Peter's at Rome.
This purpose did not differ in character from others for which
indulgences had previously been granted, and there is nothing to show
that any disregard of the requisite conditions was authorized by the
pope; but there is reason to believe that some of the agents for the
disposal of these indulgences went much beyond the intention of the
decree. This was especially the case in the instance of a Dominican
monk named Tetzel, who is charged with openly asserting what few or no
other Catholics appear to have ever claimed, that the indulgences not
only released the purchasers from the necessity of penance, but absolved
them from all the consequences of sin in this world or the next.
We shall not go into the details of the venalities charged against
Tetzel, whose field of labor was in Saxony, but they seem to have been
sufficient to cause a strong feeling of dissatisfaction, which at length
found a voice in Martin Luther, who preached vigorously against Tetzel
and his methods and wrote to the princes and bishops begging them to
refuse this irreligious dealer in indulgences a passage through their
dominions.
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