[Gocamino] hospitals, hospices, and refugios

[Eldor Pederson]

"I'd like to clarify some terminology used in various
guidebooks. When considering the early days of the
pilgrimage, are the terms hospital and hospice
interchangeable? And, are both what we think of when
we talk about refugios today?

I've noticed that some hospitals treated both pilgrims
who needed food and shelter only while others
apparently had medical care available. (Some were
even set up for lepers.)

In Medieval times, did other people (those not on
pilgrimage) also go to hospitals for medical
treatment, and if so, were these places seperate from
where the pilgrims could go?"

 

Without going on at great length, there is no simple answer to your questions. The terms "hospital" and "hospice" as they are used in documents on medieval pilgrimage were more-or-less the same as what we today call "albergues" or "refugios." They were places pilgrims enroute to or home from Santiago (or some other shrine) could spend the night and obtain food. They also provided medical assistance to pilgrims who needed it.

 

In present-day Castellano, English, and French (hôpital) and English, a hospital is a place for medical care. While it might provide rooms for relatives of patients, it is not a place for travelers to seek a room for the night under most circumstances. Prior to the 19th century, the term was less rigid and included both places for medical treatment and a place for travelers or pilgrims to seek overnight refuge. In the medieval era, a number of hospitals were established along the Camino and elsewhere, almost all of them operated by one religious order or another. All of them provided medical care, though some of it was probably more dangerous than the conditions it was intended to treat. In small villages, a hospital might provide little more than what we would now term first aid given by a kindly but untrained monk or nun. In the larger hospitals "state of the art" treatment was provided by physicians trained at great universities like Bologna, Paris, or Salamanca. All of the hospitals also gave pilgrims food and a place to sleep even when they did not need medical attention.

 

While some lepers may have made the pilgrimage, leprosy was such a feared and reviled condition that those who showed its ravages were likely to have been shunned by healthy pilgrims. Hospitals for leprosy were, as they continued to be well into the 20th century, isolated from population centers, sometimes in almost impossibly remote locations. Though I have seen no evidence on the point, I doubt that any of the hospitals along the Camino also knowingly cared for lepers unless they had a separate, isolated facility for doing so.

 

Finally, hospitals were used by local residents for medical treatment as well as by pilgrims and travelers, especially the ones where physicians were available. However, more often than not a hospital was a place to go to die rather than a place for treatment. They were frequently a refuge for the dying poor. Those known to be dying may have been separated from others at the hospital, but in general there would not have been much separation between healthy pilgrims spending a night and those needing medical care.

 

Hope this at least partially answers your inquiry.

 

E. O. Pederson