We continue our series of posts in anticipation of All Souls Day.

Growing up in the mid-20th century I clearly remember the nuns leading us in prayers and rosaries for “the poor souls in purgatory who have no one to pray for them.” Which is actually a quite lovely idea and really addresses the idea of the communion of saints, living and deceased. But I also clearly remember being told “this rosary will shorten the sentence in purgatory by 30 days.” As a third grader I thought “OK.” Seemed like a pretty good bargain. When one begins to understand all the above, you have to wonder, where and when did indulgences begin to be described in terms of “days” or “years” and such?

One needs to remember that in the early Church, penances were very public and were prescribed for a set period of time. For example, spend Sunday morning outside the church dressed in sack cloth and ashes for 1 year. An indulgence, even then an act of piety, could reduce the penance by (e.g.) 30 days. It wasn’t a reduction of the time in purgatory (as if that even had a meaning), but a reduction of time in this life when the penitent was “apart” from the believing community. As the Sacrament of Confession moved to a private setting, so too did the penances, and yet the language of time endured. Slowly the connection to penance was lost and starting in the early medieval period, indulgences began to be described in terms of “days,” “quarantines,” or “years” and slowly, misguided priests and religious began to connect indulgences with chronological time in purgatory.

By the late Middle Ages and into the modern era, people began thinking that saying a certain prayer automatically subtracted X days from purgatory. This contributed to superstition and misunderstanding — and was a factor in the abuses that provoked the Protestant Reformation. The Council of Trent strongly condemned the abuses surrounding indulgences, corrected abuses, but the language was embedded in the popular imagination as was the connection to purgatory.

The 20th-Century brought reform. Pope St. Paul VI, in 1967, issued the apostolic constitution Indulgentiarum Doctrina, a watershed in indulgence theology but really just a reaffirmation of what it was always meant to be. The Pope abolished the “days and years” system, noting that it was misunderstood and misused and left the faithful thinking it was some kind of “works salvation” by which they could earn (or worse be owed) the grace of purification. It was at that time that the Church reduced all indulgences to two categories: Plenary (full remission) and Partial (remission in part). It was done hoping that an emphasis shift away from “measuring time” to encouraging the faithful to perform works of devotion, penance, and charity with sincere faith would return indulgences to their original meaning and purpose.

Image credit: All Souls’ Day | Jakub Schikaneder, 1888 | National Gallery Prague | PD-US