In the seclusion of the Dominican convent of St. Paul's, at Leipsic, Tetzel renounced the study of humanities in order to devote himself all the more zealously to the writings of the fathers and doctors of the church.
This course he adopted as the surest means of qualifying himself to become a preaching friar in the true spirit of St. Dominic. "The goldsmith's son," says Jacob Vogel, "possessed every requisite to form a public speaker, a clear understanding, a good memory, an eloquent tongue, an animated delivery, a manly and sonorous voice, the charm of which was enhanced by a tall and slender figure."
His first essays as a preacher were confined to the church of his convent. Their effect was such that his prior, Martin Adam, soon gave him permission to preach beyond the convent walls, at the different places belonging to its jurisdiction. In Tetzel's day it was still customary not to confer holy orders until, according to ancient canonical rule, the candidate had reached the age of thirty years. This age Tetzel attained before the close of the century. He was then ordained priest by Philo von Trotha, Bishop of Merseburg. About the same time Pope Alexander VI. proclaimed the great jubilee. It was the eighth proclamation since the first by Boniface VIII. Tetzel received from his superiors the appointment to preach the jubilee indulgence. He preached it at Leipsic, Zwickau, Nüremberg, Magdeburg, Görlitz, Halle, and other towns. So well did he perform his duty, that he established his fame as one of the most powerful popular preachers that had ever appeared in Germany. "By reason of his extraordinary eloquence," says Godfried Hecht, "he acquired great authority over the people, and rose higher and higher in renown." Dr. Gröne adverts to various contemporary attestations of Tetzel's surprising success with the masses. It was ascribed to his resounding voice, his richly metaphorical language, and logical clearness.
In 1504, Pope Julius II. proclaimed an indulgence in favor of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, whom the Russians and Tartars had reduced to great straits. On this occasion Tetzel was again chosen to preach, along with Christian Baumhauer, of Nüremberg. He preached the indulgence in Prussia, Brandenburg, and Silesia. At the same time the Dominican priory of Glogau, becoming vacant, was offered to him. He was little more than thirty years old. "What stronger proof," says Dr. Gröne, "could be given him of the high veneration in which he was held by his order?" But he did not accept the dignity. In the early part of 1507 he returned to Leipsic. On his way he preached for the Teutonic Knights at Dresden. So great was the desire to hear him that the largest church in the city was found too small for the congregation. Duke George of Saxony caused him, in consequence, to preach from a window of his palace. The same zealous duke, on Tetzel's arrival at Leipsic, received him outside the gates at the head of the clergy, the civic authorities, and dignitaries of the university, and conducted him in solemn procession to St. Paul's convent. Here Tetzel again retired, a simple friar, to the seclusion of his cell. In 1510, he was employed to preach an indulgence of a peculiar sort, granted in aid of building a bridge, with a chapel on it, over the Elbe at Torgau. The Saxon princes, being themselves short of funds, and finding the people unwilling to contribute the money for nothing, had obtained in 1491 from Innocent VIII. the indulgence in question, by which all the faithful in Saxony who should give the twentieth part of a gold florin toward the bridge and chapel at Torgau were permitted to eat butter and drink milk in lent, on the rogation days, and the vigils of feasts, for a term of twenty years. In 1510, Pope Julius II. renewed this indulgence for another twenty years. Such indulgences were not unfrequent in the middle ages. In 1310. Pope John XXII., as Dr. Gröne tells us, granted an indulgence of forty days toward the erection of the bridge at Dresden. When Julius II. died in 1513, the great aspiration of his successor, Leo X., was to complete the magnificent temple of Christendom, St. Peter's basilica, begun by Julius in 1506. But Leo found that the wars waged by his high-minded predecessor in defence of St. Peter's patrimony, and the independence of Italy, had exhausted the papal treasury. Julius having raised the funds for laying the foundations of St. Peter's by means of an indulgence, Leo resolved to do the like toward the expenses of finishing the work. The bull which he accordingly issued, granting a plenary indulgence to all Christendom, reached Germany in 1515. The commission to preach it was given to the Franciscans. For Saxony and the north of Germany this commission was divided between the guardian of the Franciscans of Mentz and Albert of Brandenburg, the newly installed archbishop of the city. But the guardian of the Franciscans declining to act, the entire commission passed into the hands of the archbishop. It was merely as a special favor that he had been included in the commission at all. His grace, in fact, had been obliged to contract a heavy debt with the Fuggers of Augsburg, the Rothschilds of the day, in order to pay the fees on his pallium, which, for an archbishop of Mentz, amounted to no less a sum than thirty thousand gold florins. As it was not customary for the archbishops to pay this sum out of their privy purse, it had to be levied on the faithful of the diocese. But this had been done twice within the last ten years for the immediate predecessors of Albert of Brandenburg, namely, Archbishops Berthold and James Uriel. To raise the sum a third time under such circumstances seemed impossible without assistance. Wherefore, in order to afford relief to his flock, Archbishop Albert had obtained leave from Rome to appropriate a portion of the proceeds of the papal indulgence in his province toward the payment of his debt. This fact suffices, in Dr. Gröne's opinion, to clear the archbishop from the reproach of avarice cast at him by Protestant writers, who have also not failed to impute all sorts of unworthy motives to him for making choice of the Dominican, John Tetzel, as his chief sub-commissioner, or quaestor, in preaching the indulgence. But, says Dr. Gröne, is not the archbishop's choice of Tetzel tantamount to a refutation of the calumnies heaped upon him as one of the vilest, not only of friars, but of men? Archbishop Albert proceeded with the greatest caution, and issued very clear and exact instructions, both on the nature of the indulgence, and the manner in which it should be preached. Had Tetzel really been the notoriously bad monk Protestant writers say he was, how could the archbishop, with the knowledge of such a fact, have ventured to choose him at all? How could Tetzel be expected to preach with any effect, if, as is asserted, he was a disgrace to his order, a man who did not scruple openly to perpetrate the worst excesses? But Archbishop Albert of Mentz had, as we have seen, very particular reasons of his own for promoting as much as possible the success of Pope Leo's indulgence, and, accordingly, he made choice of Tetzel as his chief quaestor, not because he thought a coarse, sordid monk of infamous reputation the likeliest person he knew of to stir up the religious fervor of the people, but because he judged this might best be done by one who, while eminent alike for piety and for zeal in the cause of the church and the holy see, enjoyed the renown of being one of the most eloquent preachers then living in Germany. What motive could be more natural, more just, more obvious than this?
Tetzel entered on his duties as preacher of the papal indulgence for the Archbishop of Mentz with his accustomed zeal and ability. What he had to announce in virtue of the Instructio Summaria of the archbishop was substantially this: That all persons who repented of, and confessed, fasting, their sins, who received holy communion, said certain prayers in seven different churches, or before as many altars, and contributed according to their means a donation toward St. Peter's basilica, should obtain full remission of the temporal punishment due to their sins, once for their lives, and then as often as they should be in danger of death; that this indulgence might be applied by way of intercession to the souls in purgatory, while bedridden people were to be able to obtain it by devoutly confessing and communicating in their chambers before a sacred image or picture.
In the entire document, says Dr. Gröne, there does not occur a thought which the church at the present day would hesitate to subscribe. The Instructio Summaria further declares, that those who cannot afford a pecuniary donation are not, therefore, to be denied the grace of the indulgence, which seeks not less the salvation of the faithful than the advantage of the basilica. "Let such as have no money," it says, "replace their donations by prayer and fasting, for the kingdom of heaven must not stand more open to the rich than the poor." What a refutation have we here of the slanderous clamor against Pope Leo's indulgence as an alleged traffic in sin! With respect to the conduct of Tetzel himself and his subordinates, they are admonished to lead an exemplary life, to avoid taverns, and to abstain from unnecessary expense. That cases of levity nevertheless took place, Dr. Gröne admits, but he strenuously denies that Tetzel gave cause for animadversion. Finally, the Instructio Summaria directed that all indulgences of a particular or local kind should be declared, in virtue of the pope's bull, as suspended for eight years in favor of the one now granted by his holiness; a declaration which did not fail to excite a bitter spirit of opposition and jealousy, especially among the religious orders and confraternities, of which Tetzel had to bear the brunt.
In the church of All Saints, at Wittenberg, there was a costly shrine of relics resented by the reigning elector Frederic, afterward surnamed the Wise. At his request Pope Leo X., so recently as 1516, had attached to this shrine an indulgence for the yearly festival of All Saints. The offerings which this indulgence would produce Frederic designed to apply for the benefit of the university which he had founded. Hence, he regarded the papal indulgence for St. Peter's at Rome as a grievance, and, but for an imperial mandate requiring all the German princes to throw no impediment in its way, he would have forbidden its being preached in his territories.
Frederic, moreover, had a grudge against Rome on the following grounds: The holy see had, in compliance with his request, consented to confer on his natural son the coadjutorship to a benefice in commendam. But the commendator himself dying when the diploma conferring the coadjutorship had just been completed, a new diploma conferring the vacant commendatory had to be prepared instead, entailing on Frederic, who was of a very parsimonious disposition, the vexatious necessity of having to pay the fees twice over. This he ruminated upon in his sullen way, and set it down in his mind as a conclusive proof of that grasping, overreaching spirit which the enemies of the church in that age accused her of in such exaggerated terms. Frederic the Wise was also involved in a dispute with the archbishop of Mentz respecting certain territorial rights at Erfurth.
The Augustinian hermits of Wittenberg sympathized with their munificent patron the elector. He permitted them to make use of the funds accruing from the local indulgence of All Saints toward the expenses of a new convent and church which they had in course of erection. But the temporary suspension of the latter indulgence in favor of the one preached by John Tetzel for Pope Leo X. and Archbishop Albert inconvenienced and annoyed them all the more, as their buildings were on the point of completion. Neither was their ill-will toward Tetzel the less that, in his character as a Dominican, he was their ardent opponent in the scholastic and theological disputes of the day; and, besides being a preacher of such talent and influence, was a dignitary of the court of Inquisition at Cologne, where, of course, the Dominicans presided.