However, sufficient
information has been gathered to furnish an overview of when and where
almshouse foundations took place in the Netherlands. Figure 1 presents,
first, an overview of the 482 Dutch almshouses founded before 1800, be-
fore zooming in on the province of Holland, for which most foundations
have been recorded, and then concentrating on Leiden, the city that is the
focus of this article.

The secondary literature on which the database is based does not al-
ways provide all the answers to the research questions. In order to remedy
this, the database is supplemented with in-depth case studies based on
archival sources. This article presents a case study of the almshouse
founders of Leiden and aims to answer the questions: who were these
founders, what might have motivated them, and who benefited from their
charitable largesse?

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2. L E I D E N A S A C A S E S T U D Y

Leiden was chosen as a case study for various reasons. First of all,
Holland was the wealthiest, most highly urbanised and densely populated
Dutch province and Leiden, a great industrial city dominating Holland’s
important textile trade, was the second-largest and the third-richest city of
the Republic during most of the early modern age.5 Thus, a considerable
number of almshouses were founded there. Figure 1 shows how nearly
half of the Dutch almshouse foundations took place in Holland, where, as
one might expect, the number of foundations peaked in the seventeenth
century. Leiden contained a sizeable 19 per cent of all almshouse foun-
dations in Holland before 1800, and foundations there also peaked in the
seventeenth century.

Second, since 1955, the 35 almshouses remaining in Leiden have been
extensively restored, which has inspired a prolific – if fragmentary and
mostly non-academic – secondary literature based around them. In fact,
this literature begins with the substantial almshouse descriptions by
the Leiden topographers Jan Jansz Orlers (1570–1646) and Frans van
Mieris (1689–1762).6 In addition, the archives of most Leiden almshouses
have survived sufficiently to allow research to be conducted from several
angles. In the twentieth century, the upsurge of interest in almshouses and
their well-preserved archives has led to considerable attention from both
local historians and historians abroad.7

Third, Leiden is one of the most profoundly studied urban societies
of the early modern Netherlands, which allows us to place the Leiden
almshouses and their founders in a context of some depth.

83
19

11

82

32

7

141
97

21
64

46

5
112

37

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Northern
Netherlands

(n=482)

Holland (n=231) Leiden (n=44)

Unknown

18th century

17th century

16th century

Before 1500

F IG U RE 1. Almshouse foundations in the Northern Netherlands, Holland and Leiden in the

centuries before 1800. (Source: Dutch Almshouse Database.)

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3. A L M S H O U S E S I N L E I D E N: N U M B E R, O R G A N I S A T I O N
A N D C A P A C I T Y

Though the above-mentioned number of 35 has become a canonical
figure in Leiden almshouse historiography, it is certain that more existed:
the database currently has 47 entries for Leiden. Nine early founda-
tions – mostly medieval – seem to have been in existence for only a short
time and little is known about their founders and history.8 They are not
considered here. The oldest of the 35 almshouses still in existence is the
Jeruzalemshofje, founded in 1467; the most recent, the Justus Carelhuis,
was founded in 1936. Most Leiden almshouses date from the four cen-
turies before 1800: almshouse founding was thus mostly a late medieval
and early modern phenomenon. Three were founded after 1800, and
fall outside the time limits of our study. Here only the 34 foundations
before 1800 about whose founders something conclusive can be said will
be discussed.

Appendix Table A shows how these 34 almshouses were essentially
founded in two waves; a first wave in the second half of the fifteenth and
early sixteenth century, and a second, much longer, wave between 1598
and 1690, coinciding with Leiden’s Golden Age. After this peak, alms-
house foundations quickly declined in number, especially after the 1720s.
The slumps in founding in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries are
probably related to the severe economic declines that Leiden suffered in
these centuries when its predominant industry, textile manufacture, went
into recession. Conversely, when Leiden’s weaving industry was booming,
as in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, new almshouses were the
fruits of the concomitant prosperity.9 This concurs with the findings of
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk that charity markedly diminished when a
city went through pronounced economic decline.10

Most of the early modern Leiden almshouses were organised along
similar lines. Usually founded by a private benefactor, they were destined
to house poor, usually elderly, people. Initially, they were mainly founded
for and inhabited by couples, later mostly for and by women. Residents
enjoyed free housing, along with other benefits, such as regular doles of
food, fuel, clothing or money. Sometimes, the almshouse also provided
the considerable cost of medicine, health care or a decent funeral. In
return, the almspeople were often obligated to sign over their belongings
to the almshouse, although this requirement was usually relaxed in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The definition of ‘poor’ was relative:
residents had to conform to certain requirements in order to be eligible for
an almshouse, such as having a favourable reputation or being of an ap-
propriate religion. Sometimes residents had to pay a certain amount upon

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entry. Almshouses were, therefore, not open to all poor people. Contrary
to popular perception, they may have functioned as safety valves for the
lower middle class by allowing elderly people of modest means to enjoy
their remaining years with a decent quality of life, a point to which we will
return later.11

The doles varied in number and in quantity. The contents depended on
how much capital the almshouse had at its disposal. Until the twentieth
century, this allowance remained part of Dutch almshouse life. The
almshouses were run by boards of regents – either as an independent
institution or as part of a greater whole, such as the city’s almoners’
office – who looked after the buildings, the capital and the inhabitants.
The regents decided who was to receive a place, and ensured that the
inhabitants behaved as honourable, grateful recipients of charity. They
also invested the institution’s capital and applied for the freedom of taxes
that charitable institutions enjoyed.

Before the religious Reformation of the 1570s, most founders in Leiden
entrusted their foundation to the colleges of the city’s almoners or poor
wardens (huiszittenmeesters), who either exercised some manner of
supervision or governed the almshouses directly. After the Reformation,
by contrast, most founders preferred to create boards of regents either
as an independent board unaffiliated with the almoners, or in close co-
operation with the particular religious congregation to which they be-
longed – a consequence of the multiform religious landscape that emerged
in Holland after the Reformation. When, in 1582, the Almoners merged
with the Dutch Reformed deacons, they were no longer attractive care-
takers for other denominations.

In either case, the urban government ensured, by periodical checks and
occasional intervention, that the almshouse regents administered the
almshouses well and that the latter continued to function as the charitable
institutions imagined by their founders. Although most almshouses
were founded by private initiative, in an era in which magistrates lacked
the means to implement a social housing policy, the Leiden burgomasters
kept close watch over what ‘social housing’ there was. Frequently they
were, in a private capacity, on the regent boards themselves.12

Despite this close magisterial interest, as a form of ‘social housing’
almshouses were never more than marginal: by the end of the eighteenth
century, Leiden’s 34 functioning almshouses offered a total of 562 places.
What proportion of Leiden’s elderly population could be accommodated
in them will be the subject of the following paragraphs.

In the early modern age, old age was thought to begin between 50 and
60 years.13 Certain Dutch scholars have estimated that 6 to 8 per cent
of the population in the Republic were over 55 years14 and others that

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7 to 8 per cent were over 60 years.15 The first percentage is certainly too
low. Calculations, based on the reconstruction of the demographic regime
of Amsterdam between 1680 and 1920 by Marco van Leeuwen and James
Oeppen,16 show that the percentage of the population over 55 years in
Amsterdam was higher: 13.3 per cent in 1680, 13.7 per cent in 1750 and
13.2 per cent in 1795. They estimate that the percentage of the population
over 60 years in Amsterdam was 8.9 in 1680, 7.4 in 1750 and 7.7 in 1795.
In another Dutch locality, for which data are available, the village
of Maasland, the percentage of people over 60 years shows a different
pattern, growing from 4.9 per cent in 1730 to 10.2 per cent by 1800.17 In
England the percentage of the population over 60 years grew from 7 per
cent in 1581 to between 8 and 9 per cent in the first half and 9 per cent in
the second half of the seventeenth century, declining to 8 per cent in the
eighteenth century.18 If almshouses set an age minimum, they usually set it
at 50 years (rather than 55 or 60 years), which would have led to a much
larger percentage of the population which could have had access to an
almshouse. Assuming that Leiden’s demographic regime was similar to
that of Amsterdam, this would imply percentages of 18.7 in 1680, 19.9 in
1750 and 18.8 in 1795.19

For Leiden, we have no data concerning the percentage of elderly of the
total population,20 so we will work with estimates based on the total
number of inhabitants, using the Amsterdam percentages to calculate the
number of elderly. Table 1 shows the numbers and percentages of the total
population and the estimated population over 50 years in Leiden in the
years 1670, 1749 and 1795, and the number and capacity of the func-
tioning almshouses21 in those years.

The percentage of Leiden elderly accommodated in almshouses rose
considerably, from 2.7 in 1670 to a maximum of 9.7 per cent in 1795. The
latter number seems to imply that a significant number of Leiden’s elderly
population resided in almshouses in the late eighteenth century, but a
caveat is in order: almshouses in Leiden served more than just the elderly.
It has been estimated that in 1749 Leiden’s almshouses housed 556 per-
sons.22 Many of them were single men and women, widows or couples
without children, but there were also couples with children living there.
Unfortunately, there are no data that provide the ages of these almshouse
inhabitants, but one may assume that at least 49 almshouse inhabitants
in 1749 were children. There were also five co-residents of almshouse in-
habitants who are likely to have been younger than 50 years – sometimes
truly old almspeople had younger relatives caring for them. Both cat-
egories amount to 9.7 per cent of the total: the rest – even the parents
with children – may well have been over 50 years: 90.3 per cent of the
total: 502 persons.23 Judging from that number, the number of elderly

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almshouse inhabitants in 1749 was not 7.7 but more like 6.9 per cent of the
total number of Leiden inhabitants over 50 years. Extrapolating to 1795,
when there may have been as many as 562 almshouse inhabitants, of
which – if the structure was the same as in 1749 – 507 may have been over
50 years, instead of 9.7 the proportion might have been about 8.7 per cent
of the Leiden elderly. These figures must, however, be regarded as tenta-
tive. Nevertheless, even with these lower estimates, almshouses were
significant as a particular poor relief institution for the elderly. Their im-
portance continued to grow throughout the early modern age, mainly due
to the decrease in the population of Leiden, assisted by a slight increase in
almshouse places. Eventually, almshouses catered for up to a third of the
total number of elderly in need of care; other types of care for the Leiden
elderly each seem to have supported smaller numbers of people.24

4. L E I D E N A L M S H O U S E F O U N D E R S: A T E N T A T I V E P R O S O P O G R A P H Y

It is time to return to the first research question: who were the founders of
the Leiden almshouses? To help understand what might have motivated

T AB L E 1
Number of elderly Leiden inhabitants accommodated in almshouses

Year

1670 1749 1795

Total population 67,000 37,000 30,955

Percentage of elderly in total population (estimate) 18.7 19.9 18.8

Number of elderly over 50 years (estimate) 12,060 7,263 5,820

Number of functioning almshouses 21 33 34

Number of places 325 556 562

Percentage of population accommodated 0.5 1.5 1.8

Percentage of elderly accommodated 2.7 7.7 9.7

Sources: Population 1670 and 1795: Piet Lourens and Jan Lucassen, Inwoneraantallen van
Nederlandse steden ca. 1300–1800 (Amsterdam, 1997), 113–14. Population 1749: D. J.
Noordam, ‘Gezins- en huishoudens-structuren in het achttiende-eeuwse Leiden’, in H. A.
Diederiks, D. J. Noordam and H. D. Tjalsma, Armoede en sociale spanning. Sociaal-histor-
ische studies over Leiden in de achttiende eeuw (Hilversum, 1985), 87–104, especially 88.
Percentage of elderly in total population based upon Amsterdam figures. Almshouses: Dutch
Almshouse Database (DAD). Places: DAD. For 1670 the number is deduced from the
number of inhabitants or apartments specified in the founding acts. In some cases, the
number of inhabitants would have been higher than the number of apartments, but that is
not always clear from the sources. Moreover, under-registration was common because
almshouses sometimes allowed more inhabitants than originally specified. This number
must, therefore, be regarded as an approximate minimum. 1749: Tjalsma, ‘Een karakter-
isering van Leiden’, in Diederiks, Noordam and Tjalsma, Armoede en sociale spanning, 33.

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almshouse founders over such a long stretch of time, data have been
gathered which form building blocks of a prosopography of almshouse
founders: their names, dates, social status, occupations, wealth, gender,
family relations (i.e. whether they were married, single and had children or
not) and religion. The method of prosopography is, in itself, insufficient
to isolate motives for founding almshouses, but allows the shared
characteristics of almshouse founders to be established. In some cases –
such as with the absence of children – such information may lead to the
identification of a particular motive amongst founders.25

The Leiden case study is based on 34 almshouse foundations,
enumerated in Table A in the Appendix, which lists the foundations,
their founders (36 in all),26 the dates of original statement of intention
to make a foundation and the dates that the foundations were actually
effected.27 The founders and their characteristics are listed in Table B in
the Appendix, which includes such items as each founder’s gender, marital
status, occupation, religion, presence or absence of offspring, the highest
public office – if any – held in Leiden, and whether they were of immigrant
descent. All of these will be discussed in the following paragraphs.

Of the 36 founders, 23 acted alone. Of these individuals, 17 were men
and six were women. This did not mean that they were all unmarried:
sometimes their partner did not take part in the foundation. There were
also nine married couples acting as joint founders, while the Hofje van
Brouckhoven and the Tevelingshofje were founded by siblings. The largest
group of founders, thus, consisted of male founders acting alone, the se-
cond largest comprised couples and the smallest female founders.
Nevertheless there was a significant percentage of single women founders:
six women out of 23 (26 per cent) may exemplify the great liberty which
Dutch women enjoyed when it came to dispensing with their property.28

For example, the Klein Sionshofje was founded in 1641 by Emerentia
Benningh (founder number 17 in Appendix Table B) while her husband
Jacob van Brouckhoven (16a) was still alive. Since he had founded his
own almshouse, following the last will of his sister, he may have supported
his wife’s endeavour without feeling the need to act as a co-founder.

At the time of foundation, 17 founders were married,29 a further 10 had
been widowed and five had never been married. The exact marital status
of four other founders at the time of foundation is unknown. In three of
these cases, it is known that François Houttijn (28), Samuel de Zee (31)
and Barend van Namen (32) were married at some point, but it is unclear
whether they were still married at the time of foundation. Even if the last
unknown case, Joost Fransz van der Linden (25), remained unmarried all
his life, the vast majority of founders, 30 out of 36, were married at some
stage.

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The majority – 26 out of 36 – of founders did not have any surviving
children at the moment of foundation. At least 15 founders are known to
have been completely childless.30 In a further six cases, the records do not
mention childlessness, but no children are known. In another five cases,
their children had predeceased the founders. Nothing is known about the
children of the final founder, Joost Fransz van der Linde, but it is likely
that he did not leave behind any as living heirs. The nine remaining
founders had children living at the time of foundation.

The absence of children seems to have been a crucial factor in the de-
cision to contribute to charity on a grand scale. The prime consideration
and obligation of an ageing, early modern Dutchman was to transfer his
property to his partner, children or other descendants. If these were ab-
sent, he had a certain moral liberty to dispense with part of his capital for
the benefit of people to whom he was not related. This ‘unwritten rule’
also applied to bequests, which in Leiden were given predominantly by
people without children.31

Nevertheless, in nine of the cases under consideration, the founders had
children who were alive when the almshouse was founded. In the case of
Jacob Tevel and Elisabeth van den Vinct (22b) their only son was severely
handicapped and clearly expected to die young, which he duly did. Two
other foundations were to be realised only if a child died. The foundation
by Bartolomeus Willemsz van Assendelft (13) was only to take effect if his
daughter or her descendants were to die without heirs of the body,32 an
eventuality which occurred in 1681, nearly 56 years later. François
Houttijn stipulated in his will that after the death of his daughter and
brother, an almshouse should be founded. Both died, without descen-
dants, within three years of Houttijn, after which the foundation took
effect.

Only six founders apparently had healthy children who lived long be-
yond their parents and had descendants.33 Of these founders, four lived
before Leiden’s Reformation in 1573. They were all wealthy and, perhaps,
considered their children well taken care of already. The same applies
to two of the later founders, Gerrit Franckensz van Hoogmade (15) and
Diderick van Leyden (33). Van Leyden, an exceptionally proud patrician,
even in the eyes of his peers,34 not only founded the Mierennesthofje in
Leiden, but also, in 1757, the Van Leydenshofje in his lordship,
Vlaardingen. Van Leyden was exceedingly wealthy and had bequeathed a
string of local lordships to his surviving sons, so that none of them needed
to worry about being disadvantaged on account of their father’s philan-
thropic largesse. Indeed, they faithfully administered his foundations.35

As for religion, all eight pre-Reformation founders must be considered
Catholics as, until 1573, the Catholic church was the only recognised

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church. After 1573, religious diversity emerged in Leiden, and most of
the 28 post-Reformation founders were Protestants of some description,
while only four were Catholic, two were Remonstrant and one was
Mennonite. The remaining 21 Protestant founders belonged to the
Reformed church, either the public, Dutch Reformed church or the
French-speaking Walloon Reformed church. Theologically, these chur-
ches were in communion with each other, and the Walloons belonged to
the officially accepted Calvinist Reformed church.

These data on Leiden founders can be compared with all the founders
in the database. The results are presented in Table 2.

At face value, the Leiden data differ considerably from the whole.
However, research in Leiden’s archives has supplied data lacking for other
localities, so there is a contrast with the larger database where there is a
considerable percentage of cases where data are unknown. For example:
in 45 per cent of cases marital status is unknown, in 71 per cent it is not
known if the founder had long-lived progeny, and in 29 per cent of cases
no indication of religion was available.

Nevertheless, there are also similarities between the data for the
Northern Netherlands and those for Leiden. As in Leiden, nearly half of
the founders in the Northern Netherlands were men acting alone, most
of those about whom something is known were married at some point
and most were childless or their children had predeceased them. It is
probable therefore that the Leiden data are representative of the larger
database, but this can remain no more than a tentative conclusion.
Table 2 suggests that outside Leiden a greater proportion of founders
were single females, whereas the proportion of founders who were
couples was much lower. This difference may again be a result from the
additional archival research undertaken in Leiden, which supplied the
names and identified the existence of partners of the Leiden almshouse
founders.

There were clear differences where religion was concerned, which is
probably due to the uneven distribution of the religious groups.
Catholicism, for example, was much stronger in cities such as Amsterdam
and Haarlem, and the database shows more Catholic foundations in these
cities after the Reformation.

There are fewer data on the wealth of founders – even in the case of
Leiden despite the extra archival research there. Often there is insufficient
source material to assess either the wealth held by the founders or what
proportion of it they spent on their foundation.36 Older foundations in
particular were often not funded in terms of money, but were endowed
with lands and houses, from which the foundation was to receive rents
necessary for its upkeep.37 Sometimes, as founders already owned the

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buildings that were to form their almshouse, they granted a sum of money
only for upkeep. Cathrijn Maertensdr (10) left 600 guilders for the upkeep
of her almshouse while Pieter Gerritsz van der Speck (18) bequeathed
4,000 guilders to his.38 Sometimes, we are informed about how much
money the founders intended to set aside, but not how much the total
capital was, such as in the case of Eva van Hoogeveen (20), who left
obligations (bonds) worth 32,000 guilders for her almshouse, a sum which
was indeed spent, but which was considerably lower than the amount
inherited by her family.39 Sometimes we know how much was spent but
not the total wealth of the founder. Diderick van Leyden spent 1,055
guilders buying the houses that would become the Mierennesthofje.

T AB L E 2
Leiden founders compared with founders in the Northern Netherlands

as a whole

Leiden Northern Netherlands

n % n %

Type of founder

Male single 17 47 175 46

Female single 6 17 91 24

Couple 9 25 55 15

Other 4 11 58 15

Total 36 100 379a 100

Known marital status

Married at one point 30 86 160 77

Never married 5 14 48 23

Total 35 100 208 100

Known offspring

No surviving offspring 29 83 74 69

Surviving offspring in the long term 6 17 34 31

Total 35 100 108 100

Known religion

Catholic 12 33 188 70

Dutch Reformed 13 36 42 16

Walloon Reformed 8 22 8 2.5

Remonstrant 2 6 8 2.5

Mennonite 1 3 13 5

Other 0 0 10 4

Total 36 100 269 100

a Number of almshouse founders before 1800 in Dutch Almshouse Database about whom
at least some data are known.
Source: Dutch Almshouse Database.

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In 1760 he bequeathed 9,300 guilders in obligations to this almshouse.40

Cecilia Coninck (34) reserved 50,000 guilders for her almshouse, of which
13,000 was spent on the actual building.41

In a few cases, we can assess how much of their capital founders
spent on their foundations. Jacob van Brouckhoven (16a), who built
and founded his almshouse during his lifetime, possessed 250,000
guilders in 1626. He spent approximately 20,000 guilders on his founda-
tion42 – less than a tenth of his total capital, but nevertheless a consider-
able amount. Cornelis Sprongh (30) spent even more in terms of
percentage of his total wealth. He left half of his estate – worth 109,365
guilders43 – to the almshouse to be situated in his house. Joint
founders Jean Pesijn and Marie de Lannoy (23) spent their entire capital
on their almshouse. In 1674, as a widow, de Lannoy was estimated
to possess a capital of 25 to 26,000 guilders. After her death and the
sale of all her possessions, the total capital came to 27,642 guilders. This
entire amount was spent on building the almshouse and acquiring the
obligations whose rents were to provide for the upkeep of the Jean
Pesijnshofje.44

To put all these sums into perspective, in the years 1700–1780, the
average capital of a Leiden town regent was 154,159 guilders; of a regent’s
relative 99,770;45 the average capital of a merchant/entrepreneur was
253,782 guilders; a rich Catholic, 149,457 guilders; and a Protestant
rentier, 305,796 guilders.46 Thus, the amount available to spend on
founding an almshouse varied considerably. Evidently, not all founders
spent the same amount, or even the same proportion of their total capital
on their almshouse. Certainly, in the case of the larger almshouses, a large
amount of capital was required and founding an almshouse could con-
siderably drain one’s resources.

Because the data concerning wealth are often insufficient, the occupa-
tions of the founders, as possible indicator of wealth, and social class, as
captured via membership of the patrician elite, have been singled out in
two columns in Appendix Table B. Some occupations are likely to func-
tion as good indicators of wealth: brewer, merchant, landed proprietor,47

administrator,48 director of the Dutch East India Company and lawyer.
However, occupations as such are not necessarily a reliable indicator of
wealth. Thus, the husbands of both Cathrijn Jacobsdr (9) and Cathrijn
Maertensdr (10) were tailors, a relatively modest occupation in itself.
Secondary sources, however, describe the husband of Cathrijn
Maertensdr as a ‘rich’ tailor. The same applies to ‘carpenter’ Pieter
Gerritsz van der Speck (18), whose relatively modest occupational title
hides the fact that he was active as a successful contractor and speculator
who earned his fortune in Leiden’s building boom of the early 1600s.

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The same applies to Anthonis Jacobsz van der Schacht (24), listed as
shopkeeper, but whose probate inventory shows that he actually owned
28 houses in Leiden.49

We may, therefore, assume that even when an occupational title is fairly
modest, the founder in question nevertheless enjoyed considerable success
and wealth. This does not mean, however, that they necessarily enjoyed
high social status in Leiden – they may have been homines novi or ‘new
men’ – a term which may also have applied to many of the merchants.
The apex of Leiden society, as in all Dutch cities, was occupied by
the town regents, who were co-opted into the urban government.50

Participation of the almshouse founders in the city’s government provides
another indicator of status. Only a minority of the founders were town
regents, mostly in the years around and before 1500, when two founders
reached the rank of alderman, and three that of burgomaster. Although
the other two pre-Reformation founders were not members of the city
government, Agatha van Alckemade (7) and Geraert van der Laen (8),
enjoyed high social status. Van Alckemade was a noblewoman of high
rank and Van der Laen was a major landed proprietor, so equal to a lesser
nobleman.

After the Reformation, however, the number of patricians and noble-
men among the founders in Leiden declined considerably.51 Of 28 such
founders, only three were members of the city council. Two of these,
Jacob van Brouckhoven (16a) and Diderick van Leyden (33), were quite
exceptional among their peers on account of their great wealth, status and
considerable power.52 There were, however, six other founders affiliated
with the city’s patrician elite and therefore of high social status: the sister
and wife of Jacob van Brouckhoven; the Catholic priest Pouwels Claesz
de Goede (14), member of a former magistrate’s family; Eva van
Hoogeveen (20), daughter and sister to magistrates; Maarten Ruychaver
Meerman (27), brother of a magistrate; and Cornelis Sprongh (30), a
Catholic descended from a distinguished magistrate’s family whose great
wealth meant that he was regarded as socially near-equal to his Protestant
relations.

Even when counting these six individuals in, only nine out of 28 post-
Reformation almshouse founders can be regarded as part of Leiden’s
highest social stratum, which contrasts strongly with the fact that all
eight pre-Reformation founders were of such status.53 The contrast be-
tween the status of almshouse founders before and after the Reformation
begs explanation. It would appear that after the Reformation most town
regents of Leiden preferred not to display charity through the foundation
of almshouses.54 As the number of elderly far exceeded the available
almshouse places, the city was always in need of an extra almshouse.

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Nevertheless, though there were significant accumulations of capital
in eighteenth-century Leiden and, at the same time, an ever-growing
part of the population was mired in poverty, only one regent founded
an almshouse; charity does not seem to have ranked high on the list
of Leiden town regents’ concerns.55 Van Nederveen Meerkerk, inciden-
tally, notes that in Leiden, most testamentary bequests were not made by
the elite but by the ‘middling’ groups.56 There are a few exceptions,
however, which show that patricians occasionally acted charitably on a
grand scale and were wealthy enough to found an almshouse should they
choose to do so. The alderman Pieter Verhooft and his wife, Elisabeth van
der Hiel, bequeathed 20,000 guilders to the city orphanage in 1740. They
could have afforded to found an almshouse, but the charitable couple had
no desire to have their charity publicly remembered, desiring an ‘eternal
silence’ on the subject of their largesse.57

Before lambasting Leiden’s regents as Scrooges however, one should
take into account that many town regents, in addition to their public
magistrate functions, also often acted as lifelong regents of the various
almshouses in Leiden. For example, all eighteenth-century regents of the
Hofje van Brouckhoven were until 1795 also members of the city council.58

They often took on several almshouse regent positions. To give just one
example, burgomaster Nicolaas van de Velde (1697–1773) was regent of
three almshouses.59 Those of high social status thus held a considerable
number of almshouse regencies. Qualitative evidence suggests that the
regents of almshouses often contributed their own funds to the upkeep
and continuation of the almshouses they administered. They left bequests
to them, compensated for deficits in the accounts and spent money on
their beautification. Evidence from Amsterdam suggests that having given
great sums to charity during their lifetime, they might then have been less
able to be charitable after death.60 Regents were also often related to
people who founded almshouses, and were expected to look after these
foundations out of familial respect and piety. Thus those resources for
charity which they had, they were likely to channel into already existing
almshouses. Diderick van Leyden (number 33 in Appendix Table B) not
only founded two almshouses, but also acted as regent of the Hofje van
Brouckhoven as well as passing on to his sons no less than two regent posts
in the Arend Maertenshofje in Dordrecht – founded by a great-grand-
father of his – suggesting that he was an extraordinary exception that
confirms the rule.61

This all suggests that founding an almshouse, at least after the
Reformation, was more the work of a social sub-elite, a layer lower than
the city’s patrician families. We will return to this analysis in the following
section.

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5. R E A S O N S F O R F O U N D I N G A L M S H O U S E S

Like most people, almshouse founders seldom acted out of one overriding
motive, but rather from a mixture of motives. Limitations of space pro-
hibit a discussion of the whole range of possible motives. Instead, we will
focus on three important motives: religion, status and the motive of sup-
porting one’s nearest and dearest.62

5.1 Religion

The earliest almshouse foundations were presumably the result of pri-
marily religious motives; the wish to attain salvation through charitable
work. In the late middle ages, many gifts to the church and institutions of
poor relief were given under the condition that they should be acknowl-
edged by the recipients in the form of prayers for the benefactors. At the
time, people commonly adhered to the Church’s doctrine that, after
death, the soul entered Purgatory to be cleansed of its sins until it was fit
to enter Heaven. Intercession in the form of prayers quickened the puri-
fication process, especially when the prayers came from devout and poor
people. The acquisition and possession of wealth implied a greater burden
of sin, but the rich sinner could lighten his burden by charitable acts,
which had the added benefit of instilling gratitude in the recipients, who
responded by praying for the benefactor.

One of the forms in which this pursuit of salvation could be given shape
was the bedehouse. A benefactor would found an almshouse, preferably
for 12, 13 or 14 inhabitants – holy numbers referring to Mary, Christ
and the twelve apostles – where poor people, usually elderly, were given
free housing and often additional benefits. In return, these almspeople
were to pray for the founders in perpetuity, either in the almshouse chapel
or in a church. In Leiden, both the Jeruzalemshofje and the Sint Anna
Aalmoeshuis had their own chapels, the latter surviving to the present
day,63 and the residents were expected to pray for the founders. The other
early almshouses also acted as bedehouses. The founders of the Sionshofje,
Sint Stevenshofje, Sint Annahofje and the Sint Janshofje all stipulated that
prayers should be said for them.64 Thus, personal salvation was clearly a
motive for the earliest six foundations, but seems to have lost its attraction
by the 1560s, even for devout Catholics such as Agatha van Alckemade
(number 7 in Appendix Table B), who founded the Bethaniënhofje for the
benefit of her soul and that of her parents, but did not require prayers.65

Vestiges of this memorial cult seem, nevertheless, to have persisted in
some way among Catholics. Pouwels de Goede (14) stipulated, in 1625,
that his portrait should be displayed in his eternal memory in the alms-
house that he had founded.66 Cornelis Sprongh (30) stipulated, in 1690,

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that the almswomen in his Heilige Geesthofje were to be given a treat on
the anniversaries of his birthday and that of his wife.67

With the advent of the Reformation, religious motivation becomes
harder to identify. Protestant theologians often rejected the belief that
good works could lead to salvation. Thus, almshouse foundation could no
longer be regarded as particularly beneficial for the soul. Undoubtedly,
not all formally Protestant founders were fully immersed in the finer
points of their church’s theology and may yet have hoped for some hea-
venly reward.68 However, it is known that some founders, such as Jacob
van Brouckhoven (16a), were well versed in orthodox theology. It has
been suggested that for orthodox Calvinists, founding an almshouse was a
public assertion of confidence in their salvation and of thankfulness for
God’s merciful – and undeserved – bestowal of so much material wealth.
This was, presumably, the case with the founders Van Brouckhoven, who
was a thrifty and militant Calvinist,69 Catharina Geschier (29), who, in her
will, wrote that ‘the blessing of the Lord makes rich without labour’,70

and Samuel de Zee (31), whose will shows great zeal for the Calvinist
faith, founding two scholarships for theology students and arranging for
the inhabitants of his almshouse to receive catechism lessons every week.71

5.2 Memorial cult and social status

Whereas prayers for the dead lost their urgency in Protestant theology,
the cult of commemorating the charitable dead did not disappear after the
Reformation. If anything, it became stronger, for though religious piety
might have found new channels to express itself, familial piety lost nothing
of its attraction. In fact, the charitable foundations of their ancestors seem
to have become more important for the founders’ families, with the em-
phasis shifting to the memory of the family as such. Almshouses that were
run by generations of the same family could develop into monuments to
familial charity,72 veritable family shrines. This concern seems also to have
become more important for the founders themselves, who sometimes
specified that their portraits – and sometimes those of their predeceased
offspring – be placed in the regent chambers.73

This new form of memorial cult was translated into the rise of elaborate
gatehouses, fitted out with coats of arms and commemorative inscrip-
tions. Jan Willemsz van Woudendorp (19), for example, described in de-
tail his coat of arms in his will, which was to be displayed over the gate.74

Anthonis Jacobsz van der Schacht (24) had the gate of his almshouse
decorated with depictions of the tools of his trade. Incidentally, the pla-
cing of coats of arms was not the exclusive domain of almshouse founders.
Leiden town regents, from the seventeenth century onwards, also placed

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their coats of arms on many public and semi-public buildings.75 For them,
founding an almshouse was not the only road to an increase in status and
honour of their family.

In the second half of the seventeenth century a subsequent phase in
the history of Dutch almshouses began, the building of so-called ‘monu-
mental’ almshouses. Founders were no longer content with reasonably
modest buildings but, as well as impressive gatehouses, built lavish
regents’ chambers and courtyards with monumental wells. These pro-
vided the inhabitants with more living space than the older almshouses.
Prominent monumental almshouses in Leiden are the Hofje van
Brouckhoven and the Hofje Meermansburg. The latter was described as
more pleasant than an imperial palace76 and functioned as a monument
to the charity of the Meerman family as much as an almshouse, with
coats of arms on the outside and a well topped by their eponymous mer-
man. Similarly, the Hofje van Eva van Hoogeveen was adorned with a coat
of arms on the outside wall and the well was topped by a statue of a lamb,
referring to the lamb in the family coat of arms. Obviously, charitable
purposes could be combined with the exaltation of one’s family.

It is difficult to see how this rise of monumental almshouses could be
compatible with the Calvinist theology dominating the Dutch Reformed
church, which warned against excessive external display. Jacob van
Brouckhoven, whose orthodox Calvinism is beyond doubt, also had his
coat of arms displayed on the impressive gatehouse to his almshouse,
though he did not go so far as to have his full name recorded. Instead, the
only inscriptions are his and his co-founders’ initials. Even to committed
Calvinists, it would seem, the honour and status of the family were
important concerns.77

The fact that many almshouse founders were childless and their
almshouses were often completed only after their death does not contra-
dict the importance of this concern. The reputation and status of one’s
family was not only determined by the present, but also, greatly, by the
past.78 Even if one was the last of the line, one still had obligations to
the familial memory by making sure that a family name would not be
forgotten even after its extinction.

There are more reasons to assume that status acquisition played a role.
This may be deduced from the fact that so many post-Reformation
founders in Leiden were immigrants, a trait possibly peculiar to alms-
house founders in this city given the enormous influx of French-speaking
immigrants from the Southern Netherlands. At least seven foundations
were the work of eight founders who were immigrants – or children of
immigrants – from the South.79 Though often very successful in their new
home city, none of them ever achieved the highest social status in the form

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of a position on the city council. This reflects the notorious tendency of
Leiden’s elite to close its ranks against the Southerners and politically
exclude the migrant minority.80 Most of these Southerners, though not all,
were members of the Walloon Reformed congregation and, thus, attended
a church in a different linguistic environment from that of their indigen-
ous co-religionists. For this sub-elite group in Leiden, status acquisition,
coupled with a desire to strengthen their own (ethnic) community, may
well have been a strong motive for founding an almshouse.

5.3 Care for one’s dearest

Many founders felt concerned for the generations who would come after
them and part of maintaining the honour of the lineage was the duty to
care for family members. It has been said that the almshouse founders and
regents probably intended to safeguard from social decline less successful
members of the same social group that they themselves belonged to, es-
pecially their family members.81 Thus, not only was the memory of the
family safeguarded, but the almshouse also protected the family’s status
even if one of the members had hit hard times. This not only applied to
those who shared the family name of the founder, but to a much wider
circle of kin. It is difficult to trace such relations, since almshouse ad-
ministration was often rather haphazard. If a distant family relationship
was a reason for giving a particular person a place, it was not always
recorded, and even if it was, the precise kinship relation to the founder
was rarely specified. Given the fact that founders frequently made this
explicit proviso in their will, however, it is likely that this was a motive of
some importance.82

Once again this was a motive dating from the late middle ages: explicit
provisions that almshouse administrators should give preference to
family members date from long before the Reformation, as in the case of
the founders of the Sint Anna Aalmoeshuis and the Sint Stevenshofje.
Moreover, it was no empty stipulation. The Sint Anna Aalmoeshuis, for
example, housed two women from amongst the founder’s kin between
1606 and 1626.83 Jan Willemsz van Woudendorp (19 in Appendix Table B)
also stipulated that precedence should be given to his kin. Though most of
his near family were wealthy enough not to need a place in his almshouse,
one line was impoverished, and throughout the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries could dependably acquire a place in his almshouse.84

Similarly, the almshouse of Samuel de Zee (31) was explicitly set up and
referred to as a ‘family almshouse’.85 At least until the mid-nineteenth
century, the regents kept detailed records of who was entitled to a place in
the almshouse. Overall, regents scrupulously adhered to such rules, even

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centuries later: for example, the regents of the Sint Stevenshofje, founded
in 1487, on two occasions, in 1744 and 1783, specifically stated that they
had admitted a person because he was of the founder’s kin.86 The founders
of Meermansburg specified not only that their family enjoyed precedence,
but even assigned a specific apartment in their almshouse to be kept
available for family members at all times, and which was indeed used for
that purpose, although on occasion it was uninhabited.87

Sometimes the almshouse regents themselves fell into poverty and had
to make use of these stipulations privileging family. This happened to the
Van der Laens, regents of the Sint Janshofje, by the end of the seventeenth
century. One of the Van der Laen regents, an impoverished widow, took a
place in the family almshouse. The last Van der Laen took advantage of
her kinship with the Meermans and died as an inhabitant of the family
apartment in the Hofje Meermansburg.88

5.4 Care for one’s nearest

Even if a founder often favoured his (or her) own kin over others, he
ordinarily assumed in his will that kin would not be the sole beneficiaries
of his charity. Usually founders described the prospective inhabitants in
rather vague terms as poor but respectable people, but sometimes they
were more explicit. Some promised a place to their domestic personnel,
who customarily were regarded as more or less part of the family for
whom provision had to be made, and with whom ties could be intimate.89

In Leiden, throughout the early modern age, wealthy households90 had at
least one or two domestics. The upper bourgeoisie and the town regents
often had more – founder Diderick van Leyden (33 in Appendix Table B),
for example, employed seven domestics in 1743.91

Often the founder’s personnel were assigned specific tasks in the alms-
house. Cornelis Sprongh (30), for example, stipulated that his servant and
her husband should continue to live in his house, which was to be con-
verted into an almshouse, and act as caretakers of the poor, old women
housed there. Almshouse foundations could, thus, act as a form of pro-
vision for elderly personnel92 and the regents who administered their
foundations used them as such.93

Stipulations favouring those who shared a founder’s religion were more
common. In a sense, they too were regarded as a form of family, as in the
common phrase ‘household members of the faith’ (huisgenoten des ge-
loofs). At least one founder, Jan de Latere (11), used this exact phrase in
his will. In his case, he meant members of the Dutch Reformed church.94

Other founders were more explicit about the expected religious affiliation.
Gerrit Franckensz van Hoogmade (15), for example, wrote in his will that

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he founded his almshouse out of his special affection for the Mennonite
community to which he belonged.95 It is possible that the non-Reformed
founders specifically meant to strengthen their communities by providing
the elderly members with the means to stay out of the civic, magistrate-
controlled institutions, and thus preventing them from lapsing from their
faith in favour of the Dutch Reformed regime of these institutions. Some
dissenter founders kept conspicuously silent about the desired religious
affiliation of almspeople in their wills. Post-Reformation Catholic foun-
ders, by appointing trusted Catholics as executor-regents, ensured that
their almshouse would, in fact, be open only to Catholics.96

The stipulations of the Walloon founders that their almshouses
were open to Walloons in particular seem more inspired by another form
of bond between founder and inhabitants. Religiously, there was no
reason why Walloons should dread being taken into a Dutch Reformed
almshouse. Leiden’s almshouses and hospitals do not seem to have
discriminated against Walloon burghers.97 However, the fact that the
Walloons had the French language in common and shared a background
of migration, especially when that migration had not been entirely vol-
untary, may have played an important role. Jean Pesijn and Marie de
Lannoy (both 23), for example, both came from the area around Lille
and, in the 1630s, had migrated to Leiden, where they married. That
it was not just church membership that was important to them may be
inferred from the precise wording of their statement that their foundation
was meant for ‘des vieilles gens mariés de la nation Wallonne’, that is, for
‘old married people of the Walloon nation’. The memorial tablet that was
installed over the entrance gate specified, moreover, that the Pesijns
wished to give comfort to Walloons driven from their homeland.98 Thus,
the Walloon almshouses served not just a religious, but also an ethnic
community.

A similar sense of solidarity was displayed by Anthonis Jacobsz van der
Schacht (24). Orphaned as a boy, he stipulated that, after his family,
precedence should be given to former orphans who, like him, had been
taken in by the city orphanage. His concern for orphaned children is also
apparent from the fact that as a successful ‘needle maker’ he apprenticed
several orphans and bequeathed 1,000 guilders to the orphanage.99

Finally, gender solidarity may also have played a role in founding
almshouses. Some founders, at least, seem specifically motivated by con-
cern for the vulnerability of single women in society,100 such as the wealthy
Eva van Hoogeveen (20), who remained unmarried throughout her life
though she must have been a desirable match. She was explicitly described
in the epithet over the almshouse gate as a ‘most chaste and laudable
virgin’, and specified that her almshouse was meant for women ‘who had

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no husband’. This wording was rather unusual and suggests that she
wanted to provide a home explicitly for confirmed spinsters from less
privileged backgrounds than her own.101 Another example is Emerentia
Benningh (17), who founded the Klein Sionshofje, a small almshouse
specifically for four widows of the inhabitants of the adjoining Sionshofje,
who suffered a ‘double stroke’ when their husband died as they not only
lost their husbands but also their home and the support provided by the
Sionshofje.102 Benningh hired the same architect who had built her hus-
band’s almshouse, but her own almshouse remained much more modest
in scale – even though she could easily have outdone her husband, as she
left an estate worth 306,500 guilders.103 Clearly, her intentions were lim-
ited to specifically assisting the widows of the Sionshofje, in which case
four chambers may well have been enough to provide for these bereaved
women.

6. T H E I M P O R T A N C E O F B E I N G A P A T R O N

Regardless of which category of people an almshouse founder had in
mind as deserving of alms, every founder seems to have stood in the
centre of a circle of dependants for whom he or she was responsible.
Kooijmans has recognised this mechanism of patronage in his study
of Dutch early modern family and friendship relations. As depicted
in Figure 2, the first responsibility that the head of a family had was to
his immediate family – including children, sometimes parents, siblings
and siblings’ children. Beyond that, there was a wider circle of kin,
varying from descendants of maternal ancestors to far-removed patri-
lineal relatives. The head also had responsibility for his domestic person-
nel, non-domestic personnel and any neighbours with whom he had
a long-standing patronage relationship. Looking after these relations
reflected positively on the reputation of the head, and on that of his
family; failure to look after them would be viewed negatively, as the
reputation of the family depended on the proper behaviour of all its
members, no matter how far removed. Poverty of one reflected badly on
the rest.104

This patronage mechanism explains part of the choice of recipients
of almshouse charity. For founders, as Figure 3 shows, looking after
co-religionists and fellow members of a particular ethnic group was
not as obligatory as looking after family members and dependants.
However, a founder was expected to assist fellow co-religionists and
fellow-countrymen, with whom there were often kinship relations any-
way, so that the different circles overlapped in such cases.105 Similarly,
looking after single or widowed women in general, or former orphans in

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general, was not ordinarily a task for a family head, but looking after
widows, single women and orphans within the family circle certainly was.

Not all founders worked within the same set of circles. Almshouse
founders who were extremely wealthy often gave other categories of re-
cipients precedence over their relatives. Thus, Eva van Hoogeveen
(20, Appendix Table B) emphasised that her almshouse was meant pri-
marily for single women, and did not specify in her will that her relatives

Family head

Close relations

Distant 
relations

Wider kin
groups

Domestic
personnel

F I G UR E 2. Obligations of a Dutch family head.

Founder

Close family

Distant
family/kin group

Domestic
personnel

Co-religionists

F I G UR E 3. Obligations of an almshouse founder.

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had a greater claim over others.106 Neither did Diderick van Leyden (33).
It was possibly inconceivable to this wealthy burgomaster that his direct
family would ever suffer want. In his case, at least one of his almshouses
may have catered to another specific group: the inhabitants of his lord-
ships.107 This too would have been understood as part of the circle of
responsibilities within which a well-to-do Dutch burgher stood.108

7. A L M S H O U S E S A S S A F E T Y V A L V E S

Founders’ responsibilities defined, to a large extent, the social compo-
sition of almshouse populations. Data available on almshouse inhabitants
strongly suggest that, apart from the impoverished members of founders’
families, most were members of the Dutch Republic’s largest social
classes.

Dutch historians distinguish five or six layers in early modern Dutch
society. Beneath the patricians and nobility was the layer of the ‘great
burghers’, which consisted of merchants, ministers and academics,109

followed by the layers of ‘broad burghers’, ‘small burghers’, the wage-
dependants, and, in the lowest position, the ‘rabble’. The broad and small
burghers together formed the ‘decent middle class, the cork on which
society floated’110 – the upper and lower middle classes. The ‘broad bur-
ghers’ or upper middle class consisted of successful artisans, small en-
trepreneurs, well-off shopkeepers, lower military officers, urban officials,
village ministers and well-off farmers. They formed about 10 per cent of
the population and enjoyed an annual income of 600 to 1,000 guilders.
Often they could afford to save money for their old age.111 The ‘small
burghers’, or lower middle class, formed a heterogeneous group of small
farmers, lower officials, schoolmasters, small skippers, small shopkeepers
and artisans, many of them dependent on wage labour: this layer was
‘above all, the world of small guild masters’, who, incidentally, had their
own system of welfare.112 They formed about a third of the Dutch popu-
lation, subsisting on an annual income of 350 to 600 guilders. Though
regarded as ‘respectable’, the small burghers did not have many certain-
ties: the early death of the breadwinner, a protracted illness or an accident
could easily lead to social degradation in their case.

The same applied to the lower layer of wage-dependants, domestic
servants, soldiers and sailors, relatively low-skilled artisans such as textile
labourers, ship’s carpenters, usually in the service of others, and unskilled
labourers organised in guilds, such as the important group of carriers in
Amsterdam who loaded and unloaded ships. Like the ‘small burghers’,
their future prospects were uncertain; personal mishap or economic fluc-
tuations could easily tip them into poverty. They subsisted on an annual

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income of 300 to 350 guilders and comprised another third of the popu-
lation.

These two groups – the lower middle class and the wage-dependants,
comprising some 60 per cent of the population – were forever balanced
precariously on the threshold between respectability and the rabble. For
them, it was much more difficult to save money for their old age. A place
in an almshouse allowed them to age with grace and without losing
face, that is, without descending into the lowest class of Dutch society, the
10 per cent of the population who could hardly subsist even at the best of
times.113 Dutch society did not abandon this lowest rung of society, but
almshouses often – though not always – excluded the really poor through
more or less strict requirements regarding church membership and less
easily traceable notions of respectability and decency. In Leiden, at least
25 almshouses in one way or another adhered to such requirements. The
‘rabble’ simply could not live up to these rules – even if they had been able
to save enough money to pay an entrance fee.

Unfortunately, the dearth of sources does not allow a detailed
account of who actually lived in Leiden’s almshouses. Registers of alms-
house inhabitants are rare and, when they do exist, not very informative.
Almshouse regents seem to have been more concerned with administrat-
ing the almshouse’s funds properly. An exception, in this sense, was
Pauwels Pauwelsz van Thorenvliet, regent of the Sint Anna Aalmoeshuis
between 1604 and 1627, who kept a register of the inhabitants, their ages,
names, origins and, sometimes, information on the occupations of their
deceased husbands.114 These latter had mostly had jobs placing them in
the lower middle class and the group of wage-dependants. Three had been
active as weavers and two as cloth-millers. The other occupations listed
included kettle-smith, knife-smith, corn-measurer, shoemaker, ball-maker,
butcher, soldier, tailor, farmer and peat-digger. However there was also a
lakenreder or textile-manufacturer/merchant, an occupation with great
potential for acquiring wealth.

There are other indications that entering an almshouse was not for the
truly poor. In some cases, inventories of the goods that the inhabitants
brought with them have been preserved. From these lists, it is clear that
almshouse inhabitants were not the poorest since they possessed con-
siderable amounts of furniture, utensils, clothing, some jewellery, money
and sometimes a book. The inventories, which were deposited with the
regents upon entering, suggest also a moderate amount of literacy, as they
were written by the new arrivals themselves.

Almshouses in Leiden, thus, seem to have catered for those for
whom old age might mean a loss of goods and status, and, therefore, were
predominantly of interest to those who feared their lives would outlast

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their means. This category extended to those from a higher social back-
ground. The textile manufacturer’s widow is a case in point, as is Van
Thorenvliet’s cousin, who was admitted to the almshouse in 1622 and was
obviously more well-to-do than her new neighbours.115 On the whole,
however, almshouses primarily catered to the lower middle class and the
wage-dependants, from whose ranks most dependants of almshouse
founders and regents originated. When no relatives needed a place do-
mestics and outdoor personnel, such as gardeners and washerwomen,
came first in line. Similarly, those ‘fellows in the faith’ who desired a place
were also more likely to have come from amongst the ranks of the ‘small
burghers’. It is probable that most inhabitants originated from these large
groups in society. More research is needed before this can be confirmed
with greater conviction, but it is perhaps not going too far here to pos-
tulate that in almshouses, the top 20 per cent of early modern society
provided an escape from the poverty trap for the 60 per cent of the
population defined as ‘small burghers’ and wage-dependants.

8. C O N C L U S I O N

The introduction asked who the almshouse founders of Leiden were, and
why, and for whom, they founded their almshouses. The prosopography
of Leiden’s almshouse founders suggests that they were likely to be male
and usually married, in which case their wives often acted as co-founders.
A minority of the founders consisted of women, most of whom were
spinsters or widows. The vast majority of founders in Leiden had been
married at some point in their lives, but a considerable majority did not
leave children behind at the time of foundation. Religiously, they were
mostly conformist. Although before the Reformation, in 1573, they were
all Catholic, after that date 21 out of 28 adhered to the Reformed church
while Non-Reformed foundations were fewer, but ran most of the religious
gamut of the Republic, such as Catholic, Mennonite and Remonstrant.
Though theologically in communion with the Dutch Reformed, the
Walloon Reformed founders actually formed the largest subdivision,
eight founders being from this ethnically defined group. The seven dis-
senter founders and the eight Walloon founders may, however, have had
in common the desire to contribute to the cohesion of their respective
religious and ethnic communities.

The wealth of the founders varied, as did the extent to which they used
their capital for their foundations but, in all cases, their wealth must
have been considerable. The most remarkable change over time was the
decrease in founders who were part of the patrician elite. Before 1573,
almost all founders occupied positions in the urban government. After

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1573, only three founders did so, though another six founders were part of
the urban super-elite. In contrast, 19 post-Reformation founders formed
part of the city’s rich sub-elite. A possible explanation for this sharp
contrast may be that town regents in later eras were responsible for many
of the older foundations, which stopped them from founding their own
almshouses.

As for why almshouses were founded, Leiden founders could have been
motivated by religious concerns. This was clearly attested by the pre-
Reformation founders, who expected the inhabitants of their foundations
to pray for their souls. After the Reformation, they showed concern for
the spiritual welfare of the beneficiaries of their foundation, but, increas-
ingly, they also showed obvious concern for the memory and status of
themselves and their families, past and present. Founding an almshouse
was a way to acquire or solidify the status of a particular family. The
motive of status acquisition may have been highly important to the many
founders from the sub-elite. Closely related to this motive was the strong
concern for all those for whom they felt, or were obligated to feel, re-
sponsible as patrons. Almshouses were founded to accommodate less
well-off relatives, personnel, fellow religionists, countrymen, women and
former orphans, and in one case, the subjects of their lordships. Most of
these recipients could be found in the lower, but not the lowest, regions of
Dutch society.

The composite image of the Leiden almshouse founders provided in this
article suggests that, though the Dutch charitable institutions seemed
‘many and various’ to Sir William Temple, in fact, they showed a con-
siderable degree of similarity to one another; as a group, they displayed
considerable homogeneity, even across the centuries. Although change
certainly occurred, the continuity may, in fact, have been greater.

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A P P E N D I X

T A BL E A
Leiden almshouse foundations ca. 1450–ca. 1800

No. Name of foundation Aa Bb Name(s) of founder(s)c

1 Jeruzalemshofje 1464 1467 Wouter IJsbrantsz (died 1467)

2 (Groot) Sionshofje 1458 1480 Jhr Hugo van Zwieten (died 1481) and Jvr Lutgart Clarisdr van

Boschhuizen

3 St. Stevenshofje 1484 1487 Willem Aerntsz van Tetrode (died 1487) and Christina Aartsdr

(Aerntsdr) Bruinen (died 1506/09)

4 St. Anna Hofje (Aalmoeshuis) 1491 1492 Willem Claesz (died 1492) and Hillegont Willemsdr (died 1492)

5 St. Annahofje of Joostenpoort 1496 1503 mr Joest Heynricxz (van der Strijpen van Duivelandt) (died 1503)

and Geertruyt Jansdr (died 1506/07)

6 St. Janshofje 1504 1504 Jan Stoop Kerstantsz and Claertgen Pieter Jan Claerensznsdr

7 Bethanienhofje (Emmaushofje) 1563 1563 Agatha van Alckemade (died 1573)

8 St. Janshofje (Van der Laenshofje) 1565 1565 mr Geraert van der Laan (1480/81–1568)

9 Cathrijn Jacobsdochterhofje 1598 1598 Cathrijn Jacobsdr (died 1601)

10 Cathrijn Maertensdochterhofje 1608 1621 Cathrijn Maertensdr (died 1621)

11 Jan de Laterehofje 1612 1616 Jan de Latere (du Later) (died 1612)

12 St. Barbarahofje 1615 1615 Jacob Aertsz (Arentsz) Spruyt (died 1615) and Beatrix Huysmansdr

13 Van Assendelftshofje 1624 1681 Bartholomeus Willemsz van Assendelft (died 1626)

14 St. Salvatorhofje (Salvator Mundihofje) 1625 1636 Pouwels Claesz de Goede (1542/4–1635)

15 Hofje Bethlehem 1630 1630 Gerrit Franckensz van Hoogmade (died 1630/46)

16 Van Brouchoven Hofje 1631 1640 Jacob van Brouckhoven (1577–1642) and Anna van Brouchoven

(died 1626)

17 Klein Sionshofje (Hofje van Emerantia Banningh) 1641 1641 Emerantia Benningh (1586–1667)

18 St. Pietershof (Van der Speckhofje) 1645 1645 Pieter Gerritsz (van der) Speck (died 1647)

19 Van Woudendorpshofje (Woudendorpspoort) 1645 1645 Jan Willemsz van Woudendorp (died 1646) and Catherina Jansdr

van der Rijp

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T A BL E A (Cont.)

No. Name of foundation Aa Bb Name(s) of founder(s)c

20 Hofje van Eva van Hoogeveen 1650 1659 Eva Aelbrechtsdr van Hoogeveen (1594–1652)

21 Hofje van (Pieter) Loridan 1655 1656 Pieter Loridan (died 1656)

22 Tevelingshofje (Karel Tevelshofje) 1655 1666 Charles Tevel (died 1660), Jacob Tevel (ca. 1605–1664) and

Elisabeth van den Vinct (died 1667)

23 Jan (Jean) Pesijns Hofje 1655 1681 Jan Pesijn (died 1666) and Marie de Lannoy (died 1681)

24 Schachtenhofje 1664 1671 Anthonis Jacobsz (van der) Schacht (Schaft) (ca. 1613–1669)

25 Joost Frans van der Lindenhofje

(Remonstrantenpoort)

1668 1691 Joost Fransz van der Linden (died 1668)

26 St. Jacobshofje (Crayenboschhofje) 1672 1681 Gommarus Jacobsz van Crayenbosch (died 1681)

27 Hofje Meermansburg 1680 Maarten Ruychaver Meerman (1627–1684) and Helena Verburch

(ca. 1625/1630–1683)

28 Francois Houttijnshofje 1685 1736 Francois Houttijn (died 1688)

29 Jean Michielshofje 1687 1717 Jean Michel and Catharina Geschier (died 1691)

30 Heilige Geesthofje (Hof van Cornelis Sprongh

van Hoogmade)

1690 1706 Cornelis Sprongh (1642–1706), heer van Hoogmade

31 Hofje van Samuel de Zee 1723 1724 Samuel de Zee (Samuel le Maire) (1654–1724)

32 Barend van Namenshofje 1728 1730 Barend van Namen (died 1729)

33 Mierennesthofje 1737 1737 mr Diderick rijksgraaf van Leyden (1695–1764)

34 Coninckshofje 1758 1773 Cecilia Coninck (died 1771)

a Column A gives the date of the original intention to found an almshouse.
b Column B gives the date of the actual effectuation of the foundation.
c It is a Dutch convention to abbreviate surnames so, for example, Jacobsz (no. 25) is a shortened version of Jacobszoon and Jacobsdr (no. 9) is a

shortened version of Jacobsdochter.

Source: Dutch Almshouse Database.

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T A BL E B
Characteristics of the founders

No. Names of foundersa Gender

Marital

statusb Offspring Occupation

Patrician

rankc

Walloon/Southern

Netherlands

background Religiond

1 Wouter IJsbrantsz (died 1467) Male M Childless Grocer and cloth

merchant

Alderman C

2 Jhr Hugo van Zwieten (died

1481) and Jvr Lutgart Clarisdr

van Boschhuizen

Male/female M Childless Nobleman and

landed proprietor

Burgomaster C

3 Willem Aerntsz van Tetrode

(died 1487) and Christina

Aartsdr (Aerntsdr) Bruinen

(died 1506/09)

Male/female M Childlesse Brewer and cloth

merchant

C

4 Willem Claesz (died 1492) and

Hillegont Willemsdr (died

1492)

Male/female M Children Brewer and barber Alderman C

5 mr Joest Heynricxz (van der

Strijpen van Duivelandt) (died

1503) and Geertruyt Jansdr

(died 1506/07)

Male/female M Children Apothecary Burgomaster C

6 Jan Stoop Kerstantsz and

Claertgen Pieter Jan

Claerensznsdr

Male/female M Childless Brewer and dyer Burgomaster C

7 Agatha van Alckemade (died

1573)

Female W Children Noblewoman and

landed proprietor

C

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T A BL E B (Cont.)

No. Names of foundersa Gender

Marital

statusb Offspring Occupation

Patrician

rankc

Walloon/Southern

Netherlands

background Religiond

8 mr Geraert van der Laan (1480/

81–1568)

Male W Children Administrator and

landed proprietor

C

9 Cathrijn Jacobsdr (died 1601) Female W No known

children

Tailor’s widow NHf

10 Cathrijn Maertensdr (died

1621)

Female W No known

children

Tailor’s widow NHg

11 Jan de Latere (du Later) (died

1612)

Male M No known

children

Merchant Yes WH

12 Jacob Aertsz (Arentsz) Spruyt

(died 1615) and Beatrix

Huysmansdr

Male/female M Childlessh C

13 Bartholomeus Willemsz van

Assendelft (died 1626)

Male W Childreni Wood merchant Veertigraadj NH

14 Pouwels Claesz de Goede

(1542/4–1635)

Male U Childless Priest C

15 Gerrit Franckensz van

Hoogmade (died 1630/46)

Male M Children Merchant M

16a Jacob van Brouckhoven

(1577–1642)

Male M Childless Administrator and

landed proprietor

Burgomaster NH

16b Anna van Brouckhoven

(died 1626)

Female W Childless Widow of Councillor

Court of Holland

NH

17 Emerentia Benningh

(1586–1667)

Female M Childless Wife burgomaster NH

18 Pieter Gerritsz (van der) Speck

(died 1647)

Male W No known

children

Carpenter–architect NH

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19 Jan Willemsz van Woudendorp

(died 1646)

Male M No known

children

Grain merchant NH

20 Eva Aelbrechtsdr van

Hoogeveen (1594–1652)

Female U Childless Regent’s daughter NH

21 Pieter Loridan (died 1656) Male U Childless Cloth dyer Yes WH

22a Charles Tevel (died 1660) Male U Childless Merchant Yes WH

22b Jacob Tevel (ca. 1605–1664)

and Elisabeth van den Vinct

(died 1667)

Male/female M Childrenk Merchant Yes WH

23 Jan Pesijn (died 1666) and

Marie de Lannoy (died 1681)

Male/female M Children

predeceased

Merchant Yes WH

24 Anthonis Jacobsz (van der)

Schacht (Schaft) (ca.

1613–1669)

Male W Childless Shopkeeper Yes NH

25 Joost Fransz van der Linden

(died 1668)

Male Rem

26 Gommarus Jacobsz van

Crayenbosch (died 1681)

Male W Children

predeceased

Merchant C

27 Maarten Ruychaver Meerman

(1627–1684) and Helena

Verburch (ca. 1625/

1630–1683)

Male/female M Children

predeceased

Director of Dutch

East India

Company

NH

28 François Houttijn (died 1688) Male Childrenl Lawyer Rem

29 Jean Michel and Catharina

Geschier (died 1691)

Male/female M No known

children

Cloth merchant Yes WH

30 Cornelis Sprongh (1642–1706),

heer van Hoogmade

Male W Childless Landed proprietor C

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T AB LE B (Cont.)

No. Names of foundersa Gender

Marital

statusb Offspring Occupation

Patrician

rankc

Walloon/Southern

Netherlands

background Religiond

31 Samuel de Zee (Samuel le

Maire) (1654–1724)

Male Children

predeceased

Yes WH

32 Barend van Namen (died 1729) Male Children

predeceased

Merchant NH

33 mr Diderick rijksgraaf van

Leyden (1695–1764)

Male M Children Administrator and

landed proprietor

Burgomaster NH

34 Cecilia Coninck (died 1771) Female U Childless NH

a It is a Dutch convention to abbreviate surnames so, for example, Aerntsz (no. 3) is a shortened version of Aerntszoon and Aerntsdr (no. 3) is a

shortened version of Aerntsdochter.
b M, married; W, widowed; U, unmarried.
c Only the highest rank attained is mentioned; all men with offices were Leiden patricians.
d C, Catholic; NH, Dutch Reformed; WH, Walloon Reformed; M, Mennonite; Rem, Remonstrant.
e The marriage was childless, but the husband had an illegitimate daughter.
f From the fact that she entrusted the huiszittenmeesters with her foundation, it is clear that this founder was not a dissenter, even if not an avid

Calvinist.
g As previous footnote.
h Jacob Aertsz Spruyt had a child from a previous marriage, who predeceased him.
i Bartholomeus Willemsz van Assendelft stipulated in his will that if his daughter were to die without descendants, an almshouse should be built;

Regionaal Archief Leiden (RAL), Arch. 513, no. 572. This eventuality took place and resulted in the foundation of the Hofje van Assendelft in 1681.
j A ‘veertigraad’ was a member of the ‘Forty’, the municipal council, which consisted of 40 members.
k Their only surviving son was mentally handicapped and died in 1671.
l Houttijn had a daughter and stipulated that after her death, an almshouse should be founded.

Sources: Dutch Almshouse Database; RAL, Hofjes, passim; RAL, Old Notary Archives.

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A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

I am much indebted to my colleagues Lex Heerma van Voss, Marco H. D. van Leeuwen,

Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Ariadne Schmidt and Daniëlle Teeuwen, the anonymous

peer reviewers and the participants of the GIGA sessions at the 8th European Social Science

History Conference (Ghent, 13–16 April 2010) for their useful suggestions. The research for

this article was made possible by the financial support of the Netherlands Organisation for

Scientific Research (NWO).

ENDNOTES

1 Sir William Temple, Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, second

edition (London, 1673), 170–1; consulted on Early English Books Online (subscription

website http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home).

2 For an overview of hospitals, see Ton Kappelhof, ‘Hospitäler in den Niederlanden in

den frühen Neuzeit (1530–1820)’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische

Geschichtsbeforderung 115 (2007), 312–42. Orphanages: S. Groenveld, J. J. H. Dekker,

Th. R. M. Willemse and J. Dane eds., Wezen and Boefjes. Zes eeuwen zorg in wees- en

kinderhuizen (Hilversum, 1997). Madhouses: the Zinnelooshuis Reinier van Arkel in

Den Bosch, founded in 1442 by Reinier van Arkel and the Willem Arntzstichting in

Utrecht, founded in 1461 by Willem Arntz. Both institutions still exist; H. van Rooy,

Het gesticht ‘Reinier van Arkel’ te ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch, 1928); L. Hut, J. de

Lange, H. Loois, A. Poslavski and B. van der Woord, De Willem Arntsz Stichting

1461–1961 (Utrecht, 1961); A. Kappelhof, Reinier van Arkel 1442–1992. De geschiede-

nis van het oudste psychiatrisch ziekenhuis van Nederland (Den Bosch, 1992).

Reformatory: A. Hallema, ‘De stichting en inrichting van het Utrechtse tuchthuis’,

Jaarboekje van Oud-Utrecht 3 (1926), 136–59.

3 For England, see Brian Howson, Houses of noble poverty (Ashford, 1993); and Brian

Howson, Almshouses. A social and architectural history (Stroud, 2008). There are no

general histories available for other countries, though for some cities overviews exist,

such as Bruges in Belgium and Lübeck in Germany; Hilde de Bruyne, De Godshuizen in

Brugge (Bruges, 1994); and Rainer Andresen, Lübeck. Wohngänge und Stiftshöfe

(Lübeck, 1992). For Dublin, see Robert Gahan, ‘Old alms-houses of Dublin’, Dublin

Historical Record 5, 1 (1942), 15–40; and for Denmark, see H. R. Hiort-Lorenzen and

E. Rosendahl, Repertorium over legater og milde stiftelser i Danmark (Copenhagen,

1903). The notion that almshouses are a European phenomenon was confirmed and

developed in a conference co-organised by the author, Almshouses in Europe from the

late middle ages to the present – comparisons and peculiarities, held in Haarlem, the

Netherlands, 7–9 September 2011. Some of the papers will be published in a special

issue of the Scandinavian Economic History Review 60, 1 (2013).

4 The study of the history of almshouses, though everywhere still marginal, is perhaps

strongest in England and the Netherlands, where awareness of their existence is greater

than in other European countries. For England, see a forthcoming book, to be pub-

lished by the Family and Community History Research Society: Nigel Goose, Anne

Langley and Helen Caffrey eds., The English almshouse c. 1500–1900 (forthcoming).

The great interest in almshouses in the Netherlands is attested by colourful illustrated

popular overviews such as D. P. M. Graswinckel, Nederlandsche Hofjes (Amsterdam,

1943); R. Lopes Cardozo, Hofjes in Nederland (Hilversum, 1977); and I. Dorren, Langs

hofjes: routes in Nederland en België (Utrecht, 1994). For recent scholarly work,

F U N DI N G A N D F O U N DI N G PR I V A T E C H A R I T I ES

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Willemijn Wilms Floet of Delft University is working on a dissertation on the

architecture of almshouses. For the nineteenth century, almshouses are discussed in

M. H. D. van Leeuwen, Logic of charity. A simple model applied to Amsterdam

1800–1850 (Aldershot and New York, 2000).

5 Although far behind Amsterdam and The Hague, the first- and second-richest cities;

Kees Zandvliet, De 250 rijksten van de Gouden Eeuw. Kapitaal, macht, familie en le-

vensstijl (Amsterdam, 2006), XXIV.

6 Jan Jansz Orlers, Beschrijvinge der Stadt Leyden (Leiden, 1641), 142–58; and Frans van

Mieris, Beschryving der stad Leyden (Leiden, 1762), 246–362. Van Mieris included

lengthy extracts from founders’ wills. For the importance of wills in charitable giving,

see Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk’s contribution to this issue of Continuity and Change,

‘The will to give: charitable bequests and community building in the Dutch Republic,

c. 1600–1800’.

7 To give a few examples: H. M. Turck, Die Leidener Wohnstiftungen vom 15. bis 17.

Jahrhundert (Aix-la-Chapelle, 1989); Ine Leermakers and Wietske Donkersloot, Wonen

om Gods wille in Leidse hofjes (Leiden, 2007); José Niekus and Cor Smit, Van bouwvallig

nest tot bijzondere huisvesting. 350 jaar Jean Pesijnhof (Leiden, 2005); and Frits

Boersma and Greet Dusseldorp-Kingma, Regenten en kuise maagden. 350 jaar Eva van

Hoogeveenshofje (Leiden, 2007). Of great importance are also the many articles and

special issues published by, among others, archivist P. J. M. de Baar in the journal De

Leidse Hofjes (1969–1985).

8 They will therefore here be left out of the corpus of almshouse founders. They include

the Heyn Reynszn. Huys (ca. 1429), Willem Danelszs cloester (before 1451 and after

1487), Cameren van Katherijn van der Hoeven (ca. 1478) and the Camertgen van

Lijsbeth van Overwael (ca. 1485). The house of Meyne Uyt den Waerd (1368) and the

chambers of Jan Arentsz van Beringen (1511) may never have come into existence. The

Pieter Simonsz Zusterhuis, founded in 1389, may never have been an almshouse and

developed quickly into a beguinage, a congregation of devout laywomen. Another

short-lived foundation was the Warnaer van der Does Hof, founded in 1564 but already

closed down by 1592; information from the Dutch Almshouse Database (hereafter

DAD).

9 See J. K. S. Moes, ‘Stof uit het Leidse verleden. Sociale en economische facetten uit de

geschiedenis van de Leidse textielnijverheid ca. 1275–ca. 1975’, in J. K. S. Moes and

B. M. A. de Vries, Stof uit het Leidse verleden. Zeven eeuwen textielnijverheid (Utrecht

and Leiden, 1991), 7–31, for an overview of the textile trade in Leiden and its periods of

growth and decline.

10 As was the case with Zwolle: Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘Geven na de dood.

Liefdadige giften en stedelijke geefcultuur in Utrecht en Zwolle, 1600–1800’,

Stadsgeschiedenis 5 (2010), 129–47, here 137. See also Turck, Die Leidener

Wohnstiftungen, 7. On the growing poverty in Leiden, see H. A. Diederiks, D. J.

Noordam and H. D. Tjalsma eds., Armoede en sociale spanning. Sociaal-historische stu-

dies over Leiden in de achttiende eeuw (Hilversum, 1985), passim; G. P. M. Pot, Arm

Leiden. Levensstandaard, bedeling en bedeelden, 1750–1854 (Hilversum, 1994), passim.

11 On migration to Amsterdam and overseas as a safety valve for the charitable system of

the Dutch Republic, see M. H. D. van Leeuwen, ‘Overrun by hungry hordes?

Migrants’ entitlements to poor relief in the Netherlands, 16th–20th centuries’,

in S. Hindle and A. Winter, Migration, settlement and belonging in Europe, 1500–2000:

a comparative perspective. Berghahn Publishers, in press.

12 The preceding paragraphs are based on DAD; the articles concerning Leiden alms-

houses in De Leidse Hofjes; Turck, Die Leidener Wohnstiftungen; Leermakers and

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Donkersloot, Wonen om Gods wille; Boersma and Dusseldorp-Kingma, Regenten en

kuise maagden; Niekus and Smit, Van bouwvallig nest.

13 Anouk Janssen, Grijsaards in zwart-wit. De verbeelding van de ouderdom in de

Nederlandse prentkunst (1550–1650) (Zutphen, 2007), 23–5, 46–7.

14 Harry F. M. Peeters, ‘De levensloop in het begin van de Moderne Tijd (1500–1700)’, in

H. F. M. Peeters and F. J. Mönks eds., De menselijke levensloop in historisch perspectief

(Assen and Maastricht, 1986), 59–83, especially 80–1. It is not clear on which he bases

his estimate, though he refers to ‘demographical computations’.

15 Arie van Deursen, ‘De oude dag in een Hollands dorp’, in Harald Hendrix and Riet

Schenkeveld-van der Dussen eds., Oud en lelijk. Ouderdom in de cultuur van de

Renaissance (Amsterdam, 1996), 73–83, here 74.

16 Marco H. D. van Leeuwen and James E. Oeppen, ‘Reconstructing the demographic

regime of Amsterdam 1681–1920’, in Economic and Social History in the Netherlands 5

(1993), 61–102, here 88–9.

17 D. J. Noordam, Leven in Maasland. Een hoogontwikkelde plattelandssamenleving in de

achttiende en het begin van de negentiende eeuw (Hilversum, 1987), 78–9.

18 Janssen, Grijsaards in zwart-wit, 26; Ronald Sluijter, ‘Oud, afgesloofd, behoeftig en

arm. Bejaardenzorg in Leiden in de achttiende eeuw’ (unpublished M.A. thesis,

University of Leiden, 1995). I am indebted to Dr Ariadne Schmidt for this reference.

19 The percentages mentioned here are calculated on the basis of Table 10 in van Leeuwen

and Oeppen, ‘Reconstructing the demographic regime’, 88–9.

20 Only for emigrants from Leiden in the years 1735–1784, but one may doubt if the

number of elderly emigrants is representative, assuming that most elderly people would

not be very mobile anymore; on the age division of emigrants from Leiden, see C. A.

Davids, ‘De migratiebeweging in Leiden in de achttiende eeuw’, in Diederiks,

Noordam and Tjalsma, Armoede en sociale spanning, 137–56, here 148.

21 The term ‘functioning’ is defined as foundations that had actually been put into effect.

Some Leiden foundations did not take effect until long after the actual foundation, as

Table B in the Appendix shows.

22 H. D. Tjalsma, ‘Een karakterisering van Leiden in 1749’, in Diederiks, Noordam and

Tjalsma, Armoede en sociale spanning, 17–44, here 33; personal communication Heiko

Tjalsma M.A., 8 November 2011.

23 Sluijter arrives at a similar number of elderly almshouse inhabitants – 500 – on the basis

of the same data, although he believes that this value is probably too high; Sluijter,

‘Oud, afgeleefd, behoeftig en arm’, 15–16.

24 Sluijter gives the following figures for elderly Leiden inhabitants enjoying social care in

1749: elderly individuals with a separate household receiving poor relief: 300; alms-

house inhabitants: 500; elderly people living with family: 100; elderly people lodged

with private carers: 300; hospital inhabitants: 300; a total of about 1,500; Sluijter,

‘Oud, afgeleefd, behoeftig en arm’, 20–1.

25 For a discussion on the possibilities and pitfalls of prosopography as a method, see

Lawrence Stone, ‘Prosopography’, Daedalus. Historical Studies Today 100 (1971),

46–79. Prosopography as a method has flourished in the Netherlands since its intro-

duction in the late 1970s. Two studies of the early modern Leiden patrician elite, fre-

quently cited in this article, are products of this Dutch interest in prosopography; D. J.

Noordam, Geringde buffels en heren van stand. Het patriciaat van Leiden, 1574–1700

(Hilversum, 1994); Maarten Prak, Gezeten burgers. De elite in een Hollandse stad

1700–1780 (Amsterdam, 1985). For an overview of Dutch and Belgian work using

prosopography as a method, see Koen Goudriaan, Kees Mandemakers, Jogchum

Reitsma and Peter Stabel eds., Prosopography and computer. Contributions of

F U N DI N G A N D F O U N DI N G PR I V A T E C H A R I T I ES

233



mediaevalists and modernists on the use of the computer in historical research (Leuven

and Apeldoorn, 1995).

26 This is because two less obvious combinations of founders have been listed separately.

In one case, a brother and sister – Jacob and Anna van Brouckhoven – were involved

and in the other, two siblings and one in-law: the Tevelingshofje was founded by a pair

of brothers and the wife of one of them, and thus had three founders. Whenever an

almshouse, however, was founded by husband and wife jointly, they have been counted

as one founder. Marriage law valid in Leiden stipulated that a husband had control of

his wife’s capital and acted on her behalf throughout their married life: Ariadne

Schmidt, Overleven na de dood. Weduwen in Leiden in de Gouden Eeuw (Amsterdam,

2001), ch. 3 and 4.

27 Not all Leiden almshouses could be taken into account. The Houcksteen almshouse,

founded in 1660, was not founded by a private benefactor but by the deaconry of the

Flemish Mennonite congregation. Also excluded is the Elisabethgasthuishof which did

not originate as an almshouse but as a hospital, developed into an institution housing

corrodians and only much later, in the eighteenth century, developed into an alms-

house. Originally founded by private benefactors in 1428, its different aims and ad-

ministrative history make this almshouse a borderline case.

28 See Manon van der Heijden, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk and Ariadne Schmidt,

‘Terugkeer van het patriarchaat? Vrije vrouwen in de Republiek’, Tijdschrift voor

Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis 6, 3 (2009), 26–52.

29 Again, founding couples constitute one founder.

30 When the founder was a couple, absence or presence of children is related to them as a

unit. However, in two cases the husbands had had children by a woman other than his

current wife: Jacob Spruyt had a predeceased child from a previous marriage, whereas

Willem Aerntsz van Tetrode had an illegitimate child; DAD.

31 Noordam, Geringde buffels, 93–4; van Nederveen Meerkerk comes to a similar con-

clusion: in Utrecht and Zwolle a significant proportion of donors did not have children,

at least when compared with testators as a whole and with general demographic pat-

terns; Van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘Geven na de dood’, 141–2. See also her contribution

to this issue: ‘The will to give’.

32 Regional Archive Leiden (hereafter RAL), Arch. 513 (Hofjes), no. 572, Will of

Bartholomeus Willemsz van Assendelft, 29 September 1624.

33 To name two examples: Diderick van Leyden was survived by five adult sons and

Geraert van der Laen’s lineal descendants were still involved in his almshouse in the

nineteenth century; Prak, Gezeten burgers, 396–8; Leermakers and Donkersloot,

Wonen om Gods wille, 130–45.

34 See Prak, Gezeten burgers, 75, 170–1, 207, 245–8.

35 P. J. M. de Baar, ‘Het Mierennesthofje’, De Leidse Hofjes 12 (1983), 1–13; L. J. M.

Bovée, ‘Het van Leydenshofje te Vlaardingen’, De Leidse Hofjes 12 (1983), 14–18.

36 For this problem, see Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, ‘Giving in early modern history:

philanthropy in Amsterdam in the Golden Age’, in this issue of Continuity and Change.

37 This was the case with the Sionshofje, the St. Stevenshofje, the St. Annahofje

(Joostenpoort), St. Janshofje, Cathrijn Jacobsdochterhofje, the St. Barbarahofje, the

Cathrijn Maertensdochterhofje, the Van Assendelfthofje and the Van Woudendorphofje;

DAD.

38 RAL, Stadsarchief van Leiden II, 1574–1816 (hereafter SA II) 6177, will Cathrijn

Maertensdr, 17 February 1621; Arch. 513 (Hofjes), no. 425, will Pieter Gerritsz van der

Speck, 7 August 1645.

39 Boersma and Dusseldorp-Kingma, Regenten en kuise maagden, 20, 69.

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40 de Baar, ‘Het Mierennesthofje’, 4, 8.

41 R. E. O. Ekkart, ‘Het Coninckshofje 1773–1973’, De Leidse Hofjes 2 (1973), 11–22,

here 11.

42 Noordam, Geringde buffels, 89, 93.

43 R. E. O. Ekkart, ‘Cornelis Sprongh en zijn hofje aan de Breestraat’, De Leidse Hofjes 3

(1974), 29–36, 34; Prak, Gezeten burgers, 282.

44 Niekus and Smit, Van bouwvallig nest, 24, 29.

45 Prak, Gezeten burgers, 117.

46 These figures obscure a difference: of the rich burghers, Prak took only the richest

Leiden inhabitants into account, whereas the town regents as a group included a

number of not so wealthy members, lowering the average income; the median incomes

of the merchants/entrepreneurs, Protestant rentiers and Catholics were 193,731,

166,107 and 130,111 guilders. He compared them with the town regents whose capital

was over 100,000 guilders, and then arrived at figures of an average income of 225,274

guilders, and a median of 174,165 guilders, which shows a smaller difference between

the city’s regent- and non-regent elite; Prak, Gezeten burgers, 131–2.

47 Not an occupation as such, but an assumption, based on secondary literature, of the

founder’s particular main economic activity and mainstay.

48 This term is used here to classify men whose primary occupation was a position in

administration.

49 RAL, Arch. 513, no. 545, probate inventory Anthonis Jacobsz van der Schacht, 17

March 1670. See also Th. J. Lunsingh Scheurleer, C. Willemijn Fock and A. J. van

Dissel, Het Rapenburg. Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, volume I (Leiden, 1986),

233, 238.

50 The phrase ‘regent’ was used for everyone who held an urban office of some sort: I

distinguish here between the town regents, the patrician men who had a seat on

the town council and stood at the apex of urban society, and almshouse regents, the

men – and sometimes women – who sat on the almshouse boards.

51 Incidentally, this concurs with some of the conclusions that Van Nederveen Meerkerk

draws; ‘The will to give’.

52 Noordam, Geringde buffels, 35; Prak, Gezeten burgers, 75, 170–1, 207.

53 Willem Aerntsz van Tetrode did not fill any offices either, but he also belonged to the

patrician elite of Leiden; Leermakers and Donkersloot, Wonen om Gods wille, 86–7.

54 See also Noordam, Geringde buffels, 93, where it is stressed that in general the founding

of an almshouse was exceptional.

55 For the accumulation of capital; Prak, Gezeten burgers, ch. 3; Noordam, Geringde

buffels, 94.

56 Van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘The will to give’.

57 Their bequest encompassed about a sixth of their total estate of 133,652 guilders; Prak,

Gezeten burgers, 200, 419.

58 RAL, Arch. 513 (Hofjes), 333, list of regents Hofje van Brouckhoven 1642–1857; Prak,

Gezeten burgers, 374–8, 383, 386, 389, 391–3, 395–6, 399–403, 408, 414–15, 418.

59 Namely the St. Stevenshofje, the Bethaniënhofje and the Van Brouckhovenhofje; for Van

de Velde, see Prak, Gezeten burgers, 418.

60 See, for example, Boersma and Dusseldorp-Kingma, Regenten en kuise maagden, 27, 32,

35; A. J. Sormani, ‘Het Salvatorhofje 1639–1939’, Leidsch Jaarboekje 33 (1941),

111–25, 121; P. J. M. de Baar, ‘De strijd tussen het St.Annahofje en de gemeente

Leiden over de ‘‘onlosbare’’ renten’, De Leidse Hofjes 14 (1985), 67–71; Ekkart, ‘Het

Coninckshofje’, 18. For the important role donations to poor relief institutions by its

regents played in Amsterdam, see van Leeuwen, ‘Giving in early modern history’.

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61 RAL, Arch. 513 (Hofjes), provisional inventory Mierennesthofje, no. 5, will of Diderick

van Leyden, 14 June 1760. Obviously, he held two positions at the same time. See also

RAL Arch. 513 (Hofjes), Hofje van Brouckhoven, no. 333.

62 See L. Heerma van Voss and M. H. D. van Leeuwen, ‘Charity in the Dutch Republic:

an introduction’, in this issue of Continuity and Change, and also van Leeuwen, ‘Giving

in early modern history’, for these motives as evidenced by inscriptions on Amsterdam

almshouses; for the religious and social reasons in appeals to give to collections, see

D. Teeuwen, ‘Collections for the poor: monetary charitable donations in Dutch

Towns, c. 1600–1800’, in this issue of Continuity and Change.

63 Leermakers and Donkersloot, Wonen om Gods wille, 158.

64 D. E. H. de Boer, ‘Het Sint Stevenshof tot het eind van de 18de eeuw’, De Leidse Hofjes

2 (1973), 25–37, here 27; J. P. Zwanenburg, ‘Het Sionshofje. Stichting van het gasthuis

of Hofje genaemd Syon, binnen de stad Leyden’, De Leidse Hofjes 2 (1973), 39–46, here

40; Turck, Die Leidener Wohnstiftungen, 93; Leermakers and Donkersloot, Wonen om

Gods wille, 112, 129.

65 Leermakers and Donkersloot, Wonen om Gods wille, 175–6.

66 Sormani, ‘Het Salvatorhofje’, 116.

67 Ekkart, ‘Cornelis Sprongh’, 34.

68 See, for this, Van Leeuwen, ‘Giving in early modern history’.

69 Noordam, Geringde buffels, 93; Zandvliet, De 250 Rijksten, 238.

70 RAL, Arch. 513 (Hofjes), no. 559, will of Catharina Geschier.

71 RAL, Arch. 513 (Hofjes), Hofje Samuel de Zee.

72 For example, in the case of St. Anna Aalmoeshuis, the chapel became a favourite spot

for the regents to exult their lineage and involvement with the almshouse; P. A. Terwen

and R. Crèvecoeur, ‘De glasvensters van het St. Annahof-kapelletje’, in De Leidse

Hofjes 14 (1985), 19–42.

73 Sormani, ‘Het Salvatorhofje’, 116.

74 J. van Nieuwenburg, ‘Uit de geschiedenis van het Woudendorphofje’, Leids Jaarboekje

55 (1963), 100–14, especially 101.

75 Such as the regents of the Sint-Elisabethgasthuis who placed their coats of arms over

the door of their office; Leermakers and Donkersloot, Wonen om Gods wille, 198–9.

Particular elaborate examples in a ‘non-social’ context can still be seen on and near the

Keep of Leiden, the remains of the castle that once dominated the city.

76 ‘Voorwoord’, in P. J. M. de Baar, A. J. van Dissel, J. F. Dröge, H. J. M. van der Geest,

J. F. Heijbroek, W. Louwrier and G. C. Quispel, Meermansburg, Leidens grootste hofje

1683–1983 (Leiden, 1983), 1.

77 Van Leeuwen notes a similar concern with status as an incentive to found almshouses;

‘Giving in early modern history’.

78 For the importance of family reputation in the Dutch Republic, see L. Kooijmans,

Vriendschap en de kunst van het overleven in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw

(Amsterdam, 1997), 11–13, 39–41, 61–2, 88, 90, 97, 101–2, 120, 138–9.

79 Namely, the foundations of: Jan de Latere; Pieter Loridan; Charles Tevel (counted as

separate from his co-founders, his brother Jacob and his sister-in-law), Jacob Tevel and

Elisabeth van den Vinct; Jan Pesijn and Marie de Lannoy; Anthonis Jacobsz Schacht;

Catharina Geschier and Jean Michel; and Samuel de Zee; DAD.

80 Noordam, Geringde buffels, 33–4.

81 Turck, Die Leidener Wohnstiftungen, 185.

82 Van Leeuwen, ‘Giving in early modern history’; and Van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘The

will to give’. Note a similar concern for family in charitable bequests.

83 Leermakers and Donkersloot, Wonen om Gods wille, 163.

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84 Van Nieuwenburg, ‘Uit de geschiedenis van het Woudendorphofje’, 106–9.

85 I. W. L. Moerman, ‘Het Hofje van Samuel de Zee’, De Leidse Hofjes 5 (1977), 31–5,

here 33.

86 Leermakers and Donkersloot, Wonen om Gods wille, 102; For other examples, see ibid.

95, 138 and 163.

87 ‘Bouwgeschiedenis van Meermansburg’, in de Baar et al., Meermansburg, 4–9, here 6.

88 Leermakers and Donkersloot, Wonen om Gods wille, 138–9, 145.

89 For some concrete examples of this, see Prak, Gezeten burgers, 232–3; and Van

Leeuwen, ‘Giving in early modern history’.

90 Obviously not all; in 1749 only about 16 per cent of the households employed domes-

tics; H. A. Diederiks, ‘Beroepsstructuur en sociale stratificatie in Leiden in het midden

van de achttiende eeuw’, in Diederiks, Noordam and Tjalsma, Armoede en sociale

spanning, 45–67, especially 61.

91 Noordam, Geringde buffels, 52–3; Prak, Gezeten burgers, 231.

92 Although there were alternatives, such as leaving them a bequest or allowing them to

remain in their house for a while.

93 See, for example, Boersma and Dusseldorp-Kingma, Regenten en kuise maagden,

29–31, 44–5.

94 RAL, SA II 6177, Will Jan de Latere and Magdalena Vijns, 24 April 1612. For his

charitableness, and that of his wife, see also Van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘The will to

give’.

95 L.G. le Poole, Bijdragen tot de kennis van het kerkelijk leven onder de Doopsgezinden,

ontleend aan het archief der Doopsgezinde Gemeente te Leiden (Leiden, 1905), 51.

96 Catholicism was tolerated, but Catholics were regarded as second-rate citizens and

discriminated against in law. They were, for example, forbidden to bequeath to

Catholic priests and institutions; Charles H. Parker, Faith on the margins. Catholics and

Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge, MA, 2008).

97 The Elisabethgasthuis – later, an almshouse – between 1608 and 1654 housed a total of

248 widows, including 111 foreigners, of which 101 were widows from the Southern

Netherlands; Schmidt, Overleven na de dood, 185. Also in the St. Anna Aalmoeshuishofje

in Leiden in the years 1606–1626 inhabitants could come from the Southern

Netherlands; A. J. van Dissel, ‘Van wege den hoochdringenden noot en uyt sonderlinge

gratie. Enkele bewoonsters van het Sint Annahofje in het eerste kwart van de 17de

eeuw’, De Leidse Hofjes 14 (1985), 11–17.

98 Niekus and Smit, Van bouwvallig nest, 20, 26–7.

99 RAL, Arch. 513, no. 503, Will of Anthonis Jacobsz van der Schacht, 24 September

1664; donatio inter vivos, 7 August 1655; see also Kees van der Wiel, Dit kint hiet

Willem. De Heilige Geest in Leiden – 700 jaar vondelingen, wezen en jeugdzorg (Leiden,

2010), 33.

100 Sandra Cavallo, Charity and power in early modern Italy. Benefactors and their

motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge, 1995), 5, and ch. IV, notices a similar link

between female charity and concern about female vulnerability in the late seventeenth

century.

101 P. J. M. de Baar, ‘Eva Aelbrechtsdr van Hoogeveen en haar familie’, De Leidse Hofjes

13 (1984), 61–6; J. F. Dröge, ‘De bouwgeschiedenis van het Eva van Hoogeveenshofje’,

De Leidse Hofjes 13 (1984), 67–81. It has been suggested that she was unhappy with her

unmarried state; Boersma and Dusseldorp-Kingma, Regenten en kuise maagden, 15.

102 RAL, Hofjes 6, f. 24; Schmidt, Overleven na de dood, 189.

103 She ranks as no. 134 in Zandvliet, De 250 rijksten, 240.

104 Kooijmans, Vriendschap, 15–17, 20, 27, 30, 39–41, 54–5, 61–4, 79, 116, 134, 143–6.

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105 Such as providing scholarships for promising students of theology; Kooijmans,

Vriendschap, 36.

106 RAL, Arch. 513 (Hofjes), no. 459, Will of Eva van Hoogeveen, 4 June 1650.

107 He destined the almshouse for Dutch Reformed elderly poor in general, but the fact

that he had a commemorative tablet installed listing all his lordship titles suggests that

the Vlaardingen almshouse was meant to accommodate elderly persons from his lord-

ships; Bovée, ‘Het Van Leydenshofje’, 14.

108 For the importance of proximity for establishing who received charity, see also Van

Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘The will to give’.

109 Some historians combine these two layers together, while others separate them: Paul

Knevel, ‘Een kwestie van overleven. De kunst van het samenleven’, in Thimo de Nijs

and Eelco Beukers eds., Geschiedenis van Holland. Deel II, 1572 tot 1795 (Hilversum,

2002), 217–54, here 219–20, divides patricians and nobles from the great burghers;

Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, De Rijke Republiek. Gilden, assuradeurs en armenzorg

1500–1800, volume I of: Jacques van Gerwen and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, Zoeken

naar zekerheid. Risico’s, preventie, verzekeringen en andere zekerheidsregelingen in

Nederland 1500–2000 (Amsterdam and Den Haag, 2000), 41–2, combines them. W.

Frijhoff and M. Spies, 1650. Bevochten eendracht (Den Haag, 1999), 189–90, use the

same six-layer stratification as Knevel, but in contrast, merge the ‘great burghers’ and

the ‘broad burghers’ instead of the ‘broad’ and ‘small’ burghers. Here we chose to

follow Knevel and Van Leeuwen.

110 Van Leeuwen, De rijke Republiek, 41.

111 They could, for example, buy their way into a ‘proveniershuis’, a house in which one

was assured of lifelong care, lodging and food after paying a certain sum of money.

Many medieval hospitals in fact had become such proveniershuizen; for example, see

Gerda Kurtz, Het Proveniershuis te Haarlem (Haarlem, 1979); C. Boschma-Aarnoudse,

Sint-Pietershof the Hoorn: bedelnap en preuve, kruisheren en proveniers aan het Dal

(Hoorn, 1993).

112 M. H. D. van Leeuwen, ‘Guilds and middle-class welfare 1550–1800: provisions for

burial, sickness, old age, and widowhood’, Economic History Review 65 (2012), 61–90.

113 Knevel, ‘Een kwestie van overleven’, 220–1, 230–8; van Leeuwen, De rijke Republiek,

24–9, 41–2; Maarten Prak, Gouden Eeuw. Het raadsel van de Republiek (Nijmegen,

2002), 151–5. See van Leeuwen, De rijke Republiek, passim, for the many risks to which

early modern Dutchmen were exposed.

114 On registration habits in the Dutch Republic, see Henk Looijesteijn and Marco H. D.

van Leeuwen, ‘Identity registration in the Dutch Republic’, in K. Breckenridge and S.

Szreter eds., Registration and recognition. Documenting the person in world history

(Oxford, forthcoming), ch. 8.

115 Van Dissel, ‘Van wege den hoochdringenden noot’, 11–17; appendix 1-XIV, 75–96.

FRENCH AND GERMAN ABSTRACTS

Financement et fondation d’œuvres de charité privées à Leiden: les hospices et
leurs fondateurs, 1450–1800

Cet essai présente une monographie consacrée aux fondateurs des hospices pour
personnes âgées dans la ville hollandaise de Leiden à partir de la fin du Moyen Âge
et jusqu’à 1800. On commence par donner une vue d’ensemble des hospices de
Leiden et évaluer leur importance pour les personnes âgées. Ensuite l’auteur

H E NK L O O I JE ST EI J N

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propose une étude prosopographique des fondateurs d’hospice à Leiden et étudie
les raisons pouvant expliquer leur démarche individuelle, prenant en compte leur
religion, leur statut et le souci qu’ils eurent chacun de porter assistance à une
personne qui leur était très proche ou extrêmement chère à leur cœur. Il poursuit
par une analyse de la classe sociale des résidents d’hospice. Cet article affirme que,
par ces actions charitables destinées aux hospices, les classes supérieures riches et
privilégiées de la société hollandaise se sont occupées d’entretenir des membres
(éloignés) de leur famille, leurs employés et d’autres personnes devenues à charge,
appartenant à leur cercle de clientèle ou patronage et qu’ainsi les hospices pour
personnes âgées, dans la pratique, offrirent surtout aux membres de la frange
inférieure de la classe moyenne et à tous ceux dont la vie dépendait d’un salaire,
une issue respectable à leur pauvreté visible et honteuse.

Gründung und Ausstattung privater Wohlfahrtseinrichtungen: Armenhäuser in
Leiden, 1450–1800

Dieser Beitrag präsentiert eine Fallstudie der Gründer von Armenhäusern für äl-
tere Menschen in Leiden im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit. Zunächst
wird ein Überblick über die Leidener Armenhäuser gegeben, wobei auch danach
gefragt wird, welche Bedeutung sie für ältere Menschen besaßen. Es folgt eine
Prosopographie der Gründer der Leidener Armenhäuser, die auch die Gründe für
die Stiftung von Armenhäusern erörtert und vor allem danach fragt, welche Rolle
dabei die Religion, der soziale Status und das Anliegen, seine nächsten und lieb-
sten Angehörigen zu versorgen, spielte. Anschließend wird die Sozialstruktur der
Insassen von Armenhäusern analysiert. Die Ergebnisse münden in die These, dass
die reichen und privilegierten Oberschichten der holländischen Gesellschaft durch
die Stiftung von Armenhäusern ihre (entfernten) Familienmitglieder,
Beschäftigten und andere Abhängige innerhalb ihres Patronagezirkels versorgten,
und dass die Armenhäuser somit in der Praxis vor allem dazu dienten, für die
Mitglieder des Kleinbürgertums und der lohnabhängigen Klassen einen ehren-
haften Weg aus der offenen Schande zu eröffnen, die mit der Armut einher ging.

F U N DI N G A N D F O U N DI N G PR I V A T E C H A R I T I ES

239