"Spirituality and the market:
indulgences and the indulgence business in late medieval England"
R.N. Swanson
As this paper is one of a series on 'New research and new methods in medieval studies', I should begin by saying something about its origins. This is very much work in progress, part of what will be a full scale project on indulgences and their role in late medieval English religion, if I get the research leave to write it up next year. This paper is contributes to a larger project to assess the role of the church and religion in the economic life of late medieval England. While in essence descriptive, what follows also aims - tentatively - to put indulgences into the context of the transition to capitalism in the late middle ages, but just how they fit in needs more work before the argument will be complete.
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My concern is with the marketing of indulgences and other spiritual privileges in pre-Reformation England. In the land of Huss there is no need to indicate the contested nature of indulgences at that time; in England that debated status is mirrored in the academic writings of Wycliffe, and in the literary creations of Chaucer, Langland, and others. Modern commentators take that contentiousness for granted, and often show little concern to understand or appreciate the role of indulgences in late medieval religion. After all, to the calmly scientific modern mind, the whole notion of indulgences seems if not absurd, at least very odd. If, according to the doctrine of the Treasury of Merits as promulgated by Pope Clement VI in 1343, the superabundant merits of Christ's Passion were available to be distributed among Christians by the power of the keys, why were they not distributed to all, freely? If there was more than enough merit to save all Christians from the pains of Purgatory, why did the hierarchs not offer that salvation to all?
Yet despite the doubts about their theology and morality, indulgences remained a component of that extensive range of practices which was medieval catholicism. Just how much they contributed, and who was attracted by them, are real questions. Arguably, their significance has been under-stated, at least in England. Christopher Haigh has claimed that 'indulgences did not play a big part in English religion'; in my view this grossly misreads their importance. Just as questionable is a literary critic's comment from 1984 which imposes modern prejudices by asserting that pardoners' claims would only deceive the 'lewd', being 'gross enough to be unable to impose upon any but the simplest of intellects'. In fact, most evidence for pardon purchases shows acquisition by members of the gentry and above, not the lower orders - so perhaps in justice the social comment should be inverted.
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Most of what follows deals with the marketing practices linked to indulgences; but it is worth emphasising at the start the numerous ways in which indulgences were available in medieval England, and the many purposes they served. Several were offered without requiring any cash exchange, including those for prayers for individual souls, for attending sermons, or for joining in a range of devotional practices. Most of these were small pardons - those for prayers for individual souls were often under forty days - but some devotional pardons extended to thousands of years. Some of these, perhaps most, were of dubious origins, but were validated by tradition and, according to the canonists, by the faith of the devotees.
Many indulgences did, nevertheless, demand a financial outlay. Particularly widespread were those encouraging attendance at shrines, or offered in exchange for prayers or for donations to hospitals and churches across Europe. Often available on specific feast days, their impact can sometimes be detected in the accounts of the relevant institutions, as at Norwich and Ely cathedrals, or Salisbury's parish church of St Edmund. Many more indulgences encouraged donations to charitable concerns, like maintenance of roads and bridges, funding church rebuilding after fire and flood, paying ransoms for prisoners of war, and aiding victims of assorted personal disasters (these, after 1453, included Greek refugees). Indulgences were fully integrated into the late-medieval penitential and charitable regimes. Most leave little trace, but it is wrong to devalue their contribution to religious and devotional life.
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The most debated aspect of the medieval indulgence business was the process of collecting through questors or pardoners. It is they who epitomise many of the alleged abuses in the system; their behaviour, thanks to the literary stereotypes, colours all attitudes to indulgences. In England, the activities of the pardoners leave extensive but patchy traces, and are at the core of this paper. Yet it is possible that pardoners were perhaps only a minority of those who collected funds in return for indulgences. Much must have been done by individuals collecting for their own ransoms, or to accumulate money to buy a place in a leper hospital, or to recover from failed business ventures. However, the bulk of the extant evidence is from large national institutions which had nation-wide collecting structures. At the local level, for purposes like bridge collections, or the funding of a local hospital, the sources are much less revealing. What follows can only be an incomplete picture of the indulgence business; it is important to be aware of its defects in advance.
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Although I have talked of 'indulgences' and 'the indulgence business', much of the evidence concerns a specific variant: the distribution of confraternity membership. Several institutions in the fifteenth century offered donors spiritual privileges beyond what might be called 'indulgences proper' - that is, privileges in addition to direct temporal alleviation of the pains of Purgatory. These privileges often included the right to select a confessor to grant plenary absolution at death, and the right to ecclesiastical burial even under interdict, regardless of cause of death unless specifically excommunicated by name. Further privileges were also accumulated and distributed - one feature of the late fifteenth century is a certain inflation in such extra benefits, perhaps reflecting increasing competition in the market.
The mechanisms for distributing such privileges could be extremely sophisticated. They perhaps became more so with the development of printing - and arguably the indulgence business in turn encouraged the development of that technology as a mass medium. While the distribution systems merit attention, the work is fraught with problems. The surviving material is at best limited, and very incomplete. How representative the surviving evidence is cannot be determined, and most discussion must be anecdotal. Many collections - notably those for cathedral fabric funds - leave records which hint at highly organised processes, but do not adequately reveal them in operation. Even among the major collecting institutions there are significant gaps in the evidence: of the leading bodies, little besides confraternity letters survives for the hospitals of Burton Lazars and Walsoken, for the chapel of St Mary in the Sea at Newton in Cambridgeshire, for the Hospitallers, or for the various Trinitarian houses. How they organised their collections cannot be stated with certainty, and at times the evidence is self-contradictory. For example, while the Trinitarians sometimes collected via questors, a publicity document forcefully points out that their agents 'be no questers but religious men approvyed'.
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How was collecting - specifically, collecting by pardoners - actually organised in late medieval England? The sources reveal processes at several levels. Some bodies leave records which show a top level of administration, a national structure. Below them, in the dioceses, the main evidence is grants of questorial licences, which allowed the local representatives to collect. Finally, there is the most localised evidence, showing contact between the marketers and the purchasers.
None of these levels is particularly well documented; the random and accidental nature of the sources makes a comprehensive analysis of indulgence distribution impossible. At the national level, we depend essentially on the limited records of three London institutions: the guild of the Name of Jesus in St Paul's cathedral; the fraternity of Roncesvalles at Charing Cross; and St Anthony's hospital. To these can be added records of a collection to fund bridge repairs at York in the 1520s, but these suggest a slightly different pattern. The guild of St Mary at Boston, and the Palmers' guild of Ludlow, also acted nationally (or, at least, over much of the country), and leave records, but did not use questors in the normal way.
At the diocesan level, the episcopal registers, and the information they provide about the licensing of questors, are the key source. They can sometimes be supplemented by other material, but such licences remain the chief documentary record. It is woefully incomplete. Registration of questorial letters almost disappears from York's registers after 1400, but in this case gaps can be partially filled from the cathedral chapter act books and the records of the archdeacons of Richmond. Paradoxically, despite the failings of its registers, the additional sources mean that York diocese gives some of the fullest information on the identities and activities of questors between 1300 and 1540. Also well documented is Hereford, where the bishops' registers provide unusually full information in the early sixteenth century.
The worst documented level of activity is the lowest, the point of contact between seller and purchaser. There are very few records of collectors in action, whether pardoners or individuals exploiting their own personal indulgences. In theory, pardoners could proclaim their wares only with the assent of the parish priest, presumably during a major service, and the parish clergy were often instructed to oversee the collection and pass on the receipts. Evidence of practice in the parishes is almost non-existent. Entries in the Hornsea parish accounts in the 1480s note payments by pardoners for several institutions, and hint at a constant traffic. Scribblings in a breviary from Wollaton (Nottinghamshire) may add to this, with a list of dates and institutions (including Walsoken, Burton Lazars, Bedlam, and Jesus of London) which may note questorial visits. How much purchasers paid is very rarely indicated. The evidence suggests that fraternity letters usually cost around 4d.. Notes on some letters indicate the sums involved. Even rarer are statements by purchasers, but occasional entries appear in accounts or commonplace books.
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At the national level, differing collecting methods can be discerned. The most straightforward applied to international bodies which maintained only a single proctor in England, who apparently undertook the whole collection process alone. Such was the case in the 1370s with the collection for St Mary of Mount Syon, represented by br. Richard de Boxsted. Something similar perhaps applied to collections for the Roman hospital of Santo Spirito, which leaves signs of activity in the 1470s and 1520s; although in the early 1300s its collecting arrangements were probably more complex.
A different arrangement was adopted by the fraternity of St Mary at Boston. This guild retained direct control over its collections, with the central officials being responsible for all the costs, and receiving all the income. Its officials who undertook annual or semi-annual tours to collect subscriptions and ensure full registration of the membership. Accordingly, the chamberlains travelled with their clerks across their allotted section of the country. The follow-up by the vice-chamberlains was seemingly even more specific: their demarcations were more defined, perhaps offering a closer parallel to the farming arrangements known for other bodies. One, therefore, covered Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Calais; another Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Dorset; a third Wales; although the areas were vaguer in the other parts of the country.
A third collecting structure was perhaps the most common, that of farming or leasing. This can be covered briefly here, as it will be dealt with in more detail later on. The central authorities, usually based in London, leased out the collections for specific dioceses. These farmers in turn presumably leased smaller collecting areas to more local collectors. How many layers there were to the pyramid, and the full scale of sub-letting, are not known, because of the lack of sources at that level.
This system of farming was also adaptable. In the 1520s a national collection to fund bridge repairs at York offers a hyrbid between farming and the system adopted by the Boston and Ludlow guilds. York's city government was the prime mover, and retained overall supervision, including appointing some local collectors and arranging publicity. However, the collections for several dioceses were farmed out, often to York citizens.
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The people involved in these arrangements - always men - deserve more attention. For the great national bodies the leading farmers, those at the top level of the leasing pyramid, must have been people of regional or national importance, although precise identification is often impossible. The London institutions must have considered them people of established commercial reputation, either with access to immediate capital, or with sufficient credit-worthiness to be taken on trust. The latter seems more likely, as there were almost constant arrears. Some were members of relatively prominent local families, like the Mark family which held the St Paul's lease in the west country; while the John Portte who farmed the collections for St Antony's hospital in most of the diocese of Lichfield was perhaps related to the leading lawyer of that name. Some were prominent traders - like Thomas Mathewe of Winchester, clothier, who in 1536 held the St Anthony's lease of the dioceses of Canterbury, Winchester, Chichester, and Rochester, with the English possessions around Calais.
The London connections of some of the principal farmers for the hospital of St Anthony are shown through the bonds arranged to guarantee the payment of their farms. These suggest that their London contacts established the farmers' links with the hospital. Thus, when Thomas Morton took over the questorships of Worcester and Hereford, his guarantors were John Abraham, citizen and goldbeater of London, and Richard Snodenham, citizen and barber of London. Likewise, Ludovic Haward's farm of the dioceses of St David's and Llandaff, in 1476, was guaranteed by a bond from John Mathew, citizen of London.
These high-level farmers were presumably exploiting their position essentially in a capitalistic manner, as investments. The hierarchy of farming and distribution arrangements in which they were involved may provide one answer to the search for some of England's earliest capitalists. However, their profit levels are impossible to determine, because the precise relationship between farm and actual receipts remains unknown. An indication, if there was a parallel, is offered by the arrangements for farming the receipts of the papal collector in the late fifteenth century. The lease of the collectorate of Canterbury province may have produced a profit of about £45 on a farm of £110; that of York just under £4 on a farm of £18. However, the two sets of arrangements may not be comparable. The records of the Jesus guild of St Paul's give another hint. In the early sixteenth century the guild's London proctor accounted directly, handing over all his receipts and being repaid 3s. 4d. in the pound - a sixth of the proceeds. Thus, in 1514-15, Thomas Holmes was allowed £4 17s. 2½d. on receipts of £29 3s. 3d. In the 1520s the London collections were leased out; the rent, around £21 a year, perhaps assumes that the farmer would collect about the same amount as Holmes.
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While the upper levels of the farming structure show the links between the central authorities and the diocesan farmers, the local picture is harder to establish. Yet the local questor or pardoner was perhaps the most important person in the whole business of indulgence distribution. For them involvement was very much a business, indeed a trade, which could be combined with small- (or even large-) scale peddling, by chapmen and others. That association began early: in the early thirteenth century Robert de Courson condemned some questors as caupones, tradesmen. While this may be merely allegorical denigration, it could also be a realistic summary of their activities.
A model for such activity is provided by Chaucer's comments on friar Hubert, and his collecting of small trinkets as payment for fraternity from the women on his rounds. This is matched by other scattered evidence of collecting in kind. In its formal appeal St John's hospital, Canterbury, declared itself willing to receive 'ring, brooch, gold, silver, cows, heifer, sheep, lamb or calf'; and the leases from St Anthony's hospital regularly mention the collection of 'St Anthony's pigs'. A collector for the reconstruction of Bridport harbour in 1447 reported that 'whereas in the previous year he had been able to gather large quantities of groats, pennies, wool, broken silver, and rings for the works of St Mary Magdalen hospital ... he could scarcely collect a dishful of wheat, malt, or barley, or even a piece of bacon, for the harbour works.' Among unlicenced pardoners dealt with at Ripon in 1469-70, one had collected 10½d. in cash and goods, while another had acquired a sheet and other goods.
With the opportunities for petty dealing provided by indulgence selling, it is no surprise to find people with dual trading designations. In the York freemen's register, for instance, one man was admitted in 1474-5 as a questor alias chapman; while in 1505-6 another was described as a haberdasher and questor.
It is unfortunate that these local collectors are usually so obscure, for they had considerable economic opportunities by combining their activities as distributors and petty traders. It would be too much to identify all pardoners as petty capitalists, but some perhaps were. The indulgence market offered obvious opportunities for profit - it must have done, otherwise it would not have attracted so many false practitioners. For those at the lower levels of the business, a dual role as pardon seller and petty trader may even have been an economic necessity: at the bottom level it is unlikely that many pardoners could survive solely from the profits of their collections. One indication of pardoners' economic standing appears in the 1379 poll-tax, which gave them a distinct status (significantly, perhaps, provided they were not artisans) - and a liability of 2s.6d. each. This matched the rate for an esquire, and was several times the basic payment of 4d. per head. The York returns for the 1381 tax (levied at a standard 1s. per head, but with provision for the wealthy to pay more to relieve the poor) record six pardoners. Notes of assessment exist for four of them. John de Birstall, John de Swillington, and John Sharnok each paid the standard 12d., but Robert de Wresell paid double.
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When considering the reality of the local pardoner, the protrayal in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is unavoidable, and is replicated through to the sixteenth century. So far little has been done to identify local pardoners, or to assess their operations in fact rather than fiction. Material from the dioceses of York and Herefored contributes greatly to a general understanding of their role in the indulgence business, and may even aid their rehabilitation. The main concern here is with the fifteenth and sixteenth century, but there is also important material from York for the earlier fourteenth century.
In general, those operating in the localities were not the high level lessees. Those people were entrepreneurs, and usually had no direct involvement in the actual selling. However, there were exceptions, which should not be ignored. Among the farmers of St Antony's hospital, for instance, Thomas Ipers, the lessee for Hereford diocese, appears as a questor there. Likewise, the William Morgan and William Buckshawe who collected for the York bridges in Hereford diocese in 1528 were probably York citizens: William Buckshaw appears on city's freemen's roll as a capper in the 1520s, while William Morgan might be either a capper or a hosier.
Most of the top level farmers sublet, but on what terms is unknown. A sense of the different layers in the pyramid appears by comparing the records of London's Jesus guild of St Paul's with information on questorial licences from the York records, which often name local collectors. The surviving guild accounts, for 1514 to 1535, name the diocesan lessees. In general, the guild's northern collections were treated as part of a package, York province usually being farmed with other dioceses. From 1514 (perhaps earlier) the package was York, Ely, and Norwich, let to Nicholas Smith of Cambridge for £20 a year. In 1523-4 Lincoln was added, but the next year Smith was replaced by Richard Pierson (also of Cambridge) and Robert Shethar, a London merchant taylor, at a rent of £24. 1530-1 saw further changes. John Tyler of Coventry took over, his territory covering the province of York plus the dioceses of Lincoln, Norwich, Worcester, 'Chester' (that is, Lichfield and Coventry), and Hereford, at a rent of £34 6s. 8d.
In the York records, proctors for the Jesus guild received questorial licences from 1504, and it was listed among the diocese's major collecting bodies in the 1530s. Those granted questorial licences are not often named, so involvement by the London farmer remains possible, but enough are identified to suggest otherwise. In 1521, for instance, the questor was one Sherpharrow; in 1532 Milo Lax (who also acted for other institutions). In 1533 Henry Hessilwod appears as pardoner for the East Riding archdeaconry, with Hugh Beck (alias Scofeld) as questor for York city and Ainsty deanery in 1534.
The ladder of leases might have several rungs. Where John Dawes fits in is not clear, but he was at least one layer down from Nicholas Smith when he appears associated with the pardon of the Jesus guild in 1518, having in turn sub-let, and suing William Kynston for 7s., due as payment for the collections for the Jesus guild at Lenton in Nottinghamshire. In 1521 he also took on a sub-lease of collections for a fraternity of St John the Baptist in Nottingham deanery, from John Blande of Mansfield Woodhouse, for £4. Nottingham records provide other evidence of low-level leasing. In 1517 a Lincoln pardoner, Robert Bate, acting for the house of St Sepulchre in Warwick, had sublet the collection in the deaneries of Bingham and Nottingham to Robert Gilbert, for 5s.
The last references to the Jesus guild arrangements in York diocese hint at a change in practice. Henry Hessilwod had ambitions: in 1534-5 he appears in the London records as the farmer, for the province alone, at £10 per annum. Actually from York, he may have been a dyer, his trade maybe providing the capital to break into the indulgence business. Yet his questorial licence of 1533, renewed in 1534, shows that he was personally involved in the selling.
A similar pattern may apply for the London hospital of St Anthony of Vienne; but its few accounts cannot provide sufficient solid evidence. In 1513 its proctorship of the northern province and Isle of Man was let to John Egylsfeld and others for a total of £88. Who Egylsfeld was is not stated; but in 1516 one local proctor was John Felixkirk, who appears regularly through to the 1530s. Only one other questor is identified in northern sources: William Sharparow, in 1534.
In some cases subletting would not appear worthwhile, yet did occur. By 1522-3 the Roncesvalles pardon for the province of York was leased to John Cawod for 33s. 4d. annually. His name suggests a Yorkshireman, but no closer identification is possible. He had only recently taken on the office, being excused all payment in the first year. Yet questors, presumably sub-tenants, were being appointed in York, Nicholas Stokhall receiving licences for the jurisdiction of the dean and chapter. (In contrast, Thomas Jonys, who held the farm of the Roncesvalles collection in Hereford diocese, did actually collect there.)
The local questors were vital to the whole enterprise, but their identification is largely a matter of luck, with their appearance in the records being largely accidental. That Nicholas Johnson and James Forster were pardoners in Nottingham in 1467-8 appears from their presentment for affray when Johnson assaulted Forster, drew blood, and was duly fined 12d. In this respect the records from York diocese for the period 1300 to 1540 are invaluable. In the early fourteenth century, references in the archiepiscopal registers and the jurisdictional records of the dean and chapter allow the identification of a small cohort of highly active professional pardoners. From 1370 onwards, other material provides further insights. York's freemens' rolls reveal several names, as questors and pardoners entered the city's freedom. Numbers are low; but being a pardoner or questor was clearly no bar to admission, suggesting greater respectability than the Chaucerian stereotype might imply. Earlier admissions may be hidden under other titles, like the synonym of 'chuller' for John de Warnesfeld in 1408; while some fathers described as questors when their sons were admitted had actually gained the freedom with another occupation. The freemen's register is not a full list of the York city pardoners. Only two of the six men so identified in the 1380 poll tax returns appear in the register; others may have shared in the trade, but avoided the title. Similarly, in the fifteenth century, pardoners are named in York records who are not in the freemen's register.
The local pardoners are elusive. At York, wills survive for only two (John Warnesfeld, in 1439, and William Smythe, in 1509), but neither is very informative, or immediately suggestive of wealth or social status. For some pardoners their trade was effectively hereditary - Robert Robertson, admitted as questor in 1497-8, was the son of David Robertson, questor, admitted in 1464-5. More often, the trade applied to only one generation. A son of John Kirkeby, questor, was admitted as a capper in 1477-8; while in 1514-15 Thomas Shawe, questor, was described as a smith's son. Robert Ledes was called a yeoman when he and his daughter were admitted to freedom respectively in 1477-8, and 1509-10, but was called pardoner at his son's admission in 1508-9. In 1452-3 the son of William Gyselay, questor, was styled gentleman on his admission. There is little sign of questors gaining places among the city's officials, although Henry Wyndell was one of the Ousebridge wardens in 1474-5, having entered the freedom as a questor thirty years before.
These York freedom records sometimes offer suggestive hints of the activities and status of the questors. William Gyselay, a questor in 1452-3, was styled scrivener when admitted in 1409-10: possibly a suggestive occupation. Most suggestive, as already noted, are instances where a questor appears with a dual trade, offering a significant hint of how pardoners actually operated.
Some of these Yorkshire pardoners had lengthy careers. John Felixkirk entered York's freedom as a pardoner in 1510-11, but that may not have been the start of his career. He is not named as receiving a questorial licence until 1516 (perhaps suggesting that employment might be irregular), but appears frequently thereafter until 1534.
This York evidence can be complemented by material from early sixteenth-century Hereford, which confirms the enterprise of the local pardoners, showing how individuals could accumulate roles, and acted to market a range of products concurrently.
Just who or what John Bell was I do not know. He appears regularly among those licensed to collect in Hereford diocese between from 1504 to 1533, almost annually from 1515. In that year he was licensed as proctor for St Anthony's hospital, London. Thereafter, but with gaps in 1516, 1528 and 1530-2, he appears having the licence renewed annually. Such repetition would be normal; but Bell did not limit his interests to St Anthony's. Before 1515 he had been proctor for a hospital at Leominster, and for the Roman hospital of St Thomas, and in 1515 also acted for Burton Lazars. The Roman licence was regularly renewed from 1519 (when he also again acted for Burton Lazars), the last recorded occasion being April 1528. The situation regarding collections for the hospital of St Thomas in Hereford diocese was complex: Bell acted only in certain deaneries, with Roger Lowe collecting in others in 1513, 1516, and more regularly from 1523. Bell last appears as the proctor for St Antony in 1533; in 1530 he had again been licensed as proctor for Burton Lazars.
The way that Bell acted for several institutions may be reasonably typical of collections for national bodies. Probably less common, but for present purposes more revealing, is the range of business which attracted Humphrey Wood. He too was active in Hereford diocese in the early sixteenth century - from October 1520 to October 1529 he was Bell's partner as questor for St Anthony's, London. A further possible association between them is suggested by the fact that Wood replaced Bell as proctor for Burton Lazars in 1520, securing annual renewals until 1527. He reappears as the Burton proctor in October 1533, acting jointly with one John Underwood.
Wood was most prominent in the great national collections, but equally significant was his involvement with smaller enterprises. The first recorded instance was in 1523, when he was named as proctor for St Katherine's chapel in the cathedral close of Hereford, which was granted an indulgence of 40 days to contributors to its repair. Between 1526 and 1532 he received one-off licences for several other small collections: in 1526 for Battlefield College, Shrewsbury; in 1527 jointly with Henry Pygmour for St Margaret's chapel, Uxbridge; in 1530 with Thomas Bradley as proctor for the Augustinians of Ludlow for collections which seem to have included the rebuilding of St Peter's at Rome, the repair of the Augustinian priory in Oxford, and general collections for the Austin canons throughout England. Lastly, in 1532, he was proctor of the brothers of the Holy Cross, near the Tower of London, for rebuilding work.
Wood's activities suggest that collections usually required the involvement of someone with local knowledge. This applied both with the small-scale rounds (like the collections for St Katherine's chapel), and for larger cases. Wide-ranging quests for small projects (like the Uxbridge work) would need a local input, and so would the nationwide collections. Obviously, the rule was sometimes broken: as already noted the collections in Hereford for bridge repairs in York in the 1520s were undertaken by York citizens; but usually some local participation was needed.
As well as marketing, the local questors presumably usually had to cover their own costs. Questorial licences were not granted freely - at least for the major collections. In the dioceses of Carlisle and Lincoln, entries for fees appear in the episcopal accounts, the usual annual charge being 6s. 8d. The scattered references to fees in the York records are less regular. The registrar's annual fee was apparently 2s., but what this covered is unclear. There may have been an 'entry fine' for the questors: it seems that at the first request for the whole diocese a charge of 10s. was divided equally between the chancellor and registrar. In 1532 the St Antony questor paid 2s. 8d. for a licence limited to Ainsty deanery, identical to the amount charged in December 1533 for a licence for six other deaneries, and to the fee demanded of the questor for Bethlehem hospital in April 1533 for the whole archdeaconry of the East Riding. By contrast, in 1532 questorial letters granted to St Mary of Mercede for the chapter's peculiar jurisdiction cost 5s. 4d. Whether fees were levied for minor collections is uncertain: with the petty pardons for individuals, bridges, churches, and roads, fee remission might be considered an act of charity, even if an act of grace. In one York register, two licences for nuns and another for a pauperised individual have marginal notes of their free issue, 'pro deo', or because of the recipients' poverty. Another licence, to collect for road repairs, was cancelled because it had not been sealed: had the required fees not been paid?
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Questors may often also have had to provide their own confraternity letters and publicity material. A striking feature at all stages of the indulgence business is its documentary basis, and its sophistication. These campaigns were directed to mass consumption, effectively to consumerism. The documentary record is woefully incomplete, but enough survives to indicate what this entailed.
Mass production appears at two points: preparation of publicity material, and production of confraternity letters. Numerous institutional accounts record the preparation of 'briefs', probably publicity leaflets, drawn up by the hundred for some cathedral fabric collections. These, it must be recalled, were hand written. How they were produced is shown in some extant unused versions in the Hereford cathedral archives, where several copies of a publicity document were written on a single skin, presumably being separated as they were distributed by the collectors.
The method for producing confraternity letters was probably the same, although no examples survive. How and when the letters were written is unclear, but it is likely that local questors were given with the model text (or texts), and made their own arrangements for duplication. Did William Gyselay, the York scrivener and questor, write his own letters?
The format of most confraternity letters reflects their mass production. Most were written with blank spaces to fill in the name of the purchaser, sometimes also to add the date. Such production is relatively simple; more sophistication appears in differentiation between single and plural versions of the same letter, or other variations addressed to groups, or to people of a certain status. We have to imagine the questor offering the right version from his range - although sometimes he made mistakes.
Such formulaic production was eminently adaptable to print; unsurprisingly, printed indulgences and publicity leaflets were among the main products of the early English presses. The speed and scale of the switch would depend on proximity to a printer, and perhaps on having sufficient capital to commission the run in the first place. Print did not automatically eliminate manuscript confraternity letters: they were still being issued into the 1520s. At first, the local questors probably organised the printing, much as they had arranged production of the manuscript letters: for some collections, both manuscript and printed letters still exist, presumably reflecting differing local collectorates.
The shift to print may have allowed the central authorities to take more control of the indulgence arrangements. Publicity material and letters could now be produced more effectively, and distributed to the local collectors, as the accounts of some major institutions indicate. Thus, in 1502-3, St Anthony's hospital paid 70s for 700 printed copies of a papal bull. The accounts of the Roncesvalles fraternity include payments to printers for similar material. In 1528, the city council oversaw production of briefs for the collection for the York bridges, commissioning 1000 from a local printer.
Even more significant is evidence that central authorities commissioned the printing of confraternity letters. The Boston accounts provide the main evidence for this, showing that Richard Pynson was printing letters annually. In 1525-6 he supplied 2100 'letters', 2400 'briefs', and 2200 'Jubilees'. The distinction between these documents remains obscure, but the numbers are impressive. They are admittedly lower than the figures associated with some continental shrines, but presumably are a realistic reflection of anticipated recruitment in any single year. In the next year, Pynson supplied another batch: 4000 'great letters', 2000 'Jubilees' and perhaps a further 4000 'parchment letters'. Again the numbers are impressive. Corroboration that these numbers did represent expected annual sales comes from the dating clauses of some of the surviving Boston indulgences: while other institutions left the precise year blank, to be added by hand, these have the full year printed on them.
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The scale and extent of the indulgence business in late medieval England is impressive. It was clearly significant in economic terms, producing a regular movement of cash and petty goods around the country. It also provided opportunities for deception, for a black economy. Authorised pardoners were tempted to exceed their remit, and encouraged purchases with invalid claims. Attempts to maintain discipline are especially evident in the early fourteenth century, notably in orders from bishops of Lincoln to control the sales techniques of questors, or in the vigilant stance of Archbishop Melton at York. In Ely diocese in 1376 the careful checking of the credentials of Richard de Boxsted as collector of St Mary of Syon is another sign of such concern. Forgery was not uncommon, of questorial licences or the allegedly original pardon documents. In an early fourteenth-century case, a questor admitted falsifying letters by misusing the seal of the dean and chapter of York. Later that century, Beverley Minster allowed its questors to seek the arrest of unauthorised pardoners, and to seize their relics. In 1470 the chapter of Ripon sought to curb unlicensed questors within its jurisdiction, acting against three such. The most worrying of them was John Sperman, from Newcastle upon Tyne, who claimed to be both married and a priest, and to be absolving a pena et culpa. The best recorded disciplinary case in York diocese dates from 1531. John Wilkynson, the questor of Beverley Minster, confessed that he had declared his quest in various places without appropriate licence. As penance, he had to precede the cross in procession in York Minster on three Sundays, and then for one day at Kilham and another at Pocklington - presumably places where he had transgressed. He was also warned not to err in future.
How widespread forged papal bulls were is impossible to determine. Their use was suggested in 1379 in Nottingham, when John Clerk, originally hired as a pardoner's assistant, alleged that he had abandoned his employer when he realised that the bulls were forged. More serious are the undated accusations against Walter Bene, proctor of the hospital of St James of Altopascu, who was allegedly involved in a network which included false preachers, and forgers of papal and episcopal letters, active in Kent and Essex.
One of the best bits of evidence of fraudulent indulgences is a document printed at York around 1519. It promises pardon to visitors to a Kentish monastery on a staggering scale: up to around 250,000 years of pardon in a single year, plus the guaranteed liberation of at least one soul from Purgatory. The document also mentions a recent papal grant allowing purchasers to choose a confessor to grant them plenary absolution at death.
It is likely that this choosing of a confessor and assurance of plenary absolution was the main selling point, because the document is highly problematic. The promised pardon is excessive, and far beyond that usually offered. It recalls the high levels of pardon offered for relatively minor devotional acts linked with some devotional images, which were certainly spurious. The promise of a soul's release from Purgatory is unique in known pardon documents, but matches promises made by the Pardoner in the plays of John Heywood, also of the early sixteenth century. The document was obviously concocted to be sold far from Kent, for if people had tried to visit the monastery they would have been bitterly disappointed. The indulgence was attached to the monastery of Langley in Kent; but there was no such house. Presumably Kent was considered far enough from York to offer safety in distance, and someone decided to risk a forgery. The indulgence was apparently sold, as the unique copy bears the name of its presumed purchaser.
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Forgery and fraud reflected the scale and opportunities of the indulgence market. With indulgences, as with many other devotional activities, the market, and the receipts, varied. The slow decline in the indulgence income of the hospital of St Thomas of Acon in the sixteenth century would have been fairly typical. Only institutions which leased out their pardon revenues had stable receipts, passing on the uncertainty to the lessees. The variability in their revenues cannot be tested; but was probably considerable. Sometimes sales were banned. In 1480 the pope suspended all indulgences apart from that currently being sold against the Turks. On another occasion the farmers of the Beverley minster fabric indulgence sought a refund after being denied a collecting licence in Durham diocese.
Such vulnerability and competition caused tensions. Pardon receipts were affected by whim, fashion, and availability. The distribution systems often reveal activities very like those of modern consumerism. The publication of the St Antony's pardon, for example, was a real marketing campaign. The copies of the papal bull, already mentioned, were flyposted around, a servant being paid 2s. for the distribution. A Dr Redmayn received 20d. for publishing the bull at St Paul's; the hospital also secured royal letters to aid its proctors in their collections. All this was common practice: similar entries appear in the accounts of the Roncesvalles fraternity, while the acquisition of testimonial letters from the crown and local prelates had been common since the early fourteenth century.
The competitive nature of the indulgence market meant that the responsibilities of the main institutions did not end with the granting of a lease. The farmers needed aid to ensure that they made a profit - if only to ensure that the leases remained attractive investments for the future. The institutions therefore had to protect the interests both of the main farmer and of his sub-tenants. Moreover, they could not afford to be too demanding. Like all 'landlords' in late medieval England, their relationship with their farmers was tricky: arrears of farms were relatively common, and could mount significantly. While on paper the leasing system had attractions, the institutions could not just sit back and let the money roll in. Where farmers faced difficulties, action had to be taken. Thus, in 1516-17, the Jesus guild of St Paul's was presumably responding to pleas from its lessee in Exeter diocese when it procured a letter from the bishop of London to the bishop of Exeter on behalf of the farmer. In the following year the guild paid 2s. 'for punysshing of false proctours'. Costs were also incurred in enhancing spiritual benefits, and in acquiring the necessary licences and approval from ecclesiastical hierarchs. In 1516-17 negotiations to gain the privileges of the scala coeli entailed gifts to the bishop of London; in 1518-19 there were costs for getting letters from the archbishop of Canterbury on behalf of the proctors, and payments to have the guild's pardon approved by the legate (Wolsey). Even where collecting remained in the hands of an institution, production and collection costs depleted profits. At Boston, the charges for the journeys to collect and record the subscriptions of the scattered membership ate up some 40% of receipts, a quite significant inroad into the donations.
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As I commented early on, much of this paper is descriptive, but its does have an argument. My own view is that indulgences were a major feature in late medieval English religion (and, also, in the catholicism of the rest of Europe), and have been unjustly neglected. In some forms they had significant economic repercussions, which need more investigation. Their exploitation and marketing may have been one element in the transition to capitalism; they fit into a late medieval economy of consumerism. They have been under-appreciated, denigrated, and ignored for too long.
