iv. It can have no efficacy for souls in Purgatory; penalties imposed by the Church can only refer to the living; death dissolves them; what the Pope can do for souls in Purgatory is by prayer, not by jurisdiction or the power of the keys.
v. The Christian who has true repentance has already received pardon from God altogether apart from an Indulgence, and does not need one; Christ demands this true repentance from every one.
vi. The Treasury of Merits has never been properly defined, it is hard to say what it is, and it is not properly understood by the people; it cannot be the merits of Christ and of His saints, because these act of themselves and quite apart from the intervention of the Pope; it can mean nothing more than that the Pope, having the power of the keys, can remit ecclesiastical penalties imposed by the Church; the true Treasure-house of merits is the Holy Gospel of the grace and glory of God.
The Archbishop of Mainz, finding that the publication of the Theses interfered with the sale of the Indulgences, sent a copy to Rome. Pope Leo, thinking that the whole thing was a monkish quarrel, contented himself with asking the General of the Augustinian Eremites to keep his monks quiet. Tetzel, in conjunction with a friend, Conrad Wimpina, published a set of counter-theses. John Mayr [pg 230] of Eck, professor at Ingolstadt, by far the ablest opponent Luther ever had, wrote an answer to the Theses which he entitled Obelisks;[163] and Luther replied in a tract with the title Asterisks. At Rome, Silvester Mazzolini (1460-?) of Prierio, a Dominican monk, papal censor for the Roman Province and an Inquisitor, was profoundly dissatisfied with the Ninety-five Theses, and proceeded to criticise them severely in a Dialogue about the Power of the Pope; against the Presumptuous Conclusions of Martin Luther. The book reached Germany by the middle of January 1518. The Augustinian Eremites held their usual annual chapter at Heidelberg in April 1518, and Luther heard his Theses temperately discussed by his brother monks. He found the opposition to his views much stronger than he had expected; but the discussion was fair and honest, and Luther enjoyed it after the ominous silence kept by most of his friends, who had thought his action rash. When he returned from Heidelberg he began a general answer to his opponents. The book, Resolutiones, was probably the most carefully written of all Luther's writings. He thought long over it, weighed every statement carefully, and rewrote portions several times. The preface, addressed to his Vicar-General, Staupitz, contains some interesting autobiographical material; it was addressed to the Pope; it was a detailed defence of his Theses.[164]
The Ninety-five Theses had a circulation which was, for the time, unprecedented. They were known throughout Germany in a little over a fortnight; they were read over Western Europe within four weeks “as if they had been circulated by angelic messengers,” says Myconius enthusiastically. Luther was staggered at the way they were [pg 231] received; he said that he had not meant to determine, but to debate. The controversy they awakened increased their popularity. In the Theses, and especially in the Resolutiones, Luther had practically discarded all the practices which the Pope and the Roman Curia had introduced in the matter of Indulgences from the beginning of the thirteenth century, and all the ingenious explanations Scholastic theologians had brought forward to justify these practices. The readiest way to refute him was to assert the power of the Roman Bishop; and this was the line taken by his critics. Their arguments amount to this: the power to issue an Indulgence is simply a particular instance of the power of papal jurisdiction, and Indulgences are simply what the Pope proclaims them to be. Therefore, to attack Indulgences is to attack the power of the Pope, and that cannot be tolerated. The Roman Church is virtually the Universal Church, and the Pope is practically the Roman Church. Hence, as the representative of the Roman Church, which in turn represents the Church Universal, the Pope, when he acts officially, cannot err. Official decisions are given in actions as well as in words, custom has the force of law. Therefore, whoever objects to such a long-established system as Indulgences is a heretic, and does not deserve to be heard.[165]
But the argument which appealed most powerfully to the Roman Curia was the fact that the sales of the Papal Tickets had been declining since the publication of the Theses. Indulgences were the source of an enormous revenue, and anything which checked their sale would cause financial embarrassment. Pope Leo x. in his “enjoyment of the Papacy” lived lavishly. He had a huge income, much greater than that of any European monarch, but he lived beyond it. His income amounted to between four and five hundred thousand ducats; but he had spent seven hundred thousand on his war about the Duchy of Urbino; the magnificent reception of his brother Julian [pg 232] and his bride in Rome (1514) had cost him fifty thousand ducats; and he had spent over three hundred thousand on the marriage of his nephew Lorenzo (1518). Voices had been heard in Rome as well as in Germany protesting against this extravagance. The Pope was in desperate need of money. It is scarcely to be wondered that Luther was summoned to Rome (summons dated July 1518, and received by Luther on August 7th) to answer for his attack on the Indulgence system. To have obeyed would have meant death.
The peremptory summons could be construed as an affront to the University of Wittenberg, on whose boards the Ninety-five Theses had been posted. Luther wrote to his friend Spalatin (George Burkhardt of Spalt, 1484-1545), who was chaplain and private secretary to the Elector Frederick, suggesting that the prince ought to defend the rights of his University. Spalatin wrote at once to the Elector and also to the Emperor Maximilian, and the result was that the summons to Rome was cancelled, and it was arranged that the matter was to be left in the hands of the Papal Legate in Germany, Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan[166] (1470-1553), and Luther was ordered to present himself before that official at Augsburg. The interview (October 1518) was not very satisfactory. The cardinal demanded that Luther should recant his heresies without any argument. When pressed to say what the heresies were, he named the statement in the 58th Thesis that the merits of Christ work effectually without the intervention of the Pope, and that in the Resolutiones which said that the sacraments are not efficacious apart from faith in the recipient. There was some discussion notwithstanding the Legate's declaration; but in the end Luther was ordered to recant or [pg 233] depart. He wrote out an appeal from the Pope ill-informed to the Pope well-informed, also an appeal to a General Council, and returned to Wittenberg.
When Luther had posted his Theses on the doors of the Church of All Saints, he had been a solitary monk with nothing but his manhood to back him; but nine months had made a wonderful difference in the situation. He now knew that he was a representative man, with supporters to be numbered by the thousand. His colleagues at Wittenberg were with him; his students demonstratively loyal (they had been burning the Wimpina-Tetzel counter-theses); his theology was spreading among all the cloisters of his Order in Germany, and even in the Netherlands; and the rapid circulation of his Theses had shown him that he had the ear of Germany. His first task, on his return to Wittenberg, was to prepare for the press an account of his interview with Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, and this was published under the title, Acta Augustana.
Luther was at pains to take the people of Germany into his confidence; he published an account of every important interview he had; the people were able to follow him step by step, and he was never so far in advance that they were unable to see his footprints. The immediate effect of the Acta Augustana was an immense amount of public sympathy for Luther. The people, even the Humanists who had cared little for the controversy, saw that an eminently pious man, an esteemed teacher who was making his obscure University famous, who had done nothing but propose a discussion on the notoriously intricate question of Indulgences, was peremptorily ordered to recant and remain silent. They could only infer that the Italians treated the Germans contemptuously, and wished simply to drain the country of money to be spent in the luxuries of the papal court. The Elector Frederick shared the common opinion, and was, besides, keenly alive to anything which touched his University and its prosperity. There is no evidence to show that he had much [pg 234] sympathy with Luther's views. But the University of Wittenberg, the seat of learning he had founded, so long languishing with a very precarious life and now flourishing, was the apple of his eye; and he resolved to defend it, and to protect the teacher who had won renown for it.
The political situation in Germany was too delicate, and the personal political influence of Frederick too great, for the Pope to act rashly in any matter in which that prince took a deep interest. The country was on the eve of an election of a King of the Romans; Maximilian was old, and an imperial election might occur at any time; and Frederick was one of the most important factors in either case. So the Pope resolved to act cautiously. The condemnation of Luther by the Cardinal-Legate was held over, and a special papal delegate was sent down to Germany to make inquiries. Every care was taken to select a man who would be likely to be acceptable to the Elector. Charles von Miltitz, a Saxon nobleman belonging to the Meisen district, a canon of Mainz, Trier, and Meissen, a papal chamberlain, an acquaintance of Spalatin's, the Elector's own agent at the Court of Rome, was sent to Germany. He took with him the “Golden Rose” as a token of the Pope's personal admiration for the Elector. He was furnished with numerous letters from His Holiness to the Elector, to some of the Saxon councillors, to the magistrates of Wittenberg, in all of which Luther figured as a child of the Devil. The phrase was probably forgotten when Leo wrote to Luther some time afterwards and called him his dear son.