Such is the outward visible sign of the progress of the church in Ireland for the last hundred years. What though the wind sighs mournfully through the broken arches of many a church and cloister, made sacred by the saintly men who prayed and taught fourteen centuries ago; though the fern and the ivy grow up and cement a thousand crumbling ruins, which in their desolation attest at the same time man's passion and his impotence; let them be as silent teachers of the past and of its glorious memories and bitter persecution. But the people of Ireland have the present, they are working not only for themselves, but for the future; and they, too, will be known to after generations by the monuments they are now building as their forefathers built; by their churches, convents, and colleges, which shall exist, even though in ruins, in the grateful memories of coming ages.
From The Dublin Review.
John Tetzel. [Footnote 303]
[Footnote 303: Tetzel und Luther, oder Lebensgeschichte und Rechtfertigung des Ablasspredigers und Inquisitors, Dr. Johann Tetzel, aus dem Predigerorden. Von Valentin Gröne, Doctor der Theologie. Soest und Olpe. Verlag der Nasse'schen Buchhandlung. 1853. (pp. 237.)]
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.