JUBILEE, or JUBILEE YEAR, an institution of the Roman Catholic church, the name of which is borrowed from that of the Jewish jubilee. The Catholic jubilee is of two kinds—" ordinary" and " extraordinary." The ordinary jubilee is that which is cele brated at stated intervals, the length of which has varied at different times. Its origin is traced to pope Boniface VIII., who issued, for the year 1300, a bull granting a plenary indulgence to all pilgrim-visitors of Rome during that year, on condition of their peni tently confessing their sins and visiting the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, fifteen times if strangers, and thirty times if residents of the city. The. invitation was accepted with marvelous enthusiasm. Innumerable troops of pilgrims from every part of the church flocked to Rome. Giovanni Villani, a contemporary chronicler, states that the constant number of pilgrims in Rome, not reckoning those who were on the road going or returning, during the entire year, never fell below 200,000 As instituted oy Boni face, the jubilee was to have been held every hundredth year. Clement VI., in obe dience to an earnest request from the people of Rome, abridged the time to fifty years. His jubilee accordingly took place in 1350, and was even more numerously attended than that of Boniface; the average number of pilgrims, until the heats of summer sus-. pended their frequency, being, according to Matthew Villani, no fewer than 1,000,000W The term of interval was still further abridged by VI., and again by Paul II., who, in 1470, ordered that henceforth each twenty-fifth year should be held as jubilee— an arrangement which has continued ever since to regulate the ordinary jubilee. Paul
II. extended still more, in another way, the spiritual advantages of the jubilee, by dis pensing with the personal pilgrimage to Rome, and granting the indulgence to all who should visit any church in their own country designated for the purpose, and should, if their means permitted, contribute a sum towards the expenses of the holy wars. The substitution by Leo X. of the fund for building St. Peter's church for that of the holy war, and the abusive and scandalous proceedings of many of those appointed to preach the indulgence (q.v.), were among'the proximate causes of the reformation. In later jubilee years the pilgrimages to Rome gradually diminished in frequency, the indul gence being, for the most part, obtained by the performance of the prescribed works at home; but the observance itself has been punctually maintained at each recurring period, with the single exception of the year 1800, in which, owing to the vacancy of the holy see, and the troubles of the times, it w'as not held.
The extraordinary jubilee is ordered by the pope out of the regular period, either on his accession or on some occasion of public calamity, or in some critical condition of the fortunes of the church; one of the conditions for obtaining the indulgence in such cases being the recitation of certain stated prayers for the particular necessity in which the jubilee originated. •