RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Indulgences
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 — merita ecclesice satisfaciunt; 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, Yeah of), which, in- Remission 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 last medieval centuries show rather an essentially new form than a mere abuse of the theory. By the middle of the thirteenth century the indulgence 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 next pope, Boniface VIII., disapproved and revoked it, probably, however, not on the ground of general opposition to indulgences a culpa et pcena, but as objecting to the concession of such an indulgence to a particular 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 Boniface IX. made free use of it, of the Portiuncula indulgence, and of the " great " indulgence of St. Mark's at Venice. Similar indulgences a poena et a culpawere 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 pcena culpa debita. 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 sindestroying sacrament of penance which is the distinguishing note of this third stage in the development 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 "a confessional
Indulgences Infallibility of the Pope