Development of the Practice of Indulgences (2)

Absolution, that was formerly not part of the sacrament, thus became part of the sacramental form properly speaking and this term came to replace the former term of “reconciliation”. 

In fact, there was much hesitation about considering sacramental absolutions as effectively “remitting” sins and all of the eternal punishment; but all agreed on attributing to these absolutions the “forgiveness of sins” expressed in the words used, in the sense that they procured a real remission before God of the penalties, exactly as works of satisfaction would have done.

However, the purpose of absolutions was in no way the remission of the penalties imposed by the Church (which did not keep them from being highly coveted by the faithful, for whom the chastisements of the afterlife that they at least partially remitted were more imposing than the penances inflicted here below).

This is where we come to “indulgences”. In fact, indulgences became a reality the day the heads of the Church, in granting extra-sacramental absolutions, intended to take away all or a part of the works of satisfaction imposed upon penitents by their confessors, with the idea that the efficacy of the absolution before God’s tribunal justified a proportionate lessening of the ecclesiastical penalties. 

To various extents, indulgences were both a “redemption” of the penalties – an aspect that they preserved for a long time with their way of counting the days, months and years – and an “absolution” by their effect before God.

The first historically established trace of an indulgence this broad comes from the bishops of southern France and northern Spain in the first half of the 11th century.