Indulgence
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in Roman Catholic theology, a remission of the punishment which is still due to sin after sacramental absolution, the remission being valid in the court of conscience and before Goà, and being made by an application of the treasure of the Church on the part of a lawful superior. Indulgence may be either (1) Plenary, remitting the whole, or (2) Partial, remitting a portion of the temporal punishment due to sin. The former are granted by the Pope to the whole Church; the latter by primates, metropolitans, and bishops within their respective jurisdiction. The Council of Trent ordains that indulgences must be given everywhere gratis. Canonical penances in the early Church were very severe, and, in times of persecution, it was the custom of martyrs awaiting death to give weaker brethren, who had lapsed or been guilty of other grievous sin, a letter (libellus pacis) to the bishop, asking that he might be restored. Urban II. granted plenary indulgence in the Council of Clermont to those who should go at their own expense on the then co contemplated Crusade. In the 9th century Pascal I. and John VIII. bestowed indulgences on the souls of those who had died fighting for the Church. In 1300 they were_sold over Europe in connection with the Jubilee. Early in the 16th century they were farmed out, the farmers employing agents to retail them to the people at a profit. These subordinates puffed their wares without much attention to theological precision. One of these, John Tetzel, a Dominican friar, so filled Luther with indignation as to lead him, on Oct. 31, 1517, to affix theses on that and cognate subjects to the door of the Cathedral Church of Wittenberg and thus commence the Reformation.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 described a system of plenary and partial indulgences in which the partial ones were reckoned in fixed quantities of days and years. That arithmetic was swept away by Paul VI's apostolic constitution Indulgentiarum Doctrina of 1 January 1967, which abolished the numbered terms, left partial indulgences simply "partial", and sharply cut the list of plenary ones; the doctrine itself, including the "treasure of the Church", was restated in the Catechism of 1992. The Jubilee that Collier's associated with selling in 1300 is still kept, most recently in 2025, but the Council of Trent's rule that indulgences be granted gratis is now enforced in canon law. On the closing anecdote, historians have long doubted whether Luther physically nailed anything up on 31 October 1517, and the building was Wittenberg's Castle Church, not a cathedral.
Written for this edition, 2026.