ATDTDA (17): "I'll take fifty cents per head" (466.10)

[Tim Strzechowski]

While not *technically* an indulgence, the horse-trader exchange between Moss Gatlin and Jephthah raises the question of the "value" of a Christian soul.  Presumably, it's worth around forty cents a head.
 
 
[...] The whole concept of an indulgence is based on the medieval Catholic doctrine that sinners must not only repent of sins that they've committed, they must also confess these sins and pay some sort of retribution. You see, the problem with repentance and confession is that the only evidence you have of repentance is the sinner's claim to be repentant. Repentance is, like so many other Christian concepts, an internal state rather than an external action. The history of medieval Catholic doctrine is in many ways an attempt to find ways to present exterior signs for the interior state of the individual believer. Repentance was no exception to this. 
 
[...]
 
So, in order for the trade value of money to be relatively fixed, not only must money be made of a material that is relatively rare, but money can't have any real value, that is, it can't have use value. [...]

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GLOSSARY/INDULGE.HTM
 
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence