5.6: Indulgences

One crucial phenomenon that brought about the Protestant Reformation was the selling of indulgences by the Church. (An indulgence was a certificate that offered the same spiritual power as the sacrament of confession and penance: to have one’s sins absolved.) Catholic doctrine held that souls did not go straight to heaven on death. Instead, they would spend years (or even centuries) in a spiritual plane between earth and heaven called purgatory. Once their sins were purged through fire, they would ascend to heaven. Each indulgence promised a certain amount of time that the individual would not have to spend in purgatory after death.

At first, indulgences were granted by the pope for acts that were supported by the Church, such as the Crusades. Later, popes sold the certificates in order to raise revenue, especially as the Renaissance-era popes built up secular power and patronized the art and architecture associated with the Vatican. By the early sixteenth century, the practice was completely out of control. Contracted by the Church, roaming salesmen sold indulgences without the slightest concern for the moral or spiritual status of the buyer, and even invented little jingles like “when the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs”.

The concept of indulgences relied on the notion of a “treasury of merit” – a kind of spiritual bank – whose savings had been deposited by the sacrifices made by Christ and the saints. When someone bought an indulgence, they drew against that treasury in order to avoid time in purgatory. Another way to gain access to the treasury of merit was to possess, or even come into contact with, holy relics (typically the bones of saints). Thus, many rulers tried to create large collections. Indeed, one German prince had enough relics to eliminate 1,902,202 years and 270 days from his and his subjects' time in Purgatory. Another prince's total was 39,245,120 years. Out of the widespread corruption within the Church emerged Martin Luther.