To n. 616. - Appendix XIII. Historical Matters Concerning Indulgences

1. The power of binding and loosing handed over to the Church avails not only for faults and for the eternal punishment joined with grave sin, but by an equal or stronger reason also for remitting temporal punishments. Yet it demands a discreet use, since the Supreme Pontiff himself is not simply the lord, but the administrator and prudent dispenser of the rights and goods of the Church. Concerning this matter this point occurs for observation: the relaxation of eternal punishment, which is joined by an indivisible bond with sanctifying grace restored, is always reasonable, on account of the supreme indigence of men, provided that the essential conditions are fulfilled. The same also is necessarily gratuitous, since it cannot be compensated by any satisfactory work, and it accompanies the very moment in which man becomes capable of satisfying, that is, the infusion of grace. By contrast, a gratuitous remission of every temporal punishment would be opposed to the present economy itself. For from the beginning celebrated penance is a laborious baptism. Therefore, since God is not accustomed to grant to penitents an immediate condonation of all temporal punishment, can the Church, by a gratuitous remission of sins even as to punishment, wish to make that divine disposition void? Wherefore satisfactory works were imposed on penitents for a fuller remission of punishments. Yet the imposed works themselves, whether indefinitely in the assumed perpetual state of the penitent, or later defined by the estimation of the minister, acquired a greater satisfactory force from the power and intention of the Church.

According to primitive discipline, by those penitential works satisfaction was made at the same time to the Church and to God.

2. When she mitigated these penances, whether by appointing smaller ones from the beginning, or by relaxing those already imposed, examples of which relaxation certainly occur already in the fourth century, the Church, by taking account of circumstances and by sparing spiritual weakness, could either merely not exact them, or truly, on account of an extraordinary fervor of contrition or expiation, remit them efficaciously. In the former case, the Church did not think that she was condoning anything in the forum of God (cf. the epistle of St. Cyprian to Antonianus, P. L., 3, 785, or Vind. 55, co. 2, pp. 638); but in the latter God held ratified in the heavens the sentence which the Church pronounced on earth concerning sin. Immediately also it appears that remission itself can be of a twofold kind. For the Church can relax defined penances, and then by her absolution so many punishments will be remitted in the forum of God as would have been expiated by the penances; or she can simply dispense indefinitely from every punishment owed, whatever it may be, so that the absolution ought to operate upon every temporal punishment.

The motive, moreover, of a more rapid or more benign reconciliation with the Church was also the letter of peace handed over by martyrs. And insofar as the intercession of the martyrs moved the bishop so that he truly remitted some of the penitential works, that concession was efficacious also in the forum of God, so that this remission, founded on the merits of the martyrs, came nearer to our present-day indulgences.

From the seventh century out of England and Ireland into the remaining parts of Europe there began to be propagated "redemptions," by which imposed penances could be commuted into other good works, especially prayer and almsgiving, whether synods expressly conceded this, or custom was tacitly admitted. (To this propagation the Germanic usage Wergeld, by which offenses were compensated by pecuniary compensation, seems to have contributed not a little). Those commutations, first conceded in particular cases, were soon permitted more generally (with perhaps the added assent of the penitential priest), "so that commonly the option was given to the penitent either of performing the penance or of choosing a redemption of this kind" (Morinus, Commentarius historicus de administratione sacramenti Paenitentiae, etc., L. 10, c. 16, n. 4).

In these beginnings indulgences more properly so called were preformed; these, having arisen in the eleventh century, no longer converted defined works into smaller ones, but in general, on account of a good work fulfilled, then remitted imposed or to-be-imposed penances wholly or in part. And just as the imposed works would have satisfied the Church and God, so that the very commutation of works was efficacious in the forum of God cannot seriously be doubted.

Not immediately, but gradually, the very relation to imposed or to-be-imposed penances was neglected.

The distinction of the power by which indulgences were conceded from sacramental jurisdiction was increased by St. Thomas by his explanation concerning indulgences (cf. Supplementum, q. 25-27), by which the Church does not simply remit temporal punishment, but at the same time offers an adequate payment of the debt from her treasury, constituted from the superabundant merits of Christ and the satisfactions of the saints.

This doctrine, accepted by the Supreme Pontiffs, became common in the Catholic school. And it has two consequences. Since, as St. Thomas says, the dispensation of the treasury of a society belongs to him who presides over the whole society, the power of conceding indulgences is recalled to the Supreme Pontiff. Then, since besides the good work which is performed, the inexhaustible treasury of merits is offered, there is no longer, as in commutations, some necessary proportion between the prescribed work and the expected fruit; rather a reasonable cause of offering, on account of such a work, the merits and satisfactions of Christ and of the saints suffices.

3. In an indulgence for the living, the Church at the same time absolves, using her jurisdiction, and offers payment; in an indulgence for the departed, she offers the same payment by way of suffrage or prayer, supported also by some work to be fulfilled by a living person, as Sixtus IV himself explained in his Bulls, of which the first is August 3, 1476.

4. Alexander II seems first to have conceded an indulgence for the living, in 1063, when he lightened penance and conceded remission of sins (as to punishments) to those who had destined themselves to go into Spain to fight against the Moors. Yet more celebrated is the indulgence, even plenary, which Urban II promulgated in 1095 in the Council of Clermont for crusaders. Observe that in both concessions the prescribed work was such that of itself it could avail for commutation.

Already from the thirteenth century the scholastics began to teach that there was power in the Supreme Pontiff that he might also concede indulgences to the departed. But only in the fifteenth century did Callixtus III grant the first indulgences for the departed. The first preserved Bull, however, is that of Sixtus IV, August 3, 1476.

5. Therefore, if by this sole note, otherwise essential, of the remission of temporal punishment owed and not paid we describe an indulgence, from the beginning the Church used such a power; but the full present-day notion says that the remission is outside the use of the sacrament of penance, not by way of commutation, nor by simple absolution, but, jointly with the use of jurisdiction upon the living or with the use of her intercession in favor of the departed, through the offering of the merits of Christ and of the satisfactions of the saints. The concession requires a just cause, which for the most part, though not necessarily, is found in the utility or excellence of the good work itself.

Observe that properly such indulgences are conceded nowhere in the Eastern Church; but Easterners can gain the indulgences of the Latins under the same conditions under which Latins can. Very recently, May 24, 1923, the Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Church obtained an indulgence for those reciting a little prayer for Russia (A. A. S., XV, 295).

Cf. Boudinhon, Sur l'histoire des indulgences, à propos d'un livre récent (Lea), Revue d'Histoire et de Littérature religieuses, 1898 (III, p. 454 ff.); Beringer-Hilgers, Die Ablässe; Galtier, Dict. d'Apologétique: v. Indulgences; Nicolaus-Paulus, Geschichte des Ablasses im Mittelalter, vom Ursprunge bis zur Mitte des 14 Jahrhunderts, I. Band, 1922.