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PARDON BRASSES. 23
background is crowded with the instruments and emblems of the Passion, but these are not, as in most English prints of the Image of Pity, arranged as a border framing the whole picture. The inscription is in Flemish, and promises fourteen thousand years of pardon. The print is believed to have been issued between 1455 and 1471.
Of course the "Imago Pietatis" and the " Mass of St. Gregory " were not the only artistic indulgences. There is a fine wood engraving belonging probably to the school of Gaudenzio Ferrari, and dating from the early years of the sixteenth century, representing the Virgin and Child and St. Joseph with a considerable amount of landscape. Underneath is an Ave Maria and a statement also in Latin that Sixtus IV. had granted "xi milia annorum" for each time it was said. To consider the many indulgences printed in the infancy of typography would lead us far afield.
The papal grants of " indulgences" were among the abuses that led to the Reformation under Luther. Indulgences appear to have been developed as a powerful instrument for the promotion of the crusades, those remarkable, but in |
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