J H Merle d’Aubigné
Great agitation prevailed among the German people, for the Roman Church had opened a vast market upon earth. From the crowds of purchasers, and the shouts and jokes of the sellers, it might have been called a fair, but a fair conducted by monks. The merchandise that they were extolling, and which they offered at a reduced price, was, they claimed, the salvation of souls!
These dealers traversed the country in a handsome carriage, living in great state and spending freely. When the procession approached a town, a deputy waited on the magistrate, and said, “The Grace of God and of the Holy Father is at your gates”. Instantly the priests and nuns, the council, the school-masters and their pupils, the tradesmen with their banners, men and women, young and old, went out to meet these merchants, bearing lighted taper. The procession moved towards the church. The Pontiff’s bull of grace was carried in front on a velvet cushion, or on a cloth of gold. The chief of the indulgence-merchants came next, holding a large red wooden cross in his hand. All the procession thus moved along amidst singing, prayers and the smoke of incense. The cross he carried was placed in front of the altar.
One person in particular attracted attention. It was he who carried the red cross and played the chief part. He was robed in the Dominican dress, and was known as John Tetzel. From the year 1502 he had uninterruptedly dealt in indulgences. His skill had soon procured him the office of chief commissioner. He had been convicted of adultery and infamous conduct, and Emperor Maximilian had ordered him to be put into a sack and thrown into the river, but the Elector Frederick of Saxony obtained his pardon. But he had not learned modesty. He led two of his children about with him. To him all means were good that filled his chest.
When the cross had been erected, Tetzel went into the pulpit and began to extol the value of indulgences. “Indulgences”, said he, “are the most precious and the most noble of God’s gifts.” “This cross (pointing to the red cross) has as much efficacy as the very cross of Jesus Christ.” “Come and I will give you letters, all properly sealed, by which even the sins that you intend to commit may be pardoned.” “I would not change my privileges for those of St Peter in heaven, for I have saved more souls by my indulgences than the Apostle by his sermons.” “There is no sin so great that an indulgence cannot remit . . . only let him pay well, and all will be forgiven him.”
Tetzel then passed to another subject: “Indulgences avail not only for the living, but for the dead. For that, not even repentance is necessary. Priest, noble, merchant, wife, youth, maiden, do you not hear your parents and your other friends who are dead, and who cry from the bottom of the abyss: We are suffering horrible torments! A trifling alms would deliver us; you can give it, and you will not!”
“At the very instant,” Tetzel continued, “that the money rattles at the bottom of the chest, the soul escapes from purgatory and flies liberated to heaven. . . . With 12 groats you can deliver your father from purgatory, and you are ungrateful enough not to save him! I declare to you, though you should have but a single coat, you ought to strip it off and sell it, in order to obtain this grace.
“Do you know why our most holy Lord distributes so rich a grace? It is to restore the ruined Church of St Peter and St Paul, so that it may not have its equal in the world. This Church contains the bodies of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and those of a multitude of martyrs. These saintly bodies, through the present state of the building, are now . . . dishonoured, reduced to rottenness, by the rain and the hail. . . . Shall these sacred ashes remain longer in the mire and in degradation?”
Such were the discourses that Germany listened to with astonishment in the days when God was preparing Luther. “As for those,” people were told, “who wish to deliver souls from purgatory and procure the pardon of all their offences, let them put money into the chest; contrition of heart or confession of mouth is not necessary. Let them only hasten to bring their money, for thus they will perform a work most useful to the souls of the dead, and to the building of the Church of St Peter.” With what skill were presumptuous and lying words foisted in between holy and Christian expressions!
At Magdeburg, Tetzel refused to absolve a rich lady unless, as he told her, she would pay one hundred florins in advance. She requested the advice of her usual confessor, a Franciscan. “God grants the remission of sins gratuitously,” replied the monk; “He does not sell it.” When Tetzel heard the counsel she had received, he exclaimed, “Such a counsellor deserves to be banished or to be burnt”. Tetzel rarely found men enlightened enough, and still more rarely men who were bold enough, to resist him. In general he easily managed the superstitious crowd.
Luther, as far as we know, heard of Tetzel for the first time at Grimma in 1516, just as he was commencing his visitation of the churches. It was reported to Staupitz, who was still with Luther, that there was a seller of indulgences at Wurzel named Tetzel, who was making a great noise. Some of his extravagant expressions were quoted, and Luther exclaimed with indignation: “If God permit, I will make a hole in his drum”.
Staupitz, taking advantage of the confidence the Elector Frederick placed in him, had often called his attention to the abuses of the indulgences and the scandalous lives of the vendors. The princes of Saxony, indignant at this disgraceful traffic, had forbidden the merchant to enter their provinces. He was therefore compelled to remain in the territories of his patron, the Archbishop of Magdeburg; but he approached as near as he could to Saxony. The people flocked in crowds from Wittenberg to the indulgence-market at Jüterbog, only four miles from Wittenberg.
At this period Luther was still full of respect for the Church and the Pope. “I was at that time”, he said, “a monk and a most furious papist, so intoxicated, so drowned in the Roman doctrines, that I would have willingly aided, if I could, in killing anyone who should have had the audacity to refuse the slightest obedience to the Pope.” At the same time, his heart was ready to catch fire for everything that he recognised as truth and against everything he believed to be error.
Luther was one day seated in the confessional at Wittenberg. Many of the townspeople came successively and confessed themselves guilty of great excesses. Adultery, licentiousness, usury, ill-gotten gains – such were the crimes acknowledged to him by those souls of which he would one day have to give an account. He reprimanded, corrected, instructed. But how great was his astonishment when these individuals replied that they would not abandon their sins!
Greatly shocked, Luther declared that, since they would not promise to change their lives, he could not absolve them. They then appealed to their letters of indulgence; they showed them and maintained their virtue. But Luther replied that he had nothing to do with these papers and added: “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish”. They cried out and protested, but Luther was immovable. They must cease to do evil and learn to do well, or else there was no absolution. “Have a care,” he added, “how you listen to the clamours of these indulgence-merchants; you have better things to do than buy these licences which they sell at so vile a price.”
The inhabitants of Wittenberg, in great alarm, hastily returned to Tetzel. They told him that an Augustinian monk had treated his letters with contempt. Tetzel bellowed with anger from the pulpit, employing insults and curses. To strike the people with greater terror, he had a fire lighted several times in the market place, declaring that he had received an order from the Pope to burn all heretics who presumed to oppose his most holy indulgences.
This fact was not the cause of the Reformation but its first occasion. A pastor, seeing the sheep of his fold in a course in which they must perish, sought to withdraw them from it. As yet he had no thought of reforming the Church and the world. He had seen Rome and her corruptions, but still he did not rise up against her. He had a sense of some of the abuses under which Christendom groaned, but he did not think of correcting them. God willed a reform, and selected Luther to be its instrument. The same remedy which had been so efficacious in healing his own wounds, the hand of God was to apply by him to the sores of Christendom. He remained tranquil in the sphere that had been assigned to him. He walked wherever his Master called him. He fulfilled at Wittenberg the duties of professor, preacher and pastor. It is there the evil attacked him, and error sought him out. They would prevent him from executing his office. His conscience, bound to the Word of God, revolted. Is it not God who called him? To resist was a duty. He must speak.
Luther, who was impelled equally by obedience to the Word of God and charity towards men, ascended the pulpit. He forearmed his hearers, but with gentleness, as he says himself. His prince had obtained from the Pope special indulgences for the castle chapel at Wittenberg. Some of the blows that he was aiming at the inquisitor’s indulgences might fall on those of the elector. It matters not! If he sought to please men, he would not be Christ’s servant.
“No one can prove by Scripture”, said the faithful minister of the Word to the people of Wittenberg, “that the righteousness of God requires from the sinner a penalty or satisfaction. The only duty it imposes is a true repentance, a sincere conversion, a resolution to bear the cross of Christ and to perform good works. It is a great error to pretend to make satisfaction for our sins to God’s righteousness by oneself; God pardons them gratuitously by His inestimable grace.
Attacking the pretences under which indulgences were published, he continued: “They would do much better to contribute for love of God to the building of St Peter’s, than to buy indulgences with this intention. But, say you, shall we then never purchase any? I have already told you, and I repeat it, my advice is that no one should buy them. Leave them for drowsy Christians, but you should walk apart and for yourselves! We must turn the faithful aside from indulgences and exhort them to the works which they neglect.”
Finally, glancing at his adversaries, Luther concluded in these words: “And should any cry out that I am a heretic (for the truth I preach is very prejudicial to their strong box), I care but little for their clamours. They are gloomy and sick brains, men who have never tasted the Bible, never read the Christian doctrine, never comprehended their own doctors, and who lie rotting in the rags and tatters of their own vain opinions. May God grant both them and us a sound understanding! Amen.”
After these words, Luther left the pulpit, leaving his hearers in great emotion at such daring language. This sermon was printed, and made a profound impression on all who read it. Tetzel replied to it and Luther answered again, but these discussions did not take place till the year 1518.