Volume 5 — From The Dublin Review. John Tetzel. [Footnote 303]

Of all Luther's contemporary opponents none experienced so much of his foul-mouthed vituperation as the Dominican preacher of indulgences, John Tetzel—a vituperation which Protestant writers, down to the present day, have not ceased, with unmitigated virulence, to heap upon his memory.

Nor have Catholic writers done much to defend Tetzel's calumniated reputation. On the contrary, they have in general allowed themselves to be deluded by Protestant prejudice, and so to have abstained from referring, in his behalf, to original sources of information. This unworthy course they have pursued as though they viewed Tetzel in the light of a personage not worth quarrelling about, whom, without detriment to the church, they might safely abandon to the enemy, nay, whom it might perhaps be as well thus to abandon. They were fully aware that it was not for preaching Pope Leo's indulgence that Luther really attacked Tetzel. The indulgence was but the pretext seized by Luther for openly broaching the heretical opinions which, ever since the year 1515, he had secretly formed. Neither did Luther owe his success to the alleged abuses of the papal indulgence. He owed his success to the wide-spread moral corruption of his times. Had Leo X. proclaimed no indulgence at all, Luther's calamitous Reformation could hardly have been prevented.

Three Protestant biographies of John Tetzel have been written in Germany. The earliest, written by Godfried Hecht in Latin, appeared in 1707. About the same time a Life of Tetzel, in German, was published by Jacob Vogel. The third, a compilation of both, is by Friedrich Hoffmann, and appeared at Leipsic in 1844. They are all three, more or less, just such ex parte productions as might be expected, full of obloquy founded on garbled quotations and falsified facts. The most virulent is Hoffmann's book, the least so Hecht's. In copiousness of original research, Vogel far surpasses Hecht and Hoffmann. As a counterpoise to these biographies the Catholic party produced nothing till the year 1817. An anonymous work then appeared at Frankfort-on-the-Main, entitled Vertraute Briefe zweier Katholiken über den Ablass Streit Dr. Martin Luthers wider Dr. Johann Tetzel. This work is supposed to have been written by a Jesuit, and, although it contains many strong points in vindication of Tetzel's injured character, it would not seem to have had this object so much in view as the defence of the doctrine of indulgences against the attacks made on it by reason of the year 1817 being the tercentenary year of the Reformation, and celebrated as such throughout Protestant Germany. What Audin in his Life of Luther says in favor of Tetzel proceeds more from feeling than historical research, and is consequently of inferior importance. Under these circumstances it is gratifying to meet with such a book in defence of Tetzel as Dr. Valentine Gröne has produced, in which, while he exhibits the vilified Dominican as an able, pious, and devoted champion of the holy see, in a manner that establishes, his title in future to that character on a solid basis, he also contributes to the history of Luther and the Reformation a most interesting fund of knowledge and reflection.

The true date of Tetzel's birth appears to be unknown. It is conjectured to have fallen a little later than the middle of the fifteenth century. He was a native of Leipsic, where his father was a citizen and goldsmith. Dr. Gröne has much to say about the etymology of his family name. But this we may pass over as superfluous. Of Tetzel's boyhood and youth nothing is recorded until the year 1482. It was the year of his matriculation as a student of the Leipsic university. He is now said to have shown superior abilities and great application. For the art of rhetoric he soon evinced a strong predilection. Not content with attending the lectures of Conrad Kimpina on the theory of declamation, he sought to gain a practical knowledge of it by assiduously frequenting the sermons of the Dominicans. This led to his forming an attachment to the order of which, in 1490, he became a member. Two years before, he had received his bachelor's degree, being the sixth on a list of fifty candidates.

In the seclusion of the Dominican convent of St. Paul's, at Leipsic, Tetzel renounced the study of humanities in order to devote himself all the more zealously to the writings of the fathers and doctors of the church.

This course he adopted as the surest means of qualifying himself to become a preaching friar in the true spirit of St. Dominic. "The goldsmith's son," says Jacob Vogel, "possessed every requisite to form a public speaker, a clear understanding, a good memory, an eloquent tongue, an animated delivery, a manly and sonorous voice, the charm of which was enhanced by a tall and slender figure."

His first essays as a preacher were confined to the church of his convent. Their effect was such that his prior, Martin Adam, soon gave him permission to preach beyond the convent walls, at the different places belonging to its jurisdiction. In Tetzel's day it was still customary not to confer holy orders until, according to ancient canonical rule, the candidate had reached the age of thirty years. This age Tetzel attained before the close of the century. He was then ordained priest by Philo von Trotha, Bishop of Merseburg. About the same time Pope Alexander VI. proclaimed the great jubilee. It was the eighth proclamation since the first by Boniface VIII. Tetzel received from his superiors the appointment to preach the jubilee indulgence. He preached it at Leipsic, Zwickau, Nüremberg, Magdeburg, Görlitz, Halle, and other towns. So well did he perform his duty, that he established his fame as one of the most powerful popular preachers that had ever appeared in Germany. "By reason of his extraordinary eloquence," says Godfried Hecht, "he acquired great authority over the people, and rose higher and higher in renown." Dr. Gröne adverts to various contemporary attestations of Tetzel's surprising success with the masses. It was ascribed to his resounding voice, his richly metaphorical language, and logical clearness.

In 1504, Pope Julius II. proclaimed an indulgence in favor of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, whom the Russians and Tartars had reduced to great straits. On this occasion Tetzel was again chosen to preach, along with Christian Baumhauer, of Nüremberg. He preached the indulgence in Prussia, Brandenburg, and Silesia. At the same time the Dominican priory of Glogau, becoming vacant, was offered to him. He was little more than thirty years old. "What stronger proof," says Dr. Gröne, "could be given him of the high veneration in which he was held by his order?" But he did not accept the dignity. In the early part of 1507 he returned to Leipsic. On his way he preached for the Teutonic Knights at Dresden. So great was the desire to hear him that the largest church in the city was found too small for the congregation. Duke George of Saxony caused him, in consequence, to preach from a window of his palace. The same zealous duke, on Tetzel's arrival at Leipsic, received him outside the gates at the head of the clergy, the civic authorities, and dignitaries of the university, and conducted him in solemn procession to St. Paul's convent. Here Tetzel again retired, a simple friar, to the seclusion of his cell. In 1510, he was employed to preach an indulgence of a peculiar sort, granted in aid of building a bridge, with a chapel on it, over the Elbe at Torgau. The Saxon princes, being themselves short of funds, and finding the people unwilling to contribute the money for nothing, had obtained in 1491 from Innocent VIII. the indulgence in question, by which all the faithful in Saxony who should give the twentieth part of a gold florin toward the bridge and chapel at Torgau were permitted to eat butter and drink milk in lent, on the rogation days, and the vigils of feasts, for a term of twenty years. In 1510, Pope Julius II. renewed this indulgence for another twenty years. Such indulgences were not unfrequent in the middle ages. In 1310. Pope John XXII., as Dr. Gröne tells us, granted an indulgence of forty days toward the erection of the bridge at Dresden. When Julius II. died in 1513, the great aspiration of his successor, Leo X., was to complete the magnificent temple of Christendom, St. Peter's basilica, begun by Julius in 1506. But Leo found that the wars waged by his high-minded predecessor in defence of St. Peter's patrimony, and the independence of Italy, had exhausted the papal treasury. Julius having raised the funds for laying the foundations of St. Peter's by means of an indulgence, Leo resolved to do the like toward the expenses of finishing the work. The bull which he accordingly issued, granting a plenary indulgence to all Christendom, reached Germany in 1515. The commission to preach it was given to the Franciscans. For Saxony and the north of Germany this commission was divided between the guardian of the Franciscans of Mentz and Albert of Brandenburg, the newly installed archbishop of the city. But the guardian of the Franciscans declining to act, the entire commission passed into the hands of the archbishop. It was merely as a special favor that he had been included in the commission at all. His grace, in fact, had been obliged to contract a heavy debt with the Fuggers of Augsburg, the Rothschilds of the day, in order to pay the fees on his pallium, which, for an archbishop of Mentz, amounted to no less a sum than thirty thousand gold florins. As it was not customary for the archbishops to pay this sum out of their privy purse, it had to be levied on the faithful of the diocese. But this had been done twice within the last ten years for the immediate predecessors of Albert of Brandenburg, namely, Archbishops Berthold and James Uriel. To raise the sum a third time under such circumstances seemed impossible without assistance. Wherefore, in order to afford relief to his flock, Archbishop Albert had obtained leave from Rome to appropriate a portion of the proceeds of the papal indulgence in his province toward the payment of his debt. This fact suffices, in Dr. Gröne's opinion, to clear the archbishop from the reproach of avarice cast at him by Protestant writers, who have also not failed to impute all sorts of unworthy motives to him for making choice of the Dominican, John Tetzel, as his chief sub-commissioner, or quaestor, in preaching the indulgence. But, says Dr. Gröne, is not the archbishop's choice of Tetzel tantamount to a refutation of the calumnies heaped upon him as one of the vilest, not only of friars, but of men? Archbishop Albert proceeded with the greatest caution, and issued very clear and exact instructions, both on the nature of the indulgence, and the manner in which it should be preached. Had Tetzel really been the notoriously bad monk Protestant writers say he was, how could the archbishop, with the knowledge of such a fact, have ventured to choose him at all? How could Tetzel be expected to preach with any effect, if, as is asserted, he was a disgrace to his order, a man who did not scruple openly to perpetrate the worst excesses? But Archbishop Albert of Mentz had, as we have seen, very particular reasons of his own for promoting as much as possible the success of Pope Leo's indulgence, and, accordingly, he made choice of Tetzel as his chief quaestor, not because he thought a coarse, sordid monk of infamous reputation the likeliest person he knew of to stir up the religious fervor of the people, but because he judged this might best be done by one who, while eminent alike for piety and for zeal in the cause of the church and the holy see, enjoyed the renown of being one of the most eloquent preachers then living in Germany. What motive could be more natural, more just, more obvious than this?

Tetzel entered on his duties as preacher of the papal indulgence for the Archbishop of Mentz with his accustomed zeal and ability. What he had to announce in virtue of the Instructio Summaria of the archbishop was substantially this: That all persons who repented of, and confessed, fasting, their sins, who received holy communion, said certain prayers in seven different churches, or before as many altars, and contributed according to their means a donation toward St. Peter's basilica, should obtain full remission of the temporal punishment due to their sins, once for their lives, and then as often as they should be in danger of death; that this indulgence might be applied by way of intercession to the souls in purgatory, while bedridden people were to be able to obtain it by devoutly confessing and communicating in their chambers before a sacred image or picture.

In the entire document, says Dr. Gröne, there does not occur a thought which the church at the present day would hesitate to subscribe. The Instructio Summaria further declares, that those who cannot afford a pecuniary donation are not, therefore, to be denied the grace of the indulgence, which seeks not less the salvation of the faithful than the advantage of the basilica. "Let such as have no money," it says, "replace their donations by prayer and fasting, for the kingdom of heaven must not stand more open to the rich than the poor." What a refutation have we here of the slanderous clamor against Pope Leo's indulgence as an alleged traffic in sin! With respect to the conduct of Tetzel himself and his subordinates, they are admonished to lead an exemplary life, to avoid taverns, and to abstain from unnecessary expense. That cases of levity nevertheless took place, Dr. Gröne admits, but he strenuously denies that Tetzel gave cause for animadversion. Finally, the Instructio Summaria directed that all indulgences of a particular or local kind should be declared, in virtue of the pope's bull, as suspended for eight years in favor of the one now granted by his holiness; a declaration which did not fail to excite a bitter spirit of opposition and jealousy, especially among the religious orders and confraternities, of which Tetzel had to bear the brunt.

In the church of All Saints, at Wittenberg, there was a costly shrine of relics resented by the reigning elector Frederic, afterward surnamed the Wise. At his request Pope Leo X., so recently as 1516, had attached to this shrine an indulgence for the yearly festival of All Saints. The offerings which this indulgence would produce Frederic designed to apply for the benefit of the university which he had founded. Hence, he regarded the papal indulgence for St. Peter's at Rome as a grievance, and, but for an imperial mandate requiring all the German princes to throw no impediment in its way, he would have forbidden its being preached in his territories.

Frederic, moreover, had a grudge against Rome on the following grounds: The holy see had, in compliance with his request, consented to confer on his natural son the coadjutorship to a benefice in commendam. But the commendator himself dying when the diploma conferring the coadjutorship had just been completed, a new diploma conferring the vacant commendatory had to be prepared instead, entailing on Frederic, who was of a very parsimonious disposition, the vexatious necessity of having to pay the fees twice over. This he ruminated upon in his sullen way, and set it down in his mind as a conclusive proof of that grasping, overreaching spirit which the enemies of the church in that age accused her of in such exaggerated terms. Frederic the Wise was also involved in a dispute with the archbishop of Mentz respecting certain territorial rights at Erfurth.

The Augustinian hermits of Wittenberg sympathized with their munificent patron the elector. He permitted them to make use of the funds accruing from the local indulgence of All Saints toward the expenses of a new convent and church which they had in course of erection. But the temporary suspension of the latter indulgence in favor of the one preached by John Tetzel for Pope Leo X. and Archbishop Albert inconvenienced and annoyed them all the more, as their buildings were on the point of completion. Neither was their ill-will toward Tetzel the less that, in his character as a Dominican, he was their ardent opponent in the scholastic and theological disputes of the day; and, besides being a preacher of such talent and influence, was a dignitary of the court of Inquisition at Cologne, where, of course, the Dominicans presided.

In spite of all obstacles, Tetzel preached the indulgence with signal success at Leipsic, Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Berlin, and other places. At length, about the end of October. 1517, he arrived at Yüterbock, near Wittenberg, just at the time for gaining the special indulgence of All Saints. In vain the Augustinians secretly did what they could to prevent the people from flocking to hear him. The very students of the new Wittenberg university, expressly founded as it was as a rival to that of Leipsic, deserted the lecture-halls in such numbers that the professors were filled with alarm and indignation. In particular, Dr. Martin Luther was exasperated to find himself so completely eclipsed by the proximity of Tetzel, against whom he fruitlessly inveighed in the temporary church of the Augustinian hermits. Even his own penitents, regardless of his admonitions and refusals of absolution, forsook his confessional to obtain the indulgence proclaimed at Yüterbock. All at once they seemed to forget the maxims he had taken so much pains to instil into their minds respecting divine grace and good works! Long had he waited for an opportunity to broach his new doctrine openly, and he and his disciples resolved that now or never was the time to do so.

Accordingly, on the 31st of October Luther posted up his famous ninety-five theses at the door of All Saints' church in Wittenberg, and challenged all the world to dispute with him on the doctrine they maintained. Ostensibly they were levelled against the alleged abuses of the papal indulgence. But attacks on the doctrine itself, as well as on the authority of the pope, were insidiously intermingled with them.

Dr. Gröne substantiates his assertion by authenticated facts, and a critical examination of Luther's ninety-five theses, which, says he,

"Were the point of transition from secret to open from timid to obstinate, heresy. They were the seed which, sown in the soil, contains, not only virtually, but really, all that, as germ and plant, it has a right to contain. They were the result, the production of Luther's mental life, corroded, as it was, by error and learned self-conceit; they were as intimately united with it as the stem is with the root, therefore they could only be abandoned in case the author himself transformed his entire interior life. Hence, too, is to be derived the obstinacy with which Luther clung to them, with which he would still have clung to them, even if they had not earned him general applause; hence the circumstance that, in defending them, he involved himself deeper and deeper in heresy."

By means of the press Luther's theses were soon spread all over Germany. Tetzel, seeing the riotous applause they met with from the enemies of the church generally, and from his own enemies in particular, suspended his preaching; and, with the concurrence of the archbishop of Mentz, repaired for advice to his former preceptor, Dr. Conrad Wimpina, at that time rector of the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. Wimpina advised him to answer Luther's challenge with a series of antitheses. Tetzel did so, and published against Luther's ninety-five theses a hundred and six antitheses. They obtained for him the degree of doctor of divinity. In the clearest manner they set forth the true Catholic doctrine of the absolute necessity of repentance, confession, and satisfaction for the pardon of sin, affirming that, though an indulgence exempts the sinner from the vindicatory penalties of the church, it leaves him just as much bound as ever to submit to her medicinal and preservative ones; that it does not derogate from the merits of Christ, since its whole efficacy is due to the atoning passion of Christ; as also that the pope has power only by means of suffrage to apply the benefits of an indulgence to the souls in purgatory. Moreover, to say the pope cannot absolve the least venial sin is erroneous; and equally so to deny that all vicars of Christ have the same power as Peter had: rather to assert that Peter, in the matter of indulgences, had more power than they, is both heretical and blasphemous. One of the many slanders on Tetzel is, that he was not the author of the antitheses that he published, but that Dr. Wimpina wrote them for him. Luther himself flung this taunt in his face, and so gave it the prestige among his party of an undoubted fact. Dr. Gröne enters fully into the case, and terminates his inquiry with "venturing to believe that, by his vindication, he has annihilated every substantial ground for doubting that Tetzel was the real author of the antitheses in question." They did not, of course, silence Luther, who replied to them with a popular compendium in German of his ninety-five theses in twenty articles. Tetzel rejoined with twenty others, also in German. In the nineteenth he declares of Luther's doctrine, in the tone of a prophet, that, in consequence of it, "many people will contemn the authority and power of his holiness the pope and the Roman see, will intermit the works of sacramental satisfaction, will no longer believe their pastors and teachers, but will explain, every one for himself, the sacred Scriptures according to private fancy and whim, and believe just what every one chooses, to the great detriment of souls throughout Christendom."

At a time when all the most learned men in Germany regarded the matter as nothing but a scholastic dispute, when many even in Rome deemed it a mere monkish quarrel, Tetzel, by thus pointing out in such clear and concise terms what Luther's principles really involved, what fatal results they would produce, evinced, in Dr. Gröne's opinion, a more than ordinary penetration of mind.

Luther's fundamental thought in attacking indulgences was this: That indulgences are not of faith, because not taught in the Bible, not taught by Christ and his apostles; they emanate, he said, only from the pope. Now, if this thought was an erroneous one, if the pope in questions of faith and morals is infallible, if he alone possesses the right to decide the true sense and meaning of Scripture, every Catholic is bound on all such questions to submit to him; and Luther, if he persisted in maintaining his doctrine, passed sentence on himself as an apostate and a heretic, cut himself off from all escape, and had no other choice left than that of either being punished as a heretic, or making a recantation. Hence, in order to drive him from the field, it was requisite to prove that, besides the truths explicitly declared in holy writ, there are other truths in the church which we are equally bound to believe; and that they comprise all those doctrines relating to faith which are defined as such by the holy see. By setting up those propositions the dispute would be raised to one of principle, and Luther would be compelled to speak out on the pope's authority in matters of faith and practice.

These considerations spurred Tetzel on to issue against Luther's fifty theses on the power of the pope; for, indeed, it had not eluded his observation that much the greater part of the applause received by Luther was owing far more to his insidious attacks on the authority of the holy see than to his reprobation of the indulgence. Tetzel's fifty theses, published about the end of April, 1518, maintained, therefore, that the highest power having been received by the pope exclusively from God, cannot be extended or limited, either by any man or by the whole world, but only by God alone. That in his power of jurisdiction the pope stands above all other bishops separate or united. That, although, as a private man, the pope may hold, on a point of faith, a wrong opinion, yet, when he pronounces judgment on it ex cathedrâ, he is infallible. That indulgences cannot be granted by the rest of the prelates, whether collectively or singly, but only by the "Bridegroom of the whole church," namely, the pope. That what is true and of faith about indulgences, only the pope can decide. That the church has many Catholic truths, which are neither expressly declared in the canon of Scripture, nor explicitly stated by the holy fathers. That all doctrines relating to faith, and defined as such by the apostolic see, are to be reckoned among Catholic truths, whether or not they are contained in the Bible. As a warning for the elector of Saxony, Tetzel declares that all those who patronize heretics, and use their power to prevent them from being put upon their trial before the lawful judge, incur excommunication.

These fifty theses of Tetzel's were strictly in the spirit of the scholastic theology in vogue, a spirit which the experience of such councils as those of Basle, Constance, and Florence had contributed not a little to evoke.

Luther at once perceived what a stumbling-block Tetzel had thrown in his way. He did not attempt to dispute the fifty theses. Had he done so he must have plainly acknowledged himself a heretic. As matters stood this would have been premature, would have spoiled all, would have ruined him and his cause. Tetzel had not designated Luther personally as a heretic. But Luther chose to assume that he had done so, and forthwith let loose a storm against him of such brutal and malignant invective as Luther alone was capable of. Adopting the tone of an injured man, a man shamefully misunderstood, he filled Germany with hypocritical asseverations of his orthodoxy and his devotion to the see of Peter. All his party, all Tetzel's opponents, followed in his wake. The heathen-minded humanists, in particular, singled out Tetzel as the butt of their ribald satire, holding him up to scorn and execration as the very impersonation of every imaginable monastic abuse and scandal. The persecuted man found little or no shelter from the tempest. The friends of religion and the church were intimidated, confounded, paralyzed; apathy, indecision, cowardice, delusion, prevailed among the guardians of the faith, prevailed among the German bishops. Rome herself was slow and lenient in her measures. Although she cited Luther to come and answer for himself to her, she consented, in the persons of Cajetan and Miltiz, to go to him. Cajetan, all patience and condescension, allowed himself to be trifled with and duped. Miltiz truckled to Luther, reviled Tetzel, betrayed his trust. In vain did Hermann Rab, provincial of the Saxon Dominicans, address a touching letter in Tetzel's defence to Miltiz. It is dated at Leipsic, January 3d, 1519, and is quoted in full by Dr. Gröne:

"Truly I should not know where to find a man (observes Hermann Rab in this letter) who has done and suffered, who still suffers so much for the honor of the apostolic see, as our venerable father, Magister John Tetzel. If his holiness only knew it, I doubt not but that he would distinguish him in a worthy manner. With what lies and slanders beyond number he is overwhelmed, all the street-corners, where they resound in your ears, attest. I only wish your excellence had heard the sermon he preached on the feast of our Lord's circumcision, for then you would not have failed to convince yourself what his sentiments are, and always have been, toward the holy see."

Miltiz commanded Tetzel to retire to his cell at Leipsic. He obeyed. His career was now terminated. He never ascended the pulpit again. The fatigues and excitement he had undergone; the persecution he had suffered; his deserted and forlorn condition; above all, the course of events, so ominous for the church and the papacy, to which he clung with all his soul; these things preyed upon his mind and body to such a degree that his health gave way, and he died in a state of profound melancholy in the month of August of the above-mentioned year. He is supposed to have been about sixty years old:

"Tetzel could not have set up a better monument to his own character (writes Dr. Gröne) than he did in the grief and affliction which hastened his end. The ruin of the church, the wild infidelity, and unspeakable disorders which the triumph of Luther must needs entail on Germany—this was the worm that gnawed his vital thread. It broke his heart to be forced to see how the sincere champions of the old church truths were left alone, were slandered, despised, and misunderstood by their own party, while the mockers and revilers of the immutable doctrine won applause on all sides."

In a chapter devoted to a refutation of the infamous calumnies and profane anecdotes recorded of Tetzel, it is shown by Dr. Gröne that they were mostly borrowed from the Decameron of Boccaccio and a congenial German production, styled Der Pfaffe Amis. For example: Tetzel, being anxious to impart extraordinary interest to the indulgence he had to preach, once told the people he would show them a feather which the devil, in combating with the archangel Michael, had plucked from the archangel's wing. But a couple of godless wags, entering his chamber during his absence, stole the feather out of the box in which it was kept, and put some coals from the fireplace in its stead. Tetzel, ignorant of the theft, mounts the pulpit, box in hand, and declaims with great fervor on the wonderful qualities of his heavenly feather. Then opening the box, finds it full of coals. Nothing abashed, he cries out, "What wonder if, among so many relic-boxes as I possess, I have taken the wrong one?" And forthwith he extols the miraculous power of the very coals on which St. Lawrence was broiled.

Another merry tale of the sort is the following: "Tetzel," they, say, "once desired to lodge with the sacristan at Zwickau. But the sacristan excused himself as being too poor to entertain so renowned a guest. 'We'll see that you have money enough,' said Tetzel, 'only look what saint it is in the calendar to-morrow.' The sacristan found the name of Juvenalis. 'A very unlucky name, he regretted to say, because it was so little known.' 'But we'll make it known,' replied Tetzel. 'Ring the bells to-morrow as if for a festival, and let high mass be sung.' The sacristan obeyed, and the people throng the church. After the gospel Tetzel ascends the pulpit, and speaks: 'Good people, to-day I have something to tell you which, if I were to withhold it, would be the very ruin of your salvation. Hitherto, you know, we have always invoked such and such saints, but now they have grown old, and are tired of hearing and helping us. To-day you commemorate Juvenalis, and although until now he has been unknown, let us none the less honor him with all our hearts. For as he is a new saint, he will be all the more indefatigable in praying for us. Juvenalis, my friends, was a holy martyr, whose blood was innocently shed. Now, if you would also participate in his innocence before God, let each of you put an offering on the altar during mass. And do you, ye great and rich ones, precede the rest with your good example.'"

Again, in 1512, Tetzel, after having preached at Zwickau, had got all his money packed up, and was about to depart. But the parish priest, with his chaplain and clerk, came running to him, bitterly complaining that, while he had provided so splendidly for himself, they had not got as much by the indulgence as would pay for one jolly day. "Truly I am very sorry," answers Tetzel, "but why did you not tell me sooner? However, ring the bells again to-morrow; there may still, perhaps, be something left for you." No sooner said than done. The people all came flocking to church, and Tetzel, ascending the pulpit, begins: "Dearly beloved, true I had intended to depart this very day, but last night I heard in your church-yard a poor soul moaning and weeping miserably, and imploring some one to come to her relief, and deliver her out of purgatory. This caused me to remain here to day, to have mass said and offerings made for this poor soul. Now, whoever among us should neglect to make an offering would thereby prove that he has no compassion on the poor soul, or else that he must either be a fornicator or an adulterer, whose conscience tells him he is not worthy to take part in this good work. And that you may know what an urgent case it is, I myself will be the first to present my offering."

Of course all the people hasten to follow so edifying an example, they even borrow money from one another, for no one wishes to be thought a fornicator or an adulterer.

In citing such absurd stories as the above, along with many others of a still more profane description, Dr. Gröne shows that, in several instances, they were the same as were employed to slander the character of Bernardin Samson, the Franciscan preacher of Pope Leo's indulgence in Switzerland. He also cites two contemporary documents, one of them signed by the authorities of the town of Halle, the other by John Pels, prior of the Dominican convent of Nevenwerk, denying in emphatic terms that Tetzel, in his sermons, ever blasphemed the Blessed Virgin in the shocking way he was accused of doing. In fine, had he really been the monster of depravity, the shameless drunkard, swindler, liar, blasphemer, and adulterer his enemies make of him, it is but too obvious that, instead of opposing, he would have joined Luther, whose earliest and most ardent disciples were principally degenerate monks, in love with the Lutheran doctrine of the futility of good works—monks, in a word, corresponding in every respect to the Protestant descriptions, but opposite in character as day and night to the true nature of John Tetzel.