[101] i. e., The offices and positions in Rome which were for sale. See Benrath, p. 88, note 18; p. 95, note 36.

[102] See above, p. 84, note 1.

[103] The passage is chapter 31, Filiis vel nepotibus. It provides that in case the income of endowments bequeathed to the Church is misused, and appeals to the bishop and archbishop fail to correct the misuse, the heirs of the testator may appeal to the royal courts. Luther wishes this principle applied to the annates.

[104] See above, pp. 91 f.

[105] See above, p. 91.

[106] See above, p. 94.

[107] i. e.. Promises to bestow on certain persons livings not yet vacant. Complaint of the evils arising out of the practice was continually heard from the year 1416. For the complaints made at Worms (1521), see Wrede, op. cit., II, 710.

[108] See above, pp. 86 f.

[109] See above, pp. 92 f.

[110] See above, p. 93.

[111] See above, p. 89.

[112] Rules for the transaction of papal business, including such matters as appointments and the like. At Worms (1521) the Estates complain that these rules are made to the advantage of the "courtesans" and the disadvantage of the Germans. (Wrede, op. cit., II, pp. 675 f.)

[113] The local Church authorities, here equivalent to "the bishops." On use of term see Realencyk., XIV, 424.

[114] The sign of the episcopal office; as regards archbishops, the pallium; see above, p. 8q, and note.

[115] See above, p. 87, note 1.

[116] The first of the ecumenical councils (A. D. 325). The decree to which Luther here refers is canon IV of that Council. Cf. Kohler, L. und die Kg., pp. 139 ff.

[117] The primate is the ranking archbishop of a country.

[118] "Exemption" was the practice by which monastic houses were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the bishops and made directly subject to the pope. The practice seems to have originated in the X Century with the famous monastery of Cluny (918), but it was almost universal in the case of the houses of the mendicant orders. The bishops made it a constant subject of complaint, and the Lateran Council (Dec. 19, 1516) passed a decree abolishing all monastic exemptions, though the decree does not seem to have been effective. See Creighton, History of the Papacy, V, 266.

[119] i. e., Antichrist. See above, p. 73, note 2.

[120] The papal interference in the conduct of the local Church courts was as flagrant as in the appointments, of which Luther has heretofore spoken. At Worms (1521) it was complained that cases were cited to Rome as a court of first instance, and the demand was made that a regular course of appeals should be re-established. Wrede, op. cit., II, 672, 718.

[121] The reference is Canon V of the Council of Sardica (A. D. 343), incorporated in the canon law as a canon of Nicaea (Pt. II, qu. 6, c. 5). See Kohler, L. und die Kg., 151.

[122] i. e., Appealed to Rome for decision. This is the subject of the first of the 102 Gravamina of 1521 (Wrede, op. cit., II, 672).

[123] The judges in the bishops' courts. The complaint is that they interfere with the administration of justice by citing into their courts cases which properly belong in the lay courts, and enforce their verdicts (usually fines) by means of ecclesiastical censures. The charges against these courts are specified in the Gravamina of 1521, Nos. 73-100 (Wrede, op. cit., II, 694-703).

[124] The signatura gratiae and the signatura justitiae were the bureaus through which the pope regulated those matters of administration which belonged to his own special prerogative.

[125] See above, pp. 88 f.

[126] See above, p. 88, note 3.

[127] See above, p. 94.

[128] i. e., The cases in which a priest was forbidden to give absolution. The reference here is to cases in which only the pope could absolve. Cf. The XCV Theses, Vol. I, p. 30.

[129] A papal bull published annually at Rome on Holy Thursday. It was directed against heretics, but to the condemnation of the heretics and their heresies was added a list of offences which could receive absolution only from the pope, or by his authorisation. In 1522 Luther translated this bull into German as a New Year present for the pope (Weimar Ed., VIII, 691). On Luther's earlier utterances concerning it, see Kohler, L. u. die Kg., pp. 59 2.

[130] The breve is a papal decree, of equal authority with the bull, but differing from it in form, and usually dealing with matters of smaller importance.

[131] Cf. Luther's earlier statement to the same effect in A Discussion of Confession, Vol. I, pp. 96 f.

[132] See above, p. 99.

[133] The Fifth Lateran Council (1512-17).

[134] See above, p. 90, note 1.

[135] In the canon law, Decretal. Greg. lib. i, tit. 6, cap. 4. The decretal forbids the bestowing of the pallium (see above, p. 89, note 3) on an archbishop elect, until he shall first have sworn allegiance to the Holy See.

[136] The induction of Church officials into office. The term was used particularly of the greater offices--those of bishop and abbot. These offices carried with them the enjoyment of certain incomes, and the possession of certain temporal powers. For this reason the right of investiture was a bone of contention between popes and emperors during the Middle Ages.

[137] Especially in the time of the Emperors Henry IV and V (1056-1125).

[138] The German Empire was regarded during the Middle Ages as a continuation of the Roman Empire. (See below, p. 153.) The right to crown an emperor was held to be the prerogative of the pope; until the pope bestowed the imperial crown, the emperor bore the title, "King of the Romans."

[139] In the canon law, Decretal. Greg. lib. i, tit. 33, cap. 6.

[140] In the treatise, Resolutio Lutheriana super propositione XIII, de potestate papae (1520). Weimar Ed., II, pp. 217 ff.; Erl. Ed., op. var. arg., Ill, pp. 293 ff.

[141] See p. 70.

[142] cf. The Papacy at Rome, Vol. I, pp. 357 f.

[143] A decree of Pope Clement V of 1313, incorporated subsequently in the canon law, Clement, lib. ii, tit. 11, cap. 2.

[144] A forged document of the VIII Century, professing to come from the hand of the Emperor Constantine (306-337). The Donation conveyed to the pope title to the city of Rome (the capital had been removed to Constantinople), certain lands in Italy and "the islands of the sea." It was used by the popes of the Middle Ages to support their claims to worldly power, and its genuineness was not disputed. In 1440, however, Laurentius Valla, an Italian humanist, published a work in which he proved that the Donation was a forgery. This work was republished in Germany by Ulrich von Hutten in 1517, and seems to have come to Luther's attention in the early part of 1520, just before the composition of the present treatise (C. Enders II, 332). Luther subsequently (1537) issued an annotated translation of the text of the Donation (Erl. Ed., XXV, pp. 176 ff.).

[145] The papal claim to temporal sovereignty over this little kingdom, which comprised the island of Sicily and certain territories in Southern Italy, goes back to the XI Century, and was steadily asserted during the whole of the later Middle Ages. It was one of the questions at issue in the conflict between the Emperor Frederick II (1200-1260) and the popes, and played an important part in the history of the stormy times which followed the all of the Hohenstaufen. The popes claimed the right to award the kingdom to a ruler who would swear allegiance to the Holy See. The right to the kingdom was at this time contested between the royal houses of France and of Spain, of which latter house the Emperor Charles V was the head.

[146] The popes claimed temporal sovereignty over a strip of territory in Italy, beginning at Rome and stretching in a northeasterly direction across the peninsula to a point on the Adriatic south of Venice, including the cities and lands which Luther mentions. This formed the so-called "States of the Church." The attempt to consolidate the States and make the papal sovereignty effective involved Popes Alexander VI (1492-1503) and Julius II (1503-1513) in war and entangled them in political alliances with the European powers and petty Italian states. It resulted at last in actual war between Pope Clement VII and the Emperor Charles V (1526-1527). See Cambridge Modern History, I, 104-143; 219-252, and literature cited pp. 706-713; 727 f.

[147] A free translation of the Vulgate, Nemo militans Deo.

[148] The kissing of the pope's feet was a part of the "adoration" which he claimed as his right. See above, p. 108.

[149] The three paragraphs enclosed in brackets were added by Luther to the 2d edition; see Introduction, p. 59.

[150] The holy places of Rome had long been favorite objects of pilgrimage, and the practice had been zealously fostered by the popes through the institution of the "golden" or "jubilee years." Cf. Vol. I, p. 18, and below, p. 114.

[151] Cf. the Italian proverb, "God is everywhere except at Rome; there He has a vicar."

[152] Cf. Hutten's saying in Vadiscus: "Three things there are which those who go to Rome usually bring home with them, a bad conscience, a ruined stomach and an empty purse." (Ed. Bocking, IV, p. 169.)

[153] The "golden" or "jubilee years" were the years when special rewards were attached to worship at the shrines of Rome. The custom was instituted by Boniface VIII in 1300, and it was the intention to make every hundredth year a jubilee. In 1343 the interval between jubilees was fixed at fifty, in 1389 at thirty-three, in 1473 at twenty-five years. Cf. Vol. I, p. 18.

[154] Cf. the statements in the Treatise on Baptism and the Discussion of Confession, Vol. I, pp. 68 ff., 98.

[155] The houses, or monasteries, of the mendicant or "begging" orders--the "friars." The members of these orders were sworn to support themselves on the alms of the faithful.

[156] The three leading mendicant orders were the Franciscan (the Minorites, or "little brothers"), founded by St. Francis of Assisi (died 1226), the Dominican (the "preaching brothers"), founded by St. Dominic (died 1221), and the Augustinian Hermits, to which Luther himself belonged, and which claimed foundation by St. Augustine (died 430).

[157] The interference of the friars in the duties of the parish clergy was a continual subject of complaint through this period.

[158] By the middle of the XV Century there were eight distinct sects within the Franciscan order alone (See Realencyk., VI, pp. 212 ff.), and Luther had himself taken part in a vigorous dispute between two parties in the Augustinian order.