Other articles from this issue | Version in English | Version in French
Historical Notes on the Celebration of the Holy Year
Philippe Rouillard
In the relationship between God and man, between God and the community of believers, there are times of exceptional grace, periods when the mystery of salvation and of liberation is lived with a special intensity: every week there is the Sabbath or Sunday, the holy day; every year Christians celebrate a Holy Week; and periodically there is a Holy Year dispensed to sinful and repentant mankind.
Christians look upon the Holy Year, which goes back more or less explicitly to the Jewish Jubilee of the Old Testament (Lev. 25:8-55), as a year of grace and of pardon. Through the pilgrimage to the holy city of Rome it provides them with an exceptional possibility of casting their sinfulness on the indulgence of God: more precisely, of benefiting from a plenary indulgence, which means the complete remission of all the penalty due to their sins.1
The first Holy Year to be authenticated with certainty is that of the year 1300, promulgated by Pope Boniface VIII. Originally, the Holy Year was meant to be celebrated every hundred years at the dawn of each century on the centenary of the Saviour's birth. But at such an interval only one generation in three would be able to avail themselves of it. The idea of holding it every fifty years was put forward, then every thirty-three (in memory of the thirty-three years of Christ's life). In 1470 Pope Paul II finally decided that it would henceforth be celebrated every twenty-five years, and this rule is still in force.
In what does the celebration of the Holy Year consist? Doubtless the long and dangerous journey which brought the pilgrims to Rome and, in the normal course of events, took them home again, was in itself the most burdensome and meritorious part of the pilgrimage. However, for each pilgrim, as for the whole Christian world, the essential celebration of the Holy Year took place in Rome itself during a more or less long stay. Opening and closing rites, visits to the major basilicas or to other churches, confession of sins, exhibition of relics or extraordinary manifestations: these are the great events of the Jubilee year of which we want briefly to trace the history and to discover the meaning.
Opening and Closing of the Holy Year
The Holy Year begins traditionally on the preceding Christmas Day; it also ends at Christmas. In 1300 Pope Boniface VIII did not proclaim the first Holy Year until February 22 but he declared that it had been officially open since Christmas Day.' The date was chosen on purpose: the Holy Year commemorates the centenary of the Nativity, that is to say, of the coming among men of their Savior and Redeemer.
Since the fifteenth century the beginning of the Jubilee year has been marked by the symbolic rite of the opening of the « holy doors » of the four major Roman basilicas. Effectively, in the facade of St. Peter's, St. Paul's-outside-the-Walls, St. John Lateran's and St. Mary Major's, there is a door that remains walled up except when it is opened solemnly by the pope or his representative at the beginning of the Holy Year. Throughout the Holy Year, pilgrims enter the basilica by this door which is again closed and walled up with the same solemnity at the end of the year.
A Florentine pilgrim, Giovanni Rucellai describes how on Christmas Day 1499 the people proceeded for the first time to the opening of the holy door of the Lateran basilica and how they devoutly carried away as relics stones and pieces of cement that had fallen during the demolition.' For the Jubilee of 1500 the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, had the holy doors of the three other major basilicas opened.
The meaning of this rite, still observed today, is quite clear: the Holy Year offers exceptional access to God's pardon and enables sinful Christians to re-enter the Church and to resume communion with God and with their brothers.
Visits to the Basilicas
The first reason why pilgrims come to Rome is to pray at the tombs of the apostles Peter and Paul. The Christians of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance had indeed an unbounded trust in the intercession of the saints and great veneration for their tombs. They did not doubt that the two great apostles who had undergone martyrdom in Rome would be all powerful to open to them the holy gate of Paradise. The precise objects of Holy Year pilgrimage were the basilicas constructed over the tombs of these apostles: the basilicas of St. Peter's at the Vatican and St. Paul's-outside-the-Walls.
It is a fact that for the Jubilee of 1300 Pope Clement VI added the visit to St. John Lateran, dedicated to the Holy Savior, where the heads of Saints Peter and Paul were preserved. Finally, for the Jubilee of 1375, Pope Gregory XI decided that pilgrims must visit also the church of St. Mary Major. Since then visits to the four major basilicas of Rome has remained the essential feature of the Holy Year.
The popes not only indicated the churches to be visited, they also decided the number of visits to be made. According to the traditional rule going back to the Jubilee of 1300, the inhabitants of Rome had to visit the four churches during thirty days, not necessarily consecutive; for other pilgrims the time was reduced to fifteen days. It sometimes happened that this time was still further reduced during periods of overcrowding. Thus in the autumn of 1450 Rome was unable either to lodge or feed the great numbers of pilgrims and Pope Nicholas V decided provisionally that two days would suffice to gain the Jubilee: pilgrims would visit the four major basilicas on Saturday, and on Sunday they would go to St. Peter's for the exposition of Veronica's veil and the papal blessing. Thus, remark the chroniclers, Rome was emptied every Sunday evening and refilled the following Saturday.
For the Jubilee of 1875, Pius IX restored the length of the visit to fifteen days for all pilgrims including the inhabitants of Rome. In 1900, Leo XIII decided that those living in Rome should complete the visits to the basilicas in twenty days and the non-Roman pilgrims in ten. For the exceptional Jubilee of 1933, the only obligation laid upon pilgrims by Pope Pius X was to visit each basilica three times, and for the sake of speed (ut res tota expeditius fieri queat) they could do this by making three immediately consecutive visits to each of the basilicas — a strange way of accomplishing a pilgrimage! In 1950 Pius XII prescribed only a single visit to each basilica.
Apart from the major basilicas, pilgrims in all ages have been invited to visit the other churches of Rome, especially those with the most celebrated relics such as the Holy Cross of Jerusalem. To ascend the Scala Santa on one's knees was one of the « pious exercises » of the Holy Year. Legend had made this staircase, from the ancient papal palace of the Lateran, into that of Pilate's pretorium which Jesus climbed during his passion.
Confession
All the comings and goings imposed upon Holy Year pilgrims should be the expression and the symbol of an interior journey and of a sincere return to God. Confession of sin, which is the sacrament of this conversion, has a great place in the liturgy of the Holy Year.
Pilgrims find priests to hear their confessions in the innumerable churches of Rome, especially in the four major basilicas. They can confess in Latin and they can easily find confessors who speak French, English, German or even Catalan and Breton.
The most sought-after of these confessors are the penitentiaries who have power to absolve from censures or from sins reserved to the pope. Certain particularly difficult problems such as the regularization of invalid marriages, lifting of excommunication, dispensation from vows, are submitted to the Cardinal Grand Penitentiary who, where necessary, refers the question to the pope himself. A document of Alexander VI dated December 20, 1499 gives a list of penitentiaries named by the pope, all masters of theology, of different nationalities, to minister in St. Peter's basilica during the Holy Year.
The importance of this confession is well explained by Giovanni Rucellai, the above-mentioned Florentine pilgrim who visited Rome for the Holy Year of 1450. In words that certainly echo the language of the preachers of his time he declares that, to gain the Jubilee, confession, contrition and satisfaction are necessary. You must have true sorrow, repentance and real regret for all the sins you have ever committed, and you must perform the penance imposed on you by your confessor, so that the visits you must make to the churches during fifteen days may be done with a pure heart, free from all stain of sin. The aforesaid confession liberates you from the sufferings of purgatory. It is said that for each mortal sin committed these sufferings must be endured for ten years.
Venerations, Processions and Celebrations
If confession represents the most personal aspect of the Jubilee celebrations, different ceremonies and manifestations express its community and collective character. Paolo dello Mastro, a Roman who has left a chronicle of the Holy Year of 1450, tells how Pope Nicholas V had ordered all the relics of all the churches in the town to be permanently exposed. Moreover, the heads of Saints Peter and Paul were to be exposed every Saturday at the Lateran, and every Sunday at St. Peter's the Sacra Volto, e. the veil with which Veronica wiped the face of Christ on the way to Calvary. Every Sunday also, the pope was to give his blessing to the pilgrims from the top of the loggia of St. Peter's.' This exposition of the Sacro Volto was to symbolize for the pilgrims a kind of apparition of the Savior come to reconcile them.
As the majority of the pilgrims did not come to Rome as individuals but in groups, more often than not they made their daily visits to the four basilicas in procession. The Jesuit Raffaele Riera, in his souvenirs of the Jubilee of 1575, has described these processions of several hundreds of pilgrims who « warmed the whole city with their devotion, bearing at the head of their ranks large and beautiful pictures of the Savior, Our Lady and their holy protectors, to the accompaniment of sweet and melodious singing and of prayers for their friends and for the whole of Christendom ».5
Finally, it is to be noted that the popes often used the occasion of the Holy Year to perform some exceptional ceremony. It suffices to quote as examples of this the triumphal canonization of St. Bernardine of Siena on Whit Sunday 1450, and — nearer our own times — the consecration of the church of St. Anselm on the Aventine by Cardinal Rampolla on November 11, 1900, plus the proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption by Pius XII on November 1, 1950. Several canonizations are being planned for 1975.
Conclusion
From this short enquiry into the celebration of the Holy Year in the course of the centuries, a very clear conclusion seems to emerge. The different rites that we have recalled, and which have been lived in faith by generation after generation of pilgrims, prove that the Christian Jubilee not only offers an opportunity of pardon and reconciliation but does so in close relationship to the person of Christ and within the framework of the Church.
The pardon granted during the Holy Year is the pardon of Jesus Christ, incarnate Son of God, who underwent his passion for man's salvation. As has been said, it is not without reason that the Holy Year opens on Christmas Day. It is not without reason either that pilgrims are shown all that evokes the passion, whether Veronica's veil, the relics of the Cross kept at the church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem, or the Scala Santa supposedly climbed by Jesus.
This pardon that comes from Christ is given and received in the Church, more precisely in the church of Rome. Pilgrims come to Rome to pray at the tombs of the two great apostles to whom Jesus confided his Church, and the chief exercises of the pilgrimage are the repeated visits to the major churches of Rome, which are entered by doors as holy as they are symbolic.
Finally, through its different rites the Holy Year appears as a year of grace both christological and ecclesiological; it confronts the pilgrim with the great mysteries of the Incarnation, of the Redemption and of the Church. Even if, today, some of the exterior manifestations have to change, the Holy Year of pardon and reconciliation will keep its meaning and its purpose only if it draws each believer and each community closer to the person of Christ our Savior living and acting in his Church.
Fr. Rouillard O.S.B., Professor Adiunctus of Dogmatic Theology at the College of St. Anselmo and of Sacramental Liturgical Theology at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in Rome, has contributed articles to various liturgical and theological journals.
1. We will treat only of the Holy Year in Rome, not of its prolongation (or its anticipation) in other churches around the world.
2 H. Schmidt, Bullarium Anni Sancti, Rome, 1949, p. 33. This valuable compendium gathers all the promulgation documents of the Holy Years from 1300 to 1950. We will use it constantly in the course of this article.
3 Giovanni Rucellai, Relazione del Giubileo del 1450, quoted in the volume Gli Anni Santi, Rome, 1934, p. 55.
4 Paolo dello Mastro, II Memoriale, in Rerum italicarum scriptores, XXIV, II, 2, p. 94.
5. Raffaele Ria, Historia utilissima ... del Gran Giubileo 1575, quoted in Gli Anni Santi, Rome, 1934, p. 75.
