The Practice That Helped Open the Reformation

An indulgence granted for a pilgrimage is one thing; an indulgence available in exchange for a financial contribution is another, and the distinction was blurred repeatedly in the later medieval centuries. Preachers were licensed to offer indulgences in return for donations to particular projects, commissions were taken, and the proceeds funded building works including the rebuilding of Saint Peter's. That practice was the immediate occasion of Luther's ninety five theses in 1517, which are largely about indulgences and about what a pope can and cannot remit, and the controversy that followed became the Reformation.

The Council of Trent later reaffirmed the doctrine of indulgences while abolishing the office of the questor and forbidding the taking of money for them, which is an acknowledgement that the criticism of the practice had force even where the doctrine was defended. The jubilee itself continued and continues. Extraordinary holy years have been called outside the ordinary twenty five year cycle to mark particular anniversaries, and modern jubilees are pilgrimages on a very large scale with the indulgence attached to conditions including confession, communion and prayer rather than to any payment.