Luther, vol. 1 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

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 matter we learn the following details.

When Bishop Albert of Brandenburg, the brother of the Brandenburg Elector, Joachim I, was chosen Archbishop in 1514 by the Cathedral Chapter of Mayence he was faced by great difficulties, financial as well as ecclesiastical. Was it likely that he would obtain from Rome his confirmation as Archbishop of Mayence, seeing that he was already Archbishop of Magdeburg and at the same time administrator of the diocese of Halberstadt? Would it be possible for him to raise the customary large sum to be paid for his confirmation and for the pallium, seeing that the Archdiocese of Mayence, owing to two previous vacancies in rapid succession, had already been obliged to pay this sum twice within ten years, and was thus practically bankrupt? The sum necessary, which was the same in the case of Treves and Cologne, amounted on each occasion to about 14,000 ducats. With regard to the confirmation-fees for the See of Mayence and the expenses of the pallium, the Elector Joachim, who, for political reasons, was extremely anxious to see his brother in possession of the electoral dignity of Mayence, promised to defray the same, and thus the Mayence election took place on March 9. The Archbishop-elect borrowed, on May 15 of the same year, 21,000 ducats from the Fuggers, the great Augsburg bankers—no doubt with his brother’s concurrence—in order to be able to meet at Rome the necessary outlay for his confirmation and pallium.

Grave doubts, however, were entertained in the Papal Curia as to whether, according to canon law, the above bishoprics might be held by the same person. Two of the offices in question were archbishoprics, and, hitherto, in spite of the prevalence of the abuse of placing several croziers in one hand, two archbishoprics had never been held by one man. Besides, the candidate was only in his twenty-fourth year.

An undesirable way out of the difficulty of obtaining the necessary dispensation for holding the three ecclesiastical dignities presented itself. An official of the Papal Dataria informed the ambassador from Brandenburg, that if Albert could be induced to pay 10,000 ducats beyond the customary fees “this should not be looked upon as a composition [tax], as His Holiness, in return for the same, would grant a ten-year Plenary Indulgence in the shape of a Jubilee in the diocese of Mayence.”[905] This proposal emanated from the Papal officials, Leo X himself as yet refusing to hear anything about the money question. After lengthy negotiations the proposed plan was accepted by the principals on both sides in the following amended shape: The Indulgence, one half of the proceeds of which was to be devoted to the building of St. Peter’s, and the other to the Archbishop of Mayence, was to be proclaimed for eight years, not only in the diocese of Mayence, but throughout the ecclesiastical provinces of Mayence and Magdeburg as well as in the domains of the house of Brandenburg (i.e. throughout almost the half of Germany, owing to the vastness of the province of Mayence); the proceeds were to be divided into two parts in the manner mentioned above, as alms for the erection of St. Peter’s and as an income for the Archbishop of Mayence. The Pope, in his simple goodness of heart, was gradually induced, by political considerations, to agree to the proposal. On July 19 the matter was finally decided in Consistory. Thus no actual indemnity was paid for the dispensation (as Luther asserted) beyond the Indulgence money and the alms for building. Pope Leo X confirmed the supplica in question on August 1, 1514. The public Indulgence Bull, however, Sacrosancti Salvatoris, is dated March 31, 1515.

The branch house of the Fuggers at Rome at once paid the sum of 10,000 ducats to the Pope. As the other fees for confirmation and the pallium had already been paid, the induction of Albert as Archbishop of Mayence took place on August 18, 1514, no difficulty being raised as to his retaining the two other Sees.

Every Catholic at the present day will agree with H. Schrörs that “this manner of acquiring benefices with the assistance of an Indulgence was unworthy and reprehensible.”[906] It brings before our eyes an instance of the ecclesiastical abuses prevalent just before the Reformation, and which cannot be sufficiently deplored. “Although Albert’s confirmation may not have been, strictly speaking, simoniacal,” says a learned Catholic reviewer of Schulte’s works,[907] “yet there is a strong suspicion of simony about it; at any rate, it was an extremely discreditable business, and we may well look upon it as a Divine Judgment that the Mayence Indulgence should have been the immediate occasion of the great religious upheaval for which many other factors had been paving the way.” “The greater part of the blame rests with the Hohenzollern brothers, who approached the Curia with such an exorbitant demand for the cumulation of benefices.”[908]