There had been a good deal of heresy. It was in the air—men were thinking for themselves—the printing-presses were at work, and the spirit of the Renaissance was abroad.
Martin Luther was not an innovator—he simply expressed what the many wished to hear—he was caught in the current of the time: he was part and parcel of the Renaissance. And he was a loyal Churchman. None of his diatribes were against the Church itself—he wished to benefit the Church by freeing it from the faults that he feared would disintegrate it.
And so it happened that on the Thirty-first day of October, Fifteen Hundred Seventeen, Martin Luther tacked on the church-door at Wittenberg his Ninety-five Theses.
The church-door was the bulletin-board for the University. The University consisted of about five hundred students. Wittenberg was a village of three or four thousand people, all told. The Theses were simply questions for discussion, and the proposition was that Martin Luther and his pupils would defend these questions against all comers in public debate.
Challenges of this sort were very common, public debates were of weekly occurrence; and little did Martin Luther realize that this paltry half-sheet of paper was to shake the world.
The immediate cause of Luther's challenge was the presence of a Dominican monk by the name of John Tetzel. This man was raising money to complete Saint Peter's Church at Rome, and he was armed with a commission direct from Pope Leo the Tenth.
That Brother John was an expert in his line, no one has ever denied. He had been in this business of raising money for about ten years, and had built monasteries, asylums, churches and convents. Beginning as a plain, sturdy beggar, this enterprising monk had developed a System—not entirely new, but he had added valuable improvements.
There is a whole literature on the subject of the "indulgence," and I surely have no thought of adding to the mighty tomes on this theme. But just let me briefly explain how John worked: When he approached a town, he sent his agents ahead and secured the co-operation of some certain priest, under the auspices of whose church the place was to be worked. This priest would gather a big delegation of men, women and children, and they would go out in a body to meet the representative of God's Vicegerent on earth. The Pope couldn't come himself, and so he sent John Tetzel.
Tetzel was carried on a throne borne on the shoulders of twenty-five men. His dress outshone any robe ever worn by mortal Pope. Upon his head was a crown, and in his hand a hollow, golden scepter that enclosed his commission from the Pope. In advance of this throne was carried an immense cross, painted red. As the procession entered a village, people would kneel or uncover as the Agent of the Pope passed by; all traffic would cease—stores and places of business would be closed. In the public square or marketplace a stage would be erected, and from this pulpit Tetzel would preach.