fuggars

Updated: May 9, 2025

This note was brought to Pope Julius, who presently imagined it was a note of money, and therefore sent for the Fuggars' factor that was then at Rome, and asked him if he knew that writing. The factor said, "Yea, it was the debt which the Fuggars did owe to that Cardinal, which was the sum of forty hundred thousand rix dollars." The Pope asked him how soon he could pay that sum of money.

Martin Luther - Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther

One of the Fuggars being warned by the Senate of Augsburg to bring in and to pay his taxation, said, "I know not how much I have, nor how rich I am, therefore I cannot be taxed;" for he had his money out in the whole world-in Turkey, in Greece, at Alexandria, in France, Portugal, England, Poland, and everywhere, yet he was willing to pay his tax of that which he had in Augsburg.

Martin Luther - Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther

One of the Fuggars, after his death, left eighty tons of gold. The Fuggars and the money-changers in Augsburg lent the Emperor at one time eight-and-twenty tons of gold for the maintaining of his wars before Padua. The Cardinal of Brixen, who died at Rome very rich, left no great sum of ready money behind him, but only there was found in his sleeve a little note of a finger's length.

Martin Luther - Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther