First Great Jubilee of the Roman Catholic Church

This series has two easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: A Great Awakening.

Introduction
Benedetto Gaetani, born at Anagni, Italy, about 1228 — whom contemporary poets and historians also consigned to infamy — occupied the pontifical throne but ten years, 1294-1303, but those were years of almost continual strife. It is indeed likely that partisanship painted him, in some respects, with colors too black, attributing to him crimes of which he was not guilty. But even these exaggerations were due to the unquestioned facts of his character and career. When at length Boniface was worsted in his quarrel with Philip the Fair, a widespread reaction began on the part of the laity against ecclesiastical assumptions, and the great dramatic act by which, under Hildebrand, the papacy first displayed its power had its counterpart in the manner of its decline. “The drama of Anagni is to be set against the drama of Canossa.”

But Boniface enjoyed one year of triumph scarcely paralleled in all the experience of his fellow-pontiffs. This was the closing year of the thirteenth century. Taking advantage of a fresh wave of religious enthusiasm which then swept over Europe, the Pope called upon the Christian world — almost at peace from long warfare — to celebrate a jubilee. The institution of the Catholic jubilee is generally considered as dating from this celebration, though some writers refer its establishment to the pontificate of Innocent III, a century earlier.

This selection is from History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages by Ferdinand Gregorovius published in 1902. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Ferdinand Gregorovius (1821-1891) was a German historian who specialized in the medieval history of Rome.

Time: 1300
Place: Vatican

Boniface VIII inaugurated the fourteenth century with a pilgrimage festival which has become renowned. The centennial jubilee had been celebrated in ancient Rome by magnificent games; the recollections of these games, however, had expired, and no tidings inform us whether the close or beginning of a century was marked in Christian Rome by any ecclesiastical festival. The immense processions of pilgrims to St. Peter’s had ceased during the crusades; the crusades ended, the old longing reawoke among the people and drew them again to the graves of the apostles. The pious impulse was fostered in no small degree by the shrewdness of the Roman priests.

About the Christmas of 1299 — and with Christmas, according to the style of the Roman curia, the year ended — crowds flocked both from the city and country to St. Peter’s. A cry, promising remission of sins to those who made the pilgrimage to Rome, resounded throughout the world and forced it into movement. Boniface gave form and sanction to the growing impulse by promulgating the bull of jubilee of February 22, 1300, which promised remission of sins to all who should visit the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul during the year. The pilgrimage of Italians was to last for thirty days, that of foreigners for fifteen. The enemies of the Church were alone excluded. As such the Pope designated Frederick of Sicily, the Colonnas and their adherents, and, curiously enough, all Christians who held traffic with Saracens. Boniface consequently made use of the jubilee to brand his enemies and to exclude them from the privileges of Christian grace.

The pressure toward Rome was unexampled. The city presented the aspect of a camp where crowds of pilgrims, that resembled armies, thronged incessantly in and out. A spectator standing on one of the heights of the city might have seen swarms like wandering tribes approach along the ancient Roman roads from north, south, east, and west; and, had he mixed among them, might have had difficulty in discovering their home. Italians, Provençals, Frenchmen, Hungarians, Slavs, Germans, Spaniards, even Englishmen came.

Italy gave free passage to pilgrims and kept the Truce of God. The crowds arrived, wearing the pilgrim’s mantle or clad in their national dress, on foot, on horseback, or on cars, leading the ill and weary, and laden with their luggage. Veterans of a hundred were led by their grandsons; and youths bore, like Aeneas, father or mother on their shoulders. They spoke in many dialects, but they all sang in the same language the litanies of the Church, and their longing dreams had but one and the same object.

On beholding in the sunny distance the dark forest of towers of the holy city they raised the exultant shout, “Rome, Rome!” like sailors who after a tedious voyage catch their first glimpse of land. They threw themselves down in prayer and rose again with the fervent cry, “St. Peter and St. Paul, have mercy.” They were received at the gates by their countrymen and by guardians appointed by the city to show them their quarters; nevertheless, they first made their way to St. Peter’s, ascended the steps of the vestibule on their knees, and then threw themselves in ecstasies on the grave of the apostle.

During an entire year Rome swarmed with pilgrims and was filled with a perfect babel of tongues. It was said that thirty thousand pilgrims entered and left the city daily, and that daily two hundred thousand pilgrims might have been found within it. An exemplary administration provided for order and for moderate prices. The year was fruitful, the Campagna and the neighboring provinces sent supplies in abundance. One of the pilgrims who was a chronicler relates that “bread, wine, meat, fish, and oats were plentiful and cheap in the market; the hay, however, was very dear; the inns so expensive that I was obliged to pay for my bed and the stabling of my horse (beyond the hay and oats) a Tornese groat a day. As I left Rome on Christmas eve, I saw so large a party of pilgrims depart that no one could count the number. The Romans reckon that altogether they have had two millions of men and women. I frequently saw both sexes trodden under foot, and it was sometimes with difficulty that I escaped the same fate myself.”

The way that led from the city across the bridge of St. Angelo to St. Peter’s was too narrow; a new street was therefore opened in the walls along the river, not far from the ancient tomb known as Meta Romuli. The bridge was covered with booths, which divided it in two, and in order to prevent accidents it was enacted that those going to St. Peter’s should keep to one side of the bridge; those returning, to the other. Processions went incessantly to St. Paul’s without the walls and to St. Peter’s, where the already renowned relic, the handkerchief of Veronica, was exhibited. Every pilgrim laid an offering on the altar of the apostle, and the same chronicler of Asti assures us, as an eye-witness, that two clerics stood by the altar of St. Paul’s, day and night, who with rakes in their hands gathered in untold money.

The marvelous sight of priests, who smilingly shoveled up gold like hay, caused malicious Ghibellines to assert that the Pope had appointed the jubilee solely for the sake of gain. Boniface in truth stood in need of money to defray the expenses of the war with Sicily, which swallowed up incalculable sums. If instead of copper, the monks in St. Paul’s had lighted on gold florins, they would necessarily have collected fabulous wealth, but the heaps of money, both in St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s, consisted mainly of small coins, the gifts of poor pilgrims.

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