The Sale of Indulgences

To understand indulgences, one must start with the medieval theology of penance. In Catholic teaching, a sinner who repents and confesses is forgiven the guilt of sin and freed from eternal punishment. But a debt of temporal punishment remains, to be paid through acts of penance in this life or through purification in purgatory after death. In the early Church, penances were long and public, sometimes lasting years. Over time the Church allowed them to be commuted into other pious works, such as prayers, pilgrimages, fasting or gifts to the poor.

An indulgence was the Church’s declaration that part or all of this temporal punishment was remitted. A partial indulgence was measured in days or years, corresponding to the old penitential periods; a plenary indulgence remitted the whole. The first great plenary indulgence was offered in 1095, when Pope Urban II promised that those who went on crusade with pure intention would have their penance counted as fulfilled. In 1300 Boniface VIII extended a plenary indulgence to pilgrims who visited Rome during the first Jubilee year.

Theologians explained the source of this power with the idea of the treasury of merit. Christ’s sacrifice, and the good works of the Virgin Mary and the saints, had produced a superabundance of merit, more than was needed for their own salvation. The Church, holding the keys given to St Peter, could distribute from this treasury to the faithful. Pope Clement VI set out the doctrine in his bull Unigenitus in 1343. In 1476 Sixtus IV declared that the living could gain indulgences for souls already in purgatory, by way of intercession.

Indulgences were always tied to repentance and a pious act, but the act could be a donation. By the fifteenth century the preaching of indulgences had become a well-organised way of raising funds for churches, hospitals, bridges and crusades. Professional preachers, often friars, travelled with papal letters, and printed certificates of indulgence were among the earliest products of Gutenberg’s press. Indulgence letters were sold at different rates according to the buyer’s wealth, and the poor were in principle allowed to gain them through prayer and fasting instead. Many contemporaries, including loyal Catholics, complained that preachers exaggerated the benefits and that ordinary people heard a simple message: pay, and be saved.

The most famous campaign began with a building project. Pope Julius II had started rebuilding St Peter’s Basilica in Rome in 1506, and in 1515 Leo X renewed an indulgence to fund it. In much of Germany the indulgence was entrusted to Albrecht of Brandenburg, who had become Archbishop of Mainz while already holding other sees. To pay the large fees for the papal dispensation, he had borrowed from the Fugger banking house, and it was agreed that about half the proceeds in his territories would go towards repaying this debt. The arrangement was not public at the time.

The chief preacher was Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar with long experience. In the spring of 1517 he preached near the borders of electoral Saxony, at Jüterbog, where Elector Frederick the Wise had banned the campaign. Townspeople from Wittenberg crossed over to buy letters. Tetzel taught, in line with some theologians of the day, that an indulgence for the dead could be gained by a donation alone, without the giver’s own confession. A rhyme attributed to him by his critics, ‘As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs’, sums up the popular impression, though whether he used these words is uncertain.

Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar and professor of theology at Wittenberg, was troubled that his parishioners believed they no longer needed to repent. On 31 October 1517 he sent a letter to Archbishop Albrecht, enclosing ninety-five theses for academic debate on the power of indulgences. The theses did not yet reject indulgences altogether, but they questioned the pope’s power over purgatory and asked why, if he could empty it, he did not do so out of love rather than for money.

The popular image of Luther angrily nailing the theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg comes from an account by his colleague Philip Melanchthon, written after Luther’s death. Some historians have doubted that the posting took place at all; others think it may have happened in the ordinary academic manner, since the church door served as a university notice board. Either way, printers soon spread the theses across Germany. Albrecht forwarded them to Rome, and Tetzel and other theologians replied in defence of papal authority. Within a few years Luther had been excommunicated by Leo X, in 1521, and a dispute about indulgences had grown into a debate about grace, authority and the Church that ended in a lasting division of Western Christianity.

The Catholic Church responded both by defending its doctrine and by reforming its practice. At its final session in December 1563, the Council of Trent declared that the Church had the power to grant indulgences and that their use was beneficial, while condemning ‘all evil gains’ connected with them and ordering bishops to root out abuses. In 1567 Pope Pius V went further and cancelled all grants of indulgences involving fees or other financial transactions. The office of the professional indulgence preacher had already been abolished by the council.

Indulgences remain part of Catholic teaching today. In 1967 Pope Paul VI reformed the system, abolishing the counting of days and years and stressing the inner conversion of the believer. Jubilee years continue to offer indulgences for pilgrimage, prayer and works of charity, but none can be bought. For Protestants, the sale of indulgences remains a symbol of why the Reformation began, and 31 October is commemorated as Reformation Day. Many Catholic historians now agree that the abuses were real, while pointing out that the doctrine itself, properly understood, never taught that forgiveness could be purchased.