The traffic in indulgences for the building of St. Peter's was delegated by commission from the Pope, over a large part of Germany, to Albert, Archbishop of Mayence and Magdeburg. We shall meet with this great prince of the Church, as now in connection with the origin of the Reformation, so during its subsequent course. Albert, the brother of the Elector of Brandenburg, and cousin of the Grand-Master of the Teutonic Order in Prussia, stood in 1517, though only twenty-seven years old, already at the head of those two great ecclesiastical provinces of Germany; Wittenberg also belonged to his Magdeburg diocese. Raised to such an eminence and so rapidly by good fortune, he was filled with ambitious thoughts. He troubled himself little about theology. He loved to shine as the friend of the new Humanistic learning, especially of an Erasmus, and as patron of the fine arts, particularly of architecture, and to keep a court the splendour of which might correspond with his own dignity and love of art. For this his means were inadequate, especially as, on entering upon his Archbishopric of Mayence, he had had to pay, as was customary, a heavy sum to the Pope for the _pallium_ given for the occasion. For this he had been forced to borrow thirty thousand gulden from the house of Fugger at Augsburg, and he found his aspirations incessantly crippled by want of money and by debts. He succeeded at last in striking a bargain with the Pope, by which he was allowed to keep half of the profits arising from the sale of indulgences, in order to repay the Fuggers their loan. Behind the preacher of indulgences, who announced God's mercy to the paying believers, stood the agents of that commercial house, who collected their share for their principals. The Dominican monk, John Tetzel, a profligate man, whom the Archbishop had appointed his sub-commissioner, drove the largest trade in this business with an audacity and a power of popular declamation well suited to his work.
[Illustration: Fig. 10.--The Archbishop Albert. (From Dürer's engraving.)]
Contemporaries have described the lofty and well-ordered pomp with which such a commissioner entered on the performance of his exalted duties. Priests, monks, and magistrates, schoolmasters and scholars, men, women, and children, went forth in procession to meet him, with songs and ringing of bells, with flags and torches. They entered the church together amidst the pealing of the organ. In the middle of the church, before the altar, was erected a large red cross, hung with a silken banner which bore the Papal arms. Before the cross was placed a large iron chest to receive the money; specimens of these chests are still shown in many places. Daily, by sermons, hymns, processions round the cross, and other means of attraction, the people were invited and urged to embrace this incomparable offer of salvation. It was arranged that auricular confession should be taken wholesale. The main object was the payment, in return for which the 'contrite' sinners received a letter of indulgence from the commissioner, who, with a significant reference to the absolute power granted to himself, promised them complete absolution and the good opinion of their fellow-men.