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With the permission of the church, indulgences also became a way for Catholic rulers to fund expensive projects, such as Crusades and cathedrals, by keeping a significant portion of the money raised from indulgences in their lands. [41] There was a tendency to forge documents declaring that indulgences had been granted. [41]
Woodcut of an indulgence-seller in a church from a 1521 pamphlet Johann Tetzel's coffer, now on display at St. Nicholaus church in Jüterbog, Germany. Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg and town preacher, [3] wrote the Ninety-five Theses against the contemporary practice of the church with respect to indulgences.
The Catholic Church had technically banned the practice of selling indulgences as long ago as 1567. As the Times points out, a monetary donation wouldn't go amiss toward earning an indulgence.
Tetzel was known for granting indulgences on behalf of the Catholic Church in exchange for tithes to the Church. Indulgences grant a degree of expiation of the punishments of purgatory due to sin. However, the misuse of indulgences within the Church largely contributed to Martin Luther writing his Ninety-five Theses. The main usage of the ...
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation and the European Reformation, [1] was a major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and the authority of the Catholic Church.
The worldly excesses of the secular Renaissance church, epitomized by the era of Alexander VI (1492–1503), exploded in the Reformation under Pope Leo X (1513–1521), whose campaign to raise funds in the German states to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica by supporting sale of indulgences was a key impetus for Martin Luther's 95 Theses.
Other Catholic practices that had drawn the ire of reformers within the Church, such as indulgences, pilgrimages, the veneration of saints and relics, and the veneration of the Virgin Mary were strongly reaffirmed, though abuses of them were forbidden.
Religious institutes and the like, to which grants of plenary indulgences, for instance for visiting a particular church or shrine, had been previously made, were given a year from the date of promulgation of Indulgentiarum Doctrina to have them confirmed, and any that were not confirmed (mostly in a more limited way than before) [9] within two ...