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Luther's Ninety-Five Theses And LUTHER’S NINETY-FIVE THESES AND THE CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF INDULGENCES David Bagchi Luther’s theses on the power of indulgences of October 1517 are of course only the most famous of a number of criticisms made of the excesses of indulgence preaching in the sixteenth century up to the Council of Trent—including that of Trent itself. To a great extent, the theses simply raise questions that had been raised before, or were being raised elsewhere, without incident, and they are remarkable today only because of the fateful reaction to them. All that is true; but there is a danger that by leaving the matter there we lose sight of Luther’s key concerns about indulgences, concerns that had caused him to take a critical stance towards them in several lectures and sermons well before All Saints’ Day 1517. We should remember that his theses were an invitation to an academic disputation “pro decla- ratione virtutis indulgentiae”—“to clarify what it is that indulgences do.” The nearest modern-day equivalent to this invitation would be a call for papers for an academic conference. Such calls are framed in a deliberately broad and perhaps provocative manner, to ensure the greatest possible response, without necessarily putting the concerns of the conference organizers to the forefront. For the same reason, the Ninety-five Theses are deliberately wide-ranging, reflecting a broad base of concerns and criticisms, and it is no accident that they show similarities with other contemporary critiques. This chapter will exam- ine the roots of Luther’s critique of indulgences, before it was broad- ened out, by looking first at his writings from before October 1517. Once his specific concerns have been isolated, they can be located more accurately in the wider context of pre-Tridentine criticism of indulgences. 1. Luther’s Critique of Indulgences in Writings Before October 1517 Martin Luther referred to indulgences on a dozen occasions that we know of between his Psalms lectures of 1514 and the Ninety-five Theses, some of these comments being mere asides and others more sustained 332 david bagchi treatments. The vicissitudes of documentary survival need to be taken into account in evaluating these references (we know of at least one sermon, preached at All Saints’ Church in criticism of the Elector Frederick’s indulgence-bearing relics, which has not survived);1 but the evidence they provide is vital for tracing the early development of his ideas on the subject. His first documented utterances on indulgences occurred in the course of his lectures on the Psalms of 1514. Given the subject mat- ter, it was inevitable that Luther would have had to spend some exegetical energy identifying the “enemies” who feature so regularly in the songs. Following Bernard of Clairvaux’s threefold division of Church history, it was apparent to Luther that the adversaries of his day were neither the pagan persecutors of the Church’s infancy, nor the heretics of her second age, but the enemy within: lukewarm and evil Christians had attained high office, and their presence heralded the coming of Antichrist.2 This scheme tends to colour his view of indulgences in the lectures. While treating of Psalm 68:2, for exam- ple, he identifies them as one of the means by which people are taught that the Christian life is easy.3 On verse 4 of the same psalm, he criticizes the readiness of popes and lower clergy to distribute indulgences. His objection is the bizarre one that his generation was making too many withdrawals from, and not enough deposits into, the treasury of the Church. He corrects himself to the extent of affirming the orthodox position that the treasury of Christ’s superfluous merits is inexhaustible in itself but, he insists, not as far as we are concerned.4 This apostrophe to his listeners is more than a simple— if clumsily expressed—exhortation to good works. It reflects themes that recur in Luther’s later writings. The first is his equation of good works with acceptance of suffering as the mark of a true Christian, a mark that already made indulgences, as Ablässe or “let-offs,” prob- lematic for Luther. The second is a conviction that the Church is a mutual society from which we draw consolation in time of trou- ble and to which we contribute in times of spiritual strength. This 1 Luther refers to it in his 1541 tract Wider Hans Wurst. See D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. J. C. F. Knaake et al. (Weimar, 1883–) [hereafter WA], 51:539. English translation in Luther’s Works, ed. J. Pelikan and H. T. Lehmann (Philadelphia and St. Louis, 1955–86) [hereafter LW ], 41:232. 2 WA 3:416.7–17 = LW 10:351. 3 WA 3:416.20–23 = LW 10:351. 4 WA 3:424.17–425.6 = LW 10:361–2..
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