Johann Tetzel

And he's drunk.

And he's holding up this indulgence sold by Tetzel.

And he says, I can do it, I got it.

Well, that's the enemy that will come to us.

Only the real, the true saints made it right into heaven, and so indulgences were supposed to come from the what was called the treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints, the works that Jesus and the saints had done that went above and beyond what was necessary, and indulgences allowed these works to be applied to you or to a loved one.

Early on, these indulgences were associated with doing good works, going on a pilgrimage, giving to the poor, something like that, but with time, they became more and more transactional so that at Luther's time there was a man named Tetzel who was basically just selling these indulgences for money and using rather crude slogans as he did so and he wasn't allowed to sell these indulgences in Luther's territory because his prince had quite the collection of relics and you got indulgences for seeing those relics and so his prince didn't want to hurt that business but But people from Luther's parish were traveling into the next territory to purchase these indulgences.

And then they were coming back to Luther confident that they had done something good, that their time or the time of their loved ones in purgatory had been diminished to some degree.

And they placed their trust, their confidence in these indulgences.

For example, the eventual rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica with its enormous financial demands would be funded by Rome.

The funny thing is that that would actually be the digging of their grave because it would be Tetzel and others who would go around seeking after money through indulgences in which Luther would stand up and say, this is unbiblical.

So in some sense, the circumstances are created by this environment in which forces the heretics to come forward, demanding money of the people, in which Luther stands up with the sources and says, not on my watch, not today.

And it's remarkable that the Renaissance world, it was the Renaissance world that produced those extraordinary artistic achievements that also created the circumstances in which the indulgent controversy would come.

Someone could go buy one for their family member to get them out of purgatory.

One of the most well-known indulgence preachers was Johann Tetzel, and Luther objected strongly to the idea that spiritual forgiveness could be connected to financial payment.

Luther believed that repentance and salvation could not simply be purchased.

Well, things came to a head in 1517 when Luther wrote what became known as the 95 Theses.

can be pointed back to a significant number of those 95 concerns.

And so in some ways, part of this was a person named Johann Tetzel who was going around selling indulgences and basically was giving people a confidence that they could pay their way out of what their future might be.

So purgatory, they're there, and maybe they can get out of it.

And so the realization became that if that's true, then the gospel's lost.

Albrecht was the Archbishop of Mainz and therefore the most senior prelate in the German lands.

He was also the commissioner of the St. Peter's Indulgence, making him the boss of Johann Tetzel, whose preaching had irritated Luther so much.

We cannot say for a fact what Luther intended to achieve with this letter, but on the face of it, it was a simple complaint.

He was informing Albrecht that Tetzel was going well beyond his authority and was making outrageous claims about the effectiveness of his indulgences.

Luther explicitly said that he assumed Albrecht knew nothing about these successes and would never condone such behavior.

Hence, all he, a miserable little monk, requested was that these abuses will be stopped.

And there's a little bit of ambiguity here, because Luther distributed not only these theses, but also his letter to Albrecht amongst his friends and correspondents.

So if he really just wanted Albrecht to know about Tetzel's misdeeds, why did he send it around and risk it being published more widely? In any event, Albrecht did receive the letter, though he probably did not read it in full or engage with his thesis, because, well, he wasn't a theologian.

Nato nel 1483 dopo Cristo a Eisleben in Sassonia, il monaco agostiniano e docente di teologia biblica Martin Lutero scosse le fondamenta dell'Occidente cristiano il 31 ottobre del 1517 dopo Cristo, quando diffuse le sue 95 tesi destinate a confutare l'efficacia spirituale delle indulgenze papali.

In quegli anni la Chiesa di Roma finanziava l'erezione della monumentale Basilica di San Pietro mediante la vendita indiscriminata di certificati che promettevano la remissione delle pene nel purgatorio per i defunti o per i fedeli paganti, un meccanismo gestito nel territorio germanico dal predicatore Johann Tetzel con metodi spregiudicati.

Lutero, tormentato da un profondo senso di indegnità spirituale e dalla paura del giudizio divino, ravvisò in questa mercificazione una deviazione empia dal messaggio evangelico originale, sollevando una disputa accademica che grazie all'invenzione della stampa a caratteri mobili si propagò fulmineamente in tutta l'Europa centrale nel giro di poche settimane.

I pilastri dottrinali: sola scriptura e sola fide.

It also served the financial interests of Archbishop Albert of Mainz.

Johann Tetzel, a Dominican preacher involved in promoting it, became closely associated with the controversy.

Luther objected to the confidence such preaching encouraged.

He believed Christians were being offered reassurance that neither a document nor a financial transaction could legitimately provide.