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Theology: Hospitality

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Caleb Dalechamp wrote in his delightfully titled 1632 book, Christian Hospitalitie Handled Common-Place-Wise that “Hospitalitie falsely so called is the keeping of a good table, at which seldome or never any other are entertained then kynsfolk, friends and able neighbours. . . . This is no hospitalitie, though it be commonly graced with that title, but it is good fellowship or some such like thing.” Felicity Heal, who quotes this passage in a 1984 article in Past & Present, argues that Dalechamp’s vision of hospitality was an axiom of sixteenth-century writing on the subject. WilliamVaughan claimed hospitality was not “in glutonous diversities, but rather in one kind of meat, in clothing the naked and giving alms unto the poor.” It was considered a “vulgar error” to identify the specifically Christian practice of hospitality with hosting parties with friends. Still, class intervened. Heal says, “it was usually acknowledged that degree would be maintained by the careful separation of the social location in which hospitality was offered: the great chamber for men of influence, the hall for those of lesser worship who had some specific claim on the head of the household, the gatehouse for the needy.”

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, July 3, 2012 at 3:08 pm

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Theology: Hospitality

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