some degree of pardon was promised to those who had made a “suitable contribution from their property.” Once again, the “spirit of devotion” which the participants had to possess was insisted upon—but it is difficult to avoid the impression of a sliding scale of pardon which functioned in relation to the amount of material contribution, whether militaristic or monetary, which one was able or willing to offer.
Henry Charles Lea found “grandeur and consolation in this noble theory of the solidarity of mankind for good and not for evil as long as it had not assumed the shape of a fund out of which the Church could arbitrarily for money compound the sins of an individual.”175 But that is what it seems to have become. True, the traffic in indulgences helped to ensure that churches were constructed or repaired, that schools and hospitals received adequate funding, and the roads and bridges which enabled access to them were well maintained—the practical benefits could be considerable and should be given their due.176 But the system could all too easily be abused by both high and low, from the supreme pontiff to the lowliest pardoner or priest who had been ordered to advertise the issue of some new indulgence.
“Little can be said about indulgences with certainty,” said Durandus of St. Pourçain O.P. (c. 1275–1334) with masterly understatement, “because nothing is said expressly about them in Scripture.” Besides, the saints, such as Ambrose, Hilary, Augustine, and Jerome, have little to say on the subject.177 This lack of guidance was exacerbated by many sources of confusion, one of which concerned the distinction between poena and culpa: the very different powers of the two keys (of ordo and of jurisdiction) could easily be muddled. Boniface VIII’s genuine bull promised “the most total forgiveness of all sins” to those who filled the conditions for the indulgence associated with the first Roman Jubilee (1300).178 Yet contemporary chroniclers went further. The Nuova Cronica of Giovanni Villani (c. 1276–1348) spoke of a “full and entire pardon of all sins . . . both of guilt and punishment (di culpa e di pena),” while the Chronicon Astense of Guglielmo Ventura di Asti (1250–1310?) supposed that all the recipients of the indulgence would be “as free, as from the day of their baptism, of every sin, both from guilt and from punishment (tam a culpa, quam a poena).”179 Even the doctor resolutus, John Baconthorpe (c. 1290–1346), who rose to become head of the English Carmelites, could make the unwary remark that in a jubilee year the pope may absolve a culpa et a pena, in the course of affirming that simple priests possess the power of penitential absolution but not of full absolution, that being the pope’s prerogative.180 Catherine of Siena (1347–80) could suppose that the indulgence she had received from “the holy father” himself (in this case Gregory XI) afforded remission from both “sin and punishment” (di colpa e di pane).181 Francis of Meyronnes O.F.M. (c. 1285–after 1328) went so far as to remark that it is commonly taught (“communiter docetur”) that indulgences a pena et a culpa may be granted. In fact, he explains, this cannot be, because culpa is a matter repugnant to indulgences, and can be remitted only through contrition and confession.182 Similar treatments of the topic are afforded by Bonifatius de Amanatis and William of Montlaudun,183 both of whom seek to blame the confusion on a failure of comprehension by the uneducated. According to Bonifatius, the belief that indulgences can deliver absolution a pena et a culpa is a vulgar misunderstanding rather than a legal fact (est non a iure, sed a vulgo), and William speaks of how such remission of sin as was granted by jubilee year indulgences offered absolution merely from pena, though “vulgarly” they were supposed to afford release from both guilt and punishment (vulgo a pena et a culpa dicitur).
Such confusion was, to be sure, often castigated. Clement V included in his list of abuses committed by quaestores their claim to absolve people from all kinds of horrendous sin, including perjury and murder, and to absolve from both punishment and punishment (“a pena et a culpa absolvunt”), those being the very terms they used.184 But all the blame may not be placed at the feet of the pardoners, any more than it may be put down to “vulgar” misunderstanding. Some popes themselves went beyond the limits of strict theological propriety—as when, for example, Celestine V, on the occasion of his consecration (in 1294) in the church of St. Maria of Collemadio, said that anyone who visited this church on that day should receive an indulgence a poena et a culpa for all sins committed since infancy.185 True, he did say that the recipients had to be truly repentant and confessed, but the phrasing was certainly misleading. Then again, one of the charges brought against Pope John XXIII on 25 May 1415 (in the course of the Council of Constance) was that he had acted scandalously in authorizing the sale of indulgences a culpa et poena.186
In other cases the confusion probably arose from the failure of papal bulls to spell out the necessity of contrition on the recipients’ part, with phrases such as “vere poenitentibus et confessis” or “corde contritis et ore confessis”;187 thus a plenary indulgence (from poena alone) could easily be mistaken as a release a poena et a culpa. The phrase a poena et a culpa seems to have come into common (though of course misguided) use with reference to plenary indulgences in particular,188 and the fact that Boniface IX (1389–1404) finally bowed to pressure and revoked all indulgences which contained it is clear evidence that many such misleading documents were in circulation.189 He did not cease dispensing pardons for the greater glory of St. Peter’s, however, and the traffic in indulgences was so widespread and well established that effective regulation was impossible.
John Wyclif and his followers found indulgences an easy target for condemnation. Such “marchaundise of shriftes and graunting of indulgencis” is evidence that the pope is setting himself up over and above God, declares a typical account. The truth of the matter is that “no man mai for
Matters came to a head, as is well known, with Martin Luther’s virulent reaction against Julius II’s bull Liquet omnibus (1510), which offered “the fullest remission of all sins” to those who contributed financially to the restoration of St. Peter’s.193 Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses (of 1517) hypothesized that in this regard the pope lacked the power of the keys, and was able only to remit any penalties which he himself had imposed.194 These are followed by the proposition that “any Christian who is truly contrite has full remission of both punishment and guilt as his due, even without a letter of pardon.” “If the pope knew the demands made by the pardon-preachers,” Luther continues, “he would prefer to have St. Peter’s basilica reduced to ashes than built with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep.” Their practices provoke “slander” and “shrewd questions” from the laity.195 For instance, if the pope is willing “to redeem an infinite number of souls for the sake of sordid money for building a basilica, the most trivial of causes,” why does he not “empty purgatory for the sake of holy charity and the great need of souls, the most just of causes?” Most provocative of all is the suggestion that it is “madness” to “hold the view that papal pardons are of such value as to be able to absolve even a man who (to assume the impossible) had violated the Mother of God”—raped the Virgin Mary! Here Luther becomes violently outrageous
