Lázaro–the indulgence seller: master–servant and witness relationship

Lázaro’s relationship with the indulgence seller joins service to spectatorship: as his fifth master’s attendant, he watches a calculated religious fraud turn a village’s suspicion into mass demand. The episode first persuades him, then teaches him to read the performance behind its apparent miracle. His eventual recognition makes him a witness to both the seller’s methods and the ease with which public spectacle can pass for proof.

Identity and Terms of Service

Lázaro says that he came to serve the indulgence seller by chance, describing him as shameless and exceptionally inventive in the pursuit of sales. The seller is not simply a preacher whom Lázaro accompanies: his work depends on finding ways to place indulgences before people, and on persuading them to buy. Lázaro occupies the subordinate position of servant, traveling with him and observing the seller’s conduct at close range.

The seller’s salesmanship begins before the sermon. When arriving in a place where an indulgence is to be presented, he gives small gifts to local clerics: seasonal produce such as lettuce, lemons or oranges, a peach, quince, or a green pear. These modest offerings help secure their goodwill, so they will support the transaction and encourage the faithful to purchase. The seller also adapts his speech to his audience. He avoids Latin when speaking with clerics who know it, protecting himself from mistakes; with less learned clergy, he adopts the appearance of a learned man by speaking what only seems to be Latin. Lázaro’s service therefore exposes him to a business built not on a single pitch but on adjusting appearances to suit those being addressed.

The Staged Dispute

The defining episode takes place in a village in the Sagra de Toledo, where the seller has preached for two or three days without selling a single indulgence. With the villagers still unwilling to buy, he announces that the next morning he will hold the ceremony for withdrawing the indulgence, a measure that brings the community together. The arrangement exploits an existing obligation: citizens were required to attend the sermons presenting and withdrawing indulgences, so the apparent announcement of a routine religious service ensures a large audience.

That evening, the seller and the constable begin by playing a drinking game. Their exchange turns into a loud quarrel: the seller calls the constable a thief, and the constable calls him a swindler. The seller reaches for a pike, while the constable draws his sword. Lodgers and villagers rush in to separate them. Unable to get at each other through the crowd, the men continue trading insults, and the constable publicly accuses the seller of fraud and of preaching false indulgences. The quarrel plants the charge in the villagers’ minds before the next day’s sermon, while making the men’s hostility appear spontaneous.

The following morning, the seller rings the church bells and begins preaching from the pulpit. The constable enters during the sermon, prays, then addresses the congregation in a calm, loud voice. He claims that he had agreed to help the seller in exchange for a share of the profits, but says he has repented because of the damage to his conscience and the people’s purses. He declares the indulgences false, urges the congregation not to buy them, and throws down the staff that symbolizes his authority. The gesture gives the accusation the appearance of a public renunciation, reinforcing what the villagers heard during the previous night’s fight.

The Miracle as Public Evidence

The seller does not silence the constable or have him thrown out. Instead, he falls to his knees on the pulpit and makes a prayerful challenge. He asks God, who knows the truth, to make the truth manifest through a miracle: if the seller is lying, let the pulpit sink into the earth with both men; if the constable is lying, let him be punished so the congregation can recognize his malice. The appeal transforms an accusation between two men into a test apparently adjudicated by divine power.

As soon as the seller finishes, the constable falls full length to the ground. The church echoes with the impact; he foams at the mouth, twists his face, kicks, punches, and convulses. The crowd’s confusion and alarm help make the staged punishment legible as supernatural evidence. Some present urge others to help him, but the seller recasts the scene as a matter for prayer. He forbids people to answer harm with harm and directs them to supplicate God for the man’s recovery and forgiveness.

The seller descends from the pulpit, takes a cross and holy water, and performs the appearance of an exorcism. After prayers with the priests and congregation, he places an indulgence on the constable’s head. The constable gradually recovers, then throws himself at the seller’s feet and asks forgiveness. He confesses that he spoke under the Devil’s direction, supposedly both to take revenge for the quarrel and, above all, to obstruct the good that would come from the village’s purchase of the indulgence. The men then reconcile. In sequence, the staged accusation, apparent punishment, ritual healing, and confession supply the audience with a complete story that seems to validate the seller’s claims.

Lázaro as Servant and Witness

Lázaro initially believes what he sees. He admits that, though still a boy, he is astonished by the affair and takes it for truth, as many others do. His presence matters because he is not positioned outside the scene as a knowing observer: he is the seller’s servant, implicated in the traveling household and exposed to the same spectacle as the congregation. Only afterward, when he sees his master and the constable laughing heartily about what happened, does he understand that the performance was planned.

That recognition gives the relationship a second meaning. Lázaro has been learning the seller’s methods while serving him, but the lesson is not that the apparent miracle has been proved; it is that the two supposed opponents were collaborators. The laughter retrospectively overturns the scene’s public meaning. What the villagers received as a divine judgment was an invented performance, and what looked like a constable’s confession was part of the seller’s salesmanship. Lázaro’s movement from credulous witness to informed observer does not undo the deception; it lets the reader see how completely the deception has worked before its secret is revealed.

Consequences and Significance

The fraud succeeds on the scale its staging was designed to reach. Once the indulgences are bought throughout the village, the story spreads to neighboring settlements. On later visits, the seller no longer needs to preach or even go to the church: people come to the inn to buy the indulgences, as though they were freely distributed fruit. In ten or twelve nearby villages, he sells thousands without delivering another sermon. The performance thus generates its own evidence through rumor: each new audience arrives having heard the supposed miracle as a report, and the seller can turn that reputation directly into sales.

Lázaro remains with this fifth master for about four months, a period he recalls as bringing him many difficulties. The episode is consequently more than a single trick in a sequence of employments. It makes his master’s trade visible as a system: gifts win clerical cooperation; required attendance fills the church; a planted dispute introduces doubt; a simulated miracle answers it; and the tale’s circulation removes the need to repeat the performance. Lázaro’s service places him inside that system, while his later recognition makes him its witness and the narrator of its exposure.