medieval Roman Catholic Church operated a far-reaching and comprehensive welfare system for the poor..." From the 14th century onward the governments of the Italian city-states began to partner with the church to provide welfare and education to the lower classes. Throughout the history of the Byzantine Empire, various social welfare services and institutions were established. Provision was also made for the State to provide food and clothing for children that parents were unable to bring up due to indigence. In later Protestant European nations such as the Dutch Republic, welfare was managed by local guilds until the abolition of the guild system in the early 19th century. In the free imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire, the city governments in cities like Nuremberg could take control of the collection and distribution of public welfare. The seventh century caliph Umar implemented a form of zakat, one of the Five Pillars of Islam, as a codified universal social security tax. Traditionally estimated at 2.5% of an individual's assets, government zakat funds were distributed to various groups of Muslims, including impoverished people and those in severe debt. The collection of zakat increased during the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, though the zakat system was frequently inefficient and corrupt; Islamic jurists often instructed Muslims to distribute money to the needy directly instead to maximize its impact. Likewise, in Jewish tradition, charity (represented by tzedakah) is a matter of religious obligation rather than benevolence. Contemporary charity is regarded as a continuation of the Biblical Maaser Ani, or poor-tithe, as well as Biblical practices, such as permitting the poor to glean the corners of a field and harvest during the Shmita (Sabbatical year). There is relatively little statistical data on transfer payments before the High Middle Ages. In the medieval period and until the Industrial Revolution, the function of welfare payments in Europe was achieved through private giving or charity, through numerous confraternities and activities of different religious orders. Early welfare programs in Europe included the English Poor Law of 1601, which gave parishes the responsibility for providing welfare payments to the poor. This system was substantially modified by the 19th-century Poor Law Amendment Act, which introduced the system of workhouses. It was predominantly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that an organized system of state welfare provision was introduced in many countries. Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany, introduced one of the first