§50 



ON THE REVIVAL OP LITERATURE: 



This was strikingly exemplified during the papacy of Urban II. in the 

 year 1100 ; while it is admitted by the warmest advocates of the Vatican 

 that the famous fabric of St. Peter's church at Rome was paid for under 

 Leo X. out of the same resources ; which they venture to urge, indeed^ 

 in justification of the measure;* as though crimes could change their 

 nature by the end for which they are perpetrated. 



One of the fittest instruments for this traffic of abomination was the 

 notorious Dominican inquisitor John Tetzel, who, true to his own trade, 

 Jed so abandoned a life of debauchery ^athe was at length condemned to 

 death by the Emperor Maximilian for the crime of adultery, accompanied 

 with very atrocious circumstances ; and was saved from undergoing the 

 punishment with great difiiculty. He had the effrontery to boast that he 

 had saved more souls from hell by his indulgences than ever St. Peter had 

 converted to Christianity by his preaching. 



This juggler in iniquity, however, was at times himself out-juggled by 

 others ; and the following instance of his being over-reached, as gravely 

 related by Sechendorf, will show that the mummery of his trading was as 

 ridiculously absurd as it was grossly nefarious. A man of some rank at 

 Leipsic, who was disgusted with his villany, and determined to be even 

 with him, applied to him for information whether he could grant absolution 

 for a sin of a particular kind intended to be perpetrated, but to be kept a 

 secret till the time. Tetzel replied boldly that he could readily do so^ 

 provided the payment were made equal to it. The bargain was instantly 

 struck, the money paid down ; and the diploma of absolution signed, 

 sealed and delivered in due form. The purchaser, thus empowered, 

 waited quietly till Tetzel, having collected from Leipsic and its neighbour* 

 hood all the money he was able to lay hold of, set off for his home richly 

 freighted. The man of absolution followed him, right speedily ; overtook 

 him on the road ; plundered him of the whole of his fraudulent gam, and, 

 having beaten him soundly at the same time over the shoulders, produced 

 his patent of absolution, avowed that this was the sin he had purchased 

 leave to commit, and sent him back to Leipsjc to tell his own story. 



If we turn immediately to the Vatican itself, and observe the personal 

 conduct of the direct successors to the chair of St. Peter, and of the 

 sacred college by which they were surrounded, what is the picture which 

 is unfolded to us ? We behold pope fighting against pope, cardinals, in a 

 multiplicity of instances, against cardinals ;t the former occasionally de- 

 posed, and the latter still more frequently strangJed. We behold Leo X., 

 when only an infant of seven years old, made abbot of the rich benefice 

 of Fonte-dolce ; a few years afterward holding not less than twenty bene- 

 fices equally rich and valuable at the same rime ; and nominated to the 

 grave and venerable college of cardinals at the age of thirteen. We be- 

 hold Alexander VL, a near predecessor of Leo X., living incestuously 

 with his own daughter, the loose but beautiful and accomplished Lucretia 

 Borgia, a common prostitute to her father and her two brothers ; and we 

 behold one of the brothers assassinatiog the other, and shortly afterward h^ 

 legitimate husband, in the precincts of the apostolic palace, and upon the 

 threshold of St. Peter's church, from a jealousy of their superior pre- 

 tensions to her favour.| While, to close the whole, for it is disgusting to 



* See Dnpin. bookii. ch. i. ; aar also Roscoe's Life of Leo X. vol. iii. p. UO, 



tyRoscoe, vol. ii p. 104. 



T H. Tol. i, Sabjoiued DisscrtatioD)Pp. 8^11. 



