You wrote:
“Sale of Indulgences Affirmed (1343)”
Where in the document is there a mention of the sale of indulgences as proper?
Also, just one quick point about Ronald Bruce Meyer. On his website he wrote this: “It wasn’t entirely the monks’ fault: in the greatest abbey of the 13th century, the Abbey of St. Gall, not a single monk could read!”
Really? So in the thirteenth century not a single monk at St. Gall could read? Really? So the monastery that was most famous for its library and book making was entirely illiterate?
Pray tell how did Ekkehard VI write his life of St. Nokter Balbulus in 1214? And who at St. Gall made the mid-thirteenth century copy of the famous mss. of the Nibelungenlied called “The Vulgate” version (which was copied in three different hands by the way)?
http://www.stiftsbibliothek.ch/index.asp
http://www.cesg.unifr.ch/de/index.htm
Maybe Meyer should read Anna A. Grotans’ Reading in Medieval St. Gall (Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology), 2006. I think that would help.
Your defense of the indefensible dazzles the mind. Even more so, as I am convinced of your sincerity.