So folks here, smarter than me, could explain if Catherine’s calls for reform would have influenced a revenue stream, or maybe correct my understanding that the indulgences issue was tied up in revenues.
Jon
I do not know…I have tried to do some research…looks like alot of it is legend:
If Tetzel was guilty of unwarranted theological views, if his advocacy of indulgences was culpably imprudent, his moral character, the butt of every senseless burlesque and foul libel, has been vindicated to the extent of leaving it untainted by any grave moral dereliction. These would hardly be worth alluding to, did not some of them have Miltitz as the source. But Miltitz has been so discredited that he no longer carries historical weight. “All efforts”, writes Oscar Michael, a Protestant, “to produce Miltitz as a reliable witness will prove futile” (Münch. Allg. Zeit., 18 April, 1901). “The circulated reports of Miltitz about Tetzel deserve in themselves no credence”, writes another Protestant author (ibid., 14 March, 1910).
Tried reading other sites…mostly protestants with very anti-catholic bents…so hard to sift through the facts.
From Jimmy Akin:
ewtn.com/library/answers/how2purg.htm
Second, indulgences were sold. At one time, for a period of perhaps two hundred years, it was possible to give a charitable donation to some cause, such as an orphanage or church building fund, as in which an indulgence could be obtained. This was no different than Protestant ministries offering something in exchange for a charitable contribution or “love offering” to a worthy cause. However, because of the scandal that Protestants produced, over four hundred years ago (shortly after the Council of Trent) the Church forbade charitable giving as a way of obtaining indulgences.
jimmyakin.com/2005/03/the_guy_who_did.html
Leo authorized the monk Johann Tetzel to offer (NOT SELL!) indulgences in exchange for charitable donations to the fund for building St. Peter’s Basilica.
Tetzel’s reportedly-overzealous preaching enraged Luther, who then launched the Protestant “Reformation.”
newadvent.org/cathen/14539a.htm
From July, 1510, to April, 1516, all traces of him were lost. It was his appearance as an indulgence preacher in 1516, to aid the construction of St. Peter’s at Rome (see MARTIN LUTHER), that thrust him into an undue prominence, invested him with an exaggerated importance, and branded him with an unmerited odium that only the most painstaking critical research is now slowly lifting. It was while preaching at Jüterbog, a small town outside of Saxony, not far from Wittenberg (where the indulgences were not allowed to be preached), that Luther in one of his most violent philippics in 1541 relates “many people at Wittenberg flocked after indulgences to Jüterbog” (Wider Hans Worst in “Sammtl. W.”, XXVI, 50-53), and then after much hesitation nailed the ninety-five theses on indulgences on the castle church door at Wittenberg, 31 October, 1517. That this preaching of the indulgences was not the primary and immediate cause that precipitated the promulgation of Luther’s ninety-five theses may be inferred not only from his subsequent course but also from the fact that the “Annales” of Jüterbog (Hechtius, “Vita Joannis Tezelii”, Wittenberg, 1717, 53 sq.) prove that Tetzel preached there as early as 10 April; that Luther in his letter to Archbishop Albrecht (October 31, 1517) admits that he entertained the thought for a long time to preach against indulgence abuses (Enders, “Dr. Martin Luther’s Brief wechsel”, I, Frankfort, 1884, 115); that Tetzel for several weeks had already been in the district of Brandenburg (Paulus, “Johann Tetzel”, Mainz, 1899, 47).
