Indulgences may be granted by bishops and archbishops in their dioceses, and by the pope
to all Catholics. The former dealt with it in retail, the latter in wholesale. The first instances of papal
indulgence occur in the ninth century under Paschalis I. and John VIII. who granted it to those who
had fallen in war for the defence of the church. Gregory VI. in 1046 promised it to all who sent
contributions for the repair of the churches in Rome. Urban II., at the council of Clermont (1095),
offered to the crusaders "by the authority of the princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul," plenary
indulgence as a reward for a journey to the Holy Land. The same offer was repeated in every crusade
against the Mohammedans and heretics. The popes found it a convenient means for promoting their
power and filling their treasury. Thus the granting of indulgences became a periodical institution.
Its abuses culminated in the profane and shameful traffic of Tetzel under Leo X. for the benefit of
St. Peter’s church, but were overruled in the Providence of God for the Reformation and a return
to the biblical idea of repentance.
Note.
The charge is frequently made against the papal court in the middle ages that it had a
regulated scale of prices for indulgences, and this is based on the Tax Tables of the Roman Chancery
published from time to time. Roman Catholic writers (as Lingard, Wiseman) say that the taxes are
merely fees for the expedition of business and the payment of officials, but cannot deny the shameful
avarice of some popes. The subject is fully discussed by Dr. T. L. Green (R.C.), Indulgences,
Sacramental Absolutions, and the Tax-Tables of the Roman Chancery and Penitentiary, considered,
in reply to the Charge of Venality, London (Longmans) 1872, and, on the Protestant side, by Dr.
Richard Gibbings (Prof. of Ch. Hist. in the University of Dublin), The Taxes of the Apostolic
Penitentiary; or, the Prices of Sins in the Church of Rome, Dublin 1872. Gibbings reprints the
Taxae Sacrae Poenitentiariae Romanae from the Roman ed. of 1510 and the Parisian ed. of 1520,
which cover 21 pages in Latin, but the greater part of the book (164 pages) is an historical
introduction and polemical discussion.
CHAPTER IX.
CHURCH AND STATE.
Comp. vol. III. ch. III. and the Lit. there quoted
§ 88. Legislation.
Mediaeval Christianity is not a direct continuation of the ante-Nicene Christianity in hostile
conflict with the heathen state, but of the post-Nicene Christianity in friendly union with a nominally
Christian state. The missionaries aimed first at the conversion of the rulers of the barbarian races
of Western and Northern Europe. Augustin, with his thirty monks, was provided by Pope Gregory
with letters to princes, and approached first King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha in Kent. Boniface
leaned on the pope and Charles Martel. The conversion of Clovis decided the religion of the Franks.
The Christian rulers became at once the patrons of the church planted among their subjects, and
took Constantine and Theodosius for their models. They submitted to the spiritual authority of the
Catholic church, but aspired to its temporal government by the appointment of bishops, abbots,
and the control over church-property. Hence the frequent collisions of the two powers, which
culminated in the long conflict between the pope and the emperor.