In England, many of us first meet pardoners and their wares via the English National Curriculum. I was one of those reluctant teenagers, dreading having to read aloud in class from Chaucer's seminal depiction of a pardoner. Certainly, by the age of sixteen, I had formed an opinion, via the classroom, of pardoners as corrupt, drunken, odious men, selling religion like a baker sells hot cakes and with considerably less faith in their product. And I equally made assumptions about the medieval laity, some as corrupt as their pardoner, buying a little slice of forgiveness. Chaucer has a lot to answer for in this instance, and this experience reminds me to this day of the power of literature—how it can mould our opinions and beliefs with relative ease.

Swanson's impressively extensive study seeks to dispel the myths surrounding pardoners and the indulgences (pardons) they sold. In fact, “dispersed” might be a better choice of verb than “sold,” since Swanson is at pains to explain that not all pardons were granted in return for a financial payment. Across ten clearly defined chapters, Swanson leads us through the development and purpose of pardons, as well as guiding us down his research path, to expose the problems of sources and interpretation. Chapter 1 deals with “Doctrine and Development”—the actual purpose of indulgences and how they were perceived by those who gave them and those to whom they were given. The following chapter (“Pardons for Every Occasion”) examines the different types of indulgences that were available and begins to discuss the problems of available sources. The following chapter (“Nooks, Crannies, Needles, Haystacks: The Sources”) tackles this issue head on, with a comprehensive and, at times, highly entertaining survey of the problems Swanson encountered when searching out evidence of such ephemera. He turns his attention to the religious, social, and cultural world in which they were created.

Within this context, Swanson considers the logistics and people involved in the granting and receiving of pardons, including the introduction of printed pardons in England. He also considers in detail the contemporary perception of those involved; in particular, he examines the portrayal of pardoners in manuscript and printed literature—particularly that seminal depiction of a pardoner by Geoffrey Chaucer. It is important to note that England's first printer, William Caxton, was a printer of indulgences; indeed, his earliest surviving production is an indulgence (see 85, 249, and 253). It is equally important to note that the primary motive for printers was not the salvation of their fellow men but more the flourishing of their own businesses. Indulgences could be produced cheaply and money reaped in just as fast. Money made from printing indulgences helped Caxton build a business which could then take on the printing of literary works, such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It is in these chapters (4 through 6) that the reader gets a sense of both the spiritual purpose of indulgences and their role as marketable commodities.

Moving to what firmly feels like a new section of this substantial work, Swanson then considers “Indulgences debated” (chapter 7). One of the impressive attributes of Swanson's presentation of his research is his ability to make a large study readily accessible and easily readable. It is easy to follow the progress of his argument throughout this extensive study, since each chapter is divided into subsections. Here Swanson explores the debates and controversies that have surrounded indulgences over time, and how academic study has discussed their role. The subsequent chapter places these artifacts and the debates surrounding them in the context of English society. Again, Swanson discusses the problems of sources and their interpretation. The assumption that these indulgences were nothing more than a financial scam is further discussed in the next chapter; again, this is set in the wider context of England and its changing economy. As he acknowledges, reputations do not come out of nowhere; fiscal return and fraud make good bedfellows and Swanson takes us on a tour of the ropey little backstreets of this world of treachery and dubious “passports.”

Swanson then turns his attention to the demise of these pardons. “Into Oblivion: The Reign of Henry VIII” is organized chronologically, and tackles the problems of evidence of pre-Reformation activities in a post-Reformation world. Certainly willful destruction, and not just the passage of time, has done much to rob us of data, but the survival of mutilated indulges tells us much of the subsequent distaste for such practices and their physical manifestations. As was the practice (and, indeed, the decree) with codices, offensive matter could simply be blacked out or cut out. Images, in particular, would often remain, so long as they contained no whiff of popery. The afterlife of such artifacts, therefore, provides evidence of their life after their initial reason for production. (See, for example, figure 18, which presents a woodblock sheet where the devotional images remain but the text of the pardon has been mutilated.)

This closing section of the book notes how quickly indulgences were wiped from the landscape of English religious practice. At the same time, Swanson provides compelling evidence to suggest that indulgences did not, however, go “quietly” (6). After all, their loss had a considerable impact on the charitable activities of the realm, as well as on matters spiritual and social. Here Swanson shows an impressive command of the data he has accumulated in considering how these indulgences were an integral part of life in medieval England. He also tackles head on the problems of their subsequent perception by a post-Reformation Church and laity.

The text is accompanied by eighteen well-chosen illustrations (although their reproduction lacks some clarity). The bibliography is testimony to the plethora of sources consulted, and also manifests some of the problems encountered when incunabula are catalogued as manuscripts, rather than printed matter. (Manuscripts and early printed broadsides are grouped together in the bibliography, identifying such a practice.) This is a difficult topic superbly handled by a master of the field. What Swanson provides in Passports to Paradise? is not so much a rehabilitation of the pardon in history, more a reassessment—and a highly detailed and long-overdue one at that. This will be the seminal text on the subject for a long time to come.