God's Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World

by Alan Mikhail

The idea of indulgences arose in the twelfth century, at the height of the Crusades. Before Crusaders left their homes to battle Muslims in the Middle East, priests would guarantee them absolution of their sins in advance, in case they died while fighting for the liberation of Jerusalem. Instead of financial compensation, these promises of salvation served as the soldiers’ reward for their bravery in the Holy Land—thus establishing the principle that redemption could be won by something other than piety. From these origins, indulgences ballooned into a commodity that flooded the Church’s coffers with cash. By Luther’s time, individuals could simply pay the Church—no warring required—for the forgiveness of ordinary sins such as lying or lust. Like checking a price list in a butcher’s shop, a believer could find his sin on the ledger and pay the going rate to have it excised from his worldly and, he would hope, eternal life.