Pope, without
which Mainz could not be held. Albert, with all his dignities, was
dreadfully short of money at the time. Chapter of Mainz could or
would do little or nothing, having been drained lately; Magdeburg,
Halberstadt, the like. Albert tried various shifts; tried a little
stroke of trade in relics,--gathered in the Mainz district "some
hundreds of fractional sacred bones, and three whole bodies," which he
sent to Halle for pious purchase;--but nothing came of this branch.
The 15,000 pounds remained unpaid; and Pope Leo, building St. Peter's,
"furnishing a sister's toilet," and doing worse things, was in extreme
need of it. What is to be done? "I could borrow the money from
the Fuggers of Augsburg," said the Archbishop hesitatingly; "but
then--?"--"I could help you to repay it." said his Holiness: "Could
repay the half of it,--if only we had (but they always make such clamor
about these things) an Indulgence published in Germany!"--"Well; it must
be!" answered Albert at last, agreeing to take the clamor on himself,
and to do the feat; being at his wits'-end for money. He draws out his
Full-Power, which, as first Spiritual Kurfurst, he has the privilege
to do; nominates (1516) one Tetzel for Chief Salesman, a Priest whose
hardness of face, and shiftiness of head and hand, were known to him;
and--here is one Hohenzollern that has a place in History! Poor man,
it was by accident, and from extreme tightness for money. He was by no
means a violent Churchman; he had himself inclinations towards Luther,
even of a practical sort, as the thing went on. But there was no help
for it.

Cardinal Albert, Kur-Mainz, shows himself a copious dexterous public
speaker at the Diets and elsewhere in those times; a man intent on
avoiding violent methods;--uncomfortably fat in his later years, to
judge by the Portraits. Kur-Brandenburg, Kur-Mainz (the younger now
officially even greater than the elder), these names are perpetually
turning up in the German Histories of that Reformation-Period; absent
on no great occasion; and they at length, from amid the meaningless
bead-roll of Names, wearisomely met with in such Books, emerge into
Persons for us as above.

Chapter V. -- OF THE BAIREUTH-ANSPACH BRANCH.

Albert Achilles the Third Elector had, before his accession, been
Margraf of Anspach, and since his Brother the Alchemist's death, Margraf
of Baireuth too, or of the whole Principality,--"Margraf of Culmbach" we
will call it,