118. Penance and Indulgences. (Chapter 14. The Sacramental System.) (History of the Christian Church) (Schaff, Philip)

The year 1200 marks the dividing line between opinions differing most widely on the meaning of the priests absolution. Peter the Lombard represented the prevailing view of the earlier period when he pronounced the absolution, a declarative announcement. Alexander of Hales represented the later period, when he pronounced it a judicial sentence. According to Peter, God alone remits sins. It was the Lord who restored the lepers to health, not the priests to whom be sent them. They did nothing more than bear witness to the healyour condition of the lepers. The priest's prerogative is ended when he shows or declares those who are bound and those who are loosed. This view of the Master of Sentences the later theology set aside.

Before the end of the thirteenth century, the petitional form of absolution was in general, though not exclusive, used and the priest made intercession for the grace of forgiveness upon the offender. After that, the positive forensic form was substituted, I absolve you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, the form which Thomas Aquinas vindicated against all others. Hugo of St. Victor had advocated this form and pronounced the contrary form more laughable and frivolous than worthy of refutation. He was followed by Richard of St. Victor who emphasized the distinction between the priest's right to remit the punishment of sin and God's prerogative which is to forgive the guilt of sin. The priest's absolution effects the deletion of sin. He acts towards the sinner as Christ did toward Lazarus when he said, Loose him and let him go.

The absolution from certain offences was reserved to the bishops, such as murder, sacrilege in the use of the eucharist or the baptismal water, perjury, poisoning, and letting children die without being baptized. Other offences came under the exclusive jurisdiction of the papal chair, such as the abuse of the person of a priest or monk, the burning of church buildings, and falsifying of papal documents.

In the article of death, the sacrament of absolution is in no case to be refused. At such times works of satisfaction cannot be required, even as they were not required of the thief on the cross.

The extent to which absolution is efficacious called forth careful discussion and statement. Does it cover guilt as well as punishment and does it extend to the punishments of purgatory? The answer to these questions also was positive and distinct from the time of Alexander of Hales. Peter the Lombard was the last of the prominent Schoolmen to declare that the priest did not give absolution for guilt. The later Schoolmen with one consent oppose him at this point and teach that the priest absolves both from the guilt and the punishments of sin in this world and in purgatory. Thomas Aquinas asserted that, if the priest cannot remit these temporal punishments, for the punishments of purgatory are temporal, then he cannot remit at all and this is contrary to the words of the Gospel to Peter that whatsoever he should loose on earth should be loosed in heaven.

The ultimate and, as it proved, a most vicious form of priestly absolution was the indulgence. An indulgence is a remission of the guilt and punishment of sin by a mitigation or complete setting aside of the works of satisfaction which would otherwise be required. A lighter penalty was substituted for a severer one. Gottlob1 has recently divided indulgences into three classes: (1) indulgences which are secured by going on a crusade; (2) such as are secured by the payment of money for some good church cause, and (3) such as are secured by the visiting of certain churches.

Towards the close of this period this substitution usually took the form of a money-payment. For a lump sum absolution for the worst offences might be secured. It became a tempting source of gain to churches and the Roman curia, which they were quick to take advantage of. The dogmatic justification of this method of remission found positive expression before the practice became general. Alexander of Hales here again has the distinction of being the first to give it careful definition and unequivocal emphasis. Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and the other Schoolmen follow him closely and add little. Thomas Aquinas declared it impious to say the Church might not dispense indulgences.

The first known case occurred about 1016 when the archbishop of Arles gave an indulgence of a year to those participating in the erection of a church building. The Crusades furnished the popes the occasion to issue indulgences on a magnificent scale. Urban II,'s indulgence, 1095, granting plenary absolution to all taking the journey to Jerusalem was the first of a long series of such papal franchises. That journey, Urban said, should be taken as a substitute for all penance. Granted at first to warriors fighting against the infidel in the Holy Land, they were extended so as to include those who fought against the Slavs, as by Eugenius III., 1147, against the Stedinger, Albigenses, and the Hussites, 1425, and against all enemies whatsoever of the papacy, such as Frederick II. and Manfred. Innocent II., in 1135, promised full remission to those who fought the battle of the papal chair against Roger of Sicily, and the anti-pope, Anacletus II. In these cases such expressions are used as remission and indulgence of penances, relaxation or remission from the imposed penance, the relaxation of the imposed satisfaction, and also a lightening or remission of sins.

The free-handed liberality with which these franchises were dispensed by bishops became so much of a scandal that the Lateran council of 1215 issued a sharp decree to check it. More than half a century before, in 1140, Abaelard had condemned the abuse of this prerogative by bishops and priests who were governed in its lavish exercise by motives of sordid cupidity.

The construction of bridges over rivers, the building of churches, and the visiting of shrines were favorite and meritorious grounds for the gifts of indulgence. Innocent III., 1209, granted full remission for the building of a bridge over the Rhone; Innocent IV. for rebuilding the cathedrals of Cologne, 1248, and Upsala, 1250, which had suffered from fire. According to Matthew Paris, Gregory IX., in 1241, granted an indulgence of forty days to all worshipping the crown of thorns and the cross in the chapel at Paris and, in 1247, the bishop of Norwich, speaking for the English prelates, announced a remission of all penances for six years and one hundred and forty days to those who would worship the Holy Blood at Westminster. Indulgences for building bridges and roads were common in England.

To the next period belongs the first cases of indulgence granted in connection with the Jubilee Year by Boniface VIII., 1300. Among the more famous indulgences granted to private parties and localities was the Portiuncula indulgence giving remission to all visiting the famous Franciscan shrine at Assisi on a certain day of the year,1 and the Sabbatina, granting to all entering the Carmelite order or wearing the scapulary deliverance from purgatory the Saturday after their death.

The practice of dispensing indulgences grew enormously. Innocent III. dispensed five during his pontificate. Less than one hundred years later, Nicolas IV., in his reign of two years, 1288-1290, dispensed no less than four hundred. By that time they had become a regular item of the papal exchequer.

On what grounds did the Church claim the right to remit the works of penance due for sins or, as Alexander of Hales put it, grant abatement of the punishment due sin?1 The statement was this: Christ's passion is of infinite merit. Mary and the saints also by their works of patience laid up merit beyond what was required from them for heaven. These supererogatory works or merits of the saints and of Christ are so abundant that they would more than suffice to pay off the debts of all the living. Together they constitute the thesaurus meritorum, or fund of merits; and this is at the disposal of the Church by virtue of her nuptial union with Christ, Col. 1:24. This fund is a sort of bank account, upon which the Church may draw at pleasure. Christ relaxed the punishment due the woman taken in adultery, not requiring her to do the works of satisfaction which her offences would, under ordinary circumstances, have called for. So, likewise, may the pope, who is Christ's viceregent, release from sin by drawing upon the fund of merit. Thus the indulgence takes the place of the third element of penance, works of satisfaction.

These statements of the Schoolmen received explicit papal confirmation at the hands of Clement VI. in 1343. This pontiff not only declared that this heap of treasure, cumulus thesauri, consisting of the merits of the blessed mother of God and the saints, is at the disposal of the successors of Peter, but he made, if possible, the more astounding assertion that the more this storehouse is drawn upon, the more it grows. Like the wood of the true cross, it has the power of infinite self-expansion. It is, however, fair to say that the papal briefs granting this saving grace almost invariably gave it on condition of contrition and confession of the recipient.

Down to the latter part of the thirteenth century, the theory prevailed that an indulgence dispensed with the usual works of penance by substituting some other act. Before the fourteenth century, another step was taken, and the indulgence was regarded as directly absolving from the guilt and punishment of sins, culpa et poena peccatorum. It was no longer a mitigation or abatement of imposed penance. It immediately set aside or remitted that which acts of penance had been designed to remove; namely, guilt and penalty. It is sufficient for the Church to pronounce offences remitted. Wyclif made a bold attack against the indulgence from guilt and punishment, a culpa et poena, in his Cruciata. Now that it is no longer possible to maintain the spuriousness of such papal indulgences, some Roman Catholic writers construe the offensive phrase to mean from the penalty of guilt, a poena culpae.

Such was the general indulgence given by pope Coelestin V., 1294, to all who should on a certain day of the year enter the church of St. Mary de Collemayo in which he had been consecrated. This view had been stated almost thirty years before by Thomas of Chantimpre. And, about 1280, Peter of Olivi declared the indulgence granted to the Portiuncula church to be an indulgence for all sins and from all guilt and penalty. It is evident from these documents that, at the close of the thirteenth century, the formula a culpa et poena, from guilt and punishment, was quite familiar.

Boniface VIII. probably included the guilt of sin when he announced full pardon for all sins, and succeeding popes used the form constantly. John XXIII., at the beginning of the fifteenth century, was especially prodigal in the distribution of this kind of indulgence and in vain did the council of Constance attempt to put some check upon the practice. Tetzel was following the custom of two centuries when he offered remission and indulgence of guilt and penalty.

As for the application of the sacrament of penance to souls in purgatory, Alexander of Hales argued that, if the sacrament did not avail for them, then the Church prays in vain for the dead. Such souls are still under the cognizance of the Church, that is, subject to its tribunal, de foro ecclesiae. Altars and chapels, called in England chantries, were built and endowed by persons for the maintenance of a priest, in whole or in part, to pray and offer up masses for their souls after their departure from this life. The further treatment of the subject belongs properly to the period just preceding the Reformation. It is sufficient to say here, that Sixtus IV., in 1476, definitely connected the payment of money with indulgences, and legislated that, by fixed sums paid to the papal collectors, persons on earth may redeem their kindred in purgatory. Thus for gold and silver the most inveterate criminal might secure the deliverance of a father or mother from purgatorial pain, and neither contrition nor confession were required in the transaction. Such was the ultimate conclusion of the sacramental doctrine of penance, the sacrament to whose treatment the Schoolmen devoted most time and labor. The council of Trent reasserted the Church's right to grant indulgences. But what could seem to be more agreeable to the plain statements of Scripture than that men have the right of immediate access to Christ, who said, Him that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out, and what more repugnant to its plain teachings than to make confession to a priest and the priest's absolution conditions of receiving pardon!

The superstitious, practical extravagances, which grew out of this most unbiblical penitential theory of the Middle Ages, are reported in the pages of the popular writers of the age, such as Caesar of Heisterbach and De Voragine, who express no dissent as they relate the morbid tales. Here are two of them as told by De Voragine which are to be taken as samples of a large body of similar literature. A bishop, by celebrating thirty masses, helped out of purgatory a poor soul who was frozen in a block of ice. In the second case, a woman who had neglected, before dying, to make a confession to the priest, was raised from her bier by the prayer of St. Francis d'Assisi. She went and confessed to the priest and then had the satisfaction of lying down in peace and dying over again.