tained the practice, as being the exercise of a power given to the Church by God, and used in the most ancient times also, set itself to check the abuses which it acknowledged. How far this last has succeeded, one has no power of judging; but moderate theologians have since that time generally expressed themselves with great candour on the subject, holding indulgences in the primitive sense to be only the relaxation of those canonical penalties, which, in proportion to the gravity of his offence, the sinner ought to endure; and that in the case of those for the dead, they are but the prayers of the Universal Church, which the Pope and all bishops offer in the name of the Church to God, and which God hears, or hears not, as seemeth good to Him.

Mabillon says that "there are three degrees of indulgences: 1. In the time of the Apostles, the relaxation from excommunication, as in the case of the incestuous Corinthian; 2. In the time of the martyrs, when at the instance of their prayers the public penance was relaxed; and 3. at the time of the failure of the public penance which in the ninth century began to be not a little diminished. From that time certain indulgences, some more ample than others, were granted, for the remission of the penalty imposed upon or due to sin. The use of public penance was still in force in those times; but it could be bought off either by Masses and other suffrages, or by alms,

2 Session xxv. De Indulgentiis.

or by pilgrimages, or by pious works. The Council of Cloveshoe (A.D. 747) thought the buying off of penance by alms, a new invention, a dangerous custom ('nova adinventio, periculosa consuetudo'). By degrees, however, this method of redemption prevailed."

"In A.D. 878, indulgences were for the first time granted to the dead. Pope John VIII. granted in that year an indulgence to those who fell or were to fall in battle with the Pagans; and the Bishops of Bavaria besought the same favour for the soul of the Emperor Arnulph, which they desired should be absolved by his authority." The notion of a war against the infidels being a directly religious act, involved as a sequence that death in such a war was a sort of martyrdom; accordingly plenary forgiveness of sins was freely promised. The Bull of the Crusade against the Saracens (A.D. 1118) ran in these terms: "And since ye have determined to expose both yourselves and the things belonging to you to the most extreme perils, if any of you, having accepted the penance for your sins, shall die in the expedition, we, by the merits of the saints

• Præf. ad Sac. 5, Benedictin, n. 107.

Ibid. Amort, however, doubts whether these were strictly indulgences. He observes that, 1. "John VIII. says, 'we absolve them, quantum fas est;' 2. the absolution was from their sins; 3. the Pope adds, and we commend them by prayers to the Lord.' 4. The Bavarian Bishops asked for that same indulgence for Arnulph. 5. Card. Ostiensis, A.D. 1260, thought that such indulgences were only absolutions from censures, to the effect that the faithful might be free to pray for them in the church," (Hist. Indulg., p. ii. S. v. § 1). See the letter to the French bishops as given from Baronius, A. 878, xxxiv. ib.

That of

and by the prayers of the whole Catholic Church, absolve him from the chains of his sins c." A.D. 1122 says: "that to those who go to Jerusalem to defend the Christians, and to aid in breaking down the tyranny of the infidels, we concede the remission of all their sins d"

However much the Council of Trent may have cleared away the difficulties with regard to pardons, by defining them to be only a remission of the canonical discipline of the Church, it cannot be denied that at the promulgation of the Article there was a substantial abuse which well deserved its reprobation. What that abuse was will best be seen from Erasmus' tract, De Utilitate Colloquiorum, where he defends the line he took with regard to them: "Nor do I, then, condemn papal indulgences and bulls; but I censure that greatest of triflers who, thinking nothing of amendment of life, presumes to place his whole trust on human pardon." So in the colloquy "Rash Vows," speaking of one who died on pilgrimage:

"Con. Was he, then, so pious?

"Am. Nay, the greatest trifler imaginable.

"Con. Whence, then, do you draw the conclusion (that he is now in heaven)?

"Am. Because he had his satchel stuffed full of the most ample indulgences."

In Baronius, A. 1118, xviii. That against Roger, Count of Sicily, in like way, "remitted all sins" under the same terms. Baron., A. 1127, v.

d Given by Calixtus II. in the Council of Lateran, A.D. 1122, can. 11.

Thus in the Vision of Piers Ploughman :"Then preched a pardoner, as he a prest were, Brought forth a bulle, with many bishope's seles, And seide that himself might assolven them all Of falshod, of fastynge, of a-vowes y-broken." These indulgences were not granted by the Pope only, but by all bishops .

"The 'Questionarius,' 'Pardoner,' or 'Preacher,' was already so scandalous, that the antipope, Clement VII., in granting indulgences for building the nave of the cathedral of Aberdeen, A.D. 1380, declares that they shall be of no force if hawked about by these spiritual pedlars: Presentes autem mitti per Questuarios districtius inhibemus, eas si secus actum fuerit carere viribus decernentes '.'

"The Quæstor, Quèstuarius, or Questionarius, the Pardoner, or Rome-raker as he was called, had now fallen on evil days. Even in his better state, when he played something like the part of the travelling deputation of the popular religious society of our own time, the Synod of Exeter, A.D. 1287, could describe him as 'Communiter idiota, vitæ pariter inhonestæ, confingens se peritum et vitæ sanctitatem exterius prætendens... ut sic simplicium alliciat animos ad majores eleemosynas largiendas, quas postea in ebrietatibus et luxuriis in omnium conspectu prodigaliter consumere non erubescit.' He was the constant butt of ridicule from the fourteenth century downwards. He figures

e Vide J. G. Nichols' p. 98, London, 1849.

p. 266.

Wilkins'

"Pilgrimage of St. Mary of Walsingham," f Robertson's Statuta Eccl. Scot., vol. ii. Concilia, vol. ii. p. 154.

in the 'flighting' of Kennedy and Dunbar, in the Satire of the Three Estates,' and in 'Symmie and his brother;' but no portrait of him can be compared with that drawn by the master-hand of Chaucer. Lindsay paints him as disheartened and discredited :

'But now alace! our gret abusion

Is cleirly knawen till our confusion
Quhilk I may sair repent.

Of all credence I am now guyte,

That reids the New Testament 1.'

"The Council of Trent silenced him in 1546, and suppressed him altogether in 1562"

III. "Worshipping and adoration, as well of images as of relics," is the next point excepted against. In the state of ignorance in which the common people were for some time before the Reformation, it is not surprising that this should be so. There is always

a danger of religion among the unlettered becoming superstitious, and even in northern nations, there is a tendency to turn objects of faith into anthropomorphic forms. The employment of Christian art, necessary and advisable as it was, to keep alive a belief among the poor, on St. Gregory's principle, that pictures are the books of the ignorant, had of course its dangerous tendency; and, as a matter of fact, a cultus of images had grown up which required

b Poet. Works, tom. ii. p. 9, 27. Scot., vol. ii. p. 288.

i Robertson's Statuta Eccl.