Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Finally the last of the “horrible articles” mentioned above does to some extent approach the truth. The saying about the money in the coffer cannot, indeed, be traced to Tetzel’s own lips, yet in his sermons he advocated a certain opinion held by some Schoolmen (though in no sense a doctrine of the Church), viz. that an indulgence gained for the departed was at once and infallibly applied to this or that soul for whom it was destined. This view was not supported by the Papal Bulls of Indulgence, and Luther was not justified in asserting at a later date that the Pope had actually taught this. Great theologians, such as Cardinal Cajetan, for instance, even then expressed themselves against such a view, which now is universally recognised as untenable. It was the wish of Cajetan that no faith should be given those preachers who taught such extravagances. “Preachers speak in the name of the Church,” he wrote, “only so long as they proclaim the teaching of Christ and the Church; but if for purposes of their own, they teach that about which they know nothing and which is only their own imagination, they cannot be regarded as mouthpieces of the Church; no one must be surprised if such as these fall into error.” It is true, however, that even the more highly placed Indulgence Commissaries did not scruple, in their official proclamations, to set forth as certain this doubtful scholastic opinion. It is no wonder that Tetzel in his popular appeals seized upon it with avidity, for, in spite of certain gifts, he was no great theologian. He not only taught the certain and immediate liberation of the soul in the above sense but also the erroneous proposition that a Plenary Indulgence for the departed could be obtained without contrition and penance on the part of the living, simply by means of a money payment.

  Some of Tetzel’s more recent champions have insinuated that the unfavourable opinion concerning his teaching rests merely on witnesses who reported on his sermons from hearsay without having themselves been present. As a matter of fact, however, the accusations do not rest merely on such testimony, but more especially on Tetzel’s own theses, or “Anti-theses,” as he called them, on his “Vorlegung” against Luther and on his second set of theses. This is reinforced by the official instructions on the Indulgence to which he was bound to conform. That a money payment alone is necessary for obtaining an Indulgence for the departed is indeed stated — though wrongly — in the instructions of Bomhauer and also in those of Arcimboldi and Albert of Brandenburg. The Anti-theses above mentioned were publicly defended by Tetzel on January 20, 1518, at the University of Frankfort on the Oder; they thus belong to Tetzel, though in reality they were drawn up by Conrad Wimpina. a Professor of Theology in that town. Paulus published a new edition of the Anti-theses, which were already known, from the original broadsheet which he discovered in the Court Library at Munich. Four witnesses to the inaccuracy of Tetzel’s sermons must be mentioned: firstly, the Town Clerk of Görlitz, Johann Hass; then Bertold Pirstinger, Bishop of Chiemsee and author of the “Tewtsche Theologey”; thirdly, the Saxon Franciscan Franz Polygranus; and lastly, Duke George of Saxony. They confirm the statements taken from the above sources, and though their assertions do not rest on what they themselves heard, yet they may be considered as the echo of actual hearers.

  In connection with the above “horrible, terrible articles” taken from Tetzel’s teaching, Luther makes a statement with regard to his own position and knowledge at that time, which, notwithstanding the sacred affirmation with which he introduces it, is of very doubtful veracity.

  “So truly as I have been saved by my Lord Christ,” he says of the beginning of the Indulgence controversy in 1517, “I knew nothing of what an Indulgence was, and no more did anyone else.”

  It is possible that in 1541, when, as an elderly man, he wrote these words, they may have appeared to him to be true, but the sources from which history is taken demand that he himself as well as his Catholic contemporaries should be protected against such a charge of ignorance. His assertion has been defended by some Protestants on the assumption that his ignorance was only concerning the recipients of the revenues proceeding from the Indulgence. But why force his words? They refer, as the whole context shows, to the theological doctrine of Indulgences.

  We need hardly remind our readers that the conviction that Luther was thoroughly well acquainted with the Catholic doctrine on Indulgences can be demonstrated by his own sermon on Indulgences of the year 1516. He there shows himself perfectly capable of distinguishing between the essentials of the Church’s doctrine and the obscure and difficult questions which the theologians were wont to propound in their discussions. With regard to these latter, and these only, he admitted his uncertainty, as did other theologians too. This was as little a disgrace to him as the obscurity surrounding certain points was to the theology of the Church. But it is quite another matter when he says he did not even know what an Indulgence was. That no one else knew either, is a statement disposed of by his own sermon of 1516 and the various theological tracts on this subject. We need only recall the explanations of Cardinal Cajetan, of the Augustinian theologian and preacher Johann Paltz and of the continuator of the work of Gabriel Biel — so much studied among the Augustinians — Wendelin Steinbach, who succeeded Biel as professor at Tübingen. Biel himself had written on the question of Indulgences for the departed, and, in his appendices on this subject, had expressed himself quite correctly.

  Of the older theologians who preceded those we have mentioned in a right appreciation of this subject, we may enumerate the Franciscans Richard of Middletown, Petrus de Palude and Franciscus Mayron; the Dominicans Heinrich Kalteisen of Coblentz, whose writings on Indulgences have been re-edited by Dr. N. Paulus. All these treated the subject in accordance with the doctrine of St. Thomas of Aquin and St. Bonaventure. Kalteisen in his work, written in 1448 while he was Magister S. Palatii, refers expressly to St. Thomas, whose opinion on questions not yet definitively settled was ever considered the best. To mention only one point, all agree in interpreting the old expression (remissio peccatorum) usual in Indulgence-formulæ, as meaning a remission of the temporal punishment. Suarez, at a later date, could well refer not only to “all theologians,” but also to “all ‘Summists,’” i.e. to all those who had compiled moral Sums from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century.

  Thus, in 1517, the theological side of the question of Indulgences was quite clear, and the statements made by Luther at a later date are not deserving of credit. It was Luther’s false ideas on other points of theology and his determination to put an immediate end to the abuses connected with Indulgences, which led him in 1517 to make a general attack, even though partly veiled, on the whole ecclesiastical system of Indulgences.

  If we keep this in view, a statement of Luther’s to which a false interpretation has been frequently given, becomes clear. According to an account given by Hieronymus Emser, he wrote to Tetzel at a time when the latter was suffering keenly under the reproaches heaped upon him: Not to worry, for it was not he who had begun the business, but that the child had quite another father.

  This sentence has repeatedly been taken as a testimony against himself on Luther’s part, as though by it he had intended to say: My new opinions and the desire to change the ecclesiastical order of things were the cause of my coming forward, the Indulgence was only an idle pretext. Luther’s defenders, on the other hand, took it to mean: “The child has, it is true, another father, viz. God Himself Who took pity on His Church, and forced Luther to come forward.” Both interpretations are wrong, and the following is the meaning as determined by the context: The attack which Luther made upon Tetzel was really directed against the authorities of the Church, against the Pope and Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg; these, not Tetzel, were the “father of the child,” and responsible for what afterwards happened.

  Tetzel died August 11, 1519, broken down by the weight of the accusations brought against him and by the sight of the mischief which had been wrought, and was buried before the High Altar of the Dominican Church at Leipzig.

  To describe the unfortunate monk as the “cause” of the
whole movement which began 1517 is, in view of what has been stated in the preceding chapters, the merest legend. Notwithstanding the efforts which Luther made to represent the matter in this or a similar light, it has been clearly proved that his own spiritual development was the “cause,” or at least the principal cause, though other factors may have co-operated more or less.

  If we turn our attention to the external circumstances and the reasons which led to Tetzel’s Indulgence-preaching, we shall find that recent research has brought to light numerous facts to supplement those already known, and also various elements which dispose of the legends hitherto current.

  2. The Collections for St. Peter’s in History and Legend.

  The scholarly, well-documented work of Aloysius Schulte has thrown a clearer light upon the question of the St. Peter’s Indulgence and the part which the Archbishop of Mayence and Magdeburg played in the same (cp. above, ).

  In his later days Luther spread the following version of the origin of Tetzel’s Indulgence-preaching: Albert of Mayence selected the “great clamourer” Tetzel as preacher of the Indulgence in order, with one half of the proceeds of the business, which was the part of the spoils to be allotted to the Archbishop, to pay for the pallium which Rome had sent him; the cost of the pallium was said to have amounted to 26,000 or even 30,000 gulden; the Fuggers advanced this money to Archbishop Albert and then he, with Tetzel, “sent forth the Fugger cut-purses throughout the land.” “The Pope, too, had his finger in the pie, and had seen that the [other] half went towards the building of St. Peter’s in Rome.”

  At a later date some of the Protestants even averred that Tetzel “collected in the first and only year [of his preaching] one hundred thousand gulden.”

  In the above statements there is a mixture of truth and falsehood. Various particulars, discreditable to both Rome and Mayence, had reached Luther by a sure hand; for others he drew on his own imagination.

  As early as 1519 he says in his memoranda for the negotiations with Miltitz: “The Pope, as his office required, should either have forbidden and hindered the Bishop of Magdeburg [Albert] from seeking so many bishoprics for himself, or have bestowed them upon him freely as he had himself received them from the Lord. But as the Pope encouraged the Bishop’s ambition and gratified his own greed for gold by taking so many thousand gulden for the palliums, i.e. for the Bishops’ mantles, and for the dispensation, he had, I said [this is Luther], forced and instigated the Bishop of Magdeburg to coin money out of the Indulgence.... Then I became impatient with such a lamentable business, and also, more especially, with the greed of the Florentines, who persuaded the good, simple Pope to do as they wished, and drove him into the greatest danger and misfortune.” Luther was well-informed regarding what was going on in Rome, probably owing to his having friends at the Court of Albert. He refers in 1518 to an “epistola satis erudita” from Rome which had come into his hands, and which inveighed in the strongest terms against the Florentines who surrounded the Pope, as the “most avaricious of men”; “they abuse,” so he writes, “the Pope’s good nature in order to fill the bottomless pit of their passionate love of money.”

  With regard to the statement, that Archbishop Albert had petitioned the Pope for the Indulgence in order to pay off the debt he had incurred by receiving the See of Mayence in addition to that of Magdeburg and also the expenses of the pallium, it has now been ascertained (the fact is certainly no less to Rome’s discredit) that, in reality, it was the Roman authorities, who, for financial reasons, offered the Indulgence to the Archbishop; Albert was to receive from the proceeds a compensation of 10,000 ducats, which sum, in addition to the ordinary fees, had been demanded of him on the occasion of his confirmation as Archbishop of Mayence on account of the dispensation necessary for combining the two Archiepiscopal Sees; one half of the proceeds of the Indulgence was to be made over to him for the needs of the Archdiocese of Mayence, the other half was to go towards the rebuilding of St. Peter’s, for which object a collection had already commenced in other countries and was being promoted by the preaching of the Indulgence.

  Regarding the whole matter we learn the following details.

  When Bishop Albert of Brandenburg, the brother of the Brandenburg Elector, Joachim I, was chosen Archbishop in 1514 by the Cathedral Chapter of Mayence he was faced by great difficulties, financial as well as ecclesiastical. Was it likely that he would obtain from Rome his confirmation as Archbishop of Mayence, seeing that he was already Archbishop of Magdeburg and at the same time administrator of the diocese of Halberstadt? Would it be possible for him to raise the customary large sum to be paid for his confirmation and for the pallium, seeing that the Archdiocese of Mayence, owing to two previous vacancies in rapid succession, had already been obliged to pay this sum twice within ten years, and was thus practically bankrupt? The sum necessary, which was the same in the case of Treves and Cologne, amounted on each occasion to about 14,000 ducats. With regard to the confirmation-fees for the See of Mayence and the expenses of the pallium, the Elector Joachim, who, for political reasons, was extremely anxious to see his brother in possession of the electoral dignity of Mayence, promised to defray the same, and thus the Mayence election took place on March 9. The Archbishop-elect borrowed, on May 15 of the same year, 21,000 ducats from the Fuggers, the great Augsburg bankers — no doubt with his brother’s concurrence — in order to be able to meet at Rome the necessary outlay for his confirmation and pallium.

  Grave doubts, however, were entertained in the Papal Curia as to whether, according to canon law, the above bishoprics might be held by the same person. Two of the offices in question were archbishoprics, and, hitherto, in spite of the prevalence of the abuse of placing several croziers in one hand, two archbishoprics had never been held by one man. Besides, the candidate was only in his twenty-fourth year.

  An undesirable way out of the difficulty of obtaining the necessary dispensation for holding the three ecclesiastical dignities presented itself. An official of the Papal Dataria informed the ambassador from Brandenburg, that if Albert could be induced to pay 10,000 ducats beyond the customary fees “this should not be looked upon as a composition [tax], as His Holiness, in return for the same, would grant a ten-year Plenary Indulgence in the shape of a Jubilee in the diocese of Mayence.” This proposal emanated from the Papal officials, Leo X himself as yet refusing to hear anything about the money question. After lengthy negotiations the proposed plan was accepted by the principals on both sides in the following amended shape: The Indulgence, one half of the proceeds of which was to be devoted to the building of St. Peter’s, and the other to the Archbishop of Mayence, was to be proclaimed for eight years, not only in the diocese of Mayence, but throughout the ecclesiastical provinces of Mayence and Magdeburg as well as in the domains of the house of Brandenburg (i.e. throughout almost the half of Germany, owing to the vastness of the province of Mayence); the proceeds were to be divided into two parts in the manner mentioned above, as alms for the erection of St. Peter’s and as an income for the Archbishop of Mayence. The Pope, in his simple goodness of heart, was gradually induced, by political considerations, to agree to the proposal. On July 19 the matter was finally decided in Consistory. Thus no actual indemnity was paid for the dispensation (as Luther asserted) beyond the Indulgence money and the alms for building. Pope Leo X confirmed the supplica in question on August 1, 1514. The public Indulgence Bull, however, Sacrosancti Salvatoris, is dated March 31, 1515.

  The branch house of the Fuggers at Rome at once paid the sum of 10,000 ducats to the Pope. As the other fees for confirmation and the pallium had already been paid, the induction of Albert as Archbishop of Mayence took place on August 18, 1514, no difficulty being raised as to his retaining the two other Sees.

  Every Catholic at the present day will agree with H. Schrörs that “this manner of acquiring benefices with the assistance of an Indulgence was unworthy and reprehensible.” It brings before our eyes an instance of the ecclesiastical abuses prevalent just bef
ore the Reformation, and which cannot be sufficiently deplored. “Although Albert’s confirmation may not have been, strictly speaking, simoniacal,” says a learned Catholic reviewer of Schulte’s works, “yet there is a strong suspicion of simony about it; at any rate, it was an extremely discreditable business, and we may well look upon it as a Divine Judgment that the Mayence Indulgence should have been the immediate occasion of the great religious upheaval for which many other factors had been paving the way.” “The greater part of the blame rests with the Hohenzollern brothers, who approached the Curia with such an exorbitant demand for the cumulation of benefices.”

  “Looked at in itself, the allocation of Indulgences, like that for St. Peter’s, is to some extent justified by the fact, that it was customary in the Middle Ages to make the granting of privileges an opportunity for the giving of special alms, and that the position of the Papacy, as head of the Church, gave it the right to share in the privileges of its members. On this was based the whole system of taxes levied by the Curia on the bestowal of any office, inasmuch as the tax was really a part of the income of the Curial officials; whereas, however, Rome had hitherto been content with one-third of the proceeds of an Indulgence, this was now increased to one-half.” “Nor was it right if, as was probably the case, the Indulgence-preachers did not explain to the people how one part of their alms was to be disposed of, but left them in the belief that it was all to be devoted to the object announced [i.e. the rebuilding of St. Peter’s].”