Mandatory attendance at indulgence sermons

Mandatory attendance at indulgence sermons required the community to hear the sermons that introduced and formally withdrew indulgence bulls. In the episode recounted by Lázaro de Tormes, this rule supplies the seller with an audience he could not persuade to gather voluntarily: he summons the village to hear the bull’s withdrawal, then transforms a failed sales campaign into a public spectacle of accusation, apparent divine punishment, and reconciliation.

The Rule and Its Use

The relevant edict, issued in 1524 and renewed in later years, obliged the entire citizenry to attend both sermons associated with the indulgence bulls. The withdrawal sermon therefore guaranteed the seller access to the whole community, even when earlier preaching had failed to persuade anyone to buy. After two or three days of preaching in a village in La Sagra de Toledo without a sale, the seller announced that the bull would be withdrawn the following morning. The compulsory gathering was not incidental to the fraud: it was the mechanism that brought the intended audience into the church.

A Manufactured Accusation

The previous evening, the seller and the constable staged a quarrel during a drinking game. The constable called the seller a cheat and publicly declared the bulls false; the seller answered with insults, and their argument drew guests and villagers. By morning, the dispute had already shaped opinion: people gathered at the church murmuring that the indulgences were fraudulent, citing the constable’s accusation. The seller nevertheless began his sermon, urging them not to forfeit the spiritual benefit of the bull.

The constable then entered during the sermon and repeated the charge before the congregation. He claimed that the seller had recruited him as an accomplice in a scheme to divide the proceeds, but said he had repented because the fraud would harm both his conscience and the villagers’ purses. He threw down the staff that marked his official authority and presented himself as a witness against the seller. The performance borrowed the forms of public testimony and official renunciation to make the accusation seem credible.

The Apparent Miracle and Its Effect

The seller forbade the congregation to silence the constable. Instead, he knelt on the pulpit and prayed that God would reveal the truth, proposing that the pulpit sink seven fathoms into the earth if the accusation were true, and that the constable be punished if it were false. As soon as the prayer ended, the constable fell, foamed at the mouth, twisted his face, kicked, and writhed on the floor. The congregation saw the staged collapse as divine confirmation rather than part of the scheme.

The seller then directed the villagers to pray for the constable’s recovery. Together with the priests, they knelt before the altar and sang a litany; the seller approached with a cross and holy water, prayed over the constable, and placed the bull on his head. The constable gradually recovered, begged the seller’s forgiveness, and confessed that the devil had made him speak falsely. The two men reconciled, completing the public conversion of apparent accusation into apparent proof of the bull’s sacred efficacy.

Sales, Exposure, and Significance

Nearly everyone in the village bought a bull after the performance. News of the supposed miracle spread to nearby settlements, where people came to buy without requiring further sermons or even a visit to the church. Across ten or twelve surrounding villages, the seller sold thousands of bulls without preaching another sermon. The mandated gathering had launched a spectacle whose reputation then carried the sales beyond the reach of the original rule.

Lázaro initially believed the scene, as did many of the villagers. Only later, when he saw the seller and the constable laughing together about what had happened, did he understand that the quarrel and miracle had been devised in advance. The rule itself did not authenticate the bulls; it made a captive public available to a performance that manufactured its own apparent evidence. In the episode, compulsory religious attendance becomes both an instrument of fraud and a means by which the fraud acquires collective credibility.