LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
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