CHAPTER IX

THE INDULGENCE THESES OF 1517 AND THEIR AFTER-EFFECTS

1. Tetzel’s preaching of the Indulgence; the 95 theses

A MEMBER of the Dominican Order who would otherwise have remained but

little known in history obtained through Luther a world-wide name.

Everyone has heard of the Indulgence-preacher, John Tetzel, the active

and able popular speaker, to whom Albert of Brandenburg, Archbishop

and Elector of Mayence, entrusted the proclamation of the Indulgence

granted by Leo X for the building of the new Church of St. Peter. In

1516 and 1517 he made the Indulgence known throughout the dioceses of

Magdeburg and Halberstadt, appealing everywhere for funds to carry out

the great enterprise in Rome. What he taught was, in the main, the

same as Luther had previously taught regarding Indulgences (see above,

p. 324); he, like all theologians, was careful to point out that an

Indulgence was to be considered merely as a remission of the temporal

punishment due to sin, but not of the actual guilt of sin.[858] He

declared, quite rightly, that the erection of the Church of St. Peter

was a matter of common interest to the whole Christian world, and that

the donations towards it were to be looked upon as part of the pious

undertakings and good works which were always required by the Church

as one of the conditions for gaining an Indulgence. At the same time,

in accordance with the teaching and practice of the Church, he demanded

of all, as an essential preparation for the Indulgence, conversion and

change of heart together with a good confession.[859]

The proclamation of this Indulgence on behalf of St. Peter’s—which was

preached throughout almost the whole of the Christian world—in the

great dioceses of Mayence and Magdeburg, had been entrusted by Leo X,

in 1514, to Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg, who held both these sees.

This respected but worldly minded Elector had made the customary

payment, in this instance a very heavy one, to the Roman Court

for his confirmation in the see of Mayence and in return for the

pallium. He had also, in compliance with an appeal made by the Papal

Dataria, presented to the Holy See ten thousand ducats, which he had

raised through the Fuggers of Augsburg, in order to secure the above

Indulgence for his dioceses; in return for this the Pope had made over

to him, once for all, one-half of the total proceeds of the Indulgence.

With this he hoped to repay his creditors, the Fuggers.[860] The

details of this affair will be dealt with later, but we may here remark

that it was a transaction which certainly was unworthy of so sacred a

cause as that of an Indulgence, and which can only be explained by the

evil customs of that day, the pressure applied by Albert’s agents, and

the influence of the avaricious Florentine party at the Papal Court.

Though perhaps not actually simoniacal it certainly cannot be approved.

We cannot here refrain from drawing attention to a fact which stands

for all time as a solemn warning to the pastors of the Church. Just as

the sight of the corruption, both ecclesiastical and moral, in Rome

under Julius II, and the remembrance of an Alexander VI, had filled

Luther with bitter prejudice on his journey to Italy, so the extremely

worldly and regrettable action of the Curia, and episcopal toleration

of actual abuses in the promulgation of the Indulgence, supplied him

with welcome matter for his charges and with a deceitful pretext for

the seducing of countless souls.

Luther learned many discreditable particulars concerning the

arrangement arrived at between Rome and Mayence for the preaching

of the Indulgence and the use to which half of the spoils was to be

applied. What provoked Luther and many others was not only the abuses

which prevailed in the use of Indulgences, about which there was much

grumbling, and the constantly recurring collections which were a

burden both to the rulers and their people, but also the tales current

regarding the behaviour of the monk acting as Indulgence-preacher.

Tetzel did not exactly shine as an example of virtue, although the

charges against his earlier life are as baseless as the reproach of

gross ignorance. He was, as impartial historians have established,

forward and audacious and given to exaggeration. In his sermons, mainly

owing to his popular style of address, he erred by using expressions

only to be styled as strained and ill-considered. He even employed

phrases of a repulsive nature in his attempts to extol the power of

the Indulgence preached by him. In addition to this, in explaining how

the Indulgence might be applied to the departed, he made his own the

wrong, exaggerated and quite unauthorised opinions of certain isolated

theologians, putting them on an equal footing with the real teaching

of the Church. Such private opinions, it is true, had also found their

way into some of the official instructions on Indulgences. At any rate,

Tetzel, with misplaced zeal, mingled what was true with what was false

or uncertain. The great concourse of people who gathered to hear the

celebrated preacher also led to many disorders, more particularly when,

as was the case at Annaberg, the occasion of the yearly fair was turned

to account in order to publish the Indulgence.

Shortly after the sermon already spoken of Luther preached again at

Wittenberg on the Indulgence and its abuses, but without expressly

referring to Tetzel. Another sermon on the same subject was delivered

at the Castle in the presence of the Elector on the occasion of the

exposition of the rich collection of relics belonging to the Castle

Church. He still openly admitted the value of Indulgences, but more

and more he was disposed to find fault with the formalism into which

the system had degenerated. Later he declared that he had begun,

already in 1516, “to dispute about Indulgences and to write against

the Pope”; only the first part of this clause is, however, true, and

that only in a certain sense. He had as yet written nothing against the

Primacy or against Indulgences as such. There is also no foundation for

the statement that, as soon as he heard from Staupitz (at Grimma) of

Tetzel’s behaviour, he exclaimed: “Please God, I will knock a hole in

his drum.”

It was on the question of Indulgences that the wider controversy

around his new doctrines, which were now complete, was to commence.

In October, 1517, he decided to make a public attack on Tetzel. This

he did when, on the Eve of All Saints, October 31, 1517, he nailed

up his 95 theses on Indulgences on the door of the Castle Church at

Wittenberg. As All Saints was the Titular Feast of the Church[861] and

as, on that day, numbers would be flocking thither to celebrate the

festival, he counted on securing wide publicity for his theses. As a

matter of fact, by this means, and thanks to the efforts of Luther and

his friends, the printed theses were soon known everywhere. Their very

boldness and impudence also contributed to their popularity. They were

soon being read throughout Germany, exciting general surprise and even

admiration of the Monk’s language. The number of those who sincerely

applauded the theses, or who, at any rate, approved of the greater part

of their contents, was much greater than has been generally believed.

The theses, of course, contained things which were incomprehensible to

non-theologians, but the very tone in which they were written showed

all the stupendous importance of the step which had been taken. The

more timid were pacified by an introductory explanation of the author

embodied in the paper containing the theses, which stated that the

propositions did not determine anything definite, but that “out of love

and zeal for the ascertaining of the truth” a public Disputation on

these questions would be held by Luther at Wittenberg, and that those

who were precluded from taking a personal part in the debate might

state their objections in writing.[862]

If we examine the theses more closely and watch the behaviour of their

author after they were made public, there appears to be no doubt that

they were considered by him as settled beforehand and not merely as

tentative propositions. Many of them, from the theological point of

view, go far beyond a mere opposition of the abuse of Indulgences.

Luther, stimulated by contradiction, had to some extent altered his

previous views on the nature of Indulgences, and brought them more into

touch with the fundamental principles of his erroneous theology.

A practical renunciation of the doctrine of Indulgences, as it had

been held up to that time, is to be found in the theses, where Luther

states that Indulgences have no value in God’s sight, but are merely to

be regarded as the remission by the Church of the canonical punishment

(theses 5, 20, 21, etc.). This destroys the theological meaning of

Indulgences, for they had always been considered as a remission of the

temporal punishment of sin, but as a remission which held good before

the Divine Judgment-seat.[863] In some of the theses (58, 60) Luther

likewise attacks the generally accepted teaching with regard to the

Church’s treasury of grace, on which Indulgences are based. Erroneous

views concerning the state of purgation of the departed occur in some

of the propositions (18, 19, 29). Others appear to contain what is

theologically incorrect, and connected with his opinion regarding grace

and justification; this opinion is not, however, clearly set forth in

the list of theses.

Many of the statements are mere irritating, insulting and cynical

observations on Indulgences in general, no distinction being made

between what was good and what was perverted. Thus, for instance,

thesis 66 declares the “treasures of Indulgences” to be simply nets “in

which the wealth of mankind is caught.” Others again scoff and mock at

the authority of the Church, as, for example, thesis 86. “Why does not

the Pope build the Basilica of St. Peter with his own money and not

with that of the poverty-stricken faithful, seeing that he possesses

to-day greater riches than the most wealthy Crœsus?”

In order that a certain echo of the author’s mystical Theologia Crucis

may not be wanting even in this public document, the last two theses

contain a protest against the formalism of the system of Indulgences:

“Let Christians be exhorted to follow Christ, their Head, through

suffering and through the pains of death and hell,” “in order the

better to reach heaven they should put their trust in much tribulation

rather than in the certainty of peace.”

The 95 theses spread rapidly through Germany, adding dangerously to the

already widespread dissatisfaction with the Church and the Pope.

To Scultetus, Bishop of Brandenburg, within whose jurisdiction

Wittenberg lay, and to others, too, Luther continued to explain the

matter as though the theses were merely intended to serve as the basis

for a useful Disputation,[864] which, however, as a matter of fact,

never took place. He assured the chief pastor of Brandenburg of his

absolute submission and his readiness to follow the Catholic Church in

everything. At the same time, however, he stated quite clearly that, in

his opinion, nothing could be advanced against his theses either from

Holy Scripture, Catholic doctrine or canon law, with the exception of

the utterances “of some few canonists, who spoke without proofs, and

of some of the scholastic Doctors who cherished similar views, but who

also were unable to demonstrate anything”; it was not, of course, for

him to give any decision, but he might surely be permitted to open a

discussion by means of the Disputation.

Relying on his skill at debate, he looked forward to a victory over

Tetzel and to an opening for commencing the struggle against the abuses

connected with the preaching of the Indulgence. Here we may recall

the words of his pupil Oldecop, already quoted before: “He spoke in

unmeasured terms against it [i.e. Indulgence-preaching], with great

impetuosity and audacity.” He started the controversy, being, says

Oldecop, “by nature proud and audacious.”[865]

Carried away by the astounding and ever-growing applause of those

who were otherwise loyal to the Church, and deaf to the warnings and

admonitions given him, Luther launched among the people a German

work entitled “A Sermon on Indulgences and Grace,” which contains

statements yet more vehement and seditious. Almost at the same time,

and in the greatest haste, he put on paper the weighty “Resolutions” on

his theses, written in Latin for the benefit of the more learned. The

latter appeared in print in the spring of 1518.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of 1518, the Archbishop of Mayence had

forwarded to Rome an account of the movement which had been started

and of the Monk’s theses. As a result of this step the Pope, Leo X, on

February 3, instructed P. Gabriele della Volta, Vicar to the General

of the Augustinians, to seek to turn Luther aside from his erroneous

views by letter and by the admonitions of honest and learned men;

delay might fan the spark into a flame which it might be impossible to

extinguish.[866]

There is no doubt that instructions to this effect were despatched

by Volta to Staupitz, and probably other measures were contemplated

at the approaching Chapter of the German Augustinian Congregation at

Heidelberg; the calming of the storm was a duty incumbent primarily

on the Order itself, and the Holy See accordingly decided to act

through Luther’s immediate superiors. Unfortunately, nothing whatever

is known of any steps taken by the Order at this early stage. At the

Heidelberg Chapter, which was held towards the end of April (above, p.

315) the election of a new Vicar-General of the Congregation to which

Luther belonged had to take place; a new Rural Vicar had also to be

elected in place of Luther, as the latter had now completed his term of

office. It seems plain that Staupitz and the large party who favoured

Luther wished to act as gently as possible and not to interfere in the

movement beyond making the necessary change in the person of the Rural

Vicar.

After Luther had received the summons to Heidelberg, the Elector wrote

to Staupitz a letter dated Friday in Easter week, with a request to

see that Luther, on account of his lectures, “shall return here at the

very earliest and not be delayed or detained.”[867] We cannot infer

from this or from the Elector’s letter of safe conduct for Luther

himself, that measures against him were anticipated at the Chapter.

These documents merely prove the exceptional favour which Luther

enjoyed with the reigning Prince.

Luther started from Wittenberg on April 11. Being a monk he had to make

the journey on foot as far as Würzburg; after having been hospitably

entertained by the Bishop, Lorenz von Bibra, who was very well disposed

towards him, he proceeded to Heidelberg by coach, together with Johann

Lang and some other monks. The Chapter re-elected Staupitz and made

Johann Lang Rural Vicar in Luther’s stead, a choice which, as already

hinted, expressed approval rather than disapproval of what Luther had

done. It was also very significant of the position adopted by the

Augustinian Congregation, that Luther should have been permitted to

preside at the Heidelberg Disputation. He advanced the theses, which

have already been discussed (above, p. 317), containing the denial of

free will, i.e. the most important element of his new teaching, and

entrusted their defence to Master Leonard Beyer, an Augustinian of

Wittenberg, who conducted the debate in the presence of the assembled

Chapter and professors of Heidelberg University, who had also been

invited. It is remarkable that the question of Indulgences, which was

so greatly agitating the minds of all, was not touched upon in the

Disputation. Perhaps it was thought better, from motives of prudence,

to avoid this subject altogether at Heidelberg.

At the beginning of May Luther returned to Wittenberg by way of

Würzburg and Erfurt. He took advantage of his stay at Dresden to

preach a sermon before Duke George and his Court on July 25, 1518. In

this sermon he spoke in such a way of “the true understanding of the

Word of God,” of the “Grace of Christ and eternal Predestination,”

and of the overcoming of the “Fear of God,” that the Duke, who was a

staunch adherent of the Church, was much displeased, and often declared

afterwards that such teaching only made men presumptuous. The account

of the sermon and of Duke George’s opinion is first found in the

“_Origines Saxonicæ_”[868] of George Fabricius, who died in 1571. But

Luther himself refers to the opposition excited in several quarters by

a controversial sermon he preached there, and remarks, cynically: such

fault-finders only speak from an idle desire for praise; these gossips

want everything and are able to do nothing, they are a “serpent’s

brood,” “masked faces” whom I despise.[869]

On his return to Wittenberg he devoted himself to finishing the

Resolutions on the Indulgence theses. On August 21 he sent the first

printed copy to Spalatin.

These Latin _Resolutiones disputationis de virtute indulgentiarum_,

which dealt exclusively with the defence of the 95 theses, were more

hostile in tone towards the whole system of Indulgences than any of his

previous utterances. They show Luther’s fiery temper and his state of

irritation even more plainly than the theses themselves. In them his

new teaching on faith and grace was for the first time launched on the

public in unmistakable outline. Even abroad the learned were drawn into

the movement by the Latin publication which brought the matter within

their range.

Together with his Resolutions, Luther published two letters, very

submissive in tone, addressed, one to the Bishop of Brandenburg, as

Ordinary of Wittenberg, and the other to Pope Leo X. To the Pope he

said that he had ventured to address himself to him because he had

learned that some persons at Rome were attempting to blacken his

reputation, as though he were infringing the power of the Keys of the

successor of St. Peter. He explained the reason of the controversy from

his own point of view and declared: “I cannot recant.” In the same

letter, however, he asserts his readiness to listen to Leo’s voice “as

to the Voice of Christ, who presides in him and speaks through him”;

one thing only he asks, viz. that the Pope will deal with him just as

he pleases. “Enliven me, kill me, call me back, confirm me, reject me,

just as it pleases you!”[870] In the Resolutions, on the other hand,

we read: “It makes no impression on me what pleases or does not please

the Pope. He is a man like other men. There have been many Popes to

whom not only errors and vices, but even enormities (_monstra_) were

pleasing. I attend to the Pope as Pope, i.e. as he speaks in the laws

of the Church, or when he decides in accordance with them, or with a

Council, but not when he speaks out of his own head.”[871]

At a later date he did not make any secret of the weakness of so

ambiguous a position. On one occasion in later years when looking

back upon the commencement of the struggle, he said he had begun the

controversy “as an unreflecting and stupid Papist,” that he had been

drawn into the business by “his own foolishness,” that his “weakness

and inconsequence” had been deplorably exhibited, seeing that he then

still worshipped the Pope; before this Lord of Heaven and Earth, he

writes, everything still trembled, and he, the little monk, more

like a corpse than a man, had only dared to advance with lamentable

uncertainty and fear.[872]

In the same passage, he says: “I was certainly not glad and confident

at the outset.” “What my heart suffered in the first and second years,

how I lay on the ground, yea, almost despaired, of that they [my

rivals, the fanatics] know nothing, though they were happy to fall

upon the Pope after he had been severely wounded [by me]. They have

sought to take this honour to themselves, and, for all I care, they

are welcome to it.” “They are ignorant of the Cross and of Satan”;

but I only attained “to strength and wisdom through death agonies and

combats.”

While Luther was superintending the printing of the Resolutions at

Wittenberg he was at the same time engaged on other works.

Johann Eck had replied to his Indulgence theses by the so-called

“Obelisci,” which Luther met with the “Asterisci,” and as Tetzel, for

his part, had issued a refutation of the sermon on Indulgence and

Grace, Luther brought out a work in reply, entitled “Freedom of the

Sermon on Indulgence and Grace.”

Fearing that the Pope would excommunicate him, Luther preached a

sermon to the inhabitants of Wittenberg in the early summer of 1518,

possibly on May 16, on the power of excommunication; what he there

put forth excited widespread comment and irritation. This sermon he

issued in print in August, but in an amended form. In it he says

excommunication is invalid in the case of one who honestly asserts the

truth; nevertheless, it must be obeyed. He blames the all too frequent

use of excommunication, as many good Churchmen had done before him.

It had been recognised and taught from Patristic times that unjust

excommunication did not deprive the excommunicate of a part in the

inward life of the Church (_anima ecclesiæ_). This Luther emphasises

for his own party purposes, but without as yet setting up “a new view

of the nature of the Church.”

He says, in a letter to his elderly friend Staupitz, that, owing to the

action of his adversaries, “a new flame” would surely be kindled by

this sermon, though he had extolled the power of the Pope in it, as was

fitting; he declares that he is the persecuted party; “but Christ still

lives and reigns yesterday, to-day and for ever. My conscience tells me

I have taught the truth; but it is just this which is hated whenever

its name is mentioned. Pray for me that I may not rejoice overmuch nor

be over-confident in myself in this trouble.” He trusts to triumph, by

printing the sermon referred to, over all those who had listened to it

with jealousy, and maliciously misrepresented it. Yet his mood is by no

means one of unmixed joy; he hints in the same letter to Staupitz at

mysterious interior sufferings which weigh upon him “incomparably more

heavily,” so he says, than the fear of any measures Rome may take. At

the same time he is quite carried away by the idea that he must, at any

cost, fight against the contempt which the Romanists are heaping upon

the Kingdom of Christ.[873]

Meanwhile, in March, 1518, complaints had again been carried to

Rome by some Dominicans. Towards the middle of June fresh official

steps were taken by Rome against Luther’s person, this time without

the intervention of the Order. The course of these proceedings has

been made plain by recent research. The Papal Procurator Fiscal,

Mario de Perusco, raised a formal charge against the monk on the

suspicion of spreading heresy. By order of the Pope, the preliminary

examination was conducted by the Bishop of Ascoli, Girolamo Ghinucci,

as Auditor-General for suits in the Apostolic Camera, while Silvester

Mazzolini of Prierio (Prierias), the Magister S. Palatii, who, like all

Mayors of the Apostolic Palace, belonged to the Dominican Order, was

entrusted with the task of penning a learned opinion on the questions

involved.

As Prierias had already made a study of the Indulgence theses, he,

as he himself says, took only three days to draw up the opinion,

which, moreover, he did not intend to stand as an actual theological

refutation. It was at once printed, being entitled “_In præsumptuosas

M. Lutheri conclusiones de potestate papæ dialogus_.” The work was not

free from exaggerations and gratuitous insults.

At the beginning of July, 1518, Luther was summoned to appear within

sixty days at Rome to stand his trial. Ghinucci and Prierias sent the

summons to Cardinal Cajetan, who was then stopping at Augsburg, in

order that he might forward it to the Wittenberg Professor. Prierias’s

pamphlet accompanied it, and Luther received both together on August 7.

He said at a later date in his Table-Talk, alluding to the work of the

Mayor of the Apostolic Palace, that the despatch from Rome had stirred

his blood to the utmost, as he had then realised that the matter was

deadly earnest, since Rome was inexorable.

The very next day, with many contemptuous and disaffected remarks on

the citation, he set about inducing the Elector to use his influence

with the Holy See in order that judges might be appointed to try

the case in Germany; he hoped to be thereby spared the dreaded

journey to Rome. It was at that time that he published the sermon on

excommunication referred to above. On the day following the receipt of

the summons he set to work on a pamphlet in reply to the _Dialogus_

of Prierias, which appeared at the end of August.[874] This Latin

_Responsio_ he finished in two days, thus beating Prierias, as he

triumphantly informs him. It is arrogant and insulting in tone,

vindicates all the theses one by one, and asserts some of the errors

contained in them in still stronger terms than before. He does not

as yet deny the infallibility of the Councils, on the contrary, he

explicitly admits it;[875] neither does he in set words state that

the Pope may emit false opinions when teaching on faith and morals,

although in recent times both these errors have been said to be

embodied in his reply.

The obscure passage regarding the possibility of the Councils and

Popes erring refers to their action in ecclesiastico-political

matters, as the cases instanced by Luther show more clearly, e.g. the

wars of Pope Julius II and the “tyrannical acts” which he attributes

to Boniface VIII.

It is true that the want of any clear admission in his reply of the

doctrinal authority of the Church, his violent insistence on the Bible

as interpreted by himself, and his arbitrary handling of the older

theology and practice, gave cause for apprehending the worst.

Against Prierias he defends the opinion, that our Saviour commanded

what was impossible because we are always subject to concupiscence;

that the sons of God are forced to do what is good rather than left

to perform it of their own accord, and, for this reason, the higher

theology teaches that those actions are the best which Christ works

in us without our co-operation, and those the worst “which—according

to the absolutely false teaching of Aristotle—we perform by our own

so-called free will.”

From the latter circumstance the pseudo-mystic infers that fasting,

for instance, is excellent when the person who fasts is absolutely

unconscious of what he is doing and thinking of something higher;

at such a moment he is furthest removed from any craving for food.

Sacramental Penance, he says, is merely the commencement of penance,

and zeal in its use could only be maintained by a miracle.[876]

All these ideas, which, as we know from what has gone before, give

a true picture of the direction of his mind, are to be found at the

beginning of the work, of which the confusion is matched only by its

pretensions.

Because Prierias was a Dominican and Thomist, Luther here displays

the bitterest animosity against the Thomistic school, an animosity

which was henceforth never to cease, and likewise summons his national

feeling as a German to help him against the Italian. In one of his

letters Luther declared that he would let him see there were men in

Germany well versed in the arts and wily tricks of the Romans; if he

continued to incense him, he would make free use of his wit and pen

against him.[877]

In his reply to Prierias, Luther had referred his opponent to the

Resolutions to his Indulgence theses, which were then already in print.

Staupitz forwarded to Rome the copy destined for the Pope. The letters

to Staupitz and Leo X, which were incorporated in the work, were dated

May 30, 1518, though the printing was not finished before August 21.

As the Resolutions, Luther’s most important work on the question of

Indulgences, obstinately confirmed the errors already expressed, more

severe measures were anticipated on the part of the Curia.

In his efforts to procure the appointment of judges to try his cause

in Germany, Luther sought, through the Elector, to make use of the

mediation of the Emperor Maximilian. But the Emperor, who was earnestly

solicitous for the welfare of religion, and at the same time was

anxious to secure the Pope’s favour on behalf of the election of his

grandson Charles as King of Rome, wrote to Leo X, August 5, 1518, from

Augsburg, that out of love for the unity of the faith he would support

any measures the Pope might take against Luther.

More severe proceedings against Luther were accordingly set on foot in

Rome, even before the sixty days were over. These measures are outlined

in the Brief of August 23, 1518, sent to Cardinal Cajetan, the Papal

Legate at the Diet of Augsburg.

In view of the notoriety of Luther’s acts and teaching, with the

assistance of the spiritual and secular power, Cajetan was to have him

brought to Augsburg; should force have to be used, or should Luther

not recant, then Cajetan was to hand him over to Rome for trial and

punishment; he himself therefore was not to be the actual judge, but

only to receive Luther’s recantation. In the event of his presenting

himself voluntarily at Augsburg and recanting, so ran the instructions,

Luther was to find pardon and mercy. Should it be impossible to procure

his appearance at Augsburg, then the measures provided by law and

custom for such cases were to be enforced; he and his followers were

to be publicly excommunicated, and the authorities in Church and State

were to be forced, if necessary under pain of interdict, to seize and

deliver up the excommunicate.

The Elector, Frederick the Wise, however, demanded a trial before

Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg; this was to be carried out with “paternal

gentleness.” He would not consent to sanction any other measures.

Cajetan met his wishes without being untrue either to the Pope or to

himself. “A man entirely devoted to study, without much practical

knowledge of the world, he was no match for such an expert politician

as Frederick of Saxony.”[878] On September 11 he obtained from Leo X a

Brief placing in his own hands the trial and decision on Luther’s case.

Thus the way was paved for Luther’s historic trial at Augsburg.

_Fables regarding Luther and Tetzel_

Before passing on to the trial at Augsburg, we must first deal with the

legends which cluster round the name of Tetzel and which were mostly

started by Luther and the Papal Chamberlain, Carl von Miltitz.

We have a detailed critical monograph on Tetzel by Dr. N. Paulus:

“Johann Tetzel, der Ablassprediger,” Mayence, 1899, which the same

author[879] has since supplemented by other publications. Paulus by

his impartial research has sealed the fate of the principal legends

connected with Tetzel’s name.

A statement made by Luther in 1541, i.e. at the time of his most

bitter polemics, has been repeated countless times since, viz. that,

in 1512, at Innsbruck, Tetzel the monk was condemned by the Emperor

Maximilian to be drowned in the River Inn for the crime of adultery,

and that only the intervention of the Elector, Frederick the Wise, had

saved him from this fate. This is an untruth which Luther first made

use of in his violent pamphlet “Wider Hans Worst.”[880] Before that

time he had never mentioned anything of the kind. A. Berger says of

the supposed condemnation at Innsbruck: “Paulus has finally disposed

of the infamous tale of adultery and no one will ever venture to

bring it forward again.”[881] Before this Th. Brieger had declared:

“It is high time that this story which has been questioned even by

Protestants should disappear.”[882] No authority whatever can be

quoted for representing in an unfavourable light the private life of

this man, who stood so prominently before the public. Concerning the

supposed Innsbruck incident, Fr. Dibelius, Superintendent at Dresden,

says: “among the imperfections and crimes alleged against Tetzel by

his enemies the charge of immorality cannot be sustained.”[883]

The shortsighted Papal Chamberlain Miltitz, in his eagerness to secure

peace on any terms, in the first years of the Indulgence controversy

made common cause with those opponents of Tetzel who brought forward

baseless charges of immorality against him after he had withdrawn, at

the end of 1518, to the pious seclusion of his Dominican priory at

Leipzig. In mid-January, 1519, Tetzel had to endure the most bitter

reproaches from the ill-informed Papal agent. But, as Oscar Michael

remarks, “all attempts to set up Miltitz as a reliable witness will be

in vain.”[884] “What Miltitz relates of Tetzel is altogether unworthy

of credence.” Another Protestant writer had already before that

expressed himself likewise.[885]

With regard to the matter of Tetzel’s sermons above referred to, it is

chiefly to Luther that we owe the charge of flagrant errors and gross

abuses in his proclamation of the Indulgence. “He wrote,” so Luther

explained to his friends, “that an Indulgence is a reconciliation

between God and man and takes effect even though a man performs no

penance, and manifests neither contrition nor sorrow.”[886] “Tetzel put

it so crudely that no one could fail to understand his meaning.”[887]

In his pamphlet of 1541 Luther says: “He sold grace for money at the

highest price he could.” He then instances six “horrible, dreadful

articles” which the avaricious monk had preached.

One of these which extols his Indulgence contains an offensive

statement respecting Our Lady; another declares that, according to

Tetzel, “it was not necessary to feel sorrow or pain or contrition for

sin, but whoever bought the Indulgence, or the Indulgence-letters,”

had also bought an Indulgence for “future sins”; three of the articles

say he had magnified the effects of the Indulgence by the use of

unseemly comparisons, and finally, one states that his teaching was

that embodied in the ribald rhyme: “As soon as money in the coffer

rings, the soul from purgatory’s fire springs.”

As a matter of fact, the accusations brought against Tetzel, of having

sold forgiveness of sins for money without requiring contrition, and

of having even been ready to absolve from future sins in return for

a money payment, are, as N. Paulus, and others before him, pointed

out, utterly unjust.[888] Even Carlstadt, after he had gone over to

the hostile camp of the new teaching, admitted that the Indulgence

sermons, including those of Tetzel, were in agreement with the

generally accepted teaching of the Church; of the enormities just

referred to he knows nothing. Above all, Tetzel’s own writings,

likewise his instructions and also the testimony of strangers,

all speak in his favour. “The Indulgence,” Tetzel says in his

“Vorlegung,” “remits only the pain [i.e. the penalty] of sins which

have been repented of and confessed.” “No one merits an Indulgence

unless he is in a truly contrite state.”[889] Those who procured

a Confession-letter received, according to an ancient usage, with

the same letter permission to select a suitable confessor; for this

an alms was given. The confessor was able to absolve, after a good

confession, from all sins, even in reserved cases, and to impart a

Plenary Indulgence by virtue of the Papal authorisation.

Tetzel was able with the help of official witnesses to refute the

calumny with regard to Mary in his eulogy of the Indulgence. There

can, however, be no doubt that he brought the pecuniary side of

the Indulgence too much into the foreground. Another Dominican, a

contemporary of his, Johann Lindner, criticises his behaviour as

follows: Dr. Johann Tetzel of Pirna, of the Order of Preachers,

from the Leipzig priory, a world-renowned preacher, proclaimed the

Jubilee Year [Jubilee Indulgence] at Naumburg, Leipzig, Magdeburg,

Zwickau, Bautzen, Görlitz, Cologne, Halle and many other places....

His teaching found favour with many; but he devised unheard-of ways

of raising money, was far too liberal in conferring offices, put up

far too many public crosses [as a sign of the Indulgence-preaching] in

towns and villages, which caused scandal and bred complaints among the

people and brought the spiritual treasury into disrepute.”[890]

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.[891] 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,”[892] 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.[893] 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.”[894]

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.[895] 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.[896]

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.[897]

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.[898]

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[899] 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, p. 327).[900]

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.”[901]

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.[902]

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.”[903] 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.”[904]

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.”[905] 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.”[906] It brings before

our eyes an instance of the ecclesiastical abuses prevalent just

before 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,[907]

“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.”[908]

“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.”[909] “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].”[910]

Finally, the too frequent tendering of Indulgences towards the

close of the Middle Ages must be noted as a regrettable abuse.

The collections made for Indulgences granted for all sorts of

ecclesiastical purposes were so numerous, that loud complaints were

raised by the Rulers about the heavy burden thus imposed upon their

people.

The Indulgence for St. Peter’s followed many others and was first

started under Pope Julius II. In this case the importance to the

whole of Christendom of the erection of a new church over the tomb

of the Prince of the Apostles may have afforded some justification.

Originally intended to last only for twelve months, the Indulgence was

extended from year to year.

As regards its administration, Papal commissaries had been appointed

for the proclamation of the Indulgence and for making the collections.

Thus the Franciscan Observantines under the Vicar-General of the

Order were entrusted with the so-called Cismontane provinces,

comprising Italy and the Slavonian regions to the east of Europe,

including Hungary, the German portions of Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia

and Prussia and likewise Switzerland. In Switzerland the preacher

was the celebrated Franciscan Bernardin Samson. Other special

commissaries were distributed throughout the west of Europe, according

to the political divisions; thus we find them established by Papal

appointment in Spain, Brittany, the British Isles, Savoy, Burgundy,

Scandinavia, and in the Spanish colonies in America.

There had been some delay in introducing this arrangement into Germany

as the country was already exhausted by large collections made

for the Teutonic Order and the armies which it had been compelled

to raise for the defence of the Catholic countries and Christian

civilisation, and also by other taxes. In 1514 the time seemed,

however, to have arrived. In this year, the same in which the bargain

was struck with Albert of Brandenburg, a Chief Commissary, in the

person of a cleric at the Papal Court, Gianangelo Arcimboldi, was

appointed for the provinces of Cologne, Treves, Salzburg, Bremen,

Besançon and other dioceses; Mayence, on the other hand, with the

other portions of Germany before mentioned, was reserved for Albert as

Commissary-General.

The Chief Commissary appointed sub-commissaries and preachers.

Tetzel was chosen by Albert of Mayence as sub-Commissary. He had,

before this, acted as sub-Commissary (1505-6) for the preaching of

the Indulgence on behalf of the Teutonic Order in the dioceses of

Merseburg and Naumburg, and later had worked in many other parts of

Germany for the same Indulgence. In 1516 he had been appointed by

Arcimboldi as sub-Commissary and preacher in the diocese of Meissen.

It was in the beginning of 1517 that Archbishop Albert took him

into his service as sub-Commissary and preacher for the dioceses

of Halberstadt and Magdeburg.[911] In this capacity he came in the

spring, 1517, to Jüterbog, in the neighbourhood of Wittenberg. While

subordinate to Archbishop Albert he was at the same time, like his

employer, under the orders of a Roman Commission; all the Chief

Commissaries, Albert as well as Arcimboldi, were subordinate to a

Papal Commission, at the head of which was the Pope’s Master of the

Treasury.

The appointment of Albert as Chief Commissary had been made under

the impression that the standing of this powerful German Prince

of the Church would contribute to the success of the undertaking,

and influence even those who were not in favour of the scheme. Yet

Albert’s own envoys, when the handing over the Indulgence was first

mooted, openly declared that they were not inclined to agree to

accepting the Indulgence as “discontent, and perhaps something worse,

might be the result,”[912] a fear which events were sadly to justify.

In the end the yield did not reach expectations; this is plain from

the accounts now available. The “hundred thousand gulden” which

Tetzel was said to have collected in one year are a mere fiction.

This tale was spread abroad in 1721 by J. E. Kapp, and before that by

J. Wolfius (1600), and would appear to date from a chance word let

fall by Paul Lang, the Benedictine (1520).[913] We are, however, in

possession of more authentic details since an exact account was kept.

This account of the collections was made in the following manner:

the money-boxes were opened and the contents counted in the presence

of witnesses, and the statement of the amount certified by a notary.

Representatives of both parties—Archbishop Albert and the Fugger

bank—were present, and kept an account, half of the proceeds being

paid by the Fuggers to the Curia at Rome for St. Peter’s, and the

other half to the Archbishop of Mayence. It was a good thing and a

guarantee against mismanagement, that, at any rate in the case of the

Mayence Indulgence and that for St. Peter’s, a reliable banking-house

of world-wide fame and conducted on business principles (even though

Luther styles the Fuggers cut-purses), should have thus undertaken the

supervision of the accounts, however distasteful it may seem to have

left to bank officials the distribution of the Indulgence-letters from

the very commencement of the preaching.

How much did the proceeds amount to? The Mayence Indulgence was

preached only from the beginning of 1517 to 1518, the rise of the

religious conflict interfering with its continuance. Schulte has,

however, put us in possession of two considerable statements of

accounts concerning this period, taken from the archives of the

Vatican. That of May 5, 1519, deals with the Papal half of the

Indulgence money which flowed in from the various dioceses of the

ecclesiastical province of Mayence during 1517 and 1518, and was

handed over by the house of Fugger. This half amounted to 1643 gulden

45 kreuzer. A like sum was handed over to Albert, as has been proved

by Schulte from a document in the State archives at Magdeburg. The

other statement of account is dated June 16 of the same year and

places the sum total of the money received from the ecclesiastical

province of Magdeburg at 5149 gulden, according to which each half

amounted to 2574½ gulden. If we assume these sums, viz. 8436 gulden,

to have been the gross proceeds of the Indulgence enterprise, and if

we take into consideration the charges, comparatively high, for those

engaged in the work, then the amount cannot be described as large.

Nor would the Archbishop of Mayence have received entire the 4218

gulden constituting his share, as, according to an arrangement made

with the Emperor, he had been obliged to make him a yearly payment of

1000 gulden from the net profits. Thus only 3218 gulden would have

remained to him. This would have compensated him but poorly for the

enormous payments he had made to Rome. As regards the sums mentioned

we must bear in mind the vast difference between the value of money

then and now; the buying value of money, at a moderate estimate, was

then three times greater than to-day. Since the researches undertaken

by Schulte, other accounts, not included in the above, concerning the

revenues produced by the Indulgence have been discovered, “a proof

that an exact estimate of the whole proceeds of the Mayence-Magdeburg

Indulgence is as yet out of the question.”[914]

Another fable which owes its origin to the anti-Catholic inventions

of the sixteenth century has it that Leo X did not devote the results

of the Mayence Indulgence to the building of St. Peter’s, but poured

them into the already well-filled coffers of his sister Maddalena,

who had married a Cibo. There is no proof for this assertion. Felice

Cortelori, the well-known keeper of the Vatican archives, declared,

even in his day, that he was unable to find any confirmation of this

story, which should therefore be rejected as fabulous, and Schulte, as

a result of his own investigations, agrees with him.[915]

Owing to the abuses and the change in public opinion, the amalgamation

of spiritual and temporal interests, as it appeared in the Indulgence

collections, became untenable in the course of the sixteenth century.

The Council of Trent did well, though rather late in the day, in

relegating, as far as possible, the system of Indulgences to the

spiritual domain, its original and special sphere, that of benefiting

souls. But one who knows how to view the movement of the times and the

development of the Church’s life from the standpoint of history, will

be able to put its true value upon this apparently strange union of

the temporal and spiritual in the Indulgence system of the Late Middle

Ages, and will give due consideration to the fact, that in those days

the spiritual and temporal domains were more closely connected than

at any other period. They were thrown into mutual dependence, each

supporting the other; that disadvantages as well as benefits resulted,

was of course inevitable.

The preaching of Indulgences in accordance with the spirit of the

Church, when rightly carried out, might be compared with popular

missions of the present day. Besides the less desirable preachers

many able and zealous men came forward wherever the cross, or the

so-called Vesper-Bild, was erected as a sign of the preaching of

the Indulgence. The crowds who streamed together, listened to the

admonitions of speakers previously unknown to them and usually

belonging to some Order, with more attention than at the ordinary

religious services; many were led to a sense of their sins and to

amend their life, as they could not receive the Indulgence without

an inward change of heart; they were also glad to take advantage of

the presence of strange confessors provided with ample faculties,

to unburden their consciences by a good confession. The alms seemed

little to them in comparison with the spiritual gain. And as hundreds

came and experienced a similar spiritual renewal, their very multitude

fired them with a common impulse to persevere in what was good. The

researches of historians have hitherto been directed too much towards

the abuses and outward disorders which accompanied these popular

practices, which were for so long a great help to religion. It would

be no loss if in future, so far as the special accounts which have

been handed down admit, historians were to dwell more on the ordinary

and little-noticed good results effected by Indulgences since they

were first started.[916]

3. The Trial at Augsburg (1518)

In the course of September, 1518, Luther received the citation to

appear before Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, as had been agreed with

the Elector Frederick; already, on August 25, the General of the

Augustinians had, in accordance with the earlier and more stringent

instructions from Rome to Cajetan, forwarded an order to the Saxon

Provincial Gerard Hecker, to seize Luther and keep him in custody. At

the end of September Luther set out for Augsburg, where he arrived,

with a recommendation from the Elector and an Imperial safe conduct, on

October 7.

He had started on the journey with great inward tremors and was a

prey to the same violent agitation at Augsburg. At a later date he

attributes the evil thoughts which plagued him to the influence of a

demon.[917] He seems from the first to have been determined to carry

his cause with a high hand, as ostensibly that of Jesus Christ. He

becomes more and more convinced of his mission from above, a persuasion

which takes possession of his soul with suggestive force.

In the fragment of a lost letter from Nuremberg we find him writing

of his journey on October 3-4, 1518, to his Wittenberg friends whom

he wishes to encourage to remain steadfast. Faint-hearted people, so

he says, had tried to dissuade him from continuing his journey, “but

I stand fast; let the Will of the Lord be done; even at Augsburg,

even in the midst of His enemies, Christ still reigns ... Christ

shall live though Martin and every other sinner perish; the God of my

Salvation shall be exalted. Farewell and be steadfast, stand upright

because it is necessary either to be rejected by man or by God, but

God is true and every man a liar.”[918] He certainly did not treat

the matter lightly. To attribute hypocrisy to him, as though he merely

played a part, would be to do him an injustice. It is true there are

recent writers who look upon him as a mere comedian, but it would

be nearer the mark to compare him to John Hus on his journey to the

Council of Constance. Like him, he looked forward to death without any

inclination to recant. The thought passed through him, he once said

later: “Now I must die,” and he pictured to himself “what a shame that

would be for his parents.”[919]

The two letters he addressed to Spalatin and Melanchthon a few days

after his arrival in Augsburg and before his first examination, gave

proof of the strange mystical tendency which also appears in the

fragment mentioned above; they show how he overcomes the inward voice

which urges him to submit, and also the importunities of his anxious

friends; they also show how, even then, he was prepared to take a

certain step, should the demands appear to him too great: “I shall

assuredly appeal to a General Council.”[920] He admits that he was

“wavering between hope and fear” and, in order to stimulate his own

courage, he draws a picture in these letters of two of the terrifying

qualities of these “Italians” before whose representative (i.e.

Cajetan) he is to defend himself.

We must try to place ourselves in his position and to appreciate his

prejudices.

In the first place, he relentlessly accuses his adversaries of avarice

and greed in everything; unfortunately his knowledge of the Indulgence

business had furnished sufficient cause for reproaches and complaints

against the Church authorities in that respect.[921] Secondly, he

finds fault with the “ignorance” of his opponents, and here he

undoubtedly excites himself quite wrongly and unnecessarily over their

supposed senseless and one-sided Scholasticism. In his letter to

Melanchthon he exclaims, as though to reassure himself: “Italy lies in

Egyptian darkness, her animosity to learning and culture is unbounded.

So greatly do they misapprehend Christ and all that is Christ’s. And

yet these are our teachers and masters in faith and morals. The anger

of God is thus fulfilled in us where He says: ‘I will give children to

be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them.’ Good-bye,

my Philip, and turn aside God’s anger by holy prayers.” The supposed

want of sympathy with learning and culture of which Luther accuses the

Italians in this letter to Philip Melanchthon is surely most untrue,

and was no doubt intended to strengthen Melanchthon, the weak and

wavering Humanist, in his allegiance to Luther’s party, for Luther,

notwithstanding his anxieties, had not lost his cunning. The reproach

against Italy and Rome, where at that time Humanism was flourishing

as nowhere else, can at most only apply to the stiffness of the old

debased Scholasticism, and perhaps to a certain backwardness in

biblical studies. Such blemishes afforded him a welcome handle. “I

will rather perish,” he assures Melanchthon, the enthusiastic scholar,

“than withdraw my true theses and help to destroy learning.” “I go,

should it please the Lord, to be sacrificed for you and your young

men.”

He still clings to the idea of being one with the Church in his

theological views. “If they can prove to me that I have spoken

differently from what the Holy Roman Church teaches, I will at once

pronounce sentence against myself and beat a retreat, but,” he adds,

“there lies the knot.”[922] A knot tied by himself. Strange, indeed,

is the method he proposes for cutting it: “If that Cardinal [Cajetan]

insists on the private opinions of St. Thomas more strongly than is

compatible with the doctrine and authority of the Church, I shall not

yield to him until the Church withdraws from her earlier standpoint

upon which I have taken up my position.”

How greatly the applause with which he was meeting everywhere worked

upon him psychologically, confirming him in his resistance, came out

clearly at Augsburg.

It was only on this journey and at Augsburg itself that he became

aware what a celebrity his action had made him. He alludes to this in

the above-mentioned letter to Melanchthon, where he also reveals a

flattering self-complacency: “The only thing that is new and wonderful

here is, that the town rings with my name. All want to see the man

who, like a new Herostratus, has kindled such a big blaze.”

Cardinal Cajetan, after making vain representations to Luther, finally

demanded the withdrawal of two propositions which he had plainly taught

and acknowledged as his. The first was his denial that the treasure of

the merits of Christ and the saints was the foundation of Indulgences;

the second was the statement which appeared in the “Resolutions,” that

the sacraments of the Church owed their efficacy only to faith. These

were points in which he had manifestly deviated from the Catholic

teaching and, to boot, matters of supreme doctrinal importance; as a

professor of theology Luther, moreover, had bound himself to submit to

the teaching authority of the Church.

His final answer to the Papal legate was, that he could not recant

unless he were convinced that he had said something against Holy

Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, the Papal definitions, or sound

reason.

Then followed his famous secret flight from Augsburg to Wittenberg.

Staupitz, who had stood by him at Augsburg, dispensed him for the

journey from any part of the Rule which might have proved to his

disadvantage, even from the wearing of the Augustinian habit. This

Superior had again shown himself at Augsburg as a man of half-measures

who allowed his prejudice for Luther to outweigh the demands of the

Church and of his Order.

Luther caused his Appeal to the Pope “better instructed” to be

presented to the Cardinal at Augsburg. He intended, as almost at the

same time he confided to Spalatin, to make an appeal to the future

Council only after the Pope, “in the plenitude of his power, or rather

of his tyranny,” had rejected his first appeal.[923] Meanwhile he does

not know, and this makes him waver between hope and fear, whether

he will be able to remain at the University of Wittenberg. Will the

Elector have power to retain him in his office? Will it be possible

for him to continue to lead a safe existence under his sovereign, and,

above all, find protection in the present danger from imprisonment and

the violent measures threatened? At this, the turning-point of his

life, these were the most pressing questions.

The duty of providing for his safety and furthering his cause devolved

principally on the Court Chaplain, Spalatin. Luther, in his letters to

Spalatin, which duly reached the Elector either as they were written or

in extracts, wisely avoids any unseasonable demands which could only

have been prejudicial to his interests; on the contrary, he declares in

well-chosen language, which was certain to please the Elector, that he

is ready to take up the pilgrim’s staff should it be necessary for the

good of the cause; the verbal commentary on his letters was undertaken

at Court by his able clerical friend.

“I am filled with joy and peace,” he writes to the courtier in the

letter above mentioned, “so that I can only wonder how my skirmish [the

trial at Augsburg] appears as something great to many esteemed men.”

If, however, joy and contentment reigned in him at that time, this was

principally owing to his natural relief at his escape from the dreaded

town of Augsburg.

In feverish haste, without awaiting the result of his first appeal, he

published, November 28, 1518, a new appeal to a future General Council.

An appeal to an Œcumenical Council was prohibited by old laws of the

Church, because, at the commencement of any movement directed against

the authority of the Church, it appeared likely to render all efforts

for the composing of differences illusory. It was rightly felt that

whoever came in conflict with the Church would make every effort

to reserve the decision of his cause to some future Council, more

especially when he is able meanwhile to devote himself freely to the

furtherance of his ideas, and when the speedy summoning of a Council

is very doubtful. The claim that an Œcumenical Council should be

called to pronounce upon every new opinion was so extravagant that the

prohibition found general approval.

At the time of Luther’s advent on the scene the prospect of a General

Council, owing to the dissensions among the Christian Powers, had

retreated into the far distance, and even though it had been possible

for the bishops throughout the whole world to assemble, the meeting,

according to ancient custom and the regulations of canon law, would

have taken place under the Pope’s presidency. Even in this event Luther

can, accordingly, have cherished but small hope of winning the day.

His deep distrust of Rome we find expressed in the letter, written

almost simultaneously, to his trusted friend Wencelaus Link, the

Nuremberg Augustinian, to whom he was forwarding his account of what

had taken place at Augsburg (_Acta Augustana_): “My pen is giving birth

to much greater things than these _Acta_. I know not whence these

thoughts come to me; the cause [i.e. the conflict], to my thinking, has

not yet commenced in earnest and much less can these gentlemen from

Rome look to see the end. I shall send my little works to you so that

you may see if I am right in surmising that the real Anti-Christ whom

Paul describes (2 Thess. ii. 3 ff.) rules at the Roman Court. I think I

can prove that to-day he is worse than the Turks.”[924] Whoever could

speak in this way had already cut himself adrift or was on the point of

so doing.

The powerful forces within the fiery and vivacious Monk seethed like

the crater of a volcano. The Lecture-hall at Wittenberg again resounded

with his eloquent and vehement outbursts. The number of students at the

University increased to an unexpected extent. “They surround my desk

like busy ants,” Luther declares in a letter.[925]

He does not know whence the ideas he pours forth come to him, but he

sees daily more clearly that they are from Christ. “I see,” so he wrote

to Staupitz, his Superior, “they are determined [at Rome] to condemn

me; but Christ on His part is resolved not to yield in me. May His holy

and blessed will be done, yea, may it be done. Pray for me.”[926] In

the same way, though in stronger terms, he informs his friend Johann

Lang soon afterwards: “Our Eck is again preparing to assail me; it will

come to this, that, with the help of Christ, I shall carry out what I

have long since planned, namely, to strike a deadly blow at the Roman

vipers by means of a powerful book. Hitherto I have merely played and

jested with Rome, albeit she has smarted as keenly under it as though

it had been meant in deadly earnest.”[927] “So God carries me away,” we

shall soon after hear him say. “God draws me. I cannot control myself.”

“God must see to it, what He is working through me.... Why has He not

instructed me otherwise?” He fancies he feels “the mighty breathing of

the Spirit,” and little by little he is carried away by the conviction

that he is God’s messenger and the leader of a cause which “is not of

man’s invention.”[928]

* * * * *

During the exciting years of 1517 and 1518 Luther, in addition to his

polemical works, published several popular, practical handbooks on

religion. They consisted chiefly of collections and enlargements of the

sermons which he still continued to preach from time to time. Their

publication strengthened in many the impression, that the man whom some

denounced as a theological rebel was, on the contrary, simply zealous

for the salvation of souls and only seeking the spiritual profit of his

neighbour.

In the spring of 1517 he published, for instance, the German

exposition of the Seven Penitential Psalms, already referred to, a

book which, as he wrote to Christopher Scheurl, was intended for the

rough Saxon “to whom the Christian teaching cannot be presented too

fully.”[929] If the work pleases no one, he says, then it will please

him all the more.[930] In this work he speaks in heartfelt tones,

especially when enlarging upon the “Word of Grace” and describing

the riches of Christ.[931] Another book, his: “Exposition of the Our

Father for the simple laity,”[932] first appeared in 1517 through

Agricola, then again in 1518 after having been amended by the author.

In the preface he says amicably: “I should like, if it were possible,

to render a service even to my adversaries; for my desire is to

be profitable to all men and harmful to none.” The object of such

assurances is, however, too evident, and they are, moreover, flatly

contradicted by his actual behaviour towards his opponents.

To pass over other pious instructions which his amazing power for

work created, he also published in 1518 the detailed Latin notes

of the sermons on the Ten Commandments, which he had delivered in

1516-17.[933] Many portions of this book are really useful and hardly

to be distinguished from what a true spiritual guide of souls would

write, but they also contain other matter which necessarily challenged

dispute. In most of his explanations he gives a very clever, popular

and perfectly correct presentment of the contents of the commandments

and the motives for keeping them; he goes, however, too far, for

instance, in his ruthless, and occasionally even contemptuous

opposition to the abuses connected with the veneration of the saints.

The tone which he here adopts in his strictures could not have

favourable results, and he would have done better had he devoted

himself to the criticism of the superstitious practices to which he

had alluded shortly before in connection with the errors of the Middle

Ages.[934] Oldecop, who was not unkindly disposed, complains that “in

the matter of the veneration of the saints, Luther was not in agreement

with the Catholic Church.”[935]

In the book in question, where he treats of the Sixth Commandment, he

is very severe and exact, indeed, rather too exact and detailed in

his enumeration and denunciation of the various kinds of sins of the

flesh. He speaks with rhetorical emphasis and, it must be admitted,

with a wealth of earnest thought, against the habit of filthy talking

which was gaining ground at that time.[936] Here, for example, after

the most solemn warnings against giving scandal to the little ones, he

lets fall these golden words with regard to reform: “If the Church is

to blossom again, the beginning must be made by a careful training of

the young.”[937] Among other things, Luther treats of the temptations

which the devout man abhors and must abhor, although he can never

escape them, and gives vent to the paradox: “True chastity is therefore

to be found in sensuality, and the more filthy the sensuality, the

more beautiful the chastity,”[938] surely a delightful instance of our

author’s propensity to unusual language. Somewhat obscurely, indeed,

he also speaks against the freedom of the will to do what is good;

Paul invokes the mercy of God against the temptation “in the body of

this death” (Rom. vii. 24 f.), and he, Luther, would lament over the

“poison of death within him.” “Where then are those who vaunt their

free will? Why do they not set themselves free from concupiscence as

soon as they please? Why will they not, yea, why are they unable even

to will?... Because their will is already elsewhere, dragged away as a

captive.”[939]

4. The Disputation of Leipzig (1519). Miltitz. Questionable Reports

The Leipzig Disputation, which commenced on June 27, 1519, and the

origin and theological course of which has been often enough depicted,

as was to be expected, merely induced Luther to proceed yet further

with his revolutionary theology.

The Pleissenburg of Leipzig has become since the Disputation between

Luther and Carlstadt on the one side and Eck on the other, a memorable

monument of German history. The great hall of this castle belonging

to Duke George was hung with splendid tapestries; a guard of the

citizens kept watch before the walls of the castle, for the Court, as

well as the city, wished to insure the safety of those conducting the

wordy tournament which was to be held in the public name. In addition

to the professors of the University of Leipzig and the guests from

Wittenberg, students as well as masters, many others were present,

brought together partly by curiosity, partly by interest in one or

other of the religious parties. The Duke, the guests of distinction,

and the sworn stenographers had special places assigned to them. Two

professorial chairs stood facing each other. On that belonging to the

Wittenberg party Carlstadt, who had arranged the affair, took his seat

and disputed with Eck for four whole days on man’s free will and its

efficacy with, and under, grace.

Then, on July 4, Luther succeeded him and at once launched into the

theological controversy on the question of the Primacy of the Pope. As

in the case of Carlstadt, Eck stood his ground without assistance until

the Disputation closed on July 14.

The Acts of the debate were to have been submitted to the Universities

of Erfurt and Paris for decision as to the winner, but this was never

done. The final impression made on the minds of the audience was that

Eck had borne away the palm. He had repelled the often virulent attacks

of two adversaries with untiring mental and physical energy, and had

displayed throughout a more extensive and ready acquaintance with the

theologians, the decisions of the Church, the Fathers and the Bible

than either of the representatives of the new opinions. Of a powerful

and imposing exterior, with a strong sonorous voice, he dominated

the course of the Disputation by his clear-headedness, his composure

and deliberation, whereas Carlstadt was too hurried and confused and

unable to produce the necessary positive proofs, and Luther, by his

over-confidence, his rhetoric and the habitual violence of his attacks

on his enemies gave umbrage to many. The greatest stumbling-block to

Luther’s success lay in the fact that the principal point, which was

to be decisive for his standpoint towards the Church, was still, even

to himself, as Protestant writers express it, “in process of inward

development,” whereas “Eck could take his stand on a sound and solid

basis.”[940]

This principal point was the question of the recognition of the Church

and her teaching office. Eck succeeded in forcing public statements

from his opponent which he would perhaps have still preferred to keep

in the background, but which were, as a matter of fact, the outcome of

his position. On the second day of the controversy between Luther and

Eck, on July 5, the question of the exercise of the Church’s power and

doctrinal authority in the condemnation of Hus’s erroneous teaching

came under discussion. Luther was now obliged to express his views on

the condemnation of the “Bohemian heretics.” Driven into a corner he

declared, that among the Husite doctrines condemned by the Council of

Constance there were some very Christian and evangelical propositions;

that the Council was wrong in asserting that everyone who wished to

be a member of the Church must believe in the Primacy of the Papacy;

that we must learn for ourselves from Holy Scripture what is of Divine

Right; that the opinion of an individual Christian must carry greater

weight than that of either Pope or Council if established on better

grounds; that Councils not only might err in matters of faith, but that

they actually had erred, as in the case of that of Constance.

Such unheard-of admissions caused the greatest sensation. Bluff Duke

George, on hearing Luther’s assertion that the Christian doctrines of

Hus had been unfairly condemned, exclaimed in a voice loud enough to be

heard throughout the great hall: “A plague on it!” shaking his head at

the same time and planting his hands on his hips.

It was an easy task for Eck to disprove on theological grounds the

statements of Luther.

The Disputation had at least the effect of clearing up the position,

and arousing misgivings in many of those who hitherto had been

partisans of the Wittenberg Doctor.

Luther himself wrote in a very discontented frame of mind to Spalatin

regarding the Disputation, saying that time had been wasted in the

useless affair, and that Eck and the theologians of Leipzig only

sought worldly honour and on this everything had suffered shipwreck.

Only the discussion on the Primacy (i.e. that very one at which the

momentous admissions were made) had been fruitful and productive. This

is his own impudent way of describing his position as the only right

one. “Hardly anything else,” he continues, “was treated worthily.

Eck was applauded, he triumphs and reigns, but an end shall be put to

this by my publication; for as the Disputation was badly conducted I

shall have the Resolutions to the Disputation theses reprinted. These

people of Leipzig neither greeted us nor visited us, but treated us

as deadly enemies [and yet every consideration had been shown him

that circumstances permitted]. Eck they supplied with an escort, they

surrounded him constantly, honoured him with feasts and invitations,

presented him with a coat and a costly mantle, rode out with him on

pleasant excursions, in fact did everything imaginable—to disgrace

us.” “There you have the whole tragedy ... it began ill and ended

worse.... As a rule, I control my ill-humour, but here I cannot help

pouring out my grudge, because after all I am human and see how the

shamelessness of our adversaries and their poisonous hatred of so holy

a cause have grown beyond measure.”[941]

Obstinately adhering to his standpoint and embittered as he was by

the Leipzig “tragedy,” Luther would lend no ear to the proposals for

reconciliation and settlement suggested by the Papal Chamberlain Carl

von Miltitz.

His attempts in this direction had commenced even before the

Disputation. Their continuance revealed on the one hand Luther’s

obstinacy, and on the other the inability of this lay Papal

official—whose motives were merely political—to see the real

seriousness of the matter. The latter, in order to secure apparent

victories, went beyond his instructions and the intentions of those

who had entrusted him with his mission. Luther on his part did not

shrink from diplomatic concessions which could not injure him, but

which anyone conversant with the conditions must have seen to be

impracticable. The easy triumphs of which Miltitz’s shortsighted love

of peace was productive were thus of very doubtful value.[942]

Luther’s edition of the Latin Commentary on the Epistle to the

Galatians, which appeared in September, 1519, assumed all the more

importance in his eyes. In this work, written in the language of the

learned (above, p. 306), he undertook to defend on the widest basis and

before cultured men of every clime his doctrines concerning grace and

salvation, faith and righteousness.

Here we have a public manifestation not merely of the doctrines which

lay at the back of the schism he had stirred up by his controversy with

Tetzel, but also of his wrong new view concerning Holy Scripture.

In the matter of style, Luther was more successful in his shorter

works, particularly in his German controversial pamphlets. Writers who

opposed him, such as Eck, Emser, Dungersheim, Alveld, Hoogstraaten,

Prierias he readily withstood in words full of fire and imagination,

although his arguments, as a rule, left much to be desired and were not

atoned for by his passionate invective. His main contention, voiced

in a more or less coarse form, is, however, always the following: the

proofs which you adduce from the teaching of the Church and the Fathers

do not move me because Holy Scripture, upon which I take my stand, is

above both Church and Fathers.

By the Holy Scripture he, moreover, persists in understanding his

own interpretation of the Bible. By a tragic mistake he has come to

confound his own personal and altogether subjective interpretation with

the objective “Word of God” in the Bible. In the same way he makes not

the slightest distinction between the meaning of the “gospel,” which he

fancies he has discovered, and the actual Gospel itself.

Catholics urged against Luther that the Church had been entrusted with

the safeguarding of the Holy Books, with the handing down of the canon

of Scripture and the correct interpretation of the same, and that,

from the earliest Christian times, the Faithful had always left to the

living Tradition, the General Councils and the Supreme Teacher of the

Church—the Vicar of Christ and inheritor of the powers of Peter—the

final decision in doctrinal questions and the correct and binding

interpretation of Holy Scripture.

What Luther asserted, for instance, in his final letter to

Dungersheim, brought the central dogma, namely, that of the teaching

office of the Church, into still clearer light: “You have nothing

else on your lips,” he says to Dungersheim and to all Catholics

generally, “but the words Church, Church, heretic, heretic, and you

will not admit that the injunction: ‘Prove all things, hold fast that

which is good’ (1 Thess. v. 21), applies to any. But when we ask

for the Church, you show us one man, the Pope, to whom you entrust

everything [i.e. all decisions on matters of faith], and yet you do

not prove by one word that his faith is unchangeable. Yet we have

discovered in the Pope’s Decretals more heresies than any heretic ever

invented. You ought to prove your standpoint and instead of this you

always start from the same premiss.”[943] Theologians, as a matter

of fact, had never claimed for all the contents of the Decretals a

rank among the solemn pronouncements on faith. What is, however, more

important is that Luther places the individual above the Church and

the Primacy appointed by God; he puts the Scriptures in his hand, to

interpret as he will. He continues as follows: “You ought to prove

that the Church of God is with you and nowhere else in the world. We

want the Scriptures for our judge, but you wish to be judges of the

Scriptures.”[944]

In this connection, seeking to justify the bitterness of his

polemics, he unwittingly gives an excellent portrait of himself: “You

misinterpret the words I speak, just as the ass in your midst [Alveld]

is doing at the present moment. This seems to be the way with you

people of Leipzig, you read without attention, judge presumptuously,

and are too stupid to understand the writings of others. Maybe my

patience will come to an end and make room for anger, for I am after

all as human as you; you sit there calmly and nag at me while I am

oppressed with work and everyone shows me his teeth, and, forsooth,

humility is expected of me while I am being attacked by ravening

wolves. The weight of the globe presses upon me (‘_orbis me premit_’),

and if I do so much as nod, you cannot endure it; if at last I turn

round upon you, I am accused and found fault with on all sides. I

write this to show my zeal for peace and concord; why, in God’s name,

am I not allowed to enjoy them?”

He himself shows us later in what way he was desirous of “peace and

concord.” From the words we have just quoted he seems, strange to say,

to think that the Roman party had no right to fight for the great and

sacred interests of Mother Church, nor to repel the attacks he was

making upon so much which had hitherto been believed.

It is exceedingly sad to see how Luther, the once zealous religious,

has become alienated more and more from the heart of the Church,

from her life, ways of thought and feeling. Passion for his cause,

precipitation, overstrain, both mental and bodily, the delusion that

the whole world was watching the brave monk’s daring move, all this

cuts him off, more even than his previous conduct, from practical

association with the Church. His growing lukewarmness in religion is

paving the way for his complete apostasy.

He confesses that he lived in a worldly turmoil of work and

distractions, of parties and feastings which led him away “to

immoderation, impropriety and negligence.” Recollection, penance and

humility become more and more strangers to him, though he can still

speak words of piety; everything is overcovered by the great struggle

he has called into being; the less attention he devotes to the duties

of the religious life, the more he gravitates to the Electoral Court,

where Spalatin is ever busy seeking to provide him with a safe shelter.

This is the talented man, so the Catholic sadly reminds himself, whose

words might have assisted in calling forth a real reform within the

Church, if, agreeably with the spirit and rules of the Church, he had

only appealed to the Faithful and their pastors with earnestness and

deliberation, with persistence and confidence in God. Instead of this,

he pushed forward heedlessly in the slippery path to lay sacrilegious

hands on the doctrine and the whole structure of the Church as existing

up to that time.

At the close of this chapter some remarks may perhaps be permitted on

certain mistaken or misunderstood tales concerning Luther, which belong

to this period.

The history of the sermon referred to above (p. 334), delivered by

Luther at Dresden in July, 1518, in the presence of Duke George of

Saxony has recently been presented to Protestant readers in the

traditional legendary form as “portraying the whole history of the

following centuries.” If it were really so supremely important, then

we ought, indeed, in our narrative to have put this sermon in a better

light and assigned it a very different position. As a matter of fact,

however, its contents are by no means of any great moment and do

not even justify its description as “the trial sermon of the pale

Augustinian monk.”

Duke George of Saxony, so we are told in this new and adorned

version of the incident, “had applied to the Vicar-General of the

Augustinians, Staupitz, requesting that he would procure for him an

honest and learned preacher,” and Staupitz thereupon sent him Luther

“with a letter of recommendation in which he described him as a highly

gifted young man of proved excellence, both as regards his studies and

his moral character.” As a matter of fact, however, it is only known

that Luther happened to be in Dresden on July 25, 1518, on his way

back from the Heidelberg Chapter. As he usually did, he took advantage

of the opportunity afforded him of preaching. Of the letters of Duke

George or of Staupitz history knows nothing.

The sermon was delivered in the castle (“_in castro_”) in the presence

of the Court on the aforesaid day, which was a Sunday, and also the

Feast of James the Greater.[945] The text was taken from the Gospel

for the Feast in which our Saviour says to James and his brother: “Ye

know not what ye ask” (Matt. xx. 22). On this text Luther, doubtless

in his customary burning words, described “the foolishness of people

in their prayers, and what the true object of prayer should be.”

This is what he himself tells us.[946] He introduced among other

things into the sermon a story about three virgins, which, he says,

was “quite theological.” According to another account, he did not

lose the opportunity of expressing the ideas which dominated him,

namely, that those who listen to the Word of God with an attentive

mind are true disciples of Christ, chosen, and predestinated for life

everlasting, and that we must overcome “the fear of God”; he no doubt

laid particular stress on faith and depreciated good works. It does

not seem necessary to assume that there were two different sermons.

“The evangelical certainty of Salvation, as against the traditional

righteousness by works,” so runs the latest legendary account, “shone

forth from his words more plainly than was agreeable to the Duke.”

Duke George was, and remained, a good Catholic. His opinion of

Luther’s sermon is characteristic: “I would have given much money

not to have heard it,” so he says, “because such discourses make men

presumptuous.” This he repeated several times at table with great

displeasure. The occasion which gave rise to this remark was that

Barbara von Sala, a lady of the Court who was present, praised the

sermon as most reassuring, and added that if she could hear such a

sermon again she would die with a quiet mind.

At the Court much was said in disparagement of the sermon and the

preacher, certain conversations of Luther in the town seeming to have

contributed to this. The Prior of the Augustinian monastery at Dresden

wrote afterwards to Luther telling him that many found fault with him

as unlearned and arrogant, etc., that the sermon in the castle was

made the ground for all sorts of reproaches; that it was also said

that his story of the three virgins had been directed against three

particular ladies at the Court, which surely was not the case. Shortly

after, when preparing for the Disputation at Leipzig, Luther must

evidently have feared that the Duke was not favourably disposed, for

he wrote begging that, if he had displeased him, he would “graciously

pardon everything.” The Duke replied that he was not aware of “any

displeasure ever conceived by us against you.” Duke George, who was

zealous for reform, was much in favour of Luther’s Indulgence theses

and, after having come to an understanding with Eck, he sanctioned the

Disputation at Leipzig notwithstanding the objections of the Bishop

and the theological faculty.[947]

We know some details concerning Luther’s behaviour in the town, and

the violent attacks on Thomas of Aquin and Aristotle, to which he

gave vent, in the presence of some of the Leipzig theologians, at a

dinner in Emser’s house. Luther, as he himself says, there defended

the proposition, that “neither Thomas nor all the Thomists put

together had understood a single chapter of Aristotle,” undoubtedly

an extraordinary statement, yet one which, stripped of its cloak

of hyperbole, is quite in Luther’s style. Not a single Thomist, he

said on the same occasion, knew what was meant by keeping God’s

Commandments.[948] A young Leipzig Master in the ensuing Disputation

attacked him fiercely on this score, and declared later that he had

stopped his mouth so completely that he was unable to say a word.

A Dominican who was standing at the door listening angrily to the

attacks upon the great Doctor of his Order, afterwards admitted that

he had hardly been able to restrain himself from rushing into the room

and spitting in Luther’s face.

This is all that the sources contain regarding Luther’s stay at

Dresden. There is no justification for the proceeding of certain

Protestant narrators who magnify the so-called “trial sermon,” and

utilise Luther’s sojourn to make him utter unique predictions of the

future. Other events of those years might with much greater truth be

represented as momentous, particularly the Heidelberg Disputation from

which Luther was then returning.

In private conversations at Dresden Luther showed clearly how far

he had already separated himself from the older Church. Emser made

representations to him on this score: “I told you of it plainly at

Dresden,” he writes in the following year, “and again at Leipzig,

warning you in a friendly manner and begging you to place some

restraint upon your zeal and to avoid giving offence, and not to speak

of the superstitious malpractices amongst us Catholics in such a way as

at the same time to root out all belief, and to rob the German people

of their faith.”[949] Elsewhere Emser explains: “A year before the

Disputation at Leipzig [i.e. in 1518, and without doubt at Dresden]

Luther declared that he cared nothing for the Pope’s excommunication

and had already determined to die under it. And this, should he deny

it, I am ready to prove.”[950] We may take it that Emser is here

alluding to Luther’s rude answers to his adversaries, who, according

to his own story, reproached him at Dresden with the sermon he had

preached at Wittenberg on the “Power of Indulgences”; some portions of

this sermon had already found their way to Dresden, though as yet it

had not been printed. There is no doubt that Emser himself was among

these adversaries. His statement about what Luther said is absolutely

trustworthy, and shows how untrue the fable was that Luther was

animated by the most peaceful of intentions and only against his will

was dragged into a struggle which led eventually to his excommunication.

Luther’s stay at Dresden and Leipzig affords an opportunity for

discussing two of his famous and oft-quoted utterances, which, in

the sense they are generally employed against him, are historically

doubtful. Emser, it is usually stated, with his own cars heard Luther

declare that he was only waiting for an assurance of protection from

the secular power in order to declare war on the Pope, and that Luther

himself had admitted that his cause had not been begun for God’s sake.

The first utterance, so well revealing his low and cowardly standard,

Luther is said to have given vent to at Dresden in 1518, telling Emser

that if only a Prince would shield him, he would do his worst against

the Church. But is Emser here really referring to words spoken by

Luther himself? What he actually says is this: “Many people know that

one of his Order had often and in divers places been heard to say

that if he [Luther] only knew of a Prince who would have backed him,

he would give Pope, Bishop and Parsons a fine time of it.”[951] In

these words we have accordingly not an utterance of Luther’s own, but

merely one of a brother monk. Neither is Dresden given as the place

where this was said; on the contrary, the Augustinian referred to was

heard to say these words in many different places. What he repeatedly

said certainly does not redound to Luther’s credit, neither does it

agree with the high-spirited defence of the truth which is generally

attributed to him by Protestants. Whether the Augustinian spoke from a

thorough knowledge of Luther, and whether what he said really renders

words which Luther had spoken, cannot be determined. At any rate,

the manner in which Luther acted in order to gain and retain the

protection of the Elector, through the intermediary of Spalatin, gives

some weight to the words.

The other statement said to have been made by Luther was as follows:

“Let the devil do his utmost, the business was not begun for God’s

sake and, for His sake, shall not be ended.” This Emser says he

actually heard from Luther himself;[952] he tells Luther: “I warned

you three times in a fraternal spirit and begged you for God’s sake to

spare the poor people to whom you were certainly giving great scandal

by this matter, and you at last answered me: ‘Let the devil, etc.’”

It is, however, very doubtful whether Luther would have said so

plainly that his cause in the controversy had not been begun, and

should not cease, for God’s sake (which is what Emser takes him as

meaning). In his reply to Emser Luther declares he had meant something

quite different by what he said and we have no right to set aside

his explanation. He relates that the words were said to Emser in the

Chancery of the castle at Leipzig on the occasion of the Disputation

of 1519, but really of the opposite party who wished to do him “harm”

by the proposed Disputation; Eck, who had “begun the Disputation,”

Emser and the Leipzig theologians had a mind to injure thereby his

teaching; “my words applied to them,” “not to myself,” those of “ours

who were standing by” are my witnesses;[953] besides, he writes,

he would have been “possessed” had he said: “I did not begin this

in God’s name”; but, because in saying this he regretted “that the

opposite party sought honour rather than the truth,” he said it “with

sorrowful words and a sad mind.” Emser nevertheless stood to his

version[954] and declared that Luther, far from speaking sadly, had

said the words with eyes sparkling with anger; besides, Luther had

had no right to say anything of the kind about Emser and the Leipzig

theologians, as they had not then set on foot any measures against him.

It is quite likely that Emser gave Luther the threefold warning

he speaks of above. But that Luther should have replied to the

exhortation “to spare the poor people,” etc., by the strange statement

that “the matter had not been begun for God’s sake” is so utterly

unlikely that he was probably right in denying it in his reply to

Emser.[955] We may safely assume that Emser was a little confused in

his recollection of the interview; in his conversation in the castle

at Leipzig he may have spoken of Luther’s action generally and of the

Disputation in particular, whereupon Luther, thinking only of the

Disputation, may well have said: “Let the devil,” etc.; which Emser,

in the excitement of the dispute, took to refer to Luther’s action as

a whole.

At any rate, Luther’s fear of giving scandal, according to his own

letters, was not nearly so great as he makes out in his reply to

Emser. Here, in the very passage under discussion, he overwhelms Emser

with abuse, a fact which does not awaken confidence in his statements:

“That man would indeed be a monster, even worse than Emser himself,

who did not heartily grieve to cause annoyance to the poor people.”

He calls his opponent a “poisonous, shameless liar,” a “murderer,”

who spoke contrary to his own “heart and conscience.” “My great and

joyful courage cuts you to the quick”; “Ecks, Emsers, Goats, Wolves

and Serpents and such-like senseless and ferocious beasts” would have

raved even against Christ Himself. In the same breath he declares,

that in his behaviour up to that time “he had never once started a

quarrel”; everything unfavourable that had been said of him was based

merely on lies, which had been invented about him “these three years”

and had become a crying scandal.