Gregory the Great used to tell how St. Peter once appeared to the empress Galla Placidia on her deathbed and told her that all her sins were forgiven; the same miracle, he remarked, was performed every day in the Vatican basilica. Even in the dark years of the Arab invasions of the tenth century, the city of the apostles meant to one writer the mental and spiritual salvation of countless pilgrims from all over the Christian world. The theme appealed to an English king of the eleventh century, just as it had done to his predecessors in the eighth. ‘God has granted me’, Canute wrote in 1027, ‘the privilege of praying at the shrines of the blessed Peter and Paul and in every sanctuary within the city of Rome. And this privilege I have sought because wise men have told me that the apostle Peter has received from God the power of binding and loosing, and carries the keys of Paradise.’
Above all other places, Rome was the destination of those ‘nudi homines cum ferro’ who plagued the roads in the time of Charlemagne, the convicted criminals who had been exiled by their communities and sent to wander across the face of the earth. Rival sanctuaries recognized this when they advertized their saints as having the same powers as St. Peter. One of them described how a convict lost one of his fetters in the Vatican basilica and the other at the shrine of St. Austremoine in Auvergne; ‘which proves’, the author reflected, ‘since one fetter was removed by St. Peter and the other by St. Austremoine at the instigation of St. Peter, that St. Austremoine partakes of the merit of the great apostle and that their power is equal.’ So important had Rome become as an object of penitential pilgrimage, that a writer of the ninth century surprised no one by asserting that ‘penance is synonymous with going to Rome.’
Rome owed its unique prestige to a variety of factors. Its role as the converter of northern Europe was certainly one of them. Another was the gradual process by which the absolution of grave offences, originally the prerogative of the bishops, passed into the hands of the papacy. This important change had its roots in the eighth century, when bishops began to consult the popes in particularly difficult cases. St. Boniface asked the advice of Gregory III on parricides and of Zacharias on fornication and clerical murderers. Nicholas I was consulted by the archbishop of Rheims on the case of a man who had killed his three sons, and again about a monk who had killed his brother. In the ninth century, bishops began to send the malefactor to Rome together with the letter asking for advice. The pope would then prescribe the penance directly. Several penitential manuals of the period recommend this procedure, and Nicholas I began to insist that some crimes, such as incest, must be referred to him in this way. In theory the bishop retained control over the case. The pope did not actually absolve the sinner, but merely prescribed the penance and returned him for absolution to the bishop. The bishops did what they could to impress this narrow distinction on sinners, fearing that criminals would come to the conclusion that they could by-pass the bishop’s jurisdiction by a simple pilgrimage to Rome. This, indeed, was precisely what happened. Haito, bishop of Basle, warned his diocesans in vain that the power of absolution was his alone. The council of Seligenstadt (1022–3) tried to forbid all pilgrimages to Rome without the written permission of the bishop, and breaches of this principle sometimes created sore conflicts. In the 1020s Pontius, count of Auvergne, received absolution from the pope without the knowledge or consent of the bishop of Le Puy, as a result of which the council of Limoges ordered him to do another pilgrimage to Rome, this time in proper form with a letter from the bishop. The bishops struggled hard to preserve their authority and prevent the Roman pilgrimage from becoming a general fountain of forgiveness. They failed, however, and by the end of the twelfth century the canonists had set the seal on their failure by the principle of ‘reserved cases’ which could be absolved by the pope alone. Sacrilege, murder of priests or monks, robbery of churches, and a continually increasing number of lesser crimes, were all ‘reserved cases’. The pope delegated the business of absolving sinners in reserved cases to the officers of the papal penitentiary. The penitentiars could absolve in person or by brief, though in many cases the penitent came to Rome to receive his penance. For the remainder of the middle ages the prospect of confessing to an anonymous penitentiar and of being absolved from even the most enormous transgressions added considerably to the spiritual attractions of Rome.
In the newly converted countries of Scandinavia the papacy made ample use of these powers. When Alexander III was informed that incest was particularly common in Sweden he instructed the bishop of Upsala to send offenders to Rome ‘to visit the Holy See and the blessed apostles Peter and Paul so that by the sweat of their brow and the hardships of the journey they may soften the anger of the supreme judge and be found worthy of His mercy.’ Behaviour which had been normal in the pagan society of the north suddenly became sinful, and a pilgrimage to Rome enabled converts to relieve themselves of their guilt. Two pilgrims mentioned in the Grettis Saga reflected that ‘to another King we have much more to pay, … for we have lived according to our own worldly desires instead of following the teachings of Christ, … and now we are growing old. Then they journeyed to Rome, and when they appeared before the penitentiar they told him everything truthfully, just as it had happened, and with what pagan hocus pocus they had been married. They humbly submitted to such penance as he deigned to impose on them and promised to amend their ways.’ These pilgrims had asked no one’s consent before approaching the penitentiar, and had avoided all the normal preliminaries to absolution. This appears to have been regarded at Rome as a point in their favour, ‘since they had voluntarily turned their minds to atonement without being prompted or instructed by the Church.’ Unusual cases were commonly submitted to the pope in person. When Gunnhildr, the mother of a Norwegian king, confessed to the penitentiar that her son had been born in adultery, the diplomatic importance of the case was held to call for the personal attention of the pope, Alexander III. Alexander may have been untypical in the interest which he took in the penitential function of the papacy, but he was certainly not the only pope who heard confessions himself. It was said of Adrian IV, the only English pope, that no business was so urgent as to prevent him from talking with northmen who wanted to see him.
The advantages which the Roman churches enjoyed over other sanctuaries were greatly increased by the development of the doctrine of indulgences. Already in the latter half of the twelfth century a pilgrim could get more remission by attending the Lenten stations than he could find in any sanctuary outside Rome. The stations were the churches in which the Pope said Mass on certain appointed days, especially in Lent. It was Gregory the Great who was traditionally supposed to have assigned to each station its special church. Pilgrims were expected to attend each of the forty stations in turn, and from the middle of the twelfth century indulgences were believed to be attached to them. Gerald of Wales gained all the stational indulgences during his visit to Rome in 1195, though there was some doubt as to how generous they were. Gerald thought that they amounted to ninety-two years. His contemporary, the Parisian theologian William of Auxerre, computed them at fifty years. It was not until 1297 that Boniface VIII settled the matter by laying down that pilgrims would get one year and forty days at each station in addition to any indulgences that might be attached to the stational churches in their own right.
The stational indulgences came into existence more or less spontaneously, but individual churches generally received their indulgences by formal grant. At the end of the twelfth century, visitors to St. Peter’s on Maundy Thursday won an indulgence of two years if they were Italians, three if they came from further afield. Peter Mallius dated this concession from the foundation of the basilica by Constantine, though in fact it had almost certainly originated in his own lifetime. Alexander III (d. 1181) used to tell Swedish pilgrims that all those who made a good confession to the papal penitentiars before the shrine of the apostle would receive an indulgence of one, two, or three years, depending on the distance they had travelled; Scandinavians could certainly cou
nt on winning three years. In Alexander’s reign only the basilicas of the apostles could offer indulgences in their own right, but within twenty years of his death pilgrims could gain the same indulgences at many of the shrines of the martyrs on their feast days. The result was an inflation of indulgences in which those of the greater basilicas were constantly increased in order to preserve their superiority. In 1240 the pope declared an indulgence of three years and three quarantines for those who visited the basilicas of the apostles between Pentecost and the octave of the feast of the apostles. In the time of Gregory X (1272–6) the indulgence offered at the Lateran on Maundy Thursday had risen to four years and four quarantines, and Thomas Aquinas reported that pilgrims from overseas could sometimes win five years or more. By the end of the thirteenth century indulgences were being attached to individual altars in St. Peter’s.
Although the process was a continuing one, no pope was so prodigious a dispenser of indulgences as Nicholas IV (1288–92). He increased the largest indulgences obtainable at St. Peter’s to seven years and seven quarantines and shortly afterwards awarded the same privilege to the Lateran basilica. St. Paul’s received indulgences for every day of Lent, every Sunday of the year, and the octave of the feast of the apostles in addition. S. Maria Maggiore was raised to the status of the basilicas of the apostles; it received a similar indulgence for every day of Lent and every Saturday of the year, the Epiphany, the anniversary of its foundation, and a number of other feasts. In the year of Nicholas’s death a pilgrim who passed Lent in Rome could be sure of getting at least ten times the remission earned by Gerald of Wales a century before. The stage was set for the Jubilee indulgence of Boniface VIII.
1300: The Year of Jubilee
The Jubilee was originally a Jewish concept. It was an amnesty proclaimed every fifty years, when prisoners were released, ill-gotten gains restored, and penance performed for past transgressions. In the language of mediaeval preachers it came to mean any year in which men were offered an unusual chance to earn their salvation. The word was often applied to the indulgences given to crusaders. St. Bernard proclaimed that the year 1146 was ‘a year of remission, a veritable year of Jubilee’ in which men could be saved by going to the aid of the faltering Frankish kingdoms of the middle east. Those who fought on the Albigensian crusade also won a ‘Jubilee’ indulgence. ‘See, this is our year of Jubilee’, cried Humbert of Romans when urging young men to go and defend Acre against the infidel; ‘not the Jewish one but a Christian Jubilee which will be far greater.’
In the autumn of 1299 a notion spontaneously arose that the year 1300 would be a year of Jubilee in which pilgrims to St. Peter’s would win huge remission. The rumour spread through northern Italy that visitors to Rome would gain a plenary indulgence on the first day of January and at least a hundred days of remission on every other day of the year. On New Year’s eve a great crowd gathered in St. Peter’s between vespers and midnight, pressing round the high altar, pushing and trampling on each other to get a glimpse of it. It was assumed that the special remission would begin at midnight and most of them proposed, to spend the whole of the following day in the basilica. In the tightly-packed mass, rumours circulated rapidly. Some said that God had proclaimed a Jubilee in a tract handed down from the sky; others that every centennial year was a year of Jubilee. On New Year’s day itself the news of these happenings passed like wildfire through the city and surrounding countryside, and the crowds in the Leonine city became uncontrollably large. ‘Give us your blessing before we die’, they cried, ‘for we have heard that whoever visits the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul in a centennial year shall be freed from both sin and guilt.’
That this seminal event should have occurred unprompted and unplanned was altogether characteristic of the religion of the late middle ages. Far from provoking this display of enthusiasm, the pope, Boniface VIII, was taken aback by it. After hasty consultations, the cardinals were sent to look up the canons and peruse various old books to see whether the popular rumour had any basis. The matter was very obscure. Nothing could be found in the writings of the fathers about Jubilees, and various opinions were canvassed. While these enquiries were proceeding, a few temporary measures were taken. The treasures of St. Peter’s were displayed, and in the middle of January the sudarium of Veronica was exposed in the basilica. Boniface received some of the pilgrims in person. He was particularly impressed by an old man of 107 years who told him that he remembered his father describing a visit to Rome in 1200 and assured him that there had been a Jubilee in that year. This intelligence was confirmed by several other centenarians, most of them Italians, but including one Frenchman from Beauvais; the belief, declared this last, was widespread in France. The cardinals were unable to discover any authoritative basis for this nonsense. They concluded, however, that a tradition so general ought to be respected. The time was ripe to spread the fame of St. Peter, and to encourage the faithful to pay tribute to the prince of the apostles in his own basilica. It was decided that the aspirations of the crowd should be given authoritative support. On 22nd February, 1300 Boniface issued the bull Antiquorum Relatio. ‘The tradition of our ancestors’, it began, ‘affirms that great indulgences for our sins are granted to those who visit the venerable basilica of the apostles in Rome. We who, in accordance with the dignity of our office, must strive to secure the salvation of every man, do hereby hold all these indulgences to be authentic. We confirm them and approve them and do now grant them afresh.’ All those who visited the basilicas of the apostles during the centenary year and made a truly penitent confession would receive a plenary indulgence. They must visit each basilica on fifteen separate days (thirty for Italians); nevertheless, the bull vaguely adds, the more frequently they visited the basilicas the more efficacious would be their indulgence. The bull was accompanied by a brief excluding from its benefits all excommunicates and rebels against the Church, merchants who traded with the infidel, the pope’s enemies in Aragon and Sicily, and the Colonna family.
It was clear from the terms of the bull that the Jubilee indulgence did not pretend to release sinners from guilt as well as penance. John the Monk, one of the cardinals whom Boniface had consulted, insisted that ‘this indulgence remits penance after the sinner has been absolved of his guilt by a true and contrite confession; the guilt is remitted by God in the sacrament of penance.’ Theological subtleties of this sort were, however, wasted on most of those who came to Rome. Probably very few of them had confessed their sins and they thought that they were gaining an indulgence which dispensed them from such formalities. The chroniclers William Ventura and Giovanni Villani, both of whom claimed the indulgence, were under this impression. At Tournai a large band of pilgrims assembled for the journey to Rome in the belief that the indulgence released them from the need to confess. Various friars were trying to persuade them of their error ‘and for this reason everyone was perplexed by doubt and confusion.’ The abbot of St. Martin, who was in the crowd, asked a papal penitentiar in Rome to settle the question. The penitentiar, who was a doctor of theology, replied that so many pilgrims had asked this question that the papal confessors had gone in a body to Anagni to seek an authoritive ruling from the pope. Boniface had then ‘formally declared that a full remission would be granted to all who made a true and contrite confession as the canons and decretals require.’
Copies of the bull Antiquorum were despatched to every part of Europe accompanied by a slight commentary explaining the circumstances and pointing to various Biblical precedents. ‘Wherefore’, it continued, ‘you who are called, drive away your cares and preoccupations. Come and pray and atone for your sins without delay. For now is the time, and this is the very day of salvation…. Think how near is the means of your salvation, … of washing away the stains of sin from your souls, of exchanging the wretchedness of your earthly lives for everlasting glory.’ The missive concluded with the following jingle which the Siennese inscribed on the walls of their cathedral:
Annus centenus Romae semp
er est jubilaeus.
Crimina laxantur, cui paenitet ista donatur
Hoc declaravit Bonifatius et roboravit.
Every hundredth year is held the Roman Jubilee.
To he who is penitent all crimes are forgiven.
Thus says Boniface.
In Rome, pilgrims were handed copies of the bull on the steps of St. Peter’s, and invited to preserve them as a reminder that the next Jubilee would occur in 1400.
The response was overwhelming. Italy was unusually peaceful in 1300 and the pope had overcome his enemies within the city. The summer was fine and the harvest excellent. ‘Innumerable Christians of both sexes, young and old, Italians and foreigners, came to Rome. They came on horseback, on other animals, even on foot. Amongst them one could see many young people, full of hope and without a penny, carrying their parents on their shoulders.’ The Roman populace were the first to claim the indulgence. Flying in the face of tradition, fathers allowed their unmarried daughters to leave the house by night accompanied by reliable chaperons, to perform their thirty visits. Stephaneschi lyrically describes the crowd of paupers in rags entering the city side by side with proud noblemen. Almost every Italian bishop claimed the indulgence, and some French ones. The English, he thought, preferred to come later in the year, when Rome offered the same dank climate as their own country. No kings attended, but Philip of France was represented by his Italian agent Musciatto Francesi and Edward I by one of the Cerchi of Florence.
The influx of pilgrims imposed a considerable strain on the resources of the city. From the summit of the gate-towers they looked like a swarm of ants or an invading army, and there was scarcely enough room in the city to contain them. After three months there was a serious prospect of famine which was only averted by an abundant harvest. ‘The land smiled on us and the earth gave forth fruit. It was a miracle no less impressive than the feeding of the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes.’ But the miracle was accomplished, for when William Ventura came to claim the indulgence he found an ‘abundance of flesh, fish and oats’. Villani too had no difficulty in feeding himself and his horse. It was, however, accomplished at a price. The cost of food rose steeply and the Romans made enormous profits out of the Jubilee. Ventura had to pay a gros tournois per day for a bed for himself and a stable for his horse; even this did not include fodder which was extremely dear. A number of pilgrims accompanied their devotions with austerities, fasts, vigils, and even flagellation ‘to prepare themselves for the vast influx of the Holy Spirit’. The great amorphous mass of men taxed the papal police to the limit of their endurance. On the bridge below the Castel St. Angelo pilgrims were made to keep to one side when entering the Leonine city and the other when leaving it. On the city side of the bridge a new street had to be opened in the walls to allow easier access.
Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion Page 36