A jubilee is a special year of remission of sins, debts and universal pardon. In the Book of Leviticus, a jubilee year is mentioned as occurring every 50th year (after 49 years, 7×7, as per Leviticus 25:8) during which slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven, and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest.
In Western Christianity, the tradition dates to 1300, when Pope Boniface VIII convoked a holy year, following which ordinary jubilees have generally been celebrated every 25 or 50 years, with additional "extraordinary" jubilees declared depending on the need. Catholic jubilees, particularly in the Latin Church, generally involve a pilgrimage to a sacred site, normally the city of Rome.
The most recent ordinary holy year was the Jubilee Year of Hope, which commenced on 24 December 2024 and ended on 6 January 2026. The present extraordinary holy year is the Jubilee of St. Francis, which commenced on 10 January 2026 and will be concluded on 10 January 2027. It is planned to have an extraordinary jubilee in 2033 to commemorate the 2,000th anniversary of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Biblical origins
In Jewish tradition, the jubilee year was a time of joy, the year of remission or universal pardon. Leviticus 25:10 reads "Thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year, and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land: for it is the year of jubilee."
The same concept forms the fundamental idea of the Christian jubilee. The number 50 was specially associated in the early 13th century with the idea of remission. The translation of the body of Thomas Becket took place in the year 1220, 50 years after his martyrdom. The sermon on that occasion was preached by Cardinal Stephen Langton, who told his hearers that this coincidence was meant by Providence to recall "the mystical virtue of the number fifty, which, as every reader of the sacred page is aware, is the number of remission."
In the Chronicle of Alberic of Three Fountains, under the year 1208 (rather than 1200), is this brief entry: "It is said that this year was celebrated as the fiftieth year, or the year of jubilee and remission, in the Roman Court." In Ancient Rome, it was said the jubilee was the celebration coinciding with the centenaries since the founding of Rome; this pagan celebration was co-opted into the tradition of the jubilee.Gli ospizi medioevali e l'Ospedal-grande di Viterbo: memorie storiche, By Cesare Pinzi (1893), page 14.
Definition In Roman Catholic tradition, a jubilee or Holy Year is a year of forgiveness of sins and also the punishment due to sin. It is a year of reconciliation between adversaries, of conversion and receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation, "... and consequently of solidarity, hope, justice, commitment to serve God with joy and in peace with our brothers and sisters". A jubilee can be ordinary if it falls after the set period of years or extraordinary if it is proclaimed for some outstanding event.
History First Christian jubilee In the face of great suffering caused by wars and diseases such as the plague, thousands of pilgrims came to Rome at Christmas in 1299. Cardinal Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi, the contemporary and counsellor of Pope Boniface VIII, and author of a treatise on the first Christian jubilee, noted that the proclamation of the jubilee owed its origin to the statements of certain aged pilgrims who persuaded Boniface that great indulgences had been granted to all pilgrims in Rome about a hundred years before.
On 22 February 1300, Boniface published the bull "Antiquorum habet fida relatio", in which, appealing vaguely to the precedent of past ages, he declared "... the most full, pardon of all their sins", to those who fulfill certain conditions. These are, first, that being truly penitent they confess their sins, and secondly, that they visit the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome, at least once a day for a specified time—in the case of the inhabitants of the city for 30 days, in the case of strangers for 15 days.
The word "jubilee" does not occur in the bull. The pope speaks rather of a celebration which is to occur every 100 years, but writers both Roman and foreign described this year as annus jubileus, and the name "jubilee" (though others, such as the "holy year" or "the golden year", have been used, as well) has been applied to such celebrations ever since. Among those who are recorded as among the pilgrims of that first jubilee are Cimabue, Giotto, Charles, Count of Valois, the chronicler Giovanni Villani, and Dante Alighieri, who mentions it in the Divine Comedy in Canto XVIII of "Inferno" and canto XXXI of "Paradiso".
Jubilee of 1350 Boniface VIII had intended that the jubilee should be celebrated only once in 100 years. Before the middle of the 14th century, Bridget of Sweden and the poet Petrarch (among others) urged Pope Clement VI, then residing at Avignon, to change this. In 1343, Clement VI assented and issued the bull "Unigenitus", and set the time frame for every 50 years. In 1350, a jubilee was held, and although the pope did not return to Rome, Cardinal Gaetani Ceccano was dispatched to represent him. On this occasion, daily visits to the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran were enjoined, besides those to the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul outside the Walls.
Jubilees of 1390 and 1423 In virtue of an ordinance of Pope Urban VI, it was proposed to hold a jubilee every 33 years as representing the period of the sojourn of Christ upon earth and also the average span of human life. The next jubilee was held in 1390, and the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore was added to the list. The visits to these four churches has remained as one of the conditions for gaining the Roman jubilee indulgence.
In 1400 so many people came to Rome that Pope Boniface IX granted the indulgence again, though he had not decreed a jubilee year previously. One of the most severe occurrences of plague during the Second plague pandemic was exacerbated by the many pilgrims making their way to and from Rome; in the city itself 600–800 of the faithful died daily.
Another jubilee was proclaimed by Pope Martin V in 1423 (33 years after the last proclaimed jubilee in 1390), but Pope Nicholas V, in 1450, reverted to the quinquagesimal period, while in 1470 Pope Paul II decreed that the jubilee should be celebrated every 25 years, and this has been the normal rule ever since. Paul also permitted foreigners to visit some specified church in their own country, and contribute towards the expense of the Holy Wars, as a substitute for the pilgrimage to Rome.
15th century The jubilees of 1450 and 1475 were attended by vast crowds of pilgrims, and that of 1450 was unfortunately made famous by a terrible accident in which nearly 200 people were trampled to death in a panic which occurred on the bridge of Sant' Angelo. Following this disaster, great pains were taken to widen the thoroughfares and to provide for the entertainment and comfort of the pilgrims by numerous charitable organizations, of which the Archconfraternity of the Holy Trinity, founded by Saint Philip Neri, was the most famous. In 1450, Rome was a largely rural area surrounded by the Aurelian Walls and inhabited by no more than 30,000 people engaged mainly in stock-rearing, in contrast with the economic centres of Florence, Venice, and Milan. Wolves frequented the Vatican Gardens, the population was centred on the Tiber near the Campus Martius, while round the churches of San Giovanni in Laterano and Santa Maria Maggiore were separate villages. Pope Nicholas V used the wealth brought in by pilgrims in the jubilee year of 1450 to convert the medieval city into a Renaissance capital, to found the Vatican Library, and to permanently move the papal seat to the west bank of the Tiber away from the Roman masses who had evicted his predecessor: the Vatican Palace and St Peter's Basilica thus replaced St John Lateran as the main papal headquarters. The nearby Castel Sant'Angelo was rebuilt, along with new fortifications encircling what is now the Vatican City, which Pope Nicholas made his home. According to Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, 40,000 pilgrims arrived in Rome every day for the jubilee in 1450. With them came plague, and some members of the Curia died of the infection while the Pope himself fled Rome for Fabriano in the Apennine Mountains.
In 1500, Pope Alexander VI announced that the Holy Doors in the four major basilicas would be opened simultaneously, and that he himself would open the Holy Door of Saint Peter's. The celebrations around this were "founded on ancient rites and full of symbolic meaning" and the total number attending the initial jubilee events was, according to Johann Burchard, an estimated 200,000 people. Quote: "[A]ll the clergy of the city were invited to the opening of the Jubilee. The Pope himself performed this ceremony on Christmas Eve, 1499, having taken pains to settle all the details beforehand with his Master of Ceremonies. The ceremonial observed on these occasions was no modern invention, but, as the Bull of indiction expressly says, was founded on ancient rites and full of symbolic meaning. According to Burchard, the crowd which assisted at these solemnities numbered 200,000 persons. Although this may be an exaggeration, still it is certain that, in spite of the troubles of the times and the insecurity in Rome itself, the numbers attending this Jubilee were very large." This act definitively ushered in several customs.See Pope Alexander VI: The Jubilee (1500).
16th to 17th centuries The ninth jubilee was solemnly opened on 24 December 1524, by Pope Clement VII, at a time when symptoms of the great crises which would soon tear the Church apart were already present, with the Protestant Reformation. The 1550 Jubilee was proclaimed by Pope Paul III, but Pope Julius III actually opened it. In 1575, in the time of Pope Gregory XIII, as many as 300,000 people came to Rome from all over Europe. The following Holy Year was proclaimed by Pope Clement VIII in 1600.
In 1625, Pope Urban VIII opened the ceremonial doors for the jubilee year. However, the number of pilgrims was lower than expected due to the wars in northern Italy, so the Pope suspended the declaration of indulgences outside Rome in an attempt to lure the faithful to the city. He then went on to declare a universal or extraordinary jubilee in 1628 to pray for peace. This was repeated the next year in 1629, bringing material benefits to the city.Peter Rietbergen, Power and religion in Baroque Rome, 2006 Finally, Innocent X oversaw the last of his jubilees in 1650. Pope Clement X presided over that of 1675 and Pope Clement XI over that of 1700.
18th to 19th centuries Clement XI is remembered especially for establishing one of Rome's most renowned charitable institutions, the hospice of San Michele a Ripa. Gradually, other similar institutions were opened to offer shelter and assistance to pilgrims, as in 1725, the Holy Year called by Pope Benedict XIII. A famous preacher during the Jubilee of 1750, proclaimed by Pope Benedict XIV, was Leonard of Port Maurice, who set up 14 Stations of the Cross inside the ruins of the Colosseum. Benedict used the occasion of the Jubilee to celebrate the absolution and reconciliation of a number of former freemasons.Pope Benedict XIV, Bolla Providas Romanorum, paragraph 5, published on 18 March 1751 (in Italian), accessed on 12 June 2026
Pope Clement XIV announced the Jubilee of 1775, but died three months before Christmas and the Holy Door was opened by the new pope, Pius VI.