The Beggars And The Society’s Attitude To Them In Early Modern West Europe Society

From ancient times, beggars are common in human society. They are similar in many different time and region. In Europe, we can find many marks about them since Homeric age, and in modern time they still exist. In different ages, people’s attitude toward beggars is also different, aversion, toleration or even praise in sometimes.In the transition period from late medieval to early modern time, the problem of beggars seems inordinately serious, the attitude of people also has some significant changes. In this paper, I’m trying to discuss about these changes, and combine social reality in that time, to explore the significance to idealistic and society in that.In the introduction, I tried to analyze the concept of beggars in people’s mind, and then there are four sections of the main body. The first section is an overview of beggars in medieval west Europe society, the main emphasis is the attitude of medieval west Europe people, this is the reference of the compare. In the second section, by a social reality aspect, I introduced the reason of the problem of beggars in late medieval and early modern west Europe and how severity it is. In the third section I discussed the people’s attitude toward beggars in early modern west Europe, by three different groups – ordinary people, secular governments and religious people, this section makes a contrast to the first section. The forth section, I tried to explore the significance of these contrast and change. Finally, in the conclusion, I make the problem of beggars combine the modern society, attempted to play a role in the solution of modern social problem.