"'I wish we were able to eliminate poverty completely in this city.' Those words echo a sentiment that could have been written yesterday, but represent the feelings of Juan Luis Vives, a Spanish humanist living in Bruges in 1526. The urban problems of sixteenth-century Bruges seem very familiar to the modern reader: poverty, overcrowding, crime, the problems of the mentally ill, and the issue of the responsibility of government for the care of the poor.

Published in 1526, On Assistance to the Poor was Vives's effort to bring forward these questions to the City Council of Bruges, and have them addressed by local government. His distinctive development of a single integrated system out of the several practices already in use in Northern Europe presaged the English Poor Laws of 1601 and later laws in the New World.".

"This edition, originally published in 1971 with an introduction, translation, and commentary by Alice Tobriner, is a valuable primary source in Renaissance social history."--BOOK JACKET.