GUEVARRE, André.

£5,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

La mendicità sbandita col sovvenimento de' poveri Handsomely bound first edition, outlining the author's project for the institutionalisation of poverty relief through state-controlled charity in Piedmont under King Victor Amadeus II of Savoy. Appended are five related pamphlets, and a short volume of poems celebrating the King's victory over poverty, all in their first edition. From 1716, under the guidance of Jesuit preacher André Guevarre, King Victor Amadeus II issued a series of edicts banning begging and private charitable aid. In their place, the crown established a centralized system of poverty relief, creating a network of charitable congregations (congregazioni di carità) in larger towns and almshouses or "general hospitals" (ospizi generali) in smaller ones. The flagship institution in Turin served as a model for more than 140 congregations later founded across the region, all following the directives outlined in La mendicità sbandita.Guevarre, who had previously collaborated with Honoré Chaurand to establish charitable organizations in France and Rome, wrote several works on social welfare. La mendicità sbandita has been described as "an early example - ante litteram - of a welfare state, more than a century and a half before the first laws which, starting in the late nineteenth century, began... to give shape to a state program that over time would lead Western nations toward a modern assumption of responsibility for social issues" (Cipolla & Ardissone, p. 13).Th

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