Deep as were the underlying causes of the Reformation its outbreak was precipitated by the simple need to repay a debt. Albert, a young cleric, had been appointed archbishop of Mainz and needed many thousand guldens to pay for the woolen scarf which the pope gave to an archbishop as his badge of office. He arranged with the Fugger banking house of Augsburg to supply the money with the understanding that the pope, who wanted as much as he could get from the transaction for the special purpose of building St. Peter’s at Rome, should sanction a sale of indulgences in Germany. An indulgence was a draft upon the bank of heaven to pay for sin. It was an axiom of the Catholic faith that sin could be forgiven by the priest in the name of God, but the penalties for sin were still to be paid. The sinner must suffer after death unless by penance he or she could appease God and have the punishment settled. It was a teaching of the Church that the death of Jesus had heaped up a treasury of merit upon which the Church was privileged to draw drafts. Such a draft was a pardon that removed the penalty. It cost the sinner money to obtain this pardon and there were unscrupulous clergy who sold them at a high price, even declaring that such a document could be obtained before the sin was committed. The particular sale that was arranged in Germany was progressing favorably in 1517, when John Tetzel, the sales agent in the neighborhood of Wittenberg in Saxony, sold a few indulgences to persons from that town. When they confessed their sins next time to Martin Luther and presented their pardons as acquitting them of penance he was troubled. Luther was a Saxon friar who had been studying the Bible with a growing conviction that Catholic faith and practice were mistaken at many points. Believing that indulgences were a travesty on the forgiving grace of God and a financial curse to his own country of Germany, he wrote out a series of arguments, or theses, on the subject in Latin and posted them on the bulletin board of the university. He hoped that they might arouse discussion of the subject among the learned doctors of the Church. The theses were translated into German, printed, and scattered widely, however. Luther declared that people were justified in the sight of God by personal faith in Christ rather than by any expensive scheme or work of merit. It is little wonder that Luther’s convictions were widely hailed.
Impact: Luther’s contempt for injustice and oppression and his love for God’s Word and the freedom it offered launched the Protestant Reformation. It was the simple sale of indulgences, however, that inspired him to nail his written protest in a public forum.