After years of its waiting quietly, patiently on my bookshelf, gathering dust, finally today I picked up Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization. I do enjoy it because when I read it aloud to the dogs (as one does) I get to say many locations and names of people in French and I find this very fun. French is my favorite modern language and its phonics are so liquidy-nice on the tongue.
And of course, the dogs are exposed to French at a young age (2 and 3 years old) so they can later learn it comfortably in their older age, should they so choose.
Anyway none of that is the point. Here’s the point: did you know that as Europe shut down lazar houses (leprosariums) in the 17th century, they suddenly had lots of cash to divert to other resources? Because there were thousands upon thousands of lazar houses throughout Europe, mainly publicly funded. But as the number of people with leprosy diminished substantially, those thousands of leprosariums (what a jumbly, captivating word that is) weren’t needed when all of a sudden you had dozens/hundreds of these lep-ro-saahhhhr-i-umssssssss in a city but only like, three lepers.
So they had to create new edicts to divert the funds to other worthy recipients. Henri IV in 1606 wrote an edict that sent the funds to crippled soldiers and—shock of shocks—poor noblemen.
Poor. Noblemen.
Of course, a few years later (1612) another edict sent the funds to feed the poor. What a nice idea. Coincidentally, Henri IV was assassinated a couple years earlier. Marie de Medici, Queen of France and Regent, was in charge at that time. As an Italian outsider who couldn’t speak French fluently and famously hated her husband the king, Marie wasn’t well-loved by French nobility. There’s a major revolt and a couple wars as a result but that has nothing to do with finances for the LEProSARyums.
I’m sure in those six years the money did a lot of good helping the nobility get back on their feet and wined and dined and jeweled as was proper.
So in case you were wondering the exact wtfery that prompted the manufacturing of guillotines and the near-extinction of the French nobility in the late 18th century—what would drive a civilization to such extremity and hatred and glorified massacre—you can sit back happily knowing its roots were centuries old and a long time coming in a world of systemic injustice propped up by its rulers who used the laws to make them and their cronies richer, without much care for people starving and dying on the streets.
Good thing everything’s changed since then, right?
