Corrections? A principal contributing factor was money. Based on the notion that Jesus and the saints had built up a treasury of merit that could be shared with worthy Christians, the indulgence at first applied…, It was the indulgence controversy of October 1517 that brought it all into the open.…. April 14, 1482 A.D. Supernal, celestial fatherland, the City of Jerusalem, whose own participation is in itself, so rejoices in the salvation of all the elect, that the more outstanding are the merits of these, the more copious does it also receive the joys of the rewards. Paralleling the rise of indulgences, the Crusades, and the reforming papacy was the economic resurgence of Europe that began in the 11th century. Sixtus, however, left unanswered the problem of the necessity of personal confession. **, These theological developments related to the doctrine of penance and indulgences emerged at the same time as a very significant religious and social movement in Western Europe known as the Crusades. In the Bulla aurea (“Golden Bull”) of 1479, Pope Sixtus IV granted indulgences to all who made donations to the Franciscan Order and to the Poor Clares, all visitors to Franciscan churches, and all who contributed money or work to the maintenance of Franciscan monasteries. The next Sixtus was today’s martyr, who reigned from one August to the next in 257–258. Sixtus II (or Sixth, the Second) is listed in the Roman Canon’s select roll call of sainted popes: “Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus… However, neither masses for the dead nor indulgences began as a means of church income. Those who participated in these events could at the very least receive partial indulgences for contritely confessed sins. Sixtus IV, Pope, 1414-1484. Sixtus IV sold indulgences and church offices “on a scale previously unparalleled,” made an 8-year-old boy the archbishop of Lisbon and began the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. He was not (as is widely thought) moved originally to a critique of the system by these abuses but rather by his own terrible spiritual suffering. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership. The notion of purgatory as a place where a sinner fulfilled his or her satisfaction through suffering became more precisely defined. In the fall of 1517 an ostensibly innocuous event quickly made Luther’s name a household word in Germany. Instead of discouraging the practice of confession among laity, it seemed to increase lay participation in religious life or at least the bishops hoped it would do so. Medieval Christianity was a vast community of mutual help through prayer and good works, uniting the living and the dead in the Church Militant on earth, the Church Suffering in purgatory, and the Church Triumphant in heaven. As the successors of St Peter, the Roman popes claimed that they held the power to a heavenly treasury filled with the merit earned by Christ’s Passion. They persist through today with mass cards (in various denominational costs) with prayers/masses for the departed. In large part, I will allow Luther’s document itself to demonstrate the kinds of abuses that were taking place in the Church of the early sixteenth century — but first it should be noted that Luther was not the first to attempt to reform the practice of indulgences in the Church. A close reading of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses demonstrates that he was calling into question not only the doctrine of indulgences but also the late medieval sacrament of penance. The indulgence is granted by the Church after the sinner has confessed and received absolution and involves certain actions by the recipient, most often the recitation of prayers.