Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/604

 JUBILEE

532

JUBILEE

able that the Hebrew word jobel (?3V), to which it is traced, meant "a ram's horn", and that from this instrument, used in proclaiming the celebration, a certain idea of rejoicing was derived. Further, pass- ing through the Greek luprjXatos, or W;3);\os, the word became confused with the Latin jiibilo, which means "to shout", and has given us the forms jubilatio and jubilwum, now adopted in most European languages. For the Israelites, the year of Jubilee was in any case pre-eminently a time of joy, the year of remission or universal pardon. "Thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year," we read in Leviticus, xxv, 10, "and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land: for it is the year of jubilee." Every seventh year, like every seventh day, was always accoimted holy and set aside for rest, but the year which followed seven complete cycles of seven years was to be kept as a sabbatical year of special solemnity. The Tal- mudists and others afterwards disputed whether the Jubilee year was the forty-ninth or the fiftieth year, the difficulty being that in the latter case two sab- batical years must have been observed in succession. Further, there arc historical data which seem to show that in the age of the JIachabees the Jubilee of the fiftieth year could not have been kept, for 164- 163 B. c. and 38-37 b. c. were both certainljr sab- batical years, which they could not have been if two jubilee years had been intercalated in the interval. However, the text of Leviticus (xxv, S-5o) leaves no room for ambiguity that the fiftieth year was in- tended, and the institution evidently bore a close analogy with the feast of Pentecost, which was the closing day after seven weeks of harvest. In any case it is certain that the Jubilee period, as it was generally understood and adopted afterwards in the Christian Church, meant fifty and not forty-nine years; but at the same time the number fifty was not originally arrived at because it represented half a century, but because it was the number which fol- lowed seven cycles of seven.

It was, then, part of the legislation of the Old Law, whether practically adhered to or not, that each fiftieth year was to be celebrated as a jubilee year, and that at this season every household should recover its absent members, the land return to its former owners, the Hebrew slaves be set free, and debts be remitted. The same conception, spiritual- ized, forms the fundamental idea of the Christian Jubilee, though it is difficult to judge how far any sort of continuity can have existed between the two. It is commonly stated that Pope Boniface VIII in- stituted ,the first Christian Jubilee in the year 1300, and it is certain that this is the first celebration of which we have any precise record, but it is also cer- tain that the idea of solemnizing a fiftieth anniver- sary was familiar to medieval writers, no doubt through their knowledge of the Biljle, long before that date. The jubilee of a monk's religious profes- sion was often kept, and probably some vague memory survived of those Roman liidi swculares which are commemorated in the "Carmen Sseculare " of Horace, even though this last was commonly as- sociated with a period of a hundred years rather than any lesser interval. But, what is most noteworthy, the number fifty was specially associated in the early thirteenth century with the idea of remission. The translation of St. Thomas of Canterbury took place in the year 1220, fifty years after his martyrdom. The sermon on that occasion was preached by Cardi- nal Stephen Langton, who told his hearers that this accident was meant by Providence to recall "the mystical virtue of the number fifty, which, as every reader of the sacred page is aware, is the number of romis.sion " (!'. L., CXC, 421). We might be tempted to regard this <liscour.se as a fabrication of later date, were it not for the fact that a Latin hymn directed against the Albigenses, and certainly belonging to

the early thirteenth century, speaks in exactly simi- lar terms. The first stanza runs thus: —

Anni favor jubiljei

Poenarum laxat debitum. Post peccatorum vomitum Et cessandi propositum.

Currant passim omnes rei.

Pro mercede regnum Dei Levi patet expositum. (See Dreves, "Analecta Hymnica", XXI, 166.) In the light of this explicit mention of a jubilee with great remissions of the penalties of sin to be ob- tained by full confession and purpose of amendment, it seems difficult to reject the statement of Cardi- nal Stefaneschi, the contemporary and counsellor of Boniface VIII, and author of a treatise on the first Jubilee ("De Anno Jubileo" in La Eigne, "Bibli- otheca Patrum", VI, 536), that the proclamation of the Jubilee owed its origin to the statements of cer- tain aged pilgrims who persuaded Boniface that great indulgences had been granted to all pilgrims to Rome about a hundred years before. It is also note- worthy that in the Chronicle of Alberic of Three Fountains, under the year 1208 (not, be it noted, 1200), we find this brief entry: "It is said that this year was celebrated as the fiftieth year, or the year of jubilee and remission, in the Roman Court " (Pertz, "Mon. Germ. Hist.: Script.", XXIII, 889). It is beyond all dispute that on 22 Feb., 1300, Boniface pulilished the Bull ".4ntiquorum fida relatio", in which, appealing vaguely to the precedent of past ages, he declares that he grants afresh and renews certain "great remissions and indulgences for sins" which are to be obtained "by visiting the city of Rome and the venerable basilica of the Prince of the Apcstles". Coming to more precise detail, he speci- fies that he concedes "not only full and copious, but the most full, pardon of all their sins", to those who fulfil certain conditions. These are, first, that being truly penitent they confess their sins, and secondly, that they visit the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome, at least once a day for a specified time — in the case of the inhabitants for thirty days, in the case of strangers for fifteen. No explicit men- tion is made of Communion, nor does the word jubilee occur in the Bull — indeed the pope speaks rather of a celebration which is to occur every hun- dred years — but writers both Roman and foreign de- scribed this year as annus jubileus, and the name jubilee (though others, such as "the holy year" or "the golden year" have been used as well) has been applied to such celebrations ever since.

Dante, who is himself supposed by some to have visited Rome during this year to gain the Jubilee, refers to it under the name Giubbileo in the Inferno (xviii, 29) and indirectly bears witness to the enor- mous concourse of pilgrims by comparing the sinners passing along one of the bridges of Malebolge in op- posite directions, to the throngs crossing the bridge of the Castle Sant' Angelo on their way to and from St. Peter's. Similarly, the chronicler Villani was so impressed on this occasion by the sight of the monu- ments of Rome and the people who flocked thither that he then and there formed the resolution of writing his great chronicle, in the course of which he gives a remarkable account of what he witnessed. He describes the indulgence as a full and entire re- mission of all sins di culpa c di pena, and he dwells upon the great contentment and good order of the people, despite the fact that during the greater part of that year there were two hundred thou and pilgrims on an average present in Rome over and above the ordinary population. With regard to the phrase just noticed, a culpa rt n pirna, which was often jiciinilarly used of the Juliilee and other similar indulgences, it should be oliservi'd that it means no more than what is now understood by a "plenary