take the field openly by publishing, on the eve of the festival of All
Saints, 1517, his celebrated seventy theses against Indulgences.[10]
This document was drawn up with great skill and foresight. Some of the
theses were perfectly orthodox and professed great reverence for the
teaching of the Church and the authority of the Pope; others of them
were open to an orthodox as well as to an unorthodox interpretation;
others, still, were opposed clearly and definitely to Catholic
doctrine, and all of them were put forward in a way that was likely to
arrest public attention and to win the support of the masses.[11] They
were affixed to the doors of the university church in Wittenberg, and
copies of them were spread broadcast through Germany. Before a week
had elapsed they were discussed with eagerness in all parts of the
country, and the state of feeling became so intense that Tetzel was
obliged to discontinue his mission, and to retire to Frankfurt, where
under the direction of Wimpina, he set himself to draw up a number of
counter theses which he offered to defend.

The circumstances of the time were very favourable to a campaign such
as Luther had initiated. The princes of Germany and even some of the
bishops made no secret of their opinion that indulgences had been
abused, and many of them were anything but displeased at the step that
had been taken by the Wittenberg professor. The old opposition between
the Teuton and the Latin was growing daily more marked owing to the
violent and abusive language of men like Ulrich von Hutten, who posed
as German patriots; while the Humanist party, roused by the attacks
made upon Reuchlin by the Dominicans of Cologne, backed by the
Scholastic Theologians, were not sorry to see their opponents
challenged in their own special department, and obliged to act on the
defensive. The knights or lower nobles, too, who had been deprived of
many of their privileges by the princes, were ready for any scheme of