11. The punishment usually consisted of fastings, pilgrimages, whippings, etc.; but people of distinction and wealth were permitted to employ substitutes to receive this punishment; and there were monks ever ready to endure the punishment of the transgressor for a consideration paid in money. This penance was finally changed to paying to the church the money instead of employing monks to endure the punishment. Whoever, for instance, was bound to whip himself with so many stripes each day for several weeks might pay to the church or to the monastery a certain sum of money, or give it a piece of land and then be released from the penance. As the popes perceived that something might be gained in this way, they assumed to themselves the right of commuting penances for pecuniary satisfactions, which every bishop had before exercised in his own diocese. At first they released only from the punishments of sin in the present world; but in the fourteenth century they extended this release also to the punishment in purgatory. 12. The Traffic in Indulgences.--When such indulgences were to be published, the disposal of them was commonly farmed out. The papal court could not always wait to have the money conveyed from every country of Europe; and there were rich merchants at Genoa, Milan, Venice, and Augsburg, who purchased the indulgences for a particular province and paid to the papal treasury handsome sums for them. Thus both parties were benefited. The pope came at once into possession of large sums of money; and the farmers did not fail of {211} a good bargain. They were careful to employ skillful hawkers of the indulgences, persons whose boldness and impudence bore due proportion to the eloquence with which they imposed upon the simple people. Yet that this traffic might have a religious aspect, the pope appointed the archbishops of the several provinces to be his commissioners, who in his name published that indulgences were to be sold, and usually selected the persons to hawk them, and for this service shared the profits with the merchants who farmed them.[8] [See notes 3 and 4, end of section.] 13. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the sale of indulgences was pushed vigorously and became most offensive. The reason for resorting to this mode of raising revenue was justified by the pope on the plea of completing the church of St. Peter, at Rome, which had been commenced by Julius II. 14. John Tetzel.--The hawker of indulgences who traveled through Germany, where Luther was living, was John Tetzel, a Dominical monk, at once one of the boldest, most eloquent and the most profligate of men. [See note 6, end of section.] His reckless preaching of these papal wares aroused the indignation of Luther, who published ninety-five propositions against the sale of indulgences, in which he even gently censured the pope for permitting the people to be diverted from Christ.