Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 241 – The 95 Theses – More Cockup than Conspiracy.

On April 10, 1517 a Dominican friar by the name of Johann Tetzel entered the city of Jüterbog. Before him was carried on a cushion of golden velvet the bull “Sacrosanctis” issued by pope Leo X granting the good people of the archbishoprics of Mainz and Magdeburg full remission of the punishment for their sins if they deposited alms into the chests destined for the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome[1].

When he was welcomed to town, all the priests, monks, councilmen, teachers, pupils, men, women, maids, and children went to meet him singing in solemn procession with flags and candles. The bells tolled and when he entered the church the organ played. A red Cross was put up in the middle of the church to which the Pope’s banner was affixed. In short: even God himself could not have been welcomed and received more beautifully.”[2]

And then the show began. Tetzel called the congregation out for their lack of contrition. Why are you ashamed to go to confession, but not ashamed to go to the tavern. Seek the lord while he can be found, while he is near. Why are you still standing here – run for the salvation of your soul. And if you aren’t concerned about yourself, hear the wailing of your dead parents suffering pain and punishment down in purgatory. Why are you so cruel and harsh that you do not want to save them, when it takes just a little. Know that all who confess and do penance by putting alms into this chest, they will receive remission of all their sins.

And then he may have concluded with: “When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” And thereby literally coined one of the most memorable phrases of the whole Reformation.

By the end of that year though, Tetzel was out of a job and another six months later the entire indulgence industry that over the last few decades had raised hundreds of thousands of gulden, collapsed. Martin Luther became a household name and the Reformation was on!

The way responsibility for this is usually apportioned goes roughly like this:

• Johann Tetzel was a snake oil salesman who had no qualms condemning the souls of his customers to hell if he only made enough cash.
• His boss, the archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg had concocted a seedy deal with Jakob Fugger and Pope Leo X to make the people pay for his monstrous ambitions, and
• When Luther’s theses highlighted the rapacious behavior of the Roman church in Germany, he triggered the long overdue resistance.

That sounds great, but what if Johann Tetzel was just an overpromoted Middle Manager who panicked because his great project was going downhill fast, what if archbishop Albrecht never wanted to do the indulgences and would have preferred to pay out of his own pocket, and what if the pope never was as rapacious as the Germans had made him out to be.

Let’s see whether there is still something new to learn about one of the most famous stories in all of German history.

Luther’s Reaction to Tetzel’s Preaching

Luther never saw Tetzel preach. All his information was second hand. But what he heard was shocking: “that there is no sin too great to be absolved, even, as they say — though the thing is impossible — if one had violated the Mother of God; again, that man is free, through these indulgences, from all penalty and guilt[3].

Can you imagine what such claims did to a man like Martin Luther? A man who had tortured his body and mind with the question of how to achieve salvation, a man who believed that a pitiless divine judge would cast you down into hell for sins you could not repent only because you could not remember, a man who had fasted constantly, had confessed nonstop for six hours and still felt a sinner. What must he have thought of Tetzel, who offered total salvation for standard sins for 12.99 and a premium package covering murder and the rape of the virgin for just 129.99.

Of course he was appalled by the man and his outrageous claims. After all they were both friars, Tetzel a Dominican, Luther an Augustinian. They should have been on the same team. But they clearly were not of similar mind.

Here is what he himself said happened, quote:

When in 1517 indulgences were sold in these regions for disgraceful profit, I was a preacher, a young Doctor of Theology, as they say. I began to dissuade the people from lending an ear to the shouts of the indulgence-sellers. I told them that they had better things to do and that I was sure that in these matters I had the pope on my side. I was relying greatly on his trustworthiness, since in his decrees he had very clearly condemned the excesses of the quaestors as he called the indulgence preachers.

Shortly thereafter I wrote two letters, one to Albert, the archbishop of Mainz, who was getting half the money from the indulgences (the other half was going to the pope, a fact of which I was at the time ignorant),the other to the ordinary of the place, Jerome, bishop of Brandenburg. I begged them to put a stop to the shameless blasphemy of the quaestors, but they despised this poor little friar. Therefore, finding myself despised, I published a list of theses and, at the same time, a sermon in German on indulgences. A little later I published the “Explanations,” in which, in deference to the pope, I maintained that indulgences should not be condemned but that the works of charity should be preferred to them.

What I did toppled heaven and consumed earth by fire….. end quote 

The 95 Theses

Tetzel preached in April, Luther published his theses at the end of October. Why did it take so long before Luther came out with his condemnation of Tetzel? One reason was that by his own account, Luther knew nothing about indulgences. And being an academic he felt the need to thoroughly research the subject before he went out in public challenging the church hierarchy that had obviously employed Tetzel.

Then there was possibly a sense of frustration, as all his preaching in Wittenberg did not stop his flock from travelling to Jüterbog or Zerbst to obtain these miraculous pieces of paper. And finally there was the delicate matter of his sponsor, the Elector Frederick the Wise who bankrolled the university with moneys received through the indulgences associated with his astounding collection of relics.

When he finally published his theses, here is how he described the fallout, quote:

Within barely a fortnight they had run through the whole of Germany, for all the world was complaining about the indulgence, and especially about Tetzel’s articles. And because all the bishops and doctors kept silent, and nobody wanted to bell the cat […], Luther was praised as a doctor, since at last someone had come who would take the matter in hand. I did not care for the fame, for (as I said) I did not know myself what the indulgence was, and this tune was going to be pitched way beyond my range.” End quote.

Johann Tetzel

When Tetzel heard the high pitch of Luther’s theses and the specific accusations against his sermons, he strenuously denied it all, and particularly the story about absolution for the rape of the Virgin Mary. He became the first to try a rebuttal to Luther’s theses which he published together with a professor from the university of Frankfurt an der Oder. To bolster his credentials he had been hastily elevated to a doctor of theology. But soon thereafter he was dropped by his superiors and locked up in the Dominican friary in Leipzig where he died barely 2 years later.

That was exceedingly convenient as the now dead man was an ideal scapegoat. He was  portrayed as a lone wolf, operating well off the reservation. The official church claimed they had never endorsed any of his practices or claims. That did of course not work. What it resulted in though was a total vilification of Johann Tetzel in the protestant press. He was described as lusty monk, fathering children here and there, grasping money for himself and having skipped jail many times.

These legends buried the historic figure under layers and layers of anecdotes and allegations of dubious credibility. It took until relatively recently for historians to scrape off this soot and get to a more realistic picture.

Johann Tetzel was born around 1465, the son of a waggoner from Pirna in Saxony. He gained a bachelor of arts from the university of Leipzig and in 1489 joined the Dominican order. Like the Franciscans and Augustinians, the Dominicans were friars, meaning their convents were based in the cities and they played an important role in the religious life of the community. So Tetzel, like Luther, became a preacher.

He made a solid career, moving between convents, first to Cologne and then to Glogau in Silesia where he became prior in 1504. And it was around this time that he got involved with the indulgences industry.

In 1505 he made his major career move. The Teutonic knights had obtained the right to offer indulgences as a way to fund their campaign against the Grand Prince of Muscovy who attacked them in Livonia. This indulgence was initially limited to two years and was then extended a further three years until 1510. Tetzel seemed to have done well on the first campaign and was given a  management role in the second one.

By now indulgences had become a veritable industry, due to – drum roll – the invention of the printing press.

The first dated printed work we know of to have left the Gutenberg workshop in Mainz was an indulgence certificate. Having these certificates ready to be signed, rather than having to write them out laboriously for every applicant, allowed the church to issue more of them and at lower prices than ever before.

This larger customer base required more service personnel to take the confession, collect the payment and issue the certificates. We know that the indulgences campaigns that Tetzel was involved with had a permanent staff of 25 or more and would recruit local preachers to run some of the sessions.

The indulgence for the Holy Year of 1500 was extremely successful. It was preached in most of the free imperial cities, and many prominent local preachers like Jakob Wimpheling and Geiler von Kaysersberg could be recruited for this effort.

As for the 1505-1507 and then 1507-1510 indulgence to fund the defence of Livonia against the Russians that Tetzel was involved with, there was a good uptake in the north and east of Germany. But in southern cities like Strassburg it proved difficult to recruit prominent local preachers and proceeds were modest so that Tetzel and his team stayed only for a brief period of time.

By now he had risen to sub-commissioner for the Livonia campaign, which meant he was effectively in charge of the collections in what is today Saxony, Thuringia and Sachsen-Anhalt, though he still reported to a commissioner who closely managed the overall project.

In 1512-13 there was another indulgences campaign in Germany, this time for the rebuilding of Constance cathedral that Tetzel was not involved in.

He got back into the business in 1516 when the pope granted indulgences for the rebuilding of the church of St. Peter. Tetzel joined the papal campaign as sub-commissioner for the bishopric of Meissen, which was a bit of a step down and turned into something of a failure.

The Indulgences for Mainz and Magdeburg

Despite this setback, in December 1516 he finally got his chance to run his own campaign. He now had over 10 years of experience in managing such projects in a fairly senior position. He had a network of people he had worked with over the years and that he recruited into his team. He knew the region where these indulgences were to be preached, namely the archdiocese of Magdeburg, the bishopric of Halberstadt and the margraviate of Brandenburg.

This campaign was a plenary indulgence that the archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg ran with the stated purpose to fund the rebuilding of St. Peter in Rome.

It kicked off in February. Tetzel’s train of 25 support staff and their servants moved from town to town in the North East of Germany. But what became apparent fairly quickly was that there were some serious problems.

For one, the rebuilding of St. Peter was not very popular amongst the burghers and peasants east of the Elbe River. Why should they spend their money on a church they are unlikely to ever see? And why did they destroy old St. Peter in the first place? Was this not just a luxury pet project of a papacy who seemed to be totally debauched from all we hear.

And how much appetite was left for indulgences when campaigns had been run from 1500 to 1503, all through 1505 to 1510 and then again in 1512/13. There were alternatives to gain relief from purgatory, like for example pilgrimages. Of these there were now dozens, if not hundreds of options in the empire alone. And pilgrimage are pleasant spiritual experiences. That is why there are now almost as many protestants and atheists doing the Camino to Santiago de Compostella as there are Catholics. Tetzel’s cash-based option likely struggled to generate a similar feel despite all the pomp and circumstance of his set-up.

Then there was his ultimate boss, Albrecht of Brandenburg, the archbishop. He was concerned about the expenditure for all these people and whether the project would bring in any funds at all.

Moreover, Tetzel’s attempts to open up the wealthy lands of Ducal and Electoral Saxony for his sales had failed, cutting off the wealthy mining towns that had contributed so much in his Livonia campaign.

This was all looking somewhere between bleak and disastrous. The total income stood at just 10-15% of what had been collected from indulgences 30 years earlier. He then saw that the whole organisation below his ultimate boss Albrecht of Brandenburg was falling apart. The other three commissioners who were supposed to preach this indulgence in the other territories had quietly vanished from the scene, as well as the Franciscans who were initially given the overall lead.

We do not know for a fact that Tetzel’s preachings included the claim that “if the coin in the coffer rings the soul from purgatory springs”, and there is no first-hand account that he said buying his indulgences would cover the rape of the virgin. And there had not been any complaints about Tetzel’s preachings during his earlier campaigns.

But then circumstances – we have a product that is not appealing as it stands, a principal who is moaning about the cost and a manager who sees his very first major project going down the drain.

The likelihood that he stayed well within the letter of the law in these circumstance is slim. Selling these indulgences required a bit of added pizzaz. Albrecht’s instructions had already bent the rules to or maybe even beyond breaking point.  For instance they suggested that these indulgences could get your mum and dad out of purgatory for just a few pennies. Tetzel just went on from there to the even more outrageous claims.

But was this overpromoted middle manager really the main cause of the Reformation?

He triggered Luther’s response, but would that have gone around the empire like wildfire if he had been just one manager out of his depth making promises that could not be kept. Almost certainly not. There was another father to the casus.

Archbishop Albrecht von Brandenburg

It is now time to introduce the second alleged villain of the piece, the cardinal archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, bishop of Halberstadt, Prince Elector and Primate of the German church – Albrecht of Brandenburg.

This impressive list of titles was the result of dynastic ambition, pot luck and a roman curia prepared to bend the rules in the interest of politics. What it was not the result of, was merit.

Albrecht of Brandenburg was born in 1490 the second son and youngest child of Margrave Johann Cicero of Brandenburg, which made him 7 years younger than Martin Luther. He was brought up to become a prince, not an archbishop. His older brother, Joachim Nestor, was to inherit the margraviate, but in these uncertain times nobody wanted to bet the continuation of the dynasty on just one son. So Albrecht was kept in reserve, even made co-ruler.

Albrecht was given a modern education. Not a surprise in a family that had a habit of adding names from antiquity to their first names like Achilles, Cicero, Nestor and Hector. Young Albrecht was introduced to the latest ideas of humanism and read a lot of classic Latin. He would later seek the friendship of Erasmus of Rotterdam and other notable intellectuals. But his particular passion was the arts. He placed the largest commission in German art history, a total of 142 panels for 16 altars to be painted by Master Lucas Cranach of Wittenberg, destined for the Collegiate church in Halle, his favourite place of worship.

He was a pious man who took his role as priest and bishop seriously. He did fulfil his duties in performing the liturgies, saying mass and leading religious processions. His collection of relics was second only to the 17,433 pieces of bone that Frederick the Wise had accumulated. Albrecht had a book you can see in the museum of the collegiate church in Aschaffenburg that held a relic for every day of the year before which he worshipped every day. We saw it and several of Cranach’s panels on the History of the Germans Tour.

Nevertheless Albrecht was a prince first and a bishop second. And hence he happily diverted funds to his own ostentatious lifestyle in the Moritzburg in Halle and the castle of Aschaffenburg. Several of the panels Cranach painted for him show the archbishop as a saint. My favourite one is his depiction as St. Martin wearing a coat that he would under no circumstances share with a beggar. Instead he drops a tiny coin into the begging bowl of a naked man. The companion image shows St. Ursula modelled by Albrecht’s mistress. Celibacy was not something he felt applied to him. That being said, he was fairly monogamous. We know only of two mistresses in his life, and he stayed with them until they died.

His career in the church started comparatively late.

He had to wait until his brother Joachim Nestor had fathered a first son in 1505. At that point it became less critical to keep Albrecht in reserve as a potential Margrave. He could be sent out to foster the power of the family by capturing important positions in the church like their cousin, also called Albrecht, who was on his way to become Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia.

Our Albrecht was meant for even higher office. Though not yet consecrated as a priest he joined the cathedral chapter of Mainz. The plan was to elevate him to this immensely prestigious and still fairly wealthy see at some point in the future. It came with a vote in the imperial election, which everyone knew would occur sooner or later given that Maximilian I could not live forever. And when Joachim Nestor had a second son in 1513, Albrecht was off the list of succession and good to go to take higher orders.

The plan to become archbishop of Mainz was however derailed when the archbishop of Magdeburg unexpectedly succumbed to the modern but not very canonical disease of syphilis.

Magdeburg was not very wealthy. You may remember from way back in episode 7 or 8 that Otto the Great had to scramble around to find suitable bishoprics to put underneath the archbishopric he so desired. But Magdeburg and the bishopric of Halberstadt that came with it were neighbouring the margraviate of Brandenburg and had been held by the rivals of the Hohenzollern, the dukes of Saxony. So Albrecht was redeployed to Magdeburg and in 1513 became first a priest and then an archbishop. The fact that he was 23 and hence far too young and that he had never completed his studies of theology had to be overcome with a dispensation from Rome.

And then, in 1514, the archbishop of Mainz died after all, allegedly as a consequence of a brawl with his butler. Once again, Albrecht turned out to be the most qualified candidate for the post. Eased by a payment of 42,000 gulden from the margraviate of Brandenburg, the cathedral chapter duly voted the young prince into his second archbishopric. Holding multiple bishoprics was of course uncanonical, and holding two archbishoprics doubly so. So, once again, a papal permission was needed to set aside the laws of the church.

The Deal with the Papacy

Such dispensations were exceedingly expensive. In particular this one. The only case of two archbishoprics in the same hand I can think of was Balduin of Trier, the brother of emperor Henry VII.

The fees for these dispensations  came on top of the servitia and annates, the obligation of bishops, abbots and priests to transfer the equivalent of their first year income to Rome.

The final bill for all these dispensations and annates came to 30,000 ducats, money Albrecht did not have readily available. And what was worse, he did not have a ready way to raise funds of that magnitude. Normally these payments to Rome were collected by taxing the local clergy. But Albrecht had explicitly promised the cathedral chapter of Mainz that he would not raise such taxes.

So he went to the bank of Jakob Fugger who maintained an office in Rome. Fugger was willing to fund Albrecht’s career to the tune of 21,000 ducats. Which meant he was still some 9,000 ducats short.

At this point the pope suggested a deal. Why didn’t Albrecht take the lead in the ongoing indulgences campaign to fund the rebuilding of St. Peter. They would share the proceeds fifty-fifty and Albrecht’s share would go against the 9,000 ducats he still owed and the remainder could go to the Fuggers.

Albrecht’s negotiators rejected that offer and advised their master not to budge on this one. They actually wrote to him saying “that this could result in pushback and maybe even worse things”[4]. And oh boy were they so very right..

But pope Leo X pulled out the big guns and told Albrecht that unless he took the lead in the Indulgences, he would have to give up one of the three bishoprics he was applying for.

Question, why did the papacy insist on Albrecht taking a lead in the indulgences campaign? The story is usually told the other way around, that Albrecht and the Fuggers asked the pope to allow them to collect the indulgences.

The answer is almost the same as what we saw on the ground with Tetzel. Rebuilding St. Peter was extremely unpopular. None of the punters saw the point of letting Bramante realize his overblown scheme in a city far, far away.

Moreover, the papal legate charged with organizing the campaign in the empire had run into serious obstacles. Practically all the major princes refused the indulgence sellers access. One reason was that the economics were poor. Indulgences going to the papacy were shared 50/50 between the local ruler and the pope. Whilst in local indulgences, like the one for Constance cathedral, the pope only got 33%. Another was that these grand indulgences weren’t the only way to reduce time in purgatory. As we mentioned before, Pilgrimages were another and by 1515 there were literally hundreds of pilgrimage places in the empire, and in most of them the princes had a financial interest. For instance Frederick the Wise offered indulgences to the pilgrims coming to see his impressive collection of relics. He was not keen on competition from a papal indulgence.

Charles of Burgundy, the future Charles V, allowed the indulgences in his lands but only if 70% of the proceeds went towards the rebuilding of dykes following a recent flood, and only 30% went to Rome.

Basically the papal legate was stuck, being limited to just the smaller free cities, the bishoprics and a few sympathetic principalities. And even there he was often pushed out. That is where Tetzel failed in Meissen.

Albrecht of Brandenburg’s predicament was the Pope’s great opportunity. If they could make a German prince the senior commissioner for this indulgence, that -they hoped- would change the game. He would bring in his brother, the margrave of Brandenburg, which – together with Mainz, Magdeburg and Halberstadt would provide access -at least formally – to half the empire.

There was nothing Albrecht could do, so he reluctantly signed on the dotted line. He never really bought into the project other than complaining about the cost and worrying about the payback. As for the Fuggers, contrary to what is normally reported, they did not hire Tetzel or got involved in the day to day management of the campaign. They did have a role in the collection of the funds and transfer to the interested parties. Knowing them, they had not taken the commercial risk of the indulgences. Which means that the ultimate risk and loss of this failed campaign stayed with the pope, not Albrecht or the Fuggers.

As it happened, when the imperial election following the death of Maximilian I was coming around, the interested parties, including the pope, courted Albrecht’s vote which made him a cardinal and presumably sorted out his finances – at least temporarily.

All that explains why, when Luther’s 95 theses blew up, Albrecht’s efforts to contain the issue were somewhat half-hearted. When he sent Luther’s letter and his theses to Rome, it was not just to initiate legal proceedings against the Augustinian monk, but also as a way of saying “I told you so – that could never work”.

Source: winterhager_verkuendigung.pdf

The Gravamina of the German Nation

There we are. We have a panicked indulgence salesman who made outrageous claims and an archbishop who was pushed into taking the lead on a campaign that was always destined to fail. That is of course a blunder, not a heinous plot to extract the financial lifeblood from the country.

But this is not the way it appeared to the people and their princes. What they saw was a man selling heaven so that cash could flow to a prestige project in Rome, and a 23-year old who had accumulated a ridiculous number of bishoprics plus the most senior role amongst the prince electors through a seedy deal with the Fuggers and a corrupt pope. And that slotted almost perfectly into what Germans thought about the papacy in 1517. 

To those of you who have listened to the previous 240 episodes it will not come as a surprise that the Holy Roman Empire in the Late Middle Ages had a distinctly sceptical stance towards the Holy Father.

From the day emperor Henry IV knelt in the snow outside the castle of Canossa in 1077 and the passing of the Golden Bull in 1356, pope and emperor had been at loggerheads. This had been a fight over who was in command of Christendom, a fight that both sides managed to lose, first the emperors with the demise of the House of Hohenstaufen and then the papacy when they withdrew to Avignon.

What is remarkable about this conflict is that the church in the empire had often been loyal to the emperor, even when the emperor had been excommunicated. Specifically Ludwig the Bavarian, who remained excommunicated throughout most of his reign could rely on his bishops and abbots even more than on his secular vassals. In other words, there was no unified block of the church versus the emperor, it had become a struggle between Rome and the empire.

When the Kurverein zu Rhens and the Golden Bull effectively removed the pope from the decision making process in the empire, relations between pope and emperor improved. But that did not change the stance of the German church.

The reason for this lay in the church councils of Constance and Basel. If you remember episode 171, the council of Constance had declared that its decisions ranked above those of the pope and that from now on a council should take place every 10 years to continue the work of the church reform.

The council had given the senior prelates, specifically those outside the Roman Curia a lot of power and influence. After all they had removed three popes and elected a new one and ended the schism. Hence when pope Martin V and his successors worked tirelessly to suppress future councils, the bishops in the empire were as the English would say, “a bit miffed”.

Things did not improve when first England and then France signed Concordats with the papacy that gave their churches a huge degree of autonomy. This autonomy resulted in the French and English church being predominantly staffed by locals, chosen by locals. The monarch had control of the resources of the church and most importantly, the local elites could secure a good living for their second sons and unmarried daughters by placing them into well remunerated ecclesiastical jobs.

The situation in the empire was materially different. There was a concordat, that of Vienna signed by emperor Friedrich III (episode 209). This agreement placed the church in the Habsburg lands under the emperor’s control, but the rest of the empire – they were on their own. Some imperial princes, like the dukes of Bavaria got their own deal with the pope, but the bishops, abbots and smaller principalities found themselves well and truly under the bus.

Throughout the 15^th and 16^th century, the papacy kept interfering with local appointments. One of the most consequential of these moves was the replacement of Diether von Isenburg as archbishop of Mainz by pope Pius II in 1461. Diether had refused to pay Rome the aforementioned  Annates or Servitia and demanded a new church council. So the pope deposed Diether and installed Adolf von Nassau as archbishop. That in turn triggered the Mainzer Stiftsfehde that involved all major principalities of Southern Germany in a civil war. (see episodes 186, 189, 191 and 192)

At the same time we saw the emergence of a political class of bureaucrats and lawyers in the empire. These people exchanged and distributed ideas and opinions using the recently established postal service and of course the printing press.  What preoccupied them was that the empire continued to fall behind the powerful monarchies of France, England and now also Spain. They demanded reforms, which meant not just reforms of imperial processes and institutions, but also changes to the ecclesiastical set-up.

The Garvamina of the German Nation

The Complaints of the German Nation, or Gravamina began with a letter our old friend of the podcast, Martin Mair wrote to his erstwhile friend and colleague, Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini. Piccolomini had just been made a cardinal and was now focused on a career that would catapult him in due course onto the see of St. Peter. Mair may have hoped to have a chance with him given Piccolomini had served at the court of emperor Friedrich III and was by far the most knowledgeable member of the Curia when it came to German affairs.

Martin Mair, at that time working for the archbishop of Mainz wrote, quote: “The Archbishop, my master, receives daily accusations and complaints against the Roman Pontiff, [Calixt III], […]; who despises the German Nation and seems bent on sapping it of its strength and substance. […]: elections of prelates are set aside. Benefices and incomes of all kinds are reserved to cardinals and protonotaries – you yourself are holder of reservations of benefices in three German provinces. Expectancies are granted in unlimited numbers. Annates [..] are collected without thought of respite, and everyone knows how much more is squeezed out of us than we owe. Clerical positions are given not to those best qualified to hold them but to the highest bidders. New indulgences are approved day after day for one purpose only; their profits to Rome. Turkish tithes are levied without so much as a bye-your-leave to our own prelates. Law suits that should plainly be heard in our own courts are summarily transferred to Rome. A thousand subtle tricks are invented to cheat us “Barbarians” out of our money”. End quote.

Piccolomini answered with a treatise entitled Germania, which comprised two parts. One, that gets quoted most often, including by your humble podcaster, was a eulogy to the beauty and wealth of the German cities, its industrious inhabitants and wise princes. Basically that the Germans were not barbarians but on par with the Italians.

The other part, rarely mentioned, said that none of these complaints held water. That Rome was entitled to all these incomes, that they sent competent priests to take the benefices, that they made allowances for hardships, rarely overcharged and that indulgences and tithes were justified by wars against the Turks or other good works.

This debate over whether the Roman pontiff was ripping off the Germans has been going on ever since. The traditional view was that the Popes had enormous need for cash following the end of the schism. The city of Rome lay in ruins, the papal states had been taken over by local tyrants, the Bentivoglio in Bologna, the Montefeltro in Urbino, the  Malatesta in Rimini and so forth. Rebuilding the Holy City and reconquering the Papal States cost vast amounts of money. And that money had to come from Germany because the other monarchies, namely France and England had shut the pope out through their concordats, whilst the empire was wide open. And to my shame I have to say that I shared this view, even talked about it on this very show.

But as it happens, the historian Götz Tewes[5] did the hard graft and went through the papal accounts during the papacies of Calixt III, Innocent VIII and Leo X and concluded that after all, the French paid more than the Germans, that in fact the bishoprics of the Empire barely made it to #4 on the payor list.

Nevertheless Martin Mair’s complaints were repeated and embellished over the subsequent 7 decades. In 1515, so just two years before the 95 theses, Jakob Wimpheling, a humanist scholar from Alsace, published a text entitled “ Responses and Objections to Aeneas Silvius”, where he took up Mair’s complaints once again and added more detail and case files to each of them. In the following years these complaints would grow from 10 issues in Mair’s text to a set of 100 the princes presented to the imperial diet of 1521.

It seems that Martin Mair, his successors amongst the drivers of imperial reforms, and German historians were never ones for letting facts get in the way of a good story. And they needed one.

The imperial elites of the 16^th century and the German opinion formers in the 19^th century struggled with one fundamental question. Who was responsible for the political weakness of the Holy Roman Empire in a time when the nations of Spain, France and England set out to conquer the world. And if you go through the history we have now covered on this podcast, there are ultimately three plus one reasons – the self-interest of the princes, the incompetence of the emperors and the brutal clash with the papacy plus – of course – randomness, pot luck, fate or whatever you call the fact that anything can happen.

Of these, blaming it all on the papacy was by far the most convenient one, in particular for men like Mair and Wimpheling who were employed by imperial princes and the emperor. And given it took us 500 years to find out that the Germans had not been ripped off by the Holy Father, or at least not ripped off any more than others, one cannot blame them quite as hard as other peddlers of scapegoats.

But still, if we put it all together, Tetzel’s being out of his depth, Albrecht of Brandenburg being manhandled into fronting a doomed campaign and the imperial leadership opting for the most convenient institution to blame, it is clear that the spark that lit the reformation was not struck by the ambitions of an evil cabal colliding with the righteous grievances of the German Nation. It was – as my father in law tends to say – more cockup than conspiracy.

Luther may have seen it the same way. When Tetzel was dropped by the papacy and 2 years later wasted away from mental stress, Luther wrote him a letter. He told him to take heart and reminded him that “die Sach sey von seynet wegen nich angefangen, sondern hab das Kind vil ein andern vatter.”, which translates as “the whole matter had not been caused by him, but had quite another father.

And this is where we have to end for today. Next time we will look into how this affair gained traction well beyond a dispute between an Augustinian and a Dominican friar.

And in the meantime, if you do want to achieve eternal recognition in the form of having your name read out on this podcast, go to historyofthegermans.com/support and “as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the podcaster to the microphone springs”.

Our big thanks go to:  Christian C. , Nich P. , Kari B. , Tilmann B. , Rich K. , Jasper van den B. , Erik K. , Jakub S. , Michal C. and Joshua B.

[1] The Papal Bull that Triggered the Reformation: Sacrosanctis (1515) | PDF

[2] The Reformation; a narrative history related by contemporary observers and participants : Hillerbrand, Hans Joachim, edt : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

[3] projectwittenberg.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/nine5-albrecht.txt

[4] Die Fugger in Rom. 1495-1523 : Schulte, Aloys, 1857- [from old catalog] : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

[5] Götz-Rüdiger Tewes: Deutsches Geld und römische Kurie

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