Status Updates From Another Darkness, Another D...

early as the fourteenth century there was the beginning of writings suggesting that it was wrong to relieve the wilfully idle, and gradually the ‘sin of sloth’ came to be defined as including physical as well as spiritual vices. By the beginning of the fifteenth century many humanists believed that some types of poverty, far from leading to holiness, caused social disorder and should be supressed

Protestantism has often been credited with changing approaches to the poor, with writers traditionally pointing to the dissolution of religious orders and the introduction of the Protestant work ethic contributing to the harsher climate for those in need of support