Seller of Indulgences and Policemen staged a miracle fraud

The indulgence seller and the constable turn a failed sales campaign into an apparent miracle: by staging a bitter quarrel, a public denunciation, and a dramatic collapse in church, they persuade a skeptical village that the indulgence seller’s bulls have divine power. The fraud converts performance into supposed proof, and supposed proof into commerce. Its success is measured not only in the near-universal purchase of the bulls in that village, but in the thousands sold across ten or twelve neighboring settlements without another sermon. Lázaro, who initially accepts the spectacle as real, eventually understands that its apparent miracle was planned by his master and the constable together.

Causes and Design

In a village in La Sagra de Toledo, the indulgence seller had preached for two or three days without selling a single bull. His usual devices had failed, and the villagers showed no sign of changing their minds. He therefore resolved to summon the community the following morning under the pretext of withdrawing the bull. The occasion was useful because an edict required the whole citizenry to attend the sermons at which indulgence bulls were presented and withdrawn; the withdrawal ceremony gave the seller a way to gather the audience his pitch had not won.

The scheme depended on a division of roles. The indulgence seller and the constable began by drinking and playing for the last cup after supper, then turned their game into a loud quarrel. The constable would accuse the seller of fraud in public, while the seller would respond with solemn piety and invite the crowd to judge between them. Their apparent antagonism was not a breakdown in their partnership but its opening act: the constable’s denunciation would make the seller’s later appeal to divine judgment look like a dangerous test rather than an ordinary sales tactic.

The Staged Accusation

The quarrel escalated until the constable called the indulgence seller a swindler and declared that the bulls he preached were false. The commotion brought guests and villagers running. People tried to separate the men as they reached for weapons—the seller taking a large pike from the room’s entrance, the constable putting his hand to the sword at his belt. The crowd prevented an armed confrontation, but the accusations remained audible. The villagers escorted the constable out of the inn; the seller stayed behind, still apparently furious, and went to bed only after people urged him to calm down.

The next morning the seller went to church, rang the bells for Mass and the sermon withdrawing the bull, and mounted the pulpit. The previous night’s quarrel had already shaped the audience’s expectations: villagers were murmuring that the indulgences were false because the constable himself had said so. The seller began by urging them not to lose the benefit the bull offered. In the middle of this sermon, the constable entered, prayed, and stood up to address the congregation in a composed, public voice.

He represented himself as a guilty accomplice. He claimed that the seller had persuaded him to support the business in exchange for a share of the proceeds, but said he had repented because the fraud would damage both his conscience and the villagers’ purses. He denied any further connection with the bulls and threw his official staff to the ground, visibly renouncing his authority for the occasion. That gesture made his accusation appear costly and sincere: the official seemed to surrender his own standing in order to warn the community. When some men moved to remove him from the church and prevent a scandal, the seller stopped them, ordered them under threat of excommunication to let the constable speak, and remained silent while the denunciation continued.

The Apparent Miracle

After the constable finished, the seller invited him to say more. The constable answered that there was much else to tell about the seller’s lies, but that he would say no more for the moment. The seller then fell to his knees on the pulpit, clasped his hands, and appealed to God as the witness who knew the truth. He asked for a miracle: if the constable was right, the pulpit should sink seven fathoms into the earth with both men; if the seller was truthful and the constable lied under the Devil’s influence, the constable should be punished so that the congregation could know his malice.

The constable immediately fell full length to the floor. He struck the ground hard enough to make the church resound, bellowed, foamed at the mouth, twisted his face, and thrashed and kicked. The cries of the crowd mingled with the noise of his convulsions. Some people called for God to help him; others said that the punishment was deserved for false testimony. More than fifteen men eventually struggled to hold him down, gripping his arms and legs as he punched and kicked at those within reach.

Throughout the disturbance, the seller remained kneeling on the pulpit, hands and eyes raised as if absorbed in divine contemplation. When several men finally roused him and begged him to help the constable, the seller responded as though waking from a sweet sleep. He said that the congregation should not intercede for a man on whom God had so clearly manifested himself, but invoked the command to forgive injuries and proposed that they all pray for the accused man instead. The performance thus turned the seller’s apparent refusal to intervene into another display of piety, before he agreed to lead the community in supplication.

The people knelt before the altar and sang a litany with the priests. Carrying a cross and holy water, the seller approached the constable and performed a lengthy prayer, moving the congregation to tears. He then ordered the bull brought to him and placed it on the constable’s head. The constable gradually recovered; once fully conscious, he threw himself at the seller’s feet, asked forgiveness, and confessed that he had spoken at the Devil’s command. His explanation supplied a ready religious account of both the accusation and its reversal: he had supposedly meant to harm the seller after their quarrel, and, more importantly, the Devil had resented the good that would be done if the villagers accepted the bull.

Conversion into Sales

The seller forgave the constable, and the two reconciled. The congregation’s response completed the fraud’s transformation of spectacle into evidence: a rush to obtain the bull followed, until almost no one in the village was left without one—husbands and wives, sons and daughters, boys and girls alike. The public event appeared to confirm that the bull had power, while the constable’s recovery and confession seemed to validate the seller’s interpretation of what had happened.

The story then travelled beyond the village. In the neighboring settlements, people came to buy the bulls at the inn without requiring a sermon or even a visit to the church, as if the documents were fruit being handed out freely. Across ten or twelve villages, the seller disposed of thousands of bulls without preaching another sermon. His initial failure to persuade one community had become a portable story that sold the same claim elsewhere.

Lázaro’s Recognition and the Fraud’s Method

Lázaro admits that, in his youthful ingenuousness, he too was astonished and believed the scene was true, as many others did. His change in understanding comes not from a hidden supernatural sign or an investigator’s proof, but from seeing the indulgence seller and the constable laughing heartily together afterward. Their private amusement reveals the public crisis as a collaboration: the quarrel, denunciation, collapse, prayer, recovery, and confession had been arranged as parts of one deception. Lázaro recognizes the seller as the scheme’s learned inventor and reflects on how much such swindlers must do to simple people.

The episode makes the crowd essential to the trick rather than incidental to it. The required attendance at the withdrawal sermon supplies the audience; the constable’s staff, the pulpit, the church, the priests, the cross, the holy water, and the bull itself supply signs of official and religious authority. The villagers’ efforts to restrain the constable, their prayers, and their tears turn collective participation into apparent corroboration. What they witness is not merely a staged fit but a whole sequence that interprets itself: accusation becomes blasphemous false testimony, convulsion becomes punishment, and recovery after the bull is placed on the constable’s head becomes proof of the bull’s efficacy. The seller’s success rests on controlling how each gesture is read, while Lázaro’s retrospective account exposes the gap between public belief and the conspirators’ private laughter.