Rich people have been known to buy their way out of almost every type of consequence, but did you know that included even the afterlife? And no one was quicker to oblige than the Roman Catholic Church.
Over the centuries, the Catholic understanding of the afterlife evolved from the binary mindset of heaven and hell to the addition of a third option: purgatory. The idea is pretty simple, you weren’t good enough for heaven but not quite rotten enough for hell, and so you went to a place to refine yourself to get ready for eternity with the divine. And I don’t mean that like refining school but like a refining fire that you put metal into to remove all the impurities. 
Eventually, the Catholic Church decided that there were things you could do in this life to knock a couple of years off of your sentence, like praying the rosary or walking up the steps of a cathedral on your knees until they bled. But then the church decided to go to war with the whole rest of the world, known as the Crusades. There were eight crusades in total, also making it one of the longest-running franchises until the Fast and the Furious. 
War is expensive, and eventually, some financially savvy bishops started selling indulgences to fund everything from building new buildings to paying for their war chests. No more groveling or silly prayers are needed to get yourself into heaven! Just buy a piece of paper so we can buy more swords to crush the skulls of our enemies, and you can get to heaven super fast, just like Jesus always wanted.
Over time, indulgences went out of style, but occasionally a pope would pop up and still provide them from time to time. This ultimately leads to Martin Luther going bonkers over the whole thing and sending out 95 tweets about everything from the pope to purgatory and then running off to marry a nun.
But in 1877, ol’ Pope Pius the IX issued some special indulgences. One of them was a devotional that could knock a whopping 100 days off your afterlife sentence, and if you had this relic inside your home, you could get 100 days off each day! For those keeping score, that means in one year, you could get 36,500 days off your docket—an entire hundred years off, not a bad deal.
Catholics everywhere bought them, and then their grandkids yeeted them right into the trash when estate sale time came around. RIP, Granny; I hope the indulgence worked.
Needless to say, indulgences are pretty rare to find, and I just happened to stumble across one just the other day. In all my years of serving as a priest and as a restorer of religious antiquities, this is the only the second one I’ve ever seen in person. I’ve had people send me photos of them to authenticate but rarely held one.
This indulgence is a shadow boxed frame that holds a truly unique crucifix set against a print of Mary and John kneeling at the foot of the cross. It is chock-full of symbols from dice that the soldiers used to bet over who would get Jesus’ cloak and even the skull of Adam, which legend says Joseph of Arimathea left at the foot of the cross. Hidden somewhere under the statue is a piece of paper, the actual indulgence itself, issued by Pope Pius IX.
I am so lucky to have found this truly unique piece, and I couldn’t wait to share it with y’all!