JUBILEE

(Lat.jubilo, /7-<;o«ce.) The name given among the Jews to the grand sabbatical year, which was celebrated after every seven septennaries of years: whether every forty-ninth or fiftieth year is still a question among the learned. The institution of this festival is recorded in Lev. xxv. 8 — 17. This was a year of general release not only of all debts, like the common sabbatical year, but of all slaves, and of lands and po e ions which had been alienated from their original owners. It has been commonly supposed that the jubilee was intended to be typical of the release and redemption of mankind under the Gospel dispensation; and it was with this idea that Pope Boniface VIII., at the end of the thirteenth century, proclaimed a general indulgence to all Christians who should visit the tombs of the Apostles at Rome in the secular year 1300. At this period it was intended that the same celebration should take place only every hundredth year. In consequence, however, of the enormous afflux of pilgrims which this proclamation brought together, and the gain which resulted from it, Clement VI. abridged the interval to fifty years; and the solemnity then received the name of the jubilee in imitation of the Jewish custom. The second jubilee was accordingly solemnized in 1350. In 1389, Urban V. reduced the term to thirty-three years, the number of the life of our Saviour: it was raised again by Nicholas V. to fifty; and finally, m 1470, fixed by Paul II. at twenty-five; and the jubilee has ever since been solemnized every quarter of a century, beginning on Christmas eve, when the Pope opens with great pomp the door of St. Peter's, closed except on that occasion. (Mosheim's Eccl. Hist., Transl., ed. 1790, iii. 263. i [s. 633]