in Hell was as important to a believer in the sixteenth century (whether king or commoner) as getting a good crop or transporting your wool to market. According to the Roman Catholic Church, there could be no entrance into Heaven without the Church and its exclusive sacraments which conferred what is known as sanctifying grace.
Take, for example, King Henry IV of France who on 14 May 1610 was stopped in his carriage on a street in Paris, and stabbed in the chest by an assassin. His companions, although sure he was already dead, covered his wounds as he was rushed back to the palace. Laid out on his bed, a priest put his ear to the king’s mouth in order to hear a possible last confession but no sound came from the dead monarch’s mouth. The sacrament of Last Rites could not be performed and it was thus possible, although the Church would never pronounce on the issue, that King Henry never made it to heaven.
By the mid-twelfth century, seven sacraments (the outward acts which give inward, divine grace) had been defined canonically, of which five were for the laity and religious alike. All Roman Catholics were baptized soon after birth, removing the Original Sin (which Adam and Eve had committed after their unfortunate encounter with Satan in the Garden of Eden). They could all receive the sacrament of confession from a priest by which their souls were cleansed of sins committed since baptism. All Catholics could then receive communion (the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper – a replication of Christ’s Last Supper with His Apostles before His crucifixion) from a priest who changed the bread and wine at the celebration of Mass into what was (and is still) believed by Catholics to be: the real Body and Blood of Jesus. They were given the sacrament of confirmation in their teenage years to become adults in and defenders of the Catholic faith. Finally, all Christians could have their souls given a final cleansing, Eucharist, and a last anointing from a priest before death through the sacrament of Extreme Unction.
One of the final two sacraments was for the laity (Marriage) and the other (Holy Orders) for those becoming priests who were then capable of performing the sacrement of Eucharist – changing bread and wine into the real Body and Blood of Jesus for Eucharistic communion. After AD 1139, the Church decreed that priests could not marry, thereby circumventing inheritance disputes within the Church and its properties.
Salvation should have been accessible for all sixteenth-century Roman Catholics as long as they received these sacraments and did good works. However, as in the case of Henry IV, death might be sudden, leaving serious or, as they were called, mortal sins unconfessed. If you died with unconfessed mortal sins (for example murder or robbery), you certainly wound up in Hell for eternity. God’s judgement upon your death with unconfessed venial (lesser) sins sent you to Purgatory, the ‘Third Place’ as Luther called it.
Purgatory was not an eternal abode, but a place where your soul spent an unknown period of time, undergoing a purging of venial sins such as theft, lying or some minor moral offence. Such purgation through fire could last anywhere from a day to the end of the world, and God never gave clues as to how long a soul would stay in Purgatory. The existence of Purgatory became carefully defined through the authority of thirteenth-century Roman Catholic theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. At the Council of Florence (1439), the Roman Catholic Church decreed Purgatory, and believers saw it as a densely populated place which was nearly impossible to avoid.
We can now see why a real crisis of salvation existed in the early sixteenth century. Christians (and all Christians were Roman Catholics in western Europe) had to keep careful track of all their sins so that they could give an accurate accounting of them at the confessional. It seemed certain that all Christians were sentenced to Purgatory, if not Hell, while only Church martyrs and saints gained immediate entry into Heaven because of their sinless state. But how long were those who were going to be eventually saved going to have to stay in Purgatory? What’s notable about all of this is the notion that humans had some sort of control over the length of time they would have to stay there.
‘Shortening a Stay in Purgatory’
The Church created the indulgence as a hedge against too long a stay in Purgatory (pictured below). Indulgences, of which there were many forms, basically shortened the time of punishment in Purgatory for one’s sins. Prominent among these forms was the purchase of pardon. These purchases were recognized as abusive by the Church itself, but the abuse continued nonetheless. Christians could, depending on how much money they paid for these indulgences, shorten their own souls’ or the souls of their relatives’ duration in Purgatory and hasten entry into Heaven by a year, ten years, several hundred or however much they could afford. However, if the uncertain Christian had not paid enough, the poor soul still might have another several million years to spend in Purgatory; or, conversely, he may have overpaid. Proceeds from the purchase of indulgences were used for rebuilding the ancient St Peter’s in Rome to be the present basilica we know it as today. It was a win-win solution for the Church and an uncertain one for the buyer of the indulgences.
A sixteenth-century depiction of purgatory
Accounting and banking had been developing since the thirteenth century in the city-states of Florence and Venice. By the sixteenth century, several high officials and popes in the Roman Catholic Church came from banking families such as the Medici. The ideas of accounting and the monetary compensation for intercession in Purgatory transferred from traditions of commerce and banking in civil society to the Church and its mission of salvation, with the Church acting as the broker for salvation.
Early Sixteenth-Century Efforts at Reform
Attempts in the early sixteenth century to reform the Roman Catholic Church were led by, among others, Desiderius Erasmus of Holland and Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples of France. They believed that the Church was guilty of pastoral neglect, sexual malfeasance and personal financial gain, but they had no intention of breaking with Rome or its papacy. They also believed that the laity should have more direct access to the Scripture within their own vernaculars. Bibles existed only in Latin according to Church dictate, and those who dared to publish the Bible in vernacular languages were turned over to secular authorities for punishment.
However, some highly placed people felt that the Bible should be accessible to all. In 1524, for example, Lefèvre d’Étaples (pictured below) was asked by Bishop Guillaume Briçonnet to introduce vernacular bibles in the district of Meaux, north-east of Paris. Bishop Briçonnet had, as support, Marguerite d’Angoulême, the sister of the French king, Francis I.
Engraving of Lefèvre d’Étaples
However, political conditions changed the reforms in Meaux. Francis I sought to control areas to which he had dynastic claims and thus he invaded Italy in 1525. After his defeat in February 1525 at the Battle of Pavia in northern Italy, Francis I was taken prisoner by the Emperor Charles V and brought to Spain for a year, thereby depriving Lefèvre of his royal protection. Theological enemies forced Lefèvre and his colleagues to close down their biblical work in Meaux and flee to Navarre (of which Marguerite d’Angoulême was now queen).
Desiderius Erasmus (pictured below), known as the greatest scholar of his age, was a contemporary of Lefèvre and twenty-one years older than Luther. Born in Rotterdam, he joined the Augustinian Order of monks, which he eventually left, and travelled throughout Europe as a welcome guest of royalty and other court figures. He published many influential books, including a Greek New Testament (1516), which became the basis for the work of other scholars and religious thinkers. Erasmus was also a pacifist, arguing that since Christ was the Prince of Peace, all Christians should be peaceful as well.
Portrait of Erasmus c.1523, by Holbein the Younger