that his sins have been forgiven.  Whatever penances or pious exercises the Church may impose an sinners who have confessed their sins can only be imposed as a wholesome disciplinary measure and as aids to the needed reformation of life.  These penances, since they originate in the choice of the Church, may also be remitted by the Church, and for these penances the Church may accept a commutation in money, which payment, however, cannot supersede the paramount duty of the penitent to amend his sinful conduct.  Such were Luther’s views in brief outline at the time he published his Theses.  If we are to take modern Catholic critics of Luther seriously, that has also been the teaching of their Church on the subject of indulgences.  They claim that the good intentions of the Popes were grossly misinterpreted and the system of indulgences was put to uses for which it was never intended.  If that is the case, why do they attack Luther for his attempt to have the abuses corrected?  According to their own presentation of the true teaching of the Church on the subject of indulgences, Luther was the most dutiful son of the Church in his day in what he did on All Souls’ Eve, 1517.

But the Roman teaching on indulgences is not such an innocent affair as Catholics would have us believe.  The practise of substituting for penances some good work or contribution to a pious purpose had arisen in the Church at a very early time.  “This,” says Preserved Smith, who has well condensed the history of indulgences, “was the seed of indulgence which would never have grown to its later enormous proportions had it not been for the crusades.  Mohammed promised his followers paradise if they fell in battle against unbelievers, but Christian warriors were at first without this comforting assurance.  Their faith was not long left in doubt, however, for as early as 855 Leo IV promised heaven to the Franks who died fighting against the Moslems.  A quarter of a century later John VIII proclaimed absolution for all sins and remission of all penalties to soldiers in the holy war, and from this time on the ‘crusade indulgence’ became a regular means of recruiting, used, for example, by Leo IX in 1052 and by Urban II in 1095.  By this time the practise had grown up of regarding an indulgence as a remission not only of penance, but of the pains of purgatory.  The means which had proved successful in getting soldiers for the crusade were first used in 1145 or 1146 to get money for the same end, pardon being assured to those who gave enough to fit out one soldier on the same terms as if they had gone themselves.

“When the crusades ceased, in the thirteenth century, indulgences did not fall into desuetude.  At the jubilee of Pope Boniface VIII, in 1300, a plenary indulgence was granted to all who made a pilgrimage to Rome.  The Pope reaped such an enormous harvest from the gifts of these pilgrims that he saw fit to employ similar means at frequent intervals, and soon extended the same privileges as were granted to pilgrims to all who contributed for some pious purpose at their own homes.  Agents were sent out to sell these pardons, and were given power to confess and absolve, so that in 1393 Boniface IX was able to announce complete remission of both guilt and penalty to the purchasers of his letters.