The indulgences, on the other hand, were the foulest spot in its diseased body. The Pope, as administrator of the inexhaustible treasure of the merits of Christ, sold to believers, drafts on this store in exchange for money. It is true that the Church itself had not entirely lost the idea that the Pope could not himself forgive sins, but only remit the penances the Church prescribed; those, however, who held these views, individuals of the university and worthy village priests, were obliged to be careful that their teaching should not come into open collision with the business of the seller of indulgences. For what did the right teaching of their own Church signify to the papists of the sixteenth century? It was money that they craved for their women and children, their relatives, and princely houses. There was a fearful community of interests between the bishops and the fanatical members of the mendicant orders. Nothing had made Huss and his tenets so insupportable to them as the struggle against the sale of indulgences: the great Wessel had been driven out of Paris into misery for teaching repentance and grace; and it was the sellers of indulgences who caused the venerable Johannes Vesalia to die in the prison of a monastery at Mayence, he who first spoke the noble words, "Why should I believe what I know?" It is known how prevalent the traffic in indulgences became in Germany in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and how impudently the reckless cheating was carried on. When Tetzel, a well-fed haughty Dominican, rode into a city with his box of indulgences, he was accompanied by a large body of monks and priests: the bells were rung; ecclesiastics and laymen met him, and reverentially conducted him to the church; his great crucifix, with the holes of the nails, and the crown of thorns, was erected in the nave, and sometimes the believers were allowed to see the blood of the Crucified One trickling down the cross. Church banners, on which were the arms of the Pope with the triple crown, were placed by the cross; in front of it the cursed box, strongly clamped with iron, and near these on one side, a pulpit from which the monk set forth with rough eloquence the wonderful powers of his indulgences, and showed a large parchment of the Pope's with many seals appended to it. On the other side was the pay table, with indulgence tickets, writing materials, and money baskets; there the ecclesiastical coadjutors sold to the thronging people everlasting salvation.[21]