Pope Clement VI (7 mai 1342 – 6 déc. 1352)

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The Indulgence​—A Special Catholic Doctrine

The confessor imposes upon the repentant Catholic a penance (such as prayer, fasting, alms, or pilgrimage). The pope can remit these penalties because, according to Roman Catholic theory, he is lord over all temporal punishments (including purgatory) and grants indulgence from the so-called treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints. In the Middle Ages, this privilege lent itself to serious abuse and was described as “a commercial business of great dimensions, carried out at the expense of moral standards and in contradiction to the teachings of the Holy Scriptures.”

The church does not equate penance with the pardoning of sins. However, even in medieval times, people retained “the simple belief that through payment the [sin] debt was canceled,” and preachers of indulgences supported this notion. Luther’s theses were directed against those “fables” and were thus summarized: “Indulgences are works of men and have nothing in common with the pure gospel.”

Pope Clement VI established the doctrine in 1343 but did not clearly define it. Thus, Luther could appeal to its noncommittal nature. The church quickly made up for this by issuing an official definition of indulgence in 1518.

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