Burke From the church of Notre Dame in Rocamadour: of The demand for indulgences

went through the roof. You could also get one by coming here to Rocamadour, in
southern France, on a holy package tour. f you made it on this one! you popped into
the shrine of the Black "adonna here! said a prayer! pop back out again! and got your
indulgence. #nd you got it because you had done what pilgrims all o$er the place were
doing to earn foregi$eness for some sin or other! you%d climbed all the way up here.
Burke notes that at Rocamadour one &got an indulgence by climbing to the shrine on your
knees and besides your indulgence you got something else.' the pilgrims mirror in which
you were supposed to capture the image of the holy shrine' Burke goes on to remark that
the mirror was offered by the local mafia in much the same way that sou$enir sellers.
(ames Burke on the in$ention of the printing press. &There was a fortune to be made out
of pilgrims all right! and if something had not gone disastrously wrong with similar profit
making plans by certain )erman gents to sell trinkets and these special mirrors and such
to tourists at the centenary fair at the holy city of #achen! the disaster being that they got
the date of the fair wrong by one year! the fella whose mistake it was wouldn%t ha$e had
to think up an alternati$e way of making money to pay his partners back the money he
had borrowed from them for the ill*fated $enture in the first place.
This idiot with the world%s worst sense of timing was a goldsmith from "ain+ and when
in ,-./! the full horror of his financial predicament became known to him! he hurriedly
told his partners not to worry! they%d make a million a different way out of another great
idea he%d been thinking about! a goldmine of an idea! so secret that each partner couldn%t
pass it on to his heirs when he died.'
0ell it was!a gold mine! and one of the greatest secrets in western history as it turned out
because at one stroke! it was to sol$e e$erybody%s problem. 1awyers! bankers!
bureaucrats! merchants! e$erybody. #nd it was also to take away that e2traordinary
memory of theirs! fore$er.
-33 times cheaper than scripture.
First bulk orders came from the bishops. &But for the printers! the real smash best*seller
were the indulgences! what we would call a 4licence to print money%. ndulgence money
to build a new 5t 6eter%s.
,7,8 1uther listed /7 complaints one of which first person to use printing as a mass
medium! triggered )erman nationalism. 1uther%s 6rotestant reformation! born of the
printing press bureaucracy flourished! 9entral control was much easier when you could
print the laws. Rationali+ation of the lifeworld. These widespread cultural and economic
changes ine$itably had an effect on leisure.
9ould bring in the book the 41easure :our'