The quote, “All things are saleable at Rome, — temples, priests, altars, prayers, heaven, — yea God himself” by Mantuan, poignantly captures a historical reality concerning the Catholic Church’s practices, particularly the sale of indulgences. During the early modern period, the Vatican held a monopoly over significant resources, including salt, alum, and notably, indulgences. These “indulgences,” though predating their infamous sales, became a central and controversial aspect of the Church’s influence and fundraising within its broader Euro Vision of power and spiritual authority.
Tracing back to the third century, the concept existed under Latin terms like remissio, absolutio, and relaxatio, not yet termed ‘indulgences.’ Early forms involved practices around stolen goods. Historian François Icher highlights that absolution and forgiveness were offered to “thieves and holders of stolen goods” if they surrendered these ill-gotten gains, not to the original owners, but “to the Church.” Redemption, rewarding charitable acts, was another precursor. The term indulgeo, Latin for “to be kind or tender,” rooted in Roman Law and biblical texts, underscores a transactional nature.
Indulgences operate as a ‘quid pro quo’, an exchange where one action depends on another. In this context, it implied lessening the punishment for sin in exchange for a price. Crucially, it did not buy forgiveness itself, but rather mitigated the penance. An indulgence is defined as a remission before God of the temporal punishment for sins already forgiven. This absolution is granted to a Christian under specific conditions through the Church. The Church, acting as a minister of redemption, dispenses this from a spiritual “treasury”.
The process can be likened to a secular court. A guilty plea results in a sentence from a judge. Judges might suspend sentences or mandate community service instead of imprisonment. Similarly, granting an indulgence is akin to commuting a sentence – reducing it, not pardoning the crime itself. The underlying concept was that the Church possessed a spiritual “treasury” of merits accumulated by Christ and saints. The Church functioned as a bank, managing and distributing these ‘merits’ at its discretion. An indulgence, drawn from this treasury, was designated as retribution for sin. This was often viewed as a “Utopian commonwealth” where surplus spiritual wealth was allocated to those in need of remission.
Effectively, this system operated on a principle of ‘governing by debt.’ Believers could achieve spiritual bail-out through acts of penance: pilgrimages, joining Crusades, almsgiving, or specific prayers. Alms became crucial revenue for crusades and later, projects like the construction of New St. Peter’s Basilica. The exchange of indulgences for alms, later criticized as “sales,” escalated before the Reformation. “Salesmen,” business-priests, travelled, preaching the urgency of indulgences. Icher notes that while construction projects depended on seasonal rhythms, they were primarily driven by “the rhythm of money.”
Through the widespread issuance of indulgences, the Pope, the Christian Caesar, became a dominant force in Europe – a significant political power and art patron. Lorenzo Pucci observed the mass production of indulgences from ecclesiastical printing presses. The Pope functioned akin to a modern-day Tate or MoMA director, funding leading contemporary artists using persuasion, threats, bribes, and flattery to commission Western civilization’s masterpieces.
For the monumental Saint Peter’s Basilica, Agostino Chigi proposed financing through indulgences. He suggested a dedicated building fund, granting indulgences to annual contributors. This mirrors modern pledge drives, offering reduced purgatory time. The term “pledge” itself originates from the promise of regular financial contributions over time. Indulgences became an accepted method for funding Church projects and charitable endeavors. Initial church construction financing involved cost-cutting, followed by fundraising through indulgences.
Both churches in Wittenberg received indulgences, and a special indulgence was issued for Elector Frederick’s reliquary-museum. An indulgence of 100 days was attached to each of the 5,005 relics, and another 100 to each of the 8 passages between display cases. With 8,133 relics in Halle and 42 entire bodies, the associated indulgences amounted to millions and billions of days, anticipating modern concepts of geologic time spans. More precisely, these relics offered pardons totaling 39,245,120 years and 220 days, plus 6,540,000 quarantines, each of 40 days.
Pope Julius II’s bull ‘Liquet omnibus’ in 1510 aimed to generate funds for New St. Peter’s and attract the faithful to Rome. It established financial conditions for indulgences: “deposit in the chest the price determined by the commissioner or his delegates.” Prices varied by ability to pay. Archbishop Albert of Mainz and Magdeburg set a scale: kings, princes, and prelates paid twenty-five Rhenish gold gulden; abbots, dignitaries, and nobles paid ten; lesser nobles and traders over five hundred gulden paid six; burghers and merchants around two hundred gulden paid three; and lower incomes paid half to one gulden. Those too poor to pay were assigned alternative penances, initially fasting or prayers, later indentured labor. Labor was a significant construction expense, reaching about forty percent of large architectural budgets.
Geologic Time
Rome, the papal residence, predictably offered the most generous indulgences. According to Nicolas Muffel, a relic-collector from Nuremberg, witnessing the Apostle skulls or St. Veronica’s handkerchief in Rome earned Romans 7,000 days of pardon, Italians 10,000, and foreigners 14,000. Ecclesiastical grace appeared limitless. Not only the living sought indulgences; the dying also stipulated in wills for representatives to secure indulgences in Assisi or Rome for their souls.
Prayers also offered remarkable grace. The penitential book, The Soul’s Joy, claimed prayers to Mary yielded 11,000 years of indulgence, and some prayers freed 15 souls from purgatory and earthly sinners from sins. It cited a decree from Alexander VI granting 1,000 years indulgence for mortal sins and 20,000 for venial sins for praying to St. Anna thrice. The Soul’s Garden asserted a Julius II indulgence granting 80,000 years for reciting its prayer to the Virgin. Roman Catholic writer Siebert acknowledged that “the whole atmosphere of the later Middle Ages was soaked with the indulgence-passion.”
Indulgences persist today, included in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. In a modern twist, Pope Francis in 2013 issued indulgences via Twitter to followers during World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, demonstrating the enduring relevance, albeit in transformed modes, of this historical practice within the Catholic Church’s evolving global vision.
