An indulgence was never, in official theology, the purchase of forgiveness. It remitted the temporal punishment owed for sins already confessed and absolved. Click through the five steps that turned that doctrine into collateral for a bank loan, then move the dials to see where the coins in the chest actually went.
Follow the money, 1514–1517
Each step below was legal, documented and, taken alone, defensible. Click one to see what the theology said — and what a frightened villager was told.
80,000
none200,000
Albrecht’s lands — Mainz, Magdeburg, Halberstadt — held well over a million people. The campaign was licensed for eight years.
0.30
a few penniesa craftsman’s month
The printed scale asked by rank: kings and bishops at the top, and the poor told to give what they could — or to fast and pray instead. Preachers were paid to make the top of the scale feel normal.
Read this as a model, not a ledger. Surviving accounts for the campaign are patchy, and coin values shifted between regions. The structure — a fee, a loan, a licence, a split chest — is documented; the totals here are an order-of-magnitude illustration you are controlling.