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Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Luther wasn't the only one who disliked indulgences....

The indulgence seller {Johan Tetzel} traveled under the protection of the Archbishop of Mainz, one of the seven Electors of Germany. In the autumn of 1517 he had passed through Middle Germany, and in October he reached Leipsic in Saxony. His presence had not been very welcome either to the princes, to the more earnest-minded of the parish clergy, or to the better disposed among the people. The princes did not like him, because he got so much money from the people and sent it all to Rome: he made the country poorer; and some princes would not allow him. to enter their territories until he had promised to give them a share.

The better class of the parish clergy did not like him, because wherever he went the people became more wicked; he sold the right of murdering an enemy for seven ducats; those who wished to rob a church were pardoned if they paid nine ducats; while the murder of father, mother, sister, or brother, cost only four ducats. The men and women who bought these indulgences naturally liked to get value for their money, and so crime abounded where the pardon-seller went.

Quiet people also objected to him, because his presence caused such a tumult and so many scandals. He sent men before him queerly dressed, who stuck up notices, and who went through the streets and along the country roads telling that he was coming, and boasting the excellence of the pardon tickets he had for sale. Here are some of these proclamations:—"The pardon makes those who buy it cleaner than baptism, purer even than Adam in a state of innocence in Paradise." "As soon as the money chinks in the bottom of the strong box, the buyer is pardoned and is free from sin." After these mountebanks came the pardon-seller with his assistant in a strong wagon, which was drawn up in the middle of the market-place. Then Tetzel appeared—on his one side an iron cage, in which were the pardon tickets hanging from the bars; on the other, a strong box, into which the money was thrown; and he puffed his wares like a quack doctor at a country fair.

(p. 4 in The Reformation: A Handbook, by T.M. Lindsay)

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