ded as no less than
tickets of admission to heaven. In the thirteenth century the
theologians had discovered that there was at the disposal of the church
and her head an abundant "treasury of the merits of Christ and the
saints," which might be applied vicariously to anyone by the pope. In
the fifteenth century the claimed power to free living men from purgatory
was extended to the {24} dead, and this soon became one of the most
profitable branches of the "holy trade."

The means of obtaining indulgences varied. Sometimes they were granted
to those who made a pilgrimage or who would read a pious book. Sometimes
they were used to raise money for some public work, a hospital or a
bridge. But more and more they became an ordinary means for raising
revenue for the curia. How thoroughly commercialized the business of
selling grace and remission of the penalties of sin had become is shown
by the fact that the agents of the pope were often bankers who organized
the sales on purely business lines in return for a percentage of the net
receipts plus the indirect profits accruing to those who handle large
sums. Of the net receipts the financiers usually got about ten per
cent.; an equal amount was given to the emperor or other civil ruler for
permitting the pardoners to enter his territory, commissions were also
paid to the local bishop and clergy, and of course the pedlars of the
pardons received a proportion of the profits in order to stimulate their
zeal. On the average from thirty to forty-five per cent. of the gross
receipts were turned into the Roman treasury.

It is natural that public opinion should have come to regard indulgences
with aversion. Their bad moral effect was too obvious to be disregarded,
the compounding with sin for a payment destined to satisfy the greed of
unscrupulous prelates. Their economic effects were also noticed, the
draining of the country of money with which further to enrich a corrupt
Italian city. Many rulers forbade their sale in their territories,
because, as Duke George of Saxony, a good Catholic, expressed it, before
Luther was heard of, "they cheated the simple layman of his soul."
Hutten mocked at Pope Julius II for selling to others the heaven he could
not win himself. Pius II [Sidenote 1458-64] was obliged {25} to confess:
"If we send ambassadors to ask aid of the princes, they are mocked; if we
impose a tithe on the clergy, appeal is made to a future council; if we
publish