Charity and the social visibility of the nobility in the Modern period: the Hospital of Nuestra Señora de la Piedad in Benavente

Abstract

In the mid eighteenth century three hospitals were in operation in the town of Benavente in the Province of Zamora in Spain. These were the hospitals of San Juan Bautista, Nuestra Señora de La Piedad and San José, which had been founded in the Middle Ages, in the sixteenth century, and in the seventeenth century, respectively. Of the three, Nuestra Señora de La Piedad was to become the principal centre for medical assistance in the zone covering the North of the Province of Zamora and the South of the Province of Leon. However, it also had another, particularly numerous, group of users: seasonal workers from Galicia, who each year travelled up to the central plateau to earn a living as agricultural labourers during the summer months. This paper will address the question of the centre’s catchment area, from which its clientele came, and also will look into their characteristics, the period for which they convalesced, or their mortality rates, laying special emphasis on the various different types of patient treated there.