Female Lay Involvement at the Medieval Hospital of Saint John in Brussels

Brussels’ confraternity of Saint-Esprit was formed by a group of clerics, priests, and burghers and received official approval from the bishop of Cambrai in 1186. Later, the confraternity, tasked to care for the sick and those too ill to beg, developed into a hospital.  By 1204, the hospital was placed under the patronage of Saint John, and by 1207, the institution was completely in the hands of the fraters hospitalis Bruxellensis. In the following years the hospital administration beseeched the papacy for safeguard, and in 1209 the fraters et sorores hospitalis beati Johannis in Bruxella received formal papal protection. The hospital continued to flourish in the early thirteenth century, and by mid-century the institution had a permanent endowment built from numerous lay donations.  The donations continued through the rest of the century, making Saint John’s one of the largest land holders and most influential hospitals in the region. 

Of the 138 lay donations documented after 1254, 51 were issued by women.  The women in these particular extant charters were identified as widows, daughters, mothers, wives, and sisters.  Fifteen of the donations, however, indicate no familial tie, suggesting that the women were acting completely on their own.  The instances of women acting singularly is highly unusual, or so we have been led to believe.  This talk explores the particular women who acted alone in order to bring light to the normalcy of their actions and to remove the academic constructs of male domination, public and private spheres, and patriarchy.