The Pocket Bible; or, Christian the Printer: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century. Эжен Сю
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the sacrilege that you may commit, you will be pardoned – provided you pay for it – provided you pay bountifully for it! That is clearer than day! Our Lord God will have no power over you, he ceases to be God, having assigned His pardoning power to the Pope. But, you may still ask, why does our Holy Father so bountifully distribute the boon of his indulgences? Why?" repeated the Dominican in a voice of deep lament; "why? Alas! alas! alas! my brothers, it is in order to be enabled, thanks to the returns from the sales of these indulgences, to rebuild the Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome with such splendor that there is none to match it in the world. Indeed, none other must be like that basilica, which contains the sacred bodies of the two apostles! And this notwithstanding – would you believe it, my brothers? – the Cathedral of Rome is in such a state of dilapidation that the holy bones, the sacrosanct bones of St. Peter and St. Paul are so constantly exposed to the peltings of rain and hail, they are so soiled and dishonored by dust and vermin that they are falling to pieces!"
A shudder of painful indignation ran over the faithful crowd assembled before the Dominican when thus informed that the relics of the apostles were exposed to the inclemencies of the weather and the soilure of vermin as a result of the dilapidated state of the Basilica of Rome, while, since then, the most marvelous monument of architecture that immortalizes the genius of Michael Angelo, was reared to the admiration of the world. Perceiving the effect made by his peroration, the Dominican proceeded in a thundering voice:
"No, my brothers! No! The sacred ashes of the apostles shall no longer remain in dirt and disgrace! No! Indulgence has set up its throne in the Church of St. Dominic!" and pointing to the large coffer and beating with his fists a tattoo upon the lid, the Apostolic Commissioner added with the roar of a bull: "Now, bring your money! Bring it, good people! Bring plenty! I shall put you the example of charity. I consecrate this gold piece to the redemption of souls in purgatory!"
And pulling out of his pocket a half ducat which he held up glistening to the eyes of the crowd, he dropped it into the coffer through the slit in the lid, upon which he continued to strike with his fists, keeping time to his words as he cried:
"Fetch your money! Fetch it, good people! Fetch your ducats!"
The front ranks of the crowd broke in response to the summons of the trafficker in indulgences and hastened to empty their purses. But the Dominican held back the surging crowd with a gesture of his hand and said:
"One more word, my dear brothers! Do you see these confessionals decorated with the armorial bearings of the Holy Father? The priests who will take your confessions represent the apostolic penitentiaries of Rome on the occasions of grand jubilees. All those who wish to participate in the three principal indulgences will proceed to these confessionals and will conscientiously notify the confessor of the amount of money that they are disposed to deprive themselves of in order to obtain the following favors:
"The first is the absolute remission of all sins – past, present and future.
"The second is freedom from participation in the works of the Holy Church, such as fasts, prayers, pilgrimages and macerations of all nature.
"The third – listen carefully, my brothers, pay particular attention to the last words, as the saying is – this indulgence exceeds all that the most faithful believers can wish for!"
"Listen," whispered Fra Girard to Hervé; "listen, and repent your having doubted the resources of the faith."
"Oh, I doubt no longer, and yet I hardly dare to hope," murmured the son of Christian with bated breath, while the Dominican proceeded to announce aloud:
"The third favor, my brothers, gives you the right to choose a confessor, who, every time that you fear you are about to die, will be bound – by virtue of the letter of absolution that you will have purchased and which you will display before him – to give you absolution not only for your ordinary sins, but also for those greater crimes the remission of which is reserved to the apostolic See, to wit, bestiality, the crime against nature, parricide and incest."
The Dominican had hardly pronounced these words when Hervé's features became frightful to behold. The lad's eyes shot fire, and a smile of the damned curled his lips as Fra Girard stooped down to him and whispered in his ear:
"Did I deceive you? The indulgence is absolute, even for incest."
"Finally, my brothers," the Apostolic Commissioner proceeded to say, "the fourth favor consists in redeeming souls from purgatory. For this favor, my brothers, it is not necessary, as for the three first ones, to be contrite of heart and to confess. No, no! It is enough if you drop your offerings in this coffer. You will thereby snatch the souls of the dead from the tortures that they are undergoing; and you will be moreover contributing towards the holy work of restoring the Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome. Now, then, my brothers," he added, thumping anew upon the coffer, "come forward with your money! Come forward with your ducats! Come!"
Upon this last exhortation the railing of the choir was thrown open. The small number of the charitably disposed who wished to deliver the souls in pain began filing before the coffer into which they dropped their offerings after making the sign of the cross; the confessionals, however, in which the pontifical penitentiaries took their seats, ready to issue letters of absolution, were immediately besieged by a mob of men and women, anxious to obtain impunity in the eyes of heaven and of their own conscience for sins ranging from the most venial up to monstrous deeds that cause nature to shudder. It was a frightful sight, the spectacle presented by the mob around these confessionals crowding to the quarry of impunity for crime.
Good God! Your vicars order and exploit the traffic! Behold human conscience upturned, shaken at its very foundation, losing even the sense of discrimination between vice and virtue! The moral sense is perverted, it is smothered by sacrilegious superstition! Mankind is lashed to a vertigo of folly and evil by the assurance of impunity, feeling certain, Oh, God of justice! of having You for an accomplice! Souls, until then innocent, no longer recoil before any passion however execrable, the bare thought of which is a crime! Does not the Pope of Rome absolve for all eternity, in exchange for a few gold crowns, even parricide and incest? If only its faith is strong enough the incestuous or parricidal heart knows, feels itself absolved! Oh, in honor at least to the religious sentiment – the divine gift implanted in man's heart, whatever the dogma may be in which it is wrapped – there are Catholic priests of austere morals who, despite their intolerance, have, in these accursed times, indignantly repudiated the monstrous idolatries and savage fetichism that even ancient paganism knew nothing of! No! No! Christ, your celestial gospel is and will remain the most scathing condemnation of the horrors that are committed in your venerated name. Those papal penitentiaries in the confessionals emblazoned with the pontifical arms, those new dealers in merchandise in the Temple dare to sell for cash patents of salvation! Alas! After a few hurried words exchanged with Fra Girard, Hervé was one of the first to hurry to the confessionals and kneel down; he did not long remain there; those near him heard the papal penitentiary first utter a cry of surprise; silence ensued, broken by the intermittent sobs of the lad; the chinking of the money that was being counted out to the priest in the confessional announced the close of the absolutional conversation. Hervé issued out of the tribunal of penitence holding a parchment with a convulsive clutch, closely followed by Fra Girard; he cleaved the compact mass of people, and withdrew to one of the lateral chapels; there he knelt down before a sanctuary of the Virgin that a lamp illumined, and by its light read the letter of absolution that he had just bought with his father's money. The pontifical letter was couched in the following terms:
May our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon you [here followed a blank space into which the name of the owner of the letter was to be inserted]; may He absolve you by the virtue of the Holy Passion. And I, in virtue of the apostolical power in me vested, do hereby absolve you from all ecclesiastical censures, judgments and punishments that you may have deserved; furthermore of all excesses, sins and crimes that you may have committed, however grave and enormous these may be, and whatever the cause thereof, even if such sins and crimes be those reserved to our Holy Father the Pope and to the apostolic See —such as bestiality, the sin against nature, parricide and incest. I hereby efface from you all traces of inability, all the marks of infamy that you may have drawn upon yourself on such occasions; I induct you anew as a participant of the sacraments of the Church; I