including so-called works of supererogation, which people would perform in order to pay off sins of which they might be unaware, and the granting of “indulgences,” or pardons for sins committed. Indulgences could even be sold to people with the money to pay for them, a scandal that was the immediate cause of the Protestant Reformation. Worst of all, though, penance led to the belief that most people died in spiritual debt, not having paid off their sins in full. That led the church to invent a place