Setting up in the nave of the local church, Tetzel would begin his pitch by opening the bag and calling out, “I have here the passports… to lead the human soul to the celestial joys of Paradise.” The fees were dirt-cheap, he pointed out, if they considered the alternatives. Christians who had committed a mortal sin owed God seven years’ penance. “Who then,” he asked, “would hesitate for a quarter-florin to secure one of these letters of remission?” Anything could be forgiven, he assured them, anything.
