neighbourliness, of ensuring communal stability and promoting the general well-being of the commonwealth (Heal 1982: 547).
In the course of dispensing hospitality, those of lower status were received at a different table, fed different and coarser food and housed in different places/less privileged places/lodgings (Henisch 1976: 12). In serving dinner, John Russell gives a fascinating insight into the complexities of serving dinner to clergy and nobility of different ranks. According to him, it included explanations/instructions of how ushers and marshals were to seat strangers, clergy, and men and women of high rank but no wealth, and those in reverse circumstances (PohI1999:51).
As the Medieval period (AD500-1500) came to a close, Christ's hospitality among the Christians of the time had died a systematically co-ordinated death. By this time, most provision for the poor was done at the gate and not within the house. This indicates that the poor were now being seen as a nuisance, meaning that, people were no longer able to see Christ in the poor! This was a terrible reversal of the great gains that had been made in the past as our study has shown. In concluding this sub-section, we realise that the potential of hospitality was lost in the loss of the worshipping community and in the differentiation of care among the recipients. Thus, the medieval period did not fuel the fire of hospitality but instead it extinguished it through the strengthening of class society especially in the dispensation of hospitality.
rich and indiscriminate aid to the poor. They also called for a return to Christ's hospitality and patristic understanding of hospitality that had focused on care for poor persons and needy exiles.
They emphasised frugality, prudence, discernment and orderliness in the dispensation of hospitality (Pohl 1999:52).
The sixteenth century was further characterised by a significant resurgence of the moral credibility and practical relevance of hospitality to needy strangers. The large numbers of protestant refugees fleeing persecutions during this period caused this. John Calvin asserted that welcoming these persons was the "sacred" kind of hospitality. He was thankful to the civic leaders of Geneva and Frankfurt for opening up their cities for refugees as a clear expression of hospitality (Calvin 1999:15-16).
Just as hospitality was very significant in the early Anabaptist experience, as believers sought refuge from persecution and cared for the families of martyrs, it was also an important practice for the early Protestants as they attempted to survive and prevail in the religious and political upheavals of that time (Umble 1998: 1).55
In the reformation period, Martin Luther wrote that when persecuted believers received hospitality, "God Himself (sic) is in our home, is being fed at our house, is lying down and resting".56 ''No duty can be more pleasing or acceptable to God than hospitality to religious refugees", asserted Calvin, who viewed such practice as a "sacred" form of hospitality. 57 He encouraged believers to see in the stranger the image of God and our common flesh.
According to Luther and Calvin, the primary practitioners of hospitality, during the 16th century reformation period, were Christian families and civic leaders (Pohl 1999: 52). Unfortunately, they did not recover from the ancient sources an appreciation for the church as an important location for hospitality. Instead, they identified hospitality with the civic and the domestic
55 It should be noted that Anabaptist writers generally subsumed hospitality under the category of mutual aid. See, for example Jeni Hiett Umble (1998).
56Martin Luther, Luther 's works, vol.3: Lectures on Genesis, Chapters J5-20(St.Louis: Concordia, 1961) P. 189.
57 John Calvin wrote that hospitality was "sacred kind of humanity" in Commentaries on the Catholic Epistle (Grand Rapids: Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1948) p. 130.
spheres. Martin Luther, in particular, viewed these spheres as essential to the way of God ordered society. In so doing, the reformers killed the sacramental character of hospitality that we have discussed in ancient times; and hospitality was diminished and it became mostly an ordinary but valued expression of human care (Pohl 1999: 53). Further, by identifying Christ's hospitality with political authorities- that is -civic leaders, the reformers further opened the debate: To what extent should church and politics be juxtaposed? On the other hand, how far should the church leaders mingle with the politics of the land? As the salt and light of the world, how far can the Christians work hand in hand with non-converted to fulfil a noble cause? And by weakening or killing the sacramental character of the original Christ's hospitality how good or bad was it? Thus by normalising or secularising what was originally sacramental the reformers called attention to a theological debate on the parameters around which the church should or should not by pass when dealing with the "world". Despite the reformers' acknowledgement that hospitality was a "sacred" act, they simultaneously undermined some of the mystery that had
"under girded the potent earlier understanding" of Christ's hospitality (Pohl 1999: 53).
Describing the Jews as unwanted and ungrateful guests of the German people, Martin Luther urged their removal from the Land. He portrayed them as plundering their hosts' goods and blaspheming their hosts' God. He complained:
We suffer more from them (the Jews) than the Italians do from the Spaniards, who plunder the hosts' kitchen, cellar, chest, and purse, and, in addition, curse him and threaten him with death. Thus the Jews, our guests, also treat us: for we are their hosts. They rob and fleece us and hang about our necks, these lazy weaklings and indolent bellies; they swill and feast, enjoy good times in our homes, and by way of reward they curse our Lord Christ, our churches, our princes, and all of us, threatening us and unceasingly wishing us death and every evil.58
To be rid of the "unbearable, devilish burden of the Jews", Luther recommended that their homes, schools, and synagogues be razed, that they be forced to live in barns and to do manual
Luther's Works, Vo1.47: The Christian and Society IV (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971),"Onthe Jews and
work, if not expelled or "cut off like a gangrenous limb".59 This shows that even though the reformers did not quash away the concept of Christ's hospitality, they, however relaxed it by encouraging the political (civic) authorities to work towards its realization and by Luther's daring advocacy of a forceful removal of a hostile neighbour, Christ's hospitality was clearly put in a litmus test!