A diaconia was originally an establishment built near a church building, for the care of the poor and distribution of the church´s charity in medieval Rome or Naples (the successor to the Roman grain supply system, often standing on the very sites of its stationes annonae). Examples included the sites of San Vito, Santi Alessio e Bonifacio, and Sant´Agatha in Rome, San Gennaro in Naples (headed by a deacon named John in the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth century. The popes allocated to the Romans bathing through diaconia, or private Lateran baths, or even a myriad of monastic bath houses functioning in eighth and ninth centuries.
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