| Medieval indulgences have long had a troubled public image, grounded in centuries of confessional discord. Were they simply a crass form of medieval religious commercialism and a spiritual fraud, as the reforming archbishop Cranmer charged in his 1543 appeal to raise funds for Henry VIII's contributions against the Turks? Or were they perceived and used in a different manner? In his influential work, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise, R.N. Swanson offered fresh arguments for the centrality and popularity of indulgences in the devotional landscape of medieval England, and thoroughly documented the doctrinal development and administrative apparatus that grew up around indulgences. How they functioned within the English social and devotional landscape, particularly at the local level, is the focus of this thesis. Through an investigation of published episcopal registers, my thesis explores the social impact of indulgences at the diocesan level by examining the context, aims, and social make up of the beneficiaries, as well as the spiritual and social expectations of the granting bishops. It first explores personal indulgences given to benefit individuals, specifically the deserving poor and ransomed captives, before examining indulgences given to local institutions, particularly hospitals and parishes. Throughout this study, I show that both lay people and bishops used indulgences to build, reinforce or maintain solidarity and social bonds between diverse groups. Bishops used indulgences for indigent individuals to promote solidarity and support for the deserving poor. Ransomed English captives used indulgences to seek communal assistance to purchase their freedom. Hospitals used indulgences to draw the healthy and wealthy of society to the geographic and social peripheries where the sick and the leprous lay, calling for support and solidarity. Finally, parishes used indulgences as a means to smooth over parochial divisions and to encourage greater unity among parishioners, both living and dead. In sum, I demonstrate that, in the years prior to the Reformation, the function of indulgences was multivalent and played an important, unifying role in local communities: they offered spiritual gain as well as social benefits that redounded beyond the mutuality they represented and effected between benefactor and beneficiary. |
