cess to the whole case of S. Augustine and Apiarius (pp. 69-80).

In our next number we hope at length to close our controversy with Dr. Pusey. Firstly, we will apply the principles just laid down to those two events, which all admit to be more perplexing for a Catholic than any other, and on which Dr. Pusey lays his principal stress; viz. the resistance of SS. Cyprian and Augustine to the Popes of their day. We shall next proceed to say what is necessary on Dr. Pusey's alleged instances of Papal fallibility. Most of these, indeed, are mere reproductions of what has been again and again both urged and refuted in controversy; and on none of these shall we speak, beyond a brief treatment of those chief representative instances, S. Liberius and Honorius. But there is a certain number of objections (pp. 288-316) which Dr. Pusey has specially addressed to ourselves. We had pointed out, and Dr. Pusey admits, that Pius IX. (like preceding Popes) claims infallibility for very many decisions ex cathedrâ, which are not definitions of faith and in our view, as a matter of course, whatever power a Pope claims he certainly possesses. It is against this particular class of decisions, that Dr. Pusey brings together that assemblage of objections to which we are here referring; and we will not fail in our next number carefully to consider this question. We were quite amazed indeed, when first we read the facts alleged against us by Dr. Pusey, at their singular weakness and irrelevance. We will then conclude by adding a few final remarks, on what we must plainly call the narrow and unworthy controversial spirit, which animates and pervades the whole of Dr. Pusey's volume.

ART. II.-JOHN TETZEL.

Tetzel und Luther, oder Lebensgeschichte und Rechtfertigung des Ablasspredi gers und Inquisitors, Dr. Johann Tetzel, aus dem Predigerorden. Von VALENTIN GRÖNE, Doctor der Theologie. Soest und Olpe. Verlag der Nasse'schen Buchhandlung. 1853 (pp. 237).

Fall Luther's contemporary opponents none experienced so much of his foul-mouthed vituperation as the Dominican preacher of indulgences, John Tetzel-a vituperation which Protestant writers, down to the present day, have not ceased, with unmitigated virulence, to heap upon his memory.

Nor have Catholic writers done much to defend Tetzel's calumniated reputation. On the contrary, they have in general allowed themselves to be deluded by Protestant prejudice, and so to have abstained from referring, in his behalf, to original sources of information. This unworthy course they have pursued as though they viewed Tetzel in the light of a personage not worth quarrelling about, whom, without detriment to the Church, they might safely abandon to the enemy, nay, whom it might perhaps be as well thus to abandon. They were fully aware that it was not for preaching Pope Leo's Indulgence that Luther really attacked Tetzel. The Indulgence was but the pretext seized by Luther for openly broaching the heretical opinions which, ever since the year 1515, he had secretly formed. Neither did Luther owe his success to the alleged abuses of the Papal Indulgence. He owed his success to the wide spread moral corruption of his times. Had Leo X. proclaimed no Indulgence at all, Luther's calamitous Reformation could hardly have been prevented.

Three Protestant biographies of John Tetzel have been written in Germany. The earliest, written by Godfried Hecht in Latin, appeared in 1707. About the same time a Life of Tetzel in German was published by Jacob Vogel. The third, a compilation of both, is by Friedrich Hoffmann, and appeared at Leipsic in 1844. They are all three, more or less, just such ex parte productions as might be expected, full of obloquy founded on garbled quotations and falsified facts. The most virulent is Hoffmann's book, the least so Hecht's. In copiousness of original research Vogel far surpasses Hecht and HoffAs a counterpoise to these biographies the Catholic party produced nothing till the year 1817. An anonymous work then appeared at Frankfort on the Main, entitled: Ver

mann.

traute Briefe zweier Katholiken über den Ablass-Streit Dr. Martin Luthers wider Dr. Johann Tetzel. This work is supposed to have been written by a Jesuit, and, although it contains many strong points in vindication of Tetzel's injured character, it would not seem to have had this object so much in view as the defence of the doctrine of Indulgences against the attacks made on it by reason of the year 1817 being the tercentenary year of the Reformation, and celebrated as such throughout Protestant Germany. What Audin in his Life of Luther says

in favour of Tetzel proceeds more from feeling than historical research, and is consequently of inferior importance. Under these circumstances it is gratifying to meet with such a book in defence of Tetzel as Dr. Valentine Gröne has produced, in which, while he exhibits the vilified Dominican as an able, pious, and devoted champion of the Holy See, in a manner that establishes his title in future to that character on a solid basis, he also contributes to the history of Luther and the Reformation a most interesting fund of knowledge and reflection.

The true date of Tetzel's birth appears to be unknown. It is conjectured to have fallen a little later than the middle of the fifteenth century. He was a native of Leipsic, where his father was a citizen and goldsmith. Dr. Gröne has much to say about the etymology of his family name. But this we may pass over as superfluous. Of Tetzel's boyhood and youth nothing is recorded until the year 1482. It was the year of his matriculation as a student of the Leipsic University. He is now said to have shown superior abilities and great application. For the art of rhetoric he soon evinced a strong predilection. Not content with attending the lectures of Conrad Kimpina on the theory of declamation, he sought to gain a practical knowledge of it by assiduously frequenting the sermons of the Dominicans. This led to his forming an attachment to the order of which, in 1490, he became a member. Two years before he had received his Bachelor's degree, being the sixth on a list of fifty candidates.

In the seclusion of the Dominican convent of St. Paul's at Leipsic, Tetzel renounced the study of humanities in order to devote himself all the more zealously to the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.

This course he adopted as the surest means of qualifying himself to become a preaching friar in the true spirit of St. Dominic. "The goldsmith's son," says Jacob Vogel, "possessed every requisite to form a public speaker, a clear understanding, a good memory, an eloquent tongue, an animated delivery, a manly and sonorous voice, the charm of which was enhanced by a tall and slender figure."

His first essays as a preacher were confined to the Church of his convent. Their effect was such that his prior, Martin Adam, soon gave him permission to preach beyond the convent walls, at the different places belonging to its jurisdiction. In Tetzel's day it was still customary not to confer Holy Orders until, according to ancient canonical rule, the candidate had reached the age of thirty years. This age Tetzel attained before the close of the century. He was then ordained priest by Philo von Trotha, Bishop of Merseburg. About the same time Pope Alexander VI. proclaimed the Great Jubilee. It was the eighth proclamation since the first by Boniface VIII. Tetzel received from his superiors the appointment to preach the Jubilee Indulgence. He preached it at Leipsic, Zwickau, Nüremberg, Magdeburg, Görlitz, Halle, and other towns. So well did he perform his duty, that he established his fame as one of the most powerful popular preachers that had ever appeared in Germany. "By reason of his extraordinary eloquence," says Godfried Hecht, "he acquired great authority over the people, and rose higher and higher in renown." Dr. Gröne adverts to various contemporary attestations of Tetzel's surprising success with the masses. It was ascribed to his resounding voice, his richly metaphorical language, and logical clearness.

In 1504 Pope Julius II. proclaimed an Indulgence in favour of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, whom the Russians and Tartars had reduced to great straits. On this occasion Tetzel was again chosen to preach, along with Christian Baumhauer of Nuremberg. He preached the Indulgence in Prussia, Brandenburg, and Silesia. At the same time the Dominican Priory of Glogau becoming vacant, was offered to him. He was little more than thirty years old. "What stronger proof," says Dr. Gröne," could be given him of the high veneration in which he was held by his Order?" But he did not accept the dignity. In the early part of 1507 he returned to Leipsic. On his way he preached for the Teutonic Knights at Dresden. So great was the desire to hear him that the largest church in the city was found too small for the congregation. Duke George of Saxony caused him, in consequence, to preach from a window of his palace. The same zealous Duke, on Tetzel's arrival at Leipsic, received him outside the gates at the head of the clergy, the civic authorities, and dignitaries of the University, and conducted him in solemn procession to S. Paul's Convent. Here Tetzel again retired, a simple friar, to the seclusion of his cell. In 1510 he was employed to preach an Indulgence of a peculiar sort, granted in aid of building a bridge, with a

being themselves short of funds, and finding the people unwilling to contribute the money for nothing, had obtained in 1491 from Innocent VIII. the Indulgence in question, by which all the faithful in Saxony who should give the twentieth part of a gold florin towards the bridge and chapel at Torgau were permitted to eat butter and drink milk in Lent, on the Rogation Days, and the vigils of feasts, for a term of twenty years. In 1510 Pope Julius II. renewed this Indulgence for another twenty years. Such Indulgences were not unfrequent in the Middle Ages. In 1310 Pope John XXII., as Dr. Gröne tells us, granted an Indulgence of forty days towards the erection of the bridge at Dresden. When Julius II. died in 1513, the great aspiration of his successor, Leo X., was to complete the magnificent temple of Christendom, S. Peter's Basilica, begun by Julius in 1506. But Leo found that the wars waged by his high-minded predecessor in defence of S. Peter's patrimony, and the independence of Italy, had exhausted the Papal treasury. Julius having raised the funds for laying the foundations of S. Peter's by means of an Indulgence, Leo resolved to do the like towards the expenses of finishing the work. The Bull which he accordingly issued, granting a Plenary Indulgence to all Christendom, reached Germany in 1515. The commission to preach it was given to the Franciscans. For Saxony and the north of Germany this commission was divided between the Guardian of the Franciscans of Mentz and Albert of Brandenburg, the newly-installed Archbishop of the city. But the Guardian of the Franciscans declining to act, the entire commission passed into the hands of the Archbishop. It was merely as a special favour that he had been included in the commission at all. His Grace, in fact, had been obliged to contract a heavy debt with the Fuggers of Augsburg, the Rothschilds of the day, in order to pay the fees on his pallium, which, for an Archbishop of Mentz, amounted to no less a sum than thirty thousand gold florins. As it was not customary for the Archbishops to pay this sum out of their privy purse, it had to be levied on the faithful of the diocese. But this had been done twice within the last ten years for the immediate predecessors of Albert of Brandenburg, viz., Archbishops Berthold and James Uriel. To raise the sum a third time under such circumstances seemed impossible without assistance. Wherefore, in order to afford relief to his flock, Archbishop Albert had obtained leave from Rome to appropriate a portion of the proceeds of the Papal Indulgence in his province towards the payment of his debt. This fact suffices, in Dr. Gröne's opinion, to clear the Archbishop from the reproach of avarice cast at him by Protestant writers, who have also not