{
  "id": "hospital-dels-ignocents",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Hospital dels Ignocents (Valencia, 1409-1410)",
  "summary": "The Valencia hospital founded after Father Jofré's sermon of 24 February 1409 — provoked by seeing a mentally ill man beaten in the street — and financed by eleven citizens with papal and royal backing. The psychiatric-history literature identifies it as the first hospital in the Western world built solely for the care of the mentally ill.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "medicine",
    "psychiatry",
    "valencia",
    "medieval",
    "firsts"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hospitals-of-the-indies"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "balmis-expedition"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "vasco-de-quiroga-pueblos-hospitales"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "pedro-de-san-jose-betancur"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "orden-hospitalaria-de-belen"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "orden-hospitalaria-de-san-juan-de-dios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "spanish-origins-of-deaf-education"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "orden-de-la-caridad-de-san-hipolito"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hospicio-real-de-huerfanos-de-oviedo-1752"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "sabuco-nueva-filosofia-de-la-naturaleza-del-hombre"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "demencia-en-militares-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "vives-tratado-del-socorro-de-los-pobres"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Where was the first psychiatric hospital in the Western world?",
    "Who was Father Jofré?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "On 24 February 1409 the Mercedarian friar Joan Gilabert Jofré, after protecting a mentally ill man from a street mob, preached in Valencia for a dedicated charitable institution; eleven citizens financed the project, backed by papal authority and King Martin of Aragon, and the Hospital dels Ignocents was founded.",
      "sources": [
        "valencia-intl-jofre",
        "ajp-first-asylum-2009"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The psychiatric-history literature — including the American Journal of Psychiatry — treats the Valencia foundation, built from 1410 solely for the mentally ill, as the first purpose-built mental hospital of the Western world, noting that earlier institutions elsewhere admitted but were not dedicated to such patients.",
      "sources": [
        "ajp-first-asylum-2009"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Remains of the medieval hospital survive near Calle Hospital in Valencia, beside the public library, with the adjacent monastery now housing a printing museum.",
      "sources": [
        "valencia-intl-jofre"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.75
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "secondary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper",
      "industry_observation"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "A documented Western first in the history of medicine that almost never appears in English-language psychiatry timelines. The scholarly claim carries the peer-reviewed source, with the paywalled verification status disclosed in the registry — the honest tier is the credibility.",
  "confidence": 0.8,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-08",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/hospital-dels-ignocents",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/hospital-dels-ignocents.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Hospital dels Ignocents (Valencia, 1409-1410)",
    "description": "The Valencia hospital founded after Father Jofré's sermon of 24 February 1409 — provoked by seeing a mentally ill man beaten in the street — and financed by eleven citizens with papal and royal backing. The psychiatric-history literature identifies it as the first hospital in the Western world built solely for the care of the mentally ill.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/hospital-dels-ignocents",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-08",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "The First Hospital for the Mentally Ill in Europe?",
        "url": "https://valencia-international.com/the-first-hospital-for-the-mentally-ill-in-europe/"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "The Foundation of the First Western Mental Asylum",
        "url": "https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09030371"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Hospital dels Ignocents (Valencia, 1409-1410)"
  }
}