The Economics of Devotion: Vows and Indulgences in Medieval Iceland

How profitable was a saint’s shrine? To what extent did the veneration of the saints enrich the Church? This article considers these questions for the case of medieval Iceland. It examines accounts of pilgrimage, vows to saints, and the indulgences that could be obtained by visiting or supporting churches or by performing prayers in the presence of a devotional picture, from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries. It points out that prayers and other religious exercises were more common than payment or donation of goods both in the corpus of vows to the saints and as ways of obtaining indulgences.