The calculations of the number cannot be easy or accurate; but we are assured by those who assisted at the ceremony, that there were always about two hundred thousand present in the city, and the total concourse of the year has been fixed at two millions. The wealth which flowed into the papal coffers from the Jubilee was enormous. Supposing that each individual gave only a small sum, what a royal treasure must have been collected! But offerings were heaped up on the altars. It was called by the Romans the Golden Year. An eye-witness tells us that he saw two priests with rakes in their hands, employed day and night in raking, without counting, the heaps of gold and silver that were laid on the tombs of the apostles. Nor was this tribute, like offerings or subsidies for crusades, to be devoted to special uses, such as provisions or freight of armies, but it was entirely at the free and irresponsible disposal of the pope. But from the benefits of this indulgence the enemies of the church were to be excluded, or rather the enemies of Boniface.
Christendom, with the exception of a few noted rebels against the See of Rome, had now received the gift of pardon and eternal life, and in return, of its own accord, heaped up at the pope's feet this extraordinary wealth. The authorities had taken wise and effective measures against famine for such accumulating multitudes, but many were trampled down, and perished by suffocation.
The experiment far exceeded the expectations of the pope and his partisans. Boniface had proposed that the Jubilee should be celebrated every hundredth year; but the advantages to the church were so great, that the interval was naturally thought to be too long. Clement VI., therefore, repeated the Jubilee in 1350, which drew vast multitudes of pilgrims to Rome, and incredible wealth. The numbers were nearly as great as in 1300. The streets leading to the churches which were to be visited—St. Peter's, St. Paul's, and St. John Lateran—were so crowded as to admit of no movement, except with the stream of the multitudes. High prices were charged by the Romans for food and lodgings, many had to spend their nights in the churches and streets, and not a few of the poor deluded pilgrims perished. Urban VI., in 1389, reduced the interval to thirty-three years, the supposed length of time to which the life of our Lord on earth extended. Finally, Paul II. in 1475, established that the festival of the Jubilee should be celebrated every twenty-five years, which continues to this day to be the interval at which the great festival is observed.
With the great religious impostures of the dark ages, and the sin of deluding a credulous people, we have become familiar; but it is truly heart-breaking to find that such blasphemies are believed and practiced in our own day, notwithstanding the state of education and the number of witnesses to the truth of the word of God and the finished work of Christ. The following extract from a bull that was issued by the pope in 1824, appointing the Jubilee for the ensuing year, will explain what we mean.
"We have resolved, by virtue of the authority given to us from heaven, fully to unlock that sacred treasure composed of the merits, sufferings, and virtues of Christ our Lord, and of his virgin mother, and of all the saints which the Author of human salvation has entrusted to our dispensation. To you, therefore, venerable brethren, patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bishops, it belongs to explain with perspicuity the power of indulgences; what is their efficacy in the remission, not only of the canonical penance, but also of the temporal punishment due to the divine justice for past sin; and what succor is afforded out of this heavenly treasure, from the merits of Christ and His saints, to such as have departed real penitents in God's love, yet before they had duly satisfied by fruits worthy of penance, for sins of omission and commission, and are now purifying in the fire of purgatory."