This prelate (born June 28, 1490, died Sept. 24, 1545), though at that time only twenty-five
years of age, stood at the head of the German clergy, and was chancellor of the German Empire.
He received also the cardinal’s hat in 1518. He was, like his Roman master, a friend of liberal
learning and courtly splendor, worldly-minded, and ill fitted for the care of souls. He had the
ambition to be the Maecenas of Germany. He was himself destitute of theological education, but
called scholars, artists, poets, free-thinkers, to his court, and honored Erasmus and Ulrich von
Hutten with presents and pensions. "He had a passionate love for music," says an Ultramontane
historian, "and imported musicians from Italy to give luster to his feasts, in which ladies often
participated. Finely wrought carpets, splendid mirrors adorned his halls and chambers; costly dishes
and wines covered his table. He appeared in public with great pomp; he kept a body-guard of one
hundred and fifty armed knights; numerous courtiers in splendid attire followed him when he rode
out; he was surrounded by pages who were to learn in his presence the refinement of cavaliers."
The same Roman-Catholic historian censures the extravagant court of Pope Leo X., which set the
example for the secularization and luxury of the prelates in Germany.^180
Albrecht was largely indebted to the rich banking-house of Fugger in Augsburg, from whom
he had borrowed thirty thousand florins in gold to pay for the papal pallium. By an agreement with
the Pope, he had permission to keep half of the proceeds arising from the sale of indulgences. The
agents of that commercial house stood behind the preachers of indulgence, and collected their share
for the repayment of the loan.
The Archbishop appointed Johann Tetzel (Diez) of the Dominican order, his commissioner,
who again employed his sub-agents.
Tetzel was born between 1450 and 1460, at Leipzig, and began his career as a preacher of
indulgences in 1501. He became famous as a popular orator and successful hawker of indulgences.
He was prior of a Dominican convent, doctor of philosophy, and papal inquisitor (haereticae
pravitatis inquisitor). At the end of 1517 he acquired in the University of Frankfurt-on-the-Oder
the degree of Licentiate of Theology, and in January, 1518, the degree of Doctor of Theology, by
defending, in two disputations, the doctrine of indulgences against Luther.^181 He died at Leipzig
during the public debate between Eck and Luther, July, 1519. He is represented by Protestant writers
as an ignorant, noisy, impudent, and immoral charlatan, who was not ashamed to boast that he
saved more souls from purgatory by his letters of indulgence than St. Peter by his preaching.^182 On
(^180) Janssen, II. 60, 64: "Das Hofwesen so mancher geistlichen Fürsten Deutschlands, insbesondere das des Erzbischofs Albrecht von
Mainz, stand in schreiendem Widerspruch mit dem eines kirchlichen Würdeträgers, aber der Hof Leo’s X., mit seinem Aufwand für Spiel
und Theater und allerlei weltliche Feste entsprach noch weniger der Bestimmung eines Oberhauptes der Kirche. Der Verweltlichung und
Ueppigkeit geistlicher Fürstenhöfe in Deutschland ging die des römischen Hofes voraus, und erstere wäre ohne diese kaum möglich
gewesen." He quotes (II. 76) Emser and Cardinal Sadolet against the abuses of indulgences in the reign of Leo X. Cardinal Hergenröther,
in the dedicatory preface to the Regesta Leonis X. (Fasc. I. p. ix), while defending this Pope against the charge of religious indifference,
censures the accumulation of ecclesiastical benefices by the same persons, as Albrecht, and the many abuses resulting therefrom.
(^181) Löscher (I. 505-523) gives both dissertations, the first consisting of 106, the second of 50 theses, and calls them "Proben von den
stinkenden Schäden des Papstthutms." He ascribes, however, the authorship to Conrad Wimpina, professor of theology at
Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, who afterwards published them as his own, without mentioning Tetzel, in his Anacephalaiosis Sectarum errorum,
etc., 1528 (Löscher, I. 506, II. 7). Gieseler, Köstlin, and Knaake are of the same opinion. Gröne and Hergenröther assign them to Tetzel.
(^182) Mathesius, Myconius, and Luther (Wider Hans Wurst, 1541, in the Erl. ed. XXVI. 51) ascribe to him also the blasphemous boast
that he had the power by letters of indulgence to forgive even a carnal sin against the Mother of God ("wenn einer gleich die heil. Jungfrau
Maria, Gottes Mutter, hätte geschächt und geschwängert"). Luther alludes to such a monstrous saying in Thes. 75, and calls it insane.
But Tetzel denied, and disproved the charge as a slander, in his Disp. I. 99-101 ("Subcommissariis ac praedicatoribus veniarumImponere,
ut si quis per impossibile Dei genetricem semper virginein violasset ... Odio Agitari Ac Fratrum Suorum Sanguinem Sitire"), and in his