Historical-Chronological Account

The genesis of this small work extends over just a few months of the earliest days of the Reformation, as the following chronology demonstrates.^{Citation: 5Scott Hendrix’s Luther and the Papacy: Stages in a Reformation Conflict (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981) is the definitive study of Luther’s developing attitude toward Rome. Pages 34–38 cover specifically Luther’s interaction with Tetzel from 1517 to 1519, but the whole of chs. 2 and 3 chronicles the events from October 1517 to December 1518 and so is germane to Tetzel’s interaction with Luther.}

March 31, 1515 ¶ Pope Leo X issues a Bull granting plenary indulgences for those contributing to the rebuilding of the new basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome. Prince-Elector Albrecht of Brandenburg, archbishop of Magdeburg, Mainz, and Halberstadt is granted authority to promote it throughout his dioceses. By early 1517 this indulgence is being energetically preached by the Dominicans of Albrecht’s dioceses, under the leadership of Johann Tetzel, the Dominicans’ inquisitor of heretics, and the subcommissioner for the promotion of the St. Peter’s indulgence.

October 31, 1517 ¶ Having become increasingly alarmed at the extravagant and spiritually destructive claims offered by the indulgence preachers to the Christians of Wittenberg’s neighboring electorate, Martin Luther presents his Ninety-Five Theses, couched in standard academic Latin. He does this as invitation to his intellectual peers for an academic exchange of ideas on the subject of indulgences and the abuses associated with them.

January 20, 1518 ¶ At their regional chapter meeting in Frankfurt an der Oder, three hundred Dominicans gather to hold a disputation in Latin concerning Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses. Subcommissioner Tetzel participates by presenting the 106 Frankfurt Theses to refute the Augustinian Luther’s theses.^{Citation: 6See note 9 below.} In keeping with accepted disputation practice of the time, the actual author was not Tetzel but a fellow Dominican, Konrad Wimpina, who had founded and continued to serve as rector for the University at Frankfurt. Yet the 106 Frankfurt Theses were commonly attributed to Tetzel.

January–March, 1518 ¶ In response to Tezel’s presentation at Frankfurt an der Oder, Luther works to further clarify his understanding of indulgences and penance and so produces his Resolutiones (in Latin), which was not published until early summer 1518.^{Citation: 7Resolutiones disputationum de Indulge[n]tiarum virtute (Wittenberg: Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, 1518). WA 1:523.} He is also increasingly aware of a popular campaign being waged against him by Dominican preachers, who attack him from various pulpits as a heretic and one who deviates from established Church practice.^{Citation: 8Cf. Jared Wicks, Luther’s Reform: Studies on Conversion and the Church, (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1992), p. 151. Wicks is one of the most prolific and important Roman Catholic scholars of Luther and of the Roman Catholic responses to him. Part II of this volume includes several chapters on the earliest stages of the Reformation from both Luther’s and Rome’s side. Chapter 7, “Roman Reactions to Luther: the First Year, 1518,” pp. 149–188, discusses the Luther-Tetzel exchange.} Not long after the Frankfurt disputation, a bookseller brings numerous printed copies of Tetzel’s 106 Frankfurter Theses to sell in Wittenberg. University students, by then enthusiastic supporters of Luther, snatch the copies from the bookseller and burn them in the town square.^{Citation: 9Wicks, Luther’s Reform, p.151; Peter Fabisch and Erwin Iserloh, (eds.) Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri, (1517–1521) 1. Teil: Das Gutachten des Prierias und weitere Schriften gegen Luthers Ablassthesen (1517–1518) (Corpus Catholicorum: Werke katholischer Schriftsteller im Zeitalter der Glaubenspaltung, 41; Münster Westfalen: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1988), p. 314. (Cited hereafter as Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri.)
        At least one copy of the 106 Frankfurt Theses must have survived the flames for Luther to have read it, since he responds to specific points in his Sermon vom Ablass und Gnade. Paulus discovered and published (1899) the sole extant copy, now in the Bavarian Staatsbibliothek. The 106 Frankfurt Theses are reprinted in Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri (Text 10), pp. 321–337.}

Lent 1518 ¶ Responding to these academic and popular campaigns against him by unleashing the power of the language of ordinary German people, Luther publishes his Eyn Sermon vom Ablass und Gnade (A Sermon on Indulgence and Grace).^{Citation: 10See note 1 above.} The small book presents the ideas of his Ninety-Five Theses for popular consumption and in nonacademic language and is thus a response to the popular campaign against him. It refutes specific points of Tetzel’s criticism, his academic response beginning with an attack on the scholastic tripartite division of penance as scripturally unfounded and concluding with a direct reproach of Tetzel’s insinuations that Luther was a heretic.

March or April 1518 ¶ Tetzel responds almost immediately to the Sermon. Realizing that he must fight fire with fire (i.e., German with German), he publishes his Vorlegung … wider einen vermessenen Sermon von zwanzig irrigen Artikeln päpstlichen Ablass und Gnade belangend.^{Citation: 11See note 2 above.} The debate continues, and does so in German.

End of April/Beginning of May 1518 ¶ Although Luther brands Tetzel’s Vorlegung “an unparalled example of ignorance,”^{Citation: 12Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri, p. 340.} it nonetheless spurs him on to a second printed response: Eine Freiheit des Sermons päpstlichen Ablass und Gnade belangend.^{Citation: 13Eyn Freyheyt desz Sermons Bebstlichen ablasz vnd gnad belangend … wider die Vorlegung, ßo tzur schmach seyn, vnd desselben Sermon ertichtett (Wittenberg: Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, 1518). WA 1:380–381.} As Tetzel announces in the twentieth and concluding section of his rebuttal, he plans a more comprehensive response to Luther’s ideas than is possible in the Vorlegung. This he delivers in Latin as 50 Theses, this time without Wimpina’s assistance.^{Citation: 14Tetzel’s 50 Theses reprinted in Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri (Text 12), pp. 369–375.}

End of the Debate ¶ Though Luther takes some notice of Tetzel’s 50 Theses in his Eine Freiheit des Sermons,^{Citation: 15Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri, p. 364.} he essentially goes his own way, as he will from thenceforth. Tetzel is never again heard from in print, and one year later, on July 4, 1519, he is dead.