In the romance Les Rois Maudits it is said that the Catholic church never sold indulgences. It is said that in a specific region they charged for a kind of 'pious certificate', which assured that the person went to church, confessed and communed. A pope that was from this region wanted to extend this 'service' to the entire Europe, though.
Still, Martin Luther made a pretty big deal on the subject and split from the church for this specific reason. Is there any controversy on this subject?
Maurice Druon’s claim in Les Rois Maudits is technically correct. From the technical perspective of canon law (the law of the church) the church couldn’t “sell” indulgences since this would constitute the grave spiritual crime of simony, the buying and selling of church offices or graces. An indulgence was a remittance of punishment for sin if the sinner was genuinely contrite for the sin and had previously confessed it to a priest. Indulgences originally applied to pious acts such as going on crusade, visiting certain pilgrimage sites, performing good works like helping to build a church, repair a bridge or a road, or, especially, offering prayers for pious intentions (and later for souls suffering in purgatory). Almsgiving was also something to which an indulgence could be attached, but the almsgiving in return for an indulgence was always construed as a donation not a purchase price. The indulgence that Pope Julius II offered initially in 1506 (and later renewed) for pious contributions to the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica was technically not something for sale but something which was received for a donation. But you can easily see how an ordinary person would have trouble making the distinction that a) it wasn’t for sale and b) it didn’t in itself forgive sins.
Luther’s specific criticism of the church was not aimed at indulgences per se but at the claim of the papacy to be exercising authority to grant indulgences without scriptural warrant. The focus of his reforming ideas was that faith alone (sola fide) was required for salvation, not doing good works to which indulgences might be attached, and that scripture alone (sola scriptura) was the only necessary source for salvation, not the decrees of popes or councils, which could err.
Source: Any decent history of the Reformation will cover this, such as Diarmaid MacCulloch’s The Reformation (2004), a masterpiece.
I've never heard that claim to be made previously. In, A Brief History of the Crusades, Geoffrey Hindley claims that in order to avoid taking the cross and going on crusade, a person, having the wealth, was able to make a payment thus absolving himself of this duty. This exchange he claims would later be an influence on the practice of selling indulgences.