Task: Question Generation
Input (English): Passage: Nicolas Rolin was appointed Chancellor of Burgundy by Philip the Good in 1422, a position he held for the next 33 years. His tenure with the duke made him a wealthy man, and he donated a large portion of his fortune for the foundation of the Hôtel-Dieu in Beaune.  It is not known why he decided to build in Beaune rather than in his birthplace of Autun. He may have chosen Beaune because it lacked a hospital and an outbreak of the plague decimated the population between 1438 and 1440.  Furthermore,  when in 1435 the Treaty of Arras failed to bring a cessation to the longstanding hostility and animosity between Burgundy and France, the town suffered brutal ravages and famine from écorcheurs (marauding bands) who roamed the countryside during the late 1430s and early 1440s.  The hospice was built after Rolin gained permission from Pope Eugene IV in 1441, and it was eventually consecrated on 31 December 1452. In conjunction, Rolin established the religious order of "Les sœurs hospitalières de Beaune". Rolin dedicated the hospice to St Anthony Abbot, who was commonly associated with sickness and healing during the Middle Ages.
In the hospice's founding charter, signed in August 1443, Rolin wrote that "disregarding all human concerns and in the interest of my salvation, desiring by a favourable trade to exchange for celestial goods temporal ones, that I might from divine goodness render those goods which are perishable for ones which are eternal ... in gratitude for the goods which the Lord, source of all wealth, has heaped upon me, from now on and for always, I found a hospital." In the late 1450s, only a few years before he died, he added a provision to the hospital charter stipulating that the Mass for the Dead be offered twice daily.  Rolin's wife, Guigone de Salins, played a major role in the foundation, as probably did his nephew Jan Rolin. De Salins lived and served at the hospice until her own death in 1470.Documents regarding the artwork's commissioning survive and, unusually for a Netherlandish altarpiece, the artist, patron, place of installation and date of completion are all known. It was intended as the centrepiece for the chapel, and Rolin approached van der Weyden around 1443, when the hospital was founded. The altarpiece was ready by 1451, the year the chapel was consecrated. Painted in van der Weyden's Brussels workshop – most likely with the aid of apprentices – the completed panels were then transported to the hospice. The altarpiece is first mentioned in a 1501 inventory, when it was positioned on the high altar.
Output (English): What suffered brutal ravages and famine?