ecome engaged in one of the
boldest political and financial transactions of his time. His elevation
to the see of Mayence, at the age of twenty-four, had necessitated a
papal dispensation, as he also wished to keep the archbishopric of
Magdeburg and the see of Halberstadt. This accumulation of
ecclesiastical offices had to be made subservient to the Brandenburg
policy which opposed the rival house of Saxony. The Pope granted the
dispensation in return for a great sum of money, but to facilitate its
payment he accorded to the archbishop a liberal indulgence for the whole
archbishopric of Mayence, Magdeburg and the Brandenburg territories.
Albert, to whom half the proceeds were tacitly left, raised a loan with
the house of Fugger, and this charged itself with the indulgence
traffic.

When in December 1517, Erasmus answered the archbishop, Luther's
propositions against indulgences, provoked by the Archbishop of
Mayence's instructions regarding their colportage, had already been
posted up (31 October 1517), and were circulated throughout Germany,
rousing the whole Church. They were levelled at the same abuses which
Erasmus combated, the mechanical, atomistical, and juridical conception
of religion. But how different was their practical effect, as compared
with Erasmus's pacific endeavour to purify the Church by lenient means!

'Lives of saints?' Erasmus asked replying to the archbishop. 'I have
tried in my poor way to add a little light to the prince of saints
himself. For the rest, your endeavour, in addition to so many difficult
matters of government, and at such an early age, to get the lives of the
saints purged of old women's tales and disgusting style, is extremely
laudable. For nothing should be suffered in the Church that is not
perfectly pure or refined,' And he concludes with a magnificent eulogy
of the excellent prelate.

During the greater part of 1518, Erasmus was too much occupied by his
own affairs--the journey to Basle and his red-hot labours there, and
afterwards his serious illness--to concern himself much with Luther's
business. In March he sends Luther's theses to More, without comment,
and, in passing, complains to Colet about the impudence with which Rome
disseminates indulgences. Luther, now declared a heretic and summoned to
appear at Augsburg, stands before the legate Cajetanus and refuses to
recant. Seething enthusiasm surrounds him. Just about that time Erasmus
writes to one of Luther's partisa