How to Get to Heaven: Papal Indulgences

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Prime is advised, especially to buy or buy. In-house can have the potential for 18+. The general requirements are of use. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Janneke. And welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit. The podcast that delves into the greatest millennium. in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here. It's 1517, the very beginning of the early modern period. And in Wittenberg, in what is now Germany, a priest and professor of moral theology at the university is walking up to the doors of All Saints Church to post a series of arguments. This practice is standard. Scholars at the university who intend on debating their ideas were to post them publicly. That way, interested individuals would know what was to be argued, and disputants would have time to read up on the various arguments. In all, there were 95 arguments, or theses, and a lot of them centered on the practice of selling papal indulgences. For example, theses 30 through 34 argue that No one is sure of the integrity of his own contrition, much less of having received plenary remission. The man who actually buys indulgences is as rare as he who is really penitent. Indeed, he is exceedingly rare. Those who believe they can be certain of their salvation because they have indulgence letters will be eternally damned, together with their teachers. Men must especially be on guard against those who say that the Pope's pardons are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to him. For the graces of indulgences are concerned only with the penalties of sacramental satisfaction established by man. Fast forward 509 years and this episode, and Martin Luther's radical truth-telling in the face of established power are pretty much taken for granted. But what if I told you that long before Luther ever put quill to parchment, a lot of people had a lot of questions about how indulgences work. Or if they even did. As well as you may know the story of the 95 Theses, chances are you probably don't really know what they were railing against because, well, a lot of us, even professional medieval historians, really struggle with that. So today on Gone Medieval, I am joined once again by Dr. Felicity Hill, lecturer in medieval history at St. Andrews University. This time to discuss papal indulgences and the long medieval tradition of being somewhat confused by and suspicious of the practice. returning champion dr felicity hill welcome back to gone medieval hey so delighted to have you here as always and especially delighted to talk to you today because i have brought you here to talk about the concept of papal indulgences and i think this is one of those really interesting ones that people think they understand yeah but you know it's that classic historian thing that actually it's much more complicated than that. No, well, I mean, it really is a, and it's more complicated than that. I was, you know, thinking about doing this and it was like, oh, this is going to be fun because there's quite a lot of, well, yeah, it is quite complicated. It is. So this is good. So everyone buckle up for some complex chat. But I think having said that, the way that we need to start the discussion is, ah felicity do you have a definition of papal indulgences well okay so we've warned you you have been warned okay so probably the basic definition of indulgences or an indulgence is the relaxation of enjoined penance which probably has not left you any of the wiser so well we're well we all know that just i'm sure i think the point with indulgences is that you cannot understand them if you don't understand how all the stuff to do with confession and penance in the Middle Ages worked beforehand. Because all of this is to do with kind of the system by which a person is sinning and then is, you know, forgiven for their sins. And one day, hopefully, they'll end up in heaven after judgment day. And how can we make that happen quicker with less suffering? How can we do it on earth? How can we do it past death? It's all very muddled and quite confusing. And to be fair, it was confusing in the Middle Ages too. And actually, they were also like, wait, what is the deal with these guys? How do they work? Do they work? Are they a thing? Should they be a thing? Much in the same way that we might be now. So this isn't even just like our failure to explain stuff, Katie, like people in the Middle Ages, theologians, you know, the cleverest people in the Middle Ages were going, how does this work can we come up with something that makes sense and the answer was but not entirely in a way so i suppose yeah i guess more or less essentially what we're saying here with papal indulgences is it is not necessarily a total and complete get out of jail free for your sins card right i think that that's the common understanding of what they are yeah so if we if we make you the sinner how dare you elena has committed many sins in her life as as everybody does because um you know everything is a sin pretty much and okay so you have to first of all you do have to confess and receive absolution right so if you just lurk around sinning away and then you go straight and try and get an indulgence it's not going to work i mean you might be able to get it but like it's The doctrine is definitely that then it's not going to do anything. If, however, you have been confessed and you've been absolved of your sins, and in theory, basically, you will be given some kind of penance. That's how it works. And it changes a bit, but basically, you have penance. And the basic principle of an indulgence is that you often pay money, but not necessarily pay money, to get an indulgence, which kind of buys you out of some of that penance. And it's often a temporal thing, like 40 days of penance. And so then you don't have to do that 40 days of penance, which is nice. And then it becomes more complicated because in the 15th century, it becomes time out of purgatory. So after death, it can buy you time. But it's to do with not having to do the penance, I think, essentially. Are you happy with that as a basic definition? Yeah, I like that because I think I first started looking into papal indulgences while we were doing our PhDs. Flashback to Felicity and Eleanor, where we're young and cool, or at least young. yeah i was gonna say yeah i could please let's be so honest uh but one of the reasons why i became interested in them is that uh there was an indulgence that was granted to people who attended the feast of the holy lance and nail which was a feast that the emperor charles the force invented to get people to come hang out in prog yes and it was like you get uh four quartanes off of and i I was like, I don't even know what any of this means or what I'm looking at here. And so then I had to go on a deep dive. And so this was a form of penance that was directly connected to pilgrimage. And that exists for pilgrimages to any number of places. Am I right in thinking that? Yeah. So pilgrimage is one of the ways you can get indulgences. And so like really specific ones like that. And they were definitely used to draw crowds. So you want most people to turn up at an event, whatever it might be. You know, my work, I think we did a podcast previously, didn't we, on excommunication. People use them even to get people to turn up to excommunication ceremonies. And the really big ones were papal jubilees. So come to Rome and then you get a really big indulgence. I think 1300 was the first one because it's a big anniversary. so yeah so drawing crowds going on a pilgrimage turning up to event is one way you could also buy them which might be what people are kind of aware of as because it was condemned quite heavily in the reformation and you could also i think do various other kind of good works but yeah pilgrimages and money probably the biggest ones and then the benefits vary as well so in terms of what the church gets out of them. So getting a big crowd is definitely one. And then the money was used to pay for lots of different things in terms of actually the ones that you just gave some dosh for. So like they repaired bridges and roads and churches and hospitals. So like actually good work. It's kind of like giving to charity, but then you also get your own benefit. And one that I thought was really funny that I was reading up on, which was those who were benefactors to poor university students got some indulgences in Paris, which I quite liked. That's wonderful. Fund the students and you'll get time off for good behavior. That's right. Every student I've ever taken to the pub, that's why I did it. But I think that this is quite interesting, right? Because I do think that there is this tendency to conflate the idea of a papal indulgence with just you give money, the church says oh that's fine you're going to heaven but actually the indulgences especially if they are ones where money is exchanging hands are being used to fund stuff yeah and often quite good stuff stuff that we would approve of not always some of it less so but definitely i think hospitals and bridges sound pretty good well and here i hasten to mention too now i don't agree with this because I'm a gothic fan in terms of architecture but when you get to Martin Luther kicking off about papal indulgences in the 16th century the papal indulgences that were being sold at the time were to build the brand new uh Saint Peter's in in Rome the one that everybody goes to now and looks at the Vatican and goes wow isn't the the Sistine Chapel amazing well how do you think that got paid for that's what the indulgences were going to right and so i like to say look you got to pick one you can either i love the renaissance and renaissance architecture is actually so much better than everything that was happening in the medieval period or you can be mad about indulgences you can't do both right yeah yeah personally i don't really like the the you can find you can hate indulgences and that's all right that's all right uh but i i do think that that it is interesting because it is this sort of tit for tat so even if we are discounting things like building bridges or building the new St. Peter's, things of this nature. A way of thinking about it, I think, is sort of like, you know, how you get tax breaks if you give to charity now. This is like a tax break for your soul? Question mark? Yeah. No, I mean, seriously, the language that they use is really economic. Like, it's really, you know, there's this treasury of merit that they talk about. And so it's incredibly monetary in the way that they talked about in the Middle Ages. So I think clearly they liked that analogy. And I think there's no reason why we shouldn't stick with it. Yeah, that's absolutely fantastic. I love that the treasury of merit. That's what I'm going to say to everyone who's getting their rounds in, you know, at the pub. It's like, ah, in the treasury. It's quite a difficult concept. But it seems to be like a big way that certain people in the the Middle Ages thought about stuff. And it's Christ and the saints kind of did loads of good stuff and they built up this great like bank of like merit. And when you indulgences, you kind of got some of it. And what Martin Luther is like well but we used more than we put in because no one doing good stuff anymore So it is like a banking system where you just keep taking out but you don ever deposit any money But it with good works It with good Christian stuff Okay. So it's slightly baffling. We can all agree on that, I think, which is fine. But is there a timeline that we can look at for papal indulgences? Is this something that Christians would recognize in the third century before we get to the medieval period. Definitely not. And not even in the early Middle Ages. So it seems to be an 11th century new thing, aka innovation, as we might say, rather than new thing. Yeah, no, it's an 11th century innovation. And it is linked to new doctrines like purgatory, which similarly springs up around that time. There's been previous ideas of a middle place between heaven and hell, but basically purgatory really kind of comes to be a meaningful concept in that period and indulgences are probably linked to that but if you're talking even something in the 10th century they would just not know what on earth an indulgence was um and it really takes off they really take off after the crusades so crusaders get kind of like the biggest indulgence that you can get which is basically like if you go on crusade you are going to heaven hooray well done um so they're very much a late medieval phenomenon and they do develop so they start off like relatively not insane and they're not just people either like bishops are giving indulgences out all the time and actually that's one of the problems because you have different people and whose jurisdiction are you in can you have an indulgence granted by something like obviously the papacy the pope can has everybody every christian christian in his jurisdiction but bishops and archbishops who can also give indulgences don't. But so then it changes in the 15th century where they seem to then allow it to be something that you could get for people who are already dead. So before that is actually about your life. And then it becomes this posthumous thing as well. And it does change quite a lot. And so there's a kind of, again, monetary language, there's an inflation and you start getting not just 40 days, but kind of years and years and years, like thousands of years, probably adding up much longer than they believed existed until Judgment Day. So it became a bit mad, basically. And so as everything does, it got worse, everything gets worse. So towards the end of the Middle Ages, when Martin Luther starts going angry about it, it has maybe become a bit farcical. But the beginnings, less so. Now, I find this an interesting point, because one of the big characteristics that we see throughout the medieval period is this idea of the care of souls who are in purgatory. Because by the time we come up with purgatory in the 11th century, everyone agrees that probably that's where you're going, right? Because we're all sinners, right? Like I'm a sinner, you're a sinner, everyone's a sinner, right? So you probably didn't live the perfect life. So there's going to be something they're going to get you on, you know, maybe it's a premarital sex, which is super common. Maybe if you're a woman, you dare to pluck your forehead, you know, like you're going, you're, you're going to go, you're going to go. Right. And so we do see rather a lot, for example, of people having masses set for the dead. And, you know, a lot of the big works that we see, for example, Kings do, right. Like establishing monasteries and places like that. They're like, yeah, I'm going to need to get some monks on this one. They need to be praying for my soul when I'm dead. But it seems like what we kind of see over the course of time is a decline in saying, all right, well, we're going to have these masses said for the dead, which we are reliably told by church sources that will work, like that will get people time off of purgatory if you say these masses. But it seems like the indulgences kind of slot in in their place almost. Yeah, kind of. I mean, there's a huge change, you know, in the early Middle Ages. Obviously, this is simplifying everything but basically like you said everybody sins and it's kind of like if you're a monk you might go to heaven yay everybody else you're probably just going to hell so actually purgatory is this nice thing where it's like actually maybe if you just suffer for quite a long time after you're dead then you can purge your sins that's what purgatory is like purging of sin through suffering and then you can go to heaven come judgment day so it's actually a nice thing because before then it was like you're probably just not gonna go to heaven and so yeah what you could do is farm it out and say, please pray for my soul. And then there's this much longer emphasis on dealing with it yourself in the later Middle Ages. So you confess, you know, confession in the early Middle Ages is not very common. You get the Eucharist becoming much more important from the 13th century or late 12th century. And so there's a much more emphasis on individuals kind of taking care of their own souls for the afterlife. And indulgence is very much fit into that. Like you said, so it maybe is a movement from getting other people to do stuff and dealing with yourself. And you can see how in that environment where, you know, you're talking about an eternity, possibly in a horrible place, possibly in a nice place, you might want to do anything you possibly can to get you to the nice place quicker or at all. And if you can pay some money or go on a pilgrimage and get there, then you're probably going to do it. You know, it does make sense in that world view. And I think that that is sort of important for us to understand, you know, one of the reasons why I think people tend to think of, you know, indulgences as somewhat ridiculous is we oftentimes struggle to be in the same headspace as medieval people are, where they really do believe this stuff. Like, it's not a joke. They definitely believe. You absolutely have to believe in it. Otherwise, it makes no sense. And so, which is part of the reason why I think we struggle. And I think also part of the reason that we sort of struggle with it is we do definitely see as we move through the medieval period in increased focus on personal piety and this personal responsibility, which is indeed what individuals like Jan Hus and Martin Luther really latch onto, right? They're like, no, no, no, no. It is about your relationship with God, you personally, not the flock. And then that turns into, okay, well, then how could you ever possibly believe that the church is able to issue these sorts of things. There were huge issues with the kind of ability to grant these indulgences that I don't think was ever solved. It seems to me that, yeah, theologians, canon lawyers argued about it constantly, about how can this work? Because on the one hand, you know, there's a doctrine, the keys of heaven are given to Peter by Jesus. And he's the predecessor to the popes, right? So they are the bishops of Rome, the successors of St. Peter, they have the keys of binding and loosing as do all priests, binding, loosing, that is getting into heaven or not. And so if they have those keys, then indulgences are fine and great. So we have the right as priests, I'm talking as a we have the right to decide whether you're going and we can therefore remit these penances by indulgences hooray hoorah but the problem is that that also feels like it's telling god what to do and so there's a kind of theological issue of can we just tell god what to do so then some say oh well no but it's only for some types of sin kind of lesser sins uh and and god gets to decide the rest of it but then it's kind of undermining the priest's whole role of like i have this right this is my whole purpose is to have these keys so there's like there's genuine issues that they didn't seem to ever resolve completely about and yeah jurisdictional things and you know who can and is it all sins is it all sins all the time and are there limits and yeah it's complicated and not not accepted without some question about whether this is a good idea i think people often think the reformation suddenly go hey this is a bit messed up what is this about and it's like no they've been saying that for hundreds of years within the catholic church within the faithful but they were aware that there were some issues with some of this stuff i find it interesting too you know you mentioned that we really start to see the birth of this idea of the indulgences in the 11th century and i think that there that is no surprise to medieval historians where i just started nodding going yeah of course because for for us it's obvious and legible because that's really when the papacy it gets to it's like final pokemon form right it's like the evolution that that's they finally the papacy after centuries upon centuries of telling everyone that they're incredibly important and that they are the only ones who really are the arbiters of souls and everyone in western europe suddenly buys into that and they go wow guys we did it you know and and so they celebrate by having a crusade because how do you prove that you're powerful in the medieval world well you muster forces right you could call an army and then you go wow see look we're kind of like kings and then they also do these incredibly tricky lawyer things to get money in because like again they're a government right yeah you know and i think that people now again because of the fallout of the reformation they say well shouldn't the church just be these spiritual arbiters but this is a legal organization this is a government right yeah and actually the papacy as much as you know we might think of the popes as being very rich and of course buildings and regalia and of course compared to like a peasant sure but compared to other polities compared to other rulers they're really poor actually and that is a problem for them constantly and then they start spending money on walls which might be ill-advised but you know still the popes do need money and um and yet indulgences completely do fit into the growth of papal power like you said from the 11th century before then no one really cares about the Pope, unless you're living in Rome and Italy. But once the papacy gets, well, the papal monarchy, as it's sometimes known, yeah, it's absolutely the growth of indulgences is definitely linked to the growth of papal power. And if we're thinking about the later Middle Ages and how that period makes sense, the papacy is a huge part of that. Yeah. And indulgences. I suppose also the inscrutability of indulgences is kind of part of that, because, you know, really, you know, we say theologians, obviously, because that's what they are. But what theologians are doing are debating these finer points of legalese really you know it's this is um the here are the laws of christianity these are the laws of how it works we are going to figure it out we are we are legislating on behalf of god right and so if it's not immediately clear to you and i people who have devoted our lives to it so we'll gather because this is lawyer talk this is law stuff it is lawyer talk 100 and actually they kind of argue i know i say they will argue about it but they are kind of arguing amongst themselves i mean the point is they take off indulgences and the people like them they recently explained this sounds like a good idea i'd quite like to yeah just get some money in the bank as it were but for salvation so oh yeah also some of the things that they discussed which is completely valid which is so yeah it's instead of doing penance right instead of doing something good like you know um like going on a pilgrimage or something this is the basic thing but there's the debate so wait a minute so if you give a certain amount of money are we saying that it's the same a rich man and a poor man giving that same amount of money and we're saying they get the same amount of time off in purgatory but that doesn't seem fair which is you know pretty logical right so there are kind of issues with it but they take off and in the way that things happen uh it kind of overtakes them so then they kept arguing about the finer points but they were a thing land a Viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, Listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. I do find it quite interesting when we are looking at these debates about papal indulgences and, I suppose, wealth inequality. Because this is something that medieval people are quite interested in, right? So when you look at a hell fresco, say, and most hell frescoes are kind of later medieval, they're usually populated by rich guys. Like, you know, like the people being shoved in the hell mouth, they all are wearing crowns and little bishop tiaras and things like that. You know, it's very, the ratio of rich and important people to regular people is pretty high, right? And, you know, as we say, you, if you are a king, you oftentimes will donate huge sums of money in order to have monasteries So there people praying for you And what that does is it shows us that they like oh yeah I in trouble right There no way I getting into heaven because the way the power is accumulated, you know, like, let's think about William the Conqueror, for example, where it's like the way he's accumulated power is terrible. You know, he does some light genocide in the north and things like that. And he knows it's bad, right? So it's like, well, here are all the things that I'm going to need to do in order to offset this. But they are mainly just making monks pray for you rather than doing anything yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And so you can see why this would also be something that the powerful would be quite interested in. Yes. Because you can pay for monks to pray for you and that's great and everybody wants to do that, but that's also time consuming. Right. Right. So it's, yeah, you've commissioned all of these masses to be said for your soul. Brilliant. But they all also need to be said. And you can't just have someone cranking through masses constantly, right? These monks need to sleep at some point in time. So that is something that's got a real time frame on it. So yes, it might get you out of purgatory or expiate some of your sins, but you also have to wait for all of those masses to actually be said. with indulgences, you're kind of paying up front with that. And also, I think, you know, if you're the monks, you might be quite hyped because you're like, oh, great, brilliant. I don't have to say all these masses. Like for the church, it's also expedient, right? Yes. Yeah. But I guess that what we can talk about here then is, it's interesting, right? Because obviously, there's a lot in it for the church. There's a lot in it for rich people. but because there is this question about suitability and also sinfulness like you know listen if you're a peasant what is the worst thing you could have got up to well unfortunately quite a lot still because if you work on a feast day for example that's really bad you've already brought up fornication and stuff so unfortunately actually you know everyone's quite but you know you've got a couple of shillings that means more i guess it should mean more but whether it did with indulgences is kind of less clear. But what I was going to say is that there is like you were kind of talking about the sense of indulgences being kind of a sure thing. And I think that's an important part of it. Because, okay, oh, I'm doing my best. I'm fasting. And I'm, you know, I'm going to church, I'm taking the Eucharist. And I'm, you know, I went in that pilgrimage. And is this enough? Am I doing enough? But indulgences have this sense of, okay, this is a concrete thing. I've gone on Pilgrim Bridge and I've got this indulgence for this amount of days, or I've paid and I've got this amount of days. And another way you can maybe ensure getting to hell is via your will, right? So in your will, you give money to charity, whatever. But even that relies on your executors, executors. In doing your will correctly, in a way that we can't ever trust people, right? And actually, a lot of people I know get excommunicated for not doing their job as executive properly. So this is another way to kind of, I've dealt with it. I don't have to put my trust after I'm dead in people to do the right things for me while my soul is at stake. So there is a sense of kind of a certainty, perhaps, with indulgences. You see, this is a really interesting point because there's a, obviously, I'm going to talk about ghosts. Sorry, everybody. But a lot of the ghost stories exist because they are written by monks who are telling you how you should absolutely be buying masses for people's souls but there is also a really common trope where they will name a guy in their local village who is dead and they'll say oh i saw his ghost he's in hell and they will say the thing that's going to get him out of hell is he's in hell because uh for example he has taken a miller's mill off of him because the miller owed him money but he's made way more money on the mill and and he should have given it back by now because that that's how it works and so they will go to people's sons and say oh hey yeah so wow saw your dad he's in hell you should probably give that mill back to the miller and it's on record that a lot of the time the sons are like wow that's crazy yeah i don't care sucks to be dad you know and and yeah no and i have examples of that as well yeah so exactly so this it's indulgence me you don't have to deal with that kind of evil money-grubbing airs just being like nah and you know do not to be clear i do not think any of these priests actually saw these kids dad in hell that's that's not what i'm saying what i am just to be clear what i am saying is that i think that there are probably many such cases where people were given an opportunity to do what others saw as the right thing and they forewent it because they'd rather be rich right and of course that happened you know we see that happen now all the time you know people are still people right yeah and so indulgences are maybe a way of what are they um insurance policy in some ways oh i love that as a way of thinking about it right because i because i guess that it that it is ultimately this is the thing right there there is at the heart of it death is this thing that humans don't get to get out of right it's the the great leveler, we're all going to die, right? And one of the only ways to make yourself maybe feel a little bit more comfortable about it is by saying, okay, well, here's the concrete things that I've done, you know, and so it gives you a little bit of power. It is that, yeah, well, in my insurance policy for my soul. Yeah, you actually get like a receipt for an indulgence, you know, again, this economic aspect of it is actually inescapable. but yeah like okay i've done it i've got my indulgence here it is it's more tangible opportunity to sin left right and center there's lots of good things that you could be doing to offset that what's better than this is it better to go on pilgrimage or to do this or to do that or whatever and it's complicated and actually quite stressful because you don't want to spend a really long time in purgatory or hell you want to deal with that and indulgences feel like a nice solid way Hmm. And I suppose even if we think about things like, you know, maybe one of the more classic ways of doing it is, oh, are you a person who does a lot of charity in life? Right. But then there's this constant debate where you're always being warned. Oh, you can't just do charity so that you don't go to hell. That's not right. You know, if you're doing if you're doing charity because you're doing it so that you won't be in trouble, that's not good enough. Or if you're doing charity so that everybody sees that you're doing charity, that's not good enough. So even good works, there's, you know, a question hanging over it, is it? Yeah. And similarly to the point that I made at the beginning, that indulgences will not work on you if you haven't confessed and, you know, actually done at least the kind of mental repentance aspects for your sins. You can't literally just buy your way out of heaven, which is how I think they're often seen as just a way to buy your way into heaven. And it is more complicated than that. And the doctrine was very much like, you have to believe it and you have to be sorry for what you've done and so on and so forth. Possibly, and actually one thing we haven't yet talked about is Hardeners, the guys who went around selling indulgences. And actually, they are perhaps the real, they are the ones who are more corrupt, right? So you have the papacy and you have bishops granting indulgences. And okay, there were some questions about whether this is a good idea or not. but there were dodgy guys going around who were selling these indulgences and that was a proper role but perhaps they were the kind of people who didn't put that much emphasis on the penitential aspects that you have to really mean it seems that there were yeah slightly con artist aspects to them you know they have their fake relics their animal bones that they're passing off as saints bones to try and advertise indulgences. I mean, this is perhaps the most famous example, at least for an Anglophone audience, is Chaucer's pardoner, who, you know, in the late 14th century is described, I mean, physically disgusting, but he's like, oh, I've been to Rome. I've got all my, you know, I've got a big pile of indulgences to sell everybody. And he's kind of preaching away in a way that's a bit dodgy. But there is this sense in it that he's just kind of full of, you know, they're known as pardons, hence pardoner, pardons, indulgences. That's the kind of vernacular. This idea that he can just wipe away your sin willy nilly. And it does seem that actually the corruption, that's a real sense of corruption. But it's like anything, it's not the whole system. It is bad actors or whatever we might say that does seem to be a legitimate complaint. But I think that this is a really important point, Felicity, and one that you made earlier. But I think the popular conception of papal indulgences now is that they were incredibly widespread and nobody ever questioned them until Martin Luther came along with his little hammer and he said, well, hang on a minute. I think that these are quite dodgy, actually. But the selling of indulgences is considered problematic enough that we've got Chaucer a century or so earlier, who is using it as a literary trope, right? Like a wink, wink, nudge, nudge, we know how pardoners are. And they are unscrupulous, and they are taking advantage of people's fears. So it does show that there is at least some acknowledgement that there is a worry about this, right? Completely. And like I said, actually, right from the off, there seems to be worries about it. And yeah, so there's a lot of Reformation kind of propaganda about, hey, we decided for the first time that this is all a bit and it's really not like that. And it's a difficult topic, I think, because we have the Reformation, and they, you know, did a very good job of maligning the Middle Ages, let's face it. And then you get historians writing for a long time, either as Protestant, you know, very anti-indulgence kind of agenda. And then you get Catholic historians who were kind of apologists and kind of downplaying the whole thing. So also not maybe giving a completely accurate picture. It's actually quite difficult to get a true picture of indulgences in the Middle Ages because of this quite, quite a lot of baggage, quite a lot of baggage attached. as the saying goes if these walls could talk and on the betwixt the sheets podcast we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors and even more importantly in the bedrooms of people all throughout history. Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to, but twixt the sheets the history of sex scandal and society twice a week every week wherever it is that you get your podcasts brought to you by the award-winning network history hit oh i love being a medieval historian because all we could ever say is, oh, it's incredibly complicated and it depends on where you are and when and who you're talking about. It's great. It's fantastic. Okay. But what are, I guess, if we were going to say, say I am a regular old person, I'll be in the 14th century because it's my favorite century. Thanks very much. And I want to get an indulgence. What are the top ways of doing that? How would I go about doing it? Well, you might just bump into a partner selling his wares in which case you know hooray you can just be like here's some money give me my indulgence or you might go for example on a pilgrimage which was definitely a big way of getting them but that they they really did advertise indulgences so they there's lots of kind of letters saying like right we're giving x number of days remission of sins they're doing whatever it is whether it's going to a meeting or going on pilgrimage or giving money but I guess the money ones were less advertised because they were more constant but for these big events so they really were advertised so you in a way you would respond to an advert right but my one of my favorite indulgences was so in the jubilee year of 1300 everyone's like it's 1300 this is this is a big deal this is a big anniversary what are you doing pope what are you doing for this big anniversary and he's like no nothing don't nothing don't come no no come on we'll come to Rome. It'll be great. And he's like, no, don't come here. There's nothing. But people just start turning up to Rome. And he's like, oh, no, stop it. And eventually he's like, okay, okay, we'll give a massive indulgence. We'll have a big thing. But he only does this. This is Boniface VIII. He only does it because everyone started turning up to Rome against his wishes. Oh, I love it. He's one of my favorite popes too, Boniface VIII. Oh, he'd had a bad end. Yeah, he did. But that's why he's so interesting, right? But that pleases me no end The fact that that is kind of an indulgence by popular demand right So that kind of the opposite of how it seen to work you know that inscrupulous individuals are taking advantage of an unscrupulous church This is a wave of individuals who are sort of demanding something from the church as an entity Yeah, and it's unclear whether they were sort of saying specifically an indulgence, but they definitely wanted events to happen at Rome and to get credit, I guess, for going on this big pilgrimage to Rome in this big year, for sure. I was also interested and wondered if this was common because one of my favorite indulgences, I've already brought up the Feast of the Holy Lance and Nail. Shout out, real ones now. but it's also within that there was a specific other indulgence that you could get if you went to go see emperor charles iv sitting with his son the hated venteslas who was supposed to take over for him as holy roman emperor and it was i argued in my phd a very clear example where he was saying you need to come and witness that this is going to be the next holy roman emperor do it show up and acknowledge the succession claim is it common for people to use it for succession or is this just charles the fourth being innovative as we are now in the territory of how indulgence is used and this is clearly a very political and not really religious in any way use of an indulgence i actually don't know how common that is i i can't off the top of my head think of other examples so it might be that he was well do you know what this is just check excellence then felicity we're coming up we're coming up with new and innovative ways to use an indulgence it's great um yeah but it is i mean that is a really interesting but yeah i mean so my phd supervisor nicholas vincent once talked about indulgences as an early form of rent a crowd which seems to apply to your example to some extent we need lots of people to turn up to this thing we want them to see it. Obviously, the Middle Ages, you know, events, ritual, without, you know, the printing press, without mass communication via words, you have to do it orally and visually. You want big crowds at lots of things. And indulgences seem to be a successful way to get people to turn up. I think that that is actually a really interesting point as well, because there's also this tendency to see the medieval world as really locked in place, you know, this old myth that nobody ever leaves their village you only know the same 15 people and actually all you've got to do is say oh we've got a new indulgence and people are there you know even if you don't say there's an indulgence they're like go to rome i'll be back and i think that's interesting it's weird because clearly people did want to go to rome and then also it was also quite dangerous and you know expensive and takes a long time depending on where in europe you actually live but yeah yeah but look everybody wants a roman holiday we can all agree on that it is even if the forces of uh are against us you know it might be dangerous but people are going to do it yeah well they also had to eventually uh stop people going to Rome when they were like no no you should you should stay home so you know yeah it's a slightly odd mixture so I do think that though this is a really interesting thing because it is this uniquely medieval phenomenon. You know, it doesn't come into play until the high medieval period. I guess we see, you know, it's apogee in the late medieval period. And then it more or less goes by the wayside after the Reformation because of all of the embarrassment about it, right? And also, I mean, to an extent, I think the church really shifts gears in terms of what its legal apparatus is doing right it's like the the legal apparatus suddenly swings much more into how do we become the seen as the true arbiters of christianity as opposed to how do we shepherd people's souls out of purgatory where they all are right now you know and so i mean that's a political mission in and of itself right because you know you can say what you want about indulgences. And, you know, like, again, I'm not here to come down on the side of indulgences. I don't think that's quite right either. And yeah, boo the pardoner, etc., etc. But I do think that if you look at it charitably, what is kind of happening here is, well, the church does care about the people that it's looking after. It is aware that it's really difficult actually to get through life completely spotless or at least with just a few minor sins you know unless you're a child who is baptized and did everything right and dies right away you're probably in trouble right and so this is a form of pastoral care this is a way of looking after your flock as difficult as we find to relate to it you know absolutely yeah and giving people a way to get some peace of mind because like you said everybody sins it's unclear what in a concrete way you can do to really guarantee a nice afterlife and this is a way of helping so i think you're completely right that it's a nice thing in many ways to give people that opportunity the problem comes in when it does there is this inflation and it becomes a bit mad and there are thousands of years of indulgence on offer which starts you know if no one's life because the initial thing was actually more concrete the initial thing seems to be like right you've got 40 days of fasting okay instead of that you can get an indulgence for 40 days so it's kind of quite a concrete thing initially but then it becomes a bit more nebulous because like well what if your penance isn't something that you would do for a number of days what if it's a bit more complicated than that and then we get posthumous but it starts off with being quite a simple you're just yeah buying time off like you might get let out of prison early for being good good behavior or whatever you know it's i mean i don't know if that quite works but but then it does become by the end of the middle ages there's no doubt that you have these thousands and thousands of years and it maybe becomes a bit farcical okay well question for you i'm not sure if you know the answer to this are these still on the books like if you're one of those guys who bought the thousand year indulgence back in the day has the church rescinded this or is it sort of like we don't do it anymore but you know we're not we're not i don't completely know the answer but i i would suspect that it would be quite unfair i love this idea some guy's in purgatory and he's like no he just gets wrenched out and sent to hell because some modern pope's like nah we've given up on this concept i mean they would all be shocked they would all be shocked that we are still here because they would have thought judgment day was coming a long time before now yeah quite so i mean they are still on they do still indulgences still exist i mean they the catholic church has not completely given up in indulgences they have just made them a lot less big okay can you expand on that i would have to start googling it okay don't worry don't worry specific things but they absolutely you can um certainly in the 20th and i think 20 but i mean yeah and it is much less a big thing than they were in the middle ages but they they haven't actually said we're completely rejecting this doctrine but they toned it down a lot in in light of the reformation when the cath you know the council of trent and stuff when they had to start responding to the threat of protestantism i suppose i i love this it's kind of like the approach is just back away slowly while whistling instead of don't make any big announcements just you know it'll it'll be fine it's fine you know i mean i'm just going to google current indulgences and then we can put it yeah that's a good idea because i'm sure there is medieval historians attempting to talk about the 21st century okay so apparently 2025 was a jubilee year i think basically yeah you got indulgences for going on pilgrimage oh dang i missed my shot i should have gone on pilgrimage this is from the vatican i think 2020 this year in the current circumstances due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the plenary indulgences for the deceased faithful will be extended throughout the entire month of November with adaptation of works and conditions to guarantee the safety of the faithful. So that was then changing the terms of the indulgence in the wake of the pandemic. That's actually kind of beautiful. I love the idea that, you know, all of these people who sort of died suddenly, they're like, listen, we've got them. Things are weird. You might not have been able to go and make your confessions and get the good death that you wanted. Aw. Yeah, and to do... All the church. As far as the spiritual conditions for fully achieving the indulgence are concerned, it is worth recalling the indications already issued, blah, blah, blah. Since the souls in purgatory are assisted by the prayers of the faithful, etc., all priests are strongly invited to celebrate Holy Mass three times on the relevant day. I love the church sometimes. I'm sorry. I'm such a medieval historian. I'm like, oh, that's sweet. Look, they're trying. you know it's so basically i think the indulgence was kind of more specific days but people couldn't move around as much so they were kind of extending it to the whole lovely so yeah the plenary indulgence for those who visit a cemetery and pray for the deceased well dang that's very sweet i like that a lot so anyway they are alive and kicking is the right okay the real point here is that indulgences are still part of indulgences yes pardoners less so yeah less less that and i suspect indulgences maybe now do have to come from the papacy rather than lower down but again i don't 100 sure on that again don't get medievalists to talk about the modern church okay so look indulgences yeah it's probably bad that there are partners around but some of them seem not so bad So what's Martin Luther's problem here? Yeah, I think his issue is, it's not entirely unreasonable one, if you believe in, you know, basically the whole point of Christian doctrine, which is you have to atone for your sins. You have to make amends. What the term they use is make satisfaction. And I think the problem becomes nobody is doing good works anymore. or nobody is doing any kind of penance, or yeah, just the good things that good Christians are supposed to do, because instead they are just giving money and getting indulgences. Which I think you can see how he gets there. Yeah. That nobody's good anymore. And so we all think, I mean, who likes Martin Luther? I mean, nobody, no. And he's, I mean, he's a bit mental about them, to be fair. He really goes off on one. but there are some core points that you can see but again we have to make sure we understand how things have become by the time he's around and that that is not true for the whole well definitely not the whole middle ages but even the whole period in which indulgences exist so you know and there is so much polemic about it that and of course his whole thing was polemic right so of course he exaggerated all the worst aspects and downplayed any of the good bits if you can say good bits do you know what listen i agree with him they shouldn't have redone saint peter's uh martin luther and i have found one thing to agree on so that's fine well felicity thank you so so much for coming on and comparing favorite indulgences it's always such a delight to hang out with you yay well thank you for having me and hopefully um the listeners will have some idea for indulgences are at the end of this if you figured it out write in and let us know thanks so much to dr felicity hill for joining me once again and thank you for listening to gone medieval from history hit if you loved felicity and frankly if you didn't wear fighting you might want to go back and check out our past episodes with her including those on excommunication and the investiture crisis remember you can also enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original tv documentaries, including my recent film, The Trial of Joan of Arc, by signing up at historyhit.com slash subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts. And tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time. Merry Christmas from the Merry Christmas ami. Thank you. Thank you.