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The scholarly, well-documented work of Aloysius Schulte has thrown a clearer light upon the question of the St. Peter’s Indulgence and the part which the Archbishop of Mayence and Magdeburg played in the same (cp. above, p. 327).[900]

In his later days Luther spread the following version of the origin of Tetzel’s Indulgence-preaching: Albert of Mayence selected the “great clamourer” Tetzel as preacher of the Indulgence in order, with one half of the proceeds of the business, which was the part of the spoils to be allotted to the Archbishop, to pay for the pallium which Rome had sent him; the cost of the pallium was said to have amounted to 26,000 or even 30,000 gulden; the Fuggers advanced this money to Archbishop Albert and then he, with Tetzel, “sent forth the Fugger cut-purses throughout the land.” “The Pope, too, had his finger in the pie, and had seen that the [other] half went towards the building of St. Peter’s in Rome.”[901]

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]

“Looked at in itself, the allocation of Indulgences, like that for St. Peter’s, is to some extent justified by the fact, that it was customary in the Middle Ages to make the granting of privileges an opportunity for the giving of special alms, and that the position of the Papacy, as head of the Church, gave it the right to share in the privileges of its members. On this was based the whole system of taxes levied by the Curia on the bestowal of any office, inasmuch as the tax was really a part of the income of the Curial officials; whereas, however, Rome had hitherto been content with one-third of the proceeds of an Indulgence, this was now increased to one-half.”[909] “Nor was it right if, as was probably the case, the Indulgence-preachers did not explain to the people how one part of their alms was to be disposed of, but left them in the belief that it was all to be devoted to the object announced [i.e. the rebuilding of St. Peter’s].”[910]

Finally, the too frequent tendering of Indulgences towards the close of the Middle Ages must be noted as a regrettable abuse. The collections made for Indulgences granted for all sorts of ecclesiastical purposes were so numerous, that loud complaints were raised by the Rulers about the heavy burden thus imposed upon their people.

The Indulgence for St. Peter’s followed many others and was first started under Pope Julius II. In this case the importance to the whole of Christendom of the erection of a new church over the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles may have afforded some justification. Originally intended to last only for twelve months, the Indulgence was extended from year to year.

As regards its administration, Papal commissaries had been appointed for the proclamation of the Indulgence and for making the collections. Thus the Franciscan Observantines under the Vicar-General of the Order were entrusted with the so-called Cismontane provinces, comprising Italy and the Slavonian regions to the east of Europe, including Hungary, the German portions of Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia and Prussia and likewise Switzerland. In Switzerland the preacher was the celebrated Franciscan Bernardin Samson. Other special commissaries were distributed throughout the west of Europe, according to the political divisions; thus we find them established by Papal appointment in Spain, Brittany, the British Isles, Savoy, Burgundy, Scandinavia, and in the Spanish colonies in America.

There had been some delay in introducing this arrangement into Germany as the country was already exhausted by large collections made for the Teutonic Order and the armies which it had been compelled to raise for the defence of the Catholic countries and Christian civilisation, and also by other taxes. In 1514 the time seemed, however, to have arrived. In this year, the same in which the bargain was struck with Albert of Brandenburg, a Chief Commissary, in the person of a cleric at the Papal Court, Gianangelo Arcimboldi, was appointed for the provinces of Cologne, Treves, Salzburg, Bremen, Besançon and other dioceses; Mayence, on the other hand, with the other portions of Germany before mentioned, was reserved for Albert as Commissary-General.

The Chief Commissary appointed sub-commissaries and preachers. Tetzel was chosen by Albert of Mayence as sub-Commissary. He had, before this, acted as sub-Commissary (1505-6) for the preaching of the Indulgence on behalf of the Teutonic Order in the dioceses of Merseburg and Naumburg, and later had worked in many other parts of Germany for the same Indulgence. In 1516 he had been appointed by Arcimboldi as sub-Commissary and preacher in the diocese of Meissen. It was in the beginning of 1517 that Archbishop Albert took him into his service as sub-Commissary and preacher for the dioceses of Halberstadt and Magdeburg.[911] In this capacity he came in the spring, 1517, to Jüterbog, in the neighbourhood of Wittenberg. While subordinate to Archbishop Albert he was at the same time, like his employer, under the orders of a Roman Commission; all the Chief Commissaries, Albert as well as Arcimboldi, were subordinate to a Papal Commission, at the head of which was the Pope’s Master of the Treasury.

The appointment of Albert as Chief Commissary had been made under the impression that the standing of this powerful German Prince of the Church would contribute to the success of the undertaking, and influence even those who were not in favour of the scheme. Yet Albert’s own envoys, when the handing over the Indulgence was first mooted, openly declared that they were not inclined to agree to accepting the Indulgence as “discontent, and perhaps something worse, might be the result,”[912] a fear which events were sadly to justify.

In the end the yield did not reach expectations; this is plain from the accounts now available. The “hundred thousand gulden” which Tetzel was said to have collected in one year are a mere fiction. This tale was spread abroad in 1721 by J. E. Kapp, and before that by J. Wolfius (1600), and would appear to date from a chance word let fall by Paul Lang, the Benedictine (1520).[913] We are, however, in possession of more authentic details since an exact account was kept.

This account of the collections was made in the following manner: the money-boxes were opened and the contents counted in the presence of witnesses, and the statement of the amount certified by a notary. Representatives of both parties—Archbishop Albert and the Fugger bank—were present, and kept an account, half of the proceeds being paid by the Fuggers to the Curia at Rome for St. Peter’s, and the other half to the Archbishop of Mayence. It was a good thing and a guarantee against mismanagement, that, at any rate in the case of the Mayence Indulgence and that for St. Peter’s, a reliable banking-house of world-wide fame and conducted on business principles (even though Luther styles the Fuggers cut-purses), should have thus undertaken the supervision of the accounts, however distasteful it may seem to have left to bank officials the distribution of the Indulgence-letters from the very commencement of the preaching.

How much did the proceeds amount to? The Mayence Indulgence was preached only from the beginning of 1517 to 1518, the rise of the religious conflict interfering with its continuance. Schulte has, however, put us in possession of two considerable statements of accounts concerning this period, taken from the archives of the Vatican. That of May 5, 1519, deals with the Papal half of the Indulgence money which flowed in from the various dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Mayence during 1517 and 1518, and was handed over by the house of Fugger. This half amounted to 1643 gulden 45 kreuzer. A like sum was handed over to Albert, as has been proved by Schulte from a document in the State archives at Magdeburg. The other statement of account is dated June 16 of the same year and places the sum total of the money received from the ecclesiastical province of Magdeburg at 5149 gulden, according to which each half amounted to 2574½ gulden. If we assume these sums, viz. 8436 gulden, to have been the gross proceeds of the Indulgence enterprise, and if we take into consideration the charges, comparatively high, for those engaged in the work, then the amount cannot be described as large. Nor would the Archbishop of Mayence have received entire the 4218 gulden constituting his share, as, according to an arrangement made with the Emperor, he had been obliged to make him a yearly payment of 1000 gulden from the net profits. Thus only 3218 gulden would have remained to him. This would have compensated him but poorly for the enormous payments he had made to Rome. As regards the sums mentioned we must bear in mind the vast difference between the value of money then and now; the buying value of money, at a moderate estimate, was then three times greater than to-day. Since the researches undertaken by Schulte, other accounts, not included in the above, concerning the revenues produced by the Indulgence have been discovered, “a proof that an exact estimate of the whole proceeds of the Mayence-Magdeburg Indulgence is as yet out of the question.”[914]

Another fable which owes its origin to the anti-Catholic inventions of the sixteenth century has it that Leo X did not devote the results of the Mayence Indulgence to the building of St. Peter’s, but poured them into the already well-filled coffers of his sister Maddalena, who had married a Cibo. There is no proof for this assertion. Felice Cortelori, the well-known keeper of the Vatican archives, declared, even in his day, that he was unable to find any confirmation of this story, which should therefore be rejected as fabulous, and Schulte, as a result of his own investigations, agrees with him.[915]

Owing to the abuses and the change in public opinion, the amalgamation of spiritual and temporal interests, as it appeared in the Indulgence collections, became untenable in the course of the sixteenth century. The Council of Trent did well, though rather late in the day, in relegating, as far as possible, the system of Indulgences to the spiritual domain, its original and special sphere, that of benefiting souls. But one who knows how to view the movement of the times and the development of the Church’s life from the standpoint of history, will be able to put its true value upon this apparently strange union of the temporal and spiritual in the Indulgence system of the Late Middle Ages, and will give due consideration to the fact, that in those days the spiritual and temporal domains were more closely connected than at any other period. They were thrown into mutual dependence, each supporting the other; that disadvantages as well as benefits resulted, was of course inevitable.

The preaching of Indulgences in accordance with the spirit of the Church, when rightly carried out, might be compared with popular missions of the present day. Besides the less desirable preachers many able and zealous men came forward wherever the cross, or the so-called Vesper-Bild, was erected as a sign of the preaching of the Indulgence. The crowds who streamed together, listened to the admonitions of speakers previously unknown to them and usually belonging to some Order, with more attention than at the ordinary religious services; many were led to a sense of their sins and to amend their life, as they could not receive the Indulgence without an inward change of heart; they were also glad to take advantage of the presence of strange confessors provided with ample faculties, to unburden their consciences by a good confession. The alms seemed little to them in comparison with the spiritual gain. And as hundreds came and experienced a similar spiritual renewal, their very multitude fired them with a common impulse to persevere in what was good. The researches of historians have hitherto been directed too much towards the abuses and outward disorders which accompanied these popular practices, which were for so long a great help to religion. It would be no loss if in future, so far as the special accounts which have been handed down admit, historians were to dwell more on the ordinary and little-noticed good results effected by Indulgences since they were first started.[916]