Forgery & Indulgences

Forgery & Indulgences

Before the evidence on forgeries is presented, a preliminary note is fitting, and it is this: The concept of 'indulgences' as it is taught by popish Rome betrays a total ignorance on the part of the papal teaching hierarchy and/or a presumption of the total ignorance of the laity regarding God's plan of salvation as it is revealed in Jesus Christ. To think or teach that, by performing certain acts of humiliation, or by the wearing of charms or medallions or amulets or scapulars, or by saying certain prayers, or by making specific pilgrimages, or by attending specific churches on specific days, or by giving money, or by purchasing or attending masses, or in any other way, one can earn or merit that which can only be received as the free gift of God—by faith—purchased and paid in full by Christ on the cross of Calvary, is nothing less than to display one's ignorance of that Sacrifice, and to deny its efficacy.

Following are some excerpts from H. C. Lea's A History of Auricular Confessions and Indulgences in the Latin Church, in which he traces the development and practice of the doctrine of 'indulgences' by which papal Rome holds that remission of temporal punishments for sin can be earned on behalf of the living or the dead (how does Rome remit 'temporal' punishments for the dead?!) by doing certain acts, or by meeting certain criteria established by the popish system. The material presented here is not presented as a study on 'indulgences'. It is presented rather as evidence of the vast preponderance of forgeries and fraud by which the popish system established and maintains its stranglehold on the minds and hearts and souls of its victims.

Indulgences for forty days, to which bishops were for the most part limited were called quadrugenoe or quarantines, which meant an ordinary Lenten fast; sometimes however they were granted for a carina, which, as we have seen (II. p. 121), was an infliction of vastly greater severity. As the memory of the old penitential observances faded out there was uncertainty felt as to these distinctions. Bremond prints, from the archives of the Dominican order, a bull of Boniface VIII, in 1295, to aid the rebuilding of the church of St. Mary of Sendomir, which had been burnt by the Tartars in 1260, in which he grants the same indulgence as that of S. Maria ad Martyres of Rome, namely, on its annual feast and during the octave three hundred and sixty years and as many quarantines, which it proceeds to explain by saying that a carina means xxx [evidently XL] days of purgatory.(1) The bull is a palpable forgery of later date, but this definition of carina is interesting as showing either the ignorance of the forgers or their presumption on the ignorance of the people.…
H. C. Lea, A History of Auricular Confessions and Indulgences in the Latin Church (1896), Vol III, pp. 86-87

Note:

(1) Ripoll Bullar. Ord. Prædic. II. 45. Bremond himself expresses doubt as to the genuineness of this document. We shall see hereafter what persistent and audacious forgers were the religious Orders in this matter.

An indulgence … was a valuable possession, increasing in value according to the number of feasts and amount of remission of penance. If it contained a clause requiring the payment of money … so much the better … for then it could be peddled around by pardoners … These favors to churches were granted with extreme caution at first, and the temptation was irresistible for those unable to obtain them to manufacture them, taking care to place the date of the pretended grant at a period sufficiently distant to render detection difficult. Quite a number of these fraudulent indulgences have come down to us, purporting to have been issued in the eleventh century …
¶ One of the earliest, probably, of these forgeries seems to be framed in imitation of the curiously indefinite promises by Gregory VII of absolution a culpa et poena.… It purports to be a grant, in 1008, from Bruno, Bishop of Langres, to the monastery of St. Benigne of Dijon, reciting that Abbot William had requested of him some privilege that would assist in defraying the expense of lamps and candles, wherefore he orders that all residiug within six leagues of St. Benigne shall, instead of coming to Langres on Rogation days, go to St. Benigne, where, asking pardon of their sins, they shall receive absolution and benediction from the monks, whose tongues are the keys of heaven. Informal as this is, it is yet an evident forgery, for bishops had not yet recognized that priests and monks had the power of the keys, and Bishop Bruno was the last person thus to sell salvation for the lighting of a church.…
¶ The next in order …. purports to be a grant by Pons de Marignan, Archbishop of Arles … to the abbey of Montmajour on the occasion of his dedication, in 1019, of an underground chapel of a church then building in honor of the Virgin. It provides that all who will give or send an "adjutorium," or gift, ranging from two deniers to twelve, on the anniversary of the dedication, shall have a remission for a year of a third part of their penance, with the suspension during that period of excommunication and disabilities. When the penance is for one day’s fast per week it is commuted into feeding three paupers. If the penitent dies during the year he is assured of pardon for his sins.… it promises, moreover, that whoever shall enter the church to make a gift shall obtain all he asks, and it enters into a labored explanation of the power of St. Peter to authorize such grants, showing how unfamiliar as yet to the popular mind mere such concessions of “absolution.”(1)
¶ A much more recent and audacious forgery is one purporting to be granted, in 1029, by Benedict VIII to the Benedictine nunnery of Neuburg (Augsburg), as it reflects a period when indulgences had grown larger, though at no time would one like this have been granted. It confers a remission of fifty carinas and three years of penance for mortals and six years for venials on all who shall visit the church on any of thirty-eight enumerated feasts and their octaves, and on all Saturdays and Sundays and festivals, or who shall at any time attend divine service, or any funerals or anniversaries of the dead, or shall follow the sacrament or chrism to the sick, or shall give or bequeath any vestments, books, chalices, gold, silver, or other article—and all this is toties quoties—as often as the act may be repeated.(2) An evident forgery is one which the chnrch of St. Victor of Marseilles claimed to have obtained from Benedict IX in 1040. This provides that any one who shall confess his sins to the priests of that church and mend his ways shall be absolved of all his sins; nothing is said as to penance, and even Benedict IX can scarce be suspected of thus abrogating the canonical penances which, as we have seen, were at this time strictly enforced or were redeemed at a heavy price.(3)
ibid., pp. 136-39

Notes:

(1) D’Achery Spicileg. III. 402.

(2) Pflugk-Harttung Acta Pontiff. Roman. ined. III. n. 7. Pflugk-Harttung regards this as doubtful, in consequence of a blunder in the date and indiction. Its contents sufficiently prove it to be spurious.

(3) Mabillon Præf. in V. Sæc. Ord. S. Bened. n. 109.

Gröne (Der Ablass, p. 71) cites a letter of indulgence granted, in 1044, by Bruno, Bishop of Minden, to the church of St. Maurice of forty days and a quarantine (!) for visiting it on any one of eleven feasts. As far as can be judged from his version it is a formula of the thirteenth century. He refers for it to “Die Mindener Chronik.” Now Lerbeke’s Chronicon Episcc. Mindensium (Leibnitii Scriptt. Brunsvicens. II. 171) gives a detailed account of Bruno’s founding the monastery of St. Maurice, but says nothing of any indulgence. There are only tvvo other chronicles of Minden—the Chronicon Mindense, which is merely a condensation of Lerbeke (Meibomii Rer. German I. 560), and Lerbeke’s Chronicon Comitum Schawenburgens. (Meibom. I. 457), neither of which allude to it.

While thus the idea of indulgences had penetrated to Compostella, there is no trace of any such remissions accorded for pilgrimages to the shrine of Santiago.… we find that, in 1108, Innocent III, when urging the authorities of Languedoc to extirpate the heretics, offered for the good work the same indulgences as those earned by pilgrimage to Rome or Compostella, showing that by that time the two apostolic cities were on an equality in this respect.(1)

Note:

(1) Innocent. PP. III. Regest. I. 94, Yet Bianchi (Foriero dell’ Anno Santo, p. 47) assumes that Urban II regulated the indulgences of Compostella, and the learned Christian Wolff (De Indulgentiis Cap. 5) is obliged to recur to the Chansons de Geste for their origin, suggesting that they were conferred by Bishop Turpin of Reims, who accompanied Charlemagne in his so-called conquest of Spain.

The good clerics of Compostella were not unskilled in the art of forgery, as appears by the celebrated Votos de Santiago, an impost which they claimed on all the corn and wine produced in Spain, granted by the victorious army of Ramiro II after the supposititious victory said to have been won at Clavijo in 844, over Abderahman of Córdoba, by the aid of St. James. Copies of the original grant, papal bulls confirming it and other documents were produced whenever wanted, and, though often contested, it was not fully exposed till near the end of the eighteenth century.—Mariana, Historia de España, Lib. VII. Cap. xiii.—Godoy Alcántara, Historia Crítica de los falsos Cronicones, pp. 322 sqq. (Madrid, 1868).—Razon de1 Juicio contra varios Falsificadores de escrituras públicas etc. pp. 14-107 (Madrid, 1781).—España Sagrada XIX. 329.—Historia Compostellana Lib. III. Cap. 22.—Roderici Toletani de Reb. Hispan. Lib. IV. Cap. xiii.

The tribute was merged into the crown revenues and continued to be paid until 1835, at which time it produced about $l,000,000 a year.—Burke, History of Spain, I. 146 (London, 1895).
ibid., pp. 144-45

In 1420 Chicheley, Archbishop of Canterbury, whether moved, as Raynaldus says, by love of gain, or, as we may charitably hope, by inordinate zeal, proclaimed for his episcopal seat a jubilee with the same pardons as that of Rome. On hearing of it Martin V interposed effectively, characterizing it as an unheard of presumption, an audacious sacrilege and an attempt to erect a false tabernacle of salvation in opposition to the Roman pontiff, to whom alone God had confided the power. His internuncio, the Bishop of Trieste, was ordered to suppress it, and Chicheley yielded.(1)
ibid., p. 208

Note:

(1) Raynald. ann. 1423 n. 21. There were two other jubilees besides those of Rome. One was, and perhaps still is, celebrated at Compostella whenever the feast of Santiago (July 25) falls on a Sunday, a coincidence occurring during the present century in 1802, 1819, 1824, 1830, 1841, 1817, 1851, 1858 1869, 1875, 1880, 1886 and 1897. The other was at Lyons, under a papal concession of 1451, celebrated when the feast of St. John the Baptist falls on Trinity Sunday, which only occurs when Easter is on the latest possible day, April 25. This happened in 1451, 1546, and N. S. l666, 1734 and 1886, and the next will be in 1943.—Zaccaria, Dell’ Anno Santo, I. ix.

The jubilee of Compostella is based on a most impudent forgery of a bull Regis æterni, attributed to Alexander III, in 1179, in which he is made to recite that Calixtus II granted it on the same conditions as the Roman jubilee, to which Alexander added plenaries every year on the feasts of St. James, of the translation of his remains and of the dedication of the church.—Potiti de Joriis Tract. de Suffragiis etc. P. IV. Q. xvii.

The persistent and multitudinous forgeries of the Carmelites render all their documents so suspect that it is impossible to pronounce with certainty when the long-sought for and long-delayed confirmation of the Order was actually obtained, but I am inclined to accept as genuine a bull of John XXII, dated March 13,1317, decreeing the permanence of the Order and taking its possessions under his protection.…(1)
¶ Something more was needed for the prosperity of the Order than the confirmation and recognition obtained, in 1317, from John XXII. It had ceased to be eremitic, and in becoming mendicant it found the ground fully occupied by the great organizations of St. Francis and St. Dominic. Possibly the success of the Portiuncula may have suggested the next step taken to bring it into notice and secure it adhrrents. It had no saint of pre-eminent sanctity like Francis to conjure with, but a substitute was found in Simon Stock, the Englishman, who is said to have been elected general in 1145. His legend relates that he was born in Kent, in 1065; a consuming thirst for maceration drove him from his father’s house at the age of twelve to dwell in a hollow tree for twenty years, subsisting on wild herbs and bread brought to him by dogs on stated days. At length some Carmelites chanced to pass that way; he joined them, studied theology at Oxford, and gradually rose to be the head of the Order at the ripe age of eighty years. In 1251, as the story goes, on the night of the 15-16th of July, while praying to the Virgin to aid the struggling brethren, she appeared to him with a great retinue, holding in her hand the habit of the Order, and said, "This shall be the privilege for thee and for all Carmelites: whosoever dies in this shall not suffer eternal fire."(2) No reference occurs to this for nearly a hundred years after the occurrence, when, in 1348, William of Coventry made it public. Even as late as 1450 Felix Hemmerlin classes the Carmelites and their new scapulars with the Lollards and Begghards as guilty of mortal sin through their impudent pretensions.(3) Apparently the device had not the success anticipated, for, in 1494, Jan van Oudewater, a Dutch Carmelite, better known by his Hellenized name of Palæonydorus, struck a most productive vein by the happy thought of adding to the Virgin’s promise "Behold the sign of salvation, safety in danger, the covenant of peace and of the sempiternal pact."(4) It was this afterthought that has rendered the Carmelite scapular so all-powerful an amulet occupying so large ashare in the popular belief of modern Catholics.(5)
¶ The account of the Vision purports to be drawn from a life of St. Simon Stock, written, in 1267, by his secretary, Peter of Swanington, to whom he related the occurrence. This life, though quoted by one Carmelite writer after another, was long supposed to be lost, and did not see the light until the seventeenth century, when, during a violent controversy over the truth of the story, it was found, with that opportuneness which distinguishes Carmelite documents, in the archives of the Order in Bordeaux by the prior, Jean Cheron, and printed by him in his Vindicioe Scapularis.(6) It is deplorable to think that even this did not convince the opponents of the Order, who continued to denounce the story as a figment.(7)…
ibid., pp. 261-65

The inventive genius of the Carmelites, however, did not exhaust itself on the Vision of Simon Stock and the scapular. These saved in life and from hell, and to render the gifts of the Order complete something equally eflicacious was wanting to obtain control of purgatory. This was found in the celebrated Sabbatine Bull.…
¶ The bull itself—Sacratissimo uti culmine—is wild and emotional, almost unintelligible, a document such as never emanated from the papal chancery, and peculiarly incompatible with the hard and practical character of John XXII, which is so clearly visible in his authentic utterances. It relates how the Virgin told him to concede, what Christ had ordered in heaven, that all who enter the Order shall be saved … and finally the Virgin promises that every Saturday she will descend to purgatory, liberate those whom she finds there and carry them back to the holy mountain of eternal life ….
¶ The fabrication of the document can, I think, be assigned with reasonable probability to the early part of the sixteenth century. Had it existed in 1476 it would unquestionably have been embodied in the Mare Magnum of Sixtus IV. (supposing that bull to have really been issued at that time), for the latter contains five comparatively trivial letters of John XXII., and this could not possibly have been omitted.…
¶ Something was gained, in 1673, when the Carmelites procured from Clement X the confirmation and approbation of their summary of indulgences, including the old forgeries from Leo IV down. In the clause concerning the Sabbatine Bull, Clement VII is represented as approving the letters of John XXII and Alexander V, and as confirming and rendering perpetual the indulgences and graces and remissions of sin therein granted to those wearing the habit and joining the confraternity.(8)…
¶ Yet notwithstanding these pre-eminent privileges, which would seem to supersede the necessity of others, the Carmelites steadfastly kept alive all the interminable line of spurious indulgences from the ninth century onwards, the confirmation of which it so carefully procured from Sixtus IV and Clement X One of these is justly characterized by their own writers as the most extraordinary of all indulgences, stupefying those who consider it. It purports to have been granted by Urban VI, and offers three years and three quarantines to any one who will speak of the Order as that of the Virgin of Mount Carmel, or who on seeing a Carmelite will say, "Behold a brother of the most glorious Virgin Mary"—and not content with this we are told that Nicholas V doubled it and then added seven years and seven quarantines, so that it consists in all of thirteen years and as many quarantines.
ibid., pp.270-71, 273-77

Notes:

(1) Johann. PP. XXII Bull. Ordo sacer vester in Sixti PP. IV. Bull. Dum attenta § 11 (Diplom. Frat. de M. Carineli, p. 39). The Carmelites rank last of the four mendicant Orders, which would show that the Augustinians were confirmed before them. To reconcile this with their asserted recognition by Honorius III they pretend that he confirmed all four—Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians and Carmelites.—Camillo d’Ausilio Sommario dell’ Origine della Religione Carmelitana, p. 37 (Brescia, 1603).

(2) Vintimiglia, pp. 24, 29, 32.—“Hoc erit tibi et cunctis Carmelitis privilegium; in hoc quis moriens æternum non patietur incendium.”

According to Carmelite documents S. Simon at once reported, in a letter dated from Cambridge, this miraculous grace of the Virgin to all the communities of the Order.—Maffei, Vita, p. 43.

(3) "Et quodam habitu novæ religionis cum scapulari præsumptuose necnon impudenter utentes mortaliter peccare.” —Fel. Hemmerlin Dynlogus de anno Jubileo, p 4b (Ed. 1497).

(4) Vintimiglia, loc. cit.—"Ecce Signum salutis, salus in periculis, foedus pacis et pacti sempiterni."

(5) Strictly speaking, the scapular or armilausa (Macri Hierolex. s. v. Armilausa.—S. Isidori Hispal. Etymolog. Lib. XIX. Cap. xxii. n. 28) is a monastic garment worn over the cope, covering the shoulders and hanging down before and behind. It was formerly also used as a penitential vestment, worn by pilgrims (Astesani Summæ Lib. V. Tit. xxxiv. Art. 1, Q. l), and the Carmelites sought to trace it back to the Hebrew Ephod (Serrada, Escudo del Carmelo, p. 4). When its virtues caused it to be extensively used by laymen it shrank to the more convenient shape of two oblong pieces of cloth, united by tapes and worn under the garments, one piece on the breast and the other on the back. It requires benediction, which must be performed by a priest of the Carmelite Order—even a bishop is unable to do it (Decr. Authent. n. 96), and is placed on the shoulders of the applicant with certain ceremonies (Gelasii de Cilia Locupletissimus Thesaurus, Ed. 1744, p. 119), which admit him to the Carmelite confraternity. The Golden Book of the Confraternities (p. 95) says that by a decree of Gregory XVI, in 1838, no record need be kept of the membership, but the Congregation of Indulgences decided, in 1842 (Decr. Authent. n. 562), that a record must be made and transmitted to the authorities of the Order, and then again, in 1868 (n. 774), it decided that this does not apply to the Carmelite scapular, but only to those of other Orders. It however affirmed, in 1857 (n. 709), that a man can throw off the scapular and subsequently resume it without further ceremony or reception, Yet to enjoy its full benefit, when once assumed, it is never to be laid aside. It is related of Leo XI, elected in 1605, that, when his cardinal’s garments were removed to invest him with the papal robes, one of the prelates took hold of his scapular to take it off, when he forbade it, saying “Sine, desine Mariam ne me desinat Maria” (Guglielmi, Recueil des Indulgences, p. 147), but as he died after a pontificate of twenty-six days his caution does not seem to have been effective. In 1655 it served Alexander VII better, for on his way to the conclave in which he was elected he stopped at the Carmelite convent and received the scapular at the hands of the general. The common belief is that when one is worn out or broken it can be replaced by a new one that has not been blessed, but Serrada (Escudo del Carmelo, pp. 336-7) holds that this is an error; the virtue resides in the benediction, and even the breaking of both tapes requires blessing when repaired.

The virtue of the scapular, however, does not depend wholly on the benediction, but on minute details of form and material and mode of wearing, without strict observance of which it is inert. Some of these details were settled in a decree of the Congregation of Indulgences in 1862 (Decr. Authent. n. 747), but, in 1868, a full congregation of the cardinals was held to consider the profound questions whether the scapular must be made of wool or whether cotton is permissible; whether, if made of wool, it must be woven or can be knitted or embroidered, and if embroideries can be of another color or material, such as gold or silver thread; whether the old quadrangular shape is imperative, or whether the recent innovations of round and oval are allowable; whether, finally, the laudable custom of combining the several scapulars by superimposing them, one on another, is imperative, or whether the modern fashion is admissible of having only one cloth, on which are woven or embroidered in different colors the symbols of the several scapulars. All these weighty matters were maturely considered with the assistance of a consultor, and the Most Eminent Fathers decided that wool is indispensable and cotton inadmissible; weaving is requisite, and knitting and embroidery must be rejected, but embroidery on wool can be allowed, even with foreign substances, provided the prevailing color be preserved; the old quadrangular form is not to be changed, and in multiple scapulars the stratified structure is to be observed. All this was submitted to the pope, who in about a month confirmed it (Decr. Authent. n. 772). This affords a salutary warning as to the minutiæ on which the fate of body and soul may depend.

It seems remarkable that questions of the kind should remain to be settled at so late a date. In 1838 the Carmelite General was obliged to decide that the form of a single cloth hanging on the breast was irregular. Those wearing such scapulars were members of the confraternity, but they must conform to the regular pattern (Jouhanneaud, Dict. des Indulg. p. 732). In 1840 the Congregation of Indulgences was appealed to to know whether the fashion of wearing them under the arms was admissible, when it replied in the negative—they must be worn so that the cloths rest on breast and back (Decr. Authent. n. 516, 518), though it is not essential that they should be next to the skin (n. 694); as for the exact tint it is indifferent, provided it is a shade of brown or black (n. 517). In 1841 Archbishop Doney of Bordeaux represented that from time immemorial the faithful had been accustomed to wear scapulars of two pieces of cloth sewed together and hanging on the breast, that it would be very difficult to change this custom, and that it would cause much perturbation of the faith; he therefore asked that this form be recognized as a true scapular; if this be refused he prayed that similar privileges be granted to it. In reply the pope cured the defect of the brethren received with the single scapular, but the archbishop was instructed to arrange prudently that in future the regular double form alone be used (Jouhanneaud, pp. 733-4).

(6) Benedicti PP. XIV. De Festis Lib. II. Cap. vi.

(7) J. B. Thiers, Traité des Superstitions, T. IV. p, 253 (Paris, 1704).

(8) Clement. PP. X. Bull. Commissa nobis, 1673 (Bullar. T. VI. Append. p. 45).

According to the taxes of Benedict XII the scrivener’s fee was only six grossi for absolution for selling indulgences on forged letters, as well as for pretending to be a priest and as such hearing confessions and administering the sacrament of penitence.(1)
ibid., p. 289

Note:

(1) Denifle, Die älteste Taxrolle der Apost. Pönitentiarie (Archiv f. Litt. u. K.- Geschichte, IV. 224-5.

Naturally the growing belief [in purgatory] was stimulated with the customary arts of forgery. A letter was fabricated from Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, to St. Augustin, relating how a powerful sect of heretics sprang up who denied the existence of purgatory until the dead St. Jerome appeared in a vision to the holy priest Eusebius and told him to reanimate three dead men whom St. Jerome had providently carried to heaven, hell, and purgatory, and who thcrefore were able to give full and accurate descriptions of the three abodes.(1)
ibid., p. 306

Note:

(1) Ps. Augustin. Epist. XIX. (Migne, XXXIII. 1126).

… The frauds of the quæstuarii had produced a demand for indulgences for the dead, and such a demand would not fail in time to produce a supply. St. Antonino … asserts positively that the pope has authority to grant indulgences for purgatory …(1) … and there are several papal indulgences for the dead of this period which I think can be safely rejected as fictitious.(2) …
¶ All these are so evidently fabrications that their only value is to indicate the tendency of the time to extend the function of indulgences to the dead and the keen desire felt to discover some new and profitable field of operations.… The bull of concession granted, by way of suffrage, plenary remission from purgatory to the souls for which kindred or friends would pay a fixed sum to the church of Xaintes or to the papal collectors.(3)…
¶ The beneficiary of the grant … sought the opinions of learned doctors in its favor and accumulated all the evidences and precedents that it could find … to prove that the pope had the power which he had assumed, and in this it relied largely on the forged bull of Clement VI, purporting to have been issued in 1346, in which he commanded angels to extract from purgatory the souls of pilgrims who should die on the road to his jubilee.…
ibid., pp. 343-47

Notes:

(1) S. Antonini Summae P. I. Tit. x. Cap. 3; P. III. Tit. xxii. Cap. 1 § 1; Cap. 5 § 6.

(2) The Hospital of S. Spirito in Saxia claimed to have an indulgence for the dead granted in 1447 by Nicholas V, which was confirmed by Leo X. Such an innovation would have attracted attention and could not have been passed over in silence by the writers of the period, while the earliest reference to it is in 1516, in the Chronicon Curioe of Widemann (Menkenii Script. German. III. 735-7). For the same reason I doubt the accuracy of Voight who says (v. Raumer’s Historisches Taschenbuch, 1833, p. 141) that in 1451 Nicholas of Cusa, in publishing the jubilee of 1450 in Germany, offered indulgences for the dead as well as for the living. The same argument applies to a similar indulgence said to have been granted by Calixtus III (1455-58) to the cathedral of Taragona, and besides, had such grant been made it would not have escaped the researches of the editors of the España Sagrada, Tom. 49, 50. We shall see how great was the discussion raised when Sixtus IV, in 1476, really made such a concession to the church of Xaintes.

(3) As the earliest indulgence of this kind, the bull has a special interest. The clause concerning souls in purgatory will be found in the Appendix, as given in the tract issued by the church of Xaintes.

… there are many blessed objects the possession of which confers on the priest this personal privilege. It is true that Domingo Soto argues strenuously against this belief—“The clemency of the pious,” he says, “towards the tormented souls in purgatory has so increased in our time that by importunate supplication there was extorted an indulgence from the pope that any one holding a certain blessed pebble and reciting a Pater or an Ave can release a soul. I will not call this a pious fraud, for that is an expression of the heretics, . . . but it is to accuse God of wanton cruelty to suppose that he would torture atrociously a soul for three years whose liberation could be had by touching a pebble and reciting a single Pater or Ave. The pope conceded all he could, but it is not credible that he believed his concession to be what the applicants thought it . . . . if purgatory can be so easily evaded it ceases to inspire men with fear.”(1) Yet what seemed incredible to Soto passed into the current belief and practice of the Church. Bishop Zerola, it is true, draws a technical distinction as regards privileged masses. If a priest, he says, has a bead blessed so that at whatever altar he celebrates he liberates a soul (and Gregory XIII gave such a one to me), and he is asked to celebrate on a privileged altar, it is safer to use the altar, for the bead does not satisfy the request.(2) But it was not only objects blessed personally by the pope that had this power. A grant by Urban VIII, in 1625, confirmed by Innocent XII at the close of the century, to the good Benedictines of Monserrat, enriched the crosses and medals which they manufactured with the privilege that any priest possessing one can twelve times a year liberate a soul by celebrating three masses.(3) Even more efficacious is the medal known as that of the Five Saints, under which, as we are told, a priest possessing one and celebrating at a privileged altar can liberate three souls by a single mass—one by the indulgence of the altar, the second by the indulgence of the medal, and the third by applying his own indulgence from the medal.(4)
¶ As early as 1746, indeed, the Holy See had felt that it was somewhat compromised by the confident promises made by churches which possessed privileged altars; that of S. Lucia of Rome, under a grant made by Gregory XIII, in 1577, had been in the habit of issuing certificates which read “this very soul will be delivered from purgatory the same as if the mass had been celebrated at the altar of St. Gregory,” and these it was ordered to change to “each mass shall obtain the same end as if it had been celebrated at the privileged altar of the monastary of St. Gregory.”(5) Binterim, in fact, among the tests for fraudulent indulgences, enumerates as forgeries those which promise the infallible liberation of one or more souls from purgatory, even when they are displayed in sacristies or printed in books of devotion.(6)
ibid., pp. 367-69

Notes:

(1) Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. XXI. Q. ii. Art. 2.—Somewhat similar is an indulgence granted by Clement VII to the scapular of the Holy Trinity and still current in the seventeenth century. The purchaser for two reales not only received a plenary for himself, but on three Saturdays in a year could release a soul by reciting before the venerable sacrament the penitential psalms or five Paters and Aves.—Perez de Lara, Compendio de las tres Gracias, pp. 22-24.

(2) Zerolæ Tract. de Jubilæo Lib. I. Cap. xiv. n. 28.

(3) Amort de Indulg. I. 215.

(4) Bianchi, Foriero, p. 356.

(5) Decr. Authent. n. 139.

(6) Binterim, Denkwürdigkeiten, V. III. 501.

There can be little doubt that the institution of the Jubilee led to an increased influx of pilgrims to Rome in all years, as well as to an enlarged expectation of indulgences to be gained there, resulting in a reckless competition between the Roman churches to secure a share in the attendant pecuniary advantages by meeting these expectations with corresponding attractions, while the absence of the papacy at Avignon relieved them to a considerable degree from supervision. Nothing else can well explain the sudden growth of the indulgences offered by them as enumerated in the “Stations of Rome,” compiled in England toward the end of the century (pp. 279 and 345), where we find plenaries and thousands of years promised by popes of all ages. It was a period of audacious forgery, as manifested in the Portiuncula and the Carmelite Scapular, and the prelates who conducted the Roman churches were not likely to be behind in the general scramble for a portion of the spiritual treasure. The former repute of Rome as a place of pilgrimage had been based on the number of saints and martyrs whese remains reposed there, but the intercession of saints was a vague and unsatisfying benefit in comparison with the definite promise of an indulgence, and Rome now became known as a place where enormous indulgences were to be had by the faithful.
ibid., pp. 448-49

The indulgences of the Scala Santa are gained by ascending it on the knees and reciting a prayer on each step, meditating on the passion of Christ. Curiously enough, the amount of the pardon thus acquired was long a subject of dispute. In 1672 Soresino tells us that there were four opinions—one that for every step the indulgence was for three years and quarantines, another that it was seven years and quarantines, many held it to be nine years and quarantines, and the rest 3000 years and quarantines. To settle the question he produces a bull of Paschal II dated August 5, 1100, reciting how Sergius II had erected the stairs before the portal of the Lateran and Leo IV. (847-855) had granted an indulgence of three years for every step to those who would mount them in prayer; to increase the reverence for them he now adds six years for every step ascended on the knees.(1) This somewhat audacious forgery did not at once produce the uniformity desired. In 1702 Piazza tells us that the indulgence is 9000 years and quarantines for every step; that this was granted by Paschal II, and has never been altered.(2) On the other hand, in 1724, van Ranst asserts that the whole indulgence for the ascent on the knees is three years and quarantines and one-third of sins.(3) Evidently there never had been any definite indulgence conceded to the Scala Santa and the fabrication by the Lateran chapter of the bull of Paschal failed to command implicit credence. At last, in 1817, Pius VII was prevailed upon by the chapter to confirm it, and thus give it authenticity, and at the same time he made the indulgence applicable to the dead.(4) Pius IX went further, and as if to show that the authenticity of the Scala Santa had nothing to do with the indulgence, he extended it to those who mount on their knees the stairs built on either side of it, between Christmas and Epiphany, during the whole of Lent, and from November 1 to November 9.(5)
ibid., p. 458

Notes:

(1) Soresinus, De Scala Sancta, p. LV.

(2) Eorterologia, p. 398.

(3) Van Ranst Opusc. de Indulg. p. 87.

(4) Decr. Authent. n. 406. It is perhaps worthy of note that the Raccolta of 1855 asserts (p. 66) that the original bull of Paschal is preserved in the archives of the Lateran, while the edition of 1886 (p. 120) discreetly omits this statement, though it bases the indulgence on the grants of Leo IV and Paschal.

(5) Raccolta, p. 120.

The extreme meagreness of the early indulgences, except for crusading service, is a safe test for the forgeries which assume to date prior to the end of the fourteenth century.… Even as early as 1600 Baronius was candid enough to point out that the popes of the twelfth century made no grants of more than a year, except for crusades, and he quotes one of Alexander III, in 1177, to the church of Ferrara, after consecrating its high altar, of one year for mortals and a seventh for venials, to prove the falsity of the claim of the church of Ancona that Alexander granted to it, for the first Sunday of each month indulgences for as many months as a man could hold of grains of sand in both hands. Yet the Anconitan church in 1515, and again in 1605, endeavored to maintain the authenticity of this absurd claim by an immense array of priestly and notarial testimony.(1)…
¶ … the fraudulent character of the numerous early indulgences incidentally alluded to above becomes self-evident. Many of them show, like that of Ancona, that it is not easy to define the limits of the reckless audacity and inventiveness of their fabricators, nor is their prevalence difficult of explanation. The Church had long been accustomed to the use of forgery in substantiating its dogmas and its claims; nothing was easier than the fabrication of suppositious documents, as all students of diplomatics know; there were factories of papal letters in Rome and elsewhere, whose counterfeits readily passed current in an uncritical age.(2) The whole system of indulgences was interpenetrated with fraud, from the prelate or priest who framed the deceptions, to his agent the pardoner who consummated them among the people. The eagerness for gain was universal, and if perchance there were twinges of conscience they were readily soothed by the argument that the end in view was a pious one—the building or repair of a church, the maintenance of its services, or the support of a hospital. Thus scarce had indulgences become a recognized portion of church discipline when the eagerness of the people to gain them was abused without scruple.…
¶ No church could afford to be behind its competitors in attractions for pilgrims and their alms, and whatever one professed to have its rivals sought to procure or to outdo, by fair means or foul.… in Rome, where the churches were so numerous and the crowds of pilgrims so great, leading, at the close of the fourteenth century, to the vast aggregation of the most extravagant pardons, to which allusion has already been made (p. 279). The antiquity of these establishments, and the close relations which many of them bore to the curia, encouraged them to claim these grants as from early popes handed down by tradition, and as all were engaged in the work there was no one to gainsay them. As a general rule, all these frauds passed uncontested, but the papal wrath was aroused, when, in 1453, Nicholas V heard of one, somewhat more audacious than usual, by which Alonso de Almarzo, abbot of the ancient house of Antealtaria, near Compostella, at the head of a company of sharpers, on the strength of forged and falsified papal letters, was engaged in selling throughout Spain and even in France, plenary indulgences and promises to release souls from purgatory. It was not much worse than the ordinary practices of the quæstuarii, but it was more conspicuous, and Nicholas promptly ordered the Archbishop of Tarragona to suppress these children of damnation.(3) At, the same time it was rather expected that priests would commit similar frauds in the more restricted circles of their parish churches, for among the questions to be asked of them when in the confessional are whether they grant indulgences which they camrot give, or exaggerate those which their churches possess, or enter into collusion with pardoners for a share in the profits, all of which are mortal sins.(4) As for the pardoners, their frauds have already been alluded to … . They were adepts in the art of falsification, and altered and enlarged their letters of indulgence without scruple.(5)
ibid., pp. 550-53

Notes:

(1) Baron. Annal. ann. 1177, n. 49.—Amort de Indulg. I. 51.

(2) About 1185 Lucius III orders the active prosecution of a gang of forgers of papal letters in England, whose successful industry had greatly reduced the respect felt there for such documents (Compil. II. Lib. V. Tit. ix. Cap. 1, 2). Soon afterward Coelestin III speaks of similar experts who had recently been discovered in Rome (Migne’s Patrol. CCVI. 1252). His successor, Innocent III, on his accession, found another factory in full operation there (Regest. Lib. I. Epist. 235), and about the same time Stephen of Tournay discovered another in his episcopal city (De Reiffenberg, Chron. de Ph. Mousques, I. ccxxv). The practice continued and the forgery or falsification of papal letters remained one of the cases reserved in the bull in Coena Domini.

An interesting sketch of the frauds so common in ancient documents, or those pretending to be ancient, will be found in Giry, Manuel de Diplomatique, Liv. VII. Ch ii. (Paris, 1894).

(3) Raynald. Annal. ann. 1453, n. 19.

(4) S. Antonini Confessionale, fol. 58b.

(5) Tertio in brevibus seu cartellis suis tot indulgentias fingunt et mentiuntur et male exponunt quæ fere nullus credit.—Humb. de Romanis de Tractandis in Concilio, P. III. Cap. 8 (Martene, Ampl. Collect. VII. 197).

If the secular clergy were thus reckless in manufacturing indulgences to suit the market, the regulars were quite as active, though, as we have seen in the cases of the Portiuncula and the Carmelite scapular, they usually succeeded in obtaining from the Holy See confirmation of their inventions sooner or later. In this the Mendicant Orders were especially prominent. One device which they seem to have shared in common was that of alluring the people to their churches by the promise of indulgences which were conceded only to the members of the Orders, a fraud for which they were sharply reproved by Leo X, in 1519.(1)… Yet the Franciscans claim to have nineteen bulls from popes of the thirteenth century, beginning with Gregory IX, in 1228, by which those visiting any of their churches, on any day of the year, could gain one year and three hundred and twenty days; on the feasts of the Virgin, three hundred and fifty-seven years, one hundred and twelve quarantines, and one hundred days, and others on numerous other feasts, running from forty to two or three hundred years. Authentic copies of these bulls were asserted to be preserved in the conveniently distant convent of Salamanca, and in 1530 Clement VII confirmed all their claims. This is only a portion of the mass of forgeries in which the good brethren revelled, too large and intricate to be worth unravelling here… in 1734, the attention of the Congregation of Indulgences was drawn to a summary issued by the Franciscan Royal Chapel of the Conception at Granada setting forth the virtues of the medals distributed at the chapel under indulgences granted by Leo X, and recently confirmed by the reigning pontiff, Clement XII, in 1733. This summary was prohibited as containing indulgences false, apocryphal, offensive to pious ears, scandalous, and injurious to the Holy See; the Procurator General was notified of the action and the pope was asked for a brief to the Ordinary of Granada, who was ordered to see to the destruction of all copies. Yet with the extraordinary persistence, which is one of the most noteworthy features of these frauds, the Congregation, twenty years later, in 1754, was obliged to repeat its action.(2) We have seen, moreover, how large were the graces bestowed on the Franciscan Tertiaries, and yet, in 1720, a summary which they had published in 1712 was interdicted under the penalties of the Index, as containing false, apocryphal, and revoked indulgences.(3)
¶ The Dominicans were as enterprising as their rivals, the Franciscans, in this flagitious industry. Prom popes of the thirteenth century, beginning as early as Honorius III, they claimed to have six indulgences, each of twenty-five years and three quarantines, amounting in all to a hundred and fifty years and eighteen quarantines, for every one stretching forth a helping hand to their churches; seven of seven years each for giving them food and clothing, and forty-two for visiting their churches on certain feasts. Thus for the anniversary of the dedication, from Honorius III to Bonifacee VIII, there are seven, aggregating a hundred and nineteen years and seven hundred and eighty days. The fictitious character of all this is self-evident, but if proof be wanting it is found in a grant by Paul IV, in 1558, offering ten years and quarantines for visiting a Dominican church on the feast of St. Dominic and praying for Catholic unity. In this there is no allusion to any prior indulgences, yet the Order claimed to have them for this feast from Gregory IX, Innocent IV, Alexander IV, Clement IV, John XXI, Nicholas IV, Boniface VIII, Benedict XI, Alexander V and Sixtus IV, aggregating two hundred and forty-seven years and three hundred and thirty days.(4)
[This chapter goes on and on and on, detailing the frauds of the Carmelites, the Augustinian Hermits, the Benedictines, the Premonstratensians, the Servites, the Order of Merced, and the Jesuits.]
¶ To a great extent the forgeries and falsifications of the regular Orders were validated from time to time by the Holy See, and their excesses beyond these limits have been curbed by the Congregation during the past two centuries. Besides these there was the vast and inextricable mass of mingled true and false enjoyed by local shrines or circulating among the people in various shapes. No general regulations could reach these and sift out the genuine from the fraudulent. Yet in the counter-Reformation something had to be done to remove or diminish the scandal, and the only resource of the council of Trent was to throw the task upon the bishops and provincial councils, though it fatally crippled them by requiring them to refer these matters to the pope for decision.(5)
¶ … The earliest list of indulgences declared apocryphal in Rome would seem to be in 1635, when fifteen were thus included in a placard displayed in the Vatican and copied by Father Manigart.(6)… Another method was adopted, in 1667, by Alexander VII in placing on the Index as prohibited books a number of printed indulgences or summaries of indulgences—the latter being issued by religious Orders or confraternities or by the churches of Rome.(7) Occasional efforts, such as these, were, however, manifestly inadequate to overcome the evil, which was keenly felt by pious men, and which was tending to bring all indulgences into disrepute through the audaciously absurd ones which were everywhere offered to the ignorant.(8) Some competent tribunal sitting in permanence and specially intrusted with the duty was required, and this was furnished in 1668, when Clement IX created a commission of cardinals for the purpose, which, by a brief of July 6, 1669, was erected into the body known as the Congregation of Indulgences and Relics.
¶ The commission or Congregation went promptly to work.… This was a very partial sifting out of the mass, but, considering the perplexity of the task, it shows a commendable degree of zeal and activity on the part of the Congregation. It continued its labors, and ten years later, in 1678, it issued another decree, reciting that fictitious and false indulgences are constantly reported to it, as well as others which have been revoked or have become void by the expiration of the time for which they were conceded. As the evil is daily increasing the Congregation has collected a number and has caused their insertion in the Index. The result scarce corresponds with the promise, for the list appended consists of those condemned in 1668, with only ten additions, though there is added the timely notice that it is not to be assumed that all indulgences not thus denounced as fictitious are to be tacitly assumed to be genuine.(9)
¶ With this utterance terminated for the time the efforts of the Congregation to eliminate the apocryphal indulgences which were everywhere forced upon the attention of the faithful. In so far as they went its labors were useful, but they were wholly inadequate to the necessities of the situation. After its reorganization, in 1710, it occasionally condemned the frauds as they happened to be brought to its attention, but it apparently made no attempt to search for them, nor, as we shall see, were its decrees always effective in repressing those thus censured. In 1756 it took a further important step. Expressing regret that, in spite of its previous action as to the printing of indulgences, through malice or carelessness many abuses creep in, it renewed its former decrees on these points, and further decided that for the future no general indulgences should be valid unless those who obtained them should present them to its secretary.(10)… Benedict XIV, to assist bishops in the duty of distinguishing the genuine from the false, unofficially described a few tests, which have been repeated and multiplied, with more or less variation, by subsequent writers. It is interesting to observe that these admit that claims earlier than the eleventh century, and that those for prolonged terms prior to the fifteenth century, are doubtful and for the most part forged, while at the same time a discreet silence is observed as to the confirmation by the popes of the monstrous frauds of the religious Orders and the preposterous graces of the Roman churches.… in 1856, the Congregation confessed its helplessness with regard to weeding out the false from the true in the great number of fraudulent indulgences which, through heedlessness or malice, are constantly circulated among the faithful.
ibid., p. 553-60

Notes:

(1) Leonis PP. X. Const. Dudum, 1519 (Bullar. I. 597). In the following pages I shall consider only the indulgences fabricated to attract the laity; these were unaffected by the reforms of Paul V (p. 460), which were directed against those for members of the Orders.

(2) Decr, Authent. n. 76, 218.

(3) Decr. Authent. n. 41.

(4) Amort de Indulg. I. 147-8.

(5) C. Trident. Sess. XXV. Contin. Decr. de Indulgentiis.

(6) Amort de Indulg. II. 48-9. In this the date is given as 1620, but among the items is one of 1635, and the third on the list is referred to, in 1678, as having been included in the condemnations of 1635.—Decr. Auth. n. 16.

(7) Amort, II. 48. One of these however, “Fiscus Papalis sive Catalogus Indulgentiarum et Reliquiarum septem principalium Ecclesiarum Urbis Romæ” is probably a Protestant publication in ridicule of the system (Index Innoc. XI. p. 101).

(8) See the complaints of Father Manigart, in 1663, in his Praxis Pastoalis P. 1. Cap. viii n. 11 (Amort, II. 177).

(9) Decr. Authent. n. 14.

(10) Decr. Authent. n. 224.

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