Chapter 8 – Holy Mass Tourism for Each Generation

It all happened in the year 1300 of the Incarnation of our Lord, when the most Blessed Peter’s Vicar on earth, Pope Boniface VIII, proclaimed that from the previous Christmas to the next and on every hundreds year following, Roman Catholics visiting the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome would have the fullest pardon for all their sins. What believer could resist such unheard-of and immense spiritual bounty?

And so it was that Burgher Mackirken from Scotland, Manfredo Domino from Sicily , Count Stanislav from Poland, the Knight von Arnhem from Saxony, Senior Olivero from Spain, Olla Olafson from Scandinavia, Sgr Maerigo Bernini from Florence, Charles Montfroid from Paris and thousands of others suddenly departed, all in the same direction and towards the same goal. Rome, the Holy City.

What had prompted Pope Boniface to create such a precedent so unexpectedly? What arcane revelation had induced him to fling wide open the gates to the treasures of heaven? The answer is but one: the allure of the treasures of the earth.

For, truly, devotion to the Blessed Peter, which in the early golden days had made the naive Saxons flock to his tongue in Rome to ask his pardon, had greatly diminished. Coin offerings had dwindled to next to nothing . The sad fact was that, whereas the local hierarchies in many parts of Christendom were becoming fat and rich, the Holy Father in the heart of Rome was becoming increasingly poor. St. Peter’s coffer, he was being repeatedly told by his treasurers, were very low; indeed, they were well- nigh empty. Something had better be done to replenish them.

And thus it came to pass that one day Providence provided Pope Boniface with a truly “providential” inspiration. This he had, after our man reputed to have reached the ripe old age of 107, had kissed his feet, saying that in the year 1200 his father had come to Rome to offer a coin to St.Peter in order to receive an indulgence for the remission of sins. Hearing this, Boniface needed no further providential prompting. He thanked God that he had been told about it just at the beginning of the year 1300. Better late than never. Being a man of action, he speedily proclaimed the Jubilee on 22nd February, 1300, to the amazement, surprise and the delight of many, particularly in Rome.

The good children of the Church, most of whom did not believe that they could emulate the vigorous old man of 107, but realizing that so wholesome a remission of sins was truly the chance of a lifetime, did not hesitate. They left their villages, cities and countries by the thousands. Europe saw a mass movement the like of which had never before been experienced, and all compressed within a single calendar year. A contemporary, Villani, declared that there were at least 200,000 pilgrims daily in Rome G. Ventura, another contemporary eye-witness , said that crowds were so great that he saw men and women trampled underfoot. The poet Dante could find no better comparison for the multitudes of the damned in his Inferno than the crowds which congregated in Rome during this Jubilee.

But if the pilgrims went to Rome to gain the total remission of their sins, they had to show their gratitude to the Blessed Peter and Paul, not only with prayers, but also with a more tangible token of their reverence, that is, with money; and this they did. Cardinal Gaietano, nephew of the pope, admitted that his uncle Boniface received more than 30,000 gold florins, offered by pilgrims at the altar of St.Peter alone, and 20,000 at that of St.Paul. He was in that position to know.

In addition we have the description of an eye-witness who took part in the same Jubilee pilgrimage, the historian Ventura. Ventura has assured us that the tribute received by Pope Boniface on this occasion was “incomputable”. Then, to prove that his occasion was not exaggerated, he gives a glorious description. At the altar of St. Paul, he says, where he went to pray himself, there stood, by day and by night, two clerks and “raking in infinite money” – his very words! (1)Pope Boneface’s Jubilee had proved a tremendous success. The Blessed Peter’s coffers were replenished, and Rome prospered once more for a while.

Boniface’s successors, however, brooded. Some of them could never hope to see the beginning of the next century, since the lives of the popes in those days were very often shortened not only by age but also by dagger, poison or greedy nephews. And so, one bright day in January in the year 1343, Pope Clement VI issued a bull declaring that, in view of the shortness of human life, he had reduced the Jubilee’s span from one hundred to fifty years. (2) Then, to make sure that the pilgrims would come in multitudes as on the first occasion, he offered them a further spiritual inducement. In June 1346 he issued another bull in which he asserted that he had complete control and, indeed, power over the future life. And, proceeding to exact details, he told the prospective pilgrims that he could order the angels of heaven to liberate from purgatory the souls of any of them who might die on the road to Rome.

Pope Clement’s additional spiritual inducements proved a tremendous success, for it must be remembered that traveling in those days was the most hazardous occupation anyone could undertake. Traveling was mainly on foot ; horse-riding was only for a few. There were no hotels, hardly any real roads, no food provisions or banks or police; but, on the contrary, robbers all along the way, starvation, sleeping in the open, disease. About the time of this second Jubilee there also appeared the Black Death, which truly decimated the population of Europe. To realize how hazardous an enterprise it was, suffice it to remember that during the first and second Jubilees, only one out of ten pilgrims returned home alive.

Yet, in spite of all this, during the Easter of the Jubilee it was estimated that there were more than a million pilgrims in Rome. Many people were trampled to death at the tombs of the Apostles, Once again, the concrete gratitude of the pilgrims replenished St.Peter’s coffers beyond Clement’s wildest dreams.

Many others throughout Christendom, however, could not or would not come. Either the Black Death had killed their families or had ruined them or the survivors had to attend to important business or were too feeble to undertake such a risky journey. But their piety and their longing for remission of their sins, with the added privilege of liberating a soul from the flames of purgatory, were no less sincere than were these feelings in the fortunate ones who had gone to Rome in person. The pope listened, agreed, in his paternal consideration for the spiritual welfare of those far-away children, he decreed that they, too should partake of the privileges of the indulgences on the Jubilee

He began with Hugh, King of Cyprus; Edward III and Henry, Duke of Lancaster in England; Queen Isabella of France; Queen Philippa of England and Queen Elizabeth of Hungary. These all responded with regal oblations: that is, with generous, solid payments of gold.

But if kings and queens had been thus favored, why not lesser folk, as good as Roman Catholics as their majesties? The pope agreed, and he promptly instructed his representatives outside Rome to the exempt the would-be pilgrims from undertaking the journey – provided, of course, that they did not forget to show their gratitude to the Blessed Peter with a little offering. The Papal Nuncio in Sicily was one of the first to carry out the instructions. He exempted thirty persons from undertaking the pilgrimage, provided they paid what the pilgrimage would have cost them had they actually gone to Rome. And so the practice of collecting from penitents at home sums equivalent to the cost of the pilgrimage was born.

The advantages for both sides were too obvious to miss, and so hierarchs in other countries decided to imitate the pope. In 1420 the Archbishop of Canterbury proclaimed a Jubilee with the same “pardons” as those of Rome. This precedent, however, was too dangerous. Supposing it spread to other countries? Martin V, the reigning pope, called it “audacious sacrilege”, threatened excommunication, and the enterprising archbishop had to be content with local revenues.

The Jubilee of 1450 was again an immense success. The amount of gold collected from the pilgrims was so huge that Pope Nicholas V struck a coin known “the Jubilee”. This coin was of such unusual size going on was of such unusual size a equaled three of the ordinary cold peace and issued at that time by the royal mints of Europe.

One of Pope Nicholas’ successors, Pope Paul II, in 1470 reduced the interval of the Jubilee to twenty- five years, and, to prompt the pilgrims to come to Rome instead of benefiting from the Jubilee’s privileges at home, he suspended all other indulgences. Notwithstanding such measures, however, the Jubilee of 1475 was not a great success.

Nevertheless, even on this location the Church as a whole benefited in so far as the payment of specific sums continued increasing . The sums thus paid, of course, varied according to the status, wealth and dignity of the “exempted pilgrims.” From archbishops, bishops and nobles down to counts, four gold florins had to be paid; abbots and barons paid three gold florin. (3)

During the Jubilee of 1500, Pope Alexander VI, whose love of money was notorious, decided to add something new, and initiated the first ceremony of the Opening of the Holy Door. What the Holy Door should have been, or was, was never clearly understood – except that it was a device to entice the pilgrims to Rome. However, pope and architects looked in vain for such a Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica. The door could not be found; so one was prepared in haste, so as not to disappoint the oncoming penitents.

To make even more money, Pope Alexander VI charged his representatives, most of whom were called penitentiaries, with authority to reduce the days to be spent on the pilgrimage on payment of one- fourth of the expense thus saved. In addition to this they were also authorized to compound for irregularities, with authority to reduce the days to be spent on the pilgrimage on payment of one-fourth of the expense thus saved. In addition to this they were also authorized to compound for “irregularity” – for instance, on a charge of simony – on payment of one-third of the sums acquired by it. In this manner that the Basilica of St.Peter was soon transformed into a veritable market-place where pardons, indulgences, merits, dispensations and suchlike religious privileges were sold, exchanged, resold and marketed over the papal money chests.

Not content with that, Alexander in 1501 began to collect additional money throughout the rest of Europe by dispatching his legates everywhere, selling the indulgences at a discount: that is, for one- fifth of what a pilgrimage to Rome would have cost the potential pilgrim buyers. More than one Catholic king, no less business-minded and no less in need of money than the pope, considered the idea an excellent one – to mention the most notorious of them, Henry VIII of England, who came to a cordial understanding with the Papal Legate as to the royal share of the proceeds.

This was the last Jubilee before the Reformation. Indeed, it was the Jubilee which, unnoticed almost by all, had planted the seeds which were eventually to blossom into the portentous trees that were ultimately to make the monolithic structure crack into two mighty halves and bring about the emergence of Protestantism.

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