2. As Remission of Ecclesiastical Penance

Here they are met with as a partial relaxation of penitential requirements, or even, before the end of that century, as a total remission of them, granted by a bishop in a general way on condition of the performance of a definite pious act (the visiting of a church with an offering, contribution to the building of a monastery, and the like). In this form they are the last ram. neat of the penitential discipline of the earlyChurch (see Penance). In primitive times the bishops possessed the right to shorten the prescribed period of penance in the individual case, and with due regard to the circumstances and especially the penitent's zeal and fervor. It became customary to grant such a relaxation in return for a considerable benefit done to the Church, such as the giving of lands. As soon as these relaxation, became applicable to penitents in general, they constituted indulgences in the modern sense. The new general relaxations presupposed, as the older partial ones had done, the practise of ecclesiastical penance, the severity and extent of which made some mitigation desirable. The so-called redemptions and commutations, which originated in the Irish and AngloSaxon churches, and by the beginning of the tenth century began to spread on the Continent, are rather analogies than early stages of the indulgence proper. It is to these, which continued for a time after as well as before the latter, that the charges of Abelard apply against the priests who " for an offering in money condone or relax the penalties of the prescribed satisfaction,, (MPL, clxxviii. 672-873). The first demonstrable indulgence of a general nature occurs in southern France, granted in 1016, or shortly after, by Archbishop Pontius of

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Arles to the monastery of Montmajour. It applies to two classes of penitents: those who, on account of grievous offenses, are excluded from public worship and obliged to wear external marks of their condition; and those who have confessed minor sins and received a penance. To the former loss one-third, to the latter half, of their penance may thus be remitted. At the end of the century those who are under public and private penance are treated alike.

Indulgences, however, were still rarely granted. The number of demonstrable ones granted by bishops in the eleventh century, all belonging to southern France, is small; and those granted by the popes do not apparently go back further than the last decade of the century. The first wholly genuine document of this kind extant is one of Urban II., dated Oct. 12, 1091 (Jaffé, Regesta, 5452), in which he remits to the benefactors of the monas terium Paviliacense in the diocese of Rouen "one quarter of the penance imposed upon them by their bishop or priest." The fact of its being granted by a French pope renders more probable the theory that indulgences were of French origin; and the next similar case, more than twenty years later, is also by a Frenchman, Calixtus II. During the remainder of the century the popes continue to grant them, though sparingly. Of this class there are less than ten in the extant papal archives before the middle of the century, and in its latter half hardly more than twenty. The remission of fractional parts of the time of penance fell into desuetude, except, in those granted to the Knights of St. John and the Templara, and with it the last traces of individual treatment of the penitents. Instead, the remission covered a certain number of days, usually twenty or forty; Alexander III. extended it a few times to a year, or, for pilgrims to Rome from the far north, two or three years. Thus it is evident that at this period the popes had not learned to look on indulgences as a source of income. It was otherwise with the bishops, whom Abelard accuses about 1140 of being so inflamed with greed " that when they have a crowd of people assembled for the dedication of a church, the consecration of an altar, the benediction of a cemetery, or any other solemnity, they are prodigal with relaxations of penanoea, remitting to all alike either a third or a fourth of their penanees " (Ethics, xxv.). With justice Innocent III., when, in the famous Lateran decree of 1215, he attempted to set bounds to the practise, asserts that " the Roman pontiff, who has the fulness of power, has in such matters been accustomed to observe such moderation " as he there imposes upon the bishops (Mansi, Concilia, xxii. 1050).

On the other hand, the popes had long before this made use of the institution with a freedom that no bishop could equal, in behalf of the

3. Cruseding In-

liberation of the Holy Land from infidel domination. As early as 1095 dulgences. the remission of all penance was promised to the crusaders. Even be fore this Alexander II. had offered a total remission of penance to those who bore arms against the Saracens in Spain (c. 1063); but Urban II. estab- liehed the regular crusading indulgence, which nearly all his successors for two centuries continued. Paschal II. placed resistance to the Saracens in Spain on the same footing, followed by Gelasius II., Calixtus II., Celestine III., and Innocent III. In 1147 Eugeniue III. offered the same reward for a campaign against the Slave, and Alexander III. in 1171-72 for the subjection of the Esthonians. It was but a short step to considering a campaign against heretics equally meritorious; in 1135 Innocent II., at the Council of Pisa, offered the remissio of Urban II. to those who served against Roger of Sicily and the antipope Anacletua II., and Innocent III., in 1199, designated the war against the imperial governor Markwald a crusade, while the same pope originated the crusade against the Cathari in 1207 and the following years. While the crusading indulgence of Urban II. was granted only to those who undertook in person the perils and fatigues of the journey to Palestine, it was later extended to all who supported the undertaking, until Innocent III., in 1198, declared that those who sent a number of soldiers proportioned to their wealth might share in the indulgence, while those who contributed of their goods might participate in it "in proportion to the amount of their aid, and especially to their devotion." The explanation of application of the phrase which became the usual one, peccatorum venia, remissio, indulgentis, to these indulgences is to be found in a reminiscence of that stage of the penitential discipline in which the remission of sins was pronounced only - after the performance of the prescribed penance or satin. faction.

In the thirteenth century the institution takes on a new content, under the influence, not of the originators, but of the interpreters.

;. As Re- The theory is an outgrowth of the mission of great change in the penitential system Temporal which was completed about the begin Penalties. ning of that century. Penance has developed into a sacrament, whose parts are designated as contrition, confession (made a positive law in 1215), and satisfaction. Mean while, through the gradual shortening of the period between confession and absolution, until the latter followed the former immediately, satisfaction had lost the meaning which it had in the primitive Church, and needed to be put on a new basis if it was not to drop out altogether. The theory was discovered by such men as Abelard and his follow ers, Robert Pullua and Richard of Saint Victor, that there was a difference between the forgiveness effected by baptism and that which followed upon absolution. The former, they said, frees man from all guilt and penalty; in the latter, the sinner is indeed released from his sin and its eternal punishment, but not (or not usually) from the temporal penalties, of which the fires of purgatory were the most considerable. The divine justice was held to require that the sinner moat discharge this debt still remaining by a pcena astisfadoria. Thus the traditional satisfactions, especially prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, acquired s new importance, as delivering the soul from the necessity of remaining in purgatory so much longer. It is easy to see what

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effect this belief had upon the doctrine of indulgences, the meaning of which had from the beginning been the remission of satisfaction. By the theory consequently developed, an indulgence is henceforth the remission, not of ecclesiastical penance, but of the temporal penalties imposed by God upon sin, to be paid either here or hereafter. Nothing was changed in the relation of indulgences to repentance. As previously the remission of penance had implied its acceptance by the penitent, after genuine repentance and confession, so now contrition, confession, and sacramental absolution are held to be prerequisites. Attention must be called to an innovation which had come into the doctrine of penance in the Merovingian period, allowing substitution instead of payment by the sinner himself. Following out the line thus suggested, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura, and Thomas Aquinas discussed the question "whether one may make satisfaction for another," and answered it in the affirmative. The thing comes down to a simple reckoning of debit and credit, and it suffices that the indebtedness be discharged, it matters not by whom. Here a useful connection was made with the early doctrine of merit, and the indulgence became a relaxation of penalties on the ground of payment by another. That other is the Church-raerata eccleaice satisfaeiunl; and the Church takes these merits from its storehouse, filled by the superabundant acquisitions of Christ and of the saints. The first formal adoption of this theory of an inexhaustible treasury of merits, with the pope for its guardian, is found in the bull Unigenitus issued by Clement VI. in 1343; but the popes had long before this found what a useful source of revenue it might be. The ordinary indulgence had been overshadowed by the crusading indulgence; but now, where Innocent III, had only granted five or six in a pontificate of sixteen years, Nicholas IV. issued nearly 400 in his first two years (1288-90) to churches, monasteries, and hospitals.

After the decay of the crusading enthusiasm, the indulgence granted for that purpose had thrust out a new shoot in the jubilee indulgence

5. As the (see Jubilee, Year of), which, inRemission vented by Boniface VIII. in 1300,

of Guilt became increasingly remunerative to and the popes, especially after it could be

Penalty. gained (beginning with Boniface IX. in the last decade of the fourteenth century) outside of Rome itself, and not only in a jubilee year, but as often as the pope pleased. It has only recently been realized that the indulgences of the 18:=: medieval centuries show rather an essen tially new form than a mere abuse of the theory. By the middle of the thirteenth century the in dulgence granted to the crusaders must have been widely understood as a "liberation or absolution from penalty and fault-" It is not, then, surprising that, a few decades later, the famous Portiuncula indulgence was designated as "liberation from all fault and penalty." This unique character won high esteem among the "Spiritual" Franciscans not long after the middle of the thirteenth century; and this accounts for the fact that the first pope to use the above-cited designation in a plenary indulgence was Celestine V., whose relations to the "Spirituals" are well known. The neat pope Boniface VIII., disapproved and revoked it, prob ably, however, not on the ground of general opposition to indulgences a culpa et pane, but as objecting to the concession of such an indulgence to a par ticular church in perpetuity. In any case, his objection to it was not long maintained at Rome. Innocent VI. extended the Aquila indulgence to a Benedictine monastery at Naples, and Urban VI. renewed it in 1384; while Bonifaoe IX. made free use of it, of the Portiuncula indulgence, and of the "" great" indulgence of St. Mark's at Venice. Similar indulgences a pww et a culjoa were granted viva voce by Alexander V. in 1409 at the Council of Pisa, and by Nicholas V. in 1452 on the occasion of the coronation of Frederick III. The free use of this kind of indulgence by recent popes, especially John XXIII., led to attempts in the Council of Constance to abate the practise; but nothing further was attained than the revocation, by Martin V. in his reforming decree of 1418, of such indulgences granted to special localities.

Both the terminology of the' Curia and the popular mind now accepted a pcena et culpa as implied in a plenary indulgence, at least of the jubilee class. The dogmatic difficulty involved in the conception of an indulgence both from the penalty and from the guilt of sin struck many theologians, who found various ways of dealing with it. Some have positively denied that such indulgences were ever granted, though Bellarmine and Suarez definitely admit the historical fact. Others limit the remission of guilt to venial sins, while still others understand the formula as equivalent to a parns culpce debits. A greater number attempt to make a distinction between the real meaning of the indulgence and the things which may in a loose sense be attributed to it (thus Antoninus of Florence, John Gerson, and Juan de Torquemada). Not a few of this latter class make use of the fact that in connection with the plenary indulgence large powers were granted to confessors to absolve from sins falling in the class of reserved cases, which actually amounted to a somewhat close union in the pope's hands of the grace of the sacrament of penance with the power of indulgence as originally understood, whether the individual penitent needed only the ordinary absolution or that from reserved sins, and whether he received it from special papal representatives or from confessors endowed for the occasion with special faculties. It is, in fact, this fusion, so to speak, of the older indulgence extending only to the remission of temporal penalties with the sin. destroying sacrament of penance which is the distinguishing note of this third stage in the develop. ment of indulgences. The doctrine then current finds nowhere a clearer expression than in the instructions issued to govern the distribution of indulgences in Germany shortly before Luther took up the question, by the papal legate Arcimboldi and Archbishop Albert of Magdeburg and Mainz. The latter explicitly names "the four principal graces conceded by the apostolic bull." They include not only the opening of 11 a confessional

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endowed with the greatest and moat important and hitherto unheard-of faculties," " the sharing of all the treasures of the Church universal " in the way of merit, the plenary indulgence for the departed (" the liberation of the dead from the pains of purgatory "), but, even before these," the first grace is the plenary remission of all sins, than which no greater grace could be bestowed, seeing that by it man, a sinner and deprived of divine grace, obtains perfect remission and the grace of God once more, and by this remission of sins the pains which would have to be suffered in purgatory on account of offenses against the divine majesty are most fully remitted and absolutely done away." Observing the practical effect of such proclamations, "that unhappy souls believe, if they have purchased letters of indulgence, that they are sure of their salvation, and also .: . that by these indulgences a man is freed from all penalty and guilt" (letter to Archbishop Albert, Oct. 31, 1517), Luther set himself to restore indulgences to their primitive form, that of the remission of canonical penance; and in so doing he struck at another outgrowth of the medieval indulgence, which the popes had legalized shortly before his time.

The possibility of extending the application of indulgences from the Church militant to the souls

in purgatory seemed to follow logically 6. Appli- from the conception of their effect as

cable to the the removal of the divine penalties of Departed. sin. The effort to help these suffering

souls in any conceivable way brought both the scholarly and the popular mind to the idea that this might be done by indulgences as early as the first half of the thirteenth century. But the theologians found difficulties in the way which greatly delayed an affirmative answer to the problem. Discussion of this point appears as early as Alexander of Hales. He decides, indeed, that the pope may, in virtue of the power of the keys, grant indulgences to those who have died in a state of grace; but since an element of the exercise of that power, judicial absolution, is here lacking, it can only be accomplished through prayer. He was followed by Bonaventura; and with the two Franciscans agreed the Dominicans Albertua Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, though the former limited himself to the statement that indulgences " are of much avail to those in purgatory," without attempting to define the manner of their operation. Thomas based his agreement on the assumption that the souls in purgatory are still `f within the jurisdiction of the Church," but this was expressly denied by a prominent contemporary of his; Cardinal Henry of Ostia, in Summa super titulis decretalium, and at the beginning of the fourteenth century he was supported by Franciqcua Maronis. Their position influenced principally the canonists, but theologians were not lacking who took the same view, so that half, or even three-quarters, of the fifteenth century had passed before the difference of opinion gave way to the increasing feeling in favor of these indulgences. The popes were singularly slow to act upon it. It is true that both Albertus Magnus and Aquinas assume the existence of papal bulls granting such indulgences, but no trace remains in authentic documents of anything more than an unscrupulous promise of such effects by certain eleemotrynarum qucestorea until well into the second half of the fifteenth century. Calixtua III. is said to have granted them; but the first extant bull of the kind is that of Sixtus IV. in favor of St. Peter's Church at Saintes in 1476, which still asserts its application to the departed to be by prayer. The novel proceeding excited much attention and not a little protest, especially on the part of the friends of other churches. The papal commissary, Raymond Peraudi, had a defense drawn up by two French theologians, the wide circulation of which in France and Germany shows the general interest in the subject; but Sixtus himself was impelled to act in the matter. In his bull of Nov. 27, 1477, he authoritatively defines the phrase by prayer in quite a different sense from its original use, as meaning practically that the faithful on earth represent the departed and do for them what they are unable to do for themselves. The principal point is that the operation of the indulgence for the departed was held to be no less certain than of that for the living. This is shown by Raymond Peraudi'a official exposition of the Saintes bull, as well as by the manner in which Gabriel Biel, having in his tqanonis mieate expos4io declined to decide the question, when before, the printing was ended in 1488 he became acquainted with the declaration of Sixtus, added an appendix in which he stated this interpretation as now authoritative, and opposed the view that anything was taken away from the efficacy of indulgences by the modus sufragii.

Tetzel has been said by some modern Ultra montaniats to have followed "an uncertain school. doctrine" in asserting the infallible operation of indulgences for the departed; but this view was strongly set forth in the instructions by which he was bound, and the papal bulls from Sixtus IV. to Leo X. betray no doubt of the efficacy of such in dulgences. Moreover, nothing except the payment of the prescribed sum was required from the person who acquired such an indulgence. This is expressly stated in the instructions, e.g., of Albert of Mainz: "Nor is it necessary that those who pay into the treasury on behalf of the souls [in purgatory] shall be contrite in heart and make oral confession" (J. E. Kapp, Sammlung einager zum pabstlichen Ablaw . . . gehdrigen Schriften, p. 154, Leipsic, 1721).

(T. Brieger.)

Bibliography: Sources are: E. Amort, De origins, progressu, roalore et frudu indu4antiatum, Venice, 1738; J. E. Kapp. 3chauplats dss tdadisdten Ablase-Krams, Leipsic, 1720; J. H. Hottinger, Hist. eccl. Nova Tedamenti, vol. vii., Zurich, 1855; Deada autdentica sacra eongregationis indulgsntiia, Regensburg, 1883; Rescripta aufluntiea sacra congregationia indulgenhis, ed J. Schneider, ib. 1885. The chief modern work is H. C. Lea, Hist. of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, 3 vols., Philadelphia, 1896; L. Thomassin, Vetus et nova ecclesis! dieciplina, l l., iii. 24-25, Paris, 1728; Bingham, Origines XVIII., iii. 8, XX., v. 8; N. Marshall, Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church . . . downward to its Present State, in Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, Oxford. 1844; E. Wiese, in Jahrbücher der deutschen Theologie, xxii (1877), 599-800; P. Woker, Dos kirwiche Finanxrsasen der Päpste, Nördlingen, 1878; Documents Illustrating the Hist. of St. Paul's Cathedral, ed. W. 8. Simpson for Camden Society, London, 188o; A. W. Dieckhoff, Der Ablusstreit,

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Gotha, 1880; F. Beringer, Die Abldsee, ihr WeSen and Gebrauch, Paderborn, 1895; T. Brieger, Dos Wesen des Ablaseer am Ausganpe do* Mittelalters, Leipsic, 1897; A. Kurs, Die katholiwAs Lehre roofs Ablase vor and nach dem Auftreten Luthers, Paderborn, 1900; F. Bdrlnger, Les Indulgences. Leur nature et leur usage, Paris, 1906; Neander, Christian Church, vols. iii.-v. passim; Schaff Christian Church, iv. 381 sqq., vi. 146 sqq., v. 1, pp. 729 sqq.; Thatcher and McNeal, Source Book, pp. 338-340; Robinson, European History, i. 337-340, 477 ii. 41-42, 53 sqq.; KL, i. 94-112; DCA, i. 834-835, if. 1586-1608; and literature under Eck, Johann Meyer; Luther, Martin; Reformation; and Tetzel, Johann.