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JOHANN TETZEL (c. 1460–1519)

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Originally appearing in Volume V26, Page 672 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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JOHANN

TETZEL (c. 1460–1519)  , preacher and salesman of papal indulgences, the son of Hans Tetzel, a goldsmith of
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Leipzig, was born there about 1460 . He matriculated at the university in 1482, graduated B.A. in 1487, and in 1489 entered the Dominican convent at Leipzig . He early discovered his vocation as a preacher of indulgences; he combined the elocutionary gifts of a revivalist orator with the shrewdness of an auctioneer . He painted in lurid colours the terrors of purgatory, while he dwelt on the cheapness of the indulgence which would
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purchase remission and his prices were lowered as each sale approached its end . He began in 1502 in the service of the Cardinal-legate Raymond Peraudi; and in the next few years he visited Freiberg (where he extracted 2000 gulden in two days),
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Dresden,
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Pirna, Leipzig,
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Zwickau and
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Gorlitz . Later on he was at Nuremberg,
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Ulm and
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Innsbruck, where he is said to have been condemned to imprisonment for adultery, but released at the intercession of the elector of Saxony . Thischarge is denied by his apologists; and though his methods were attacked by good Catholics like Johann Hass, he was elected prior of the
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Dominicans in
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Glogau in 1505 . Fresh scope was given to his activity in 1517 by archbishop Albrecht of Mainz . Albrecht had been elected at the age of twenty-four to a see already impoverished by frequent successions and payments of annates to Rome . He had agreed with Pope Leo X. to pay his first-fruits in
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cash, on condition that he were allowed to recoup himself by the sale of indulgences .
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Half the proceeds in his province were to go to him, half to Leo X. for
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building the
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basilica of St Peter's at Rome . Tetzel was selected as the most efficient salesman; he was appointed general sub-
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commissioner for indulgences, and was accompanied by a clerk of the Fuggers from whom Albrecht had borrowed the
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money to pay his first-fruits .

Tetzel's efforts irretrievably damaged the complicated and abstruse

Catholic
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doctrine on the subject of indulgences; as soon as the coin clinks in the chest, he cried, the soul is freed from purgatory . In
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June he was at
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Magdeburg, Halle and
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Naumburg; the elector of Saxony excluded him from his dominions, but Albrecht's
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brother, the elector Joachim of
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Brandenburg, encouraged him at Berlin in the hope of sharing the spoils, and by the connivance of Duke George of Saxony he was permitted to pursue his operations within a few miles of the electoral territory at
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Wittenberg . Luther was thus roused to publish his momentous ninety-five theses on the subject of indulgences on
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October 31, 1517 (see LUTHER) . Even Albrecht was shamed by Luther's attack, but he could not afford to relinquish his profits already pledged for the re-payment of his debts; and Tetzel was encouraged to defend himself and indulgences . Through the influence of Conrad Wimpina, rector of Frankfurt, Tetzel was created D.D. of that university, and with Wimpina's assistance he drew up, in
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January 1518, a
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hundred and six theses in answer to Luther's . But the storm overwhelmed him: sober Catholics felt that his vulgar extravagances had prejudiced Catholic doctrine, and Miltitz, who was sent from Rome to
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deal with the situation, administered to him a severe castigation . He hid himself in the Dominican convent at Leipzig in fear of popular violence, and died there on the 4th of
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July 1519, just as Luther was beginning his famous disputation with Eck . Many lives of Tetzel have been published on the
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Protestant and on the Catholic side, the most
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recent being Korner's (1880), K . W . Hermann's (2nd ed . 1883), and N . Paulus' (1899) .

See also Allgemeine deutsche Biographie; Gess's Akten and Briefe zur Kirchenpolitik

Herzog Georgs von Sachsen, vol. i . (1905), Introd. pp . 76-8, &c.; H . Barge's Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt (2 vols . 1905) J . Janssen's Hist. of the German
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People, and An -amine Kritiker; M . Creighton's Hist. of the Papacy, vol. vi.; and H . C . Lea's Hist. of Auricular Confession and Indulgences (3 vols., 1896) . All the histories of the Reformation in Germany and all the lives of Luther deal at greater or shorter length with Tetzel ; in the
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index to vol. ii. of the Cambridge Mod .
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History he is confused with a later Tetzel of Nuremberg . (A .

F .

End of Article: JOHANN TETZEL (c. 1460–1519)
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