On Thu, 21 Aug 1997, Jessalynn Bird wrote:
It seems clear that one basic question underlay all
> the fuss about indulgences: who is in control of penance, either in the
> external forum of justice or the internal forum of confession. A matter
> both of control over pastoral care and legal jurisdiction.
>
>
Then the broadest sense of the indulgence question is very broad indeed!
And the legal and judicial past a very important element. For one thing,
the medieval principle of excommunication was that it was effective even
if unjust, and that put a great lever in the hands of more and more
officers, mostly fiscal agents of one or another ecclesiastical
corporation, when the ecclesiastical sanctions were subdelegated to them:
their victims would at least have to get absolved by a higher authority,
at some cost. The authority of the Apostolic See became accustomed in the
13th and 14th centuries to
issuing, for a reasonable chancery tax, the various indulgences
penitential and otherwise which I mentioned before, and then became
over-dependent on the revenue. It seems to me (it seemed to the reformers
at Constance, and to Luther) that the pastoral interest got quite lost.
A fine topic, and good luck with it!
Daniel Williman
Binghamton University
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