De Subventione pauperum, which Vives had published in 1526, was attacked bitterly after his death. In the end of the Middle Age several cities began to enact the poor law. His writing seems to be reasonable, when we take the situation of the age in account. He concealed his writing plan even to his friends, and they did not know that he wrote this work. He seemed to be afraid of the shock which this work would bring about. But he felt a new program for the poor relief very urgent. He published this work with such a complicated mind. Not only the poor relief mandates of Nürnberg, Strasbourg and Ypres, but also the program of Vives supplemented and reformed the poor relief of the Middle Age: they all aimed at the total forbidding of the beggary and the secularization of the poor relief institutions. The organizing systems and the practical methods of the poor relief corresponded to the size of cities. But while the law of three cities were interested in the open relief in common, Vives was interested in the closed relief. He proposed to drive out the healthy but idle from the relief institution, to accomodate only the sick, the old, the orphans, the blind, the lame and the mentally sick, to subdivide the relief institution according to the purpose, to offer the blind and lame the labor opportunity, to offer the healthy poor the technical education, to offer the children of the poor the school education and to collect the charity funds from the rich for the finance. His program was very revolutionary in that time. In the great economical change of the ending Middle Age the increase of the poor shook the social order. The city as the center of the political and economical life must accommodate itself to the new situation with new methods. Therefore the mandate limiting the beggary has developed into the law which would stop the increase of the poor and offer the healthy poor the opportunity to work. For men could not solve the problem of poverty any more by donating a little alms. For the poverty was no longer a private problem but became that of all the society. As Vives says, the poor relief should be carried out by the secular power on the basis of the neighbor love. Therefore the effort which tried to conform to the changing economical situation, was expressed in the process which developped from the mandate limiting beggary into the poor relief law. Though the program of Vives was not directly motivated by the reformation, we cannot deny that it was influenced indirectly by the reformation, because the poor relief law of Nürnberg lent a impetus to a new direction for the poor relief. This new direction can be clearly found in the total forbidding of the beggar inclusive of the mendicant friars and the secularization of the poor relief institution. The men of the Middle Age understood the poverty as the divine order for the salvation of the human beings. Therefore they believed that if they would try to overcome the poverty, they would disobey the will of God. Therefore the poor despaired of their poverty and gave up the will to overcome it. Besides Vives refused the mediaeval belief that the bodily labor was cursed on account of the Fall. He made effort to give the poor the opportunity to overcome the poverty. Vives showed himself a precursor, so far as he made effort to solve the problem of the poverty. Though he dedicated his writing to Bruges city, it must delay the reform of the poor law until 1562. This fact shows how revolutionary his program was.

• 황정욱(한신대학교) | Hwang, Jung Uck