The Spirit of French Capitalism by Charly Coleman;

Author:Charly Coleman;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Theologians drew deeply on monetary metaphors to describe the workings of the spiritual economy. An eighteenth-century compendium of real indulgences stressed the supplemental, even superfluous, nature of the exchange. Pardons presumed a surfeit of sin, the temporal penalties for which could not be expiated in a single lifetime. God offered sinners the possibility of forgiving the original offense as well as the punishment it brought upon the soul. The compiler marveled at the “generous goodness of the Church, which procures for us so sure and so abundant a means” of salvation in the “depository of an inexhaustible treasure.” He urged readers to seek fortunes so freely given: “Let us never lose an occasion to profit,” he wrote, from privileges that “keep us in a spirit of fervor.”93 The analogies formulated between temporal and heavenly wealth transformed both registers of meaning. Economic references designated devotional objects as a means of conveying value without end. The economy in question was founded not on scarcity but abundance, with the rosary mediating between infinite indebtedness and infinite redemption.

As Pierre Forestier, canon on Avalon, observed, “the sovereign pontiffs seem to have wanted to surpass each other in the liberality with which they enriched the Rosary with indulgences.”94 In 1686 Pope Innocent XI directed Antoine de Monroy, Master of the Dominican Order, to publish a compilation of grants issued during his predecessors’ reigns. The quantities of indulgences varied widely: Sixtus IV (r. 1471–84) promised five years and five quarantines for saying the Rosary. As noted in the introduction to this chapter, his successor, Innocent VIII, increased the amount to a staggering sixty thousand years, provided one confessed before praying; the reward of five years was also retained, now merely for uttering the name of Jesus after each Ave Maria. Clement IX (r. 1667–69) guaranteed that Catholics in the Spanish Antilles enjoyed the same benefits as subjects residing in the metropole. Gregory XIII gave plenary indulgences to members who confessed and communed before participating in a procession with their rosaries; men and women too infirmed to participate could recite the prayers at home. Still further dispensations accrued for visiting the Chapel of the Holy Rosary in Rome or elsewhere, for giving alms, caring for ailing friends, attending services, and performing other pious actions.95

Several popes, including Innocent VIII, Pius V, Clement VIII (r. 1592–1605), and Clement X (r. 1670–76), offered to forgive all outstanding temporal penalties at the moment of death. This was an especially valuable asset, since it opened the possibility of avoiding purgatory altogether. For the most part, one needed only to have received last rites, or, less frequently, to have said the rosary either regularly during one’s lifetime or in one’s final hours. In drawing up the terms for gaining an indulgence, popes made allowances for the ill and indisposed, who often could recite prayers as a substitute for another good work.96 Clement X and Innocent XI also authorized petitions to bestow the advantages enjoyed by the confraternities on the “souls of the faithful departed in union with God.

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