The worldly-minded archbishop of Mainz who had entrusted the sales of indulgences in his territories to John Tetzel against which Martin Luther wrote the Ninety-Five Theses in protest, and which sparked the Reformation.
Being the younger son of the Elector of Brandenburg, Albrecht had to find his own way into the power structure of his time. This he accomplished, first, by getting appointed to being the archbishop of Magdeburg in 1513, at the age of 23; it is not difficult to imagine how he accomplished that. Eager for more, he eyed—when it became availabe—the archbishopric of Mainz, a far richer benefice, the city of Mainz being one of the richest city on the Rhine. The laws of the Catholic Church, however, does not permit a single person to hold more than one office at a time. In addition to Magdeburg, he also held a number of abbeys. To secure Mainz, he made a huge donation to Pope Leo X, who was badly in need of funds to complete the building of St Peter's in Rome. To do that he had to borrow heavily from the Fuggers, the merchant-bankers in Augburg. The agreement with Leo was that the pope would then authorize the sales of indulgences in his territory and they would split the profit. It was one of the most scandalous case of corruption in the Renaissance Church; the shame of fleecing the poor for the personal gain of the clergy. Martin Luther, when he protested against the indulgences in his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, could not have known of this racket, and it did not come out in the controversy which ensued.
The controvery over Luther's theses, however, forced Albrecht to pick up the Bible and to read it: he later confessed, "I don't know what to make of this book because everything that is in it is against us." That, and the fact that he was also in correspondence with humanists like Erasmus and Ulrich von Hutten and his acceptance of a dedication by Melanchthon's commentary on Romans, might suggest the possibility of him turning to the reformation cause. But he never did and remained within Rome's embrace, becoming a strong supporter of the Jesuits.
©ALBERITH
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