"The
Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire published by John Hopkins
University Press (June 17, 1997)
Medical historians have traditionally claimed that modern
hospitals emerged during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Premodern
hospitals, according to many scholars, existed mainly as refuges for the
desperately poor and sick, providing patients with little or no medical care.
Challenging this view in a compelling survey of hospitals in the East Roman
Empire, Timothy Miller traces the birth and development of Byzantine xenones,
or hospitals, from their emergence in the fourth century to their decline in
the fifteenth century, just prior to the Turkish conquest of Constantinople.
These sophisticated medical facilities, he concludes, are the true ancestors of
modern hospitals. In a new introduction to this paperback edition, Miller
describes the growing scholarship on this subject in recent years.
The
Orphans of Byzantium: Child Welfare in the Christian Empire published by The
Catholic University of America Press (February 12, 2003)
Among the controversial issues in America today is the debate
over how best to care for abandoned and neglected children. Largely absent from
the debate, however, is any discussion of past practices. In this book,
historian Timothy Miller argues that it is necessary to look at the history of
orphanages, of their successes and failures, and of their complex roles as
social institutions for unwanted and homeless children.
In The Orphans of Byzantium, Miller provides a
perceptive and original study of the evolution of orphanages in the Byzantine
Empire. Contrary to popular belief and even expert opinion, medieval
child-welfare systems were sophisticated, especially in the Byzantine world.
Combining ancient Roman legal institutions with Christian concepts of charity,
the Byzantine Empire evolved a child-welfare system that tried either to select
foster parents for homeless children or to place them in group homes that could
provide food, shelter, and education. Miller discusses how successive Byzantine
emperors tried to improve Roman regulations to provide greater security for
orphans, and notes that they achieved their greatest success when they widened
the pool of potential guardians by allowing women relatives to accept the
duties of guardianship.
After a thorough discussion of each element of the Byzantine
child care system, the book closes by showing how Byzantine orphanages provided
models for later Western group homes, especially in Italy. From these
renaissance orphan asylums evolved the system of modern European and American
religious orphanages until the foster care movement emerged at the beginning of
the twentieth century. Miller's study of these systems can provide useful
models for reforming the troubled child-welfare system today.
Timothy S. Miller is Professor of History at Salisbury
University in Maryland. He has written or edited numerous books and articles on
the Byzantine Empire, including The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine
Empire and Peace and War in Byzantium.
Praise for the book:
"A very important contribution to Byzantine social and
family history.... Like his other works, The Orphans of Byzantium commends
Professor Miller as an indefatigable researcher and leading social historian of
the Byzantine era. [This] is an original book, extensively researched, well
documented, and readable, of value to students and teachers of Byzantine
civilization, and the history of philanthropy and welfare.... Dr. Miller
deserves congratulations and our gratitude for making another major
contribution to Byzantine studies."--Demetrios J. Constantelos, Catholic
Historical Review
"Timothy Miller has become an expert on the Byzantine
Empire's system of social welfare, and here he provides an exhaustive study at
a millennium of Byzantine care of orphans.... Miller's work is, by any gauge,
thorough, and while there is not a plethora of evidence on this topic, readers
can be sure that Miller has carefully analysed what there is."--Daniel
Boice, Catholic Library Wolrd
"What should a morally responsible society do with
orphans? Ignore and thus condone possible slavery, certain neglect, probable
death? Encourage adoption? Institutionalize and therefore confine and
marginalize? In this handsomely produced text, established Byzantine historian
Miller (Salisbury Univ.) explicitly addresses a perennial issue of social
policy by investigating and assessing the strategies that the classical and
Byzantine worlds employed for abandoned or neglected children. Miller
competently reviews the Hellenistic and Roman legalities and realities that
Byzantine church, state, and private society sought to improve, then
informatively describes the importance of the orphanage as institution
(religiously or privately controlled); the sometimes effective encouragement
(notably, by giving female kin greater..." From the Amazon website
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