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Abstract:  DOCTRINAL DEBATES AND JUBILEES: FROM ANTI-LAXITY TO ALFONSIAN BENIGNITY The essay outlines the influence which the doctrinal debates on dogma, morality, philosophy and politics, developing between the mid 17th century a the early 19th century, had on the jubilee. The jubilee of the 1650 was celebrated by the greatest crowd of believers during the period of largest expansion of benign casuistry. Only a few decades later, however, the anti-laxist and anti-probabilist debate raised the issue, especially in France, of the theoretical and practical link between the concept of indulgence and the slackening of penitential discipline. Notwithstanding the criticism reserved for the decreased fear of hell in sacramental absolution, in Italy, even during the jubilee years, sermons such as those by Paolo Segneri and Leonardo da Porto Maurizio were based on the four “novissimi” – death, judgment, hell, heaven- in order to raise at least dome remorse before absolution. At the same time, catechists and confessors were growing increasingly irritated over the believers’ scant knowledge of the mysteries of the faith. During the second half on the 18th century, the disquieting atmosphere provoked by the critical attitude of the philosophes had its effects on sermonizing and filled many jubilee instruction pamphlets. There was an attempt to bring the system of indulgences back under Episcopal control on the common ground of enlightened reformism and late Jansenism in the name of a “national” Church. This, of course, had its effects on the Roman Holy Year. After the revolutionary experience and within a context of imminent “de-Christianization”, there was a return to benignity. It was idealized in the name of Alfonso de Liguori and made official by the papacy in the official jubilee proclamation documents.