How to Get to Heaven: Papal Indulgences

Were papal indulgences really just a medieval “get out of hell free” card? How were they expanded after the Crusades? And how were they used to fund projects, including the rebuilding of St Peter’s in Rome? Dr. Eleanor Janega is joined by Dr. Felicity Hill to unpack this complicated system of confession, absolution, penance and purgatory. MORE Conclave: Picking Popes Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/conclave-picking-popes/id1564113746?i=1000705823278 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6QMVaDJT1v8Exujsn1LCgd?si=1KGoyQTLRM6QGzqi-fzbJQ&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A4OkeBgJLymPhAmXL6krhnR&nd=1&dlsi=132bcd58f12d46a2 Pope Joan: Sacred Scandal Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pope-joan-sacred-scandal/id1564113746?i=1000659009581 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6f8OBBcJAjceSfr6vW6weX Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producers are Joseph Knight and Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Yanega, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 1:20Eleanor Janega?

  Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanega, 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.

• 1:59Eleanor Janega?

  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.

• 2:19Eleanor Janega?

  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.

• 2:36Eleanor Janega?

  In all, there were ninety-five arguments, or theses, and a lot of them centered on the practice of selling papal indulgences.

• 2:48Eleanor Janega?

  For example, theses thirty through thirty-four argue that

• 2:53Eleanor Janega?

  "no one is sure of the integrity of his own contrition, much less of having received plenary remission."

• 3:01Eleanor Janega?

  "The man who actually buys indulgences is as rare as he who is really penitent." Indeed, he's 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."

• 3:20Eleanor Janega?

  "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.'

• 3:31Eleanor Janega?

  For the graces of indulgences are concerned only with the penalties of sacramental satisfaction established by man."

• 3:40Eleanor Janega?

  Fast forward five hundred and nine 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?

• 4:05Eleanor Janega?

  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.

• 4:20Eleanor Janega?

  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.

• 4:41Eleanor Janega?

  Returning champion, Dr. Felicity Hill, welcome back to Gone Medieval.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 4:47Eleanor Janega?

  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, but you know, it's that classic historian thing that actually it's much more complicated than that.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, it really is, and it's more complicated than that. I was, you know, thinking about doing this and it was like, oh, this is gonna be fun because there's quite a lot of, well, yeah, it is quite complicated.

• 5:24Eleanor Janega?

  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, Felicity, do you have a definition of papal indulgences?

• 5:39Speaker 03

  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 the wiser.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  So I

• 5:56Eleanor Janega?

  Well, we're well, we all know that chestnut.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  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?

• 6:43Speaker 03

  What, what, what? 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, clearly, 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.

• 7:03Eleanor Janega?

  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.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. So if we, if we make you the sinner, right?

• 7:29Eleanor Janega?

  How dare you?

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Eleanor 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, 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 indulgence is that you often pay money, but not necessarily pay money, to get an indulgence which kind of buys

• 8:14Speaker 03

  you out of some of that penance. And it's often a temporal thing, like forty days of penance. And so then you don't have to do that forty days of penance, which is nice. And then it becomes more complicated because in the like fifteenth 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?

• 8:40Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I like that because I think I first started looking into papal indulgences while we were doing our PhDs. Flashback to when Felicity and Eleanor were young and cool. Or at least young.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 8:57Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, good please. Let's be so honest. But one of the reasons why I became interested in them is that 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 IV invented to get people to come hang out in Prague.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 9:17Eleanor Janega?

  And it was like you get four quartains off of, and 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.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 9:36Eleanor Janega?

  And that, and then that exists for pilgrimages to any number of places. Am I right in thinking that?

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. So pilgrimage is one of the ways you can get indulgences. And so like really specific ones like that. And they are, 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. Um, and the really big ones were papal jubilees. So like come to Rome. Um, and yeah, then you get a really big indulgence. I think thirteen hundred was the first one because it's a big anniversary. So, yeah, so drawing crowds, going on a pilgrimage, turning up to an 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.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  And you could also, I think, do various other kind of good works. But yeah, pilgrimage is and money probably the biggest ones. And then the the benefits vary as well. So it's out 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 dos 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 uh, one that I thought was really funny that I was reading up on, which was uh, those who were benefactors to poor university students got some indulgences in Paris, which I quite liked.

• 11:10Eleanor Janega?

  That's wonderful.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  Fund the students and you'll get time off for good behaviour in.

• 11:15Eleanor Janega?

  That's right. Every student I've ever taken to the pub, that's why I did it. So. Yeah, I I but I think that this 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.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  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, some pretty good.

• 11:52Eleanor Janega?

  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 St. Peter's in Rome, the one that everybody goes to now and looks at the Vatican and goes, wow, isn't the Sistine Chapel amazing? Well, how do you think that got paid for? That's what the indulgences were going to.

• 12:26Speaker 03

  Quite.

• 12:26Eleanor Janega?

  And so I like to say, look, you've got to pick one. You can either be, 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.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  But not both.

• 12:39Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, yeah. Personally, I don't really like the Renaissance.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  You can find, you can hate indulgences and yeah, fine.

• 12:46Eleanor Janega?

  That's right. But I do think 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?

• 13:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, and 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 it 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.

• 13:30Eleanor Janega?

  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 of merit.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  It's quite a difficult concept, but it seems to be like a big way that certain people in 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've used more than we've put in because no one's doing good stuff anymore. So it is like a banking system. Like you'll just keep taking out, but you don't ever deposit any money. But it's with good works, it's with good Christian.

• 14:08Eleanor Janega?

  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? Like, is this something that Christians would recognise in, you know, the third century, before we get to the medieval period?

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Definitely not, and not even in the early Middle Ages. So it seems to be an 11th century new thing. AKA innovation, we might say rather than new thing. Yeah, no, it's an 11th century innovation. And it is linked to like 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 an earthen indulgence was. And it really takes off, they really take off after the Crusades.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  So Crusaders get kind of like the biggest indulgence that you can get, which is basically like, if you're going Crusade, you are going to heaven. Hooray, well done. 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 papal 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 someone? 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.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  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 into there's a kind of, again, monetary language, there's an inflation and you start getting not just forty days, but kind of years and years and years, like thousands of years, probably adding up to much longer than they believed existed until judgment day. So it became a bit mad, basically. And so it, as, 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, it has maybe become a bit farcical. But the beginning's less so.

• 16:32Eleanor Janega?

  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 premarital sex, which is super common. Maybe if you're a woman, you dared to pluck your forehead, you know, like you're going, you're, you're gonna go, you're gonna go, right? And so we do see rather a lot, for example, of people having masses set for the dead.

• 17:16Eleanor Janega?

  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 gonna, I'm gonna 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're, we kind of see over the course of time is a decline in saying, all right, well, we're going to have these masses set for the dead, which we are reliably told by church sources that will work, like that will get people time off of purgatory if, if you say these masses. But it seems like the indulgences kind of slot in, in, in their place almost.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  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 could 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. So 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.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  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 gonna do it.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  You know, it it does make sense in that worldview.

• 19:20Eleanor Janega?

  Hmm hmm. 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, indulgence is 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.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  You absolutely have to believe in it, otherwise it makes no sense.

• 19:42Eleanor Janega?

  Exactly. 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 on to, right? They're like, no, no, no, no.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:04Eleanor Janega?

  You, 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 to issue these sorts of things.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  There were huge issues with the the kind of ability to grant these indulgences that 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 is the 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 can, we have the right as priests, I'm talking as a priest.

• 21:03Eleanor Janega?

  Obviously.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  We have the right to to decide whether you're going and we can therefore remit these penances by indulgences. Hooray, hurrah. 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, 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 the genuine issues that they didn't seem to ever resolve completely about. And I, 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.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  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.

• 22:02Eleanor Janega?

  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

• 22:46Eleanor Janega?

  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?

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:05Eleanor Janega?

  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?

• 23:18Speaker 03

  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 wars, which might be ill advised. But, you know, still, the popes do need money and 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 like living in Rome and Italy. But once the papacy gets, well, the papal monarchy, as it's sometimes known, yeah, it is absolutely the growth of indulgences is definitely linked to the growth of papal power.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  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.

• 24:07Eleanor Janega?

  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 that's what they are. But what theologians are doing are debating these finer points of legalese, really. You know, it's a, this is, 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 lost up.

• 24:48Speaker 03

  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, the reasons have all 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've discussed, which is completely valid, which is, so, yeah, it's instead of doing penance, right? Instead of doing something good, like, you know, like going on a pilgrimage or something, this is the basic thing. But there's the base, 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

• 25:31Speaker 03

  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, it kind of overtakes them. So then they kept arguing about the finer points, but they were a thing.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 26:33Speaker 04

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• 27:26Eleanor Janega?

  I do find it quite interesting when we are looking at these debates about papal indulgences and I suppose wealthy 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, the ratio of rich and important people to regular people is pretty high, right?

• 28:06Eleanor Janega?

  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's people praying for you. And what that does is it shows us that they're like, oh yeah, I'm, I'm in trouble, right? There's no way I'm 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.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  But they are mainly just making monks pray for you, rather than doing anything yourself.

• 28:49Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. Yeah. And so you can see why this would also be something that the powerful would be quite interested in.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 29:00Eleanor Janega?

  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? So it's, yeah, you, 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 like cranking through masses constantly, right? These monks need to sleep at some point in time. So that is something that's got a real timeframe 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.

• 29:32Eleanor Janega?

  With indulgences, you're kind of paying upfront 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 sail all these, these masses. Like for, for the church, it's also expedient, right?

• 29:45Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah.

• 29:46Eleanor Janega?

  But I guess that what we can talk about here then is, so it's, 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?

• 30:06Speaker 03

  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, every, everyone's quite.

• 30:18Eleanor Janega?

  But, you know, if you've got a couple of shillings, that means more, I guess.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  Well, it should mean more, but whether it did with indulgences is, is kind of less clear. But what I was gonna 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 and 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 pilgrimage 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, is via your will, right? So in your will, you give money to charity, whatever.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  But even that relies on your executors, executors. In doing your will correctly, we, 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 executor 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 certainty, perhaps, with indulgences.

• 31:35Eleanor Janega?

  You see, this is a really interesting point because there's, 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, 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 he should have given it back by now because that's how it works.

• 32:17Eleanor Janega?

  And so they will go to people's sons and say, oh, hey, guys, 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.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't care.

• 32:31Eleanor Janega?

  Sucks to be dad, you know, and.

• 32:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, and I have examples of that as well. So exactly, so this indulgence, I mean, you don't have to deal with that kind of evil money grabbing airs, just being like, nah.

• 32:44Eleanor Janega?

  And, you know, to be clear, I do not think any of these priests actually saw these kids' dad in hell. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  Just to be clear.

• 32:54Eleanor Janega?

  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?

• 33:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. So indulgence is maybe a way of, what are they, an insurance policy in some ways?

• 33:18Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, I love that as a way of thinking about it, right? Because I guess that it is ultimately, this is the thing, right? There is, at the heart of it, death is this thing that humans don't get to get out of, right? It's 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, and so it gives you a little bit of power. It is that, um, yeah, well, in my insurance policy for my soul.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is 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.

• 34:26Eleanor Janega?

  Hmm. And I suppose even if, 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, 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?

• 34:59Speaker 03

  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 the, at least the kind of mental repentance aspect for your sins. You can't literally just buy your way out of heaven, which, 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, and actually one thing we haven't yet talked about is pardoners, 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.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  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

• 36:25Speaker 03

  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, yeah, 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.

• 37:00Eleanor Janega?

  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, oh, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, we know how pardons are. And they are unscrupulous and they are taking

• 37:43Eleanor Janega?

  advantage of people's fears. So it does show that there is at least some acknowledgement that There is a worry about this, right?

• 37:53Speaker 03

  Completely. And like I said, actually, right from the off, there seems to be worries about it. And yeah, so it's, there's a lot of reformation kind of propaganda about, hey, we decided for the first time that this is all of it. And it's, 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,

• 38:34Speaker 03

  I think, 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.

• 39:01Speaker 04

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• 39:52Eleanor Janega?

  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. 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?

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Well, you might just bump into a pardoner 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 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 for doing whatever it is, whether it's going to a meeting or going on a 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.

• 41:00Eleanor Janega?

  Right.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  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, for this big anniversary? And he's like, no, nothing. Don't, nothing. Don't come. No, no, no, come on. We'll come to Rome. It'll be great. And, and he's like, no, don't, 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.

• 41:38Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, I love it. He's one of my favorite popes, too, Boniface IV.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Oh, he had a bad end.

• 41:43Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, he did. But that's why he's so interesting, right? But. That pleases me no end, like the fact that that is kind of a indulgence by popular demand, right? So that's kind of the opposite of how it's 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.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  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.

• 42:21Eleanor Janega?

  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 Vencus Loz, 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.

• 43:05Eleanor Janega?

  Is it common for people to use it for succession, or is this just Charles IV being innovative as his one?

• 43:11Speaker 03

  We are now in the territory of how indulgence is used, and this is clearly a very political and not very religious in any way, use of an indulgence. I actually don't know how common that is. I can't off the top of my head think of other examples, so it might be that he was...

• 43:27Eleanor Janega?

  Well, do you know what? This is just Czech excellence then, Felicity. That's what it is. We're coming up, we're coming up with new and innovative ways to use an indulgence. It's great.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  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 all 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.

• 44:11Eleanor Janega?

  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, the this old myth that nobody ever leaves their village. You only know the same fifteen 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.

• 44:34Eleanor Janega?

  I'll be back. And I think that's interesting.

• 44:37Speaker 03

  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.

• 44:47Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, yeah. But look, everybody wants a Roman holiday. We can all agree on that.

• 44:53Eleanor Janega?

  Even if the forces of are against us, you know, it might be dangerous, but people are going to do it.

• 44:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, they also had to eventually stop people going to Rome when they were like, no, no, you should you should stay home. So, you know, yeah, it's slightly odd mixture.

• 45:09Eleanor Janega?

  So I do think that 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, its apogee.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:23Eleanor Janega?

  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.

• 45:50Eleanor Janega?

  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 that is, that's quite right either. And yeah, boo, boo the pardoner, et cetera, et cetera. 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.

• 46:30Eleanor Janega?

  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?

• 46:56Speaker 03

  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.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  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 for 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.

• 48:10Eleanor Janega?

  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 taking-

• 48:27Speaker 03

  I don't completely know the answer, but I would suspect that it would be quite unfair.

• 48:33Eleanor Janega?

  I love this idea. Some guy's in purgatory and he's like, no, I'm so close.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  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.

• 48:51Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, quite so, quite so.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  I mean, they are still on, they do still, indulgences still exist. I mean, they, the Catholic Church has not completely given up on indulgences. They have just made them a lot less big.

• 49:03Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, can you expand on that?

• 49:04Speaker 03

  I would have to start Googling it to see the most recent, specific things. But they absolutely, you can, certainly in the twentieth, and I think twenty, but I mean, yeah, it is much less a big thing than they were in the Middle Ages. But they haven't actually said, we're completely rejecting this doctrine. But they toned it down a lot in light of the Reformation. When the, you know, the Council of Trent and stuff, when they had to start responding to the threat of Protestantism, I suppose.

• 49:30Eleanor Janega?

  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 be, it'll be fine. It's fine, you know?

• 49:41Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm just gonna Google current indulgences and then we can fit it.

• 49:44Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, that's a good idea.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  Because I'm sure there was.

• 49:49Eleanor Janega?

  Medieval historians attempting to talk about the 21st century.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  Okay, so apparently 2025 was a jubilee year. I think basically, yeah, you got indulgences for going on pilgrimage.

• 50:02Eleanor Janega?

  Oh dang, I missed my shot. I should have gone on pilgrimage.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  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 them changing the terms of the indulgence in the wake of the pandemic.

• 50:28Eleanor Janega?

  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.

• 50:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, and to do.

• 50:43Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, the church.

• 50:46Speaker 03

  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, et cetera, all priests are strongly invited to celebrate holy mass three times on the relevant day.

• 51:04Eleanor Janega?

  I love the church sometimes. I'm sorry. Like, I'm such a medieval historian. I'm like, oh, that's sweet. Look, they're trying, you know?

• 51:11Speaker 03

  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 month. So, yeah, the plenary indulgence for those who visit a cemetery and pray for the deceased.

• 51:25Eleanor Janega?

  Well dang, that's very sweet. I like that a lot.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  So anyway, they are alive and kicking, is the point.

• 51:29Eleanor Janega?

  All right, okay.

• 51:31Speaker 03

  The real point here is that indulgences are still part of Catholic doctrine.

• 51:34Eleanor Janega?

  Indulgences, yes. Pardons less so.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, less, less that. And I suspect, but 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.

• 51:52Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, so look, indulgences, yeah, it's probably bad that there are pardners around, but some of them seem not so bad. So what's Martin Luther's problem here?

• 52:03Speaker 03

  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, 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.

• 52:37Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 52:38Speaker 03

  That nobody's good anymore. And so there's, we all think, I mean, who likes Martin Luther? I mean.

• 52:43Eleanor Janega?

  Nobody, no.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  So, 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 had 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.

• 53:19Eleanor Janega?

  Do you know what, listen, I agree with him, they shouldn't have redone St. Peter's. 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.

• 53:36Speaker 03

  Yay. Well, thank you for having me. And hopefully, the listeners will have some idea of what indulgences are at the end of this.

• 53:43Eleanor Janega?

  If you figured it out, write in and let us know.

• 53:48Eleanor Janega?

  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, we're 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/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.

• 54:54Speaker 01

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