A Holy Year Called for the First Time

The first Roman Jubilee was proclaimed by Boniface VIII for the year 1300, granting a plenary indulgence to those who came to Rome and visited the basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul on a set number of days. Accounts of the crowds that resulted are large and not easy to check, but the effect on the city was substantial enough that the practice was repeated. The theological machinery behind it is the indulgence, which in Catholic teaching remits the temporal punishment due for sins already forgiven, drawing on what the tradition calls the treasury of merit.

Eamon Duffy's history of the papacy sets the first jubilee in its political moment, at the height of Boniface's claims for papal authority and shortly before the humiliation of his pontificate's end. The rite that became characteristic of the jubilee is the opening of the holy doors of the four major basilicas at the start of the year and their closing at the end, so that the year itself has a threshold. The interval between jubilees was set at fifty years, then shortened to thirty three in memory of the years of Christ's life, then to twenty five, which remains the ordinary cycle. Jubilees have been called outside that cycle as well, and the years in which one has fallen are recorded in the atlas under the Christian calendar.