Arrival of the printing press spread books rapidly, but the first bestsellers weren’t grand literature—they were indulgences.

Why Indulgences Fit the New Press

Indulgences were already part of Catholic religious life before movable-type printing. They concerned a specific distinction in church teaching: an indulgence did not forgive a sin or guarantee salvation, but was understood to remit some of the temporal punishment associated with sins whose guilt had been forgiven. Because many people believed that this punishment could continue in purgatory after death, the practice carried powerful personal stakes.

Printed indulgence letters turned that established practice into a product that could be reproduced and distributed in quantity. A press could make many similar slips far faster than a scribe could copy them by hand. Church authorities could authorize a campaign, while printers supplied the documents that made it workable across a wider area.

Paper, Payment, and a Contested Practice

People might receive an indulgence in connection with a religious act or a donation. The paper itself was not a magical ticket out of purgatory; it documented participation in a practice whose meaning depended on church teaching and the recipient’s beliefs. But when money became prominent, the transaction could look—and sometimes be criticized—as buying spiritual relief.

That tension helped make indulgences an especially consequential use of print. The technology did not create the belief or the practice. It made their administration more scalable, giving religious institutions a way to circulate standardized documents and reach people beyond the immediate reach of handwritten copying.

An Early Mass Market, Not the Whole Story

Indulgences were among the early high-volume printed goods, but calling them the press’s single first bestseller oversimplifies a crowded early market that also included religious texts, calendars, and other practical works. Their significance lies in what they reveal: early printers found demand not only for great books, but also for small, useful documents tied to institutions and urgent concerns.

A printed slip could carry a claim about the afterlife into an ordinary household. That was the press’s striking new power: not merely to preserve words, but to reproduce a trusted document—and the authority behind it—at scale.