LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
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