[Illustration: Fig. 10.—The Archbishop Albert. (From Dürer's engraving.)]
Contemporaries have described the lofty and well-ordered pomp with which such a commissioner entered on the performance of his exalted duties. Priests, monks, and magistrates, schoolmasters and scholars, men, women, and children, went forth in procession to meet him, with songs and ringing of bells, with flags and torches. They entered the church together amidst the pealing of the organ. In the middle of the church, before the altar, was erected a large red cross, hung with a silken banner which bore the Papal arms. Before the cross was placed a large iron chest to receive the money; specimens of these chests are still shown in many places. Daily, by sermons, hymns, processions round the cross, and other means of attraction, the people were invited and urged to embrace this incomparable offer of salvation. It was arranged that auricular confession should be taken wholesale. The main object was the payment, in return for which the 'contrite' sinners received a letter of indulgence from the commissioner, who, with a significant reference to the absolute power granted to himself, promised them complete absolution and the good opinion of their fellow-men.
[Illustration: Fig. 11—Title-page of a Pamphlet Written at the Beginning of the Reformation, with an Illustration showing the Sale of Indulgences.]
We have evidence to show how Tetzel preached himself, and what he wished these sermons on indulgences to be like. Calling upon the people, he summoned all, and especially the great sinners, such as murderers and robbers, to turn to their God and receive the medicine which God, in his mercy and wisdom, had provided for their benefit. St. Stephen once had given up his body to be stoned, St. Lawrence his to be roasted, St. Bartholomew his to a fearful death. Would they not willingly sacrifice a little gift in order to obtain everlasting life? Of the souls in purgatory it was said, 'They, your parents and relatives, are crying out to you, "We are in the bitterest torments, you could deliver us by giving a small alms, and yet you will not. We have given you birth, nourished you, and left to you our temporal goods; and such is your cruelty that you, who might so easily make us free, leave us here to lie in the flames."'
To all who directly or indirectly, in public or in private, should in any way depreciate, or murmur against, or obstruct these indulgences, it was announced that, by Papal edict, they lay already by so doing under the ban of excommunication, and could only be absolved by the Pope or by one of his commissioners.
After Luther had once ventured to attack openly this sale of indulgences, it was admitted even by their defenders and the violent enemies of the Reformer, that in those days 'greedy commissioners, monks and priests, had preached unblushingly about indulgences, and had laid more stress upon the money than upon confession, repentance, and sorrow.' Christian people were shocked and scandalised at the abuse. It was asked whether indeed God so loved the money, that for the sake of a few pence He would leave a soul in everlasting torments, or why the Pope did not out of love empty the whole of purgatory, since he was willing to free innumerable souls in return for such a trifle as a contribution to the building of a church. But not one of them found it then expedient to incur the abuse and slander of a Tetzel by a word spoken openly against the gross misconduct the fruits of which were so important to the Pope and the Archbishop.
Tetzel now came to the borders of the Elector of Saxony's dominion, and to the neighbourhood of Wittenberg. The Elector would not allow him to enter his territory, on account of so much money being taken away, and accordingly he opened his trade at Jüterbok. Among those who confessed to Luther, there were some who appealed to letters of indulgence which they had purchased from him there.
In a sermon preached as early as the summer of 1516, Luther had warned his congregation against trusting to indulgences, and he did not conceal his aversion to the system, whilst admitting his doubts and ignorance as to some important questions on the subject. He knew that these opinions and objections would grieve the heart of his sovereign; for Frederick, who with all his sincere piety, still shared the exaggerated veneration of the middle ages for relics, and had formed a rich collection of them in the Church of the Castle and Convent at Wittenberg, which he was always endeavouring to enrich, rejoiced at the Pope's lavish offer of indulgences to all who at an annual exhibition of these sacred treasures should pay their devotions at the nineteen altars of this church. A few years before he had caused a 'Book of Relics' to be printed, which enumerated upwards of five thousand different specimens, and showed how they represented half a million days of indulgence. Luther relates how he had incurred the Elector's displeasure by a sermon preached in his Castle Church against indulgences: he preached, however, again before the exhibition held in February 1517. The honour and interest, moreover, of his university had to be considered, for that church was attached to it, the professors were also dignitaries of the convent, and the university benefited by the revenues of the foundation.
[Illustration: FIG. l2.—THE CASTLE CHURCH. (From the Wittenberg Book of Relics, 1509: the hill in the background is an addition by the artist.)]
Luther was then, as he afterwards described himself, a young doctor of divinity, ardent, and fresh from the forge. He was burning to protest against the scandal. But as yet he restrained himself and kept quiet. He wrote, indeed, on the subject to some of the bishops. Some listened to him graciously; others laughed at him; none wished to take any steps in the matter.