The First Jubilee Year

On February 22, 1300, Pope Boniface VIII went from the Lateran[i] to St. Peter's Basilica where a crowd of pilgrims awaited him. The Sovereign Pontiff ascended the ambo and, after the homily, published the bull Antiquorum habet fida relatio by which he proclaimed the first Jubilee in the history of the Church.

Giotto immortalized this event with a beautiful fresco, part of which can still be admired today in the Basilica of St. John Lateran.

“Boniface, Bishop, for perpetual memory. It is known from the faithful report of the ancients that there are great indulgences and remissions of sins granted to those who visit the venerable Basilica of the Prince of the Apostles. We therefore… considering these kinds of remissions and indulgences as agreeable, we confirm and approve them and even renew and approve them by this present writing.”

“And so that the blessed Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul may be ever more honored by the visit that the faithful will make to their basilicas, … We grant to all those who, truly penitent and confessed, will visit these basilicas, during this year one thousand three hundred, which began on the day of the Nativity of Our Lord … a full and entire remission of their sins.” 

Louis Tosti, Histoire de Boniface VIII et de son siècle, [History of St. Boniface VIII and His Times] Paris, Vives, 1854, t. II, p.109.

Cheers rang out in the basilica, while the original of the bull was solemnly carried to the altar of St. Peter. This was an unprecedented event in Christianity, as all contemporary annals attest. Two million faithful went to Rome that year.

This first Jubilee ended on Christmas Eve in the year 1300 and was one of the most prodigious manifestations of faith in medieval Christianity. Boniface VIII then fixed the celebration of the Holy Year every hundred years.

[i] An eyewitness, Cardinal J. G. Stefaneschi, left a precious testimony in his De centesimo seu jubileo Anno. See the journal Bessarione, t. VII, p.299–300.