Over the Halloween week — yes, it lasted more than a week this year — some of us indulged in candy.
In particular, Snickers and KitKats and Reece’s, the three most popular treats for 2024, to judge by the stacks of “fun size” packages offered at City Market and Walmart.
Also, M&Ms. But mostly, Snickers.
The term “indulgence” has a modern meaning, but lately I’ve been researching the original meaning of the word, which can be traced back to a curious Christian practice from medieval Europe.
I got interested in this original meaning while reading about Martin Luther. Martin Luther was not a big fan of ‘indulgences’, and it got him into trouble with the Catholic Church, back in 1517. On Halloween, in fact.
Legend has it that Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31. He probably had no idea that his writing and preaching would ultimately bring about the Reformation and the birth of the Protestant denominations.
These days, we indulge our children with candy on Halloween — if they’re willing to dress up as ghosts and witches, and wander from door to door on a freezing October night. But the situation was quite different in Europe in 1517.
The controversy around ‘indulgences’ had a long history, but the specific situation faced by Martin Luther and his contemporaries had its start with Pope Alexander VI, who had spent pretty much every penny of the Papal treasury by the time he died in 1503, after fathering maybe a dozen children with various mistresses.
Then Pope Julius, his successor, started rebuilding the gigantic St. Peter Basilica, using credit cards. When Julius died in 1513, he was followed by Pope Leo X, who found his church on the verge of bankruptcy. Rather than appeal to the Ruler of Heaven for a loan, he reverted to a time-tested method of raising cash: by selling indulgences.
An indulgence was a piece of paper obtained in exchange for a certain sum of money, that promised a sinner a shorter time suffering in Purgatory before ascending into Heaven. And since everyone was a sinner, the church was doing a brisk business by 1517.
A bit too brisk, in Luther’s opinion.
Luther was professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg and the town preacher. He also wrote hymns, but that didn’t carry much weight with Pope Leo X, who demanded that Luther renounce his more inflammatory writings. When Luther refused to do so, Pope Leo excommunicated him in January 1521. Later that year, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V condemned Luther as an outlaw.
So in a sense, the Protestant churches were birthed by an outlaw.
Luther’s writings and preaching caused all kinds of discord in Europe, resulting in rebellions and executions and ultimately the Thirty Years War between the Catholic Hapsburg royalty and the Protestant princes of northern Europe. (Actually, 30 years, 5 months and 1 day.)
An estimated 5 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of the war, mostly from disease and famine.
All of this, over some relatively harmless indulgences.
If Martin Luther had indulged the Pope, even just a little, maybe things would have turned out differently.
But Snickers had not yet been invented. I consider us lucky, in that sense.