The Holy Year of Jubilee. By Herbert Thurston, S.J. (Sands
and Co. 12s. 6d. net.)—The first Jubilee was proclaimed by Pope Boniface VIII. in 1300 A.D.; perhaps we should say the first on record, for there are hints of an earlier celebration of the same kind. The original idea was that it should be celebrated every hundredth year, but the period has been shortened to fifty, and even to thirty-three, years. (A certain parallel is to be found in the celebration of the Ludi Seculares.) Father Thurston gives an elaborate account of the ceremonies of the Jubilee—there is an interesting discussion about the opening of the Porte Santa—of the Basilicas which it is the duty of the pilgrim to visit, and of other cognate matters. And of course there is a carefully studied apologia for indulgences. This was a necessary task, but we cannot help thinking that Father Thurston would have been happier if he had not had to discharge it. But a Church that can- not acknowledge an error must sometimes put its apologists into awkward places. The one thing to which such an apologist is bound is modesty and courtesy, and when our author de- scribes an antagonist as "one of those gentlemen whose prin- ciple of historical investigation is to devise a theory first and to make the facts fit in with it afterwards," we can but wonder. If there is any writer in the world whose conclusions are fixed beforehand and who must reach them at any cost, it is the defender of the Papacy. But the strategy of defence sometimes demands attack, and there is always the maxim, toujours de raudace. As for the real force of indulgence, we cannot discuss it. One thing is evident, that whatever theo- logians may say, the words of Boniface's Bull, that all who should fulfil the conditions of the Jubilee should receive "not only a full and copious but the most full pardon of all their sins," are not a little liable to misunderstanding. And to think that the infallible teacher of Christendom, speaking on a subject in which self-deception is most common and most fatal, should so express himself is indeed strange. What did the ignorant multitudes who flocked to Rome know of the distinctions of yoena and eulpa? Would Leo XIII. use the same language now ?
Previous page
