Critical Essays

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Critical Essays
The Faust Legend
Introduction
The Faust Legend

The Faust legend is probably based on the life of a real person named Jorg or George Faust, also referred to as
Georgius and as Johannes Faustus. He was a traveling performer or magician, thought to have been born
around 1480 in the Württemberg region of southwest Germany, and to have died in the same region around
1540. The first lengthy historical mention of him occurs in a letter written in 1507 by the Benedictine scholar
Johannes Tritheim. The letter is not complimentary of Faust. In it, Tritheim refers to him as one "who has
presumed to call himself the prince of necromancers," but who is in fact "a vagabond, a babbler, and a rogue,
who deserves to be thrashed so that he may not henceforth rashly venture to profess in public things so
execrable and so hostile to the holy Church."

The principal German source of the legend surrounding Faust is the volume edited by Johann Spies in 1587
and published as Historia von D. Johann Fausten. This version, commonly called the Faustbuch, is also
referred to as the Volksbuch or the Historia. This folktalewas altered and augmented over time in numerous
forms (including puppet shows) and in a variety of languages. The first known English-language publication
appeared under the title The Historie of the damnable life, and deserved death of Doctor John Faustus. The
basic story is about a magician who makes a pact with the Devil in return for superhuman powers, sexual
pleasures, and arcane knowledge. As part of the bargain, the Devil requires Faust's soul and ultimately claims
it by torturing Faust's body and dragging him to Hell.

During the sixteenth century, Martin Luther and the proponents of the Reformation found the Faust myth a
useful tool. It was modified into a warning against what were considered the excesses and idolatrous practices
of the Catholic Church. At the same time, the story of Faust's overreaching the normal limits of human
knowledge and ability was also directed against Humanism in Renaissance Germany.

The Faust legend has been a rich source of creative inspiration. Christopher Marlowe wrote one of his most
famous plays based on the legend. It was published in 1604 as The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of
Doctor Faustus. And in the nineteenth century, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published Parts I (1808) and II
(1832) of his poetic drama, Faust. Over the centuries, the legend has continued to fascinate novelists, poets,
painters, film-makers, and musicians. Whether they see Faust positively as a seeker of benevolent knowledge,
negatively as a diabolical harbinger of fascism, or tragically as a symbol of humanity's insatiable curiosity,
composers like Louis Hector Berlioz (The Damnation of Faust, 1846), novelists like Thomas Mann (Dr.
Faustus, 1947), and poets like Karl Shapiro ("The Progress of Faust," 1968), have turned Faust into a cultural
archetype.

Criticism
Adolphus William Ward (essay date 1901)

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SOURCE: "Introduction," in his Marlowe: "Tragical History of Dr. Faustus"; Greene: "Honourable History
of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay", fourth ed., rev. and enlarged, edited by Adolphus William Ward,
Clarendon Press, 1901, pp. xv-clxvi.

[In the following excerpt, Ward examines in detail the origins of the Faust legend, including its basis in fact
and its manipulation by proponents of the Reformation. He concludes with a discussion of possible source
material for Christopher Marlowe's play, Dr. Faustus.]

… The century of the Reformation and that which succeeded to it were the period in which the belief in
necromancy and witchcraft reached its height. An era of theological controversy on an unprecedented scale
had set in; and it was only where the schism never came to a head, as in Italy and Spain, or where, as in parts
of the Empire, it was averted by a practical compromise, that the epidemic found little or no material to feed
on1. Warning voices were indeed not wanting to protest against the perils of popular credulity; some of these,
as has been seen, were those of the very men who were decried or persecuted as sorcerers. 'In England,' says
an eminent historian2, 'the belief in the reality of witch craft was strongly rooted in the minds of the
population. James I, in his book on Daemonology, had only echoed opinions which were accepted freely by
the multitude, and were tacitly admitted without inquiry by the first intellects of the day3. Bacon and Raleigh
alike took the existence of witches for granted. In 1584, indeed, Reginald Scot4, wise before his time, had
discoursed to ears that would not hear on the shallowness of the evidence by which charges of witchcraft were
sustained, but even he did not venture to assert that witchcraft itself was a fiction. A few years later, Harsnet5,
who rose to be Bishop of Norwich and Archbishop of York, charged certain Jesuits and priests with imposture
in pretending to eject devils from possessed persons, in sheer forgetfulness of the fact that these priests did no
more than take in sober earnestness the belief which was all around them. That the tide, however, was
beginning to turn, there is a slight indication in The Witch of Edmonton6, a play produced on the London stage
about 1622, the authors of which directed the compassion of their hearers to an old woman accused of having
entered into a league with Satan. Yet even here the old woman was treated as being in actual possession of the
powers which she claimed. So, again, in Thomas Heywood's The Wise Woman of Hogsdon (pr. 1638),
although the false and fraudulent practice of witchcraft is ridiculed and reprobated, a passage seems to
indicate a substratum of belief in the thing itself7. As late as 1643, a certain Thomas Browne was indicted
before a Middlesex jury for selling his soul to an evil spirit for an annuity of £1000, but acquitted8. As late as
1652, witches were hanged without mercy in England9; nor was the law making witchcraft punishable by
death repealed in this country till 173010. It is needless to add that our Elizabethan and early Stuart dramatic
literature largely deals with themes concerned with practices of witchcraft11, astrology12, and alchemy13;
while a hellish sorcerer is a prominent figure in the great allegorical epic of the Elizabethan age14. If,
however, the play called The Divil's Charter (1607) be excepted, the idea of an actual contract with the Devil
appears, in the later plays of this period, either as a satiric allusion15, or is converted into a theme for comic
treatment16, in accordance with the attempt already made in a (probably) earlier comedy of which the
authorship has been falsely ascribed to Shakespeare—The Merry Devil of Edmonton17. In following the
shameful tradition which attributed the glorious achievements of the Maid of Orleans to a compact with the
Powers of Hell, the author of passages in I Henry VI adhered to the belief kept alive in English minds by a
popular chronicler18.

These delusive fancies of the English popular mind had been no doubt propagated from many and various
sources, but from none so persistently and abundantly as from the 'news' which numberless sheets professed to
bring 'out of Germany.' It is impossible here to trace the causes of the very curious phenomenon, that in the
course of the period connecting the Reformation age proper with the closing years of the sixteenth century, the
character of the relations between England and Germany had greatly altered, and that the moral and
intellectual, as well as the most general, influence of the latter country upon the former had sunk from a very
high to a far lower level. 'To the average contemporary of Bishop Bale,' says a writer who has luminously
surveyed the literary relations between the two nations in the sixteenth century19, 'Germany was the
mother-country of the Reformation, the refuge of the persecuted Protestants, the seat of literary

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accomplishments and civic splendour which England could at the most barely rival. To the average
contemporary of Jonson and Fletcher, probably enough, it was famous only as a land of magicians and
conjurors, as the home of Albertus and Agrippa, Paracelsus and Doctor Faust. '

And, indisputably, there was some colour for this latter conception, of which our contemporary dramatic
literature furnishes a more than sufficient number of illustrations. In Germany, even more largely than in other
continental countries, the popular belief in the infernal origin of practices of sorcery in this age found
expression in wild scandals and uncontrollable fictions. It attached itself to a wide variety of personages—from
the scholastici vagantes, of whom Hans Sachs had already brought an example on the stage20, to an Elector of
the Empire such as Joachim II of Brandenburg (1535-71). In France charges of this kind were even brought
against a king (Henry III) and his royal mother (Catharine de' Medici). But if princes were the patrons of
necromancy (as they were more especially of alchemy), they likewise persecuted its practice with the utmost
severity; thus we find an edict of the Elector Augustus of Saxony (of the year 1572) proclaiming the penalty
of death by fire against whosoever 'in forgetfulness of his Christian faith shall have entered into a compact, or
hold converse or intercourse, with the Devil, albeit such person by magic may do no harm to any one21.' The
clause I have italicized strikes me as particularly significant. In vain did a writer such as Johannes Wierus
(Wier, Weiher, or Weyer) seek, in the spirit of Reginald Scot, to stem the tide of popular prejudice, and to
vindicate the memory of those whose fame, like that of Cornelius Agrippa, had by that prejudice been
converted into infamy. Wierus' noble effort (158322) in the cause of reason, and the partial protest of his
contemporary, Augustine Lercheimer23 (1585), were outclamoured by eager witnesses to the truth of the
popular superstitions and of the narratives by which they were supported, such as, above all, Bodin (159124),
whom Fischart translated into German, and Hondorff (157225). Thus fostered, these beliefs flourished in
Germany through the sixteenth and part of the seventeenth century, the troubles of which furnished them with
new materials. But of these all notice must be left aside. The neighbouring countries were not in advance of
Germany; the last personage widely believed to have entered into a compact with the Evil One (for the period,
it was affirmed, from 1659 to 1695) was the French Marshal Luxembourg, whose Dialogues in the Kingdom
of the Dead with Doctor Faustus were a catchpenny of the year 173326; and if Germany had its Faustus in the
sixteenth century, Bohemia had had its Zytho in the fifteenth (in the age of Charles IV), and Poland had its
Twardowski, said to have been a contemporary of the German magician, of whose legend his is a reflexion or
a singularly close parallel27. How the story of Faustus found a ready welcome in the Netherlands and in
France, as it did in England, will be immediately shown.

The supposition28, first put forward as early as 1621 by the Tubingen theologian, Schickard, that the story of
Faustus is a legendary fiction pure and simple, invented as a warning against practices of magic, is altogether
untenable. Faust or Faustus was a real personage. His original German surname may be uncertain; for the
Latin form 'Faustus,' in which his name occasionally appears already in the oldest German literary version of
the legend, is obviously either a Latinization of a native name, or a name bestowed on account of its
significance. In the latter case 'Faust' would only be a Germanization of 'Faustus,' the favourite Roman name
which had so remarkable a vitality29. And 'Faust' would accordingly mean much the same as 'Fortunatus,' a
name familiar to mediaeval legend, and thence transplanted into the Elizabethan drama30. In the other and
more probable case, we may suppose the original German form to have been 'Faust,' or possibly 'Fust.' But the
notion that Faustus or Faust the magician and Fust the printer are the same person cannot be accepted. It was
suggested by Durr, an Altdorf professor of theology, in a letter written in 1676, but not published till 1726;
and it has since been adopted by various writers, including the German dramatists, Klinger and Klingemann,
who wrote plays on the subject, Heinrich Heine, F. V. Hugo (the French translator of Marlowe's tragedy), and
no less an authority than the late Karl Simrock. But it must be rejected nevertheless. It rests primarily on the
specious assumption, that the art of printing was regarded as an invention of the Evil One by the people, or
decried as such by the monks. Of this, however, there is no satisfactory proof. The story that the printer,
Johann Fust, who was in Paris in 1466, was there looked upon as a conjurer, has no historical foundation; just
as there is no reason to attribute the dispersion of Fust and Schoeffer's printing establishment at Mainz in 1462
to any cause but the sack of the city by Archbishop Adolf of Nassau and its natural effects. The printer Fust in

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his Latin colophons never assumed the name of 'Faustus'; and there is no basis whatever for the ingenious
fancy which identified or identifies him with the necromant31.

Faust or Faustus shared his surname in its Latin form with the legendary father of St. Clement of Rome,
whom St. Peter himself was said to have converted to Christianity at Antioch, notwithstanding the efforts to
the contrary of Simon Magus. A haze of romance surrounds the traditions concerning the family of St.
Clement; and though it is doubtless a tempting fancy that the story of Faustus and Simon Magus 'furnishes the
germ of the story of Faust and Mephistophiles,' especially as there is a Helena involved in it as the magician's
companion, to argue from such premisses would be to build upon a quicksand32. The name 'Faustus' was
likewise borne by several Christian ecclesiastics of the early Middle Ages, two of whom were canonized by
the Church of Rome, while a third (Faustus Reiensis, i.e. Bishop of Riez) was accounted a heretic by the
orthodox. This personage plays an important part in the Confessions of St. Augustine, a book of the greatest
significance both for the literature and for the general history of Christendom. The attractive qualities and
intellectual accomplishments of the Manichaean bishop at first charmed the young lecturer at Carthage, who
had eagerly looked forward to intercourse with him. But he began to doubt the depth of Faustus' scholarship
long before he emancipated himself from the power of the doctrines with which the bishop was identified; and
indeed he acknowledges the prudence with which Faustus declined to be involved in arguments concerning
the astronomical matters of which, as St. Augustine informs us, the books of the Manichaeans were full.
When he ultimately entered the lists against their doctrines, it was however Bishop Faustus whom he attacked
by name as their spokesman. The Manichaeanism, against which the great Christian father directed his
memorable efforts, was to reappear in not a few of the most daring theories concerning the world and its
government promulgated during the course of the Middle Ages and in the Reformation epoch33. Of no real
importance, though rather striking at first sight, is the coincidence of the existence at Rome in the
Reformation age of a Faustus Sabaeus34, who is called a 'clerk of Brescia,' and was one of the custodians of
the Vatican library under six successive pontiffs. This scholar, between 1523 and 1524, published with a
colleague at Rome a work of Gebir, the famous Arabian 'master of masters,' as Roger Bacon calls him35.
Finally, another Italian scholar must not be overlooked, who called himself Faustus Andrelinus, and was a
shining light among the Renascence 'poets' at Paris. He died in 1518, and his decease, his popularity at Paris,
and the licentiousness of his ways were recorded in the correspondence of Erasmus, who had been on intimate
terms with the author of the Epistolae proverbiales and the Amores36.

The Christian name of the magician is in the legend, with all but unvarying consistency, given as John
(Johannes or Johann), and is the same in several of the authentic notices of him as an actual personage. It is
perhaps worth noticing that the name of Tritheim (said to have been Faust's instructor) was John, and that
Tritheim has himself handed down the fame of an Italian named Johannes, who called himself 'philosophus
philosophorum' and 'Mercurius, messenger of the gods,' and who aired his pretensions to universal knowledge
in 1501 at the court of King Lewis XII of France37. But, oddly enough, there exist two notices of
unquestioned authenticity, in which, under a distinct but not altogether different form of appellation, mention
is made of a strolling necromant of precisely the same kind as the Doctor Johannes Faustus of other authentic
notices and of the legend. In the year 1507 the already-mentioned Tritheim informs a friend that in an inn at
Gelnhausen (in the countship of Hanau) he had found traces of a personage to whose acquaintance Tritheim's
friend had been looking forward with eager curiosity. On Tritheim's approach the impostor had decamped, but
he had left behind him a card for a citizen of Gelnhausen identical with one he had sent to Tritheim's friend, as
bearing his name (without his address) and 'additions' as follows:—

'Magister Georgius Sabellicus, Faustus junior, fons necromanticorum, magus secundus,

chiro-manticus, agromanticus [query aeromanticus?], pyromanticus, in hydra arte secundus38.'

This worthy, whom in another passage of his letter Tritheim calls simply 'Georgius Sabellicus,' he proceeds to
describe as having at Wurzburg blasphemously boasted his power to equal the miracles of Christ, and having
in this year 1507, through the good offices of Franz von Sickingen (the famous knight), obtained a post as

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schoolmaster at Kreuznach. Soon, however, he had to quit the place in haste, having been guilty of the most
shameful immorality. A few years later (in 1513 or 1514) another witness of unimpeachable trustworthiness,
the celebrated humanist and friend of Reuchlin and Melanchthon Mutianus Rufus (Conrad Mudt), writes to a
friend that 'a week ago there came to Erfurt a chiromant, by name Georgius Faustus Helmitheus
Hedebergensis, a mere braggart and fool. His art, like that of all sorcerers, is vain, and such a physiognomy is
lighter than a water-spider (typula, i.e. tippula). The ignorant marvel thereat. The theologians should rise
against him, instead of seeking to annihilate Reuchlin. I heard him jabber at the inn; I did not chastise his
ignorance; for what is the folly of others to me?' It would therefore appear that by this time the adventurer in
question, whoever he was, called himself Faustus without adding the word 'junior,' but using epithets which
can hardly have any other signification than 'semi-divine' (…39), and 'of the Hedebergs. Heidenberg type,' i.e.
of the type of Tritheim, whose family name was 'von Heidenberg.' And in two parallel notices found in the
town archives of Ingolstadt 'the soothsayer' and 'Dr. Jorg Faustus of Heidelberg' are respectively stated to have
been expelled from Ingolstadt on the Wednesday after St. Vitus in the year 152840. The question arises
whether this personage (for Tritheim's man, Mutianus', and the visitor to Ingolstadt, can hardly but be one and
the same) is to be regarded as identical with the Doctor Johannes Faustus or John Faust, of whom there is no
trace before the year 1520, and to whom it would therefore be surprising if a competing necromant had, as
early as 1507, sought to compare himself as 'junior' or 'secundus41.' Was this man's surname really Faust, or
was it Sabellicus? The latter can hardly be a mere Latinisation, but must surely have been adopted in allusion
to the Sabine magic mentioned by the Roman poets—and indeed Widmann speaks of the hero of his narrative,
Johannes Faustus, as having studied among other books Sabellicum Ennead42. If George and John Faust were
one and the same person43, then it is not absolutely impossible that George may have assumed the name of
John in memory either of the printer John Fust or Faust, or of some earlier necromant bearing that name. But
there is no obvious connexion between the reputation of the printer and the sort of notoriety a strolling
charlatan endeavoured to acquire; while of an earlier necromant, John Faust or Faustus, no real evidence
whatever exists. On the other hand, there is no improbability in the supposition of George and John Faust
having been competitors, although the evidence of the notoriety of John is later in date than that of the
vagabond who called himself 'junior,' and in some branches of his profession 'secundus.' The unwarranted
assumption by popular entertainers of a name to which they have no birthright has, I believe, been a common
practice in much later times than those in question; and if a 'Johannes Faustus,' who, according to the
Heidelberg registers, took his degree there as a bachelor of divinity in 1509, was the same person as the
famous Doctor, Georgius may perchance have decorated himself not only with the surname of Johannes, but
also with the name of his university. But this is quite uncertain, more especially as the register attaches to the
name the letter 'd, ' signifying 'dedit, ' i.e. he paid his fees.

Passing by the statement of the Württemberg historian, Sattler, that according to 'trustworthy information,'
which he does not cite, a Doctor Faust in the year 1516 visited his fellow-countryman and good friend, the
Abbot Johann Entenfuss, in his monastery at Maulbronn (in Württemberg), we come to a series of
well-authenticated notices of Faust or Faustus by persons who were actually or nearly contemporary with him.
Among these can hardly be included the famous inscriptions in Auerbach's Cellar, an ancient wine-tavern and
vault at Leipzig. One of these inscriptions appears to make reference (by the words 'at this time,' 'zu dieser
Frist') to a date, 1525, twice written on the wall, where a fresco still recalls the magician's exploit of riding out
of the cellar on a wine-butt, and another represents him as treating a party of students with its contents.44 The
date, 1525, is said to be of proved authenticity, and is unhesitatingly adopted in Vogel's Leipzig Annals,
published in 1714. It was possibly from the Leipzig legend that Widmann, in his version of the story of
Faustus—where, on the evidence of a book 'with concealed letters,' he states Faustus' contract with the Devil to
have been sealed in 1521—took the date of 1525 as that of the beginning of the conjurer's public career.

But an indisputable record of Faust has been recently discovered, which proves him to have 'flourished' as
early as 1520, five years before the supposed date of his visit to Auerbach's Cellar. In the accounts for that
year of Hans Müller, Chamberlain (Kammermeister) of George von Limburg, Prince-Bishop of Bamberg, J.
Mayerhoffer has found an entry purporting that by the orders of Reverendissimus ten florins were, on the

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Sunday after Scholastica (whose festival falls on February 10), paid to Doctor Faust, pho [= philosopho], as a
gratuity, he having cast a nativity or indicium to his lordship. The bishop, a patron of the New Learning and
friend of Luther, died May 31, 1522; and it seems probable that the consultation took place at the castle of
Altenburg, the bishop's favourite residence45.

The first known writer who mentions Faustus as a real personage is the eminent scholar Joachim Camerarius,
in a letter dated August 13, 1536. Addressing Daniel Stibar, a lawyer in the service of the city of Würzburg,
and connected by his studies and tastes with the Erfurt humanists, Camerarius, then at Tubingen, banters him
on the 'uanissima superstitio' with which he has been inflated by 'his Faustus,' but at the same time expresses
curiosity as to Faust's opinion concerning the prospects of Charles V's campaign. Taken in conjunction with
the reference in the letter of Philip von Hutten to be mentioned immediately, this points to a sojourn of Faust
in Upper Franconia within the years 1535-746.

Next comes another quite recently discovered reference to the 'Philosophus Faustus' in a letter from Philip (the
cousin of the famous Ulric) von Hutten to his brother Maurice, Prince-Bishop of Eichstedt, dated January 16,
1540; though the actual date of the event with which the name of Faust is here connected is obscure, and may
possibly lie back as far as 153547. A certain vagueness likewise attaches to the mention of Faust by Dr. Philip
Begardi, physician to the Free Imperial City of Worms, in his Index Sanitatis of 1539. He there speaks of
'Faustus' as a famous necromant and medical quack, who 'a few years ago' travelled about 'through all
countries, principalities and kingdoms, and made his name known by every one there.' He made, says Begardi,
no secret of it himself, adding to it the title of 'philosophus philosophorum.' In 1545, another medical writer,
Conrad Gesner of Zurich, mentions a 'Faustus quidam' as famous among the schlolastici vagantes who
practised magic, and as not long since dead. In the second edition, 1548, of a book of historical anecdotes of
which the first volume was published in its first edition in 1543, the Protestant theologian Johann Gast relates
two stories of Faustus' marvellous doings, the scene of one being laid in the Palatinate, that of the other, which
Gast narrates as an eye-witness, in the great College at Basel. Gast mentions the wonderful dog, which,
together with a similarly uncanny horse, attended Faustus48, and the magician's terrible death—but these things
only on hearsay. A still more remarkable piece of evidence is furnished by the Locorum Commuunium
Collectanea, published at Basel in 1562 by Manlius (Johann Mennel of Ansbach), a pupil of Melanchthon, of
whose sayings the collection professes to a great extent to consist49. In this book Melanchthon (for it is clearly
he who is supposed to be speaking) says that he was acquainted with one of the name of Johannes Faustus, of
Kundling, evidently a corruption for Knittlingen, a small town near his own native place50, who studied and
learnt magic at Cracow51, and practised his devilish art at Venice and elsewhere. 'A few years ago' he met
with his death 'in a village of the Duchy of Wurttemberg,' having predicted a terrible event for the night in
which he died, and being found in the morning dead in his bed with his face twisted, 'so the devil had killed
him.' Melanchthon proceeds to mention that this Faustus, whom he calls 'Johannes,' had a dog 'who was the
Devil'; and that he twice made his escape from impending imprisonment, on one occasion from 'our town of
Wittenberg,' where 'the excellent prince, Duke John,' had ordered his arrest, and on another from Nürnberg.
He adds that 'this conjurer Faustus, an infamous bestia, a cloaca of many devils,' boasted that all the victories
gained by the Imperial armies in Italy were due to his magic, 'which,' adds Manlius, 'for the sake of the young,
lest they should at once give credit to such fellows,' 'was the emptiest of lies.' Melanchthon, who twice
introduces an anecdote of 'Faustus' into his commentaries on the Gospels52, is likewise said to mention him in
his letters; but the passage has not proved discoverable. On the other hand, in Luther's Table-Talk
(Tischreden), published posthumously in 1566, it is stated that the conversation one evening at supper turned
on a necromant called Faustus, whereupon Dr. Martin solemnly said: 'The Devil doth not use the services of
the magicians against me: had he been able and strong enough to do harm to me, he would have done so long
ago. He has in truth more than once had me by the head; but yet he was constrained to let me go.' This shows
that the name of Faustus was well known at Wittenberg, and confirms the statement of his visit there
attributed by Manlius to Melanchthon, whose own residence at Wittenberg lasted from 1518 to his death in
1560. Shortly after this, in 1561, the learned Conrad Gesner mentions Faust as a magician of the kind which
had its origin at Salamanca, and called fahrende Schidler, and as a personage whose fame was extra-ordinary

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and who died 'not so very long since.' The next witness is the worthy and liberal-minded Wierus, in an
addition to whose work, De praestigiis daemonum, &c., bearing date 1583, are found copied the statements
reported by Manlius concerning the university studies and death of Faustus, and it is stated (possibly on the
authority of Begardi) that Faustus practised magic shortly before 1540 in different parts of Germany. Wierus
adds some stories of the conjurer's tricks, of one of which the scene is laid at Batenberg on the Maas, and of
another at Goslar in the Harz. The Batenberg story is related on the personal authority of the chaplain, 'Dr.
Johann Dorst,' who was the subject of the experiment (he was induced to shave himself by a fomentation of
arsenic instead of a razor, and the consequences were very unpleasant). Another story is likewise given by
Wierus, on the authority of a man 'mihi non incognitus,' to whom in it an insulting speech is made by Faustus.

The theologian, Heinrich Bullinger, who died in 1575, in his work against the Black Art speaks of the
necromant Faustus as having lived 'in our times'; and in 1570 Bullinger's son-in-law, Ludwig Lavater, refers
to the marvellous stories about the magical arts of 'the German Faustus.' The so-called Zimnmern Chronicle,
of about the year 1565, mentions the death of Faustus, the marvellous nigromanta, as having occurred about
the year 1539 not far from Staufen in Breisgau. In 1568 Andreas Hondorff, in his Promptuarium Exemplorum,
reproduces the statements in Manlius as to Johannes Faustus' visits to Nürnberg and Wittenberg, and as to his
death in a Württemberg village; and they again reappear in a work (1615) by the learned jurist, Philip
Camerarius, the son of the Joachim cited above, who says that he has 'heard many proofs of Johann Faust's
eminence in magic from persons who were well acquainted with that impostor,' and tells a story (which
afterwards reappeared in the Faustbuch) of his conjuring up a vine full of grapes in the middle of winter, and
deluding the company in the manner in which Mephistophiles befools the students at the close of the scene in
the Cellar in Goethe's play. It is necessary to pass by several other references to Faustus dating from the years
1569 to 1582, including quite a collection of stories concerning him, illustrated by woodcuts and claiming a
Nürnberg origin, which was completed in 157053. In 1583, when the name of Dr. Faustus is found in the
Onomasticon of the learned Brandenburg Court physician, Leonhart Thurneysser zum Thurn, it likewise
found its way, with that of Agrippa, into a diplomatic report of the nuncio Minucci to Duke William of
Bavaria concerning the condition of things brought about in the archbishopric of Cologne by the revolt of the
Archbishop Gebhard Truchsess, whose heretical predecessor, Hermann von Wied, is there stated to have
patronized and followed the instruction of these magicians at the time of his apostasy. In 1585 appeared the
Christian Considerations on Magic of Augustine Lercheimer, a pupil of Melanchthon, in which occur several
notices of Faustus, doubtless of Wittenberg origin. Lercheimer calls him 'Johann Faust of Knuitlingen,' and
tells stories of his doings at Wittenberg, at Salzburg, and at 'M.' (which Düntzer conjectures to be
Magdeburg). He relates an interview between Faustus and Melanchthon, with a repartee of the divine to the
vapourings of the sorcerer in Luther's most robust style, and gives the story of the attempted conversion of
Faustus by an old pious man, which found its way, together with some of Lercheimer's tales about other
conjurers, into the Faustbuch, and thence into Marlowe's play54.

We are now near the date at which the story of Doctor Faustus was to be made the theme of a popular
storybook, and near the end of the list of notices possessing more or less value as historical evidence of the
actual man. To this list may perhaps be added the statement cited from an old Erfurt chronicle by a later
author, Motschmann, in his Erfordia Literata Continuata, as to the attempted conversion of Dr. Faust at Erfurt
by the Guardian of the Franciscans, Dr. Kling (who actually lived there from 1520 to 1556), of Faust's
recalcitrance, and of his consequent expulsion from the city55. Probably, however, this incident was borrowed
by the compiler of the old chronicle from an episode in the later edition of the popular story-book with which
it almost verbatim agrees. The first edition of the storybook was, as will be immediately seen, published in
1587; and the statement in its Second Preface ('to the Christian Reader'), that Dr. Johann Faust 'lived within
the memory of men,' is the last of such notices of him appealing to contemporary evidence as appear to be
discoverable. Gradually, doubts as to his historic existence began to spread; nor was it till, nearly a century
after the first publication of the story-book, the Wittenberg theologian, Johann Neumann, had in his
Disquisitio historica de Fausto praestigiatore (1683) reviewed the evidence on the subject, that further
historical notices of the hero of so vast a body of legend were thought worth discovering56.

7
The writer of this story-book annotates the account of Faustus' dealings with Sultan Soliman (chap. xxvi) by
the remark that 'Solimannus began his reign in 1519'; and it is therefore clear that he considers the life of
Faustus to have been spent in the earlier half, and partly in the first quarter, of the sixteenth century. This
agrees with the evidence as to chronology already cited, as well as with the dates on the wall at Leipzig, and
with those given by Widmann, the author of a later literary version of the legend. But Widmann's dates fail to
tally with the notices of Georgius Sabellicus or Faustus; and whether or not we assume him to have been a
different person from the real Doctor Johannes Faustus, it will be safe to assign the public life of the latter to
some time between the years 1510 and 1540. The places in which one or the other is stated to have made his
appearances are, as has been seen, numerous already in the historical notices, which likewise mention as such
Wulrzburg, Gotha, Meissen, and Prague; their number was largely increased by the legend, and was doubtless
in the case of the actual Faustus very large and multifarious. It has even been thought possible to distinguish
between an Upper-Rhine, a Wittenberg, and an Erfurt Faust tradition; the former two being on the whole
unfriendly to Faust, who at Wittenberg was asserted to have been born and to have died in the South-West,
Melanchthon's country, while the humanistic circles at Erfurt had been favourably impressed by him57.

Such comment as appears requisite in the case of one or two of these places will be made below, after some of
the variations offered by the legend have been noticed. It may here be added, that the various writings on
magic attributed to the actual Dr. Faustus are all palpable forgeries. These tractates, of which the earliest is the
famous 'Doctor Faustus' Triple Charm of Hell' (Dreifacher Hollenzwang), pretending to have been printed at
Lyons in 1469, begin with the end of the sixteenth, or the early part of the seventeenth century, and continue
into the eighteenth58. The name of Faustus had by this time become, in one way or another, indispensable for
every publication of the sort. Nor, on the other hand, will any value be attached to the assertion by Widmann
in a passage of his commentary59, that he is citing rhymes composed by Dr. Faustus himself, when he quotes
some verses developing in German the sentiment:

'Credite mortales, noctis potatio mors est;'

(which verses Dr. Faustus, he aserts, bore as his symbolum or motto when a student of medicine)—and a Latin
distich, with its German translation, impressing a similar maxim and said to have been inscribed by Dr.
Faustus 'in a physic book.' Almost as readily might we regard the Doctor's narrative of his journey among the
stars, which the old Faustbuch (chap. xxv) professes to copy from a manuscript written by Faustus himself,
and dedicated to his friend Jonas Victor, a physician of Leipzig—or his second Contract with the Devil, which
'was found left behind him after his death'—as genuine documents. Lastly, the personal appearance of the man
must be left to the imagination, to which faculty doubtless already Rembrandt owed his conception of the
famous magician, apparently varied by the great painter in at least three several etchings60.

In the latter part of the sixteenth century the name and story of Dr. Faustus had thus, in Germany and its
vicinity, become typical of the figure and career of the strolling magician, who after selling his soul to the Evil
One and thus acquiring the supernatural powers of which he gave evidence in the practice of his arts, had to
pay the penalty of his bargain in a violent death. They were at the same time the name and story, not indeed of
the last of the necromants, astrologers, and alchemists, but of the last of the cosmopolitan type of scholastici
vagantes famed for their magical powers and doings. And thus it came to pass that all the wonderful tales
which—some of them for centuries—had floated about among the people were fathered upon this the last
representative of the mediaeval magicians. There is accordingly hardly one, if any, incident or feature in the
legend of Faustus to which a parallel may not be found in one or more of the legends of his predecessors. His
tricks are the old tricks; his adventures the old adventures; his canine companion is the dog of Agrippa and
Friar Bungay; his death is the magician's traditional doom. Hence too the double nature of the purpose of
Faustus' contract with the Devil. It is not knowledge only, or pleasure only, but both ends intermixed, to
compass which he barters his soul. But the sixteenth century impresses a character of its own—and this in
more than one respect—upon its condensation into a single collective legend of all these contributory stories.
In the first place, the colour of the Faust legend is altogether anti-Papal or anti-Roman; for the age of the

8
Reformation delights in casting derision upon monks and priests, upon cardinals and upon the Pope himself.
Yet this age started violently back from the threshold of rationalism to which it had been brought so near; and
as there has never been a firmer believer in the Devil than was Luther himself, so the fancy of the infernal
compact never flourished with more vital vigour than in these times, when it was by no means confined to the
uses of fiction61. It was an age which, notwithstanding the 'Epicurean' elements in it, held most devoutly the
doctrine of eternal punishment, and entertained no doubts as to the inevitable consequences of an obstinate
revolt against the ordinances of religion. The greater seriousness distinguishing the age of the Reformation
from those which had preceded it, gives a tragic dignity to its conception of the revolt of a human being
against his God, and invests the spirit of such a defiance with what has been truly called a Titanic character62.
The individual is contending against the Divine Order of things; and thus the legend of Faustus begins to
acquire a significance, which later poetic genius was to develop, in a sense resembling that of the ancient
Prometheus myth63.

The first, so far as we know, and for the purpose of the present inquiry the one important, form in which the
legend of Faustus made its appearance in literature is the 'Historia of Dr. Johann Faust, the widely-noised
conjurer and master of the Black Art: How he sold himself to the Devil against a fixed time: What in the
meanwhile were the strange adventures he witnessed, himself set on foot and practised, until at last he
received his well-merited reward. Mostly collected and put in print from his own writings left by him, as a
terrific instance and horrible example, and as a friendly warning to all arrogant, insolent-minded and godless
men'; with the motto from the Epistle of St. James (iv. 7): 'Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he
will flee from you.' This book, 'printed at Frankfort-on-the-Main by Johann Spies, in the year 1587,' is the
editio princeps of the famous Faustbuch (as it is usually called, and as I have called it in the present volume),
on an early English version of which Marlowe founded his tragedy. The printer, in his Preface, states that the
story was 'recently communicated and sent' to him 'through a good friend from Speyer' (in the Rhenish
Palatinate).

Of this edition a copy is preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna; four other copies however are said to
exist, and one of these, from Prince Stolberg's library at Wernigerode, was exhibited at Frankfort in 189364. A
reprint of the editio princeps, of which only a single copy is extant, appeared at Hamburg in 1587. A second
enlarged edition of the same year exists in two copies, one at Ulm and another at Wolfenbüttel; it differs to
some extent in arrangernent, and is enlarged by some additional stories taken from Lercheimer. Three or more
editions, one at least of which is a reprint of the editio princeps, exist of the year 1588; one of 1589; and one
of 1590, which contains six additional chapters, taken from the old Erfurt Chronicle already mentioned, or (as
seems more probable) taken by the Chronicle from this edition of the Faustbuch. There exist, or are
mentioned, a number of later editions, among which the rhymed version of 1597 will be mentioned below,
while the edition of 1598 is noticeable as professing in its title (for the book itself has not been discovered) to
narrate the doings of the three famous conjurers, Dr. Johann Faust, Christophorus Wagner, and Jacobus
Scholtus. Of Wagner we shall hear more; 'Scholtus' is another form of Schotus, who on the title of the
Wagnerbuch adverted to below appears as its author under the name of Fridericus Schotus Tolet (i.e.
Toletanus, of Toledo)—the name of a real man; for the late Professor Gindely discovered notices of an
alchemist named Scotus, who practised his art in the Netherlands, at Prague, and in different parts of Germany
early in the seventeenth century65.

The genesis of the Faustbuch, in itself a most attractive subject of study, has been discussed with remarkable
vigour and acumen by an eminent literary critic of our day66. In Herman Grimm's opinion the reader must, on
the first perusal of the book, be struck by the difference in the treatment of its various parts, and will be unable
to avoid the conclusion that he has before him a nucleus originally simple, but surrounded by manifold
additions. Herman Grimm finds the first substance of the story in the traditions concerning Georgius Faustus
(of whom he thinks Dr. Johannes Faustus was only a mythical transformation). The materials of the chief
accretions he believes the author of the Faustbuch to have taken from several sources, to most of which
reference has been made in this sketch. The Confessions of St. Augustine, and the references contained in

9
them to the Manichaean Bishop Faustus, are held to have suggested, if not a kind of designed contrast
throughout the course of the narrative, at least a pointed allusion to more than one Manichaean doctrine or
notion—the eternity of matter, the ineptitude of marriage. Another source is thought discoverable in the stories
concerning the Parisian scholar, Faustus Andrelinus, to whom the Faustbuch and his hero are supposed to owe
features recalling the least respectable associations of the Latin Quarter. Particular passages may, in addition,
have been suggested by the author's reading, such as it was. As a rule, his 'facts' in natural history, astronomy,
and physiography seem to have come at second—or third—hand; mainly from M. (Meister) Elucidarius, 'a brief
and merry review of all sorts of creatures of God,' printed at Frankfort in 1549, 1572, 1584, and 1589. This
work was an enlargement of the Lucidarius, a popular encyclopaedia of 'science' arranged in the well-known
question-and-answer form, and familiar to the households of Germany and other countries of the fifteenth
century67. The dry data of the expeditions made by Faustus through the air may be a rude imitation of the
aerial journey in Lucian68; but such geographical knowledge as is displayed in them is likewise thought to be
traceable to contemporary sources easy of access69. He seems further to have put under contribution Agricola,
Sebastian Brant, and the dictionary of Petrus Dasypodius70.

These conjectures may be more or less exact. With regard to the most interesting among them, there can be no
doubt but that, under various names, Manichaeanism lurked in much of the speculation of the later, as well as
of the earlier, Middle Ages; nor was it only at Paris that in the Renascence age students led the lives of
libertines. But Herman Grimm's general conception of the composite character of the Faustbuch is
unmistakably sound, and supplies one more reason for the extraordinarily wide popularity to which this book
and its story attained. This conception does not necessarily conflict with the fact that the tendency of the
author or compiler is unmistakably one-sided, i.e. Lutheran71.

The popularity of the Faustbuch was in 1593 interfered with by the publication of the Wagnerbuch—an
imitation or continuation professing to give an account of the doings of Doctor Faustus' famulus Wagner,
whose adventures were of course a mere copy or expansion of those of Doctor Faustus himself72, the wonders
of the New World being laid under contribution already in the first edition. Meanwhile, already in 1588 had
appeared a rhymed version of the Faustbuch73. The earliest German popular ballads on the story of Faustus,
including one which had a distinguished literary history, do not call for mention here, as not one of them can
safely be ascribed to a century earlier than the eighteenth74. The supposition favoured by Simrock, that in
Germany the subject had likewise at once been treated in a dramatic shape, seems to rest on a mistake75. A
notice in the protocols of the Senate of the University of Tübingen, stating that by resolution of the Senate,
dated April 18, 1587, the printer Hock and the 'autores of the historia Fausti' were to be arrested, and that the
'autor comoediae nuper habitae' was to be put in the carcer (university prison), was misread76, so as to
identify the comedy with the history. What the comedy was is unknown; the 'historia Fausti' must have been
the rhymed version of the Faustbuch, published by Alexander Hock at Tubingen early in 1588 (with the date
1587). Whether a non-extant Latin drama, 'Justi Placidii: Infelix prudentia' (Leipzig, 1598) dealt with the
story of Faustus, or some other theme of the same kind, is unknown77; and it is necessary to leave aside any
mention of the seventeenth-century writers who treated one or more of the motives of the Faust story apart
from its proper framework78. No play ori the subject of Faustus can be shown to have been produced on the
German stage before the Tragoedia von Dr. Faust, acted by the 'English Comedians' at Dresden in 1626; and
this was presumably Marlowe's79. From the latter part of the seventeenth century onwards, the story of Faust
frequently appeared on the German stage—the first known instance being at Danzig in 1668, from which year
we have the report of a performance recalling in its main features Marlowe and the Faustbuch80. Again, in
1696, 'German comedians' performed a 'terrible tragedy' of Doctor Faustus at Basel in 1696; and the
comedians of the Elector of Bavaria represented the Life of Dr. Faustus at Nürnberg, in 1748 'with
Hanns-Wurst,' and in 1752 'with Arlequin81' Out of these popular dramas arose in its turn that long succession
of popular puppet-plays on the story of Faustus, which forms the most interesting series of a branch of the
German popular drama deserving, for reasons which cannot here be detailed, the attention of all students of
the history of dramatic literature or of the German national life82.

10
Meanwhile the legend of Faustus in its narrative form had courted a new class of readers in Germany, since in
1599 G. R. Widmann, a literary man of much learning (including a good deal that was useless and even, under
the circumstances, pernicious) and an ardent Lutheran, had published his greatly enlarged version of the story,
accompanied by a commentary replete with examples and precepts more or less directly suggested by the text.
This didactic version of the story was, in 1674, unctuously elaborated by a doctor of medicine, J. N. Pfitzer,
and a doctor of divinity, C. W. Platz; and their version again was condensed into a shorter and more popular
form in 1725, by an author who called himself 'one of Christian purpose' ('ein Christlich Meynender'), under
which demure designation he is known in the bibliography of the subject. This book is of importance, as the
first smaller book on the Faust-legend in its most elaborate version, and as one which, together with its larger
original, was read by Goethe in his youth83. It went through several editions, and is said still to be sold at fairs
in Germany; and with it the growth of the popular legend as such in Germany may be held practically to
close84.

But from its native Germany the legend, as put into some sort of literary shape by the printer Spies in 1587,
had with extraordinary rapidity passed into the popular literature of other countries. A Low-German version
had appeared at Lubeck in 1588; and thus it was easy for a Dutch translation to follow in 1592, which
contains no additions of note except a characteristic precision in the matter of dates—informing the reader, for
instance, that the Evil One carried off Faustus in the night from the 23rd to the 24th of October, 1538,
between the hours of 12 and I a.m. A close French translation had been put forth already in 1589 by Victor
Palma Cayet, whose end, according to tradition, was the same as that of Doctor Faustus himself85. There
seems a trace, though an uncertain one, of the existence, in Holberg's day, of a popular version of the legend
on the Danish stage: on the other hand, there can be little doubt that the Polish story of Twardowski, already
noticed, was elaborated with the help of the German Faustbuch. A Czechish puppet-play on the subject is also
mentioned, but without a date86. The Wagnerbuch was in its turn translated and adapted in several Dutch
editions, the interest excited by it in the Netherlands doubtless arising from the circumstances that it professed
to be by a Spanish author, and that the scene of its adventures was mostly laid in Spain. In France, Wagner
never attained to a similar popularity.

At last we come to what for us possesses a more direct importance, the English versions of the legend of
Doctor Faustus; among which it will be convenient to mention first Marlowe's tragedy itself. Now, though the
earliest extant edition of this tragedy is the quarto of 1604, we find the following entry in the Registers of the
Stationers' Company of London under the date of January 7, 1600—i.e. 1601 N.S.:

'7 Januarij

Thomas Bushell Entred for his copye under the handes of master Doctor BARLOWE and the
Wardens a booke called the plaie of Doctor FAUSTUS87

And between six and seven years before this, under the date of September 30, 1594, we find in Henslowe's
Diary88 the first of a long series of notices of his share of receipts from this play. The first notice is a
remarkable one, for it appears that Henslowe on this occasion:

'Rd at Doctor Fostose.… iijli xjj,s

being the largest sum except one which, so far as I have observed, Henslowe ever notes as received by him as
his share after a performance89. Between this date and the end of October, 1597, Henslowe has not less than
twenty-three notices of receipts 'at Doctor Faustus,' most of which attest the popularity of the play, though by
December, 1596, the receipts sink to 'ix l,' and by the January following to 'vs,' till one more repetition—in
October—appears to have brought in nothing at all. Henslowe's entries begin as far back as February, 1592
(N.S.), when the first play entered is 'fryer bacone.' But Doctor Faustus, having in all probability been written
for the Lord Admiral's company90, with which so far as is known Henslowe did not become connected till the

11
summer of 1594, is not mentioned by him as acted before September 30 of that year, and the amount of the
receipts on this occasion certainly points to the performance having proved specially attractive. Henslowe
does not, however, append to his mention of it the letters ne (new), as he usually does in the case of plays
performed for the first time; and it is in itself quite unlikely, even supposing Doctor Faustus not to have been
brought out in Marlowe's lifetime, that an unacted posthumous play by him should not have been performed
till more than a year after his death, which occurred on June 1, 1593. The conjecture is therefore not
hazardous, that Henslowe and his company took advantage of the notoriety which that death had attracted to
'revive,' together with other plays by the same author91, a play which had for some time previously remained
un—-acted, and which was not yet on sale as a book; and that it was already on this occasion—in September,
1594—produced with additions from other hands. Certainly, the reference to Doctor Lopez (xi. 46) would have
been specially effective in September, 1594, as he had been executed not longer ago than the previous June
for having conspired to poison the Queen92; and the passage could. not have been written at a much earlier
date. Again, since a series of passages and phrases occur in the old Taming of a Shrew (a play entered in the
Stationers' Registers in 1594, and very probably produced on the stage before August 23, 158993), which
imitated certain other passages and phrases to be found in the quarto of Doctor Faustus of 1604, this would
show that Marlowe's play was on the stage by 1594 certainly, and in all probability by 1589. For the contrary
assumption, that the passages in question, and those in Tamburlaine which resemble others in the old Taming
of a Shrew, were imitated by Marlowe from that work, seems too preposterous to require discussion. It
remains, on the other hand, possible that certain comic passages which formed part of the earliest additions to
Doctor Faustus were so imitated; but this, as shown by Mr. Fleay, could hardly have been done after it had, in
1589, been satirised by Greene and Nash for its plagiarisms from plays produced by the Admiral's men94.

This would not in itself necessarily take us very far back95. But already in the year 1589 there occurs another
entry in the Stationers' Registers, dated 'ultimo die Februarij' (O.S. 1588):

'Ric. Jones Allowed vnto him for his Copie, A ballad of the life and deathe of Doctor
FFAUSTUS the great Cunngerer. Allowed vnder the hand of the Bishop of LONDON, and
master warden Denhams hand beinge to the copie … vjd.'96

There is, of course, nothing to prove that the ballad referred to in this entry was later in date than Marlowe's
play, on which it need not have been founded. For there are certain discrepancies between the form in which
the ballad has been preserved and the tragedy—though I think too much importance has been attached to these
differences; and it is quite clear that the writer of the ballad in its existing form was acquainted with the
English translation of the Faustbuch97. But, whether or not the ballad entered in 1589 was identical with that
which we now have, it is certainly more probable that it should have been founded on the play than vice
versa. The usual process of the Elizabethan age was no doubt for dramas to be founded on favourite stories,
and for popular ballads or other brief treatments of the kind to summarize the incidents and morals of
favourite plays98; and such was probably also the order of sequence in the present instance, though the
ballad-writer also refreshed his remembrance of the prose story.

This would place the probable date of the first performance of Marlowe's tragedy some time before February,
1589, and very possibly in 1588, by which year Tamburlaine had certainly been performed99. Such internal
evidence as the play of Doctor Faustus furnishes is in accordance with this assumption. This conclusion
agrees with that at which Mr. Fleay has arrived by a combination of arguments which he has kindly permitted
me to publish in his own words in an Appendix to this Introduction100. It has been pointed out with some
force101 that the reference to the Prince of Parma as the oppressor of the Netherlands (i. 91), assuming it, as
there is no reason to doubt, to have formed part of the original text, would best suit the time when 'this
Prince's hand was still lying heavy upon them,' viz. before 1590, in which year his attention began to be
principally turned to France, and at all events before his death in December, 1592. On the other hand, the
reference to the destruction of the Antwerp bridge (i. 94) shows that the play must have been written after the
spring of 1585. The same critic who makes the above suggestion seeks an allusion in the passage (i. 80-3),

12
'I'll have them fly to India for gold,' &c.,

to the entertainment given by Thomas Cavendish to Queen Elizabeth on shipboard after his return in the
autumn of 1588102 from his voyage round the world; and such may possibly be the case, though the passage
does not require to be interpreted as containing any special allusion. It is of more importance that the evidence
of versification points to Doctor Faustus having been the play composed by Marlowe next after Tamburlaine.
Collier has shown103 how the habit of 'terminating nearly all the lines with monosyllables,' and letting 'each
line run as if a rhyme were wanting' (so that, it may be added, the verse occasionally, as it were, slips into
rhyme104), is exchanged for greater variety of endings to the lines in the middle, and for still greater towards
the conclusion of the tragedy; and that, though of course it is impossible to speak decisively in the case of a
play which we have in a form that has undergone so many alternations, the appearance is as if the poet had
'improved his blank-verse as he proceeded.' I think that in Edward II, which is clearly one of Marlowe's latest
works, the versification may fairly be described as freer throughout; and the number of double-endings in that
play is twice as great as that in either Part of Tamburlaine, and much further exceeds that in Doctor
Faustus.105…

Notes

1 Cf. Stieve, u. s. Riezler, in his Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Bayern (of which Stieve's essay is a
review), is inclined to attribute the revival of the popular belief in witchcraft to the two earlier special causes
mentioned in the text.

2 Gardiner, Personal Government of Charles I, i. 28, 29.

3 Queen Elizabeth, Mr. Gardiner might have added, made no pretence to superior insight. Though
immediately upon her accession Bonner, as Bishop of London, was ordered by the Council to proceed against
certain men who practised conjuring in the City, Elizabeth's confidential maid, Blanche Parry, was an adept in
the art; and the Queen declined to be crowned till the notorious Dr. Dee had chosen a lucky day. (See Bridgett
and Knox, The True Story of the Catholic Hierarchy, p. 83, citing Miss Strickland.)

4Discovery of Witchcraft; and also A Discourse upon Divels and Spirits; both of which are several times cited
in the notes in this volume. George Giffard's Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcraft (reprinted in the
Percy Society's Publications, vol. viii) is likewise noticeable as showing a critical and temper-ate spirit in the
author, who however does not present himself as a disbeliever in the superstition itself.

5 From Harsnet's book, Shakespeare took some hints for the scene in King Lear (iii. 4) where Edgar appears
'disguised as a madman.'

6By Ford, Dekker, and, according to the publishers, William Rowley (not Samuel, who made 'additions' to
Doctor Faustus).

7 See ii. 1:

'What can this witch, this wizard, or old trot

Do by enchantment, or by magic spell?
Such as profess that art should be deep scholars.
What reading can this simple woman have?'

8 See a notice in Athenceum, August 24, 1889, of vols, ii and iii of Middlesex County Records, edited by J. C.
Jeaffreson.

13
9 See Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, ii.10.

10 See Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, i. 267.

11See especially Macbeth; Middleton's The Witch; and Heywood and Brome's The Lancashire Witches,
besides Jonson's The Sad Shepherd and The Mask of Queens.

12 See Tomkis's Albumazar, which is not, however, original.

13See above all Jonson's The Alchemist, where the treatment is of course satirical, as it is in Fletcher's The
Chances.

14 Archimago in The Faerie Queene.

15 So in C. Toumeur's The Atheist's Tragedie, iv. 3.

16See Jonson's The Devil is an Ass. The Birth of Merlin, which was published in 1662 as the work of
Shakespeare and William Rowley, is a different kind of play, which of course follows the old legend. The
notion of a contract with the Devil is introduced by Dryden into his earliest comedy, The Wild Gallant (1673).

17The legend of Peter Fabel of Edmonton, who sells his soul to the Evil One, but contrives to outwit the
purchaser, is said to be identical with the German popular story, afterwards turned into English verse under
the title of 'The Smith of Apolda,' and thus published in The Original, and reprinted in Thoms' Lays and
Legends of Germany. This I have not at hand; but it is noticeable that in the English legend the hero is a
university man (of the age of Henry VII)—educated, I regret to say, at the most ancient College in Cambridge.

18Holinshed; who, in one of his versions of the end of Joan, states that she was found, at the inquiry
conducted by the Bishop of Beauvais, 'all damnably faithless to be a pernicious instrument to hostility and
bloodshed in devilish witcheraft and sorcery.'

19Dr. C. H. Herford, in his Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century
(1886), p. 165.

20 See his Der Fahrende Schüler mit dem Teufelspannen ('The Scholar-Errant with the Devil's bans').

21The constitutiones of the Elector Augustus were drawn up on the basis of the Carolina (the code of the
Emperor Charles IV, who appears occasionally to have patronized magicians). See R. Calinich, Aus dem
sechszehnten Jahrhundert, 289, 290.

22See Scheible's Kloster, ii. 187-205; and cf C. Binz, Doctor Johann Weyer, ein rheinischer Arzt, der erste
Bekimpfer des Hexenwesens (Bonn, 1885).

23See ibid., v. 263-348; and compare Duntzer, Die Sage von Faust, 73. Lercheimer protests against the
prevalent treatment of witches, who, he says, should be taken to the physician and the sacristan rather than to
the judge and the magistrate. He, however, advocates a more rigorous treatment of sorcerers, conjurers, and
jugglers than they have hitherto received.

24 See ibid., ii. 218-32.

25 See ibid., 233-42.

14
26 See Scheible's Kloster, v. 575-637.…

27 See ibid., xi. 526 seqq. Mr. Sutherland-Edwards has introduced the Polish Faust to English readers in a
paper in Macmillan's Magazine, July, 1876. The origines of the local Faust-legend at Prague seem to connect
themselves with the patronage extended to alchemy about the period 1460-7 by one of the Dukes of Troppau,
to whom the so-called Faust-house in Vysherad belonged. See E. Kraus, Das böhmische Puppenspiel vom
Doctor Faust (Breslau, 1891).

28 The literature on Faust and the Faust-legend has swelled to proportions so enormous that even an
enumeration of its principal works is quite out of question here. Of the earlier of these, many are collected in
vols. ii, iii, v, and xi of Scheible's Kloster, an uncouth repertory of odd learning indispensable to every student
of the subject; but a more complete enumeration appears to be contained in K. Engel's Zusainmenstellung der
Faustschriften vom 16. Jahrh. bis Mitte 1844 (2nd ed., Oldenburg, 1884). See also Dr. A. Tille, Die
Faustsplitter in der Literatur des 16. bis 18. Jahrh. (Weimar, 1898); and cf. the earlier portions of the
catalogue of the interesting exhibition of MSS., printed works, pictures, and musical compositions connected
with the legend of Faust and its poetical treatment, held at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, August-November, 1893.
Much of the information summarized in my text is taken from Duintzer's Die Sage von Doctor Johannes
Faust, printed both in Scheible, vol. v, and in a separate edition, or from Baron von Reichlin-Meldegg's Die
deutschen Volkshücher von Johann Faust und Christoph Wagner, &c., printed in Scheible, vol. xi; but I have
also referred to a variety of other authorities.

29Sulla gave to one of his sons the praenomen of Faustus, which no man is known to have borne before him.
A celebrated 'Faustus' at the other end of the series was Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), of whom a brief
account will be found in the late Mr. C. Beard's Hibbert Lectures On the Reformation of the Sixteenth
Century, &c., pp. 272-81. 'Faust' was certainly a praenomen in Germany as late as 1555, when a coat of arms
was granted by Charles V to 'Andreas Faust von Schorndorff.'

30See Dekker's Olde Fortunatus. As to the history of this Teutonic legend, and of the Volksbuch, based
apparently upon some Romance version of it, see C. H. Herford, u.s., pp. 203 seqq. and Appendix iii. Hans
Sachs has a 'Tragedia' on the same subject (1553). In one of the German puppet-plays on the story of Faustus,
the hero asks for a purse which shall never be empty—Fortunatus' purse. See Simrock, Faust, Das Volksbuch
und das Puppenspiel, 208. It may be mentioned that one of the interlocutors (the 'uplondyshman') in Barclay's
VIth Eclogue, imitated from Jo. Bapt. Mantuan, is named Faustus.

31 Mr. Sutherland-Edwards, I observe, thinks it 'just possible' that the printer may have been the father of the
professor of the Black Art. This superfluous suggestion does not absolutely disagree, but does not very well
tally, with the probable dates of the life and death of the conjurer. I may add that the anonymous author of an
unprinted Latin-Bohemian dictionary of the seventeenth century is stated to have, in his preface, identified not
only Faust with Fust, but Fust with Guttenberg; stating him to have assumed the latter name in memory of the
Kuttenberg near Prague, on taking refuge at Strassburg about the year 1421, at the time of the Hussite
troubles. Johann von Kuttenberg is the hero of a long modern Bohemian poem, by J. E. Vocel (1846). (Kraus,
u. s., pp. 8, 12.)

32 Mr. Sutherland-Edwards has, however, not shrunk from the attempt; see his Faust Legend (1886), where he
cites the Abbé Maistre's St. Clément á Rome (Paris, 1883), which I have not seen. The necessary references
will be found in the article 'Clement (Romain)' in the Nouvelle Biographie Generale, vol. x; see also Bishop
Lightfoot's St. Clement of Rome, an Appendix (1877), p. 262 and note. Mr. Sutherland-Edwards notices that
Bodin in his Daemonomania (lib. ii, cap. vi) states Simon Magus to have changed the face of Faustinianus by
magic, and refers to the history of St. Clement as his authority. Faustinianus is said to have been the name of
St. Clement's brother. The story of Simon Magus 'absorbing' a wagon loaded with hay, like Faust in
Faustbuch, is told by Bodin in his Opinionunm Joannis Wieri Confutatio, p. 463. As to Simon Magus and

15
Helena, see Helen in Dramatis Personae of Doctor Faustus.

33 See below as to Herman Grimm's view concerning the relation between the Manichaean controversy and
the Faustbuch. The passages in the Confessions referring to Bishop Faustus are in bk. v, chaps. iii, vi, vii; see
also the opening of St. Augustini contra Faustum Manichaeum, lib. xxxii. Cf. Hagenbach's Kirchengeschichte
(3rd ed.), i. 57, and Neander's Church History (Engl. tr.), iii. 503. A mention of this Faustus by Sebastian
Frank (1531) is quoted by Scheible, ii. 271, in a way likely to mislead.

34 Sabaeus is of course = Arabian.

35A copy of this is in the possession of Professor Dowden, who was kind enough to communicate to me the
above particulars, with a reference concerning 'Fausto Sabeo' to Roscoe's Leo X, ii. 279 (Bohn).

36See Herman Grimm, "Die Entstehung des Volksbuches vom Dr. Faust," in Preussische Jahrbicher, vol.
xlvii. (1881) pp. 454-7, where, as will be seen, the author of the German Faustbuch is supposed to have taken
over some features of this Faustus Andrelinus from the Letters of Erasmus.

37 See Herman Grimm, ibid., 447-8. The name of Goethe's Faust is Henry; because neither in Goethe's day nor
at the present could a German reader or audience tolerate a 'Johann' as taking part in any but a comic
love-scene.—For speculations as to Goethe's reasons for substituting 'Henry' see Goethe-Jahrbuch, viii. (1887)
231-2.—'Johannes' had, as readers of Quentin Durward will remember, been preceded at the Court of France
by another celebrated Italian astrologer in the days of Lewis XI. See Scott's note on Martius Galeotti, who was
a native of Narni in Umbria, and had formerly served King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary.

38 With this 'card' it may be worth while to compare the phrases in the letter sent by Giordano Bruno to the
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford by way of introduction, and printed in the Explicatio xxx
Sigillarum (see J. A. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy, vii. 156): 'Philotheus Jordanus Brunus Nolanus
magis laboratae theologiae doctor, purioris et innocuae sapientiae professor. In praecipuis Europae academiis
notus, probatus et honorifice exceptus philosophus, etc.' A quasi-coincidence will be noticed between the
'philotheus' in this passage and the 'Helmitheus' of Mutianus. Cf. the passage in Shirley's The Bird in a Cage
(1632), ii. 1, as to 'the juggling mountebanks,' of whom Italy is there said to be full:

'here an empiric dares boast

Himself a Paracelsian, and daub
Each post with printed follies.'

39Hemithea, it may be worth noticing, was a goddess who, as Diodorus Siculus states, in the Thracian
Chersonese exercised the same miraculous powers as those ascribed to Isis. See Maury, u.s., 239.

40See Tille, Faustsplitter, No. 4 (p. 6), from the Oberbayerisches Archiv für vaterldndische Geschichte, vol.
xxxii (Munich, 1872-3). This notice gives colour to Duntzer's otherwise unnecessary emendation
'Hedelbergensis' (of Heidelberg). See Herman Grimm, u.s., p. 776.

41
Moreover, Herman Grimm, u.s., p. 449, may be right in supposing 'secundus' to be in relation to Simon
Magus, who was magus primus.

42Part I, chap. iv; Scheible's Kloster, ii. 297. The Enneades are a collection of treatises by Plotinus. H. Grimm
compares the line in Goethe's Faust, Part II, act iv, sc. 2:

'Der Necromant aus Norcia, der Sabiner.'

16
See above, p. Iviii, as to the Italian nationality of the magician Johannes.

43This hypothesis is most ably advocated by Professor Erich Schmidt in his essay Zur Vorgeschichte des
Goetheschen Faust (ii), in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, iii. (1882).

44These pictures are described and the inscriptions quoted in a note to Hayward's translation of Goethe's
Faust (6th edition), where the scene in Auerbach's Cellar is immortalized.

45See Vierteljahrschrift für Litteraturgeschichte, iii. (1890) 177-8. A facsimile of this entry was exhibited at
Frankfort.

46See G. Ellinger, 'Das Zeugniss des Camerarius uber Faust,' in Vierteljahrschrift für Litter aturgeschichte, ii.
314 seqq. (1889); cf. Goethe-Jahrbuch, x. 256. The letter of Camerarius first appeared in his collection
entitled Libellus Novus, &c., published at Leipzig in 1568, of which there is a copy in the Royal Library at
Berlin.

47See S. Szamatólski, Der historische Faust, in Vierteljahrschrift, u.s., 156-9; and cf. Faustsplitter, Nos. 6
seqq. for this and the subsequent notices.

48 … see Maury, u.s., 103, note 2, as to the supposed assumption by the Devil of the forms of animals.

49A German translation was published in 1566 at Frankfort by J. H. Ragor, under the title of Schone
ordentliche Gattierung allerley alten und neuen Exempel.

50 Melanchthon was born at Bretten in the Lower Palatinate.

51 This may indicate some connexion with the story of Twardowski, the 'Polish Faust'; though according to
Creizenach, in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vi. 585, the Cracow University registers have been searched
in vain for Faust's name.

52See the passages from Explicationum Melanchthoniarum in Evangelia Dominica, Parts II and IV (1594-5),
Faustspliter, Nos. 9 and 10. In the former, on St. Matthew iv, the attempt of Simon Magus to fly is mentioned,
and it is added; 'Faustus Venetiis etiam hoc tentavit. Sed male est allisus solo.' (This was afterwards repeated
by Lercheimer.) In the latter, on St. John iv, it is related, in illustration of the power of the Devil, how at
Vienna Faustus devoured another magician, who, a few days afterwards, was found in a cave.

53Nürnberger Faustgeschichten. Von Wilhelm Meyer aus Speyer. See Faustsplitter, No. 20 (p. 24), from the
Transactions of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences, 1895.

54There can be no doubt that Herman Grimm, u.s., p. 450-1, is correct in tracing the origin of the episode of
the old man to the passage in the Confessions of St. Augustine (iv. 5), where he mentions how he was warned
by a wise physician against his fondness for libri genethliacorum. Elsewhere (vii. 6) the name of this 'acutus
senex' is given as Vindicianus.

54 Compare An Old Man in Dramatis Personae of Doctor Faustus, and note to stage-direction before xiii. 36.

56 See W. Creizenach, u.s., vi. 583.

57 See W. Scherer's introduction to the reprint of Das lilteste Faustbuch (Berlin, 1884), ix, xiii. Scherer
considers that it was from the Upper-Rhine and Wittenberg sources that the author of the Faustbuch derived
his materials.

17
58See Reichlin-Meldegg, u.s., xi. 549 seqq.; and cf. the elaborate list of Dr. Faust's magical works, manuscript
and printed, in the Frankfort Catalogue, which includes a Passau MS. of the Hollenzwang of 1505, and a
seventeenth-century copy described by Goethe to Zelter in 1829. Much of this strange rubbish will be found in
Scheible's earlier volumes.

59 On Part I, chap. xiv; Scheible's Kloster, ii. 371, 372; compare Reichlin-Meldegg, ibid., xi. 726.

60 See Moehsen's statement in Scheible, ii. 254. A coarse, but telling, woodcut 'after Rembrandt' accompanies
this volume; and a reproduction of one of the etchings forms the frontispiece of the Frankfort Catalogue. Cf
also Erich Schmidt, in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, iii. (1882) 96-7.

61 See the notice in R. v. Mohl's account of the manners and behaviour of the students of the University of
Tübingen in the sixteenth century (p. 70, 2nd edition), as to the proceedings of the Senate against a student of
the name of Leipziger, said to have sold himself to the Devil when in want of 'a little money,' in the year 1596.
This curious incident is particularly apposite, on account of the connexion of Tubingen with the literary
history of the Faust legend to be noticed below. As to Luther's nocturnal disputation with the Evil One, and
the way in which it impressed itself on Roman Catholic minds, see Herman Grimm, u.s., p. 458 and note.

62 See Kuno Fischer, u.s., 65.

63I cannot help referring with astonishment to a passage touching upon this familiar parallel in Mr. W.
Watkiss Lloyd's interesting work, The Age of Pericles, i. 334—which passage must be left to the judgement of
other critics.

64 An exact and critical reprint of the editio princeps of the Faustbuch, with the variations of the edition of
1590, and Introduction and Notes, has been published by Dr. August Kiuhne, Zerbst, 1868. To this my
quotations refer, and not to Scheible's reprint in vol. ii of his Kloster, which is from the second edition,
likewise of the year 1587. See also the facsimile reprint, Das ailteste Faustbuch, published in 1884 as vol. ii
of the Deutsche Drucke iilterer Zeit, edited by W. Scherer, and accompanied by an admirably concise and
lucid Introduction. As to the enlarged edition of 1587, and one of 1588, see Th. Delius, Marlowe's Faustus
und seine Quelle (Bielefeld, 1881), pp. 5, 6, and cf. the Frankfort Catalogue, though this is seemingly not
quite complete. I regret not to have been able to consult the observations of the late Professor Zarncke on the
order of editions, in his introduction to Braune's reprint (1878), or his notes Zur Bibliographie des
Faustbuches in Berichte der Kon. Sdchsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (1888).

65See Kühne's Introduction, xviii-xx. This must be the 'Scoto' mentioned in Minucci's relation cited above, p.
lxvii.

66 In the essay in the Preussische Jahrbücher, already repeatedly cited.

67See S. Szamatólski, Kosmographisches aus dem Elucidarius, in Zu den Quellen des iltesten Faustbuches, in
Vierteljahrschrift far Literaturgeschichte, i. (1888) 161 seqq.

68 In the True History, the first of a long line of 'true histories.'

69 Cf. Hugo Hartmann, Faust's Reisen, in Vierteljahrschrift, &c., u.s., 183-9.

70Cf. L. Fraenkel and A. Bauer, Entlehnungen imältesten Faustbuch, in Vierteljahrschrift, &c., iv. (1891) 361
seqq.

18
71See Erich Schmidt in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, iii. 101 seqq., where the whole Faustbuch is admirably
analysed. Some curious parallels are adduced (iii. 113 note) from Luther's Tischreden.

72 Compare Wagner in notes on Dramatis Personae of Doctor Faustus.

73 Reprinted in Scheible's Kloster, xi. 1-211.

74 The ballad which describes itself as 'a broadside from Cologne' was reprinted in the famous collection, Des
Knaben Wunderhorn, by Arnim and Brentano, where it attracted the attention of Goethe, who briefly noticed
it in the Jenaische Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung. This production, which introduces the figure of the Good
Angel to be found in Marlowe, but neither in the Faustbuch nor in its English version, is printed in Scheible's
Kloster, ii. 120-3. On the whole subject of the popular German lyric literature concerning Dr. Faustus, see A.
Tille, Die deutschen Volkslieder vom Doctor Faust (Halle, 1890); and cf the Frankfort Catalogue, pp. 30-1.

75See W. Creizenach, Versuch einer Geschichte des Volksschauspiels vom Doctor Faust (Halle, 1878), 34-6,
and cf. Duntzer, Zu Marlowe's Faust, in Anglia, i. 44 seqq.

76 By Mohl, u.s., 57.

77See Creizenach, u.s., 36-40. The title Infelix Sapientia was afterwards taken by a popular puppet-play on
the story of Faustus.

78 See, however, Erich Schmidt, Zur Vorgeschichte des Goetheschen Fausts, iv, in Goethe-Jahrbuch, iv.
(1883) 128 seqq., and Zur Faustsage, in Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum und Litteratur, xxix. (1885), 100,
as to Johann Valentine Andreae and his remarkable allegory Turbo, sive moleste et frustra per cuncta
divagans ingenium (1601). In his dialogue Institutio magica pro curiosis Andreae actually introduces the
name 'Mephistopholes.'

79See Creizenach, u.s., 45. Cf. Cohn's Shakespeare in Germany, and Fleay's Life of Shakespeare, p. 310. I
cannot pretend to have been seriously shaken in the view indicated above by the very elaborate argument of
A. Bielschowsky, Das Alter der Faustspiele, in Vierteljahrschrift, &c., iv. (1891) 196 seqq., in favour of the
assumption of an earlier German dramatic treatment of the study of Faust, conceived independently of
Marlowe's tragedy and created in the shape of a play acted by the English Comedians in Germany.

80 Ibid., 47.

81Cf. Vierteljahrschrift, &c., iv. (1891) 157-9. As to the popularity of the Faust-legend in Saxony and Silesia
about the middle of the eighteenth century, see K. Burdach, Zur Geschichte der Faustsage, in
Vierteljahrschrift, &c., i. (1888) 9 seqq., 290.

82 For a history of this treatment of the Faust-legend, which possesses a special interest by reason of the
impression made by it upon Goethe in his youth, the reader must be referred to the work of W. Creizenach
cited in a previous note, to the Introduction to C. Engel's Das Volksschauspiel Doctor Johann Faust
(Oldenburg, 1874), where one of these plays is reprinted from the MS., and to Simrock's Faust, Das
Volksbuch und das Puppenspiel (Frankfort-on-the-Maine, 1877). In this last the endeavour—for which few
were qualified like Simrock—is made to restore the old puppet-play from memory and from the reports of
others. An English version of the German puppet-play of Doctor Faustus, as performed at Dresden so late as
1844, was published in 1893 as No. I of the Mediaeval Legends Series. In an altered form the puppet-play of
Faustus is said to be still performed on the most popular stages of this humble description. It notably
survived, or till recently survived, about Vienna and elsewhere in the Austrian dominions. See an interesting
paper in the Vienna Neue Freie Presse, September 13, 1890, Doctor Faust in Tirol und Steiermark, by A.

19
Tille.

83 Pfitzer's version, condensed by the 'Man of Christian Purpose,' contains in germ the episode of Gretchen.
But it is also familiar to the more sophisticated audiences of the Reichshauptstadt on the Spree. See Liubke's
elaborate article, Die Berliner Fassung des Puppenspiels vom Doctor Faust, in Zeitschrift für deutsches
Alterthum und deutsche Litteratur, vol. xxxi. (1887) 105 seqq.

84For a list of some narrative versions of the story of Doctor Faustus, current in Germany in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, see the Frankfort Catalogue. It begins with two books concerning his doings with
Marshal Luxembourg (see ante, liii-iv, and note).

85For a series of seventeenth-century editions of the French Histoire Prodigieuse et Lamentable de Jean
Fauste, and of other foreign versions of the story, see the Frankfort Catalogue.

86The Bohemian puppet-play, translated and discussed by E. Kraus (u.s.), is concluded by him to have been
based upon a German original, itself a revision, acted at Prague in the last quarter of the seventeenth century.

87 See Arber's Transcript of the Stationers' Registers, iii. 67 b.

88 Collier's edition, 42.

89 Oddly enough, 'the taner of Denmarke,' on account of which Henslowe, on May 23, 1592, received 'iijli xiijs
vjd' as his share, and which he marks as a new play, does not appear to have been repeated. Tamburlaine
brings in good sums on several occasions.

90 See Fleay's Life of Shakespeare, p. 97.

91The Jew of Malta, The Massacre of Paris, Tamburlaine. See Henslowe's Diary, pp. 35-42.

92 See note on the passage in Doctor Faustus (xi. 46).

93 i.e. before the entry on the Registers of Greene's Menaphon; cf. Fleay, Life of Shakespeare, pp. 99-100.

94 … Cf. as to the resemblances in Tamburlaine, Dyce, Some Account of Marlowe and his Writings, li-liii; and
see Professor Brown ap. Grosart, Introduction to Greene's Works, I. xv.—The parallelisms between the old
Taming of a Shrew and Doctor Faustus, several of which had been previously pointed out, have been brought
together by Professor Logeman in a convincing note to sc. iv. of Doctor Faustus, which has led me to rewrite
the whole of this passage of my Introduction. The most important of these, which it is not possible to cite in
the compass of a single note, are pointed out below in the notes on iii. 1, xiii. 91 (and on Opening Chorus, 21);
also on sc. iv, on xi. 73, and iv. 41; while a coincidence of phrases is mentioned in the notes on i. 81, ix. 2,
and xiii. 92. It should be added that, as already pointed out by Dyce, the line in the 1616 quarto of Doctor
Faustus,

'Or hew'd this flesh and blood as small as sand,'

recalls one in the old Taming of a Shrew (p. 205)—

'And hew'd thee smaller than the Libian sands';

and that the repeated use in the latter of the epithet 'chrystalline,' as applied to the heavens, seems to recall the
coelum cristallinum mentioned by Faustus in the former (sc. vi).

20
95 In the Introduction to his recent edition of Mountford's Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, p. xix, 0. Francke
quotes a passage from 'Four letters, and certaine sonnets: especially touching Robert Greene and other parties
by him abused in London 1592,' where Greene is ridiculed as 'having searched every corner of his
Grammar-schoole witte (for his margine is as deeplie learned as Fauste precor gelida).' This is certainly an
allusion, in 1592, either to Marlowe's play, or, far less probably, to the story-book. The words 'precor gelida'
puzzle Dr. Francke; are they peradventure taken from the fifth eclogue of Baptist Mantuan (which was
translated by Barclay)?

96 Arber's transcript, ii. 241 b.

97 The ballad makes Faustus to be born at 'Wittenburge,' and not at 'Rhodes'; and 'of good degree,' instead of
'of parents base of stock.' It likewise, herein following the English History, states him to have been brought up
by his 'uncle,' who left him 'all his wealth,' instead of 'chiefly by kinsmen.' But it takes its own course in
representing Faustus as unrepentant till his end; while it designates as his sole motive for entering into the
compact the desire 'to live in peace' (i.e. pleasure); and omits one of the principal features in the tragedy, the
episode of Helen. See Wagner's Introduction, xxiii-xxvi; and cf. Logeman, p. 141, where one or two close
correspondences of phrase with the English History are noted. See also Zarncke, Das Englische Volksbuch
vom Doctor Faust, in Anglia, ix. (1886) 610-1.

98 Compare Dyce's Introduction, xxii, xx. Thus the ballad of The murtherous life and terrible deathe of the
rich Jew of Malta is entered May 16, 1594 (Arber's transcript, ii. 307).

99 See Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry, iii. 108-12.

100See Appendix A [of Marlowe: "Tragical History of Dr. Faustus"; Greene: "Honourable History of Friar
Bacon and Friar Bungay," fourth ed., rev. and enlarged, edited by Adolphus William Ward, Clarendon Press,
1901].

101By Dr. J. H. Albers, in an article on Marlowe's Faustus in the Jahrbuch für romanische und englische
Sprache und Literatur, Neue Folge, vol. iii. (1876).

102Not 1587, as Albers gives the date. Cavendish was said to have amassed wealth sufficient 'to buy a fair
earldom. '

103U.s., iii. 129-31.

104 See v. 86-7, 89-90.

Supplemental Works Cited

Collier, John Payne. The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of Shakespeare; and Annals of the
Stage to the Restoration. London, J. Murray, 1831.

Fischer, Kuno. In Deutsche Rundschau, October, 1877.

Logeman, H., ed. The English Faust-Book of 1592, edited with an Introduction and Notes by H. Logeman, &c.
(Ghent and Amsterdam, 1900).

Maury, Louis-Ferdinand-Alfred. La magie et l'astrologie dans l'antiquite et au moyen age, ou Etude sur les
superstitions paiennes qui se sont perpetuees jusqua nos jours, 4. ed., Paris: Didier et cie, 1877.

21
Stieve, F. Der Hexenwahn, in Abhandlungen, &c. Leipzig, 1900.

Philip Mason Palmer and Robert Pattison More (essay date 1936)
SOURCE: "The Historical Faust," in their The Sources of the Faust Tradition: From Simon Magus to Lessing,
Oxford University Press, 1936, pp. 81-126.

[In the following excerpt, Palmer and More present testimony and hearsay from the sixteenth to the
seventeenth centuries concerning the actual existence and career of Faust; they note that the fantastic nature
of the "evidence" increases during the second half of the sixteenth century.]

The documentary evidence which is generally advanced for the existence of a historical Faust[1] is of varying
value. The mixture of legendary matter with material that is really authentic is inevitable and increases as we
get into the second half of the sixteenth century. Nor is it always easy to sift out the one from the other. Such
evidence as we get from Tritheim, Conrad Mutianus Rufus, the account book of the Bishop of Bamberg,
Kilian Leib, the Nuremberg and Ingolstadt records, Luther's Tischreden, and Philip von Hutten is first hand
and genuinely historical, though Tritheim brings in some material that is probably hearsay. The evidence from
the matriculation records of the University of Heidelberg is certainly historical but the question remains
whether the "Johannes Faust ex Simem" is Faust the magician. In other cases the evidence is partly hearsay,
but it is well to remember that the authors were frequently scholarly men and should be given credit for using
due caution in what they wrote. To this group belong the Waldeck Chronicle, Joachim Camerarius, Begardi,
Gast, Gesner, the Zimmerische Chronik, Wier, Lercheimer, and Philipp Camerarius. The evidence of Manlius
would seem to belong somewhere between the two groups in view of the fact that he claims to be quoting
Melanchthon who speaks, in part at least, from first hand knowledge. The Erfurt stories as told by Hogel seem
at first sight to be distinctly legendary. This impression is strengthened by the fact that we find the same
stories in the so-called Erfurt chapters in the enlarged Spies Faust Book. And yet there is reason to believe that
Hogel uses as his direct source an older Erfurt chronicle whose author knew at first hand the events he is
recounting. The historical value of Hogel cannot, therefore, be ignored.2 What is offered in the Explicationes
of Melanchthon, and by Lavater is decidedly hearsay.

The problems raised by all this material are not solved when it has been judged along the lines just indicated.
The question still remains whether all these references are to one individual or whether there was more than
one personage at the basis of the stories. Erich Schmidt held to the former view; Robert Petsch believes there
were two Fausts. The matter is, of course, one for the personal judgment of the reader.

The Faust of history, as he emerges from the letters, diaries, and records of his contemporaries between 1507,
when he is first mentioned, and approximately 1540, when all mention of him as still living ceases, remains at
best a shadowy figure. That he was widely known, fairly well educated, and extensively travelled; that he had
pretty generally an evil reputation; that he was a braggart, a vagabond, and something of a mountebank; that
his contemporaries had a great contempt for him not unmixed with fear, all this may be inferred from the
extant documents without too much stretching of the imagination.

The widespread interest aroused among contemporaries and succeeding generations by the historical Faust
and the legends connected with his name is attested by the vast number of references to the alleged magician
appearing in the various European literatures. The most complete collection of these references was made by
Alexander Tille,3 who, with unbelievable patience and industry, gathered together almost 450 separate items
which he published in Berlin between 1898 and 1901. Some ninety additional references, discovered since
Tille's collection was printed, have been published in the Jahrbuch der Sammlung Kippenberg, Vols. 1, 4, 8,
and 9.

I. Letter of Johannes Tritheim' to Johannes Virdung.5

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—The man of whom you wrote me, George Sabellicus, who has presumed to call himself the prince of
necromancers, is a vagabond, a babbler and a rogue, who deserves to be thrashed so that he may not
henceforth rashly venture to profess in public things so execrable and so hostile to the holy church. For what,
other than symptoms of a very foolish and insane mind, are the titles assumed by this man, who shows himself
to be a fool and not a philosopher? For thus he has formulated the title befitting him: Master George
Sabellicus, the younger Faust, the chief of necromancers, astrologer, the second magus, palmist, diviner with
earth and fire, second in the art of divination with water. Behold the foolish temerity of the man, the madness
by which he is possessed, in that he dares to call himself the source of necromancy, when in truth, in his
ignorance of all good letters, he ought to call himself a fool rather than a master. But his wickedness is not
hidden from me. When I was returning last year from the Mark Brandenburg, I happened upon this same man
in the town of Gelnhausen, and many silly things were told me about him at the inn,—things promised by him
with great rashness on his part. As soon as he heard that I was there, he fled from the inn and could not be
persuaded to come into my presence. The description of his folly, such as he gave to you and which we have
mentioned, he also sent to me through a certain citizen. Certain priests in the same town told me that he had
said, in the presence of many people, that he had acquired such knowledge of all wisdom and such a memory,
that if all the books of Plato and Aristotle, together with their whole philosophy, had totally passed from the
memory of man, he himself, through his own genius, like another Hebrew Ezra,7 would be able to restore
them all with increased beauty. Afterwards, while I was at Speyer, he came to Wurzburg and, impelled by the
same vanity, is reported to have said in the presence of many that the miracles of Christ the Saviour were not
so wonderful, that he himself could do all the things which Christ had done, as often and whenever he wished.
Towards the end of Lent of the present year he came to Kreuznach and with like folly and boastfulness made
great promises, saying that in alchemy he was the most learned man of all times and that by his knowledge
and ability, he could do whatever anyone might wish. In the meantime there was vacant in the same town the
position of schoolmaster, to which he was appointed through the influence of Franz von Sickingen,8 the
magistrate of your prince and a man very fond of mystical lore. Then he began to indulge in the most
dastardly kind of lewdness with the boys and when this was suddenly discovered, he avoided by flight the
punishment that awaited him. These are the things which I know through very definite evidence concerning
the man whose coming you await with such anticipation. When he comes to you, you will find him to be not a
philosopher but a fool with an overabundance of rashness.—Würzburg, the 20th day of August. A.D. 1507.…

III. Letter of Conrad Mutianus Rufus10 to Heinrich Urbanus.11

—Eight days ago there came to Erfurt a certain soothsayer by the name of George Faust, the demigod of
Heidelberg, a mere braggart and fool. His claims, like those of all diviners, are idle and such physiognomy has
no more weight than a water spider. The ignorant marvel at him. Let the theologians rise against him and not
try to destroy the philosopher Reuchlin.14 I heard him babbling at an inn, but I did not reprove his
boastfulness. What is the foolishness of other people to me?—October 3, 1513.

IV. From the Account Book of the Bishop of Bamberg,15 1519-1520.

The annual accounts of Hans Muller, chamberlain, from Walpurgis16 1519 to Walpurgis 1520.

Entry on February 12, 1520, under the heading "Miscellaneous."

10 gulden given and presented as a testimonial to Doctor Faust, the philosopher, who made for my master a
horoscope or prognostication. Paid on the Sunday after Saint Scholastica's Day18 by the order of his
reverence.

V. From the Journal of Kilian Lieb,19 July 1528.

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George Faust of Helmstet said on the fifth of June that when the sun and Jupiter are in the same constellation
prophets are born (presumably such as he). He asserted that he was the commander or preceptor of the order
of the Knights of St. John at a place called Hallestein20 on the border of Carinthia.

VI. From the Records of the City of Ingolstadt.

1. Minutes on the actions of the city council in Ingolstadt.

Today, the Wednesday after St. Vitus' Day,23 1528. The soothsayer shall be ordered to leave the city
and to spend his penny elsewhere.
2. Record of those banished from Ingolstadt.

On Wednesday after St. Vitus' Day, 1528, a certain man who called himself Dr. George Faust of Heidelberg
was told to spend his penny elsewhere and he pledged himself not to take vengeance on or make fools of the
authorities for this order.

VII. Entry in the Records of the City Council of Nuremberg. May 10, 1532.

Safe conduct to Doctor Faust, the great sodomite25 and necromancer, at Fürth26 refused.

The junior Burgomaster.

VIII. From the Waldeck Chronicle.

Francis I by the grace of God, son of Philip II28 by his second marriage, Bishop of Munster, on June 25, 1535,
invested the city of Münster which had been occupied by the Anabaptists and captured it with the aid of
princes of the Empire under the leadership of Hensel Hochstraten. John of Leyden,29 the boastful pretender,
who called himself King of Israel and Zion, was executed together with Knipperdollinck and Krechting, their
bodies being torn with red-hot pincers, enclosed in iron cages and suspended from the tower of St. Lambert's
Church on the 23rd of January, 1536. It was at this time that the famous necromancer Dr. Faust, coming on
the same day from Corbach,30 prophesied that the city of Münster would surely be captured by the bishop on
that very night.

IX. Letter of Joachim Camerarius32 to Daniel Stibar.33

—I owe to your friend Faust the pleasure of discussing these affairs with you. I wish he had taught you
something of this sort rather than puffed you up with the wind of silly superstition or held you in suspense
with I know not what juggler's tricks. But what does he tell us, pray? For I know that you have questioned him
diligently about all things. Is the emperor victorious? That is the way you should go about it.—Tulbingen, the
13th of August, 1536.

X From the Tischreden of Martin Luther.35

God's word alone overcomes the fiery arrows of the devil and all his temptations.

When one evening at the table a sorcerer named Faust was mentioned, Doctor Martin said in a serious tone:
"The devil does not make use of the services of sorcerers against me. If he had been able to do me any harm
he would have done it long since. To be sure he has often had me by the head but he had to let me go again."

XI. From the Tischreden of Martin Luther.

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Mention was made of magicians and the magic art, and how Satan blinded men. Much was said about Faust,
who called the devil his brother-in-law, and the remark was made: "If I, Martin Luther, had given him even
my hand, he would have destroyed me; but I would not have been afraid of him,—with God as my protector, I
would have given him my hand in the name of the Lord."

XII. From the Index Sanitatis of Philipp Begardi.38

There is another well-known and important man whom I would not have mentioned were it not for the fact
that he himself had no desire to remain in obscurity and unknown. For some years ago he traveled through
almost all countries, principalities and kingdoms, and himself made his name known to everybody and
bragged much about his great skill not only in medicine but also in chiromancy, nigromancy, physiognomy,
crystal gazing, and the like arts. And he not only bragged but confessed and signed himself as a famous and
experienced master. He himself avowed and did not deny that he was and was called Faust and in addition
signed himself "The philosopher of philosophers." The number of those who complained to me that they were
cheated by him was very great. Now his promises were great like those of Thessalus39; likewise his fame as
that of Theophrastus.41 But his deeds, as I hear, were very petty and fraudulent. But in taking or—to speak
more accurately—in receiving money he was not slow. And afterwards also, on his departure, as I have been
informed, he left many to whistle for their money. But what is to be done about it? What's gone is gone. I will
drop the subject here. Anything further is your affair.

XIII. Letter from Philipp von Hutten42 to His Brother Moritz von Hutten.

Here you have a little about all the provinces so that you may see that we are not the only ones who have been
unfortunate in Venezuela up to this time; that all the abovementioned expeditions which left Sevilla before
and after us perished within three months.

Therefore I must confess that the philosopher Faust hit the nail on the head, for we struck a very bad year. But
God be praised, things went better for us than for any of the others. God willing I shall write you again before
we leave here. Take good care of our dear old mother. Give my greetings to all our neighbours and friends,
especially Balthasar Rabensteiner and George von Libra, William von Hessberg and all my good comrades.
Pay my respects to Herr N of Thiungen, my master's brother. Done in Coro in the Province of Venezuela on
January 16th, 1540.

XIV. From the Sermones Convivales of Johannes Gast.44

[a] Concerning the Necromancer Faust

He puts up at night at a certain very rich monastery, intending to spend the night there. A brother places
before him some ordinary wine of indifferent quality and without flavor. Faust requests that he draw from
another cask a better wine which it was the custom to give to nobles. Then the brother said: "I do not have the
keys, the prior is sleeping, and it is a sin to awaken him." Faust said: "The keys are lying in that corner. Take
them and open that cask on the left and give me a drink." The brother objected that he had no orders from the
prior to place any other wine before guests. When Faust heard this he became very angry and said: "In a short
time you shall see marvels, you inhospitable brother." Burning with rage he left early in the morning without
saying farewell and sent a certain raging devil who made a great stir in the monastery by day and by night and
moved things about both in the church and in the cells of the monks, so that they could not get any rest, no
matter what they did. Finally they deliberated whether they should leave the monastery or destroy it
altogether. And so they wrote to the Count Palatine concerning the misfortune in which they were involved.
He took the monastery under his own protection and ejected the monks to whom he furnishes supplies from
year to year and uses what is left for himself. It is said that to this very day, if monks enter the monastery,
such great disturbances arise that those who live there can have no peace. This the devil was able to bring to

25
pass.

[b] Another Story about Faust

At Basle I dined with him in the great college and he gave to the cook various kinds of birds to roast. I do not
know where he bought them or who gave them to him, since there were none on sale at the time. Moreover I
never saw any like them in our regions. He had with him a dog and a horse which I believe to have been
demons and which were ready for any service. I was told that the dog at times assumed the form of a servant
and served the food. However, the wretch was destined to come to a deplorable end, for he was strangled by
the devil and his body on its bier kept turning face downward even though it was five times turned on its back.
God preserve us lest we become slaves of the devil.

XV. From the Explicationes Melanchthoniae,46 Pars II.

There [in the presence of Nero] Simon Magus tried to fly to heaven, but Peter prayed that he might fall. I
believe that the Apostles had great struggles although not all are recorded. Faust also tried this at Venice. But
he was sorely dashed to the ground.

XVI. From the Explicationes Melanthoniae, Pars IV.

The devil is a marvellous craftsman, for he is able by some device to accomplish things which are natural but
which we do not understand. For he can do more than man. Thus many strange feats of magic are recounted
such as I have related elsewhere concerning the girl at Bologna. In like manner Faust, the magician, devoured
at Vienna another magician who was discovered a few days later in a certain cave. The devil can perform
many miracles; nevertheless the church has its own miracles.

XVII. From the Epistolae Medicinales of Conrad Gesner.49 Letter from Gesner to Johannes Crato50 of
Krafftheim.

Oporinus51 of Basle, formerly a disciple and companion of Theophrastus,52 narrates some wonderful things
concerning the latter's dealings with demons. Such men practice vain astrology, geomancy, necromancy, and
similar prohibited arts. I suspect indeed that they derive from the Druids who among the ancient Celts were
for some years taught by demons in underground places. This has been practiced at Salamanca in Spain down
to our own day. From that school came those commonly called "wandering scholars," among whom a certain
Faust, who died not long since, is very celebrated.

XVIII. From the Locorum Communium Collectanea of Johannes Manlius.54

I knew a certain man by the name of Faust from Kundling,55 which is a small town near my birthplace. When
he was a student at Cracow he studied magic, for there was formerly much practice of the art in that city and
in that place too there were public lectures on this art. He wandered about everywhere and talked of many
mysterious things. When he wished to provide a spectacle at Venice he said he would fly to heaven. So the
devil raised him up and then cast him down so that he was dashed to the ground and almost killed. However
he did not die.

A few years ago this same John Faust, on the day before his end, sat very downcast in a certain village in the
Duchy of Württemberg. The host asked him why, contrary to his custom and habit, he was so downcast (he
was otherwise a most shameful scoundrel who led a very wicked life, so that he was again and again nigh to
being killed because of his dissolute habits). Then he said to the host in the village: "Don't be frightened
tonight." In the middle of the night the house was shaken. When Faust did not get up in the morning and when
it was now almost noon, the host with several others went into his bedroom and found him lying near the bed

26
with his face turned toward his back. Thus the devil had killed him. While he was alive he had with him a dog
which was the devil, just as the scoundrel57 who wrote "De vanitate artium" likewise had a dog that ran about
with him and was the devil. This same Faust escaped in this town of Wittenberg when the good prince Duke
John had given orders to arrest him. Likewise in Nuremberg he escaped. He was just beginning to dine when
he became restless and immediately rose and paid the host what he owed. He had hardly got outside the gate
when the bailiffs came and inquired about him.

The same magician Faust, a vile beast and a sink of many devils, falsely boasted that all the victories which
the emperor's armies have won in Italy had been gained by him through his magic. This was an absolute lie. I
mention this for the sake of the young that they may not readily give ear to such lying men.

XIX. From the Zimmerische Chronik.58

That the practice of such art [soothsaying] is not only godless but in the highest degree dangerous is
undeniable, for experience proves it and we know what happened to the notorious sorcerer Faust. After he had
practiced during his lifetime many marvels about which a special treatise could be written, he was finally
killed at a ripe old age by the evil one in the seigniory of Staufen in Breisgau.

(After 1539). About this time also Faust died in or not far from the town of Staufen in Breisgau. In his day he
was as remarkable a sorcerer as could be found in German lands in our times. He had so many strange
experiences at various times that he will not easily be forgotten for many years. He became an old man and, as
it is said, died miserably. From all sorts of reports and conjectures many have thought that the evil one, whom
in his lifetime he used to call his brother-in-law, had killed him. The books which he left behind fell into the
hands of the Count of Staufen in whose territory he died. Afterwards many people tried to get these books and
in doing so in my opinion were seeking a dangerous and unlucky treasure and gift. He sent a spirit into the
monastery of the monks at Luxheim60 in the Vosges mountains which they could not get rid of for years and
which bothered them tremendously,—and this for no other reason than that once upon a time they did not wish
to put him up over night. For this reason he sent them the restless guest. In like manner, it is said, a similar
spirit was summoned and attached to the former abbot of St. Diesenberg by an envious wandering scholar.

XX. From the De Praestigiis Daemonum of Johanines Wier.61

John Faust was born in the little town Kundling and studied magic in Cracow, where it was formerly taught
openly; and for a few years previous to 1540 he practiced his art in various places in Germany with many lies
and much fraud, to the marvel of many. There was nothing he could not do with his inane boasting and his
promises. I will give one example of his art on the condition that the reader will first promise not to imitate
him. This wretch, taken prisoner at Batenburg on the Maas, near the border of Geldern, while the Baron
Hermann was away, was treated rather leniently by his chaplain, Dr. Johannes Dorstenius, because he
promised the man, who was good but not shrewd, knowledge of many things and various arts. Hence he kept
drawing him wine, by which Faust was very much exhilarated, until the vessel was empty. When Faust
learned this, and the chaplain told him that he was going to Grave, that he might have his beard shaved, Faust
promised him another unusual art by which his beard might be removed without the use of a razor, if he
would provide more wine. When this condition was accepted, he told him to rub his beard vigorously with
arsenic, but without any mention of its preparation. When the salve had been applied, there followed such an
inflammation that not only the hair but also the skin and the flesh were burned off. The chaplain himself told
me of this piece of villainy more than once with much indignation. When another acquaintance of mine,
whose beard was black and whose face was rather dark and showed signs of melancholy (for he was
splenetic), approached Faust, the latter exclaimed: "I surely thought you were my brother-in-law and therefore
I looked at your feet to see whether long curved claws projected from them": thus comparing him to the devil
whom he thought to be entering and whom he used to call his brother-in-law. He was finally found dead near
his bed in a certain town in the Duchy of Wurttemberg, with his face turned towards his back; and it is

27
reported that during the middle of the night preceding, the house was shaken.

XXI. From the Von Gespdnsten of Ludwig Lavater.63

To this very day there are sorcerers who boast that they can saddle a horse on which they can in a short time
make great journeys. The devil will give them all their reward64 in the long run. What wonders is the
notorious sorcerer Faust said to have done in our own times.

XXII. From the Chronica von Thüringen und der Stadt Erffurth of Zacharias Hogel.66

1. It was also probably about this time [1550] that those strange things happened which are said to have
taken place in Erfurt in the case of the notorious sorcerer and desperate brand of hell, Dr. Faust.
Although he lived in Wittenberg, yet, just as his restless spirit in other instances drove him about in
the world, so he also came to the university at Erfurt, rented quarters near the large Collegium, and
through his boasting brought it to pass that he was allowed to lecture publicly and to explain the
Greek poet Homer to the students. When, in this connection, he had occasion to mention the king of
Troy, Priam, and the heroes of the Trojan war, Hector, Ajax, Ulysses, Agamemnon, and others, he
described them each as they had appeared. He was asked (for there are always inquisitive fellows and
there was no question as to what Faust was) to bring it to pass through his art, that these heroes should
appear and show themselves as he had just described them. He consented to this and appointed the
time when they should next come to the auditorium. And when the hour had come and more students
than before had appeared before him, he said in the midst of his lecture that they should now get to
see the ancient Greek heroes. And immediately he called in one after the other and as soon as one was
gone another came in to them, looked at them and shook his head as though he were still in action on
the field before Troy. The last of them all was the giant Poly-phemus, who had only a single terrible
big eye in the middle of his forehead. He wore a fiery red beard and was devouring a fellow, one of
whose legs was dangling out of his mouth. The sight of him scared them so that their hair stood on
end and when Dr. Faust motioned him to go out, he acted as though he did not understand but wanted
to grasp a couple of them too with his teeth. And he hammered on the floor with his great iron spear
so that the whole Collegium shook, and then he went away.

Not long afterward the commencement for masters was held and [at the banquet given in connection
therewith], in the presence of the members of the theological faculty and of delegates from the
council, the comedies of the ancient poets Plautus and Terence were discussed and regret was
expressed that so many of them had been lost in times gone by, for if they were available, they could
be used to good advantage in the schools. Dr. Faust listened to this and he also began to speak about
the two poets and cited several quotations which were supposed to be in their lost comedies. And he
offered, if it would not be held against him, and if the theologians had no objections, to bring to light
again all the lost comedies and to put them at their disposal for several hours, during which time they
would have to be copied quickly by a goodly number of students or clerks, if they wanted to have
them. After that they would be able to use them as they pleased. The theologians and councilmen,
however, did not take kindly to the proposal: for they said the devil might interpolate all sorts of
offensive things into such newly found comedies. And after all, one could, even without them, learn
enough good Latin from those which still existed. The conjurer accordingly could not exhibit one of
his masterpieces in this connection. He was accustomed to spend a good deal of his time while he was
in Erfurt at the Anchor House of Squire N. in the Schlossergasse, entertaining him and his guests with
his adventures. Once, when he had gone to Prague in Bohemia, a group of such guests gathered at the
inn and, because they desired to have him present, begged mine host to tell them where he was. And
one of the guests jokingly called Faust by name and begged him not to desert them. At that instant
someone in the street knocks at the door. The servant runs to the window, looks out and asks who is
there. And behold, there, before the door, stands Dr. Faust, holding his horse as though he had just

28
dismounted, and says: "Don't you know me? I am he whom they have just called." The servant runs
into the room and reports. The host refuses to believe it, saying that Dr. Faust was in Prague. In the
meantime he knocks again at the door and master and servant again run to the window, see him, and
open the door, and he is given a cordial welcome and immediately led in to the guests. The host's son
takes his horse, saying that he will give it plenty of feed, and leads it into the stable. The squire
immediately asks Dr. Faust how he had returned so quickly. "That's what my horse is for," says Dr.
Faust. "Because the guests desired me so much and called me, I wanted to oblige them and to appear,
although I have to be back in Prague before morning." Thereupon they drink to his health in copious
draughts, and when he asks them whether they would also like to drink a foreign wine, they answer:
"Yes." He asks whether it shall be Reinfal,68 Malmsey, Spanish, or French wine. And when one of
them says: "They are all good," he asks for an auger and with it makes four holes in the table and
closes them with plugs. Then he takes fresh glasses and taps from the table that kind of wine which he
names and continues to drink merrily with them. In the meantime the son runs into the room and says:
"Doctor, your horse eats as though he were mad; he has already devoured several bushels of oats and
continually stands and looks for more. But I will give him some more until he has enough." "Have
done," says the doctor, "he has had enough; he would eat all the feed in your loft before he was full."
But at midnight the horse utters a shrill neigh so that it is heard throughout the entire house. "I must
go," says the doctor, but tarries a little until the horse neighs a second and finally a third time.
Thereupon he goes, takes his leave of them outside, mounts his horse and rides up the Schlossergasse.
But the horse in plain sight rises quickly into the air and takes him back through the air to Prague.
After several weeks he comes again from Prague to Erfurt with splendid gifts which had been given to
him there, and invites the same company to be his guests at St. Michael's. They come and stand there
in the rooms but there is no sign of any preparation. But he knocks with a knife on the table. Soon
someone enters and says: "Sir, what do you wish?" Faust asks, "How quick are you?" The other
answers: "As an arrow." "No," says Dr. Faust, "you shall not serve me. Go back to where you came
from." Then he knocks again and when another servant enters and asks the same question, he says:
"How quick are you?" "As the wind," says he. "That is something," says Dr. Faust, but sends him out
again too. But when he knocked a third time, another entered and, when he was asked the same
question, said he was as quick as the thoughts of man. "Good," said Dr. Faust, "you'll do." And he
went out with him, told him what he should do, and returned again to his guests and had them wash
their hands and sit down. Soon the servant with two others brought in three covered dishes each, and
this happened four times. Thirty six courses or dishes were served, therefore, with game, fowl,
vegetables, meat pies and other meat, not to mention the fruit, confections, cakes, etc. All the beakers,
glasses, and mugs were put on the table empty. Soon Dr. Faust asked each one what he wished to
drink in the way of beer and wine and then put the cups outside of the window and soon took them
back again, full of just that fresh drink which each one wanted to have. The music which one of his
servants played was so charming that his guests had never heard the like, and so wonderful as if
several were playing in harmony on harmoniums, fifes, cornets, lutes, harps, trumpets, etc. So they
made merry until broad daylight. What was to be the outcome? The man played so many tricks that
the city and country began to talk about him and many of the nobility of the country came to Erfurt to
him. People began to worry lest the devil might lead the tender youth and other simpletons astray, so
that they also might show a leaning towards the black art and might regard it as only a clever thing to
do. Since the sorcerer attached himself to the squire in the Anchor House, who was a papist, therefore
the suggestion was made that the neighboring monk, Dr. Klinge, should make an effort to tear him
from the devil and convert him. The Franciscan did so, visited him and spoke to him, at first kindly,
then sternly; explained to him God's wrath and the eternal damnation which must follow on such
doings; said that he was a well educated man and could support himself without this in a godly and
honorable way: therefore he should stop such frivolity, to which he had perhaps been persuaded by
the devil in his youth, and should beg God for forgiveness of his sins, and should hope in this way to
obtain that forgiveness of his sins which God had never yet denied anyone. Dr. Faust said: "My dear
sir, I realize that you wish me well; I know all that, too, which you have just told me. But I have

29
 ventured so far, and with my own blood have contracted with the devil to be forever his, with body
and soul: how can I now retract? or how can I be helped?" Dr. Klinge said: "That is quite possible, if
you earnestly call on God for grace and mercy, show true repentance and do penance, refrain from
sorcery and community with the devils, and neither harm nor seduce any one. We will hold mass for
you in our cloister so that you will without a doubt get rid of the devil." "Mass here, mass there," said
Dr. Faust. "My pledge binds me too absolutely. I have wantonly despised God and become perjured
and faithless towards Him, and believed and trusted more in the devil than in Him. Therefore I can
neither come to Him again nor obtain any comfort from His grace which I have forfeited. Besides, it
would not be honest nor would it redound to my honor to have it said that I had violated my bond and
seal, which I had made with my own blood. The devil has honestly kept the promise that he made to
me, therefore I will honestly keep the pledge that I made and contracted with him." "Well," says the
monk, "then go to, you cursed child of the devil, if you will not be helped, and will not have it
otherwise." Thereupon he went to his Magnificence, the Rector, and reported it to him. The council
was also informed and took steps so that Dr. Faust had to leave. So Erfurt got rid of the wicked man.

However, this affair with the aforesaid sorcerer probably took place in this year or shortly before or
afterwards, during the lifetime of Dr. Klinge.
2. Also the Lord God afflicted Dr. Klinge, the above mentioned obdurate monk and abbot in the
Franciscan cloister in Erfurt, so that he despaired of his life. But he recovered again and, because it
was reported to him that they said of him in the city that he had become Lutheran, he wrote and
published his book called Catechismus Catholicus, printed in 1570 in Cologne. And in the
introduction he bore witness that he would remain in the doctrine which he had preached in Erfurt for
thirty-six years. And this was the monk who wanted to turn and convert the notorious Dr. Faust from
his evil life. Dr. Klinge however died in the year 1556 on the Tuesday after Oculi,69 on which Sunday
he had still preached in the church of Our Lady. And he lies buried in that church opposite the
chancel, where his epitaph may be seen.

XXIII. From the Christlich Bedencken of Augustin Lercheimer.70

He was born in a little place called Knittlingen, situated in Wuirttemberg near the border of the Palatinate. For
a time he was schoolmaster in Kreuznach under Franz von Sickingen: he had to flee from there because he
was guilty of sodomy. After that he travelled about the country with his devil; studied the black art at the
university in Cracow; came to Wittenberg and was allowed to stay there for a time, until he carried things so
far that they were on the point of arresting him, when he fled. He had neither house nor home in Wittenberg or
elsewhere; in fact he had no permanent abode anywhere, but lived like a vagabond, was a parasite, drunkard,
and gourmand, and supported himself by his quackery. How could he have a property at the outer gate in the
Scheergasse in Wittenberg, when there never was any suburb there, and therefore also no outer gate? nor was
there any Scheergasse there.

He was choked to death by the devil in a village in Württemberg, not at Kimlich near Wittenberg, since there
is no village by that name. For he was never allowed to return to Wittenberg after he had fled from there to
avoid arrest.

I do not touch upon other trivial, false, and nasty things in the book. I have pointed out these particular things
because it has vexed and grieved me greatly, as it has many other honest people, to see the honorable and
famous institution together with Luther, Melanchthon, and others of sainted memory so libelled. I myself was
a student there, once upon a time. At that time the doings of this magician were still remembered by many
there.

The lewd, devilish fellow Faust stayed for a time in Wittenberg, as I stated before. He came at times to the
house of Melanchthon, who gave him a good lecture, rebuked and warned him that he should reform in time,

30
lest he come to an evil end, as finally happened. But he paid no attention to it. Now one day about ten o'clock
Melanchthon left his study to go down to eat. With him was Faust, whom he had vigorously rebuked. Faust
replied: Sir, you continually rebuke me with abusive words. One of these days, when you go to the table, I
will bring it about that all the pots in your kitchen will fly out of the chimney, so that you and your guests will
have nothing to eat. To this Melanchthon replied: you had better not. Hang you and your tricks. Nor did Faust
carry out his threat: the devil could not rob the kitchen of the saintly man, as he had done to the wedding
guests of whom mention was made before.

XXIV. From the Operae Horarum Subcisivarum varum of Philipp Camerarius.72

We know, moreover, (not to mention Scymus of Tarentum, Philistes of Syracuse, Heraclitus of Mytilene, who
as we read were very distinguished and accomplished sorcerers in the time of Alexander the Great) that
among the jugglers and magicians who became famous within the memory of our own fathers, John Faust of
Kundling, who studied magic at Cracow where it was formerly publicly taught, acquired through his
wonderful tricks and diabolical enchantments such a celebrated name that among the common people there
can hardly be found anyone who is not able to recount some instance of his art. The same conjurer's tricks are
ascribed to him as we have just related of the Bohemian magician.73 Just as the lives of these magicians were
similar, so each ended his life in a horrible manner. For Faust, it is said, and this is told by Wier, was found in
a village in the Duchy of Württemberg lying dead alongside his bed with his head twisted round. And in the
middle of the preceding night the house was shaken. The other, as we mentioned a little while ago, was
carried off by his master while he was still alive. These are the fitting rewards of an impious and criminal
curiosity. But to come back to Faust. From those in truth, who knew this impostor well, I have heard many
things which show him to have been a master of the magic art (if indeed it is an art and not the jugglery of a
fool). Among other deeds which he performed there is told one in particular which may seem ridiculous but
which is truly diabolical. For from it may be seen how subtly and yet seriously, even in things which seem to
us ridiculous, that arch conjurer, the devil, undermines the well being and safety of mankind … It is reported
that Faust's deception was of this kind. Once upon a time when he was staying with some friends who had
heard much about his magician's tricks, they besought him that he should show them some sample of his
magic. He refused for a long time, but finally, yielding to the importunity of the company, which was by no
means sober, he promised to show them whatever they might wish. With one accord therefore they besought
him that he should show them a full grown vine with ripe grapes. For they thought that on account of the
unsuitable time of the year (for it was toward the end of December) he would by no means be able to
accomplish this. Faust assented and promised that they should immediately see on the table what they wished
but with this condition: they should all wait without moving and in absolute silence until he should order them
to cut the grapes. If they should do otherwise they would be in danger of their lives. When they had promised
to do this, then by his tricks he so befuddled the eyes and senses of this drunken crowd that there appeared to
them on a beautiful vine as many bunches of grapes of marvellous size and plumpness as there were people
present. Made greedy by the novelty of the thing and athirst from too much wine, they took their knives and
awaited his orders to cut off the grapes.

Finally, when Faust had held these triflers in suspense for some time in their silly error, suddenly the vine
with its grapes disappeared in smoke and they were seen, each holding, not the grapes which each thought he
had seized, but his own nose with his knife suspended over it so that if anyone had been unmindful of the
directions given and had wished to cut the grapes without orders, he would have cut off his own nose. And it
would have served them right and they would have deserved other mutilation, since, with intolerable curiosity,
they occupied themselves as spectators and participants in the illusions of the devil, which no Christian may
be interested in without great danger or rather sin.

Notes

31
1For a discussion of the historical Faust see: Erich Schmidt, "Faust und das sechzehnte Jahrhundert."
Charakteristiken I. Berlin, 1886.

Erich Schmidt, "Faust und Luther." Berichte der Berliner Akademie, XXV (1896), 567 ff.

Georg Witkowski, "Der historische Faust." Deutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 1896-97, pp. 298
ff.

Robert Petsch, "Der historische Doktor Faust." Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, 11 (1910), 99 ff.

Carl Kiesewetter, Faust in der Geschichte und Tradition. Leipzig, 1893. 2nd ed. Berlin, 1921.

Harold George Meek, Johann Faust. London, 1930.

2 For a discussion of the historical value of Hogel see Szamatólski, Euphorion II, 39-57.

3Alexander Tille (1866-1912), Die Faustsplitter in der Literatur des sechzehnten bis achtzehnten
Jahrhunderts. Berlin, 1898-1901.

4 Johannes Tritheim (1462-1516), physicist, humanist, writer. Abbot of the monastery at Sponheim near
Kreuznach from 1485 to 1506. Then, after a short stay in Berlin, abbot of the monastery of St. James at
Würzburg. Tritheim combined great learning with an inclination to the fantastic, which led to a considerable
reputation as a magician.

5Johannes Virdung of Hasfurt was mathematician and astrologer to the Elector of the Palatinate, and a
professor at Heidelberg.…

…7 Cf. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, tr. by K. Lane, London, 1926. Vol. I, V, viii, 461: "—for when the
Scriptures had been destroyed in the captivity of the people in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Jews had
gone back to their country after seventy years, then in the time of Artaxerxes, the king of the Persians, he
(God) inspired Ezra, the priest of the tribe of Levi, to restore all the sayings of the prophets who had gone
before, and to restore to the people the law given by Moses." Quoted by Eusebius from Irenaeus.

8Franz von Sickingen (1481-1523), imperial counsellor, chamberlain and general, greatest of the "free
knights," friend of Ulrich von Hutten and by him interested in humanism. Supporter of the Reformation.…

…10 Conrad Mutianus Rufus (1471-1526). Canon of the Church of St. Mary's at Gotha. His real name was
Konrad Muth. He led a studious life as a humanist and philosopher and was ranked by the humanists with
Erasmus and Reuchlin, despite the fact that he never published any of his writings.

11Heinrich Urbanus, student and later friend of Mutianus Rufus, and through him interested in humanism.
From about 1505 he was steward of the Cistercian cloister Georgenthal at Erfurt.…

…14 Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522). Capnio was the Greek form of his name. He was learned in jurisprudence
and languages (especially Greek and Hebrew). For many years he was in the service successively of Count
Eberhard of Wulrttemberg, Johann von Dalberg at Heidelberg, and Duke Ulrich of Wulrttemberg. In 1519 he
became Professor of Greek and Hebrew at Ingolstadt and from 1521 held the same chair at Tübingen. In 1511
he was involved in a bitter quarrel with the theological faculty at Cologne.

15 George III Schenk of Limburg was Bishop of Bamberg from 1502 to 1522.

32
16 i.e. May Ist.…

…18 Saint Scholastica's Day fell on Friday, February 10, 1520.

19 Kilian Leib was the prior of Rebdorf in Bavaria.

20Hallestein. According to [Karl] Schottenloher … this is probably Heilenstein in Styria which at one time was
the seat of the Knights of St. John.…

…23 St. Vitus' Day fell on Monday, June 15, 1528.…

…25 Cf. Tritheim's account of Faust's experience as a teacher in Kreuznach, No. I, p. 86.

26We have followed the suggestion of Neubert, Vom Doctor Faustus zu Goethes Faust, Leipzig, 1932, p. 16,
that 'zu furr' is to be interpreted as "zu Fürth."…

…28 i.e. Philip II, Count of Waldeck.

29John of Leyden, originally a tailor, became a leader of the Anabaptist movement in Münster and set up
there the "Kingdom of Zion" proclaiming himself king. Krechting was his chancellor. Knipperdollinck was
mayor of Münster during the Anabaptist regime.

30 A small town in the principality of Waldeck, about eighty miles southeast of Münster.…

…32 Joachim Camerarius (1500-1574). His real name was Joachim Liebhard. 1518, teacher of Greek at Erfurt.
1521, he went to Wittenberg where he became a friend of Melanchthon. 1526, became teacher of Greek at the
Gymnasium in Nuremberg. 1535, was called to Tübingen to reform the university. 1541, called to Leipzig for
the same purpose. Camerarius' importance is beyond dispute. He was the best philologist of his time; and he
wrote many works, mostly in the field of philology, but also of history and biography. He enjoyed an
international reputation.

33 Daniel Stibarus was a city councilman of Würzburg.…

…35 Martin Luther (1483-1546), reformer and founder of the Protestant church. The Tischreden were
published in Eisleben by Aurifaber in 1566. They give the comments and discussions of Luther in the
informal circle of his family, friends, and acquaintances, as they had been recorded by Aurifaber himself and
by numerous other intimates of Luther. The passage quoted is found in Chap. 1, § 47 of the Aurifaber edition
of 1566.…

…38 Philipp Begardi was city physician in Worms. The Index Sanitatis is of the year 1539.

39Thessalus was a Greek physician of the first century A.D. He lived in Rome during the reign of Nero and
was buried there. He considered himself superior to his predecessors but Galen, while often mentioning him,
always does so in terms of contempt.…

…41 Theophrastus, i.e., Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541),
physician and chemist. Bombastic in fact as well as by name, inclined to charlatanism, suspected of
supernatural powers and himself promoting the suspicion, he is nevertheless credited by modern scholarship
with genuine service in the fields of medicine, chemistry, and pharmacy.

33
42Philipp von Hutten (1511-1546) was one of the leaders of the Welser troops in Venezuela, where he met his
death. The letter would seem to indicate that Faust had made predictions concerning the fortunes of the
expedition in Venezuela.…

…44 Johannes Gast (t 1572) was a Protestant clergyman at Basle. His Sermones Convivales were very popular.
The quotation is from the second volume, published in 1548.…

…46 Philipp Melanchthon (Greek for Schwarzert) (1497-1560) was a co-worker of Luther and after him the
most important figure in the German Reformation. From 1518 on he was professor of the Greek language and
literature at Wittenberg. After Luther's death he became the head of the Protestant church.

The Explicationes Melanchthoniae, or Postilla Melanthoniana, as they are called in the Bretschneider and
Bindseil edition of Melanchthon's works, were published by Christopher Pezelius, a former student of
Melanchthon, in 1594 ff., and they reproduce Melanchthon's commentaries on the Scriptures, delivered
between 1549 and 1560.…

…49 Conrad Gesner (1516-1565), a Swiss teacher, physician, and scholar. His scholarly activity was enormous.
His main fields were zoology and botany, but he did tremendous work also in medicine, in philology, and in
the editing and translating of Greek and Latin writers. His writings in these fields are encyclopedic.

The letter quoted is dated Zurich, August 16, 1561.

50 Johannes Crato was Physician in Ordinary of the Emperor, Ferdinand 1.

51Johannes Oporinus (1507-1568), a Swiss teacher, physician, and in later years publisher and bookseller.
The name Oporinus is a translation of Herbst or Herbster.

52 See note (41).…

…54 Johannes Manlius (Mennel) of Ansbach was at one time a student under Melanchthon. In the Locorum
Communium Collectanea (1563), Manlius gives extracts and quotations "from the lectures of D. Philipp
Melanchthon and accounts of other most learned men." The passages cited are quoted from Melanchthon.

55 i.e. Knittlingen, not far from Bretten, Melanchthon's birthplace.…

…57 i.e. Cornelius Heinrich Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535), author, physician, and philosopher. He, like
so many others, was also suspected of being a sorcerer.

58 The Zimmerische Clironik is a Swabian chronicle of the 16th century. The authors were Count Froben
Christoph von Zimmern (t 1566 or 1567) and his secretary Hans Müller (t ca. 1600). The work centers about
the history of the Swabian noblemen who later became the Counts of Zimmem. It contains an invaluable store
of legends and folklore.…

…60 Compare the story cited above from Johannes Gast.…

61 Johannes Wier (1515-1588) was a Dutch physician and particularly known as an opponent of the
prosecution of witches. The De Praestigiis Daemonum (1st ed. 1563) was an appeal to the emperor and
princes in Wier's campaign against superstition. The passages relating to Faust appear for the first time in the
fourth edition (1568). For a study of the historical value of what Wier has to say, see the introduction to van't
Hooft, Das Hollindische Volksbuch vom Doktor Faust. Hague, 1926.…

34
…63 Ludwig Lavater (1527-1586), for many years preacher and finally head of the Protestant church in Zurich.
His work Von Gespänsten (1569) was very popular and was also translated into French and Italian.

64 Literally: pay for course and steed, and money for shoeing and saddle.…

…66 Hogel's chronicle was written in the 17th century. Its source, however, is the Reichmann-Wambach
chronicle of the middle of the 16th century. This latter work is now lost. The parts relating to Faust were
entered in the chronicle by Wolf Wambach, who continued the work which had been begun by his
brother-in-law Reichmann. The story of the efforts of the monk Klinge to convert Faust probably came to
Wambach fairly directly. For a discussion of the historical value of Hogel's work, see Szamatólski,
Euphorion, II, 39 ff.…

…68 An Istrian wine highly esteemed in Germany in the middle ages. The derivation of the word is uncertain
but the form Rheinfall is merely the result of popular etymology. The earliest German form of the word is
"raival" from the Latin "vinum rivale."

69 'Oculi' is the fourth Sunday before Easter.

70Augustin Lercheimer von Steinfelden (1522-1603) was professor of Greek at Heidelberg from 1563 to
1579. From 1579 to 1584 he held the same chair at Neustadt on the Hardt. From 1584 to his death he was
again at Heidelberg as professor of mathematics. His name was really Herman Witekind, originally Wilcken.
He assumed the pseudonym Lercheimer in his work Christlich bedencken und erinnerung von Zauberey
(Heidelberg, 1585; 3rd edition, Speyer, 1597).

In the third edition of his work, from which our quotations are taken, Lercheimer added a vehement
denunciation of the Spies Faust book, resenting as he did the unknown author's assertion that the magician had
been brought up in Wittenberg, had received his degrees at the university there, and had resided in the city.
Lercheimer himself had matriculated at Wittenberg in 1546.

For a complete discussion of the connection of the historical Faust with Wittenberg, see Walz, "An English
Faustsplitter," Modern Language Notes, XLII (1927), 353 ff.…

…72 Philipp Camerarius (1537-1624) was the son of the Joachim Camerarius previously mentioned. He was
trained in law at Leipzig, Tübingen, Strassburg, Basle, and in Italy. From 1581 to his death he was prorector
of the university at Altdorf. His Opera horarum subcisivarum was first published in 1591 ff. (enlarged edition
1602-1609). It was translated into French, Italian, English, and German.

73 The magician referred to is Zyto.…

H. G. Haile (essay date 1963)

SOURCE: "Reconstruction of the Faust Book: The Disputations," in PMLA, Vol. LXXVIII, No. 3, June,
1963, pp. 175-89.

[In the following essay, Haile pieces together several variations of the German Faust Book in order to
establish as accurately as possible the original, uncorrupted version of that text.]

Toward the close of the last century, one of the busiest areas of literary research centered about the Faust
Book. The Faust image, that unique gift of Germany to Western tradition, had fascinated scholars and critics
for over a hundred years, and the oldest printed texts of the Faust Book had long since been established and
edited. During the nineteenth century, however, further documentary references to the historical Faust had
been accumulating, while at the same time researchers had gained a more complete and accurate knowledge

35
of the scope of the Faust legend together with its relationship to similar sorcerers' tales. Then, beginning in the
1880's, a number of important discoveries were made in such rapid succession as to hinder careful evaluation
of any one document.1

Our two basic editions of the Faust Book accurately reflect those hectic times. Gustav Milchsack was ready to
submit the newly discovered Wolfenbüttel Manuscript (W)2 to the printer in 1892, but he never considered his
long introduction to it finished, and, during the next five years while he labored over the first 300 pages, his
circulated galley proofs became the object of violent argument and even piracy. If Milchsack was overly
conscientious, Robert Petsch may have worked a bit too hastily, for his (still standard) edition of the Spieß
print (H)3 contains numerous inaccuracies in his notes, partly as a result of Milchsack's failure to get around to
a textual comparison of W with H.4

Every Faust scholar at the turn of the century found himself defending special hypotheses, and it was probably
for this reason that none was able to attain the necessary distance from the whole problem to come to a full
understanding even of his own contributions. Thus the central question remains unanswered: are we in a
position to infer the original form of the Faust Book? Since the generation of Petsch and Milchsack no real
steps have been taken in this direction, probably because those scholars left us with authoritative, but not quite
accurate, views concerning the complex interrelationships of the material at hand.

After Petsch's time a great deal of excellent work was done in two areas indirectly related to the Faust Book
problem: studies of the Faust figure as it has fascinated Western Civilization through the ages—both before
and after the sixteenth century;5 and research into the factual evidence we have about the historical Faust.6
However fruitful it is to pursue the mythical-legendary-literary Faust through the imagination of the centuries,
any final comment on the meaning of Faust for the author of the Faust Book will have to wait until we know
much more about the book he wrote, for it is highly improbable that we possess such a book in anything better
than an extremely corrupted form.

It seems clear that the Faust Book began as fiction, so that research on the historical Faust has seldom proved
relevant to the central problems concerning its original form.7 That one kind of factual account from the
sixteenth century can cast brilliant light on these problems was strikingly demonstrated when Harold Jantz
showed how a remark by the author of an English Faust gives some factual support to what had hitherto
remained a tenuous hypothesis on the German Faust Book stemma. But here we are dealing with a document
pertinent not to Faust, but to the composition of the Faust Book.

In addition to his contribution on the historical Faust, Hans Henning has published a second article in which
he revises and drastically simplifies the Faust Book stemma as postulated by Robert Petsch.8 Henning makes
the basic error of assuming that inferences can be drawn from the historical Faust about the fiction of the
Faust Book, and he interprets both Faust figures as personifications of the transition from feudal to
middle-class social systems. Until some new documentary evidence—such as that uncovered by Jantz—is
brought to light, we must rely on internal, textual evidence for most of what we know about the origin of the
Faust Book.9 Such evidence must be evaluated fully. We are never justified in ignoring it, as Henning must in
order to assume that W might be the exemplar for H—without mentioning that H presents some readings
palpably more accurate than those in W. That W and H have a common exemplar is proved most strikingly
when W calls attention to an error in that exemplar, although H retains the error.10

But Henning goes further than this. He wishes to simplify the traditional stemma still more by accepting
Milchsack's opinion that W presents the Faust Book in its original form. Such a conception would be possible
if, with Wilhelm Scherer, he took the Faust Book to amount to nothing more than a haphazard collection of
anecdotes; for in such a collection he could explain crass contradictions from one chapter to the next, or
expect the same motif to be used one time in a clever, pointed manner, well adapted to the personality of
Faust, and then again—and occasionally even a third time—in the hackneyed folk version. But when Henning

36
assumes an author for the Faust Book as opposed to a collector of tales—if, with most critics since Scherer, he
finds a unified form and one overall intent—then, in order to explain the disparities,11 he must assume that the
exemplar for W and H, whose existence is textually demonstrable, represents an expansion of the author's
work. If that exemplar was anything other than the original, we should on that basis alone expect it to be an
expansion of whatever came before it; for characteristic of the history of the Faust Book since its first printing
in 1587 is constant expansion of previous versions through interpolation of factual historical material, Faust
legend, older folk tales transferred to the Faust figure, and general enrichment with pansophic material of all
sorts.

I have attempted to correct and to simplify the traditional Faust Book stemma by showing that our sole access
to any earlier stages of the work is through W and H; that W gives in general the more reliable rendition of the
common exemplar X; and that X, although it was not the original version of the Faust Book (as Witkowski
recognized as early as 1898),12 may very well have had that original as its direct exemplar. I have therefore
proposed the following stemma:

L (hypothetical original, composed ca. 1580)

X (demonstrable common exemplar for W and H)13

W14 H15

It must not be forgotten that the existence of L cannot be proved. For seventy-five years L has continued to
represent the attractive hypothesis that the Faust Book was a unique German Renaissance novel, consciously
and often cleverly formed by a sophisticated Lutheran, and that, although it has been preserved for us only as
corrupted through senseless expansion at the hand of a perfunctory copyist, it is perhaps still accessible to
reconstruction through stylistic analysis. Robert Petsch has already worked out the basic lines which such an
analysis would have to follow with respect to the Faust anecdotes in the Third Part and the complaints in the
Fourth Part. I have made some further suggestions with respect to Faust's youth, his adventures, and his death,
where Widman's Wahrhafftige Historia can help us to distinguish between fact and legend on the one hand
and the fiction of the Faust Book on the other. Only a complete demonstration, i.e., an attempted
reconstruction of L, will permit a solution to the problem, but even then we shall have proved very little.
Rather, we shall have justified the hypothesis by obtaining aesthetically satisfying results with it.16

In the present article we want to apply the hypothesis of the existence of L to those chapters which contain
disputations by Mephostophiles on devils, Hell, and the Grace of God. With respect to our hypothesis, this is
the most critical point in the Faust Book. Here L attempted to state its basic theme, the condition of Faust's
soul within the framework of the Protestant doctrine of Salvation.17 But this is also the point where some
copyist encountered his greatest temptation to corrupt the exemplar through supplementation from popular
compendia.

Thus it is my purpose here to confirm the feasibility of reconstructing L by seeking to infer the original form
of the most crucial and, in the versions available to us, the most distorted portion of the Faust Book. It is my
thesis that what we now possess in eight disputations consisted in L of only three, and that these shared
certain inner principles of organization including an exposition of the following points:

1. occasion for the disputation

2. short question(s) by Faust
3. comment by Mephosto on the propriety of the disputation
4. response by Mephosto
5. effect of the information on Faust

37
 6. comment by the author on Faust's prospects for salvation, which depend on his reaction to the
knowledge just acquired.

The disputations begin immediately after the chapter which deals with Faust's desire to marry. In W (which is
used here), these are Chapters 10-17. In H, they are Chapters 11-17 (W 15-16 = H 16). Their content is as
follows.

Chapter 10

Mephosto, having sated Faust's lecherous desires with succubi, finds another means of
diverting his thoughts from godly pursuits: "Nach sollichem, wie jetzt gemelt, Doctor Faustus
ein gar schone Ee mit dem Teuffel Trib, vbergibt jm sein Gaist bald ein groß Buech von
Allerlay Zauberey vnd Nigromantia, Darjnn er sich auch neben seiner Teufflischen Ee
erlustigtte … bald sticht jn der Fuirwitz, Fordert seinen Geyst Mephostophilem, mit dem wolt
er ein Gesprech halten, sagt zum Gayst: Mein Dienner, sag an, was Geistes bistu? Jm Antwurt
der Geyst vnd sprach: Mein herr Fauste, jch bin ein Geyst vnnd Ein fliegennder Geyst, vnder
dem Hymmel Regierenndt. wie ist aber dein herr Lucifer inn fall kommen? Der Gaist sprach:
herr, Mein herr Lucifer ist ein schoner Engell gewest von GOtt erschaffen; Er ward ein
geschöpff der Seligkeit.…" All the rest of the chapter is a slavish—although sometimes
careless—quotation from Hartmann Schedel's Weltchronik (1493)18 It is an analysis of the
angelic hierarchies and is so completely without relevance to Faust's question that right here
the first suspicion of a corrupted text is aroused. Not only in this, but in the next two chapters
as well, the question about Lucifer's fall seems ignored by Mephosto and forgotten by Faust.

Chapter 11

There now begins a series of disputations (Chapters 11-14) without any direct questions from
Faust. "Dem Doctor Fausto ward eben, wie man sonst zusagen pflegt. Es traumbt jm von der
Hell, darumb fragt er seinen Gaist auch von der Substantz, Orth vnnd erschaffung der Hell,
wie es darmit geschaffen sey." Mephosto replies that Hell was prepared for Lucifer as soon as
he fell from Heaven, it being a place of darkness where Lucifer is bound with chains of
darkness and held for judgment. It stinks of fumes, fire, and sulphur, but the devils cannot
comprehend it, "dann sie hat weder Endt noch grundt, vnd ist diss mein kurtze berichtung."

Chapter 12

"Der Gaist muest dem Fausto auch berichtung thuen von der Teuffel Wohnung vnnd
Regiment vnnd Regierung." What follows is little more than a list of key terms from
Elucidarius' Von allerhand Geschopffen Gottes … (1572), or from some work dependent on
it.19

Chapter 13

"Doctor Faustus nam jm wider ein gesprech far mit seinem Gayst. Er solt jm sagen, inn was
gestalt sein herr im Hymmel geziert vnnd darjnnen gewohnt?" The alleged question hardly
seems to require serious—or even new—information, but Mephosto desires a three-day
prorogation. His answer, finally, first describes Lucifer's glorious position in Heaven and then
continues: "Aber so bald er inn Vbermueth vnnd zu der Hoffart stig, vnnd vber Orient
Steygen wolt, ward er verdilgt vnnd verworffen auss der Wohnung vnnd sitz des Hymmels
inn ein Fewrstain, der Ewig nicht verlischt, sondern quelt jn immerdar. Er wardt geziert mit
der Cron aller Hymlischen Pomp, vnnd dieweil er also wider GOtt also Trutzlich gesessen, ist

38
GOtt auch gesessen auff sein Richterstuel, vnnd jn zur Hell, da er nimmer mehr hocher
steygen kan, vervrthailt vnnd judiciert." Faust is dismayed by the parallel he perceives
between his own career and Lucifer's: "Als er nun inn seiner Kammer ward, legt er sich aufs
bett, hebt an bitterlich zu waynen vnnd Seunfftzgen vnnd inn seinem hertzen zuschreyen.… O
Wehe Mir, immer wehe! Also wirt es Mir auch vnnd nichts er-treglicher ergehn. Dann jch bin
auch ein Geschopf Gottes vnnd mein Vbermueth fleisch vnnd Bluet hat mich gesetzt in ein
verdamlicheit an Leib vnnd Seel vnnd jch, mit meiner vernunfft vnnd Synn, mich geraytzt,
das jch als ein Geschopff GOttes von jme gewichen bin.… Darumb kan jch kein genad mehr
hoffen, sonndern wirdt Ewig wie Lucifer inn die Ewige verdamnus vnnd wehe ver-stossen
werden muessen. Ach wee, jmmer wehe! was zeich jch mich selbs vnnd was mach jch auß
mir selbs?" The end effect on Faust thus justifies Mephosto's hesitation at the beginning of the
chapter. For just this reason, however, it becomes all the more illogical that Mephosto would
discuss Lucifer's fall at all. It is this topic which moves Faust to such repentance—and Faust
made no inquiry concerning it.

Faust's repentance turns out to be of no avail, and at the end of the chapter the author explains
why: "Er wolt aber nie kein glauben noch hoffnung schopffen, das er durch poenitenz mecht
zuer gnad GOttes gebracht werden."

Chapter 14

"Doctor Faustus, nachdem jm sein vnmueth ein wenig vergieng, Fragt er sein
Mephostophilem von Regierung, Thatt, Gewalt, Angriff, Versuechungen, vnnd Tyranney dess
Teuffels vnnd wie er solliches anfenngclichs getriben hette." Mephosto discourages this
inquiry for two reasons: 1) if he must give answer, it will move Faust "etwas zu vnmueth vnd
nachdennckhen"; 2) it concerns secret matters. Still, Mephosto correctly recognizes his
obligation to answer (according to the pact). Lucifer was at first kindly disposed toward
mankind, even after the fall, but matters soon changed, probably on account of his jealousy,
and he has been responsible for the violence on earth since Adam. A quotation from the
Belial of Jacobus de Theramo (1508—Quellen, pp. 163 f.) illustrates the point by outlining the
spirits' accomplishments during Old and New Testament times and stating that they even now
possess the hearts of great men. Faust asks: "So hast du mich auch besessen? Lieber, Sag mir
die Warheit." Mephosto is happy to answer in the affirmative and to provide a detailed
account of just how the devils enticed Faust into his present bond with them. Faust is visibly
shocked to learn how he has been duped: "Ey, was hab jch gethon & Antwort der Gaist: Do
sihe du zue! Also gieng Doctor Faustus trawrig von jm." Again Mephosto has accurately
anticipated the effect the disputation would have on Faust.

Chapter 15

The opening words give precise information on Faust's motives in the disputations: "Doctor
Faustus hett wol jmmerdar ein Rew im hertzen vnnd ain bedennckhen, was er sich doch
gezigen hett an seiner Seligkeit, das er sich also dem Teuffel vmb das Zeittlich ergeben. Aber
sein Rew ward Cains vnnd Judas Rew vnnd Bueß, da wol ein Rew im hertzen ward, Aber er
verzaget an den Genaden Gottes vnnd ward jm ein vnmuglichs, das er zur Huldt Gottes
konndt kommen, gleich wie Cain, der also verzweyffelt, das er sagte, seine Suindt weren
grosser, dann jm verzigen mocht werden … Dem Doctor Fausto wardt auch also. Er sahe wol
gehn Hymmel, Aber er konndt nichts ersehen. Jm Traumet, wie man spricht, von dem Teuffel
oder von der Hell, das ist, er dachte, was er gethon, vnnd vermaint jmmer durch oft vnnd viel
Disputationes, fragen vnnd gesprech mit dem Geist wolt er so weitt kommen, das er einmahl
mochte zuer besserung, Rew vnnd Abstinentz gelanngen." This disputation now differs from

39
others in that Mephosto is here required to discuss four topics: "Erstlich … was die Hell, Zum
Andern, wie die Hell erschaffen vnnd geschaffen were? Zum Dritten, Was für Wehe vnnd
Clag der verdampten inn der Hell sey? Zum Vierdten, Ob der verdampte wider zur Huldt
GOttes konndte kommen, vnnd erlost mechte werden von der Hell?" Mephosto's admonition
that Faust desist from such inquiry is harsher than ever before: "Was machstu auss dir selbst?
vnnd wann du gleich inn Hymmel steygen konndtest, So wolt ich dich inn die Hell herab
stossen, Dann du bist mein vnnd kerest auch inn den Weg, darumb, das du vil von der Hell
wilst fragen." But Faust will not be swayed: "So will jchs wissen oder will nicht leben, du
muest mirs sagen!"

Chapter 16

Chapter 15 was the first to contain no response from Mephosto. Chapter 16 is the only one in
the Faust Book which commences in the title itself:

"Die Hell, diser Nam

Hat manicherlay Figuren vnnd Bedeuttung …" The remainder of this first sentence begins a
quotation from the dictionary by Dasypodius (1537—Quellen, pp. 164 f.). Retaining
alphabetical order Mephosto-Dasypodius lists various names for Hell and interprets their
meanings. The point is then made "das die Seel also ists / Das es vnmoglich mit was weiß sie
ausspeculiem / vnnd zubegreiffen ist / Wie Gott sein Zom also gelegt hat jnn ein solchen Orth
/ Da Gottes zorn sein gebew vnnd erschaffung ist" (quoted from the MS, in order to avoid
Milchsack's misleading punctuation—rough translation: that the human psyche is such that its
own speculative faculties are not commensurate to the task of conceiving Hell, whose very
structure is His wrath, which God placed there). There occurs a space in the MS. text. It is
followed by a translation into German of those borrowed Latin names for Hell which made up
almost the whole of Chapter 12. "Vnnd dies," says Mephosto, "sey mein Erster vnnd Anderer
bericht."

With respect to the third question he remarks caustically, Faust might better consult Scripture,
"dann es mir verborgen ist." Hell's function is consonant with its structure as just described.
Lamentations in Hell are discussed according to the parts afflicted. Torments are depicted in a
detail dependent on the Cordiale of Dionysius van Leeuwen (1487—Quellen, p. 165).

The last question is one which only God can answer, but Faust may be sure of a negative
reply, for the damned have as little hope as the very devils in Hell. The sinner will indeed
believe in God's wrath and most heartily repent, "Aber meine sundt," mocks Mephosto, "sein
zu gross vnnd nicht zuuergeben, darumb ich dise Hellische straff leiden mueß. Also kan jch
verdambter abnemen, das jch keiner genad zu gewartten hab … Jr [= the damned] hart
zuuersicht vnnd vertrawen zu GOtt, so Sie erst haben werden, wirt nit gehört werden, auch
nimmermehr gedacht." He concludes with a flat refusal to discuss such matters further.

Faust is cast into a state of depression and brooding. "Es hett aber bey jm kein bestanndt,
dieweil jm, wie obgemelt, der Teuffel das hertz verstockht vnd verblendt. zue dem, wann er
schon allein ward vnnd dem Gottlichen wort nachtrachtet, da schmuckht sich dann der
Teuffel inn gestalt einer schönen frawen zue jm, halset jn vnnd trib mit jm alle vnzucht, Also
das er dess Gottlichen worts bald vergaß vnnd inn windt schlueg."

Chapter 17

40
Faust would again question Mephosto, but the author seems confused as to how he manages to do it: "Dem
Gaist war solchs gar zu wider. Jedoch wolt er jm diss mahl gehorchen vnnd wie er vor gesagt, So hab er jm
diss ganntz vnnd gar abgeschlagen, jedoch kom er wider. aber diss mahis, wie gemelt, soll er gewert werden
vnnd sonnst nit mehr." Faust asks: "Wann du inn meiner statt werest, vnnd werest von Gott also ein Mensch
erschaffen, was du thon woltest, das du Gott vnnd dem Menschen gefellig werest?" Mephosto replies that,
unlike Faust, he would avoid arousing God's displeasure, observe His Commandments, and praise the Lord,
"damit ich Gott so gefellig vnd angenem wer, das ich wuste, das jch nach meinem absterben hette die Ewige
freudt, Glorj vnnd Seligkeit." Would Mephosto like to be a human in Faust's stead? Indeed he would! For
even if he had erred, he would return into God's Grace.

The unevenness of the disputation section marks it as the most challenging in the Faust Book. A sillier
conjecture than those in Chapter 17 will scarcely be encountered in the shallowest sermon of the age; a more
convincing pronouncement of the condition of the sinner than that beginning "Doctor Faustus hett wol
jmmerdar ein Rew im hertzen …" (Ch. 15) might not be found after Luther. Just when we feel we are being led
to a sensitive treatment of the sixteenth-century Faustian soul, we enter into a sterile mass of material copied
in only out of joy in quantity and quite irrelevant to Faust. When we think we glimpse organization and form,
even a development in Faust's character, we come upon an infantile non sequitur such as Mephosto's
cautioning word at the beginning of Chapter 14 ("Dise Disputatio vnnd Frag, so jch dir erclaren soll, wirdt
Dich etwas, mein herr Fauste, zu vnmueth vnd nachdennckhen treiben"), after the end of Chapter 13 where
Faust was in the blackest depths of despair. If the hypothesis that L was augmented and distorted by a
perfunctory copyist can be at all justified, then the disputation section, which contains excerpts from at least
five common reference works—and perhaps from other, unidentified sources—must support that hypothesis.

It would probably be unreasonable to assume that L itself was completely free from borrowings and that all
passages with an extraneous source might hence be discarded from L. On the one hand, some sections are
stylistically inconsonant with L, although no source for them has been, and probably never will be,
established. Chapter 17 is such a suspect section. On the other hand, passages known to be derived from
Jacobus and from Dionysius—from each of whom the Faust Book borrows only once—represent sequential and
meaningful developments of their respective chapters. The account from Jacobus is even cleverly integrated
into the dialogue—Mephosto (Jacobus): "Wir besitzen auch die hertzen der Konigen vnnd Fürsten der Welt
wider Jesus lehr …"; Faust (a remark not from Jacobus, and leading directly to an important insight for Faust):
"So hast du mich auch besessen? Lieber, Sag mir die Warheit." We have no reason to suppose that such
excerpts were not present in the Faust Book from the beginning.

Examination of the excerpts from Schedel and Dasypodius, however, all awkwardly crammed into a section
where Jacobus and Dionysius are integrated with moderation and some skill, does yield ample evidence of
some mind at work which was not the one that conceived the Faust Book. It is a mind which had little
understanding for Faust's situation—the focal point of the disputations—but was more captivated by the
information on supernatural matters which Mephosto—and a few handy compendia—could provide.

The whole Faust Book offered repeated opportunity for supplementation from Schedel and Dasypodius. The
dictionary by Dasypodius yielded data at six different points (Quellen, pp. 164 f., 161, 168, 210, 211). We
have called attention to the names for Hell and their interpretations in Chapter 16. The other excerpts are: a
listing of musical instruments in Chapter 6 and 49, of insects in Chapter 22, of dishes in Chapter 46, and,
finally, brief but entirely superfluous biographical data for Helen of Troy in Chapter 51. Far from being
necessary to the course of the Faust Book, this material has a disturbing, pedantic effect in each instance.
Some of it is in chapters long recognized as later additions.20

We find no positive considerations for consigning any Dasypodius material to L. Copying from this source is
always so slavishly mechanical—listings usually retaining the original alphabetical order—that we cannot
reconcile them with the generally higher level of the Faust Book. Finally, we note that the Dasypodius excerpt

41
in the disputation section is marked by a superficial scar. The end of a chapter (15) after a question only is
followed by a new chapter (16) which bears no real title but begins with an arrangement unique in the Faust
Book: a sentence which starts in the title itself and whose first nine words alone are original, the next several
hundred words being an adaptation from Dasypodius. Since this material has no bearing whatever on Faust's
question preceding it, we can conclude that L contained neither this nor any other material from Dasypodius.

If we consider the Schedel excerpts throughout the Faust Book, we come to a similar conclusion. The great
bulk of the borrowings in the Faust Book derives from this source (Quellen, pp. 162, 166 f., 169 ff.), all the
excerpts occurring between the beginning of the disputation section and the end of the travel section,
specifically, the above-mentioned account of the Heavenly Hierarchies (Ch. 10), a history of Creation (Ch.
21), and a Baedeker-like description of the cities visited by Faust together with the situation of Paradise (Chs.
26 and 27).

It was early observed that the account of Creation in Chapter 21 contradicts that in Chapter 22. More
important, and more difficult to reconcile, are the introductory remarks to each chapter:

21. Von dess Himmels Lauf, Zier vnd Vrsprung Doctor Faustus dorfft den Geyst von
Gottlichen, hymlischen dingen nit mehr fragen. das thett jm wee vnnd gedacht jm Tag vnnd
Nacht nach. vnnd damit er von Gottlicher Creatur vnnd erschaffung besser gelegenheit hett,
dem ein farb anzustreichen vnd mit glimpff herumb zukommen, fragt er nicht wie zuuor mehr
von der freudt der seligen vnnd den Engeln vnnd von dem wee der Hell; dann er wust, das er
vom Geist hinfuro kein Audients mehr wurd erlangen. Muest also fragen, was jn gedeucht,
das er erlanngen mocht. nimpt jm derhalben fur, den Geist zue fragen vnder einem glimpf,
Als ob es zu der Astronomia oder Astrologia den Physicis dienstlich sey vnnd Nottig zu
wissen: Nemlich von dess hymmels Lauf, zierdte, vnd vrsprung, das solt er jn berichten.
Hierauf antwurt der Gaist: Mein herr Fauste, der Gott, der dich erschaffen hat, der hat auch
die welt erschaffen vnnd alle Elementa vnder dem Hymmel…

22. Ein Disputatio vnd falsche antwort dess Geists, Doctor Fausto gethon.

DOctor Fausto ist durch sein Trawrigkeitt vnnd Schwermueth sein Geist erschinen vnnd
gefragt, was für beschwernus vnnd anligen er habe? Doctor Faustus gab jm kein Antwort,
Also das der Geist hefftig an jn setzte vnnd begert, jm sein anligen grundtlichen zuerzelen;
wo muglich, So wolle er jm hierjnn behilfflich sein. Doctor Faustus Antwurt vnnd sagt: Jch
hab dich als einen Dienner aufgenomen vnnd deine Diennerschafft kombt mich zu theuer an.
Demnach so kan jch von dir nicht haben, das du mir zu willen werdest, wie einem dienner
gezimbt. Der Geist sprach: Mein herr, du waist, das jch dir nie zu wider gewesen bin,
sonndem noch alizeit wilfart, Ob jch wol offt dir fürgehalten vnnd mein Condition gewest,
das jch dein Audiennts nimmer wolle annemen; demnach vber diss bin jch dir zu willen
worden. So sag nun, mein herr Fauste, was dein beger vnnd anligen sey?

Der Geist hat dem Doctor Fausto das hertz abgewonnen, vnnd Fragt Doctor Faustus den Gaist
darauff: Wie GOtt die Welt erschaffen habe, vnnd von der Ersten geburt des Menschen. Der
Geist gab jm ein Gottloß vnchristlich vnnd kindisch erzehlen vnnd bericht vnnd sagt: Die
Welt, mein herr Faust, ist vngeborn vnnd vnersterblich. So ist das Menschlich Geschlecht von
Ewigkeit her gewesen vnnd hat anfanngs kein ursprung gehabt.

Faust's Trawrigkeitt vnnd Schiwermueth of Chapter 22, like Mephosto's protests (which refer to the
disputation section, Chs. 10-17), appear foolish in the light of Chapter 21, in which Faust himself devises
effective subterfuge for continuing the disputations. These two different conceptions of Faust's relationship to
his mentor are more significant than the variance in content of the two chapters with regard to our contention

42
that two different minds are involved in the progression of the plot.

Of course the essential difference between Chapters 21 and 22 lies in Faust's role, active there and passive
here. Faust was the active inquirer in the disputations on Hell and Salvation. Should we expect him to
continue in the same role here? Probably not. Faust's curiosity was first aroused by Mephosto with "ein groß
Buech von Allerlay Zauberey vnd Nigromantia" (Ch. 10). The disputations took a turn to which Mephosto
objected repeatedly and more grimly, finally refusing altogether to give audience to "sollichen fragen vnnd
Disputationibus." From Chapter 22 forward, however, discussion turns to precisely the kind of subject treated
by the occult groß Buech brought by Mephosto at the outset: astrology and the closely related topic of familiar
spirits. Mephosto's character in Chapter 22 corresponds to L's conception of an importunate father-confessor
(cf. Chs. 9 and 55, etc.) and an unwilling informer on matters secret (cf. Ch. 14), while the dupe of Chapter 21
is foreign to L. For these reasons we are inclined to attribute Chapter 22, in which Mephosto, purportedly to
comfort Faust, again takes up the disputations in order to give "ein Gottloß vnchristlich vnnd kindisch
erzehlen vnnd bericht," to the basic stock of L. Chapter 21, with its orthodox Creation account, must then
represent a contribution of the copyist. He takes it, almost word for word, from Schedel's Weltchronik, and he
actually concludes with a final reference to other information obtainable from the same source. The next
exploitation of the Weltchronik involves the immense Chapter 26 (the cities visited by Faust) and Chapter 27
(Paradise), a section of the Faust Book which Petsch called highly suspect throughout on account of its slavish
dependence on the source. I agree with Petsch that the copyist at least greatly expanded Chapter 26—its
inordinate length alone would suggest as much. Nevertheless, this does not mean that L might not already
have contained corresponding chapters. Perhaps they were conceived as logical continuations of his trips
down to Hell and up to the stars (although this explanation is not necessary, as Joachim Mette showed by
bringing the latter trips into the larger context of what he calls the ascensus and the descensus motifs, which
have their origin in the late Greek Alexander novel,21 and as a desired transition into the adventure section
(Part Three). The sections which deal with Faust's blasphemy in Rome and in Constantinople are of chapter
length (the Register in W lists them as chapters) and are not only original but even consonant in tone with
other Faust adventures. If they were contained in L, they might well have suggested to the copyist the
possibility of expanding his exemplar with visits to the many cities described by Schedel. For our present
purposes it is enough, however, that any satisfactory interpretation of Chapters 26 and 27 supposes the use of
Schedel by a copyist. Our observations outside the frame of the disputations thus confirm the assumption that
the information borrowed from Schedel for Chapter 10, which interrupts the course of the disputations with
vapid matter irrelevant to Faust's question, should no more be consigned to L than was the Dasypodius
excerpt (of Ch. 16).

Undoubtedly Chapter 12 is the shallowest copy work in the Faust Book. Here various Latin names for Hell are
presented so mechanically as to omit not merely a question from Faust to justify them, but even a prose
context for the list which makes up the entire, brief chapter. The same names are translated, in the same
sequence, for Chapter 16, where the copyist sets them off with an empty line in the text, as if thus to claim his
own contribution.

Since the Elucidarius (1572) contains a section very similar to Chapter 12, and because information from this
compendium occurs often in the Faust Book, Szamatólski believed it to be the source for Chapter 12.22 Petsch
(Quellen, pp. 162 ff.) followed Szamatólski, but Milchsack23 called attention to a second possibility in the
Imago Mundi of Anshelmus of Cantuarius (1573), which bears a closer relationship to the beginning of
Chapter 12, and which also shares the spelling of Barathrum with W and H, but not with Elucidarius. On the
other hand, the sequence of the names in W and H is closer to Elucidarius.

Further evidence for an indirect relationship between the Faust Book and Elucidarius may lie in the translation
(Ch. 16) of lacus mortis. Anshelmus uses only Latin. Elucidarius gives see des todts. W probably reflects an
error in the direct source with Seel des todts; because H attempts a correction: Helle des todts. Milchsack
suggested as the direct source for the Faust Book an unknown collection of sermons, because he noticed the

43
pronoun jr in Chapter 12, a form of address unusual with Mephosto. The copyist did use it again, however, in
Chapter 26 (which, we have seen, consists mainly of Schedel excerpts). Chapter 26 begins with a list of
countries in no special order, but the sequence corresponds in detail with a list from Elucidarius.

There can be no doubt that X took some material—directly or indirectly—from Elucidarius. Those portions of
the disputation series drawn by X from Dasypodius and Schedel led us to a survey of all Faust-Book passages
dependent on these two sources, and we were able to conclude that the use of them was everywhere typical of
X and different from the work of L. With Elucidarius the case turns out to be entirely different. A survey of
the whole Faust text indicates that the author of L was probably already familiar with this source, and that X
used it (perhaps indirectly) as well. Thus our question here is not: are Elucidarius excerpts typical of X?—but
rather: can we distinguish between L and X in their use of this reference work?

In some cases we cannot. Chapters 20, 28, and 33 all present data from Elucidarius (Quellen, pp. 162 f. and
185), although by no means as slavishly as does Chapter 12. Chapters 29-32, meteorological discussions of
Faust with a learned Doctor from Halberstadt, are clearly essential components of L. Chapters 20, 28, and 33
offer more meteorology. Did the author of L draw these pseudo-scientific sections from Elucidarius?

Chapters 11, 16, 24, and 25 seem to prove that he was familiar with the work, for these chapters, which cannot
all be additions by X, contain several short passages dependent on Elucidarius (Quellen, pp. 162 f. and 168).
Most of them are well adapted to their new context. In excellent accord, for example, with Faust's arrogant
point of view when describing his Himmelfahrt is his remark: "Jm herab fahrn sah jch auf die Welt, die ward
wie ein dotter im Ay." Elucidarius uses this figure merely as an objective illustration of how the earth is
surrounded by the wendelmeer. Such Elucidarius fragments as those in Chapters 11, 16, 24, and 25 are not the
perfunctory work of a copyist. They are bits of information which an intelligent reader of Elucidarius would
on appropriate occasion draw from memory—and Elucidarius was a popular reference work in its day.

Since the use of Elucidarius by the Faust Book is not at all uniform, as was the use of Dasypodius and
Schedel, we cannot say whether some chapters (20, 28, and 33) derive from that author who freely adapted an
occasional Elucidarius phrase to new contexts (in Chs. 11, 16, 24, and 25), or from that scribe who pointlessly
and awkwardly interpolated the slavish copy work of Chapter 12. But because the Faust Book does show two
such strikingly different relationships to Elucidarius, we have gained further evidence for two discrete stages
in its development: L and X.

Our examination of the source materials for the disputation series raises major questions at two points. The
first concerns the unanswered question in Chapter 10: "Wie ist aber dein herr Lucifer inn fall kommen?" The
subsequent material is from Schedel's Weltchronik. We have seen that such excerpts are in general typical of
the work of X, and we wonder what Mephosto's answer according to L might have been.

In Chapter 13 Mephosto demands a three-day deferment before he answers for fear of the effect his reply will
have on Faust, in spite of the fact that Faust's question in Chapter 13 is perfectly harmless. Mephosto's
response does indeed dismay Faust greatly, but this is because of information volunteered by Mephosto—in
spite of his avowed wish not to disturb Faust. Neither of the contradictions in Mephosto's behavior remains if
his response in Chapter 13 is to a question like that in Chapter 10, for in this case Faust asks, receives an
answer to, and is deeply dismayed by, one question—namely, how Lucifer came to fall. Furthermore, the first
words of Mephosto's response in Chapter 13—"Mein herr Lucifer (der Also genannt wirdet von wegen das er
auss dem hellen Leicht des Hymmels verstossen) ward im Hymmel ein Engel GOttes"—present the obvious
continuation from Chapter 10: "Wie ist aber dein herr Lucifer in fall kommen?"

If this is the correct relationship of question and answer according to L, the problem we must then consider is
how the description of Lucifer's glory in Heaven (the subject of Chapter 13 according to X) fits into the
context of Lucifer's fall. The real content of the disputations is their effect upon Faust. We can rest assured

44
that the account of the fall must begin with a description of the archangel's glory in Heaven, for both glory and
fall are essential as justification for Faust's complaint at the end of Chapter 13:

Dann er betracht auff dise erzellung dess Geists, wie der Teuffel vnnd verstossen Engell vor
Gott so herrlich geziert ward, vnd wann er nicht wider Gott gewesen auss Trutz vnnd
Hochmueth, wie er hett ein Ewigs, Hymlischs wesen vnnd wohnung gehabt, da er jetzt von
GOtt Ewig verstossen sey, vnnd sprach: O Wehe Mir, immer wehe! Also wirt es Mir auch
vnnd nichts ertreglicher ergehn.

It is in connection with Lucifer's glory in Heaven that the wording of Mephosto's responses offers a final link
between the question of Chapter 10 and the answer of Chapter 13. Mephosto's response in Chapter 10 (before
he trails off into the Schedel quotation) is: "Herr, Mein herr Lucifer ist ein schoner Engell gewest von GOtt
erschaffen; Er ward ein geschopff der Seligkeit." The italicized words correspond with the first words of the
response in Chapter 13: "Mein herr Lucifer … ward im Hymmel ein Engel GOttes … ein gleichnus vnd
geschopf vor Gott."

Apparently the wording from one point in L is reflected at two points in X, where it was necessary for
Mephosto to answer once according to Schedel and later according to the exemplar. This would mean that
Faust's question in Chapter 13 is the invention of X. It is not a direct question, and it is not pure invention. The
wording "Er solt jm sagen, inn was gestalt sein herr im Hymmel geziert vnnd darjnnen gewohnt" was already
present in Mephosto's response: "Er ward inn sollicher Zier vnnd inn einer sollichen gestalt … vnd Wohnung."
Since Mephosto (logically) began with a description of Lucifer's former glory, X took this subject to be a
reasonable one for Faust's question.

The second point where X distorted the context of the disputations with an excerpt occurs in another chapter
of great importance for our understanding of Faust's situation. In Chapter 15 the introductory remarks explain
Faust's compulsion to hear more of Hell and of the torments there:

Jm Traumet, wie man spricht, von dem Teuffel oder von der Hell, das ist, er dachte, was er
gethon, vnnd vermaint jmmer durch oft vnnd viel Disputationes, fragen vnnd gesprech mit
dem Geist wolt er so weitt kommen, das er einmahl mochte zuer besserung, Rew vnnd
Abstinentz gelanngen. Hierauff nimpt Doctor Faustus jm für ain gesprech vnnd Colloquium
mit dem Gaist (dann jm wider von der Hell getraumet hett) zuhalten, fragt derwegen Erstlich
den Gaist, was die Hell, Zum Andern, wie die Hell erschaffen vnnd geschaffen were?

The chapter ends rather abruptly, with no answer to these questions. The next chapter (16) begins with the
long quotation from Dasypodius, where the textual arrangement alone was enough to arouse our suspicions.
We found Dasypodius excerpts in general typical of the work of X, and the content of this excerpt in
particular so inappropriate to the questions of Chapter 15 that we discarded the possibility of its presence in L.

The Dasypodius material is shortly followed by a passage beginning: "Endtlich das die Seel also ists / Das es
vnmoglich mit was weiß sie ausspeculiern / vnnd zubegreiffen ist / Wie Gott sein Zorn also gelegt hat jnn ein
solchen Orth/Da Gottes zorn sein gebew vnnd erschaffung ist." This sentence was garbled in H (Petsch, p. 37,
1. 4), and the reference of the pronouns in W is certainly ambiguous. Still, the use of the words speculiern and
erschaffung, as well as the figurative use of gebew, are strongly reminiscent of what we know of L.24 This
passage now, like the Dasypodius borrowing which precedes it, lists various names for Hell. Unlike
Dasypodius, the interpretations are more imaginative than pedantic:

Ein Schandt wohnung, ein Schlundt, Rachen, Tieffe vnnd vnderscheidt der Hell. Dann die
Seelen der verdambten muessen nicht allein inn Wehe vnnd Clag dess Ewigen Fewers Sitzen,
sonder auch schandt, hon vnnd spott tragen gegen GOtt vnnd seinen Seligen, das Sie inn

45
 Wohnung des schlunds vnnd Rachen sein muessen. Dann die Hell ist ein solcher Schlundt
vnnd Rachen, der nit zu ersettigen ist, sundern gunnet jmmer noch mehr nach den Seelen, die
nicht verdambt sein sollen, das Sie auch verfüert vnnd verdampt werden möchten.

This passage, which probably represents at least a part of Mephosto's response according to L, is followed by
a space in the text and then a translation into German of those Latin names which make up Chapter 12. We
then learn that the first two questions have been answered: "Vnnd dies sey mein Erster vnnd Anderer bericht."

If the Faust Book still holds any more of Mephosto's original response, then we have good reason to seek it in
Chapter 11, which Mephosto concludes with the words: "Vnd ist diss mein kurtze berichtung." That X shifted
the authentic answer to Faust's question of Chapter 15, "wie die Hell erschaffen vnnd geschaffen were," from
Chapter 16 to Chapter 11 seems evi-dent from the first words of this short chapter. Those which I have
italicized recur in Chapter 15: "Dem Doctor Fausto ward eben, wie man sonst zu sagen pflegt. Es traumbt jm
von der hell, darumb fragt er seinen Gaist, auch von der Substanz, Orth vnnd er-schaffung der Hell, wie es
geschaffensey."

Whatever the location of this comment and question in L, we can reasonably assume that they occurred there
only once, not twice (i.e., not in Ch. 11 and in Ch. 15). We can further assume that the question must occur in
connection with the detailed justification for asking it which constitutes the first part of Chapter 15. We must
then conclude that the response to the question, which we cannot find in Chapters 15 and 16, appears in
Chapter 11.

Mephosto's "Erster bericht" ("Was die Hell … were") probably begins according to L with the statement that
the soul's speculations are not equal to the structure of Hell, which is God's Wrath (the word Seel—H:
Helle—thus makes sense after all, particularly in connection with the word speculiern). Mephosto can offer a
few names for Hell, which the copyist then supplements with the same ones he has already interpolated for his
Chapter 12. By translating them he offers some variation; to reproduce L here would have been sheer
repetition, for this is the point where he borrowed the material for Chapter 11. Where, according to X-W,
there is a space in the text, lay, according to L, Mephosto's "Anderer Bericht" ("Wie die Hell erschaffen vnnd
geschaffen were"), or the content of Chapter 11, in which Mephosto takes up the theme of an earlier
disputation (Lucifer's Fall), tells when and why Hell came into being, and concludes with the statement: "Aber
wir Teuffel können (H: können auch) nicht wissen, was gestalt und weiß die Hell erschaffen, noch wie es von
GOtt gegrundet vnnd erbawt sey; dann sie hat weder Endt noch grundt."

We are now able to postulate a disputation series in L which contains the following items:

A DISPUTATION CONCERNING MEPHOSTO

Occasion: "Vbergibt jm sein Gaist bald ein groß Buech … bald sticht jn der Fürwitz" (Ch. 10)

Question: "Was Geistes bistu?" (Ch. 10)

Response: "Jch bin ein Geyst… vnder dem Hymmel Regierenndt" (Ch. 10)

A DISPUTATION CONCERNING LUCIFER'S FALL

Question: "Wie ist … Lucifer inn fall kommen?" (Ch. 10)

Mephosto postpones answer: "Sein Gaist batt in … (Ch. 13)

46
Response: "Mein herr Lucifer (der Also genannt wirdet von wegen das er auss dem hellen
Liecht des Hymmels verstossen) … vervrthailt vnnd judiciert" (Ch. 13)

Complaint: "Doctor Faustus als er dem Gaist von disen Dingen hat zugehört, speculiert er
darvff … O, das jch nie gebom wer worden &" (Ch. 13)

Comment: "Dise Clag fiert Doctor Faustus … Aber er ward … vnglaubig vnnd Clainer
hoff-nung" (Ch. 13)

A DISPUTATION CONCERNING THE SPIRITS

No direct question

Mephosto hesitates: "Dise Disputatio vnnd Frag, so jch dir erclaren soll … Wiewol jch nit
hinuber kan" (Ch. 14)

Response: "Also soltu wissen, das baldt der verstossne Engel inn fahl kam … wir … besitzen …
auch seine Lehrer vnnd Zuehorer" (Ch. 14)

Question: "So hast du mich auch besessen?" (Ch. 14)

Response: "Ja, warumb nicht … mit Leib vnnd Seel vnns ergabest" (Ch. 14)

Complaint: "Es ist war (sagt Doctor Faustus) … Ey, was hab jch gethon &!" (Ch. 14)

A DISPUTATION CONCERNING HELL

Occasion: "DOctor Faustus hett wol jmmerdar ein Rew im hertzen … mochte zuer besserung,
Rew vnnd Abstinentz gelanngen" (Ch. 15)

Questions:

1. "Was die Hell?"

2. "Wie die Hell erschaffen?"
3. "Was für Wehe vnnd Clag der verdampten?"
4. "Ob der verdampte wider zur Huldt GOttes konndte kommen" (Ch. 15)
Mephosto warns: "Der Gaist gab jm auf kein frag noch Articul antwurt … ist noch mein
Sententz vnd mainung, du liessests bleiben" (Ch. 15)

Faust insists: "So will jchs wissen … du muest mirs sagen" (Ch. 15)

Responses:

1. "das die Seel also ists, das es vnmoglich … das Sie auch verfuert vnnd ver-dampt
werden mochten" (Ch. 16)
2. "So bald mein herr in fall kam, ward jm die Hell zu theil… sie hat hat weder Endt
noch grundt" (Ch. II)
3. "Zum Dritten … jr straff vnnd Pein wirt Letstlich grosser vnnd merer" (Ch. 16)
4. "Zum Vierdten … dannocht ist solliche hoffnung verlohren" (Ch. 16)
Mephosto forbids further questions: "Vnnd solst wissen, fragestu mich ein ander mahl … jch
bin dir solliches nit schuldig. Darumb lass mich … zufriden" (Ch. 16)

47
 Comment: "Doctor Faustus gieng abermahlen vom Gaist … dess Gottlichen worts bald vergaß
vnnd inn windt schlueg" (Ch. 16)

A DISPUTATION CONCERNING MEPHOSTO'S WISHES

Question

Response

Mephosto forbids further questions (Ch. 17)

We have no reason, of course, for supposing that the disputations originally fell in this order. Before we can
explore the question of arrangement, we need briefly to refer to the central theme of the disputation section. It
is stated most precisely by Faust himself after he learns how Lucifer was dashed from glory as punishment for
the sin of pride:

… jch bin auch ein Geschópf Gottes vnnd mein Vbermueth fleisch vnnd Bluet hat mich
gesetzt in ein verdamlicheit an Leib vnnd Seel vnnd jch, mit meiner vemunfft vnnd Synn,
mich geraytzt, das jch als ein geschöpff Gottes von jme gewichen bin vnnd mich den Teuffell
verfueren lassen, das jch mich mit Leib vnnd Seel an jn verknipfft habe. Darumb kan jch kein
genad mehr hoffen, sonndern wirdt Ewig wie Lucifer inn die Ewige verdamnus vnnd wehe
verstossen werden muessen. Ach wee, jmmer wehe! was zeich jch mich selbs vnnd was mach
jch auß mir selbs? (Ch. 13)

The real question in all the disputations is the one which Faust repeats in each important chapter: "Was mach
jch auß mir selbs?" Faust's doubts are of a protestant-religious, not of a purely logical, nature, i.e., he never
questions God, but rather whether his own condition is such that he can look for salvation. Thus the focal
point of the disputations remains Faust's soul.

Mephosto must twice command him to consider: "Was machstu auss dir selbst"—once when Faust insists on
marrying (Ch. 9), and again when he persists in continuing the disputations (Ch. 15). We have seen Faust's
lament of Chapter 13 ("was zeich jch mich selbs vnnd was mach jch auß mir selbs"). When in Chapter 14 he
cries, "Jch hab mich selbs gefanngen … Ey, was hab jch gethon," his devil says: "Do sihe du zue" Chapter 15
stresses Faust's "bedennckhen, was er sich doch gezigen hett an seiner Seligkeit."

The same theme is continued throughout the Faust Book. The old man of Chapter 54 still urges Faust to
consider: "Mein herr, jr wist, wie jr ein Fiirnemen habt … Ach, mein herr, was zeucht jr Euch; es ist vmb den
Leib nicht zuthuen, sunder vmb die Liebe Seel" (cf. Ch. 13, end). Faust is not unmoved by the sermon: "Dacht
er der Lehr lanng nach vnnd betrachtet, was er doch sich vnnd sein Seel zyhe." The theme then reappears in
the Complaint of Chapter 66 (much garbled in H, and not remedied by Petsch's note): "Ach, Fauste, Du
verwegens, nichts werdes hertz … Ach, vernunfft vnnd Freyer will, was zeyhet jr meine Glyder." When at last
Faust informs the students "was jch für ein Mann ward," their first remark is the now familiar: "Ach, lieber
herr Fauste, was habt jr Euch gezygen" (Ch. 71).

The purpose of the disputation series is to establish the extent to which Faust has depraved himself and to
determine his necessary end unless he turn from his evil way and sin no more.

The disputation section must make it clear that Faust's pride, as it has caused him to sin, also stands in the way
of his conversion, for pride is at the root of his conceit that his depravity can exceed the forgiving Grace of
God:

48
 Aber sein Rew ward Cains vnnd Judas Rew vnnd Bueß, da wol ein Rew im hertzen ward,
Aber er verzaget an den Genaden GOttes vnnd ward jm ein vnmüglichs, das er zur Huldt
GOttes könndt kommen, gleich wie Cain, der also verzweyffelt, das er sagte, seine Sündt
weren grösser, dann jm verzigen möcht werden; desgleichen mit Judas &. Dem Doctor Fausto
wardt auch also. Er sahe wol gehn Hymmel, Aber er konndt nichts ersehen. (Ch. 15)

Here is an accurate presentation of that condition of sin which the Lutheran regarded as most perilous.25 The
last we hear of Faust before the devil fetches him is:

Er wolt betten. Es wolt jm aber nicht eingeen, wie dem Cain, sagt seine sund weren grosser,
dann jme mocht verzygen werden. Also mit Fausto auch, der gedacht jmmer, er hab es mit
seiner verschreibung zu grob gemacht. (Ch. 71)

Faust insolently seeks to effect his own salvation with the disputations, seeks to attain "durch oft vnnd viel
Disputationes, fragen vnnd gesprech mit dem Geist … besserung, Rew vnnd Abstinentz" (Ch. 15). He hopes
that the description of Hell, including the manner of lamentations there and the impossibility of redemption
thence, can engender sufficient horror of the consequences of sin that he will sin no more, "dann nimmer
thuen ist ein grosse Bueß (Chs. 13 and 54). Such a conception of redemption—based upon sinning no more out
of fear for the consequences—was regarded by the sixteenth-century Lutheran as sinfully Catholic. But Faust's
depravity exceeds merely seeking salvation in his own way; insufficient faith in the Grace of God leads him to
seek salvation through the aid of God's enemy.

In the disputation section, Faust becomes more and more intensely aware of his depraved condition and,
seeking in vain for a change of heart through assurances from a devil, he becomes also more and more
hardened in his heart, so that he is finally incapable of the humble yet confident faith which alone can save
him. This development amounts to the major organizational principle of the disputation series, but certain
others deriving from this basic theme are also apparent:

Each disputation tends to conclude with some account of its effect on Faust.

The later disputations are more serious, and more space must accordingly be devoted to
comment on his condition, including his own complaints.

As Faust's purpose becomes obvious, Mephosto becomes more grudging in his answers,
finally refusing to hear further questions of this nature.

Faust must therefore press more and more urgently, finally demanding either instruction or
death.

As he learns more, Faust becomes more distressed, thus moving further away from joyous
Lutheran faith, toward doubt and depravity.

At two points a solution is offered: a) how Faust might achieve salvation (Ch. 13); b) the
certainty of his damnation (Ch. 16).

A certain framework seems to have enclosed the series, and still partially encloses it. Faust's lechery with
succubi, recalled at the beginning of Chapter 10 and mentioned again at the end of Chapter 16, suggests that
inquiry into forbidden knowledge is just as indecent as camal lust and that acceptance of a devil as mediator is
as inhuman as intercourse with demons. It is significant that the devil who brings the book to prick Faust's
curiosity also provides the succubi to prick his lust. This framework gives us a final reason for rejecting
Chapter 17 as a component of L, other considerations being its vapid content and its confused attempt to

49
explain how the disputation on Hell is continued, despite the fact that its function in the Faust Book is already
accomplished.26

Now there are a few points where our tentative arrangement of questions and responses violates the formal
principles we have abstracted. This indicates displacement of at least one disputation. The Disputation
Concerning Lucifer's Fall (response in Ch. 13) turns out to be of a far more serious nature than the one
Concerning the Spirits (Ch. 14) following it. Mephosto clearly perceives their relative importance. In Chapter
13 he wants to turn Faust away, and not until three days later—presumably after obtaining permission from
some higher authority, as was necessary at the other most crucial point in the Faust Book, the acceptance of
Faust's conditions for the pact—will he give answer. In Chapter 14 Mephosto does hesitate to answer, but only
briefly and because he fears that "Dise Disputatio vnnd Frag, so jch dir erclaren soll, wirdt Dich etwas, mein
herr Fauste, zu vnmueth vnd nachdennckhen treiben." Mephosto is right. This is the exact effect of the
disputation on Faust. The remark strikes us as peculiar nonetheless, for Faust has just been (end of Ch. 13)
weeping bitterly and crying in his heart. Faust's pensiveness of Chapter 14 is caused by the recognition that he
did not really outwit the devils; his des pair in Chapter 13, by the realization that his condition is precisely the
same as Lucifer's. The arrangement of these disputations according to X thus makes Mephosto's remark of
Chapter 14, if it is not to be taken as comical, appear silly in the light of the far greater impact of the previous
disputation upon Faust.

Furthermore, certain words in Faust's long and bitter complaint at the end of Chapter 13 presuppose
information supplied and, perhaps more decisive, even a frame of mind prepared only in Chapter 14. In
Chapter 13 Faust is able to lament the fact "das jch als ein Geschopff Gottes von jme gewichen bin vnnd mich
den Teuffell verfüeren lassen," even though he must be at this point still of the vain and proud opinion that he
has devils in his service (as is abundantly clear from the conjuration scenes and from his pact). Not until
Chapter 14 ("So hast du mich auch besessen? Lieber, Sag mir die Warheit … Ey, was hab jch gethon!") is the
awareness forced upon an astonished Faust that this devil has seduced him. Indeed, the essential purpose of
Chapter 14's Disputation Concerning the Spirits is to make Faust know that he, not the devil, has been
ensnared.

If, according to L, Chapter 14 precedes Chapter 13, it then becomes probable that the fragmentary Disputation
Concerning Mephosto of Chapter 10 was not a separate disputation in L, but rather represents the vestige of
that complete disputation which was originally located at the beginning of the series—namely, the Disputation
Concerning the Spirits of Chapter 14. Mephosto's opening words here, "Dise Disputatio vnnd Frag," are
appropriate for the beginning of the section, as is his explanation that, even if he does not wish to comply, "jch
nit hinuber kan." We saw how the introduction to Chapter 14 was the work of X. It is comforting to see that
this copyist, above all interested in quantity, did not throw out Faust's question according to L, but left it
standing in its original position (Ch. 10). The result was a question virtually unanswered (Ch. 10: "Was
Geistes bistu") and (in Ch. 14) a response not asked for by Faust. X interpreted Faust's question in the
narrowest sense and gave a twelve-word statement that Mephosto is a spirit like Beelzebub (Ch. 24). In L,
Faust most probably is seeking to determine the spiritual realm to which his own familiar spirit belongs.
Mephosto belongs to that realm which seeks to possess men's hearts against Christ, and the response in
Chapter 14, with its excerpt from Jacobus, amounts to the full and adequate answer to "Was Geistes bistu?"

A "full and adequate answer" in L must be judged not according to hellish protocol, but according to Faust's
condition. In L, Mephosto's response is adequate in that Faust understands this spirit to be of Lucifer, that
there are many like him whose business is the seduction of mankind, and that he is not Faust's subject. The
phrasing by X of the "question" in Chapter, 14—here, as elsewhere, an indirect question contrived out of words
in the response—betrays the copyist's interest in the occult material presented rather than in Faust. This does
not seem to have been true of L, for the very first disputation, like the two subsequent ones, led—if our
surmises are correct—to a development in Faust, in this instance to the destruction of his conceit that a spirit is
subject to him.

50
We are able to conclude with the following probable arrangement of disputations according to L:

A DISPUTATION CONCERNING MEPHOSTO (AND THE SPIRITS)—question in Ch. 10,

response in Ch. 14 of W;

A DISPUTATION CONCERNING LUCIFER'S FALL—question in Ch. 10, response in Ch.

13 of W;

A DISPUTATION CONCERNING HELL—questions in Ch. 15, responses in Chs. 11 and 16

of W.

If we observe this sequence from the point of view of Faust the questioner—and thus from the point of view of
a somewhat sophisticated novelist—our hypothetical arrangement can be shown to yield good continuity.
Continuity could not be found in X; certainly it could not be shown in X minus those passages which were
clearly absent in L.

Mephosto comes dangerously close to losing Faust in Chapter 9, when Faust threatens to marry, but his
"monk" can satisfy him temporarily with succubi. In Chapter 10, Mephosto brings Faust further diversion is
the form of a book of occult writings, "darjnn er sich auch neben seiner Teufflischen Ee erlustigtte." These
instructions (as to which spirit bears affinity to which elements and which are best for a given task) arouse
Faust's curiosity about his own familiar spirit, so that he takes advantage of an article in the pact and initiates
the first disputation. The response involves a matter which Faust immediately perceives to be of critical
personal importance, and he interrupts Mephosto with another question: "So hast du mich auch besessen?"
Faust is assured that the business of such spirits as Mephosto does indeed concern him personally; that his
present condition stems directly from their initiative; and that his part has been the merely passive one of
failure to keep godly thoughts. This knowledge comes as a shock to the proud speculator, and the first fears
concerning his future strike him: "Ey, was hab jch gethon!"

Faust has learned that Mephosto is of the Kingdom of Evil and that in the normal course of his age-old
business he has possessed Faust. Mephosto's master, the Prince of Evil, thus becomes the subject of Faust's
now anxious inquiry. The seriousness of the matter is indicated at the outset by the same technique as was
used with the pact. Mephosto's explanation of Lucifer's fall convinces Faust that—whether he be a pawn of the
devils or not, whether they be serving him or he them—he must in either case be condemned to a fate such as
Lucifer's, for he bears the same guilt which damned the archangel. This is where Faust's longest and most
violent complaint occurs. It is followed by a clear statement as to where salvation lies and what the
consequences will be if Faust turns from his evil ways: he will lose his body to the devil, but his soul will be
saved. "Aber er ward inn allen seinen opinionibus vnnd mainungen zweifelhafftig, vnglaubig vnnd Clainer
hoffnung."

The last disputation is introduced by a statement of Faust's mistaken hopes: that he might achieve repentance
through mere fear of the consequences of his sin, a topic virtually predicted by, and a logical continuation of,
the end of the preceding disputation (Ch. 13). Now come the questions concerning Lucifer's place of
confinement, the torments there, and the possibility of release. Mephosto provides, as always, a full answer. In
the end it clarifies his statement: "du bist mein vnnd kerest auch inn den Weg, darumb, das du vil von der Hell
wilst fragen," for the sort of faith that Faust is seeking has been attained by all the damned in Hell, and they
too know full well that their sins exceed the Grace of God.

Mephosto concludes by brusquely forbidding further such discussions. He cannot fear that Faust is on the
right path, but he understandably finds the subject of salvation—and this is whither the disputations
tended—distasteful. L can now enter his conclusion that Faust will not find salvation according to the means
outlined in the second disputation (close of Ch. 13),

51
 … dieweil jm, wie obgemelt, der Teuffel das hertz verstockht vnd verbl endt. zue dem, wann
er schon allein ward vnnd dem Gottlichen wort nachtrachtet, da schmuckht sich dann der
Teuffel inn gestalt einer schönen frawen zue jm, halset jn vnnd trib mit jm alle vnzucht, Also
das er dess Gottlichen worts bald vergaß vnnd inn windt schlueg.

By returning at the end of the third disputation to the carnal theme of Chapters 9 and 10, L assures us that his
purpose is accomplished. When X adds an awkward chapter, it not only breaks the meaningful framework of
lust encircling the indiscrete speculations, it also betrays the plodding interests of the copier of Schedel and
Dasypodius.

We have looked often enough now into the workshop of X to attempt some conjectures as to how this editor
came to rearrange the series of disputations. The sort of material he interpolated betrays at least one attitude of
his toward this section: interest in the "facts" Mephosto and others have to offer, rather than concern for the
progress of Faust's soul. For the editor of X, the disputations are a group of articles on the Devil and Hell, on a
topic worth treating and even worth research and supplementation at some points. His reference books were a
dictionary by Dasypodius, Schedel's Weltchronik in the Alt translation, and either the Elucidarius or some
work which drew heavily from it.

Schedel's analysis of the Heavenly Hierarchies could be utilized right at the start, where Faust's first question,
"Was Geistes bistu?" seemed to call for a thorough treatment of the spirit world. Mephosto, clearly, was a
damned spirit; Elucidarius could provide a list of the names of Hell together with a brief description of the
torments there. After all, L itself contained the statement that as soon as Lucifer fell from the Hierarchies Hell
was ready for him. Removed from their context in L these lines provided the logical connection (Ch. 11)
between the Schedel (Ch. 10) and the Elucidarius excerpts (Ch. 12).

Such a connection seemed logical to X because it is chronological, and interest in information alone prefers
historical order. When these three topics were located at the very beginning, the material began to acquire a
certain historical sequence (Ch. 10—the spirits in Heaven; Ch. 11—the creation of Hell for the fallen ones; Ch.
12—some names for Hell according to the torments there). Of the three disputations in L, the first one—A
Disputation Concerning Mephosto—was for X a disputation about the activities of the spirits from the time of
Adam to the present, and hence could not reasonably precede the Disputation concerning Lucifer's Fall, which
treats of events before Adam. Hence X reversed the original order of Chapters 14 and 13.

The compiler's method seems to have been as transparent as his reasoning. He lets Faust ask his first two
questions (from L, without changing the original order) immediately: "Was Geistes bistu?" and "Wie ist …
Lucifer inn fall kommen?" He then lets Mephosto answer them with borrowed material spliced with lines
from the exemplar. Response to the first question becomes brief and to the point (Mephosto giving the same
reply as does Beelzebub in Ch. 24). The first part of Mephosto-Schedel's response to the second question
comes from the same source as the question itself. The question and these first words of the response
represent the beginning of L's Disputation Concerning Lucifer's Fall (now Ch. 13). These words, like the
Schedel passage which constitutes the remainder of Chapter 10, concern Lucifer's glory in Heaven, so that L
itself could offer the transition into the Schedel excerpt.

When the compiler of X came to copy the Disputation Concerning Lucifer's Fall, he did not repeat the
question he had already used in Chapter 10, but put together a new one out of words in Mephosto's response
of Chapter 13. Since Mephosto begins with an account of Lucifer in Heaven, this becomes the sole subject of
Faust's new question as invented in X. Procedure in Chapter 14 was the same. The editor of X had already
used the question "Was Geistes bistu?" so he took words from the response to devise another indirect question
which again corresponded with the beginning of Mephosto's response.

52
In Chapter 15 the editor faced a similar problem, for here too he had already used some of L's material (for
Ch. 11), but he could not conveniently invent a new question without rewriting a long paragraph. Here he was
content to recopy the lines he had already entered, perhaps because he thought he had sufficient pertinent
material from Dasypodius to justify answering the same question a second time. He defends himself with the
remark: "dann jm [Faust] wider von der Hell getraumet hett." Thus this statement appears three times: once in
Chapter 11, again when these lines are recopied, and a third time by way of justification for the Dasypodius
material.

We began our investigations in the realm of near certainties, with those materials which obviously represent
additions to the original Faust Book. Upon discarding these passages from the disputations and then seeking
to restore what remains of the section to its original order, we found ourselves dealing in mere probabilities.
Our attempt to determine the motives which led to such a disarrangement of the series amounted to
explorations at the outer limits of conjecture. Although even these conjectures seem more reasonable than the
sequence of disputations according to X, we cannot claim to have proved the existence of L. We have sought
only to show that such a hypothesis is justified in that it allows in detail an intellectually and aesthetically
satisfying interpretation of the Faust Book.

Notes

1H. G. Haile, "Widman's Wahrhafftige Historia: Its Relevance to the Faust Book," PMLA, LXXV (Sept.
1960). Fn. 6 reviews the research done at that time.

2Historia vnd Geschicht Doctor Johanntis Fausti … (Wolfenbüttel, 1892-97).

3HistoriaVon D. Johann Fausten …, in Neudrucke deutscher Literaturwerke des XVI. und XVII.
Jahrhunderts, Nos. 7-8b (Halle, 1911).

4H. G. Haile, "Die bedeutenderen Varianten in den beiden altesten Texten des Volksbuchs vom Doktor
Faustus," Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, LXXIX, 4 (1960), 383-409.

5 Examples of such work are: Geneviève Bianquis, Faust a travers quatre siecles (Paris, 1935); Eduard
Castle, "Faust im Wandel der Jahrhunderte," Chronik des Wiener Goethe-Vereins, LV (1951), 1-8; Eliza M.
Butler, The Fortunes of Faust (Cambridge, Eng., 1952); and Charles Dedeyan, La theme de Faust dans la
littérature europeene (Paris, 1954), to mention only a few.

6 Modern work in this direction stems from Robert Petsch, "Der historische Faust," Germanisch-Romanische
Monatsschrift, II (Jan.-June 1910), 99-115. Rudolf Blume wrote a number of articles dealing generally with
the historical validity of Widman's Faust. They are listed, and their more important conclusions are applied, in
"Der geschichtliche Wagner in den altesten Volksbüchern vom Faust," Euphorion, XXVI (1925), 9-21. Blume
later published: "Hat der geschichtliche Faust in Heidelberg studiert und promoviert?" Mein Heimatland
(1925), pp. 130-131 (this is not the last article in which Faust is claimed for a particular part of Germany); and
"Deutungen und Erlauterungen der wichtigsten Eigennamen in den altesten Überlieferungen und
Volksbüchern vom Faust," Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins, N.F. XL (1927), 273-301. The most
important views on the historical figure are represented by: Max Büchner, "Auf den Spuren des
geschichtlichen Faust," Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, XV (1927), 61-65; Ernst Beutler, "Georg
Faust aus Helmstadt," Goethe-Kalender, XXIX (1936), 170-210; Will-Erich Peuckert, "Dr. Johannes Faust,"
Zeitschrift far deutsche Philologie, LXX, 1 (1948), 55-74; and Hans Henning, "Faust als historische Gestalt,"
Jahrbuch der Weimarer Goethe-Gesellschaft, N.F. XXI (1959), 107-139.

7 Ernst Beutler, whose inferences concerning the historical Faust are still among the most probable, speaks of
the Faust Book in the following manner: "Nichts, gar nichts steht in diesen Blattem mehr von dem Faust, der

53
etwa ein halbes Jahrhundert vorher gestorben war, es sei denn dies, daß von ihm gesagt wird, er sei ein großer
Astrolog gewesen, und daß ein paar Orte genannt werden, an denen jener nachweislich sich aufgehalten. Wie
bei sinkender Sonne der Mensch einen großen Schatten wirft, undeutlich im Umriß—weithin
verdammernd—gespenstig wachsend—, aber nichts identisch ist an diesem Schattenbild mit dem Körper, der
den Schatten hervorruft, so verhält's sich auch bei diesen beiden Faustgestalten. Es ist nur noch Sage und nur
noch Erdichtung und nirgends mehr 'Historia'." ("Georg Faust aus Helmstadt," p. 198). This distinction, basic
to any orderly investigation of the Faust Book, could scarcely be made more eloquently; but I tried to stress it
further ("Widman's Wahrhafftige Historia," p. 355).

8 "Das Faust-Buch von 1587: seine Entstehung, seine Quellen, seine Wirkung," Zeitschrift far deutsche
Literaturgeschichte, VI, 1 (1960), 26-57. Here Henning uses his earlier work on the historical Faust as his
springboard. His simplification of the Faust Book stemma is independent of mine, which appeared later in the
same year.

9 Such discoveries no longer seem likely, not so much because of the remoteness of the sixteenth century, as
because the Faust Book was not willingly discussed in its day. The fate of the two Tubingen students who
popularized the Faust Book in rhymes is well known. The obscure history of the Wolfenbüttel MS indicates in
another way the aura of danger which surrounded magical writings. We can be reasonably certain that it was
acquired for Herzog August the Younger by one of his agents in South Germany, most probably Philip
Hainhofer in Nuremberg and Augsburg; yet there is nowhere a mention of it in the lists sent to the Duke. It
must have been purchased around 1620, the date which appears on the first page in a hand other than that of
the scribe, because in 1619-20 August's letters to Hainhofer stress his interest in magical books in general and
most particularly in Trithemius' Ste[ga]nographia. Although he was finally able to acknowledge receipt of the
Steganographia, we find no mention of it in the apparently complete file of dealers' catalogues of books sent
to Wolfenbüttel. Our best explanation of this fact probably lies in August's statement that the book ought not
to be sought in Heidelberg: "Von Heidelberg, kan ich das autographum der Steganographiae nicht erlangen;
sintemahl, der vorige Bibliothecarius, Franciscus Junius [1545-1602—the father of the philologist] selbiges mit
andern magicis libris, auß unverstande dem Vulcano committiret." Who is to guess what Faust materials
Junius thus disposed of? Who is to estimate how many righteous Juniuses countered heresy with fire? What
was the real extent of such losses?

10 In this case we have the source, Hartmann Schedel's Weltchronik, which speaks of "Mayland … herdisshalb
dem gepirg gelegen Gallie." The exemplar for W and H did not speak of Gallia, however, for H contains
"Meyland in Italiam." W, although he agrees with Schedel, clearly had the same exemplar as H, for he writes:
"Meylandt doch Galliae zuestendig." If, as Henning suggests, W is the original Faust Book and hence a direct
copy from Schedel, the word doch cannot be explained. If, as Henning supposes, H is descended from W, we
must expect H to contain Gallia instead of Italia. This and similar evidence for the existence of a common
exemplar X was established over a half century ago, and Henning is obliged to explain such things before
dismissing X from the Faust Book stemma.

The purpose of my article "Die bedeutenderen Varianten …" was indeed to show that W is less corrupted than
H, in that the editor of the latter felt free to alter and to omit passages. Nevertheless, we must often rely on H
for correct readings, because W contains many minor errors, too—apparently hearing errors made during
dictation. Here are a few examples, which only confirm the traditional theory that H is not descended from W,
but rather uses the same exemplar independently. W 14: "Noch ain Gayst ist bey vnns Asmodaeus Der Mann
jnn Vnkheuscheit getödt." H 15: "Noch ist ein Geist Asmodeus genannt, der hat sieben Mann in Vnkeuschheit
getödtet." This is another case where we have the source, reproduced in an appendix to Petsch's Historia
(Quellen, p. 163): "Auch haben wir den geist Asmod, der getot hat. vij. mann in irer vnküschen begird."—W
16: "Die Hell der Frawn Bauch / Vnnd die Erdt wirdt nicht stan." H 16: "Die Helle, der Frawen Bauch, vnd
die Erden werden nimmer satt."—W 56: "Die guet jungkhfraw wardt mit jupitters pfeyl durchschossen." H 54:
"Die gute Jungfrauw war mit Cupidinis Pfeilen durchschossen."—W 59: "Siben Teufelische Hecubas oder

54
Concubinas." H 57: "Siben Teuffelische Succubas."—W 59: "Damit Er alle weybsbilder schon macht." H 57:
"Darmit er alle Weibsbilder sehen möchte." There is also the well-known Schedel excerpt in Chapter 26,
where W and H both wander from their source (Quellen, p. 172). Schedel: "sigpogen." W: "Schwibogen." H:
"Steigbogen." Cf. also the following passages [italics mine]:

Schedel (on Würzburg)

Dise lobliche statt hat drey chorherrisch kirchen. on die bischoflichen thumkirchen. vnd die
vier petl orden. Auch sant Benedicten orden. zu sant Stephan, vnd cartheusser. teutsch herren.
vnd sant iohansen.

W (Ms)

jnn diser Statt hat es vil Orden / als Bettlorden / Benedictn / Steffan / Cartheuser / vnnd
Teutschen Orden / Auch Drey Chorherrisch kirchen ohn die Bischoffliche Thuemb kirchen /
Vier Bettelorden.

Jn diser Statt hat es viel Orden, als Bettel Orden, Benedictiner, Stephaner, Carthauser,
Johanser, vnnd Teutschen Orden. Jtem es hat alida drey Carthauserische Kirchen, on die
Bischoffliche Thumbkirchen, 4. Bettel Orden.

11 It is not enough merely to point to the careless style of chap books in general, for the Faust Book is not a
typical chap book: Inge Gaertner, "Volksbulcher und Faustbücher: eine Abgrenzung," diss. (Gottingen, 1951).
It is entirely true that Petsch's over-complicated stemma has led to extremes, as when Friedrich Schmidt, "Die
Historia vom Doktor Faustus: Stufen und Wandlungen," diss. (Gottingen, 1950), adds yet a fourth ancestor of
W and H to Petsch's three, but Henning does not solve the problem by merely dismissing earlier research and
stating that we possess the original.

12Euphorion, v, 741-753.

13Expansion of L with excerpts from compendia of the day and with folk tales about Faust as well as other
sorcerers. See Petsch's introduction to the Historia, esp. pp. xxiii-xxxvii; his article "Die Entstehung des
Volksbuches vom Doktor Faust," Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, III (1911), 207-224; and my article
on the Wahrhafftige Historia. Concerning the language of X, see: Herbert Müller, "Historia Doctor Johannis
Fausti: eine sprachliche Untersuchung der beiden altesten deutschen Fassungen des Faustbuchs nach der darin
zur Geltung kommenden Mundart," diss. (Rostock, 1923).

14 Generally, our most accurate rendition of X. See my "Die bedeutenderen Varianten …," pp. 405 f.

15
An editing of X; deletion of certain morally questionable passages (the beginning of H 52 = W 54; or all of
W 62); addition of occasional preacherly commentary.

16 Forthcoming in the Erich Schmidt Verlag is my diplomatic edition of the Faust Book according to the
Wolfenbüttel MS. There I have made such inferences with respect to the entire original Faust Book.
Quotations from the Faust Book in this paper, however, are from Milchsack's edition except where otherwise
noted. His editing is not good—and his orthography in particular is faulty—but for the moment no other edition
is available.

55
17 But cf. Eugen Wolff, Faust und Luther (Halle, 1912), for the thesis that the Faust Book is a Catholic roman
à clef.

18 Petsch's second appendix to the Historia, pp. 158-235, contains a reproduction of "Die wichtigsten
Quellen" in convenient form. We shall refer to it here as "Quellen." This excerpt is reproduced on p. 165. See
also the textual juxtapositions on pp. xxi-xxii.

19Quellen, pp. 162 f. See also: Siegfried Szamatólski, "Zu den Quellen des altesten Faustbuchs,"
Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturgeschichte, I (1888), 166 ff.; and Gustav Milchsack, Gesammelte Aufsatze
(Wolfenbülttel, 1922), col. 137.

20 See Petsch's introduction to the Historia, pp. xxix f. on Chapter 6 (=H 7), and xli on Chapter 46 (=H 47).

21 "Dr. Faustus und Alexander," Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift, xxv (1951), 27-39.

22 "Zu den Quellen des altesten Faustbuchs," pp. 161 ff.

23 Milchsack's Gesammelte Aufsatze, col. 137.

24 See Petsch's introduction to the Historia, pp. xxv-xxxvii.

25Milchsack, Historia, pp. ccclx ff., was even able to show that Chapter 15 uses words and turns of speech
identical with familiar passages from Luther's writings. See also Erich Schmidt, Faust und Luther (Berlin,
1896).

26 I showed above, p. 182, how X enters still another chapter—21—in which Faust is again able to circumvent
Mephosto's refusal; and we saw how, according to L, it is Mephosto who is to initiate further
discussion—Chapter 22—on a subject which corresponds with the devil's own interests.

Madeleine B. Stern (essay date 1972)

SOURCE: "The First German Faust Published in America," in American Notes & Queries, Vol. X, No. 8,
April, 1972, pp. 115-6.

[In the following essay, Stern discusses the original publication of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust in
America during the nineteenth-cenitury Transcendenitalist literary movement. Stern also comments on the
resonance of the Faust myth in the American mind.]

The importance of Goethe in the cultural life of 19th-century America has been so well documented that any
further evidence may seem superfluous and all but impossible. Yet a footnote, in the form of a previously
underestimated "first", may now be added to the towering superstructure of the bibliography on the subject.

From the time of Edward Everett's return from abroad in 1819, the fame of German literature and philosophy
began to spread in this country. The foreign seeds were sowed here by Margaret Fuller, Emerson and others.
Carlyle's influence was effective and in time copies of Goethe's writings appeared upon American shelves and
articles on Goethe enriched American periodicals. James Freeman Clarke wrote in the Western Messenger
(August, 1836): "Five years ago the name of Goethe was hardly known in England and America.… But now a
revolution has taken place. Hardly a review or a magazine appears that has not something in it about Goethe".
Margaret Fuller planned a biography of the great German poet. At Harvard, at Longfellow's Bowdoin and
elsewhere, German lessons and German readings prepared the ground for an understanding of that "restorer of
faith and love" whose universality and whose affirmations began to infiltrate American transcendental
thought.

56
Goethe's Werke, published in forty volumes between 1827 and 1830 at Stuttgart and Tubingen, were followed
between 1832 and 1834 by fifteen volumes of the Nachgelassene Werke. These fifty-five volumes found their
way to Emerson's shelves and when Elizabeth Peabody opened her Foreign Library at 13 West Street, Boston,
Items 15-70 consisted of Goethe's Sammtliche Werke in 55 Banden.

Of all Goethe's works, his Faust—that "national poem of the German people"—seemed most meaningful to the
American mind. As Margaret Fuller put it in The Dial (July 1841): "Faust contains the great idea of his life, as
indeed there is but one great poetic idea possible to man, the progress of a soul through the various forms of
existence. All his other works … are mere chapters to this poem". Faust was known to this country both as part
of the Werke and in translation. A copy of Lord Francis Leveson-Gower's verse translation of Part I (London:
J. Murray, 1823) was in Thomas Dowse's library in Cambridge; Emerson read the Gower translation.
Abraham Hayward's prose version, published in London by Edward Moxon in 1833, was the first translation
to be published in this country, bearing the 1840 imprint of Lowell: Daniel Bixby; New York: D. Appleton
and Company. A copy of that edition "in which Emerson wrote his name, is still in his house, at Concord".
The Hayward translation of Faust was also in Elizabeth Peabody's circulating foreign library despite the
feeling expressed in The Dial (July 1841) that "All translations of Faust can give no better idea of that
wonderful work than a Silhouette of one of Titian's beauties".

Although it appears to have esscaped general notice, Faust in the original German was made available in this
country three years before the American edition of the Hayward translation. The Curator of the William A.
Speck Collection of Goetheana at Yale cites as the "earliest Faust in German with an American imprint" the
1864 edition published by S. R. Urbino of Boston and F. W. Christern and others of New York. Yet a
generation earlier—in 1837—a German Faust was published in this country. Its title-page reads simply:
Faust./Eine Tragbdie/von/Goethe./New-York:/ Zu haben in der Verlags-Handlung,/ 471 Pearl-Strasse./1837.

An octavo of 432 pages, it contains both parts of Faust in continuous pagination with a second title-page, no
more informative than the first, preceding the "Zweiter Theil".

This edition was actually published by the New York firm of Radde and Paulsen as the second volume of a
five-volume set issued between 1837 and 1840 entitled MUSEUM DER DEUTSCHEN KLASSIKER and its
appearance as part of a set is probably the reason why it seems to have eluded the bibliographers.

In their own way, Radde and Paulsen were sowing the foreign seeds as actively as Margaret Fuller and
Elizabeth Peabody. William Radde and George Henry Paulsen were agents of J. G. Wesselhoeft and importers
of French and German books. At 471 Pearl Street they offered the works of Jean Paul and Wieland, Schiller
and Korner, as well as all the advantages of a German intelligence office and a homeopathic apothecary shop.
Indeed in this the Verlags-Handlung resembled the Peabody bookshop where homeopathic remedies were also
available along with German literature. Besides the works of Hahnemann, Radde and Paulsen sold tinctures,
milk sugar, and homeopathic chocolate.

In 1840, when Elizabeth Peabody published a Catalogue of her Foreign Library, her fourteenth entry was
"Faust, Tragedie von Goethe. (See Hayward's Faust.)" One wonders if this was a copy of the edition published
in New York by Radde and Paulsen. Its appearance, preceding Miss Peabody's entry for the 55-volume set of
Goethe's Sammtliche Werke, seems to indicate that it was indeed a separate edition and if so it may well have
been the Radde and Paulsen edition.

At all events, that New York firm merits the distinction of issuing the first German Faust with an American
imprint and so of helping to stir up that tempest in the transcendental teapot that has been engaging the
attention of scholars ever since.

Clarence K. Pott (essay date 1973)

57
SOURCE: "The Seventeenth-Century Dutch Faust Play," in Husbanding the Golden Grain: Studies in Honor
of Henry W. Nordmeyer, edited by Luanne T. Frank and Emery E. George, Department of Germanic
Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan, 1973, pp. 238-54.

[In the following essay, Pott discusses adaptations of the Faust legend in Dutch drama.]

Holland's contribution to the Faust literature is a modest one. But with much of sixteenth-century Europe it
shared an early interest and knowledge regarding the notorious doctor. For in the course of his wanderings
Faust came also to the Low Countries. He even gained a kind of prominence there: he was imprisoned most
probably in the castle Batenburg in the province of Gelderland as punishment for one of his typical escapades
the nature of which is unknown.1

The Spies Faustbuch of 1587 elicited an almost immediate response in Holland. In 1592 appeared DE
WARACHTIGHE HISTORIE VAN DOCTOR JOHANNES FAUSTUS, published in Dordrecht. This work
is, excepting minor deviations and omissions, a faithful translation of Spies. Its author, not finally identified
until 1863, was the Stadtmedicus of Dordrecht, Karel Baten. It is a little difficult to understand why his nom
de plume, Carol B. Medic, should have mystified anyone for long but this seems to have been the case. A
most detailed authoritative treatment of this Dutch Faust book was published in 1926 by B. H. Van 'T Hooft,
who offers a thorough summary of a great many hitherto scattered facts and points to possibly rewarding
further investigation in those localities in Holland which the historical Faust is known to have visited.2

Apparently quite independently of the Dutch Faust book, there appeared during the second half of the
seventeenth century a Dutch version of a Faust play. For a long time little or no factual information
concerning it was available. Even [Wilhelm] Creizenach, writing in 1878, despite painstaking research on the
Volksschauspiel, is apparently unaware of the unusual significance of this Dutch play for he fails to single it
out for special comment.3 But almost two decades later when Johannes Bolte publishes the results of his own
research on the history of the early German theater, specifically the stage at Danzig during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, a note under the date 1703 (Bolte, pp. 154-55, footnote) mentions a visit to Danzig by
one Jacob van Rijndorp, the leader of a very prominent company of hollandische Komodianten, and also the
long-time director of the established theaters in Leiden and The Hague.4 Bolte reports that Rijndorp published
"eine ganze Reihe von Lust- und Trauerspielen …, (darunter De hellevaart van Doktor Joan Faustus
[Amsterdam, 1731], ein Stuck, das vielleicht eine nahere Untersuchung lohnte)". At the time that Bolte uttered
this conjecture it is more than likely that neither he nor his predecessor Creizenach had seen a copy of this
Dutch play, since it was exceedingly rare. In 1910, however, E.F. Kossmann issued the play itself and
summarized in the Einleitung and six Beilagen everything he had been able to uncover concerning authorship
of the play, personages connected with its origin, stage performances, and related matters.5 The result of
Kossmann's work is that we are now able to see something of the probable position which the Dutch Faust
play occupies in the long and fragmentary history of the Faust Volksschauspiel.

De Hellevaart van Dr. Joan Faustus appeared in printed form in 1731 in Amsterdam, issued by Jan van
Hoven, onetime actor in The Hague and a former member of the aforementioned company of holldndiscihe
Komodianten whose leader was Jacob van Rijndorp. The latter had died eleven years before, and van Hoven
ostensibly published the Faust play from the Nachlass of his revered Prinzipal. In van Hoven's dedicatory
poem the first line reads:

Dit Spel door Ryndorps pen voor 't grootste deel gedicht,
(This play for the greater part composed by Rijndorp's pen)

58
This suggests at the very least that a talent other than Rijndorp's had also been involved in the composition of
the play. Kossmann has succeeded, conclusively it seems, in showing that this other author was one Floris
Groen (d. 1689, see Kossmann, pp. 169-75), concerning whom little is known save that he was a poor
wandering actor with a facility for adapting the works of others to the demands of the traveling companies.
How much of the Faust play was Groen's and how much was Rijndorp's is very difficult to determine.6 Be
that as it may, it is demonstrable that the Rijndorp-Groen Faust play was well known and popular in Holland.
Further, it is not impossible that Rijndorp had it in his repertoire on his extensive foreign visits (Denmark
1703, and north German cities). Quite aside from the interesting role that the Dutch piece may have played in
the theatrical history of Faust, the play is in itself worthy of the "nahere Untersuchung" invited by Bolte.

Despite certain differences of opinion it is generally accepted today that Faust as a drama came to the
continent essentially in the form of Marlowe's Tragicall History of D. Faustus. That is to say, a garbled
version of Marlowe, equipped with ornaments, modifications, and additions calculated to catch the eye and
ear, was constructed and performed by a troop of Englische Komodianten. Kossmann (p. 11) is of the opinion
that this play represented an amalgam of Marlowe, plus scenes and motifs from Dekker's If It Be Not Good,
the Devil Is in It(1612), plus certain changes intended to exhibit the special talents present in the performing
company. This composite play, if it existed, is lost, but Creizenach was able to reconstruct it fairly completely
from a report of a performance in Danzig in 1668.7 Marlowe is thus, more or less, the model for the
continental play performed in Dutch and German cities from about the middle of the seventeenth century on.
It is not possible to form exact opinions regarding the poetical and structural virtues and limitations of this
first Faust play. But if we examine other seventeenth-century Komödiantenstücke we may conclude that the
quality of these pieces was not high.8 They were, for our taste at least, disfigured by low-comedy additions
extraneous to the plot, by bombast and coarseness, by extensive recourse to pantomime (no doubt necessitated
by the initial language difficulty), and the like. The generally low estimate of these productions need therefore
not be seriously questioned. But to dismiss uncritically the contemporary Dutch Faust play, most probably
also a descendant of Marlowe, is not warranted.9

The total impression of R is one of unity. The various scenes are tied together logically; that is, they are
related not merely in a mechanical chronology but to the theme indicated in the title. This is true even of the
low-comedy scenes, which are usually thrown into ordinary seventeenth-century plays in a highly inorganic
fashion. In R they are connected with the main action. For example, Pekel (the Pickelharing of
contemporaneous German plays) becomes in R more than the servant of Faustus and more than a mere
buffoon wandering on and off the stage. His role is related to the heart of the play, as will be noted later.

Poetically, too, the play is not without its merits. Especially in Faustus' monologues (there are nine
throughout) the author, although never escaping entirely from the stylized rhetoric of the period, nevertheless
achieves at times a genuine feeling and pathos, even a level of tragic statement, which remove this play far
indeed from the mediocrity of the usual seventeenth-century Komnidiantenstuck. True, these passages occur
only occasionally, but they constitute some grounds for believing that the author of this piece had some
awareness of the profoundly tragic implications of his theme."10

The opening scene "verbeeldende de Hel" (representing hell) consists of a "Rei van helsche vrouwengeesten"
(chorus of hellish women-spirits). This chorus deserves more than passing attention since it is peculiar to R
and not found in early German Faust plays. Kossmann is no doubt correct in surmising that it represents an
addition by Rijndorp. We know that such Reien were his specialty as were other embellishments such as
frequent ballets, singing, elaborate stage settings, and the like. But this scene serves a purpose other than that
of omament. By placing it in hell the author plainly tells the audience that the matter here involves the
ultimate destiny of the human soul and by emphasizing the stately character of the Rei he elevates his subject
high above the mere hocus-pocus level it inhabits, for example, in the Volksbuclh. The Rei, which incidentally
was a dramatic device frequently employed by the greatest of Dutch seventeenth-century dramatists, Vondel,
serves thus as a kind of Greek chorus; it sets the tone and level of the matter to be treated and, so to speak,

59
indicates to the audience the dignified perspective into which the parts, characters, and scenes are to fit. The
serious mood is sustained by means of a "Balet van Helsche Furien" (ballet of hellish furies) at the end of the
first act.

The long second scene presents a conversation between Pluto, the prince of Hell, and Charon, who complains
of the indolence of those hellish lieutenants whose responsibility it is to corrupt souls. After an initial savage
rebuke directed at Charon for his presumption, Pluto agrees to stir up his underlings. R has four such devils,
each assigned a most specific area of operation. The first, Ramuzes, is to go to the lawyers, who are to cease
upholding only justice; the second, Stokebrand, is to attack the physicians for their notorious greed and their
ignorance. Both these devils joyously accept their assignments and describe with relish how they plan to go
about this business. They utter savage criticisms of the two professions, criticisms which must have been
current in the seventeenth century. A third devil, Heintje Pik, receives orders to instigate gross immorality
among the populace, and like the other devils, issues a most detailed description of the method he plans to
employ and even of the exact locale of operation. Finally Mifastofeles, as the most sophisticated devil, is
assigned the task of corrupting the clergy and the students. In lines of stately dignity Mifastofeles reveals his
pride in being assigned so important and difficult an area of work.

This whole second scene, which concludes the first act, consists of some 260 lines and constitutes roughly
one-eighth of the entire play. When we compare its emphasis and magnitude with that of the corresponding
scene in, for example, the Ulmer Puppenspiel,11 which devotes only twenty-four lines of its "Vorspiel" to the
subject, the importance of this scene to the author of R is clear. And the probable reasons have already been
indicated: the solemn, even somber, tone of the play is here set, and the author thus affords himself the
opportunity for a savage criticism of the contemporary social scene. Of course the shrewd and facile author,
whether Groen or Rijndorp, was well aware that this criticism would have mass appeal.

The second act opens with a scene of Faustus in his study and in despair, profoundly disillusioned with the
pursuit of academic learning. Here the solemn theme as it was announced in Act I becomes visible and the
poetry takes on a deeper quality. A real anguish is evident in Faustus' monologue, in which he describes a
conflict between the zwei Seelen in his breast—a leitmotif that, unlike the Puppenspiel, the Dutch play never
relinquishes from this point on.12 The Wissensdrang, present in the Puppenspiel, but certainly unexploited as
to its implications, is here presented most convincingly and movingly:

o Hemel, wil my toch bewaaren, en laat my niet van

het regte pad der waare wysheid dwaalen,
…
(O Heaven, preserve me, and do not let me stray from
the right path of true wisdom)

The rival urgings of Mifastofeles on the left and the guardian angel on the right increase the learned man's
torment. They leave and with a fine sense of dramatic structure the author has Faustus express in a monologue
the effect that the two spirits have had on him. The balance seems to be favoring his return to righteousness
when Wagenaar announces the arrival of "twee Heeren van de Studie" (two gentlemen-scholars), Fabritius
and Alfonzus. With them an ironic turn is introduced, for it is these two well-meaning, cordial fellow scholars
(they return in Act IV and again in Act V to plead with Faustus to abandon his downward path; see also note
12) who innocently bring Faustus the book which is to lead to his damnation. To be sure the visiting students
in U perform the same function, but there they are completely devoid of any specific character traits and even
of names (they are designated merely as erster and zweiter Student). In the Dutch play Fabritius and Alfonzus
serve a thematic function: being fellow scholars they are able to understand not only the compelling power of
Faustus' desire to know, but also the disillusionment which pushed Faustus into his desperate choice. By
placing the visiting scholars on the higher human plane of pleaders the author enables the audience to
recognize the real validity of Faustus' tragic problem.

60
With the possession of the magic book, the die is cast. Faustus resolves to banish all thoughts of heaven and to
address his prayers henceforth (scene 9) not to heaven "maar aan't Onderaardsche Ryk" (but to the realm
below). He calls on Wagenaar to accompany him out of doors. At this juncture, to allow for the time lag,
comic relief in the person of Pekel enters the play for the first time. In a monologue spiced with earthy
language and revealing his cynical, insolent attitude toward the contemporary scene, he runs through various
possibilities for employment and decides in favor of a dishonest employer. It is plain that this man is destined
to join Faustus' household. As sustained comic relief the Pekel scenes were doubtlessly effective.

Following this scene 9, in which also all the grisly details of conjuring are catalogued (not omitted here as in
the Spies-Baten Faust book), Faustus succeeds in bringing the devils to him; Mifastofeles is chosen to be
Faustus' servant since he responds to the question regarding qualifications with the assurance that he is as
swift as the thoughts of man. Before any formal pact can be concluded, however, Mifastofeles has to secure
Pluto's agreement.

Almost all of this is contained also in U but there the poetry and the genuine problem simply do not exist, and
we have instead a mere chronology of events. The difference in treatment becomes especially apparent in the
role accorded Pekel throughout Acts III, IV, and V of R. He becomes an integral part of the plot, quite aside
from the immediate appeal he must have had for the less sophisticated part of the audience. In the negotiations
for employment between Pekel, Wagenaar, and Faustus, for example, Pekel, after revealing his own low
origins, insinuates that Faustus' origins are similar when he makes lewd and insolent conjectures regarding the
doctor's parents, whereupon the latter indignantly informs Pekel that he is a man of consequence:

Weet dat ik Faustus ben, een Dokter, hoog verheven,

(Know that I am Faustus, a doctor of high estate)

and Pekel becomes immediately contrite. The net effect is, however, that Faustus' self-esteem has received a
jolt: he is indirectly reminded that his projected alliance with the devil will reduce his exalted state; the thrust
of Pekel's insult is that evil is evil and degrades man, that however genuinely motivated Faustus may have
been originally, his embracing evil will lower him to little above the level of a Pekel. No doubt this point was
intended even more for the audience than for Faustus. A similar effect is obtained later when Pekel, having
gotten hold of the magic book, stages an elaborate parody (Act IV). The significant aspect is that when
Faustus, his dignity outraged, comes rushing up he is promply subjected to Pekel's own version of magic
charms. He is forced to play the fool and thus finds himself degraded to the same level as the so-called
low-comedy characters. He feels keenly the humiliation of "having to jump here like a fool." Again the effect
on him and on the audience cannot have been lost.

Certainly among the most important and provocative scenes in R are those dealing with Faustus' exploits at
the court of the emperor Karel and his wife Izabelle. Kossmann designates scene 11 as the most difficult, that
is, from the point of view of trying to derive it from Marlowe; it is "die schwierigste Scene des Stiickes, die
am ersten die alte Vermutung von einem vormarlowischen deutschen Faustdrama stiitzen konnte" (p. 23). In
addition to the appearance of Alexander at Faustus' bidding, a scene which could have come directly from
Marlowe, R has just previous to it a Kampfballett between Hector and Achilles. There is no trace of this in
Marlowe, but we do encounter it in other pre-Marlowe Faust literature: an actual battle pantomime between
the two heroes occurs in Johann Wier's De Praestigiis Daemonum of 1586 (cf the excerpt in Das Kloster,
2:188). Other such apparently "original" passages in R have counterparts in certain of the Faust Puppenspiele.
To quote Kossmann again: "Denn mannigfache Spuren besonders in der Schutz-Dreherschen Gruppe und den
bohmischen Stucken beweisen, dass das hollandische Stück alte Züge, wenn auch verstümmelt, bewahrt" (p.
25).

The whole complex of scenes depicting Faustus at court is used by the author of R to highlight his serious
theme. That such a serious and organic purpose was intended by the author is evident first of all from the

61
extensive treatment he allots to the court episode (scenes 8 through 13). But even more of the author's
probable intention is discernible in the scenes themselves. A heavy, grave note of warning pervades; the
emperor expresses a wish to see the great Alexander. At once both the courtier, Ferdinant, and the emperor's
wife, Izabella, express great anxiety and try to dissuade him. Izabella particularly is apprehensive. She
recognizes such contacts with the spirit world as Duivels konsten—the dread black magic—and argues that
since Alexander has died long ago only a devil could assume his shape. The wish to see Alexander can
therefore only mean a recourse to "grave sins." This fear on Izabella's part continues to remind Karel (and the
audience) of the fateful step involved. But Karel, inexplicably stubborn, insists on pursuing his whim. All this
happens before Faustus has appeared at the court. But the emperor issues the order to find a man skilled in the
arts of calling up the departed and of course the courtier, Octaaf, succeeds immediately in finding Faustus.
The emperor's wish is gratified but because he disobeys Faustus' injunction not to address or approach the
spirit, he is struck in the face. This insult enrages him: it convinces him that Izabella's warnings were well
founded. He begs for divine forgiveness, banishes Faust, and the episode is closed. He knows now that he has
narrowly escaped the disaster to which Faustus has committed himself. The moral effect of this demonstration
of the ever-close danger from the side of evil must have been powerful. Also the author's addition of a
low-comedy burlesque counterpart to the various Faustus-Mifastofeles scenes only stressed the ludicrous and
degrading aspects of such association.

It has been noted that in R there is a continued possibility of Faustus' salvation. This is stressed so much more
in the Dutch play than in other early Faust pieces that this feature can hardly be coincidence. The usual
pattern is that when Faust has definitely decided in favor of Mephistopheles (and this always occurs early), his
further career is steadily downward until finally he is dragged off to hell. Obviously this early decision and its
predictable conclusion robs the material of most of the potential for dramatic tension inherent in it. The
Puppenispiel versions, for example, are little more than recitals of Faust's wicked acts. In R, on the contrary,
there is a conscious attempt to keep alive a real conflict between two opposing forces in Faustus' breast—a
genuine dramatic struggle. Thus in Act IV, scenes 12-14, there is a formidable attempt to reclaim Faustus and
it comes again from the side of the two scholar friends, Fabritius and Alfonzus. That the author wished to tie
this scene (12), in the consciousness of the audience, to the earlier visit by the two friends is skillfully shown
by the similarity of the device employed in both scenes. For again they bring Faustus a book, this time The
Book. Even the words of address in the two scenes correspond: Act II, scene 5: "Zo wil dit Boek eens zien"
(Do look at this book),…; Act IV, scene 11: "… wil dit Boek eens regt beoogen" (look closely at this book). It is
The Book plus genuine remorse that will, so they assure Faustus, still save him. And Faustus believes and acts
on this plea; his relief from anguish is immediate. Mifastofeles, recognizing at once that the prize is about to
slip from his grasp, takes desperate measures: he introduces Helena. R, in short, offers a really organic
motivation for the Helena scene: only by means of this temptation, the devil's trump card, is he able to
recapture Faustus.

With this attempt the real drama is finished and the dramatist hastens to the end. A short fifth act recounting
Faustus' last moments concludes the play: the act focuses but briefly on a final plea by the two friends which
meets only with Faustus' te laat, and on Wagenaar's genuine grief, before it is taken over by the devils who
drag Faustus off.

This short fifth act and its contents contrast markedly with the final act of Marlowe's Faustus, an act that
includes the high mark of the entire drama, a fifty-line monologue by Faust, beginning with the anguished
line:

O Faustus, now hast thou but one bare houre to liue

But precisely at this point the Dutch author apparently had certain misgivings of a practical sort. It must be
remembered that the stage tradition to which Rijndorp belonged was oriented completely toward the audience,
its powers of imaginative participation but also its quite thorough literal-mindedness. Would it not seem

62
awkward to a Rijndorp that a speech somewhat over fifty lines in length should require an entire hour as is
implied in Marlowe? Since this is the final dramatic moment, any flaw at this point is structurally and
psychologically disastrous. However valid or false Rijndorp's stage instincts may have been, he solved his
difficulty most ingeniously. In R he concentrates the climactic end of Faustus entirely on the hour of twelve.
With each stroke of the clock Faustus utters a single line and after the final stroke of twelve the devils appear.
The whole device has an impact of the greatest solemnity and precisely at the moment when the author most
wants it. Dramatically and theatrically, this is highly effective.13

To reiterate, many of the features of R singled out in the foregoing are present in the Puppenspiele but only in
skeletal form and of no poetic and at most very limited dramatic value. By way of a much tighter organic
structure plus the infusion of flashes of genuine poetic insight and form, the author of the Dutch play has
shown himself to be worthy of more serious attention than he has hitherto received.

II

The very fragmentary knowledge of the plays of the seventeenth-century traveling comedians is to be ascribed
largely to the almost secret manner in which these play manuscripts were guarded by the companies who
possessed them. The repertoire, ornamented to suit the taste and histrionic capabilities of the individual
companies, was simply the stock-in-trade with which audiences could be attracted and rival companies
outdone. Even the Puppenspiele which derived from them, inferior though they were, were jealously guarded.
It is almost an accident that the Dutch play, R, was preserved.

Thus De Hellevaart van Dokter Joan Faustus has, in addition to its own appeal, a unique importance in the
history of the seventeenth-century Faust folk play. For, since almost no firsthand knowledge of German
Marlowe adaptations is possible, the historian of literature is limited to evidence of two kinds: reports and
descriptions of actual performances such as that of a Danzig official, Georg Schröder, and, of far more direct
value, actually existing Faust plays which are demonstrably parallel productions. Such a play is the Dutch
Faust drama.

It is because of the dearth of authentic material that Creizenach was forced to rely so heavily on Schröder's
report of the Danzig Faust performance of 1668. His ingenious, painstaking reconstruction is of extraordinary
interest to us. For since the Danzig play was almost certainly a Marlowe adaptation, a pedigree which
Kossmann claims also for the contemporaneous R, a comparison of the two is illuminating.

In addition to the facts supplied by Schröder, Creizenach draws also on the Ulmer Puppenspiel (U) for "in
mehreren wesentlichen Punkten können wir dies Bild [that is, the Danzig Faust play] jedoch durch das Uliner
Puppenspiel erganzen" (Creizenach, Versuch einer Geschichite …, p. 58). He uses this particular puppet play
for reasons already mentioned, namely, that it is probably most directly derived from the traveling folk play.

Schröder's account of the various scenes of the play he saw is most sketchy.14 He states simply that "Faustus
mit gemeiner Wissenschaft nicht befriediget, sich umb magische Bucher bewirbet." Creizenach speculates
without conclusion about a possible monologue in which Faust may have expressed this dissatisfaction; also
he finds it impossible to determine how Faust came into the possession of magic books. As we have seen, R
furnishes answers to both questions: it offers indeed a monologue in which Faust reveals his frustration, and
the two friends, Fabritius and Alfonzus, who bring Faust the magic book. R contains also a correspondence in
detail, that is, with reference to the behavior of "der kluge Teufel" (Mifastofeles in R): when Faust, in
Schröder's account, states the conditions of the agreement (24 years servitude, etc.), the devil must first gain
the approval of his master, Pluto. Even this minor point is recorded in R exactly as sketchily described by
Schröder.

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Creizenach has great difficulty with Schröder's omission of any details regarding Faust's career after the
original pact and before his end, that is, with the body of the text. Whereas Marlowe records many adventures,
Schröder reports only: "den Fausto gerathen alle Beschwerunge wol; er lest ihm Carolum magnum [sic], die
Schöne Helenam, zeügen" (Flemming, loc. cit.). From this Creizenach concludes that the Beschwörungsszene
was even in this early play the center of interest. More significant for our purposes than this, however, is an
apparent confusion resulting possibly from Schröder's carelessness or, as Creizenach surmises, from an
imperfect recollection of what actually happened in the Danzig play which he saw. For neither in Marlowe nor
in later Faust comedies is there any mention of a conjuration of Charlemagne by Faust.

Whence, then, this unexpected innovation? It is possible that the Dutch text throws some light on the problem.
In Act III, scene 7, the agreement between Mifastofeles and Faustus just having been concluded, the latter
gives his first order:

Kom, voer my nu op 't Hof des Keizers, daar de Grooten,

Op 't Jaarelyksche Feest te zaamen zyn verheugd,
(Come, lead me now to the court of the emperor, where the great
Are reveling on the occasion of the annual festival)

Since it is quite evident that Schröder is relying entirely on his aural recollection, it is quite possible to
misunderstand this in such a way that the reference here seems indeed to be to Charlemagne (Karel de
Groote). In this case Faustus seems to be demanding of Mifastofeles that he, by the use of magic, be
transported to the court of Charlemagne. However, the lines mean simply that Faustus is requesting that
Mifastofeles conduct him to the imperial court "where the great of the realm are reveling on the occasion of
the annual festival"; that is, the expression "daar de Grooten" is not a demonstrative attaching to "Keizer," but
simply the beginning of a relative clause. Thus there is no Beschwörung of Charlemagne at all. But we are left
with the interesting question: How, then, did Schröder arrive at this misunderstanding? The hypothesis that the
drama which Schröder saw was practically identical with the Dutch play, R, seems greatly strengthened.
What is significant, further, is that in those scenes in which the emperor appears, R corresponds completely to
Marlowe, to the Danzig play (Schröder's account of it), and to the Volksbuch.15 Kossmann thinks this
remarkable and comments: "Als Fürst der Hofscenen nennt die Historia bekanntlich Karl V, den Marlowe
übernahm. R ist der einzige Text der diesen Namen bewahrt, und der sogar, vermutlich selbstandig, die in
Holland augenscheinlich noch nicht vergessene Gemahlin desselben Isabella von Portugal namentlich
einfuhrt" (p. 23, italics mine).

At the court it is Faust himself who conjures up the figure of Alexander the Great. This is so in Marlowe, in
the Danzig play, and in R. Creizenach adds that there must have been in the seventeenth-century popular
drama an additional episode not mentioned by Schröder nor found in any of the available puppet play texts.16
And again R validates Creizenach's surmise. In Marlowe there is a scene following the appearance of
Alexander in which a knight who had fallen asleep at a window suddenly finds it impossible to draw his head
in because Faustus has magically equipped him with a set of antlers. Marlowe found this in the English Faust
book and it derives of course from the original German Volksbuch. However, in both the English and German
Volksbücher the event stands isolated and is thus an act of gratuitous cruelty on Faust's part. Not content with
such a loose end, Marlowe furnishes a proper motivation: the knight has behaved in an insulting manner
toward the visting doctor and the antlers are punishment for this disrespect. R follows Marlowe completely in
this instance and Creizenach, had he known R, would not have had to rely on secondary evidence for his
belief that there was such a scene in the Danzig play.

R solves a similar problem regarding the origin of a scene found in U. Faust, having returned to Wittenberg,
inquires of Wagner how he fared with Pickelharing during the master's absence. Wagner gives a negative
report from which Creizenach concludes that the German play must have contained a comical scene in which
Pickelharing incurred Wagner's displeasure. Creizenach could not have surmised more shrewdly if he had

64
actually seen a performance of R. For, as we have noted, the Dutch drama treats this comic interlude most
elaborately. Of course Creizenach could hardly have had an idea of the lengths to which the klucht loving
Dutch would go in exploiting this material.

Other details of scenes and motifs which Creizenach posits for the Danzig play find almost complete
verification in R. For example, his deductions from Schröder's report concerning such matters as the
individualized characterizations of the devils, the scene in which these devils are questioned as to their
swiftness, the genuine struggle in Faust, his Wissbegier—Creizenach's conclusions on all these could be read
almost unchanged as descriptions of R.

Tempting though it is, it is not possible to claim a complete identity between the Danzig drama which
Schröder saw and R. There are scenes in one which were evidently not present in the other. The
correspondences cited do, however, allow for the at least tentative conclusion that the play which Schröder
saw in 1668 and De Hellevaart van Dokter Joan Faustus of about the same date are closely parallel, sister
adaptations of Marlowe's Tragicall History …, or otherwise, that R is an exceedingly faithful replica of an
early German Komodiantenstuick, now lost, seized upon by the facile Floris Groen and embellished with
additional spectacular effects by Jacob van Rijndorp. As Kossmann all too tersely puts it: "… mir scheint, dass
… also der Realinhalt von Rijndorps Stuck das alte Stuck, welches Creizenach schon grossenteils rekonstruiert
hat, darstellt" (p. 12). And since the German Faust folk plays of the seventeenth century are themselves lost
and accessible only indirectly by way of the derivative Puppenspiele, the importance of R is obvious.

III

It is not clear to what extent and in what various forms Goethe knew the traditional Faust material. The
Volksbücher (Widmann, Pfitzer; probably also the book of the Christlich Meynenden, though curiously not
Spies) he evidently knew and used, though not until late in his Faust composition. Erich Schmidt even doubts
that Goethe ever worked seriously with the Faust chapbooks.17 He did not, it is claimed, read Marlowe until
1818, that is, not until he had been occupied off and on with the subject for almost a half-century. There can
hardly have been a direct "influence" from Marlowe therefore. Goethe's own remarks concerning initial
impulses are confined to the Puppenspiel,18 references to which Julius Zeitler adds affirmingly: "Auch zeigt
der Beginn von Faustens erstem Monolog unverkennbare Anklange an das Puppenspiel" (Goethe Handbuch,
1:559). But the Puppenspiele were not the only source of the alleged Anklänge.

For although Goethe did not know Marlowe until late, it is virtually certain that he did know the continental
adaptations of Marlowe, such as Schröder described, long before 1818. This despite the fact that Goethe fails
to mention them. The popularity of these pieces with the seventeenth and eighteenth-century public is amply
documented. Already in 1878 Creizenach stated: "Goethe hat das Volksschauspiel … in einer Fassung gekannt
und benutzt, die in manchen Punkten von den jetzt noch vorhandenen Texten abgewichen sein muss"
(Creizenach, Versuch einer Geschichte…, p. x). Curiously Creizenach later contradicted this opinion when,
speaking of the folk plays, he remarked: "Goethe kannte sie sicher bloss vom Puppentheater her; zu der Zeit,
als die Kurz'sche Truppe in Frankfurt ihre Vorstellungen gab, befand er sich in Leipzig. Er scheint gar nicht
gewusst oder doch in spateren Jahren vergessen zu haben, dass die Faustcomodie nicht bloss für das
Puppentheater bestimmt war" (p. 183). This contradiction, and especially Creizenach's conclusion that Goethe
was probably not acquainted with a Faust drama for the stage, attracted the attention of Erich Schmidt in
1879. In a note to his article "Deutsche Litteratur im Elsass" Schmidt points out one probable cause of
Creizenach's mistake.19 In 1770 a prominent company of actors, the combined Lepper-Ilgnerische
Gesellschaft, was active in Strassburg for "langere Zeit." The two principals parted company; the Ilgner half
of the group left for Hamburg and in the same year put on a Faust performance there. Creizenach mentions
this, and Goethe, who was in Strassburg, could not of course have witnessed this performance. What
Creizenach apparently did not know was that the Lepper contingent remained in Strassburg and also put on a
Faust. Schmidt concludes: "Es ist mir danach—im Gegensatz zu Creizenachs Worten …—kaum zweifelhaft,

65
dass Goethe, mit dem Stoffe vom Volksbuch und Marionettentheater her wohl vertraut, den Faust hier in
Strassburg auf der lebendigen Biihne geschaut hat, zu einer Zeit, wo nach den dumpferen Frankfurter Tagen
mit ihrer engen Haft und ihren alchymistischen Spielereien der jugendliche Titanismus in ihm zu treiben und
zu stürmen begann. Welchen Ruck konnte ihm da nicht eine solche. Auffuhrung, auch von einer
unbedeutenden Truppe, geben?" Almost a half-century later, Robert Petsch in his edition of Goethe's Faust
(1925) also accepts the factthat Goethe certainly saw the play performed in Frankfurt and Strassburg "von
lebenden Schauspielern oder von Marionetten …" ("Einleitung," p. 21, my italics).20

But even aside from this type of evidence there are other compelling reasons for believing that Goethe had
known a popular Faust play. The long history of Faust germination in Goethe shows that a mass of scenes and
motifs were present in his consciousness from the beginning. Erich Schmidt has summarized the most
important of these in briefest form (JA 13:vii f.). Were all these the products of Goethe's own creative
imagination? They either do not appear at all in the puppet plays or chapbooks, or if they do exist there, then
in an extremely skeletonized form. For example, the opening monologue in Goethe's Faust, mentioned by
Zeitler as stemming from the Puppenspiel (see above) and singled out also by Erich Schmidt as one of the
important Goethean amplifications, is far removed indeed from the corresponding monologue in the puppet
plays. There the monologue contains merely statements of an unconvincing weariness resulting from much
fruitless study, and is but a prosaic recital of sentiments which do not rise above the level of platitude. This is
just one example. It is really difficult to believe that a genius should have wished to retain for his own
monumental work even so much as the schemes and outlines from such patchwork "drama." The same can be
said for other great and important Goethean scenes; they have only the most slender and insignificant
beginnings in Goethe's alleged source, the puppet play: such matters as Faust's repudiation of the various
learned faculties, the turn to magic, the conversations with Wagner, the visits by evil spirits of high and low
degree, the pact with Mephistopheles. What could have moved Goethe to incorporate into his own drama
scenes and episodes as wooden and as inorganically related as in the puppet play?

Considerable light is thrown on these problems if one accepts the evidence cited by the scholars just
mentioned, evidence that suggests Goethe almost certainly knew more than the puppet plays. True, we do not
possess the play he knew, nor any complete, finished, popular German drama on the Faust theme; but we do
have recourse to what we have attempted to show was a sister drama, the Dutch Hellevaart van Doketen Joan
Faustus. Here we discover those motifs, hints, beginnings, but now in immeasurably more finished form,
whose potentialities could have moved Goethe to expand, refine, and deepen them in his own vast work.

But there are of course monumental differences between R and Goethe's work. When we compare the
beginning of R with that of Goethe's Faust, we are struck at once by the radical difference in Goethe's
treatment: the prologue in hell has been changed into a Prolog im Himmel. This change was necessitated of
course by Goethe's ultimate purpose to save Faust. The Dutch author, much closer to the traditional
sixteenth-century complex of ideas which by and large treat Faust as Schreckensbeispiel, probably did not
dare or want to do this although, as has been shown, the effort to persuade Faust to leave his career of
wickedness and thus save him is a recurring element in R.

Even more significant is a comparison of the actual opening monologues of the two works. The Faustus of the
Dutch play is torn by exactly the same paradoxical conflict that we find in Goethe: Wissensdrang—yes, but
also despair of Wissen. Both Faustus and Faust have ventured into all realms of knowledge; the former is
aware that there may be more to know but he does not see in what direction he can proceed, for, as he says,

'k heb alle ding geleezen.

(I have read all things.)

This frustration causes him to wish that he knew nothing at all, much as Goethe's Faust too comes to wish to
be free of all Wissensqualm. It is striking, moreover, that one of Faustus' expressions of despondency,

66
 't Schynt dat myn hart hier door als staat in ligte brand
(It seems that because of this my heart is aflame)
(Act 11, sc. 1)

occurs in almost identical langauge in Goethe's work:

Das will mir schier das Herz verbrennen.

(365)

Goethe's satiric treatment, in the monologue, of the various learned disciplines is much fuller than in the
corresponding scene in the Dutch drama. But as we have seen, a similar cataloguing of these branches of
learning is found in R, though in another place. In one of the speeches of Ramuzes, one of the evil spirits
appearing in the prologue in hell, the life of the student is represented cynically and in an astounding mixture
of languages:

Je suis & etudient d'honneur,

Mais bosta! nam sum Advocatus
Et par la grace, aussi Docteur
(Act 1, sc. 2)

These lines, reminding obviously of Goethe's words, come from a long passage in R (sixty-seven lines) which
is a sustained diatribe against the fraudulent pretensions of the intellectuals of the day.

After Faustus has received the initial temptation from the lower world but before he has succumbed (Act II,
sc. 7), he summons Wagenaar to follow him out of his dull study into the free outdoors to see, as Faustus
explains, whether the youthful green of spring is already beginning to appear. Coming at this moment, that is,
after the most acute awareness of failure and consequent despondency, this act reminds strongly of the
Osterspaziergang especially in its symbolic and psychological significance. A little later (sc. 11), Faustus,
having succeeded in conjuring up the helsche Geesten, participates in a macabre scene, singing and dancing
quite in the ribald spirit of the Hexenküche.

There are other such parallels where the Dutch play seems to anticipate a number of the motifs and scenes
later worked out by Goethe in detail. The point is not that Goethe, artist that he was, needed such supports
from previous Faust pieces. We do know, however, from Goethe himself of his preoccupation with them.
That being so, the Puppenspiele, exciting as they were to the impressionable boy, could nevertheless hardly
have left a permanent mark on Goethe. But when we examine such a work as R line by line and scene by
scene, we can begin to see that a piece of this poetic potentiality, if not always of poetic quality, certainly had
something to recommend it to the turbulent young genius. Robert Petsch, speculating upon the possibility of
the existence of a German (or Latin) Faust drama, based on the Historia of 1587 but not independent of
Marlowe, concludes: "… wahrscheinlicher ist es, dass ein deutscher, uns unbekannter, aber keineswegs
unbedeutender Dichter in ganz freier Benutzung und mit kühner Umgestaltung von Marlowes Text eine
Tragodie von hoher Eigenart und starker Wirkung verfasst hat" ("Einleitung" to his Faust edition, p. 20). But,
it will be recalled, R, the Dutch Faust play published in 1731, is itself a product quite independent in essential
respects either of Spies or of Marlowe, and in poetical and dramatic stature to be considered a worthy rival of
both. It seems almost certain that the conjecture by Petsch is correct and if so, then indirectly and quite
unaware of the possibility of such illustrious progeny, the obscure author of De Hellevaart van Dokter Joan
Faustus may have contributed his mite to the Entstehungsgeschichte of Goethe's work.

Notes

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1This incident and others are recounted in Johann Wier's De Praestigiis Daemonum (4th ed., 1568). Cf. J.
Scheible, Das Kloster, 2:187-205 ("Von Schwarzkünstlern"). Cf. also Van 'T Hooft (note 2), pp. 9-11.

2 B. H. Van 'T Hooft, Das holländische Volksbuch vom Doktor Faust (Haag, 1926).

3Wilhelm Creizenach, Versuch einer Geschichte des Volksschauspiels vom Doctor Faust (Halle/Saale:
Niemeyer, 1878).

4 Johannes Bolte, Das Danziger Theater, Theatergeschichtliche Forschungen, no. 12 (1895).

5E. F. Kossmann, Das niederländische Faustspiel des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts (Haag, 1910). Kossmann
disputes Bolte's statement that Rijndorp himself published the Faust play.

6 For a full account of the adapting practices of these early companies, cf Kossmann, "Einleitung," pp. 6-12.
The assertion that Rijndorp composed the play only "for the greater part" may even be doubted. Except where
the name is quoted from original sources, the modern spelling Rijndorp is used.

7 Kossmann has the date 1669; concerning Creizenach's reconstruction, more later.

8Wilhelm Creizenach (ed.), Die Schauspiele der englischen Komödianten, Deutsche National-Litteratur, vol.
23.

9 Following Kossmann's practice the Dutch play will hereafter be referred to as R.

10 It is a curious fact that the author of R shares this unevenness of poetic quality with his model, Marlowe.
Creizenach (Versuch einer Geschichte …, p. 42) cites a comment by Alexander Dyce, who published an
edition of Marlowe's works, to the effect that the English dramatist showed his poetic genius more in
individual scenes than in the overall structure of his dramas. This comparison is not of course to be regarded
as an unqualified attempt to place the author of R somewhere near in quality to the great Elizabethan.

11The Puppenspiele are of course an important source of information for any investigation of early stage
drama in Germany, since they had their origin in the performances of the traveling theatrical companies. The
reason for choosing the Ulmer Puppenspiel (U) specifically is that this puppet play seems to show the least
corruption by way of later additions and changes; the form in which we have it is presumably essentially the
same as that of the original, which probably goes back to the end of the seventeenth century (cf Creizenach,
Versuch einer Geschichte …, pp. 58 ff.; for U, cf Scheible, Das Kloster, 5:783-805).

12It is noteworthy that in R the possibility of Faustus' final salvation is never abandoned. The two friends,
Fabritius and Alfonzus, still hold out hope of forgiveness as late as Act V, as the period of Mifastofeles'
servitude is ending.

13 That Rijndorp's solution suffers from a defect of its own is undeniable. To modern sensibilities the stately,
rhetorical, declamatory style demanded of the seventeenth-century author and actor for a speech such as this
is, of course, artificial. But Rijndorp was playing to an audience trained to expect the lofty style, certainly in a
piece of such grave import.

14The original of Schröder's report is preserved in manuscript at the Danziger Stadtbibliothek; Creizenach
repeated it in his work (Versuch einer Geschichte … pp. 5-6); so too Willi Flemming (ed.), Das Schauspiel der
Wanderbühne, Deutsche Literatur in Entwicklungsreihen, Reihe Barock (3:202). I here quote Flemming's
version of the orthography; Creizenach rendered it in modernized spelling.

68
15 Among others Widmann substitutes Maximilian I; U has the King of Prague.

16 In support of this supposition Creizenach cites a Latin source of 1666 in which are contained instructions
dealing with the production of the bit of magic with which we are here concerned; there is a similar reference
in an epigram by Gottlieb Siegmund Corvinus of 1710 (cf Creizenach, Versuch einer Geschichte…, pp. 85-86).

17 JA [Goethes Werke, Jubilaumsausgabe] 13:vii ("Einleitung").

18WA [Goethes Werke, Weimarer Ausqabe] 1:27:321; ibid., 1:152:213. Cf also the letters to Wilhelm von
Humboldt and Sulpiz Boisserèe of Oct. 22, 1826.

19Schnorrs Archiv für Litteraturgeschichte 8:359 f.

20 A more recent Faust edition likewise surmises that Goethe could well have seen a performance of a popular
Faust play. Cf Goethe's Faust, ed. R.-M. S. Heffner, H. Rehder, W. F. Twaddell (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1954),
Introduction, pp. 23 f.

J. W. Smeed (essay date 1975)

SOURCE: "Faust As a Character and a Type: Changes in Interpretation and Motivation," in his Faust in
Literature, Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 14-33.

[In the following excerpt, Smeed traces the development of the Faust character in literature: from a wicked,
grasping trickster, to an overreacher lusting for knowledge, to a noble character striving for a knowledge that
will correct the injustices of the world.]

Le magicien coupable et maudit—l'esthète ambitieux—le 'génie original' tumultueux et

passioné—le surhumain ou l'homme intégral selon Goethe—le blasé romantique—l'utopiste d'un
monde meilleur—Faust est cela tour à tour, selon le tempérament du poète et l'idéologie en
faveur aux diverses époques.1

Geneviève Bianquis' list is not complete, but it is a useful corrective to the view that the sole or main
motivation of most Fausts is the quest for knowledge. The changing attitudes towards Faust as a character in
fiction and as a human type, and the different ways of interpreting what made such a figure dissatisfied with
the conditions of ordinary human existence have been hinted at briefly in the preceding chapter; but they
deserve consideration in detail. Faust is probably the figure most often treated in modern literature, and it is in
an examination of how successive authors have stood to him and attempted to motivate his actions that the
reasons for this popularity must be sought. Since so little is known for certain of the historical Faust, our
starting point must be the Spies chapbook.

As already mentioned, this work devotes a good deal of space to the theme of intellectual speculation, dealing
with, among other things, Faust's questions regarding Heaven, Hell, astronomy, astrology, meteorology, and
so on, together with the voyages of discovery which he undertook with the Devil's aid. The treatment of these
themes is naïve and limited, but it is nevertheless a curious fact that this author devotes a greater proportion of
his work to Faust's curiosity than other, later authors who are much more in sympathy with this facet of
Faust's character. In the Spies Faust-book, of course, the curiosity is sinful; the arrogance, pride and envy
which drive Faust into Lucifer's arms are in fact the same qualities which, according to the theologians,
caused the fall of the angels. Lawless desire for knowledge, the life of pleasure, the practice of magic,
showing off at court: these are all of a piece, all demonstrations of Faust's presumptuous nature.

The historical Faust, if some early testimonies2 are to be believed, seems to have preened himself on his actual
knowledge, rather than to have been obsessed with the need to find out yet more. If this is so, he was a fool in

69
the Socratic sense: a fool because he thought himself wise. The chapbook at least shows Faust as wanting to
know more at any cost …, that is, it depicts a Faust who realizes the limitations of his present knowledge and
wants to overcome them, even if this desire is portrayed as reprehensible.

In Marlowe, the desire to condemn is absent; he wishes to make Faust's arrogance and 'Titanism'
psychologically comprehensible. The Chorus, it is true, opens and closes the play with an invitation to us to
muse on the theme of wickedness finding its just reward, but the play itself is rather an attempt to make us
understand. There is a danger of taking up an anachronistic stance here, but clearly there is—to put it no more
strongly—a marked difference between the attitudes of Marlowe and of the anonymous chapbook author. It is
interesting to see how Marlowe picks up a motif from the chapbook and gives it new meaning. Faust's
'Weheklag' begins with the lament that he is not a mere beast, for whom death is the end: 'O Ich armer
Verdampter, warumb bin ich nit ein Viehe, so one Seel stirbet, damit ich nichts weiters befahren dorffte …' (p.
128). The burden of the lament is again Faust's sinfulness and the frightful torments that await him
('Schmertzen, Trübsall, Heulen, Weinen vnnd Zäenklappern'). Marlowe's Faustus, too, wishes that he were a
beast. (Even at this moment, he pays due regard to learning and gives Pythagoras proper credit for his theory.)

Oh Pythagoras Metemsycosis; were that true,

This soule should flie from me, and I be chang'd
Into some brutish beast.
All beasts are happy, for when they die,
Their soules are soone dissolu'd in elements,
But mine must liue still to be plagu'd in hell.
(p. 291)

Where the lament in the chapbook is at least as much a sermon to the reader as an expression of Faust's agony
of spirit, Marlowe's passage is part of a skilfully constructed climax of terror. Marlowe has put himself inside
his character, whereas the German author is observing him and moralizing about him from outside. Faust in
'Spies' is saying, in effect: 'I should either have been a beast without soul, or a virtuous man. Now I am
damned.' But Marlowe, despite his reference to Hell, is not interested in such straightforward didactic effects.
He is showing the tragedy of wasted human material. His passage, in which Faustus is shown longing to be
less than man, harks back to the opening monologue in which he is twice shown desiring to be more than man
(cf. lines 50 and 88).

After Marlowe came the long process of popularization. Evidence concerning the stage plays is,
unfortunately, inconclusive. Theatre-bills understandably stress the sensational spectacle and the clowning.
But two pieces of evidence suggest that the theme of intellectual curiosity stayed alive in these works and only
became extinguished somewhat later, in the puppet plays. The account of a Faust play given in Danzig in
1669 contains the following: 'Hieauff begibt es sich, das D. Faustus mit gemeiner Wissenschaft nicht
befreidiget [sic] sich umb magische Bücher bewirbet, und die Teüffel zu seinem Dienst beschwüret …', while
the Faust play given in Vienna in 1767 by Felix von Kurz opened with: 'Fausti gelehrte Dissertation in seinem
Musaeo, ob das Studium Theologicum oder Micromanticum zu erwählen'.

There is then some regard for the theme of learning in these old stage plays. But in the puppet plays little or
no stress is placed on this side of Faust's character. The opening monologues tend to concentrate on ambition
and dissatisfaction, while the pacts turn on pleasure, power, fame and material things. Where there is a brief
mention of thirst for knowledge, it is shown as part of Faust's vulgar desire to impress his fellow men rather
than as the will to become more than man.3 The only puppet play which shows a Faust who turns to magic out
of dissatisfaction with lawful scholarship is the Ulm version, probably the oldest extant, and therefore nearest
to the stage plays.4

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By the time that serious writers in the eighteenth century came to turn their attention to the Faust theme, the
attitudes of educated men towards knowledge and faith had altered radically since the century in which Faust's
story had first been written down. For [G.E.] Lessing [Faust, 1755-67(?) (lost except for fragments)],
intellectual curiosity was the noblest of human characteristics. According to orthodox opinion in the sixteenth
century, Faust had abused his understanding by seeking to pass beyond the permitted frontiers; in the
eighteenth century men increasingly came to ask why we should have been granted the gift of reason if our
use of this gift is bad, or only good within certain limits. Since the author of the Spies chapbook is so clearly a
staunch Lutheran, it may be interesting to hear Luther on the subject of human reason. It is not surprising that
Luther constantly stresses the powerlessness, indeed the irrelevance of reason in matters of faith and salvation.
What can still surprise us is the way in which he sometimes restricts the application of reason to trivialities:

In äufßerlichen und weitlichen Sachen, da laß man der Vernunft ihr Urtheil. Denn da kannst
du wohl ausrechnen und gedenken, daß die Kuhe größer sei, denn das Kalb; item, drei Ellen
länger sind, denn eine Ellen … und dal das Dach besser stehe oben uber dem Hause, denn
unter dem Hause … denn Gott hat auch dazu die Vernunft gegeben, daß man Kühe melken
und Pferde zaumen solle, und wissen, daß hundert Gülden mehr sind, denn zehen Gülden …
Aber alihie, wenn es dahin kömmet, wie man solle selig werden im himmelischen Wesen,
und in Sachen des Glaubens, da thue die Vernunft zu, halt stille …5

Speculation regarding the hidden forces behind everyday phenomena was, for Luther, useless curiosity:

Darum, lieber Mensch, laß naturliche Kunst fahren. Weißt du nicht, was Kraft ein jeglicher
Stem, Stein, Holz, Thier oder alle Creatur hat, darnach die naturliche Kunst trachtet …; so laß
dir begnugen an dem, das dich deine Erfahrung und gemein Wissen lehret. Es … ist genug, dal
du weißt, daß Feuer heiß, Wasser kalt und feucht ist; daß im Sommer andere Arbeit denn im
Winter zu thun ist: wisse, wie du deinen Acker, Viehe, Haus und Kind uben sollst; das ist dir
gnug in naturlicher Kunst: darnach denke, wie du nur allein Christum erlernest, der wird dir
zeigen dich selbst, wer du bist, was dein Vermögen ist.6

This second passage hints clearly enough at the meaning of such phrases from the 1587 Faustbook as 'wolte
alle Grund am Himmel vnd Erden erforschen' and 'die Elementa zu speculieren' (pp. 14 and 22).

By contrast Lessing's treatment of the Faust theme is very much a part of that general praise of reason among
men of the European Enlightenment. Dr. Johnson is very near Lessing when he says (30/7/1763): 'Sir, a desire
of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being, whose mind is not debauched, will be
willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.' The same point had been made wittily in the penultimate
chapter of Voltaire's Zadig (1747), where an angel appears to the hero and speaks to him of the (for mortals)
inscrutable interaction of good and evil in the universe. But supposing there were no evil? asks Zadig. Then
this would be a different world with a different order, is the reply. Everything in this universe, as in all others,
is subject to immutable decrees which it is not your business to question.

Faible mortell cesse de disputer contre ce qu'il faut adorer.—Mais, dit Zadig.…

Zadig's 'but' would have been condemned in the sixteenth century as being on a par with Faust's illicit
curiosity; for the Rationalists of the eighteenth century it was man's duty to interject a 'but' whenever anyone
told him to accept something unquestioningly.

The first thing that must be said about the Sturm und Drang Fausts is that the insistence on the quest for
knowledge that dominates Lessing's plans and sketches vanishes—at least in so far as 'knowledge' has anything
to do with conceptual understanding, reason, logic. These things are clearly regarded as arid in [Goethe's
Urfaust, 1773/75], whose hero is interested first in an intuitive grasp of nature, later in direct experience, but

71
never in explanation. The desire for knowledge figures in Maler Müller, but only in a long list of Faust's
desires: 'Geschicklichkeit, Geisteskraft, Ehre, Ruhm, Wissen, Vollbringen, Gewalt, Reichtum, alles, den Gott
dieser Welt zu spielen …' (p. 353). Presently, in the temptation scene, Faust is enticed with material goods and
pleasures but not with the prospect of knowledge (pp. 384f). Müller's Faust [1776; 1778] does, it is true, ask:

Warum hat meine Seele den unersattlichen Hunger, den nie zu erstillenden Durst nach
Können und Vollbringen, Wissen und Wurken, Hoheit und Ehre … ? (p. 416)

—but his main preoccupation is not to get an answer to this question, but to overcome the limitations to which
it refers. A practical Faust, so to speak.…

Klinger's Faust [1791] begins by asking, among other things, about the hidden principles governing the
universe; he wishes to learn about the purpose of man's life and the causes of moral injustice (i, 8). It may be
noted that, if one assumes the existence of God and of purpose in the universe, the single problem of moral
injustice embraces a good deal of what is traditionally understood by Faust's 'rebellious' curiosity. But Faust is
quickly made to realize that, as a mortal, he cannot hope for an answer; the theme of intellectual curiosityis
dead by the end of Book I of Klinger's novel.

In fact, what distinguishes the Sturm und Drang Fausts from Lessing's Faust and, to some extent, from the
Faust of the original chapbook is that they do not so much want to know more than other men as to be more
than other men. They are nearer to Marlowe's Faustus in this than to any other previous Faust, although any
similarities are fortuitous since Marlowe was not known to the Stürmer und Drünger. Where Marlowe's
Faustus had dreamed of becoming 'a Demi-god' through magic, the hero of the Urfaust feels god-like as he
gazes on the sign of the Macrocosm and arrogates to himself something like superhuman status when he
claims equality with the Earth Spirit. He is rebuffed, it is true (lines 159f), but this is a rejection because he
has demanded the impossible, not a condemnation because he is wicked. Other Stürmer und Dränger go
further and, implicitly or explicitly, praise Faust's desire to be more than man. Maler Müller sees him as a
giant, worth a whole universe of lesser souls, 'Pobelseelen'.7 For the first time in Faust literature Faust is
likened to a god with approval: '[Ich] fuhl' den Gott in meinen Adern flammen …' (p. 353). This conception of
Faust shows not only the admiration of the Sturm und Drang for the 'Titanic' figure, but also the moral
ambivalence of this ideal. Maler Müller's Faust is a superman of whom it is hardly relevant to ask whether he
is good or bad. Greatness is all.

Klinger's Faust, too, is a colossus—'ein Genie' says Satan himself, with reluctant admiration (i, 7). His
boldness is such that the devils grow pale (v, 8). His rebellion takes the form firstly of railing against the
moral injustices in the world, then of trying himself to put them right.

The two most considerable Faust works of the Sturm und Drang period, then, demonstrate in their different
ways that even the greatest and boldest of men will be frustrated if they try to become more than man.
Klinger's Faust tries to usurp God's position as moral arbiter and creates yet more suffering and despair;
Goethe's Faust is first cut down to size by the Earth Spirit, then mocked by Mephisto: 'Warum machst du
Gemeinschafft mit uns wenn du nicht mit uns auswirthschafften kannst. Willst fliegen und der Kopf wird dir
schwindlich.'8 But man is not condemned for wanting to be more than man. It is in his nature or, at least, in the
nature of any bold and free spirit. (These Sturm und Drang Fausts are indeed not so far from the ideal of 'der
freie Geist', which Nietzsche was to formulate a century later.)

Notes

1 G. Bianquis, Faust à travers quatre siècles, Paris, 1935, p. 7.

2 Tille, Nos. I and 2.

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3 This idea, that Faust pursues learning merely for the fame it brings, occurs in one of Schink's treatments of
the theme too: 'Theologie, Philosophei/Hatt' er bis auf den Grund durchbissen;/Er trieb das Jus, trieb
Medicin,/Bloß um des Ruhmes Seifenblase.'—'Doktor Faust. Romanze …' (1800).

4 'Alles zu sehen und mit Handen zu greifen möchte ich wünschen …', i, 1.

5 Luther, S. W., Erlangen, 1826ff, xlvii, 337f.

6 x, 322.

7 Cf. Klinger, i, 7: '… ein Mann wie [Faust] ist mehr wert als tausend der elenden Schufte, die … auf eine
alltagliche Art zur Hölle fahren.'

8 This passage is from the antepenultimate scene of the Urfaust, ed. cit., p. 210.…

Works Cited

1592(?): CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Doctor Faustus. I have quoted from the B-text of 1616, according to
the edition of W. W. Greg, Oxford, 1950.

1755-67(?): G. E. LESSING, Faust. (Lost. Survives only in fragments and brief descriptions. See Samtl.
Schriften, ed. Lachmann and Muncker, Berlin and Leipzig, 1886ff, iii, 380ff; xvii, 51, 148, 239. Also in Tille,
nos. 277, 328 and 332 and in Geißler, i, 295ff.)…

1773/75: J. W. VON GOETHE, Urfaust. Quoted from L. A. Willoughby, Goethe's Urfaust and Faust, ein
Fragment in Blackwell's German Series, Oxford, 1943.…

1776: FRIEDRICH (MALER) MÜLLER, 'Situation aus Fausts Leben'.

1778: FRIEDRICH (MALER) MÜLLER, 'Fausts Leben, dramatisiert'. Many editions of this and the
preceding work. I quote from Geißler (i, 312ff)

1790: J. W. VON GOETHE, Faust, ein Fragment. For edition used, see under Urfaust, 1773-5.

1791: F. M. KLINGER, Fausts Leben, Taten und Hollenfahrt. Many editions; I have referred to chapters
when quoting.…

[A. TILLE], Die Faustsplitter in der Literatur des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts (xiiia). References are to items
and not to pages, except where it is explicitly stated otherwise.…

Marguerite De Huszar Allen (essay date 1985)

SOURCE: "The Faustbuch and The Golden Legend: The Faustian Reversal of the Saint's Life," in her The
Faust Legend: Popular Formula and Modern Novel, Germanic Studies in America, Vol. 53, Peter Lang
Publishing, Inc., 1985, pp. 13-41.

[Allen suggests that the Faust legend as it developed in Germany in particular appeared during the
Reformation as a Lutheran response to the Catholic Golden Legend, a popular rendition of the lives of the
Saints, which Martin Luther condemned as idol worship.]

If the Faustbuch is a popular formula, where did it come from? What are its popular roots? Why did the Faust
formula thrive? I believe the answers to these questions lie in a work rarely mentioned in Faustbuch

73
scholarship, an immensely popular formula for the entire Middle Ages: the Calendar of Roman Catholic
Saints, best represented in the collection of saints' legends by Jacobus de Voragine known as The Golden
Legend. The formative structural principle of the Faustbuch is a reversal of the formulaic pattern typical of the
medieval Calendar of Roman Catholic Saints.

Recognition of a specific connection between the Faustbuch and individual stories contained within the
Calendar of Saints is-not lacking in Faustbuch scholarship, but the relationship between the Faustbuch and
the Calendar as a whole has not been fully appreciated.

Earlier scholars linked the Faustbuch with the stories of Theophilus and Cyprian of Antioch, who like Faustus
formed pacts with the Devil, and with stories of Simon Magus.1 But it was not until 1930 that the relationship
between the Faustbuch and the Calendar of Saints as a whole was recognized.

Harold G. Meek's commentary on the Faustbuch pointed out parallels between Faustus's deeds and those of
the legendary saints. No longer was the relationship confined to individual stories; now the whole Calendar of
Saints is considered. Meek concludes:

Apart from the very few episodes in the legend of Faust which … were historical or were
borrowed from prior magicians or popular legends, every single item in Faust's mythical
deeds has a parallel in the sixteenth-century Calendar of Roman Catholic Saints.2

And Jolles stressed the notion of the Faust legend as the antithesis of the saint's legend. Although earlier
scholars were quick to point out that Theophilus, for example, is saved by the Virgin Mary whereas Faustus is
damned, the focus of such comments remained the individual stories. Jolles, on the other hand, examined the
medieval legends of saints' lives as a simple form ("einfache Form"). From the many diverse stories he
deduced the essential pattern of these legends, a pattern the Faust legend reverses. Faustus belongs in the
hypothetical "Kalendar der grossen Unheiligen." He is "der Anti-Heilige, der Unheilbringer." In contrast to
the "tatige Tugend" of the saints, Faustus embodies "tatiges Unrecht."

The waning of the holy legends and the rise of their unholy counterparts, the "Antilegende", both generally
coincide with the phenomenon of the Reformation at the end of the Middle Ages. For Luther protested against
a special category of saints, of heroes of virtue and performers of miracles, preferring Christ instead as the
sole intermediary between God and man, and preferring salvation through belief in Christ alone.3
Inexplicably, the insights of Meek and Jolles have not been integrated into the mainstream of Faustbuch
criticism.

The Formula for a Holy Life

The essential formula of these numerous and enormously popular stories is the imitatio Christi. The heroic
virtues evinced in the holy lives and the deeds and miracles performed are all patterned on the example of
Christ. Their purpose is edification; the holy lives portrayed are themselves to be emulated. The Devil, his
demons and human representatives are everywhere in these saintly legends. For they are the archvillains, the
evil enemy against whom the heroes of virtue must fight. In contrast, the saints are truly perfect and ever
victorious. Their life stories are adventure stories. They are the superheroes of the medieval world.

The structure of these Catholic legends follows that of a "vita." Usually the saint's birth or youth is depicted,
frequently the events that led him to take up the holy life, then his virtuous deeds and holy miracles are
related, and finally his martyrdom and the miracles performed posthumously in his name. Despite this
underlying structure the overall impression is of a "Sammelsage", a collection of anecdotes strung together.
For there is no growth in character, no plot development. Even in the many conversion episodes, divine
miracle replaces development. Instead of plot development, the spirit of the procedure for canonization is

74
relived. We are regaled with story after story of heroic virtue, and miracle follows miracle, even after death.
This abundant evidence of saint-hood has been witnessed, recorded, and collected by others as proof of the
saint's divinity and right to canonization, and Voragine is careful to give his sources.

It follows that as characters, the saints are types and their experiences are all similar. Moral truth takes
precedence over factual accuracy. Voragine, for example, quite often questions the authenticity of an episode
but relates it nonetheless. The saint as a person is only important for what he represents. The lives of the saints
are variations of the fixed ideals of the Roman Catholic Church. They are models, the highest standard for all
aspiring Christians.

Similarly, there is no ambiguity in these stories. Christ and the saints fight the Devil and his adversaries,
demonic or human. The Devil and his representatives in political power have an infinite number of possible
entrapments for the momentarily weak. But as in every good adventure story, the saint is ultimately always
victorious. In this lies the enormous appeal of these legends. Their didactic quality reinforces their
entertainment value. The virtues and behavior aspired to by Christians always prove triumphant and the reader
and believer is reinforced in his beliefs and in his own worth.

Tire Faustian Reversal

The Faustbuch varies this basic formula by inverting it. The very idea of a pact with the Devil originates in
the portrayal of Christ's temptation by Satan in the Book of Matthew, which ends with Christ's refusal. In the
Faustbuch Faustus seeks out and enters into a pact with the Devil to obtain unlimited knowledge and powers.
So Faustus serves the Devil instead of Christ; the deeds and miracles he performs are all in the name of the
Devil and are therefore misdeeds and magic. The essential structure of the adventure formula has not changed;
it is merely inverted. Emulation by the reader is explicitly discouraged by the portrayal of Faustus' terrible end
and by the polemical framework which presents the formula as a cautionary tale. Thus, at least in appearance,
the reader is to identify only with the narrator, whose role is expanded for this purpose so that the established
security and order of the basic formula is not seriously challenged.

Under the influence of the Reformation, the Faustbuch upsets the stereotype just as its effectiveness begins to
wane and becomes a tremendous popular success by reinvigorating an already popular but waning formula. A
parallel between Faustus and the saints, between the Devil and Christ is suggested which is deliberately daring
and thrillingly shocking to its readers. Moreover, Faustus is presented with a certain psychological realism
superior to the usual formulaic mold. Faustus wavers, repents, but is ultimately a weak man; his stratagems
and defeats are presented sympathetically and yet realistically. So powerful, in fact, is the impact of the
Faustian reversal, that ultimately Faustus transcends his particular literary historical origins, attains archetypal
status, and is transformed again and again into a variety of artistic forms.

All the basic ingredients for the Faustian inversion are already present in Tile Golden Legend. Two of the
most important ingredients are the pact and sorcerer motifs. The idea of a pact with the Devil, for example,
occurs at least four times in Tile Golden Legend as anecdotal variations in the formula of a saintly life. In the
life of St. Justina, the story is told of Cyprian of Antioch who tries to seduce Justina with the help of the
Devil. The pact and sorcerer motifs are combined, for Cyprian is a magician consecrated at seven by his
parents to the Devil. His pact, however, is only oral and is not consummated. The original of all written pacts
is thought to be that of Theophilus whose story is told in the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Theophilus
enters into a written pact with the Devil in order to regain his post as vicar. In Voragine's version Theophilus
writes his pact in blood, probably the first appearance of a blood pact with the Devil.4 This motif of the pact
signed with blood suggests a reversal of man's Holy Covenant with God symbolized in Holy Communion as
established by Jesus with his disciples on the night of his betrayal.

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Another lesser-known written pact occurs in the story of St. Basil where a slave wins the noble daughter of his
master with the Devil's intervention. As was also true in the story of Theophilus, Satan demands as part of the
written pact that the slave renounce Christ, his baptism, and the Christian faith. Finally, under the rubric of the
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the anecdote is related in which a soldier sells his wife to the Devil
for riches. In all these stories the miscreant is converted and saved at the eleventh hour, his pact revoked, and,
if written, is returned.5

Second, the sorcerer Simon Magus has generally been considered a forerunner of Faustus, and he too finds a
place in Tire Golden Legend in two different versions, one by St. Clement in his life story and one by Leo in
the life of St. Peter. In the anecdote in the life of St. Clement the complicated history of Clement's family and
their reunion is told. The names Faustinus and Faustus are used for Clement's twin brothers who were
disciples of Simon but abandon him for St. Peter. Simon seeks revenge for their defection on their father,
Faustinianus, by impressing his own likeness on the face of Faustinianus at the moment when Caesar's
ministers are seeking to put Simon to death for sorcery. Peter saves the day by effacing Simon's likeness from
Faustinianus through prayer, but first instructs him to appear before the people of Antioch in his likeness as
Simon and to retract his earlier un-favorable statements about Peter. As a result, Peter is beloved by the people
while Simon is chased out of Antioch.

In the anecdote in the life of St. Peter, Simon's desire to usurp the role of Christ is emphasized: Simon
"proclaimed himself the source of all truth, promised to make immortal all those who would believe in him,
and said that nothing was impossible to him"; "it is related that according to Jerome, Simon said: 'I am the
Word of God, I am the Holy Spirit, I am the God whole and entire."'6 In this version which takes place in
Jerusalem and in Rome, Peter and Simon are pitted against each other, miracles against magic. Despite
temporary setbacks, Peter is, in the end, always victorious and Simon put to shame. Finally, Simon is dashed
to the earth and killed while attempting to fly.

There are at least eight other stories about sorcerers in The Golden Legend, but the legend of Simon Magus is
central because of his claim to be able to imitate the miracles of Christ and his pretensions to being a god.
Simon Magus is both the antithesis of the saint and the perfect model. for Faustus, who has pretensions to
divinity through demonic means. Scholars, however, have not always agreed on the nature and extent of the
relationship between the Simon Magus legend and the Faust legend. Two conclusions are nonetheless clear.
First, the legend of Simon Magus, like those of Theophilus and Cyprian, was tremendously popular in the
sixteenth century, in large part due to the enormous popularity of The Golden Legend itself. Second, Faustus
clearly follows in the legendary tradition of the first great "Antiheilige." This is most obvious from the
reference to the Biblical version of the legend of Simon in Chapter 52 of the Faustbuch. Here the old man
who wishes to convert Faustus refers to Simon's conversion by St. Philip.7 Faustus's sins are found
comparable to Simon's, the old man suggests himself as the parallel for St. Philip, and Simon's conversion as a
model for Faustus. Not mentioned but implicit is the further parallel: after his conversion Simon offers the
apostles money for divine powers given them by God, from which the term "simony" is derived; and Faustus,
after a period of regret approaching conversion, seals his fate forever in a second pact with the Devil.

Further parallels between Simon and Faustus have been suggested but not conclusively proven. Two in
particular are especially intriguing. The first is the possibility that the man who called himself Faustus
deliberately used this name to claim for himself the notoriety surrounding Simon Magus and his disciple
Faustus, Clement's brother.8 This hypothesis is inferred chiefly from the calling card the historical Faustus left
Trithemus in May of 1506 which reads:

Magister Sabellicus, Faustus itjuior, fons necromanticorum, astrologus, magus secundus,

chiromanticus, agromanticus, pyromaticus, in hydra arte secundus.9

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Proponents of this hypothesis also frequently point to the episode where Clement's father, Faustinianus, who
is called Faustus in other versions of the story, assumes Simon's likeness and pretends to be Simon.10

A second intriguing question is whether the Helena of the Faustbuch is related to the prostitute who allegedly
accompanied Simon and who was variously called Luna, Selene, and Helena.11 This question remains open
because a sixteenth century text of the Simon Magus legend specifically using the name Helena has not yet
been agreed upon. The Clementine Recognitions, a version of which came out in 1526 and again in 1536, is
the most likely candidate, but uses the name Luna instead of Helena.12 The Clementine Homilies which tell
essentially the same story, use the name "Helena", but the Homilies are not known to have been popular in the
sixteenth century.13

Until a thorough history of the Simon Magus legend is written which would include accounts of the different
versions of the legend and their dates of publication, the nature and extent of its connection to the Faust
legend must in many respects remain hypothetical. In any case, the existing evidence suggests that the
material in The Golden Legend on Simon Magus is typical of a much larger body of material on Simon which
was common knowledge at the time and played an important role in the evolution of the Faust legend.

A third crucial ingredient for the Faustbuch already present in The Golden Legend is the simulation of Christ's
Last Supper. On the evening of the last day of the twenty-four years granted him in the pact, Faustus
confesses his deeds to his friends, colleagues, and students, prepares them for his death in the night, and
bequeaths them his life story to which they are to add the end. Near the end of his life, St. Dominic sees a
vision foretelling his death. He then calls together the twelve brothers of his convent, makes known his
imminent death, and gives them his testament as his inheritance to them. Like Faustus he seeks to comfort
them in their mourning, but unlike Faustus he can reassure his companions that his death is only of the flesh
whereas Faustus has promised the Devil his soul as well.

The death and resurrection of Christ also find their counterparts in The Golden Legend and the Faustbuch. A
modern reader cannot easily ignore one of the most salient features of The Golden Legend: the descriptions of
the gruesome, protracted deaths of the saints, so necessary for their badge of sainthood. Similarly, Faustus's
death is violent; like many of saints, he is torn limb from limb. But in the saints' legends, heathen earthly
rulers are the persecutors and the saints die courageously in the knowledge that the greater their suffering, the
greater their glory. In the Faustbuch Faustus is quickly destroyed by the Devil; the best he can do is to scream
feebly for help.

As The Golden Legend tells of the appearance after death of Christ and of numerous saints and of their
posthumous miracles which add credence to their beliefs, so the Faustbuch tells of the appearance after death
of Faustus to his disciple, Wagner, to whom he makes secret revelations, and to passersby from the window of
his house. Thus, the reversal is complete.

Finally, in the Faustbuch itself, the pact with the Devil is a renunciation of the saints as well as of God
himself. A sharp line is drawn between God and his saints, on the one hand, and the Devil and those who
make pacts with the Devil, namely Faustus, on the other. Shortly before his death, in his lament echoing
Luther's hymn, Faustus sees himself as essentially opposite to the saints.

Wo ist mein zuflucht? Wo ist mein Schutz, Hülff unnd Auffenthalt? Wo ist meine feste Burg?
Wessen darff ich mich trösten? der Seligen Gottes nicht, dann ich schäme mich, sie
anzusprechen, mir würde keine Antwort folgen, sondern ich muss mein Angesicht vor jnen
verhüllen, dass ich die Freude der Ausserwehlten nit sehen mag. (p. 116)14

The Faustus of the Faustbuch is himself dimly aware that his life is a reversal of the lives of the saints.

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In conclusion, the Faust variation of the formula incorporates both the pact and sorcerer motifs and elevates
them in the person of Faustus from the status of an anecdote in the life of a saint to the stature of a saintly life
itself. As the saintly life becomes turned into its opposite, the ending of the pact variation is also necessarily
reversed; Faustus is not saved but damned to Hell and violently carried away by the Devil. Similarly, at
Faustus's "Last Supper" his last speech to his friends and students is full of doubts, regrets, and fear.

Ultimately, the Faust variation itself becomes the basis for a new formula, the Faustbücher, of which the
Spies Faustbuch is the first published version and hence the most influential. Indeed, the Historia von D.
Johann Fausten, dem Weitbeschreyten Zauberer und Schwartzkünstler was such an immediate popular
success that although the first edition is dated September 4, a new, expanded edition had already appeared
before the end of the year as well as several reprints. In addition to the innumerable reprints, and the editions
and translations which made only slight changes in the Spies Faustbuch, three major versions appeared:
Widman's Wahrhafftige Historia in 1599, Nicolaus Pfitzer's version in 1674, and Faustbuch des Christlich
Meynende in 1725. The Faustbücher in their turn inspired a similar formula with Faustus's famulus Wagner as
its hero, the Wagnerbücher, which in their turn inspired still another formula based on Johann de Luna,
servant to Wagner.15

Luther's Views on The Golden Legend and the Saints

Luther did not write a biography of Faustus. But in a sense he came very close to it. There is
hardly a passage in the 1587 Volksbuch that cannot be related directly to a closely
cor-responding passage in Luther's works. When-ever Luther wrote about magicians or the
devil, he appeared to foreshadow the details and general tenor of the legend.

Frank Baron, Doctor Faustus'16

Previous scholarship has concentrated on Luther's influence on the content of the Faustbuch.17 But Luther's
influence affected the formal structure of the Faustbuch as well. For Luther's criticism of the saints' legends,
like his rejection of the Catholic cult of saints and of the medieval Catholic concept of imitation, paved the
way for the Faustian reversal of the saint's life.

Luther's chief objection to the saints' legends was their impurity. He coined the expression "Lügende" (lying
legends).18 To Luther the legends had been at one time historical truth. As he stated frequently, the Devil was
responsible for the loss of so many legends over the years and had injected fables, godless lies, and
nonsensical dreams into those remaining.19 Those legends about monks, in particular, those hermits called
anchorites who lived in solitude, he felt to be notoriously inaccurate, full of outrageous miracles and
foolishness concerning moderation, self-castigation, and discipline.20

The holy legends needed to be purified of these accretions and Luther expressed the wish on several occasions
that a competent person would undertake this task.21 It was of some urgency, for "nächst der heiligen schrift
ist ja kein nützlicher Buch für die Christenheit, denn der lieben heiligen Legenden."22 However, the task
would not be an easy one. Luther commented in 1544:

Es ist ein eigene Plag von dem Teuffel, das wir kein legendam sanctorum rein haben; sein die
schendlichsten lugen darinnen, das es ein wunder ist. Und ist ein schwere arbeit, legendam
sanctorum zu corrigim.23

Despite their corruption the legends still contained "gar feine Sprüche und Werke" and, as noted in his preface
to a purified version of the Vitae Patrum undertaken at his suggestion by his friend Georg Major, these noble
sayings and deeds of the saints would serve as a wholesome example and be of great comfort for living.24 For
saints were more like us than the apostles more the prophets.

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 Sie waren wol heilig, aber auch Menschen, bei denen der Geist zwar willig, aber auch das
Fleisch nicht nur schwach, auch wider den Geist streitend sich befand. So ferne sie nun reden
oder thun, was der Geist in ihnen wirket, seyn ihre Worte und Werke, wie die Brocken im
Evangelio, zu sammeln, als solche Dinge, die der Herr Christus in ihnen gewirket, und
wahrhaftig Christi Werk selbst sind. Wo sie aber nach dem wider-strebenden Fleisch etwas
reden und thun, seyn sie nicht zu verdammen, sondern zu ent-schul-digen, uns zu gewissen
Trost weil wir sehen, dass die Heiligen Gottes uns Schwachen gleich gewesen, und jeder in
seinem sundlicher Fleisch auch seine Schwachheiten an sich gehabt.25

Throughout his life Luther drew examples from the legends in his works, often accompanying them with a
complaint about the inaccuracies of the legends. Even after his break with the Roman Catholic Church, Luther
extolled the potential benefits of the legends. Placing them second in usefulness only to the Bible is high
praise indeed for Luther.

Luther's comments on the saints' legends only partially explain his attitude towards them, his role in the
decline in their popularity near the end of the sixteenth century, and his influence on the Faustian reversal. Of
equal importance is the transformation in Luther's attitude towards the saints themselves—in his conception of
sainthood and in his conception of the imitation of saints—which took place during the formative years of his
reformational theology. This transformation in Luther's thought shattered the Catholic conception of the
saints.

The influence of The Golden Legend on Luther was early and deep. Given its widespread popularity, its
availability, and respectability within Luther's early environment, it is assumed that as a youth Luther was
already familiar with its contents. As a monk his working knowledge of The Golden Legend could only have
increased, for it was favorite reading among the monks and the veneration of saints played an important role
in monastic life.26 Significantly, at the first great turning point in his life, when he felt his life threatened,
Luther's first reflex was to call on a saint for help. Knocked to the ground by a bolt of lightning in the midst of
a thunderstorm, he appealed to St. Anne for help and vowed in exchange to become a monk. Such dramatic
moments are the backbone of the saints' legends and it is not unlikely that Luther's early vision of his life was
molded after the pattern of the saint's life. Luther's first happy year as a monk, his probationary period,
seemed to confirm to him the correctness of that vision.27

Thus, when he entered the monastery in 1505, his burning desire was to follow the example of sainthood
developed by the Roman Catholic Church. But, as was clearly revealed by the publication in 1521 of "On
Monastic Vows", in which he rejects the assumption of a special vocation of perfection to which superior
Christians are called, and by his marriage in 1525, a profound change in his thinking had taken place in the
intervening years. By the time he arrived at the Wartburg, the only difference for Luther between "die
Heiligen" in heaven and those "heilige Menschen" on earth were that the former had died while the latter were
still living. The Catholic notion of a special category of saints, of perfect heroes of virtue and performers of
miracles, simply lost its validity for Luther. All believers in Christ were saints as in the time of the apostles
and they were both righteous and sinful.28

Because the saints, living or dead, were not perfect, a treasury of superflous merits, the basis for indulgences,
was out of the question. And because salvation depended solely on God's mercy, the transfer and stockpiling
of merits were meaningless as was the worship of relics and images. The idea of imitation underwent a
corresponding transformation. No longer were the saints to be imitated in the hope of winning God's favor by
one's own efforts; such moral achievements or ascetic feats reflected a selfish concern for one's own eternal
destiny. Justification was the work of God, not man. Similarly, because the saints were also sinners, they were
not to be imitated as if their lives presented fixed rules of behavior for Christians. Rather, as Paul Althaus has
summarized, they were to be examples in a different sense:

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 through their "teaching," that is, through their certainty and knowledge of God.… The saints
are our examples through their faith and obedience, through the patience in suffering which
God has granted them. The vital power of faith proceeds from them.29

Luther often remarked later in his life that he had lived more than fifteen years of his life as a monk "in lauter
Abgottery und Gottes Lesterung, … im unglauben an Gott und falschem vertrawen auff die todten Heiligen."30
As a monk Luther had viewed Christ as a severe judge who could only be approached through intermediaries,
through the Virgin and the saints, and who could only be placated by fasts, prayers, appeals to the saints, and
self-castigation. Christ the Saviour was essentially ignored and God's Word was not used as a source of
comfort.31 Referring roughly to the time when he became a monk, Luther wrote in 1543:

Da war die gantze Welt in allen winckeln vol Messen, Seelmessen, Vigilien, Walfarten,
Ablas, Heiligen dienst, Müncherey, Nonnerey, Pfafferey und greulicher grewel, die nichts
theten, denn das sie geld namen und überluden uns mit eitel Teufelslastern und blendeten uns
die augen, das wir das selige liecht, unsem Heern und Heiland ja nicht kennen solten.32

The mature Luther argued in the Smalcald Articles and elsewhere that the veneration of the saints led away
from Christ and ran counter to the main tenet of the Christian faith which was that salvation depended solely
on God's mercy. The cult of saints emphasized outward holiness, the works of man, and established a
hierarchy of holiness, whereas faith and righteousness came from God alone, began their work inwardly,
invisibly, and led to a sharing community of equal saints. Nothing in Scripture indicated that we should seek
intercession from the saints. "Heiligendienst" was a creation of the Papists; it was idolatry, and the Devil's
hand was at work there. Not only did it have no scriptural precedent, but it discouraged use of the Bible.33The
Golden Legend should not replace the Bible. In 1530 Luther confessed,

Es ist mir selber aus der massen sauer worden, dass ich mich von den Heiligen gerissen habe;
denn ich uber alle masse tief drinnen gesteckt und ersoffen gewesen bin. Aber das Licht des
Evangelii ist nun so helle am Tage, dass hinfort niemand entschuldiget ist, wo er im
Finsterniss bleibt. Wir wissen fast alle wohl, was wir thun sollen.34

The Shift from Catholic to Lutheran Values

Two major changes in the nature of the adventure formula characterize the transition from Catholic to
Lutheran values. First, the nature of the central fantasy of the adventure story changes. In the saints' legends
the hero is embarked on a holy moral mission. His birth, youth, or a dramatic conversion mark him as chosen
for God's work. His subsequent life is then a battle against the injustices and temptations of the heathen world.
This righteous battle against the Devil and his heathen emissaries provides the dramatic interest. The ultimate
victory of the spiritual Christian world over the earthly one is exemplified in the saint's virtues, in the miracles
and good works he performs, and in his martyrdom for his beliefs.

In the Faust formula, Faustus's mission is to know all things, do all things, and enjoy all things. The chief
obstacles he must overcome are the doubts and fears inculcated by his Christian upbringing, his theological
education, and the temptations offered by those who would convert him. His uncommon intelligence and his
love of speculation mark him early on as easy prey for the Devil. He lays God's Holy Word aside, takes up
with bad company, and practices black magic. The counterpart to the saint's conversion is Faustus's pact with
the Devil. His subsequent life is an attempt to fulfill his desire to know, to do, and to enjoy all things despite
frequent moments of doubt and the temptation to convert. The counterpart to the saint's miracles and virtues
are Faustus's magic tricks and his weak character. The saint's devotion to divine revelation and sacred
knowledge compares to Faustus's devotion to demonic revelation and secular knowledge. The saint's chastity
corresponds to Faustus's lasciviousness. Faustus's feelings of despair and fear as the time limit of the pact
draws to a close correspond to the certainty, faith, and fearlessness of the saint. Ultimately, although

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Mephostophiles lies to Faustus and Faustus's desires are obviously not entirely satisfied since he is not
prepared to die, nevertheless, Faustus is more or less successful in his attempt to overstep the bounds of
human limitations. Faustus represents both a fearful possibility and an attractive temptation.

Naturally, this fantasy would have been unacceptable as such to sixteenth century readers, Catholic and
Lutheran alike. Thus, the adventure formula undergoes a second major change. The Faustian reversal is placed
within a didactic framework in which Faustus's violent end is interpreted as a just and necessary punishment
for his sins. Whereas the saint's life is to be emulated, Faustus's life story is a cautionary tale. The Faustbuch
does not overtly challenge the established moral norms of the time in a serious way; it simply reverses them.
Of course, this reversal in itself amounted to a polemical attack on the Roman Catholic Church. Yet this attack
is so well disguised within a didactic framework that it did in fact go undetected by the Church.35

Nevertheless, the Lutheran message is clear. It is most obvious in Faustus's trip to Rome in Chapter 26 where
Faustus commits blasphemy after blasphemy. This "Reyss oder Pilgeramfahrt", as it is called, is a reversal of
the holy pilgrimages of the saint. Whereas the saints are often transported miraculously from one place to
another by an angel or by other divine means, Faustus makes his trip on Mephostophiles who is transformed
into a winged horse from Hell. Of the Pope and his servants Faustus says, echoing Luther's expression for the
Pope ("des Teuffels Saw"): "Ich meynt, ich were ein Schwein oder Saw dess Teuffels, aber er muss mich
langer ziehen. Diese Schwein zu Rom sind gemastet, und alle zeitig zu Braten und zu Kochen" (p. 60).
Whenever the Pope crosses himself at dinner, Faustus, who is invisible, blows in his face, then laughs and
cries loudly. The Pope tells the people it is a damned soul begging for absolution ("Ablass" or indulgence).
Later, after the Pope discovers how many things have been stolen from him, he rings the bells, has a mass and
petition held for departed souls, and condemns to purgatory the departed soul who has caused so much
trouble.

These Protestant stabs at the Church would have been widely appreciated in Lutheran circles in the second
half of the sixteenth century. Faustus's adventures in the other city most hated by Protestants, Constantinople
("new Rome"), would also have been of topical interest.

The Lutheran message is also drummed home in the chapters dealing with Faustus's sexual exploits. The
author of the Faustbuch makes clear that the opposite of the saint's chastity is not marriage but lasciviousness.
In Chapter 10 Faustus wants to marry but the Devil tells him "der Ehestand ist ein Werck dess Höchsten", and
marriage is now forbidden him since the domain of the Devil is "Ehebruch und Unzucht." In place of a
Christian marriage Faustus is allowed only the Devil's succubae. Not to be forgotten is that Mephostophiles
appears in the form of a Franciscan monk and the historical Faustus called himself the Devil's
brother-in-law.36

The Lutheran attack on Catholic values is most decisive in the chapters of the Faustbuch where the question
of whether Faustus can still be saved is paramount. The possibility of enjoying the benefits of the pact and yet
eluding its restrictive clauses, a possibility which until the Reformation period was almost always realized, is
raised soon after the pact is signed in the disputation sections; it reaches a climax in the attempt of the old man
to convert Faustus and is finally extinguished with the signing of the second pact and in the final chapters.

As formulated by Robert Petsch, the issue centers in part around the difference between the concepts of
attritio cordis, the fear of Hell, which according to the Catholic Church of Luther's time could lead to
salvation even when no inner connection with the Christian religion existed, and the concept Luther posited in
its place of contritio, which consisted in a complete inner transformation through faith, a contrition for one's
sins awakened by the adoption of God's word.37 The disputation chapters have been carefully analyzed by H.
Haile who summarizes:

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 Faust insolently seeks to effect his own salvation with the disputations, seeks to attain "durch
oft vnnd viel Disputationes, fragen vnnd gesprech mit den Geist … besserung, Rew vnnd
Abstinentz." … He hopes that the description of Hell, including the manner of lamentations
there and the impossibility of redemption thence, can engender sufficient horror of the
consequences of sin that he will sin no more.… Such a conception of redemption based upon
sinning no more out of fear for the consequences was regarded by the sixteenth-century
Lutheran as sinfully Catholic.38

Faustus is almost converted by the pious old man in Chapter 52, but the Devil intimidates him and forces him
to sign a second contract. In the popular folklore of pacts with the Devil, the second pact is considered
irrevocable.

In the disputation sections and again in the final chapter, Faustus's remorse is characterized as "Cains vnnd
Judas Rew vnnd Buss" (p. 34). This was the Lutheran slogan for the Catholic form of remorse; in Luther's
eyes it was based on fear and the concept of earning grace through acts of penitence.39 It also represented the
troubling question of just how much remorse was sufficient to obtain grace.

The pride and arrogance which led Faustus to sign a pact with the Devil also leads him to believe his sins are
too great to be forgiven. To the Lutherans the despair so evident in Faustus's complaints in the disputation
sections and in Chapters 63 and 64, 66 and 67, came not from Christ, but from the Devil and an incorrect
understanding of remorse, and this despair destroyed faith. Faustus's repeated lament, "Ach Vernunfft und
freyer Will", reflect a subtle allusion to the alternative Luther saw between reason and free will which
represented man's self-styled divinity and saving activity over against faith and enslaved will which
represented Christ and the salvation God had prepared for him.40

The narrator leaves no doubt as to Faustus's end. Faustus expresses the hope in the final chapter that since he
dies in heartfelt remorse ("hertzliche Reuwe") as "ein guter Christ", though his body be taken by the Devil, his
soul might be spared. But though "hertzlich Reuwe" might have been sufficient in a Catholic formula, it is not
sufficient here. In the margin Faustus's "hertzlich Reuwe" is characterized as "Judas Rew" (p. 119). In
response to the students' plea that he pray to God for forgiveness and for his soul's salvation, Faustus explains
his inability to pray; like Cain he feels his sins are too great, his pact unforgivable. And here the matter rests.
For the Lutherans a complete inner transformation was needed. Faustus is damned. Haile sums up the
anti-Catholic bias:

Faust went to Hell for the same reasons that all good Catholics were going there: for the
abominable arrogance, namely, of seeking salvation on his own hook, for the sin of doubting
the exclusive sufficiency of God's Grace, for the vain presumption that he might try to
deserve redemption, for his utmost pride that his own depravity could exceed the forgiving
power of Divine Grace …41

Finally, the adventure, travel, and magic episodes which comprise the middle of the work are not to be
overlooked here as they have been throughout the critical history of the Faustbuch. They correspond to the
virtuous deeds and holy miracles of the saints; in these anecdotes Harold Meek found the greatest number of
parallels between the miracles and deeds of the saints and Faustus's magic tricks and misdeeds. Just as the
saints' legends are, for the most part, a compilation of a saint's memorable acts, a "Sammelsage", so the Faust
legend is to a great extent a collection of tales from popular folklore adapted here to display sinful deeds now
attributed to Faustus. The disguised polemical intent of the Faustbuch is furthered by these anecdotes, for they
celebrate Faustus, the heretic, and contradict the didactic framework.

But is the Spies Faustbuch a parody of the saint's legend? I think not. For the world of Faustus is still the
unambiguous world of superhuman feats and superhuman heroes where evil is ultimately punished and the

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Devil is still the source of all evil. All that has changed in the formula is that, for polemical purposes, an
unholy one has usurped the role of the saint, reflecting the shift from Catholic to Lutheran values. Meek's
comments are helpful:

The Catholic parallels to Faust's adventures are not obvious at first glance; it follows that the
authors introduced no broad parody of themiracles of the Saints, possibly because such would
immediately have made the Church of Rome hostile to the Faustbucher. The writers aimed
only at producing doubt in the minds of expected converts as to the Catholic claims of divine
power, and this they did under the guise of an amusing story which incidentally attributed the
same supernatural feats as appeared in Roman Catholicism, not to God, but to the Devil …
Any opposition to Catholic egotheism could be propagated only by cunning suggestion since
men had for so long not dared to argue things spiritual for themselves. No stronger form of
polemics could the Lutherans have found than to turn against the Roman Catholics the very
weapons upon which they relied and to show that such weapons were, not of Heaven and
God, but of Hell and the Anti-Christ.42

Why was the Faustbuch written? Why did it thrive? For over 250 years The Golden Legend was the chief
exposition of Catholic values in popular literature and was surpassed only by the Bible as the most frequently
printed book in Europe.43 As the values underlying these popular saints legends were being attacked and
undermined, what could be more natural than the desire, in fact the urgent need to "rewrite", to revise them in
the light of Luther's religious revolution.44

Add to this need for revision the piquant and immensely popular figure of Faustus, whose bold claims and
disreputable actions led him to be compared to Simon Magus, the first great "Antiheilige", as well as to other
magicians and ne'er-do-wells. Faustus became the people's villainous folk hero, their im-aginative repository
for all sins they dared not commit, their antithesis to the virtues of the perfect Christian saint.

An inverted hagiography was born; and with it a new popular formula was initiated, for the volatility and the
widespread popularity of this inverted hagiography encouraged the copier, editor, or author of each Faustbuch
to expand and adapt the Faust formula to suit his own taste and needs. This characteristic of constant
adaptation and expansion needs to be stressed. For we must keep in mind in our subsequent analyses the facts
that we simply do not have the original Faustbuch and that the Spies Faustbuch is itself a poorly edited
version of the Faust formula.

This characteristic of constant adaptation and expansion, what Inge Gaertner calls the
Oberarbeitungscharakter" of the Faustbiicher, is, moreover, a defining characteristic of formulaic fiction.45 J.
T. Hatfield finds the development of the Faust formula morphologically comparable to the development of the
synoptic gospels. One enormously popular success is challenged by an "improved" rival version which in its
turn is eventually outdone. This passion for "re-writing" and improving is evident even in the 1592 English
translation of the Spies Faustbuch.46 The aesthetic impact of this characteristic will be taken up later.

The Faust formula debunks the cult of saints by attributing similar feats to a sinner as to a saint, by merely
casting the sinner into the role of the saint. The retention of the basic structure of a hagiography though in an
inverted form, also provides cultural continuity to the shift in religious and cultural values from Catholic to
Lutheran, as do the adaptations from popular folklore of Faustus's "merry pranks." Similarly, the didactic
framework in which the sinner is condemned maintains the accepted moral norms of the time. The story of the
unholy Faustus allows the reader to experience in fantasy the extreme excesses of what his culture considers
forbidden, because the reader is assured by the unambiguous, strictly controlled didactic framework that in
reality he, along with the narrator, rejects this temptation. The Faust formula reaffirms the strongly held view
that laying aside God's Holy Word to search for knowledge not contained there and closing one's heart to God
in the pursuit of magical, demonic powers can only lead to the triumph of the Devil. The action of the formula

83
from the signing of the pact, the disputations, and the attempted conversion, to the second pact and Faustus's
death raises the all important controversial question of possible redemption. Faustus's increasing depravity
and despair prevent faith despite moments of heartfelt remorse, and no saint nor the Virgin Mary appears to
save Faustus miraculously from his fated end as they might in a Catholic formula. The anatomy of the saint
has been transformed into the anatomy of the sinner.

Notes

1 The following is a sample of critics who connected the Faust legend with the stories of Theophilus, Cyprian
of Antioch, or Simon Magus: Mone, Anzeiger für Kunde des deutschen Mittelalters (1834): pp. 266-75; Oskar
Schade, Weimarisches Jahrbuch 5 (1856): 242; Friedrich von der Hagen, "Faust," Germania 6 (1884):
289-308; Erich Schmidt, "Faust und das 16. Jahrhundert," Clharakteristiken (Berlin: Weidmannsche
Buchhandlung, 1886), pp. 1-37; Wilhelm Meyer, Niirnberger Faustgeschichten (Mulnchen: Verlag der k.
Akademie, 1895), pp. 4f; Franz Jostes, "Die Einfuhrung des Mephistopheles in Goethes Faust," Euphorion 3
(1896): 739-58; Ernst C. Richardson, "Faust and the Clementine Recognitions," Papers of the American
Society of Church History 6 (1894): 133-45 and "The Influence of the Golden Legend on Pre-Reformation
Culture History," Papers of the American Society of Church History 1 (1889): 237-48; Philip M. Palmer and
Robert P. More, eds., The Sources of the Faust Tradition (New York: n.p., 1936). For a recent discussion of
the connection between the saints' legends (those of Theophilus and Cyprian in particular), see Frank Baron,
Faustus: Geschichte, Sage, Dichtung (Muinchen: Winkler, 1982), pp. 65-7, 73, and 95-7. Although Baron
approaches this topic from a different angle, the conclusions of his fascinating discoveries are in harmony
with my own.

2Johann Faust: The Man and the Myth (London: Oxford University Press, 1930), p. 156. The commentary on
the Faustbuch is on pp. 62-99.

3Einfache Formen (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1930), pp. 53-7.

4 Richardson, "The Golden Legend," p. 246.

5Other variations on the motif which fall just short of a formal pact are found in The Commemoration of All
Souls and in the lives of St. Julian, St. John the Baptist, and St. Christopher.

6TheGolden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. Trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger (New York:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1941), p. 332.

7 "Es ist noch nichts versaumpt, wenn jr allein wider umbkehret, bey Gott umb Gnad und verzeihung
ansuchet, wie jr sehet das Exempel in der Apostelgeschicht am 8. Cap. von Simone in Samaria, der auch viel
Volcks verfiihret hette, denn man hat jn sonderlich für ein Gott gehalten, and jn die Kraft Gottes, oder Simon
Deus sanctus genennt, diser war aber hernach auch bekehret, als er die Predigt S. Philippi gehört, liess er sich
tauffen, glaubt an unsern Herrn Jesum Christum, und hielt sich hemacher vil bey Philippo, diss, wirt in der
Apostelgeschicht sonderlich gerumpt, also mein Herr, lasst euch mein Predigt auch gefallen, und ein
hertzliche Christliche Erinnerung seyn." Das Volksbuch vom Doctor Faust (Nach der ersten Ausgabe, 1587,
ed. Robert Petsch, Neudrucke deutscher Literaturwerke des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Nr. 7-8b (Halle: Max
Niemeyer, 1911), pp. 100-1. All page and chapter references are to the 1911 Petsch edition of the Spies
Faustbuch unless otherwise indicated.

8 Thomas Mann supported this hypothesis in "ÜOber Goethes 'Faust'," Adel des Geistes (Frankfurt am Main:
S. Fischer, 1967), p. 585. Otto Haggenmacher appears to be the first to have developed this hypothesis in "Ein
altchristlicher Roman als Quelle der Faustsage," Protestantische Kirchenzeitung für das evangelische
Deutschland 26 (1879), Nr. 25-26: 518-26 and 541-52. Others who have supported it are: Schmidt, "Das 16.

84
Jahrhundert," p. 15; Wilhelm Scherer, "Einleitung," Das ialteste Faust-Buch (Berlin: n.p., 1884), p. viii;
Richardson, "The Clementine Recognitions," p. 138; S. Singer, rev. of Milchsack's Wolfenbüttel Manuscript
in Archiv 100 (1898): 390; Siegfried R. Nagel, "Helena in der Faustsage," Euphorion 9 (1902): 58-59; Meek,
pp. 48-49; and Erich Kahler, "Doctor Faustus from Adam to Sartre," The Orbit of Thomas Mann (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 97-98.

9Quoted in Frank Baron, Doctor Faustus: From History to Legend, Humanistische Bibliothek, Reihe I:
Abhandlungen, Bd. XXVII (Muinchen: Wilhlem Fink, 1978), p. 31. (Italics is mine.)

10 Singer, p. 390 and Meek, pp. 48-49.

11Thomas Mann believed Helena was related to the Simon Magus legend. See "Über Goethes 'Faust'," p. 585.
Those who agree are: Emil Sommer, "Faust," Allgemeine Encyclopadie der Wissenschaften und Kunste,
Section 1, Th. 42 (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1845), 108; Richardson, "The Clementine Recognitions," p. 143;
Nagel; Palmer and More, pp. 9 ff. Meyer, p. 44, and Singer, p. 390, disagree.

12Nagel, p. 59. Dietrich Assmann corrects Thomas Mann on this point in "Faustus Junior: Thomas Mann und
die mythische Identifikation," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 68 (1967): 549-53.

13 Fenton J. A. Hort writes, "A third M.S. of the Homilies must have existed in the sixteenth century, and may
still exist, but it has not been recovered." Notes Introductory to the Stud)' of the Cleinentine Recognitions
(London: Macmillan and Co., 1901), p. 14.

14 The old man who wishes to convert Faustus begins, "Mein lieber Herr unnd Nachbauwer, ihr wisset euwer
Fürnemmen, dass ihr Gott und allen Heyligen abegesagt, und euch dem Teuffel ergeben habt…" (p. 100). See
also p. 37 and the top of p. 116.

15Meek, p. 142, Inge Gaertner, "Volksbucher und Faustbiicher: Eine Abgrenzung," Diss. Gottingen 1951, p.
82 and pp. 101 ff. and Petsch, "Einleitung," Das Volksbuch, pp. xlvi ff. Karl L. Schmidt discusses three later
versions of the Faustbuch by Aurbacher in 1825, G. Schwab 1835/37, and Holder 1907 in "Die Stellung der
Evangelien in der allgemeinen Literaturgeschichte," Eucharisterion: Studien zur Religion und Literatur des
Alten und Neuen Testaments, ed. Hans Schmidt (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Reuprecht, 1923), p. 98.

16 Baron, Doctor Faustus: From History to Legend, p. 80.

17In addition to Baron's Doctor Faustus: From History to Legend, pp. 78 ff., see Friedrich Zarncke, "Johann
Spiess, der Herausgeber des Faust-Buches, und sein Verlag," Goethesschriften (Leipzig: n.p., 1897), pp.
289-99; Erich Schmidt, "Faust und Luther," Sitzungsberichte der Königliche Preussischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften zu Berlin 25 (1896): 567-91; and Gustav Milchsack, "Zur Geschichte des Volksbuches vom
D. Faust," Historia D. Johannis Fausti des Zauberers nach der Wolfenbütteler Handschrift (Wolfenbüttel:
Verlag von Julius Zwissler, 1892-1897), pp. ccclx-cccxciv.

18 Rudolf Kapp, Heilige und Heiligenlegenden in England (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1934), I, 20.

19See Tischreden, Vol. V in D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus
Nachfolger, 1919), No. 5674, and his comments in three prefaces in D. Martin Luthers Sämtliche Schriften,
ed. Johann G. Walch (Halle: Johann Justinus Gebauer, 1744), XIV, 321, 384-85, and 392.

20Tischreden,Vol. III, No. 3654 (1914) and Ernst Schffer, Luther als Kirchenlhistoriker, pp. 151 ff. See also
D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1928), XXI,
201.

85
21D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus, 1927), XVII2, 251, and
the prefaces in Walch's 1744 edition of Luther's works, XIV, 321 f., 384 ff., and 393.

22 Walch, XIV, 322.

23Tischreden, V, No. 5674.

24D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, XVII2, 251, and Walch, XIV, 385.

25 Walch, XIV, 393.

26 Karl Jürgens, Luther von seiner Geburt bis zum Ablassstreite 1483-1517 (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1846), I, 219
f. and 248 ff., and Schäfer, p. 153.

27 Ronald H. Bainton, Here I Stand (1950: rpt. New York: New American Library, n.d.), p. 28.

28Lennert Pinomaa, "Die Heiligen in Luthers Frühtheologie," Studia Theologica 13 (1959), No. 1, and Faith
Victorious, trans. Walter J. Kukkonen (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963), pp. 113 ff; Paul Althaus, The
Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Robert C. Schulz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), pp. 294-303.

29Althaus, pp. 299-300. See also Erich Vogelsang, Der angejochtene Christus bei Luther (Berlin: Walter De
Gruyter, 1932), pp. 52-62, and Pinomaa, Faith Victorious, pp. 57-58.

30 Otto Scheel, Dokumente zu Luthers Entwicklung, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1929), no. 510.

31 Scheel, nos. 346, 429, 501, and 503.

32D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, XXI, 201.

33 Kapp, p. 36.

34D.Martin Luthers Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Johann G. Walch (Halle: Johann Justinus Gebauer), 1746, XIX,
1202.

35Nevertheless, in April of 1588 the printer Alexander Hock along with the student authors of the versified
edition of the Faustbuch were sentenced to two days in prison and censured for printing this popular version
which appeared in Tübingen in 1587/88. Hans Widmann, Tübingen als Verlagstadt (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr,
1971), pp. 89-91. See also H. G. Haile, "Reconstruction of the Faust Book: The Disputations," PMLA 78
(1963): 176.

36 Milchsack, "Zur Geschichte des Volksbuches," pp. cccxlvi-ccclv.

37 Petsch, "Einleitung," p. xxxi.

38 Haile, "Reconstruction," p. 186.

39 Milchsack, Zur Geschichte des Volksbuches," pp. ccclxxii ff.

40 Pinomaa, Faith Victorious, p. 32.

86
41 H. G. Haile, "Introduction," The History of Doctor Johann Faustus, trans. H. G. Haile (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1965), p. 88.

42 Meek, p. 158.

43 Kapp, p. 36 and Schäfer, pp. 151-53.

44New forms of the old legends also arose as a result of Luther's teaching. See Annemarie and Wolfgang
Brückner, "Zeugen des Glaubens und ihre Literatur: Altvaterbeispiele, Kalendarheilige, protestantische
Martyrer und evangelische Lebenseug-nisse," ed. Wolfgang Brückner, Volkserzählung und Reformation
(Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1974), pp. 521-78.

45 Gaertner, p.2.

46J. T. Hatfield, "The Faust-Books and the Synoptic Gospels," The Open Court 39 (1925): 464-65. See also
Karl L. Schmidt, "Die Stellung der Evangelien," pp. 92-102.

Frank Baron (essay date 1990)

SOURCE: "From Witchcraft to Doctor Faustus," in The Verbal and the Visual: Essays in Honor of William
Sebastian Heckscher, edited by Karl-Ludwig Selig and Elizabeth Sears, Italica Press, 1990, pp. 1-15.

[In the following excerpt, Baron discusses the historical background of the idea of a pact with the devil, as
well as the case of the highly educated and initially well-respected doctor of law, Dietrich Flade (who was
burned for witchcraft in 1589), to draw connections between the witch hunts of late-sixteenth-century Europe
and the enduring Faust legend.]

Despite the great mass of literature on the Faust legend, the question about the relationship between witch
hunting and the Faust legend has not attracted serious attention. The fact is that the stereotype of the
persecuted witch, who was generally an uneducated woman, does not appear to be relevant to the lofty idea of
the scholarly Faustus. The Faustian pact, with its effort to transcend human limitations in knowledge, does not
seem to originate in the literature of witchcraft. A certain degree of patience is required to discover that below
the surface there are complex but intriguing historical forces that bring these two topics together. If we
consider that the Faust Book (Historia von D. Johann Fausten, 1587) appeared in the midst of an intense era
of persecution, this is not entirely surprising.

In the second half of the sixteenth century there was a dramatic intensification in the persecution of witches.
Before about 1540 there had been only scattered reports of legal proceedings against individual witches. Now
there were mass trials, often leading to mass executions, soon followed by yet more trials. There was a strong
tendency to consider witchcraft as a spiritual crime for which the courts did not need to produce any kind of
physical evidence. The famous Malleus maleficarum, published first in 1486 and reprinted in numerous
editions, had provided a powerful impetus for the idea that witchcraft was a heresy and hence a spiritual crime
as well as a civil offense, comparable to treason, a crime that could be prosecuted in civil courts. The authors
of the Malleus maleficarum declared torture the essential tool in dealing with such cases: "… witchcraft is high
treason against God's majesty. And so they (the witches) are to be put to … torture in order to make them
confess. Any person, whatever his rank or position, upon such an accusation may be put to. torture.… In days
of old such criminals suffered a double penalty and were often thrown to wild beasts to be devoured by them.
Nowadays they are burnt at the stake, and probably this is because the majority of them are women."1

Not all witchcraft theorists took such an extreme position, but in the sixteenth century the parameters of
disagreement about witchcraft tended to narrow. In general, the accused were forced to cooperate in creating a
set of statements that appeared credible and in agreement with the claims of witchcraft theorists. The courts

87
and interrogators worked with a well established set of questions and could compel the defendant to tell a
story that conformed more to witchcraft theory than to the biography of the person interrogated. Confessions
made under the threat of torture, involving little or no bodily harm, were designated as voluntary. The misuse
of the word made "voluntary" confessions commonplace, at least in the perception of the outside world. In
these confessions there was some flexibility for individual variations, but in the sixteenth century the
confessions displayed a considerable degree of uniformity. The basic plot focused on the drama of a
misguided human being, who was engaged in a losing game with the devil. Although the texts of such
confessions have not been treated by literary scholars, I see the work of radically restructuring the facts of an
accused person's life into an imaginary account to be somewhat akin to the process of literary creation. The
historical phenomenon of witch hunting certainly influenced the emergence of a literary theme. It is possible
that there was an influence operating in the opposite direction as well: that the requirements of rhetoric and
imaginative literature were unconsciously employed in the restructuring of reality. The historical background
of the idea of the devil pact supports this interpretation. The devil pact was primarily a legacy of saints'
legends, another genre in which rhetorical and literary devices dominate a narrative. At any rate, what appears
today to be the most fictional and questionable link in the system of persecution, the confession—clearly a
gross distortion of reality—was at that time held to be the most persuasive evidence of a reality behind
appearances.2

A radical restructuring of reality also took place on another level, with respect to large groups of people over a
period of many decades. Carlo Ginzburg examined the agrarian cults of Friuli in northern Italy and found that
the fertility rituals of a group of simple people, the benandanti, came under suspicion of heresy and witchcraft
in the sixteenth century. Ginzburg has shown how the authorities gradually brought the puzzling beliefs of the
benandanti in line with their own beliefs about witchcraft. With the aid of torture and suggestive questioning,
conceptions about witchcraft were superimposed on beliefs that at the outset had nothing to do with them. In
the span of about a century, the nocturnal rituals that were thought to induce fertility were transformed into
the witches' sabbath, a meeting for conspiracies to cause storms and destruction.3 As we shall see, the
emergence of the Faust legend also involves the convergence of at least two different conceptions of reality
and the subsequent imposition of one on the other.

Before we turn to the case of Faustus, it might be instructive to examine the trial of Dietrich Flade, whose fate
has much in common with that of Faustus. His trial shows in a concrete way the kind of creative reorientation
required to prosecute a learned man rather than an uneducated woman. Dietrich Flade (1534-89) was
undoubtedly the most prominent, learned man ever accused and tried for witchcraft. Unusual twists of fate
have preserved the records here in the United States at the Cornell University Library. These documents make
it possible to examine Flade's trial in detail.4

As a doctor of law Flade was advisor to three archbishops of Trier, Johann VI (d. 1567), Jacob III (d. 1581),
and Johann von Schönenberg (d. 1599), before his fall from grace in 1587. As the head of the civil courts in
Trier, he held one of the highest judicial positions in the land. After 1577 he had held the rank of professor in
the law faculty of the University of Trier. In 1587 he became dean of the law faculty, and in the same year he
was honored as rector, the highest academic rank. He was undoubtedly the wealthiest man in the city of Trier:
his annual income exceeded that of the city as a whole, and at the time of his arrest seventy-four persons were
in his debt.5 Of course, Flade's great wealth and power may have accounted for the hostility that made his
defense so difficult.

Enemies might have mattered little if the social fabric of the city had not been overstrained by economic
hardship and a series of persecution waves in which Flade himself was an active participant. Disastrous
weather conditions that destroyed crops and made harvests impossible over a number of years in the 1580s
had created a climate of desperation.6 In the first decade of his career as a councillor, as early as 1557, Flade
served on a commission for the prevention and suppression of Protestantism.7 The banishment of the Jews
followed closely on the heels of the intensive attacks on the Protestants.8 Flade himself presided over a series

88
of witch trials that subsequently reached massive proportions.

A document prepared by friends in defense of Flade during his trial for witchcraft asserted that Flade had
himself participated in such trials, conducting interrogation with the aid of torture, announcing the conviction
and attending the execution in more than eight such trials.9 There is independent confirmation that Flade had
conducted a trial for witchcraft in 1582, five years before his own trial.

The earliest evidence of suspicions about Dietrich Flade arose from the somewhat vague confession of a
fifteen-year-old boy, Matthias of Weiskirchen. Suspected of witchcraft, Matthias was brought to the
archbishop's palace in Trier early in 1587 and interrogated by the governor of the city, Johann Zandt von
Merl.10 Matthias asserted that he had heard someone at the witches' sabbath boast of having attempted to
poison the archbishop. He accused Dietrich Flade.

For a village boy who had never been to Trier before to recognize Flade as the man behind a plot against the
archbishop would surely not have been possible without some help from the interrogating officer. It is not
surprising to find this interrogator, Johann Zandt, associated with subsequent confessions that confirmed the
reliability of the initial accusation. Zandt also examined a witch named Maria who, before being executed on
June 8, 1587, testified that she had seen Flade several times at the sabbath. About a month later a man named
Hans, being tried for witchcraft in the same village, under Zandt's supervision, also accused Flade.

With these initial accusations Zandt confronted Flade in August of the same year. In the subsequent months
before the trial (just when the Faust Book went to press and was quickly sold out in several printings),
twenty-three executed men and women named Flade as a participant at the witches' sabbath. The statement of
Margarethe Merten von Euren is the most noteworthy; it contains elements that later confessions and reports
remembered, repeated, and elaborated on. Merten testified that Dr. Flade had arrived at the sabbath in a
golden carriage. When he called for the destruction of crops, she protested and he struck her. Moreover, she
claimed, Flade himself was responsible for producing the snails that injured crops.11

After several futile legal maneuvers and an attempt to escape from Trier, Flade was placed under arrest.12 The
subsequent metamorphosis of Flade into a witch proceeded in several distinct stages. Flade struggled against
insurmountable odds searching for an acceptable and redeeming confession, while for his interrogators the
only acceptable confession was one that proved his guilt beyond any doubt.

At first, on July 11, 1589, Flade had to respond to forty questions prepared by the archbishop and presented to
Johann Zandt. The first questions showed that the trial promised to be different from the typical witch trial.
What lured him into the trap of the devil? Temptation of the flesh? avarice? curiosity? some other pact? Flade
asserted defiantly that he had nothing to confess. He admitted only that he was accustomed to dreaming and
had in his dreams attended meetings and festivals, but he had never taken part, either consciously or
physically, at any witches' sabbath.13 In this way Flade was again propounding a theory he had used when he
responded to the allegations of two witches who had accused him. His accusers, Flade asserted, probably saw
only a phantom representing him, not his person in reality; they saw only the delusions of the devil. With this
line of defense Flade showed the influence of Johann Weier (or Weyer) who had used the conception of
demonic delusion to propound the most controversial witchcraft theory of the sixteenth century. As we shall
see, Weier plays an important role in the development of the Faust legend. At this stage, Flade energetically
denied the implications of the questions that were based on confessions and charges of the earlier Trier trials.

The archbishop was unmoved by the denials and the pleas for mercy; he insisted that a formal trial had to take
place. On August 17, the first interrogation of the trial was conducted, and it began with the threat that torture
would have to be used if Flade did not confess. Under these circumstances Flade was prepared to make certain
guarded concessions. Because of the many deaths in his family he had suffered a great deal, and he finally
gave in to the temptations of the flesh. At this stage the executioner responsible for torture was called into the

89
room. Flade now confessed that he had been in bed with a virgin, who was, in reality, only an apparition.
Because of this and because he wavered concerning many articles of faith, Flade believed that the devil
considered him a willing accomplice and then represented him at the meetings of witches. Thus, he again
made an effort to elaborate on his dream theory of witchcraft. But the court now responded with torture. As
the interrogation contin-ued over the next two days, with alternating periods of threatening questioning often
accompanied by torture, Flade gradually confessed to a whole series of witchcraft sins: to an explicit pact with
the devil and to attendance at witches' meetings, where he was called doctor and where it was decided to
destroy the harvest. To be sure, Flade's resistance had not broken down completely, for he insisted that this
resolution to destroy the harvest was not carried out.

The archbishop studied Flade's confession, but in the end he found that Flade had not confessed enough.
Archbishop Schönenberg was evidently concerned about some ambiguous assertions that could be construed
to defend Flade. The interrogations had to be taken up again after a pause of three weeks.14

Again threatened with torture, Flade made his confession more explicit. He had been seduced by the sins of
impurity, doubt, avarice, and greed. He had succumbed to curiosity—"curiositas sciendi"—and to the desire to
satisfy it.15 He admitted, among other things, to having participated in the production of snails. He affirmed
the charges made against him in earlier trials. He said that he had been taken in a golden wagon to the
sabbath, where the decision was made to destroy farm produce.

On August 18 the court convened at the city hall, where the public could hear Flade's confession as well as the
court's judgment, death by fire. Flade, followed by a large crowd, walked to the market-place, where he turned
and exhorted the people surrounding him to learn from his fate, to avoid the snares of the devil. As an act of
mercy, the executioner strangled Flade before his body was surrendered to the flames.

Flade's trial raises many questions. It followed the prescribed pattern of witch trials, but with some variations.
George Burr and Emil Zenz have explored the details with great thoroughness, and they propose the
hypotheses about the factors that brought about Flade's downfall. Burr's treatment appears more convincing in
its emphasis on the crucial roles of governor Johann Zandt and Archbishop Johann von Schönenberg in
representing the decisive forces behind the case against Flade. Economic and political motives as well as
excessive zeal in persecuting witches were evidently involved, but for our purposes the question of the
relevance to the Faust legend is paramount.

It is puzzling that the original impetus for the case against Flade, the charge that an attempt was made on the
archbishop's life, is not mentioned in the trials. This serious matter was forgotten. Flade's defense on the basis
of his dream theory was also forgotten. Instead, the characteristic features of a typical witch trial emerged: the
conception of the devil pact and sexual intercourse with demons. On these dangerous points Flade resisted
most stubbornly, and only in response to torture did he make a confession. The court wanted considerable
details about of the twenty-six- or twenty-seven-year-old virgin who had come into Flade's bedroom. Two
leaves of the trial manuscript, later tom out, were devoted to this episode. When we turn our attention to
Faustus, we note that the elements necessary to condemn Flade—the devil pact and the sexual adventure with
demons—became the essential components of the narrative. In the closing moments of Flade's life as well as in
those of Faustus we may observe another striking parallel in the exhortation and warning to the witnesses of
their tragic end. Finally, both Flade and Faustus became victims of a violent death.

In contrast to the usual witch trial, the court had an extraordinary number of witnesses and denunciations to
confirm. It appears that the quantity of evidence was a primary consideration in his conviction. The court
pressed Flade to respond to many accusations and to elaborate on his motives. It emerged that Flade's role at
the sabbath had been [that] of leader. His leadership over the witches, a role to which his learning helped to
elevate him, made him all the more responsible for evil deeds.

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The published reports about the trial also stress these aspects of Flade's newly created image. In 1593 a small
book by a Protestant author appeared in Erfurt. [An] illustration [in the book] makes it clear that the essential
features of the Flade trial were unaffected by religion. To be sure, a priest and a monk are shown in prominent
positions. But we also have Flade as the king of witches appearing in a "golden" carriage drawn by horses,
later in his position of honor at the table, facing witches, who flaunt their sensuality. Flade is also seen sitting
at his desk surrounded by books on magic, the snails that he had produced at his feet. If we compare this
illustration with other pictures of the witches' sabbath, we are struck by the emphasis on books and learning in
the Trier witchcraft picture. Books dominate the entire foreground.16

In 1594 a Cologne newspaper (Warhafftige newe Zeitung) reported some familiar details in Flade's
confession, about his role as a leader at the witches' sabbath and about his responsibility for the destruction of
harvests. The following passage is of particular interest:

Among the witches there was a leader, who was their king. He was an extremely learned man,
a doctor in astronomy and well versed in all fields. He was responsible for a great deal of
suffering by poisoning and killing many human beings as well as animals with his diabolical
magic. He is like Doctor Faustus; a big book might be written about his diabolical magic.17

This comparison with Faustus clearly caused a further mutation in the image of Flade, who has now become
an astrologer and alchemist, like Faustus.

The Flade case and the attempt to publicize its significance show that the conception of the witch trial was
flexible enough to deal with a formidable challenge. It met the challenge in this case by exaggerating
masculine power and learning, the features that represented the most significant deviations from the
stereotype. In their demonized form these features served to illustrate a hitherto unimagined picture of evil
and guilt. As the quoted newspaper passage suggests, this kind of exaggeration could create a figure
comparable to the condemned magician of the Faust Book.

We do not have any evidence of a formal witchcraft trial against the historical Faustus, who claimed to be an
astrologer, magician, alchemist, and philosopher. At most, his provocative behavior earned him the dangerous
label of sodomist and necromancer. But the image that survived his death was subjected to constant attacks,
and the transformations of his reputation reflect certain features of an actual trial. Luther, in Wittenberg,
regarded Faustus as a diabolical magician. In a sense, the symbolic, retroactive trial of Faustus began in the
city of the Reformer.

As in the case of beliefs and theories about witchcraft, the life and exploits of Faustus became widely known
in popular printed books. Neither witchcraft not the Faustus story owes a great deal to an oral tradition, and
the common people were not responsible for the reputation of Faustus. In the genre of exempla collections
designed to help Protestant pastors in the preparation of sermons, authors with academic backgrounds
propagated information about Faustus. Johannes Manlius, a pupil of Melanchthon's, prepared the first
best-seller in a long series of exempla collections. Short historical anecdotes from biblical, classical, and
contemporary sources, generally organized according to the Ten Commandments, provided illustrative
material for moral lessons of every kind. The devil, diabolical magicians, and witches were among the most
common characters in these stories. Here Faustus's deeds and witchcraft appeared side by side.
Understandably, these collections gave prominence to Martin Luther's anecdotes and pronouncements, just the
material that form the largest group of identifiable sources in the Faust Book. Literary historians are in
agreement that Luther represents the strongest single influence shaping this book, but this insight has tended
to obscure the role that certain other factors played.

The exempla collections by Weier and Lercheimer introduced an important new perspective that visibly
influenced the image of Faustus. Unlike other such works these two books offered contributions to the debate

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on witchcraft. The inclusion of Wittenberg source materials on Faustus sets the stage for the convergence of
two previously distinct components: Faustus and witchcraft. We need to see how the building blocks of the
Faustus story fared in the hands of Weier and Lercheimer.

Johann Weier, a physician practicing in a small duchy north of Cologne, served Duke William of
Jillich-Cleve-Berg for twenty-seven years. Under the duke's protection, he dared to attack some fundamental
assumptions about witchcraft. He questioned the reality of fantastic actions, such as the witches' sabbath, the
devil pact, and the copulation with the devil, which he contended existed only in the imagination. He
attributed the reports about them in part to the desperation of people under the threat of torture and, even
more, to an illness which, he believed, women were especially susceptible [to]: , nelancholia, a derangement
of the mind caused by the influence of the devil. The devil was responsible for the fantasies of witches.
Ignorance made the work of the devil easier. With these arguments Weier defended the women accused of
witchcraft as innocent persons who were unjustly persecuted.

Despite these efforts, it would be a mistake to see Weier as a rational, enlightened thinker in the modern
sense. His collection of exempla is just as rich in fantastic diabolical deeds as the Wittenberg sources he took
over without critical analysis. Thus we find the Wittenberg anecdotes about Faustus, magicians, and witches
transmitted here with little change. It is important to recognize that Faustus, who was included in the 1568
edition of Weier's book for the first time, entered a new context. He was still the diabolical magician, as
Luther had labeled him, but now he was grouped together with other learned magicians in one category,
which Weier singled out for attack. In contrast to the witches, who were ignorant and innocent, the magicians
were great sinners, who turned to the devil despite their learning. Magicians should know better. Weier urged
the authorities to persecute learned magicians. Clearly he hoped to shift the focus of the witch hunting from
those who were most threatened and most vulnerable to those who were few in number and often under the
protection of high-ranking persons. It is difficult to assess whether Weier's arguments were able to stem the
tide of witch hunting to a significant degree, but their impact probably set the stage for later mutations in the
stories and feats associated with Faustus.

Weier argued against the reality of the devil pact, and he excluded the Wittenberg devil pact stories from his
collection and avoided references to confessions about pacts of witches. Although he did not explain how
learned magicians obtained the aid of the devil, he must have thought that this was possible without resorting
to a pact. Weier saw Faustus as a great sinner and was the first author to bring his name into the witchcraft
debate.18

When we turn to Lercheimer's exempla collection and consider it from the same perspective, we realize that
an important change has taken place. Like Weier, Lercheimer (pseudonym for Witekind, a professor at the
University of Heidelberg) argued that witches were ignorant, sick, deluded by the devil, and therefore
innocent. Both Weier and Lercheimer saw the ignorance of women as a fact that speaks best in their defense.
Like Weier, Lercheimer was one of the few scholars who dared to take the dangerous position against the
witch hunts. Unlike Weier, however, he believed in the reality of the devil pact, and as a student of the
University of Wittenberg (and a friend of Melanchthon's), he could recall and relate Luther's and
Melanchthon's devil pact stories. He used them to illustrate the guilt of learned magicians, and thus he was
able to revive and intensify Weier's polemic against such figures. The pact became the sin on which
authorities should focus.

As a background to this shift in the argument against magicians, we might consider the origin and influence of
the criminal code of Saxony concerning devil pacts. In the discussions that led to the adoption of the laws in
1572, the lawyers of the elector took Weier's provocative book into account, but since Weier was a physician
and not a lawyer, they rejected his authority. Unlike Weier, they insisted on the reality of the devil pact and
made it punishable by death. In 1582 the elector of the Palatinate revised the criminal code of his land along
these lines, and Johann Spies, the publisher of the Faust Book, printed this legal code in Heidelberg.19 Even if

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Lercheimer had not been persuaded by his Wittenberg teachers of the reality of the pact, the existence of the
laws about it must have served to define the dangers and problems more sharply and narrowly. By shifting the
blame for the pact from the unjustly accused witches to Faustus and other magicians, Lercheimer could hope
to eliminate what was probably the most threatening accusation against the witches. Faustus's reputation, on
the other hand, was now even more seriously damaged. The rhetoric of the pact clearly brought about a
mutation in his image. To illustrate Lercheimer's contribution to the restructuring of the biography of Faustus,
it may suffice to cite one of the five passages in which the magician is treated.

As I reported earlier, in the days of D[octor] Luther and Philipp [Melanchthon], the diabolical
magician Faust resided in Wittenberg. The people tolerated him because of their hope that he
might be converted and rehabilitated. But that did not occur; instead he even seduced others.…
Thus, the prince ordered him to be imprisoned. But the devil warned him and helped him to
escape. Not long after that, he was brutally murdered by the spirit, who had served him for
twenty-four years.20

Lercheimer was probably the first person to introduce the idea of a twenty-four-year pact into the biography
of Faustus. Since the motif does not appear in Wittenberg sources, on which Lercheimer depended, it is
probably safe to conclude that this elaboration, which constitutes the plot idea that formed the basis of the
Faust Book, was his own. Because numerous images and events have relevance to the story of Faustus, it is
not surprising to see the author of the Faust Book, who must have used Lercheimer as one of his sources,
taking over the Wittenberg forest as the setting for the pact. Hence the appropriation of the Faustian pact and
the context in which it was narrated helps to show how the case against Faustus developed and under what
circumstances his biography was restructured. As in the case of the witches, the process took place in the
context of legal considerations, in an effort to punish retroactively a man whom the authorities had apparently
overlooked and spared. The witchcraft debate thus intruded into Faustus's biography and superimposed its plot
requirements.

Lercheimer's treatment of Faustus is not an isolated incident. What happened to Faustus in his book also
happened to Agrippa of Nettesheim. Weier was proud to be a student of Agrippa's, and he took pains to
defend Agrippa against the attacks on his reputation. He maintained that Agrippa had nothing to do with
demons. But Lercheimer ignored Weier's pleas. He retold the anecdote about the demonic dog who appeared
at Agrippa's death bed. Then Lercheimer went beyond his sources by contending that Agrippa had made a
pact and implied that this fact explained both the appearance of the devil and the certainty of Agrippa's end. In
other words, Agrippa was also the victim of a revised biography.

In addition to the pact, the Faust Book owes a number of other plot elements to the rituals of witch hunting:
for example, Faustus's ability to fly with the devil's help, his sexual exploits with demonic beings, and the
opportunity he is given by a consoling and pleading pastor to repent. At many points we can recognize motifs
that could have been produced by the suggestive interrogation of a witches' trial. Faustus's cruel, grotesque
murder at the hands of the devil may be seen as a retroactive punishment for the crimes that the legal system
had failed to carry out.

The introduction to the Faust Book defines the category of historical material to which the Faust story
belongs: "Whoever has read history (Historien) will find that if the authorities do not perform their duty in
this matter, the devil himself executes the diabolical magicians."21 This faulting of the efficiency or
thoroughness of the system implies that the author of this statement strongly identified with the system of
persecution and accepted the premises on which it was based. But he also found the arguments of Weier and
Lercheimer with respect to learned magicians entirely compatible with these premises and felt comfortable
about citing Weier as his source.

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There have been some ironic twists in this history. We have seen that the powerful dynamics of witch hunting
compelled even its opponents to make compromises with its basic premises. It was impossible to attack the
system without great danger. What surfaced in the Faust Book in response to Weier's and Lercheimer's
struggle with the witch hunters was not humanitarian concern. Instead, the diversionary attacks on the learned
magician prevailed, providing the impulse to exaggerate Faustus's learning as well as his diabolical nature.

I have tried to trace the lines of development of witch hunting and the Faustus image with special attention to
the patterns of change, in order to determine when, where, and why these lines converged. As a result of a
repeated restructuring of historical materials, these lines came together, leading to a convergence in
Lercheimer's work. Here the essential plot of the Faustian story emerges: the conception of the Faustian pact,
a dangerous contract with evil forces to transcend human limitations for the sake of power and knowledge.
This conception was shaped by the imagination of persecution and fear, and to a lesser degree by the literary
imagination. The Faustian pact has formed a consistent point of departure for the rich tradition of Faust
literature until the present time.

Notes

1 Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, Malleus maleficarum (New York: Dover, 1971), p. 6.

2 Recent archival research about witchcraft in Germany during the sixteenth century by the following scholars
is particularly important: H.C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562-1684: The
Social and Intellectual Foundations (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972); and Gerhard
Schormann, Hexenprozesse in Nordwestdeutschland (Hildesheim: August Lax, 1977).

3 Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries,
trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (New York: Penguin, 1983).

4The American scholar George L. Burr discovered it as he examined an old-book catalog of 1882. George L.
Burr, "The Fate of Dietrich Flade," Papers of the American Historical Association 5 (1891): 3-57. This
excellent study has been supplemented by a more detailed consideration of the trial by Emil Zenz, "Dr.
Dietrich Flade, ein Opfer des Hexenwahns," Kurtrierisches Jahrbuch 2 (1962): 41-69.

5 Zenz, "Dr. Dietrich Flade," p. 45.

6 Burr, "Fate of Dietrich Flade," p. 15; Zenz, "Dr. Dietrich Flade," p. 46.

7 Zenz, "Dr. Dietrich Flade," p. 43.

8Burr, "Fate of Dietrich Flade," p. 12. Jakob Marx, Geschichte des Erzstifts Trier (Trier, 1858; Aalen:
Scientia, 1969) 1:510.

9 Zenz, "Dr. Dietrich Flade," p. 52.

10 Burr, "Fate of Dietrich Flade," pp. 21-22; Zenz, "Dr. Dietrich Flade," pp. 46-47.

11 Zenz, "Dr. Dietrich Flade," pp. 49-50.

12 Zenz, "Dr. Dietrich Flade," pp. 56-57.

13 Zenz, "Dr. Dietrich Flade," p. 57; Burr, "Fate of Dietrich Flade," p. 39.

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14 Zenz, "Dr. Dietrich Flade," p. 62.

15Zenz, "Dr. Dietrich Flade," pp. 62-63. Cf manuscript of the "Flade Trial," in Witchcraft in Europe and
America (Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications, Inc., 1983), fol. 104r, reel 40, no. 333.

16 Thomas Sigfrid, Richtige Antwort auff die Frage: Ob die Zeuberer vnd Zeuberin mit jhrem Pulfer,
Kranckheiten, oder den Todt selber beybringen können, was von jhrer Salben, Zusammenkunfft und
Bekandtnuß zuhalten, Vnd ob jhm eim Bezauberter durch Zauberey wider moge helfen lassen. Allen
guthertzigen Christen zum Bericht vnd Warnung, mit warhafftigen alten vnd newen Historien, deren sich eins
theils noch diß Jahr zugetragen kiirtzlich dargethan, vnd mit eim Kupfferstick vor Augen gestellet (Erfurt:
Jacob Singen [in Verlegung Pauli Brachfeldt], 1593), fol. Aij. The book and illustration were photographed
for me by the Staatsbibliothek in Munich. I am grateful to Dr. Günter Richter for drawing my attention to this
interesting book.

17 … dem doctor Fausto vergleichet er, von seiner Zaubereye/ein grosses Buch zu schreiben wer.

Burr, "Fate of Dietrich Flade," pp. 45-46. Von vilen Hexen vnd Vnholden, die man newlicher zeit in disem 94.
Jar, im Trierischen Land, vnd andern Orten verbrandt hat, auch was sie für wunderliche schröckliche Sachen
begangen, vnd bekennet han, in Drey Warhhafftige Newe Zeitung (Cologne: Niclaus Schreiber, 1594). A copy
of the original book was made available to me by Aargausiche Kantonbibliothek in Switzerland.…

18Johann Weier, De praestigiis daemonum (Frankfurt: Basse, 1586). Cf Carl Binz, Doctor Johann Weyer, ein
rheinischer Artz, der erste Bekimpfer des Hexenwahns (Bonn: A Marcus, 1885); Ulrich Friedrich Schneider,
Das Werk De praestigiis daemonum von Weyer und seine Auswirkungen auf die Bekimpfung des Hexenwahns
(Dissertation: Bonn, 1951).

19 [Pfalz. Ludwig VI], Churfuirstl. Pfaltz Landtrechtens [5. Teil: Criminalia] (Heidelberg: J. Spies, 1582), fol.
9r. Carl Georg v. Wachter, Gemeines Recht Deutschlands (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1844), p. 56.

20Frank Baron, "The Faust Book's Indebtedness to Augustin Lercheimer and Wittenberg Sources," Daphnis
14 (1985): 535-36. Cf. Frank Baron, "Georg Lukacs on the Origins of the Faust Legend," in Faust Through
Four Centuries, ed. Peter Boerner and Sidney Johnson (Tulbingen: Niemeyer, 1989), pp. 13-25.

21 Hans Henning, ed., Historia von D. Johann Fausten (Halle: Verlag Sprache und Literatur, 1963), p. 8.

Frank Baron (essay date 1992)

SOURCE: "The Making of the Historia von D. Johann Fausten: The Emergence of the Faustian Pact," in his
Faustus on Trial: The Origins of Johann Spies's "Historia" in an Age of Witch Hunting, Max Niemeyer
Verlag, 1992, pp. 110-46, 157-68.

[In the following excerpt, Baron discusses the literary tradition of pacts with the devil that preceded the first
known instances of the Faust legend in print.]

Augustin Lercheimer speaks of a pact that Faustus had made, but he supplies few details. As far as we know,
Lercheimer was the first to claim that Faustus made a pact for twenty-four years and that when he later tried to
repent, the devil forced him to sign a second pact and thus brought about his damnation.1

Aber sein geist warnet jn daß er davon [from Wittenberg, where he was about to be arrested]
kamm, von dem er nicht lange darnach grewlich getodtet ward, als er jm vier vnd zwantzig jar
gedient hatte.2

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 Der. vielgemeldte Faust hat jm ein mal fürgenommen sich zu bekeren, da hat jm der teuffel so
hart gedrawet, so bang gemacht, so erschreckt, daß er sich jm auch auffs new hat
verschrieben.3

The reference to Faustus's intention to repent indicates the relevance of other passages in Lercheimer's book.
Lercheimer relates, for example, that Faustus visited Melanchthon, who attempted to convert the magician
and warn him that there would be serious consequences if he did not (" … kamm etwann zum Herrn Philippo,
der laß jm dann einen guten text, schalt vnd vermanet jn daß er von dem ding beyzeit abstuinde, es würde
sonst ein bose end nemmen, wie es auch geschahe.") At the same time, Lercheimer tells of an unsuccessful
attempt by a pious old man to convert Faustus ("Ein Gottesforchtiger mann vermanete jn auch, er solte sich
bekeren.")4 These brief assertions occur in a context that points to Faustus only as one of many magicians
illustrating the dangers of learned magic. They serve a relatively minor function in the book as a whole. In the
hands of the anonymous author, however, they become the nucleus of the Faustian plot and thus the basis of
the entire Historia.

But it would be wrong to think that the author simply revised these passages. He was aware of a long tradition
of stories, which he drew from, combined, and placed in a new context. To understand his contribution it is
necessary to see it in relationship to its background.

Although Lercheimer asserts that Faustus is taken by the devil in the end, it is not a foregone conclusion that
he would have approved of an exemplum of warning that focuses simply on Faustus's losing his soul. After
all, he concludes his brief narrative of Faustus and the Wittenberg student who had also made a pact with the
devil by stating that one should treat such people mercifully ("Diesem exempel nach solt man fleiß anwenden
vnd sich bearbeiten mehr solche leute zu bekeren vnd zu beßern, dann dann vmmzubringen vnd zu
verderben.")5

The literary tradition favored a merciful ending for Faustus. In this respect the Historia deviated from
tradition and even from its guiding authority, Luther.

Although Luther repeatedly stressed the danger of the devil pacts, he and his close friend Philipp Melanchthon
were inclined to favor a merciful treatment of sinners accused of diabolical magic. We need to take a closer
look, therefore, at the stories they told. Although it would be impossible to examine every reference to the
popular idea of the devil pact, the number of stories in which the reformers treated this phenomenon in detail
is modest. We find these stories in Luther's table conversations and in the record of Melanchthon's Sunday
lectures. Each has its own history, many stages of which can be reconstructed. The texts provide evidence
about the origins, development, and association of the devil pact stories, with information about Faustus.6

A. Erfurt

The origin and transformation of the Erfurt devil pact story is well documented. We know how Luther reacted
to the story when he first heard it, what his information was based on, and how, many years later, Philipp
Melanchthon reported the story in an entirely changed form. On July 27, 1537, Luther responded to the news
from Friedrich Myconius in Erfurt about a devil pact, and he thought that this news warranted the publication
of a book. He asked Myconius to investigate the matter; he felt that it could serve the glory of Christ and that
it promised comfort to many. It also implied, in his view, most terrifying portents for the pope. A letter of the
same day by Justus Jonas shows that Luther and Jonas had discussed the devil pact story with intense interest.
Jonas wrote that "by this horrifying example God appeared clearly to reject the profanity of the times in which
many people—even if they did not make explicit pacts with the devil—impiously dedicated themselves to the
riches and pleasures of this world while neglecting God, Christ, and religion." Both Luther and Jonas attached
considerable significance to the Erfurt report as an exemplum; the story addressed itself to some serious
immediate concerns.

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Antonius Lauterbach's report of a table conversation shows the sequence of events that interested Luther and
Jonas so much: "On July 28, news came from Erfurt about a certain impious magician, who was executed
there in that week by burning.… Describing how he had made a pact with Satan and deserted Christ, he
confessed his crime. Because the devil had made his pact invalid and because the magician realized the
deceptions, he requested the help of pastors. By the example of his genuine repentance he encouraged many to
give up complacency and to fear God. He accepted his punishment joyfully. In this way the devil was
defeated, being beaten at his own game, and he revealed what his advice was really worth."7 Luther's version
of the story makes no mention of the fact that the confession of the Erfurt sinner was obtained with the aid of
torture. This fact emerges from the letter of Aegidius Mechler, who "converted" the sinner and reported about
that to Luther.

Even at the earliest stage of the devil pact story, it is appropriate to refer to the medieval legends of the holy
sinner. The Theophilus legend is generally considered the model for the Faust story. 'But in this particular
instance a story told about Bishop St. Basil offers a much more striking parallel. Whereas Theophilus, who
makes a pact with the devil, is eventually returned to the fold through the intercession of Mary, St. Basil
himself, not unlike the pastor Aegidius Mechler, is called upon to save the soul of a sinner, who has been
trapped by the devil and cannot escape without help. St. Basil visits the sinner over a period of time. At first
the sinner feels that his pact has made his case hopeless. He suffers from nightmares; devils threaten him. But
with persistent encouragement, the sinner gradually regains hope, and finally a fervent public prayer led by St.
Basil miraculously forces the devil to give up the pact. The fateful signed document is given up by the devil
and flies through the air into the hands of the bishop.

When we turn to Melanchthon's version of the Erfurt devil pact, we find that after more than fifteen years,
further mutations have taken place. In his brief presentation Melanchthon has given the exemplum a new
focus. He speaks about the initial reluctance of the captured sinner to repent, and he stresses the sinner's belief
that redemption is no longer possible for him. The pastors had to make a special effort to make him
understand that there was hope. For Luther this was not the problem; in his presentation the sinner realizes on
his own the deception of the devil. For Melanchthon a problem Luther ignored becomes the essential one: the
conversion finally becomes a reality when "pastors said that although he had committed a great evil, it was
nevertheless God's will to have him return to his senses, and although he had made the pact with the devil, the
pact was invalid for no one can give to another that which is not his own." Melanchthon agrees with Luther's
assertion that the pact is invalid but ignores information about the devil's deceptions and stresses, instead, the
inability of the devil to get possession of man's immortal soul. Melanchthon shifts the focus, which is now on
the pastor's role in overcoming despair and on God's infinite mercy rather than simply on the deviousness of
the devil.8

The new interpretation brings about a revision of the details. Melanchthon's exemplum is further removed
from specific, time-bound concerns; his concluding statement makes a stronger claim for general acceptance
and relevance. His revision of the exemplum has a close parallel in the devil pact story in the legendary
biography of St. Basil. We noted that the exchange between the sinner and the representative of the court had
an antecedent in Basil's life. Luther ignores this aspect of the incident. Melanchthon, who was probably
unaware of Mechler's letter, now shifts the focus of the story to a conversion attempt resembling one
described in great detail in the life of the saint. Basil succeeds in persuading a despairing young man to realize
that he can still reject his pact with the devil and that salvation is still possible. Through prayers Basil is able
to force the devil to return the pact, and the sinner is spared of punishment.9 In contrast to Luther,
Melanchthon does not mention that the Erfurt sinner was punished at all; this significant omission brings his
exemplum very close to the devil pact story of the saint's legend. Evidently its influence was at work.

In 1585, Augustin Lercheimer also tells a version of this story, but since he does not supply the location and
since he changes the story radically, it is at first not clear how much has survived from the original event in
Erfurt. The devil pact of the magician is no longer the focus of the story. The magician is merely mentioned as

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the person who falsely accuses a poor man of theft. Lercheimer implies that torture produces false information
and can have tragic consequences.10 The story now has an entirely different function. Although the thrust of
the exemplum has shifted, Lercheimer, like his predecessors, shows a great deal of sympathy for the plight of
those accused and stresses the importance of mercy and forgiveness.

B. Valerius Glockner

The gradual fusion of contemporary incidents with narrative passages from saints' legends is illustrated by
another devil pact story originating just a matter of months after the Erfurt incident. This incident revolves
about Valerius Glockner, a student of the University of Wittenberg, the son of the mayor of the city of
Naumburg and a pupil of Luther's friend Georg Major, in whose house the student lived. From the table talk
we learn that Luther absolved Valerius from his pact on February 13, 1538. According to this report, the
student had been "most disobedient, displaying no uprightness at all. When he was interrogated in this
desperate condition by his teacher, who wanted to know why he lived without fear of God and man, he
confessed that five years earlier he had committed himself to the devil with these words: "God, I am giving up
my faith in you, and I will have another master." Luther interrogated him concerning these words and scolded
him harshly, asking whether he had said anything else, whether he was sorry, and whether he wished to be
converted." Then Luther prayed for Valerius, stressing that God favored the spirit of gentleness in teaching
those who have transgressed and that Christ's primary concern was for sinners. After Valerius publicly
declared in church that he regretted having given himself to the devil and resolved from then on to be the
devil's enemy, Luther admonished Valerius to lead an obedient and pious life. If the devil should tempt him
again, he should quickly flee to his teacher or chaplain.

There can be little doubt that Antonius Lauterbach, who was present at the ceremony that absolved Valerius,
reported honestly what he saw. The report does not reveal, however, how the extraordinary confession came
about. What prompted Valerius to admit to a pact with the devil, an admission that had earned an Erfurt sinner
capital punishment? We cannot exclude the possibility that Valerius confessed because he was afraid of being
tortured or severely punished, and perhaps, as was common practice, he was promised merciful treatment if he
confessed. At any rate, the repetition of the verb examinare suggests that Valerius found himself in a situation
similar to that of a trial for diabolic magic (" … a praeceptore examinatus … Lutherus eum examinavit eumque
graviter urgebat…"). He was in great danger, from which he thought perhaps to extricate himself with a
confession. Whether he really believed that he had made a pact is not important. What is important is that
Luther was convinced of it, and his pronouncements on this subject certainly left no doubt in Antonius
Lauterbach, a witness and the author of the report.11

More than fifteen years later, Philipp Melanchthon gave an entirely different version of the same events. In
the new account the name Valerius Glockner is no longer remembered; the youth is not the son of a mayor,
but rather a young nobleman, whose father does not supply him with the money he needs to lead the proper
student's life. While despairing in his need for money, the young man meets the devil, who is in the disguise
of a ragged old man in a forest near the city. In return for a regular income, the young man is asked to sign a
pact in blood. Each day for almost half a year under his bed he can find the sum agreed, which enables him to
lead a life of pleasure. Then the situation begins to appear suspicious. Georg Mayor's bidding to his pupils to
prepare for Holy Communion causes great consternation in the young man, and his anxiety exposes him. We
learn then of Luther's intervention, which was similar in Lauterbach's report. At the conclusion, however, we
again have a radical departure from the original account: after Luther's fervent prayer for mercy, the same old
man (in reality the devil) appears and returns the pact (chirographon), directing a resentful "O Du! 0 Du!" at
Luther as he disappears.12

Melanchthon's contributions to the transformation of this story are not entirely arbitrary. The original story
does not explain why the young man has made a pact. From Melanchthon we learn that he needs money. This
is, of course, a common explanation for the pact throughout the Middle Ages, and we see evidence of it in the

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Erfurt story. It is conceivable that the similarity between the Erfurt and Valerius Glockner stories caused
Melanchthon to assume that the same motivation was valid where the necessary information was not
provided. Moreover, many details have close parallels in the devil pact stories of the saints' legends: meeting
the devil outside the city, the exchanges with him, the signing of the pact in blood, and, finally, the marvelous
return of the pact represent a pattern of correspondences.13 Can so many correspondences occur by chance?
Melanchthon's concluding passage clearly eliminates this possibility. Both the sinner whom Basil converts
and Theophilus feel at first that they are bound to the devil as long as the devil has the pact. Most readers in
the sixteenth century would have wondered whether Valerius Glockner could be assured of salvation without
the return of the pact. Melanchthon's miraculous ending with its idea firmly based in medieval tradition
provides that security. In Melanchthon's story we observe a logical and natural fusion of a historical incident
with essential aspects of older well-known narratives generally thought to provide plausible explanations of
situations involving the devil.

Melanchthon's story stresses the miraculous power of Luther's prayer. Martin Luther was no longer alive, and
Melanchthon transfigured him as one who absolved Valerius Glockner into a saintly figure capable of
miracles like those of St. Basil. This is not the story of a sinner brought back to the fold; there is now a
mythical struggle in which the forces of evil are overcome by superhuman means. Melanchthon's faith in
Luther's mission in renewing Christianity has given the original story a new dimension. At any rate, we realize
that such narratives have to be seen in the situations in which they originated: first, Luther's reacting to what
he perceives as the need to save a youth from the snares of the devil; second, Melanchthon relating this
incident later in such a way that the reasons for the devil pact are understood and Luther appears as a divinely
inspired leader.

The life of St. Basil with its story of the devil pact was well known and valued in Wittenberg. A convincing
documentation of its influence is that Georg Major himself published it in Wittenberg in 1544, and Luther
wrote an introduction to this edition. The story of the Wittenberg student also circulated widely. We find, for
example, two different versions in Hungary. A French author was responsible for an entirely different
rendition.14

In 1585, just two years before the publication of the Historia, Augustin Lercheimer told the same story in a
way that shows its direct relevance to the Faustian devil pact. Information about the devil pact and about
Faustus appear here together for the first time in a single exemplum. One part primarily treats Faustus.
Lercheimer essentially retells what Johannes Manlius reports that Melanchthon said about Faustus escaping.15
But unlike Manlius, he has information about the twenty-four-year pact and Luther's and Melanchthon's
efforts to convert Faustus. Then he proceeds immediately to the story of the Wittenberg student. This part of
the exemplum, in which the student meets the devil during his walk outside the gates of Wittenberg, supplies
information that we know comes from the devil pact stories of the saints' legends: the idea that the pact must
be signed in blood ("nicht mit dinte, sondern mit seim eigen blute"), just as the devil of the Historia demands.
The way Lercheimer tells it, the lives of Faustus and the Wittenberg student have the same significance. For
him such stories helped to support his argument that one should not be too quick to burn people at the stake.
The words "zu bekeren und zu beßern" appear in two places in the exemplum. They stress the importance of
making an effort to rehabilitate people such as Faustus and the Wittenberg student.

C. Regensburg

It is not certain how Luther contributed to the story of the Regensburg magician, but a relatively late source
attributes the story to him.16 This story has come to light in a manuscript containing primarily excerpts and
exempla characteristic of Melanchthon's Sunday lectures. The manuscript in question refers to the lectures
Melanchthon delivered in November 1555.

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 Concerning a magician and his penance. A few years ago in Regensburg there was a certain
nobleman who led an extremely wicked life. He practiced magic. But when certain cities of
Southern Germany, including Regensburg, were recipients of the purer reformed doctrine,
this nobleman, despite his wicked way of life, went to church frequently to hear sermons. But
after listening once to a sermon very attentively, he felt moved by a force from above, and he
was suddenly gripped with terror. Having left the church, he began to think about his former,
foolish way of life and to deplore and curse it. He changed his life and behavior so that his
piety was apparent to all, and by his example many were moved to embrace the cause of this
doctrine. But in old age, when he was close to death, he called certain friends, among whom
there was a doctor, to his bedside, and as his death was imminent, he said to his friends: "I see
that I am being called by God from this life. Although I stand firm in my faith so that I am
assured of salvation through Christ's sacrifice and the devil has no power over me, because I
had made a pact with the devil previously and now my soul was stolen from him, after my
death he will rage against my body and deform it. You need not be disturbed by this." When
the nobleman expired, there was rumbling and such disturbance that the house appeared to
collapse. The doctor, who had been present up until then, was gripped by great terror and fled.
In the meantime, the devil twisted the dead man's face against his back and left him in that
condition. The friends entered again after the house calmed down and saw the corpse
deformed in this way, and they ordered him to be buried in a very honorable manner.17

The Regensburg story deserves attention because it shows a situation very close to that in the conclusion of
the Historia. At the same time, many elements draw it close to earlier devil pact stories. The familiar motifs
suggest that this story has evolved to a considerable extent beyond the historical situation that first inspired it.
For example, there is the crucial role of the Lutheran pastor who converts a great sinner. Melanchthon adds
the idea that the devil did not have a right to the sinner's soul. The violent death of the sinner, despite a
confession and repentance, is present in the original Erfurt story, which narrated the execution of the sinner.18

The myth of violence that the witch craze created plays an even more prominent role in the narration of
Faustus's death. Lercheimer states that Faustus was taken in a violent way. But he does not give details; he
tells the story of the Regensburg magician and thus shows what could be expected in Faustus's case.
Lercheimer does not mention that the conversion resulted from the sermon of a Lutheran pastor; instead, he
focuses on the discussion with friends before his death.

Vor jaren ist zu R. auff dem Reichstage ein zauberer oder schwartzkünstler gewesen, der sich
vor seinem letzten, da er wußte daß jn der teuffel, jrem vertrage nach, holen würde, wider zu
Gott bekert, vnd deßen eine gute christliche Bekantnuß und anzeigung gethan hat: aber nicht
desto weniger in bestimmter nacht vom Geiste erwurget worden, daß er morgens fir seim
Bette gelegen auff dem Rucken umb jm das Angesicht abwertz auff dem boden gestanden.
Aber doch haben die hochgelerte berahmte Theologi vnd Doctoren der heiligen Schrifft,
damals daselbs zu eim gesprech versammlet, von denen er zuvor rhat, underricht, und trost
begert vnd eingenommen, vnd denen er seine bekantnuß gethan, an seiner seelen Heil nicht
verzweiffelt. Denn wie Gott wil daß die Ubeltheter von der Oberkeit gestraffet und schendlich
hinngerichtet werden, andern zum exempel, derhalben aber die seel nicht verwirfft noch
verdammt: gleichs fats wil er villeicht auch, ob sich diese schon bekeren, und er die seel zu
gnaden auffnimmt, dal sie nicht desto weniger vom teuffel am Leibe geschendet werden,
andern zum Spiegel und zu[m] Abschrecken. Also wann ers dahinn bracht hat, daß die armen
hexen brennen, dann lachet jm, dem schadenfro, das hertze: ob jm wol die seel nicht werden
mag.19

The Wittenberg version of the Regensburg story focuses on the idea of conversion, the return to the fold
through a Protestant sermon. There is no mention of a pact in that earlier story, but a long period of dealing

100
with the devil is evident. Lercheimer refers specifically to the existence of a pact and focuses on its tragic
consequences. The body must go to the devil. Lercheimer grants that the authorities have to execute those
who were guilty of such an evil deed. But he sees the need to prevent the process from going to that dangerous
point. If execution takes place, the devil has won. Lercheimer sees a special significance for the fate of
witches; he implies that burning the witches is, in effect, a potential victory for the devil. It is such burnings
that his book desires to prevent.

D. Francisco de Spiera

The story of Francisco de Spiera (or Spera, t 1548) is not about a devil pact, but it describes a situation closely
related to the crisis of the Regensburg sin-ner. The influential Philipp Melanchthon was the author of a
version published in Wittenberg in 1549. Spiera, a doctor of law, had been forced to recant his Protestant
beliefs. This action against his own conscience drove him into a deep depression. Basing his report on an
account by Pier Paulo Vergerio, who tried to console Spiera, Melanchthon describes in great detail Spiera's
condition of despair. He describes a man who has lost all faith and identifies himself with Judas and Cain: his
sin is thought to be too great to be forgiven.

Hatt gar zu Gott kein hoffnung, Wunschet an des Juda Cain [oder] eines anderen verdampten
menschen stad zu sein, alda Gottes zom, straff vnd emstlich gericht zu erwarten. Bekennet,
das Gottes gnad viel grosser sey den alle sunde, komme jhm aber nicht zu gut, dieweil er
ewig von Gott verworffen vnd aus der zal der auserweleten aus geschlossen, Christus hab
nicht für jhn, sondern allein für die ausserweleten gelitten vnd gebeten, Drumb werde ehr den
andern zum exempel ietzund schrecklich gestraffet vnd verworfen.20

Melanchthon argues against the misconceptions that underly Spiera's thinking. He sees salvation easily within
the reach of such a sinner, if only he would understand God's message of mercy in the Bible. From the
account in Melanchthon's hands it appears that Spiera, despite all the pleading and arguments of his friends,
persists in his despair and is intent on committing suicide. In his concluding remarks Melanchthon does not
dwell at all on the question of how Spiera died.21 Melanchthon's primary concern is about the ways in which
one can avoid the path of Cain, Saul, Judas, and other lost sinners. At any rate, this particular story goes an
important step beyond the Regensburg story and approaches that state of mind that considered the despair,
death, and merciless condemnation of Faustus appear as a just and appropriate end. Johannes Spies printed a
Latin version of the fate of Spiera a year before the Historia.22

The devil pact story with a positive, merciful ending, represents a strong tradition, which makes itself felt in
the Historia by contributions to the plot and motifs. The saints' legends are constantly in the background of
these contemporary stories, so the narrators are not entirely aware of the difference between legend, tradition,
and historical event.

The basic premise of a merciful ending is given in the Historia. Of course, by discarding the Bible and then
signing a devil pact, Faustus has destroyed the obvious basis for recovery and has essentially narrowed his
options to one: saving his soul. He could still save his soul, just as the sinners of these stories had done. The
anonymous author spells this option out in unmistakable terms.

Er [Faustus] wolte aber keinen Glauben noch Hoffnung schöpfen, daß er durch Buß möchte
zur Gnade Gottes gebracht werden. Denn wenn er gedacht hette: Nun streicht mir der Teuffel
jetzt eine solche Farbe an, daß ich darauff muß in Himmel sehen, Nun so wil ich umbkehren,
vnd Gott vmb Gnade vnd Verzeihung anruffen, Denn nimmer thun, ist ein grosse Buß, hette
sich darauff in der Christlichen Gemein in die Kirchen verfugt, vnnd der heyligen Lehre
gefolget, dardurch also dem Teuffel einen widerstand gethan, ob er jm schon den Leib hie
hette lassen massen, so were dennoch die Seele noch erhalten worden, Aber er wardt in alien

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 seinen opinionibus vnnd Mey-nungen zweiffelhafftig, vnglaubig vnd keiner Hoffnung.23

In the end, Faustus appears to be desperate enough to accept these terms and act accordingly.

Dann ich sterbe als ein böser vnnd guter Christ, ein guter Christ, darumb daß ich eine
hertzliche Reuwe habe, vnd im Hertzen jmmer vmb Gnade bitte, damit meine Seele errettet
möchte werden, Ein böser Christ, daß ich weiß, daß der Teuffel den Leib wil haben, vnnd ich
wil jhme den gerne lassen, er laß mir aber nur die Seele zu frieden.24

The conditions for salvation appear to be present. Why must Faustus be damned? The printer appears to
caution that this line of questioning is not justified. What Faustus said was not sincere; it was the repentance
of Judas (the gloss is: "Judas Rew"). The author himself makes his view clear in the subsequent exchange.
The students plead with Faustus and urge him to let learned theologians save him from the devil. He should
appeal to Christ and say that he is willing to give up his body as long as the soul is not lost. Faustus's response
seals his fate: he feels like Cain, whose sins are too great to be forgiven. Despite what theologians might
think, the author believes that it is possible to go too far.25 Faustus is the victim of ultimate despair; he has no
hope of salvation. His belief is prepared and reinforced at various points: in the resolution not to allow a return
to the Christian fold to take place (chapters 4 and 52), in the belief that it is too late to turn back (chapters 17
and 65), and by thinking that his sin was too great to be forgiven (chapters 16 and 68). These persistent
expressions of despair are found thus at the beginning and the end, obviously representing the forces that
prevail in the end. The author rejects the traditional solution for Faustus.

Marguerite De Huszar Allen analyzes the life of Faustus as the antithesis of the typical saint's legend. Her
study shows that the Historia, while adhering to the essential patterns of the saints' lives, may be seen as a
reversal in which the exemplary biography is transformed into a cautionary tale: For polemical purposes, an
unholy one has usurped the role of the saint.26 Thus, Allen argues persuasively for the concept of "inverted
hagiography" as an explanation of the obvious links and parallels between the Historia and the Legenda
aurea. When the author of the Historia takes over some of the features from the biography of Valerius
Glockner (that is, the life of St. Basil), he is unconsciously bringing about the "reversal" that Allen describes.

The name Mephostophiles has inspired many interpretations, but perhaps the most convincing is that proposed
by Füssel and Kreutzer, that the name is derived from Greek and that its three components indicate 1)
negation; 2) light, and 3) loving.27 In this sense the devil represents the reversal of the divine light. This
manner of creating a fictional name would not have been foreign to Spies, who engaged in a similar word play
when he presented his edition of the Disticha Catonis to the public. In the preface he addresses the reader as
Philophiles, one who loves love (that is, friendship).28 Spies printed this book for the book fair of fall 1587, at
the time when the Historia appeared.

The "reversal" is illustrated in the transformation of verses by Luther. In their reversed form they become
appropriate as a little sermon of the devil.

Luther

Schweig, leyd, meyd vnd vetrag,

dein not niemand klag,
An Gott nicht verzag
dein hülff kombt alle tag.29

Historia

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 Darumb schweig, leyd, meyd vnd vertrag,
Dein Vnglück keinem Menschen klag.
Es ist zu spat, an Gott verzag.
Dein Unglück läufft herein alle tag.

By having the devil preach in opposition to Luther, the author remains faithful to basic premises of the
reformer. But he is now focusing on the most negative outcome conceivable. The anonymous author inserts
the key concept of despair "zu spat" and reverses "nicht verzag" into "verzag." His decision to challenge
traditional wisdom and insisting on a harsh, merciless resolution he could point to stories and a tradition that
lent him support [sic]. The forces that prepared the "reversal" are also detectable in the exempla tradition. But
in this respect the social phenomenon of witchcraft plays a more visible role. In fact, all devil pact stories of
this period relate to it. The biography of Faustus represents a warning of unprecedented urgency to desist from
diabolical magic and as such it became embroiled early in the debates about witchcraft.

Notes

1There is, to be sure, a vague reference to Faustus's pact in one of Rosshirt's anecdotes (ca. 1575-1586): "Alls
nun doctor Georgius Faustus im Lande hin und wider mancherley abentewer vnd Schalckheit geubt vnd
getriben hette, dardurch er doch wenich Ehr noch danck erworben, kam die bestimpte Zeyt darinnen er sich
gegen dem Teuffel seinem Lehrmeister, verschrieben hatte." Fulssel and Kreutzer 273.

2 Lercheimer fol. 44v-45r.

3 Lercheimer fol. 55r.

4 Lercheimer fol. 36v-37r. Cf. Baron, "The Faust Book's Indebtedness" 531-532.

5 Lercheimer fol. 45r.

6In an attempt to establish a representative survey of the Wittenberg devil pact stories Brückner's
comprehensive reference work has been useful: Wolfgang Brückner, Volkserzählung und Reformation. Ein
Handbuch zur Tradierung und Funktion von Erzizhlstoffen und Erzählliteratur (Berlin: Schmidt, 1974). I
have discussed some devil pact stories in Doctor Faustus from History to Legend (Munich: Fink, 1978) 80-81
and Faustus. Geschichte, Sage, Dichtung (Munich: Winkler, 1982) 65-74. About Luther's influence on the
Faustus legend see Erich Schmidt, "Faust und Luther," Abhandlung der Akademie der Wissenschaften in
Berlin 25 (1896): 567-591. Secondary literature about the devil pact generally ignores the sixteenth-century
background of this topic. Cf. Wolfgang S. Seifferth, "The Concept of the Devil and the Myth of the Pact in
Literature Prior to Goethe," Monatshefte 45 (1953): 271-289 and Hans Joachim Gernentz, Der Pakt mit dem
Teufel (Hanau: Müller and Kiepenheuer, 1988).

7 Luther wrote to Friedrich Myconius in Gotha on July 27, 1537: "De historia Erffordensi velim vos,
exploratis omnibus, edere libellum, quia ad gloriam Christi & multorum solatium ea res pertinet, ut taceam,
quam territura sit Papae portenta. 1537 feria 6. post Iacobi. M. L." On the same day, Justus Jonas also wrote
also to Myconius: "Historiam de cive Erphordiensi, quam perscripsisti, mi Friderice, d. doctor Martinus et nos
omnes non sine magna admiratione legimus et audivimus. Deus hoc exemplo horrendo videtur palam
obiurgare horum temporum et huius saeculi profanitatem, ubi multi non quidem tam crasse paciscuntur cum
Satana, sed tamen satis impie opibus et voluptatibus mundi posthabent Deum, Christum, totam religionem.
Scribam Egidio Mechlero, ut explicatius totam rem nobis mittat, et curabimus typis excudi." D. Martin
Luthers Werke. Briefwechsel (Weimar: Böhlau, 1938) 8: 104-105. The pastor, Aegidius Mechler, who wrote a
detailed account in response to Luther's request, quotes the precise wording of the pact that the "miserable"
man had made four and a half years earlier. In this pact (which, incidentally, is in German, in contrast to the

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Latin of the letter) the devil, in return for the rejection of baptism and faith, promises to provide money and
wealth. After the sinner's capture, a crystallike stone is found in his home next to the pact. During his
imprisonment the sinner is vexed constantly by the devil, and he asks for the aid of a pastor. Mechler
describes how in five separate visits he was able to make the sinner realize genuine remorse and remain
constant in his renewed faith until the time of his punishment. Mechler's letter brings to light the incidents that
inspired Luther's devil pact story. But Mechler's report is not entirely firsthand. He relies on others for
information about the events before his meeting with the imprisoned sinner. The pastor accepts the reality of
the pact without question and reports how it came about and how a copy of it was found, together with the
crystallike stone, in the sinner's house. The confession is clearly extracted with the help of torture ("Haec
fassus est in tortura."). Otto Clemen, "Eine Erfurter Teufelsgeschichte von 1537," Archiv für Kulturgeschichte
10 (1912): 455-458. Having received the report from Myconius, Luther told the story of the Erfurt devil pact
at his table. See text in: D. Martin Luthers Werke. Tischreden (referred to hereafter as Tischreden) (Weimar:
Böhlau, 1912-1921) no. 3618A.

8The original text in: "Historiae quaedam recitatae inter publicas lectiones," K. G. Bretschneider, Corpus
Refornnatorum (Braunschweig: Schwetschke and Sohne, 1854) 20: cols. 540-541. Cf. note 10 below.

9 The legend narrates the dramatic resolution of the crisis very much the way Melanchthon does: "Et orante
Basilio et tenente in coelum manus, ecce charta p[er] aerem delata et ab omnibus visa venit et imposita est in
manibus Basilii, quam ille suscipiens dixit puero: agnoscis has litteras frater? Et ille: etiam manu mea scriptae
sunt. Et frangens Basilius scriptum perduxit eum ad ecclesiam et dignum eum fecit ministerio et bene
instruens et regulas sibi dans reddidit mulieri." In: "De sancto Basilio," Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea,
ed. by Th. Graesse (Dresden, 1846) 125. Jacobus de Voragine uses the name Heradius, a corrupted form of
Helladius, who is referred to in earlier texts as a witness; the father is generally known as Proterius. Cf.
Ludwig Rademacher, "Die griechischen Quellen zur Faustsage," in: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der
Wissenschaften in Wien, philos.-hist. Kl. 206 (1927): 53. Rademacher shows that the legendary biography of
St. Basil was an extremely popular work in the Middle Ages (p. 120). Cf. Erhard Dorn, Der sundige Heilige in
der Legende des Mittelalters (Munich: Fink, 1967). Ernest Cushing Richardson, "The Influence of the Golden
Legend on Pre-Reformation Culture History," Papers of the American Society of Church History 1 (1889):
239-248.

10 A manuscript of the Munich State Library shows Melanchthon's Erfurt story with essentially the same
concluding admonition as that of Lercheimer. The admonition deals with the problem of motivation for the
devil pact: money and the prospect of recovering lost articles with the devil's help. The manuscript belonged
to Johannes Spon of Nurnberg, a student who began his studies in Wittenberg in 1553. "Ich will euch wol ein
gewissere Kunst lernen. Wenn du etwas verloren hast, so lege saltz drauff, so findestu es wider. Id est: Supra
rem amissam pone salem." Clm 941, fol. 558v. Lercheimer writes: "Derhalben gehe man solches teuffels
fragens mussig. Hastu etwas verloren, das suche vnd bekomme es wider auff rechte, zimliche, vngefehrliche
weise: als, lege ein wenig saltz daraff, so hastu es alsbald …" Lercheimer 9r-9v. The close correspondence in
the moral lesson leaves little doubt that Lercheimer, a former student in Wittenberg, also took his material
directly from Melanchthon.

11 Luther, Tischreden no. 3739. Cf. Milchsack, Gesammelte Aufsatze cols. 227-228.

12 Most of the anecdotes in the Leipzig manuscript described by Ernst Kroker date from 1554 and 1555. There
is no piece dated later than 1557. The title of the section in which these stories are found is "Historiae
collectae Wittebergae ex lectionibus D. Praeceptoris Philippi Melanthonis" in a manuscript preserved at the
University of Leipzig (Rep. IV. 115aa 2). Quoted here from Ernst Kroker, "Anekdoten Melanchthons und
Leipzig," Schriften des Vereins für Geschichte Leipzigs 10 (1911): 124-125. Also published by Milchsack
Gesammelte Aufsaitze cols. 228-229. Cf. Andreas Hondorff, Promptuarium Exemplorum fol. 70r.

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13The Theophilus legend provides a striking parallel. In response to prayer, Mary returns the pact, placing it
on the dying Theophilus's breast. Legenda aurea 593-594. As Hrotsvitha tells the story, Theophilus meets the
devil in a forest. Hrotsvithae opera, ed. by H. Homeyer (Munich: Schoningh, 1970) 154-170 (lines 83-106).

14Georg Major, Vitae Patrum in usum ministrorum verbi (Wittenberg: Seitz, 1544) fol. 211r-216v. Péter
Bornemisza, Ordögi kisértetek, ed. Alexander Eckhardt (Budapest, 1955) 138. Cf Frank Baron, "A
Faustmonda es valtozatai (Bornemisza Peter es Szenci Molnar Albert)," Irodalomtortenti Kozlemenyek 90
(1986): 22-31. In 1567 the Frenchman Gilbert Cousin published still another variation of the Valerius
Glockner story in: Gilbert Cousin (Cognatus), Narrationum sylva (Basel, 1567) 543-547. Written down more
than a century later, a similar devil pact story concerns the life of the Hungarian author Szenci Molnar Albert.
The basic outline of the story is very close again to that of Melanchthon. Judit Vásárhelyi, "Molnár Albert és a
Sátán Szövetsége," Irodalomtörténeti Közleménnyek 81 (1977): 395-403. Cf. György E. Szönyi, "Molnár
Albert és a 'Tikos tudományok,'" Addattár XVII századi szellemi mozgalznaink történetéhez 4 (1978): 47-57.
The narrators tended to revise their sources according to their particular interests. For Bomemisza the vice of
drunkenness is of great concern. The author of the story about Szenci Molnár, as Melanchthon, focused on the
popular motif of greed. For Bornemisza and Cognatus there was the new problem of pomography.

15"Hic Faustus in hoc oppido Wittemberga evasit, cum optimus princeps dux loannes dedisset mandata de illo
capiendo …" Johannes Manlius, Locorum communium collectanea (Basel: Oporinus, 1565) 39.

16"Et nota est historia recitata a D. Luthero de nobili quodam pontificio & mago …" Nicolaus Selneccer,
Operum Latinorum pars quarta (Leipzig: J. Steinemann, 1584) 206. A version of the story is also found in
Wolfgang Bütner's revised ex empla collection Epitome historiarum of 1596, published in Leipzig by Frantz
Schnellboltz, fol. 20r.

17 Gustav Milchsack, Gesammelte Aufsatze cols. 269-270. This story is found in the Wolfenbüttel manuscript
1169 Helmst., fol. 114v. The title: "Exempla insignia factorum dictorumque memorabilium, et principum et
privatorum, collecta ex lectionibus D. praeceptoris Philippi Melanthonis et aliorum." The collection was
probably written down about 1555. Cf. Milchsack, cols. 252-256. Luther tells the story of a pope (Sylvester II,
999-1003) who paid for his pact with the devil by the dismemberment of his body, but who in the end was
able to save his soul by penance. Luther, Tischreden no. 6448. Cf. no. 5451.

18The motif of violent death at the hands of the devil is common at this time, especially with the twisted head.
The life of a Cologne physician in the Zimmerische Chronik ends in this manner. Frank Baron, "Which
Faustus Died in Staufen? History and Legend in the Zimmerische Chronik," German Studies Review 4 (1983):
185-194. In 1562, Manlius shows this grotesque death of Faustus; Johannes Gast does the same as early as
1548; in the preface (Vorred an den Christlichen Leser) the Historia of 1587 follows their lead.

Luther's table conversation about Johannes Eck and Joachim I of Brandenburg, his famous religious and
political opponents, illustrates this important factor in the development of devil pact stories. According to
Luther, both Eck and the elector had made pacts with the devil in order to lengthen their lives. Luther,
Tischreden nos. 5451 and 6809. Cf. Martin Rade, Zum Teufelsglauben Luthers, in: Marburger theologische
Studien 21 (1931). Rade gives other examples of Luther's use of Teufelspolemik. This kind of attack made use
of a considerable freedom in associating and shifting information from one subject to another. Motifs, images,
or an entire devil pact story could be borrowed from other sources and brought to bear on a particular subject,
motivated strongly by religious and polemical zeal.

19 Lercheimer fol. 5r-5v.

20 K.G. Bretschneider, Corpus reformatorum 20: col. 617. Cf. Milchsack, Gesammelte Aufsätze cols. 148-149.

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21Spiera is reported to have died of natural causes. "Francesco Spiera," in: Realencyklopädie für
protestantische Theologie und Kirche (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1906) 18: 648-649.

22 Andreas Hondorff, Theatrum historicum (Frankfurt: Spies, 1586) 100-103. About the mythical dimension
of the identification with Cain and other sinners cf. Friedrich Ohly, Der Verfluchte und der Erwählte. Vom
Leben mit der Schuld (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1976) 98-104. Ohly shows that the closely related
concepts of excessive self-reliance, boldness, and subsequent despair are familiar warning signs in the
religious thought of the Middle Ages. Friedrich Ohly, "Desperatio und Praesumptio. Zur theologischen
Verzweiflung und Vermessenheit," in: Helmut Birkhan (Hrsg.), Festgabe für Otto Höfler (Wien: Baumüller,
1976) 499-556.

23 Füssel and Kreutzer 33.

24 Füssel and Kreutzer 121.

25For a discussion of this problem in relationship to Lutheran thought cf. Hartmut Rudolph, "Das Faustbuch
im kirchengeschichtlichen Zusammenhang," Das Faustbuch von 1587. Entstehung und Wirkung. In: Bad
Kreuznacher Symposien II ed. by Richard Auernheimer and Frank Baron (Munich: Profil, 1991).

26Marguerite De Huszar Allen, The Faust Legend: Popular Formula and Modern Novel, in: Germanic
Studies in America (New York: Lang, 1985) 53: 17. Cf. André Jolles, Einfache Formen (Halle: Niemeyer,
1930).

27 Füssel and Kreutzer 188. Their interpretation is supported by Jeffrey Burton Russel: "The chief elements
are the Greek me, "not"; phos, photos, "light"; and philos, "lover"—yielding "he who is not a lover of light," an
ironic parody of Lucifer, "lightbearer." Mephistopheles. The Devil in the Modern World (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1986) 61. Cf. Müller, Romane 1376. Many attempts to solve the puzzle begin with the false
assumption that the devil's name is Mephistopheles, as it appears in Goethe's work. The original name is
Mephostophiles.

28 Cf. Figure 5 and note 48 in Chapter 2 of Part I above.

29 Johann Matthesius, D. Martin Luthers (Berlin, 1855) 295.

Frank Baron (essay date 1992)

SOURCE: "The Precarious Legacy of Renaissance Humanism in the Faust Legend," in The Harvest of
Humanism in Central Europe: Essays in Honor of Lewis W. Spitz, edited by Manfred P. Fleischer, Concordia
Publishing House, 1992, pp. 303-15.

[In the following essay, Baron discusses the evolution of the Faust legend from its inception through its
transformation into both a tale of warning against Renaissance humanism and its veneration of the heroes of
classical antiquity; and as a Protestant condemnation of the Catholic Church.]

Although Goethe portrayed his Faust as a Renaissance scholar, the original legend on which he based his story
displays surprisingly little interest in the past and even less in the ambitions of the humanistic movement. But
to obtain an accurate picture about the legacy of Renaissance humanism in the legend, we need look at Faust
as a necromancer, a role in which Faust appears most prominently as a humanist. As a necromancer Faust tries
to raise spirits of antiquity from the realm of the dead, and he seems to look to the ancient world as a superior
age. The early authors of the Faust story did not look with approval on such efforts, however. In this way
humanism found itself in a dangerous position, linked to those who were accused of diabolical magic and
persecuted in an age of widespread witch hunts. Whether humanism could survive in this process is debatable.

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Nevertheless, the story of necromancy—popular in the Renaissance and gradually inherited by the magician
Faust—serves as a convenient way to investigate the fate of Renaissance humanism in the history of the Faust
legend.

Responding to a whim of the emperor, Goethe's Faust turns to Mephistopheles with an urgent demand to
perform the feat of necromancy, specifically, to conjure up the spirits of Helen and Paris from the distant past
of antiquity.

Der Kaiser will, es muss gleich geschehen,

Will Helena und Paris vor sich sehn;
Das Musterbild Manner so der Frauen
In deutlichen Gestalten will er schauen.
Geschwind ans Werk! ich darf mein Wort nicht brechen.

The Emperor bids, there must be no delay,

Helen and Paris he must see straightaway;
Ideals female and male, ideally mated,
He would inspect distinctly corporated.
To work! I must not be foreswom or feckless.
(Part 11, lines 6183-6187)1

Goethe was well aware that this incident had its roots in the earliest Faust legend.2 His revival of the old story
of necromancy serves to realize a poetic encounter of two worlds and ages: Faust, representing the Christian
world, and Helen, the spirit symbolic of antiquity. Faust's necromancy reflects Goethe's own infatuation with
the rich cultural achievements of antiquity; it is an expression of his humanism. The arduous path to the
encounter with Helen, the tentative and brief companionship, and its ultimate dissolution show that this
humanism is problematic, but Goethe saw in the attempt to recover antiquity a noble striving and ambition.

Goethe's point of reference was the popular puppet play, which had made a strong impression on him during
his childhood in Frankfurt. Because Goethe did not find the condemnation of Faust in the popular form of the
legend justifiable, he, like his predecessor Lessing, set about to retell the story of the Renaissance magician in
a radically different way. There is almost no evidence that he seriously studied the original Faust stories of the
sixteenth century; only the scene of Leipzig student life ("Auerbachs Keller") reflects the direct impact of
specific Faust anecdotes.3 Goethe believed that awareness of Renaissance magicians gave a reliable basis for
creating a convincing image of his Faust. He was not far off the mark by suspecting that the reputation of the
original Faust suffered gross distortions from attacks of fanatical religious detractors. Goethe saw the need to
rehabilitate the Renaissance magician.

Goethe's Faust sees magic as a way to gain access to knowledge, love, and power. Because he was aware of
the Renaissance magicians Agrippa and Paracelsus, Goethe could reliably base the fictional characterization
of his hero on the evidence of genuine sources from the time in which the original Faust lived. But another
Renaissance magician, Johannes Trithemius, of whom Goethe was probably not aware, is of far greater
importance in preparing the outlines of the experiment in necromancy. Although Trithemius's role as a
catalyst is buried deep in the earliest stages of the legend's evolution, it is impossible to reconstruct the
evolution of the scene of Helen's reappearance from the realm of the dead without treating the life and
reputation of Trithemius, the controversial abbot of Sponheim.

Trithemius, the Benedictine monk, historian, bibliophile, biblical scholar and controversial humanist, was a
frequent guest at a number of secular courts. His consultations with his prominent contacts was, however, not
what one might expect from a pious abbot; they often dealt with magic, a topic Trithemius treated extensively
in books and letters. He confided to men like Philipp, the count of the Palatinate, Joachim I, the margrave of

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Brandenburg, and Emperor Maximilian the secrets of his mystical, philosophical magic. But Trithemius
insisted that his magic was natural magic, not diabolical magic. He condemned necromancy in no uncertain
terms. He asserted that the conjuring of dead spirits entailed a previous arrangement, a pact, with the devil. In
response to questions about the spiritual world posed to him by Maximilian, Trithemius elaborated on the
sinful activities of necromancers. Ironically, he who advised the emperor on necromancy (see his book of
eight responses, which appeared in print in 1515) was remembered later in legendary accounts not as an
opponent of necromancy but as its practitioner.4

There are other ironic twists of the complex and colorful history in the evolution of the anecdotes devoted to
necromancy. Trithemius's consistent position as an enemy of diabolical magic and necromancy is reflected in
his famous letter about the historical Faustus; he condemned the magician Faustus, who boldly claimed to be
the great authority for all necromancers ("fons necromanticorum").5 Trithemius saw in this boasting the
indication that Faustus was a fraud. He thought that it was foolish and even a sign of madness to speak of
oneself as an expert in necromancy.6 Despite his uncompromising condemnation of Faustus, Trithemius
reported an anecdote that reveals that Faustus's magical experiments had a humanistic dimension. Faustus had
reportedly claimed that if the works of Plato and Aristotle were lost, he would be able to restore them to an
even more elegant form than in the original. This boast of an ability to recover treasures of ancient wisdom
and eloquence clearly reflects the influence of Renaissance humanism, and this element is a consistent
component in all stages of the evolution of the legend up to the time of Goethe.

Later generations did not remember Trithemius's arguments and pious distinctions. They remembered
primarily his interest in magic, which, to be sure, was seen as diabolical; Trithemius became a servant of the
devil. Hostile rhetoric of enemies of the Catholic Church set the stage for Trithemius's extraordinary
metamorphosis: the enemy of Faustus became transformed into Faustus himself.

The fate of Trithemius was not an isolated incident. As in the case of most other stories and motifs that found
their way into the Faust Book of 1587, Historia von D. Johann Fausten, the earliest and most influential
developments took place in the Protestant camp, in Wittenberg under Luther's and Melanchthon's influence.
The monk Trithemius became a convenient target of anti-Catholic polemics. Many passages of the Historia of
1587 can be traced directly back to pronouncements or anecdotes of the Wittenberg reformers. For example,
the devil pact, the basis for the plot of the Faust story, had its source in widely circulating Wittenberg devil
pact stories. Characteristically, such anecdotes or motifs were kept alive, transmitted, and adapted not only by
word of mouth; they were often published in exempla collections designed to help Protestant pastors in
preparing sermons. These publications provide an accurate record of the progress of the different components
that ultimately converged in the Faust story as we know it today.

On March 29, 1539, in the course of a table conversation, Luther gave his views about necromancy. He was
asked whether Samuel had really been brought back to life through necromancy. Luther responded: "No, for it
was an apparition. The confirmation is found in the Book of Moses, according to which God forbade the quest
for truth from dead spirits." After explaining that he saw the experiment as the work of the devil, Luther adds,
"A certain magician produced in a show for Maximilian all dead emperors and kings including Alexander the
Great."7 For Luther, the crucial question focused on the witch of Endor, who aided Saul in his efforts to speak
[to] Samuel's spirit, and he shows that such experiments do not succeed in recovering the true form of the
dead spirits; the apparitions were for him delusions inspired by the devil. He confirmed Trithemius's view that
such experiments were diabolical. Luther established the essential features of this legend: of a necromancer at
the court of the emperor and the conjuration of famous spirits from the world of antiquity.

Luther does not indicate who the magician is. If he had known that it might have been a monk, he certainly
would have welcomed the opportunity to give his anecdote an antimonastic dimension. He used the image of
the monk as a devil in other contexts.8

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In the 1550s Philipp Melanchthon related this incident at the court of Maximilian in a different way. Like
Luther, Melanchthon was unaware of the necromancer's identity. He refers to the magician as a
nigromanticus, implying that he agreed with Luther's view that such activities were diabolical. In contrast to
Luther, Melanchthon supplies many details.

Hearing Hector and Achilles praised for their strength, Melanchthon's emperor desires to see Homer's great
heroes. There happens to be an nigromanticus at the court, and this magician of the black arts is willing to
make the images of Hector and Achilles appear, provided he is rewarded and there is silence during his show.
The emperor is seated on a chair in a circle. The nigromanticus conjures from a book; at once Hector's ghost
appears, knocking at the door and making the whole house shake. Then Achilles appears, and the two heroes
confront each other threateningly. Before leaving, both men bow before the emperor. The show is not over;
now David, the psalmist of biblical antiquity, appears, but he does not bow to the emperor. Ironically,
Melanchthon has the nigromanticus state the moral of the story. The magician explains to the emperor that,
since David is an ancestor of Christ, his kingdom surpasses all others.9

By conjuring the ghosts of Hector, Achilles, and, especially, David, Melanchthon shifts the focus from the
question of imperial ambitions, which the fame of Alexander represents, to literary and religious issues. But
Melanchthon was not entirely original in his deviation from Luther's version. Conjuring up the ghosts of
Hector [and others] was by this time a standard motif of stories about necromancy. In the first decade of the
sixteenth century, Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola referred briefly to a magician's representation of the
duel between Hector and Achilles.10 Trithemius treated necromancy sarcastically, remarking that there were
those who promised to conjure up Hector and Alexander the Great."11 Thus, we may assume that
Melanchthon did not simply invent this story; most of what he said drew upon a well-established tradition.
Certain components of Melanchthon's narrative belong to the ritual of a necromancer's show: exacting a
promise of silence during the performance, drawing a magic circle, and reading incantations from a book. It is
possible that some magicians of this time actually staged shows with convincing images, using light effects,
mirrors, smoke, and optical illusion. We are reminded of Benvenuto Cellini's vivid account of necromancy
(his efforts to see his lost beloved again).12 But there are unique elements that Melanchthon himself probably
contributed. In attributing greed as a motivation to the nigromanticus, Melanchthon exhibits a tendency
characteristic of his other anecdotes.13 Most striking is Melanchthon's elaboration on Luther's story by
speaking of the appearance of David. The conjuror himself slips into the role of a moralist, and thus the story
becomes a little sermon to demonstrate the superiority of the biblical kings over the pagan heroes.
Renaissance humanism—a weak influence in any case—recedes into the background.

In the 1550s the anonymous necromancer acquired an identity. In 1557 Caspar Goltwurm, a Protestant pastor
and a former student in Wittenberg, published the first known printed version of the anecdote, and he
identified the necromancer as the abbot of Sponheim. The new, elaborate version of a popular story reveals
Luther's as well as Melanchthon's influence, combining elements found in the two independent sources.
Although the reference to magician Trithemius is new, even this contribution may have profited from
Melanchthon's influence. Melanchthon had been responsible for speaking out against Trithemius as a
diabolical magician in a different context. He told his students a story that he claimed to have heard
personally: "Pirckheimer told me once that his father had been part of a delegation with the abbot of
Sponheim, and when they came into a sordid-looking inn near the Franconian forest, a friend and companion
said to the abbot in a joking way, 'My dear abbot, could you fetch for us a sumptuous dish of well-cooked
fish?' The abbot knocked at the window and said: Bring a dish of good fish quickly. A little later someone
came and presented a magnificent dish of pike. The abbot sat down and ate, but the others abstained."14
Johannes Manlius published this story about Trithemius and placed it immediately before the biography of the
diabolical Faustus.15 In the Historia of 1587 Faustus performs the same kind of trick (Cf. chapters 9, 44, and
47).16 Thus, the anecdote of the magical dish was finally inherited by Faustus. The case of necromancy
represents at first a development in the direction of Trithemius. Like Faustus, Trithemius also drew devil
stories into his orbit. Ultimately, Faustus proved to be the more powerful magnet.

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When Johannes Aurifaber published Luther's table talks in 1566, he profited from Goltwurm's contribution.
He followed Goltwurm's lead in identifying the formerly anonymous magician as the abbot of Sponheim.
Aurifaber elaborates on Luther's original statements in another way: While Luther only named Alexander the
Great as one of the conjured ghosts, Aurifaber names also Julius Caesar and, surprisingly, Maximilian's first
wife and queen, Anne of Bretagne, whom Maximilian had married in absentia. Before the marriage could be
consummated, much to the emperor's embarrassment, the French king captured her in 1491 and proceeded to
marry her himself.17 Aurifaber's revisions of the original text were motivated evidently by the new political
situation; after Luther's death, the emperor's actions against the Protestants caused disillusionment and evoked
a more critical stance against him.18

The proliferation of stories about necromancy at the imperial court is difficult to trace after its publication in
many popular books. The variations are too numerous, and the motivations behind the innovations (if they are
indeed innovations) are not always evident.… The story is in a constant state of flux in the sixteenth century.19
It is not a simple matter to identify the causes and patterns of change, but the changes are clearly not arbitrary;
they are dictated by the needs of a particular time and place in which the story is narrated. The story serves a
function, and before the changes can begin to make sense, that function needs to be understood.

The story of necromancy, like the many other stories dealing with diabolical magic and the lives of the
so-called diabolical magicians, such as Trithemius, Faustus, and Agrippa were popular themes of the
Protestant exempla collections.20 The most famous and popular publication of this sort was Aurifaber's edition
of Luther's table talks. This book was widely used and quoted. There were many other such books; they were
popular reference books in the libraries of pastors. The stories that illustrated principles of religious life and
doctrine provided the raw material for sermons. In this way the stories circulated not only from book to book
but also by word of mouth. The context in which the stories appeared imposed certain persistent features: (a)
Since the stories served the rhetorical aims of preaching, the narratives consistently conclude with a clearly
stated moral lesson. (b) The Protestant authors exploited the stories as polemical weapons against
Catholicism. (c) Written in the time of intense witch hunting, the stories labeled the necromancer as a
diabolical magician, who actually made contact with the devil to perform his feats. (d) The stories display, at
best, a cautious and respectful opinion about the responsibility of the emperor; at other times, they imply that
he is guilty of curiosity.

The ideals of Renaissance humanism could hardly fare well under these circumstances. Whatever the
historical Faustus and Trithemius may have contributed as humanists, their links to scholarly interests were
forgotten. They are not pioneering scholars who discover the ancient sources of wisdom. What remains is the
inclination to see antiquity as a superior age. But the effort to recover that age is certainly not applauded; it is
even branded as a dangerous and sinful curiosity. For example, Augustin Lercheimer referred to the
necromantic experiment as "gefahrlichen fuirwitz," an expression that takes us very close to the
characterization of Faustus in Historia of 1587. Chapter 2 of that book shows Faustus speculating day and
night, wanting to explore heaven and earth and being motivated by curiosity and recklessness to undertake
conjurations.21 Barbara Könneker has argued persuasively that this Faustus is not the image of the modern
scholar and scientist; the narrator's primary purpose is to describe the magician's obsessions with the devil and
black magic.22 The Faustian curiosity and humanism may appear very progressive and praiseworthy in
Goethe's Faust, but in the sixteenth century they are labels that pious authors use to condemn magic and
witchcraft.

The idea that Faustus's necromancy could bring to light Helen, the ideal of feminine beauty, seems to have
evolved in gradual stages. Aurifaber was the first to describe the abbot of Sponheim conjuring up the figure of
a woman, the wife of Maximilian. Lercheimer thought that this woman was the much-bereaved first wife of
Maximilian, who had died in an accident. Hans Sachs is the first known source to name Helen, the most
beautiful woman ("das aller-schonest weib"). In this the Historia followed suit: Faustus responds to requests
of his students to see Helen, who was stolen from her husband and for whom the destruction of Troy took

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place (chapter 49). Somewhat later, Faustus possesses this Helen as a concubine (chapter 59). These
experiments and adventures are not intended to inspire admiration; they show, instead, how easily the devil
led men to a life of sensual pleasure. The belief that the devil could use an image of Helen to entice men into
sin found its way into a report on a Cologne witch trial of 1590, probably under the influence of the
Historia.23 This interest in Helen has nothing to do with literature or scholarship; Helen had been transformed
into a witch.

The author of the Historia of 1587 is not known. Johann Spies, the printer and publisher in Frankfurt,
undoubtedly exerted influence on the final shape of the book. He belonged to the orthodox wing of the
Protestant movement, and his book about Faustus reflects his own consistent opposition to any deviation from
Luther on religious issues. For example, he eliminated all traces of Melanchthon's name from the legend of
Faustus. Hence it is not surprising that the book abandons respectful treatment of the emperor, a feature of
Melanchthon's version of the necromancy story. The emperor of the Historia displays visible pleasure from
the necromantic show. He is now identified as Charles V, an emperor who was not kindly disposed to the
Reformation and who was thought to have betrayed Luther. The Historia criticizes this emperor as a friend of
necromancy.

Many factors played a role in shaping the legend. Paradoxically, Goethe's Faust, the highly respected scholar
and humanist, is far removed from the figure of the diabolical magician in the sixteenth-century story. He was
primarily the victim of polemics in a time of religious discord. Thus, Luther's direct influence is evident in
many places in the Historia.

But ultimately the strongest single catalyst in the evolution of Faustus into Trithemius and Trithemius into
Faustus was the witch craze. The fact that necromantic shows could be produced by means of optical illusion
did not penetrate into general consciousness. The legend was born in an age that was convinced of the
constant threat of the devil. Mysterious, destructive forces were devil's work, and magicians and
necromancers such as Faustus and Trithemius were servants of the devil. Goethe recognized that the legend of
Faustus was a story born of fear; in response, he himself became the necromancer who conjured up the spirit
of the Renaissance scholar from a time before his image was distorted by layers of religious conflict,
prejudice, and superstition.

Notes

1Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. A Tragedy, trans, by Walter Amdt and ed. by Cyrus Hamlin (New
York: Norton, 1976).

2 Goethe wrote in 1826, as he worked on the completion of his Faust, "Die alte Legende sagt namlich und das
Puppenspiel verfehlt nicht, die Szene vorzuführen, dass Faust in seinem herrischen Ubermut durch
Mephistopheles den Besitz der schönen Helena von Griechenland verlangt und ihm dieser nach einigem
Widerstreben willfahrt habe. Ein solches bedeutendes Motiv in unserer Ausführung nicht zu versaumen, war
uns Pflicht …" Goethe, Goethe. Faust, ed. by Erich Trunz (Munich: Beck, 1981), III, 439. Harold Jantz's book
is disappointing in the treatment of the Renaissance sources of Goethe's Faust. Jantz focuses on Nicolaus
Cusanus and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who show general affinity to Faust but had no direct impact on
the Faust legend. Renaissance magicians who exerted direct influence, such as Trithemius, Paracelsus, and
Agrippa, are not given serious attention. Harold Jantz, Goethe's Faust as a Renaissance Man: Parallels and
Prototypes (Princeton, 1951).

3The stories on which this scene is based are found together in a Faust Book of the seventeenth century,
Georg Rudolph Widman, Das argerliche Leben und schreckliche Ende des vielberüchtigten
Ertz-Schwartzkünstlers D. Johannis Fausti, vermehret durch Joh. Nicolaus Pfitzer (Nürnberg: Endter, 1674).
Cf. also edition by A. von Keller, in Bibliothek des literarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, (Tübingen, 1880), vol.

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146, 284-85, 300-03, and 438-39. Frank Baron, Faustus. Geschichte, Sage, Dichtung (Munich: Artemis,
1982), pp. 113 and 144.

4Johannes Trithemius, Liber octo questionum ad Maximilianum Caesarem (Oppenheim, 1515), f. Fij. Cf.
Klaus Amold, Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516), in Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Bistums
und Hochstifts Wiirzburg (Wiirzburg: Schoningh, 1971), vol. 23, pp. 180-200. Noel L. Brann, The Abbot
Trithemius, 1462-1516 (Leiden: Brill, 1981), pp. 27-31. For a general treatment of the topic of Faust and
necromancy see Hans Henning, "Zur Geschichte eines Faust-Motivs," in Festschrift für Wolfgang Vulpius
(Weimar, 1957), 53-62. I have also treated this topic in an earlier essay. I stressed the significance of
Lercheimer's story about Trithemius as a source for the Historia. Frank Baron, "Faustus und Trithemius:
Begegnungen in Geschichte und Sage," in Johannes Trithemius: Humanist, Abt, Magus, in Bad Kreuznacher
Sypmposien I, ed. by Richard Auemheimer and Frank Baron, to appear soon.

5Early documents about the historical and legendary figure consistently refer to him with the name Faustus,
not Faust.

6Frank Baron, Doctor Faustus from History to Legend (Munich: Fink, 1978), p. 29. Cf. Karl P. Wentersdorf,
"Some Observations on the Historical Faust," Folklore, 89 (1978), 201-23.

7"Deinde interrogabatur, utrum ille verus fuerit Samuel resuscitatus? Respondit: Non, quia fuit spectrum.
Nam hoc ita probatur, quod Deus in Mose prohibuit, ne veritas a mortui quaereretur. Sed fuerunt praestigia
Sathanae formam viri Dei producentis, sicut quidam magus Maximiliano produxit omnes caesares et
monarchas mortuos et Alexandrum Magnum in spectaculum." Martin Luther, Werke, Tischreden (Weimar,
1912-1921), no. 4450, conversation recorded by A. Lauterbach on March 29, 1539.

8 Baron, Faustus, p. 53.

9 "De nigromantico. O. M. Factum est quodam tempore mentio in aula Maximiliani Hectoris et Achillis, quos
cum quidam ex cancellarijs vehementer laudarent et viros fortes et robustos praedicarent, dicit Maximilianus,
se optare videre eorum effigies et corporis quantitatem. Fuit autem eodem tempore in aula Nigromanticus, qui
ad quosdam nobiles dixit, se posse absque ullo periculo eorum effigies adducere … Post hos venit Dauid
psalmista, omatus aurea corona regia, regio omatu incedens, portans Cytharam. Hic non adeo inuiso vultu
incedebat sicut priores duo, ter cum praterijsset Maximilianum in sede Regia sedentem, nullum ipsi exhibuit
honorem et euanauit. Interrogauit postea Nigromanticum Imperator, Quare Dauid sibi nullum exhibuisset
Honorem? R[espondit], Dauidis regnum esse super omne regnum et Christum, aetemi Dei filium, ex Dauidis
stemmate progenitus est. Ideo Dauidem nullum, honorem Imperatori exhibuisse." Gustav Milchsack,
Gesammelte Aufsitze (Wolfenbüttel: Zwissler, 1922), pp. 248-49. Written down in Wittenberg in 1561-1562
by Hieronimus Coler. Since Melanchthon died in 1560, we may assume that Cö1er's notes contain
Melanchthon's anecdotes of the late 1550s. A possible source for the conjuration of Hector and Achilles may
be a text by Johannes Franciscus Pico della Mirandola: Another source may be Philostratus the Elder (ca.
2nd-3rd century A.D.) who has Apollonius of Tyana say that he offered prayers by which the Indian sages
invoked departed heroes, and then the earth quivered slightly, and Achilles appeared in armor. The life of
Apollonius of Tyana appeared in a number of editions in the early sixteenth century. Cf. Charles P. Eels (ed.),
Life and Times of Apollonius of Tyana (by Philostratus the Elder), Stanford University Publications,
Language and Literature, 2 (1923), p. 99. Johannes Weier referred to this event in his discussion of
necromancy. Johannes Weier, De praestigiis daemonum (Frankfurt: N. Basse, 1586), p. 115. The passage in
which Weier quoted Pico appears in the preface to the Historia. Cf. Fiissel, p. 10. Johannes Weier published
Melanchthon's story essentially without change.

10"Alium audiui ab eiusdem socijs qui viuunt adhuc, a daemone quinquaginta ferme ab hinc annis viuum
asportatum nusquam comparuisse: dum curioso cuidam & male sano principi Troie oppugnationem

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repraesentare quasi in scaena pollicitus esset, Achillemque & Hectorem introducere proeliantes, & multis
tamen id quaerentibus irritum negocium euenit." De rerum praenotione (first published in 1506/1507). Cf.
Opera omnia (Basel: S. Henricipetri, 1601), II, p. 329. Cf. Brückner, p. 160.

11 Klaus Arnold, "Additamenta Trithemiana, Nachtrage zum Leben und Werk des Johannes Trithemius,
insbesondere zur Schrift De demonibus," Würzburger Diözesan-Geschichtsblätter, 37/38 (1975), 259.

12 Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Werke (Weimar: Böhlau, 1890), vol. 44, 184-91 and 358-59.

13 Baron, Faustus, p. 73.

14 "O. M. Pirchamerus mihi aliquando marrauit, quod pater suus in legatione quadam profectus esset cum
Abbate Spadanensi (sic) et cum uenissent iuxta syluam Franconum in sordidum diuersorium, quendam
amicum Abbatis et socium itineris ioco dixisse ad Abbatem: domine Abbas, curate nobis lautum ferculum
piscium bene coctorum. Ibi Abbatem digito fenestram pulsasse et dixisse: Afferas ocius ferculum bonorum
piscium. Paulo post uenisse quendam ac per fenestram exhibuisse lupulae laute apparatum. Abbas apposuit et
edit, sed reliqui abstinuerunt." Milchsack, p. 275. This anecdote was recorded sometime before 1555.

15 Baron, Faustus, p. 80. Johannes Manlius, Locorum communium collectanea (Basel, 1565), p. 38.

16Stephan Fiissel and Hans Joachim Kreutzer (eds.), Historia von D. Johann Fausten (Stuttgart: Reclam,
1988), pp. 27, 89, and 95.

17 Von Samuel, so Konig Saul erschein, was es gewest. Doctor Martinus ward gefraget: "Da Samuel auf des
Konigs Sauls Begehren von der Wahrsagerin ihm erschienen ware, ob es der rechte Prophet gewest?" Sprach
er: "Nein, sondern ward ein Gespenst und boser Geist gewest. Welchs damit beweiset wird, dass Gott in Mose
verboten hat, dass man die Wahrheit nicht soll von den Todten fragen, sondern ist nur des Teufels Gespuknis
gewest, in der Gestalt des Mannes Gottes. Gleich wie ein Zauberer und Schwarzkuinstiger, der Abt von
Spanheim, hatte zu Wegen bracht, dass Kaiser Maximilian alle verstorbene Kaiser und grosse Helden, die
Neuen Besten, so man also heisset, in seinem Gemach nach einander gehend gesehen hatte, wie ein jaglicher
gestalt und bekleidet war gewest, da er gelebet, unter welchen auch gewest war der grosse Alexander, Julius
Casar, item des Kaisers Maximiliani Braut, welche der Konig von Frankreich Carolus Gibbosus ihme
genommen hatte." Luther, Tischreden, no. 4450 (Aurifaber).

18 Goltwurm registered at the University of Wittenberg in 1539, in the year during which Luther's remarks on
necromancy were recorded. Karl Eduard Forstemann, Album academiae Vitebergensis (Halle, 1905), p. 177.
"Ich hab gelesen, das ein loblicher Christlicher Keyser gewest, wolches namen ich mit vleis hie für vbergehe,
Welcher höchlich begert hat, das er die alten Helden und rittermessige Menner, Als Eneam, Agamemnonem,
Priamum, Ulissem, Achillem, Hectorem, Scipionem, Hanibalem und andere mehr in jrer gantzen volligen
Kriegsruistung und tapfferen gestalt sehen mochte, solches durch besondere Teufflische kunst und gespenst zu
wegen zu bringen, begert er von einem geystlichen Abt, der solcher kunst vberaus erfaren und viel dauon
geschriben, das er solches jme zu gefallen nicht wolle abschlagen … Dieses ist warhafftig durch den Abt von
Spanheim beschrieben, auch von dem selbigen beschehen, Darauss man sihet, was der Teufel den Menschen
für ein gebler für den augen machet vnd was er damit furhat aufzurichten, nicht anders denn die Menschen
zubetriegen und in verfiihrung und abgottischen Aberglauben zu bringen und allerley Teufelisch mord und
jamer anzurichten. Wie denn solches gnungsam zu vnsem zeiten unsere vielfeltige Teufel(i)sch gespenst
aussweisen. Dauon hemach weiter meldung beschicht." Caspar Goltwurm, Wunderwerck und Wunderzeichen
Buch (Frankfurt, 1557), f. yijv-yiijr.

19The following passage shows the first participation of Wittenberg. "So habe ich auch gehöret, das Faustus
zu Wittenberg den Studenten und einem hohen Mann N. habe Hectorem, Ulyssem, Herculem, Aeneam,

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Samson, Dauid vnd andere gezeiget, die denn mit grausamer geperde und emsthafftem angesicht herfiir
gangen und wider verschwunden und sollen (welches Luth. nicht gelobt) dazumal auch Fuirstliche Personen
dabey gessessen und zugesehen haben." Wolfgang Butner, Epitome historiarum (Frankfurt, 1576), f. 115r. For
the appearance of Helen see Hans Sachs, "Historia: Ein wunderbarlich gesicht keyser Maximiliani, 1, blicher
gedechtnuss, von einem nigromanten." Hans Sachs completed the poem October 12, 1564. Cf. Hans Sachs,
Werke, ed. by A. v. Keller and E. Goetze, Bibliothek des literararischen Vereins in Stuttgart (Tübingen,
1892), vol. 193, pp. 478-87. This poem was published for the first time in 1579. Cf. Karl Goedeke, Grundriss
zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung (Dusseldorf: Ehrlemann, 1884-1953), v. 2, p. 436. Cf. Frank Baron,
"The Faust Book's Indebtedness to Augustin Lercheimer and Wittenberg Sources," Daphnis, 14 (1985),
517-45.

20 After the appearance of the Historia, the evolution of stories about necromancy becomes even more
difficult to trace. The so-called Erfurt chapters in the expanded editions of 1587 and 1589 contain a
description of Faustus conjuring up the heroes of antiquity, including Polyphemus; reminiscent of the
historical Faustus, another chapter tells us of Faustus's offer to reproduce the lost comedies of Plautus and
Terence. Cf. Fiussel, pp. 153-56. Faustus's necromancy is also treated in Stanislaus Samicius, Annales, sive de
origine et rebus gestis Polonorvm et Litvanorvm (s.l.: 1587), pp. 67-68. Cf. Wolfgang Brückner (ed.),
Volkserzählung und Reformation. Ein Handbuch zur Tradierung und Funktion von Erzählstoffen und
Erzählliteratur im Protestantismus (Berlin, 1974).

21 "Wie obgemeldt worden, stunde D. Fausti Datum dahin, das zulieben, das nicht zu lieben war, dem trachtet
er Tag vnd Nacht nach, name an sich Adlers Flügel, wolte alle Gründ am Himmel vnd Erden erforschen, dann
sein Fuirwitz, Freyheit vnd Leichtfertigkeit stache vnnd reitzte jhn also, dass er auff eine zeit etliche
zauberische vocabula, figuras, characteres vnd coniurationes, damit er den Teufel vor sich mochte fordern, ins
Werck zusetzen, vnd zu probiem jm furname." Fiissel, p. 15.

22Barbara Könneker, "Faust-Konzeption und Teufelspakt im Volksbuch von 1587," in Heinz 0. Burger and
Klaus von See, Festschrift Gotftried Weber (Berlin: 1967), p. 168.

23 ". at length the deuill sent vnto him a wicked spirit in the similitude and likenes of a woman, so faire of face
and comelye of personage, that she resembled rather some heauenly Hellin (sic) then any mortall creature, so
farre her beauty exceeded the choisest sorte of women, with her as with his harts delight, he kept company the
space of seuen yeers, though in the end she proued and was found indeed no other then a she Deuil …" A true
Discourse. Declaring the damnable life and death of one Stubbe Peeter, a most wicked Sorcerer, who in the
likenes of a Woolfe, committed many murders, continuing this diuelish practise 25. yeeres, killing and
deuoring Men, Woomen, and Children … Who for the same fact was taken and executed the 31. of October
last past in the Town of Bedbur neer the Cittie of Collin in Germany. Trulye translated out of the high Duch,
according to the Copie printed in Collin, brought ouer into England by George Bores ordinary Poste, the Xj.
daye … of Iune 1590 (London, 1590), p. 9. This title is common to the two editions with minor differences in
the British Museum and Lambeth Palace.

Roslynn D. Haynes (essay date 1994)

SOURCE: "Evil Alchemists and Doctor Faustus," in her From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the
Scientist in Western Literature, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, pp. 9-22.

[In the excerpt below, Haynes contrasts the sinister medieval view of Faust as a black hearted alchemist with
more benign Renaissance humanist interpretations that see Faust as an inquisitive mortal striving to surpass
his human limitations.]

Remote as they may seem from twentieth-century atomic physicists or industrial chemists in white lab coats,
surrounded by equipment costing more than their life earnings, the medieval alchemists were the predecessors

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of modern scientists. Not only were they at the cutting edge of experimental research into the mysteries of
nature, but they contributed to the profession an aura of mystery, secrecy, suspicion, and, at times, irreligion
from which it has never wholly succeeded in detaching itself, either in literature or in the public perception, of
scientists.…

The diverse traditions and the social status of alchemy determined many characteristics of both the art itself
and its practitioners. Because of the intimate relation between alchemy and the alleged production of gold, the
presence of charlatans trading on the greed of the populace was almost inevitable. The Hermetic element of
secrecy, deriving from the priestly origins of alchemy, was also there from the beginning; indeed, the
alchemists often called themselves the sons of Hermes, believing that their art derived from the god Hermes,
the Greek counterpart of the Egyptian god Thoth, whom they addressed as Trismegistus, "the Thrice-Great."
These religious and magical origins also gave rise to the popular belief that alchemists wielded extraordinary
power over nature and transcended the limits of what it was considered proper for man to know. Further, the
isolation enforced by both the alchemists' desire to protect their secrets and, later, the threat of persecution
enabled them for a long time to retain considerable autonomy; no one asked any questions, because it was too
dangerous to know the answers.…

The best-known alchemist figure in literature, even a stereotype in his own right, is Doctor Faustus. Many of
his characteristics, notably his intellectual arrogance, are clearly derived from the older alchemist tradition,
but the Faust legend evolved somewhat differently, and the significance attached to it has varied markedly at
different periods and under different influences.

The original Doctor Georg Faust, whose title was almost certainly spurious, was born around 1480, perhaps in
the German town of Knittlingen. He seems to have been something between the extremes of traveling
conjurer-cum-hypnotist and quack doctor, on the one hand, and alchemist, perhaps even serious student of
natural science, on the other.16 With the passage of time, the legends about this Faust became increasingly
exaggerated, with anecdotes of magic tricks and familiars predominating. The first written account, the
anonymous Spieß edition of Historia von D. Johann Fausten published in 1587, presents the story in a highly
moralistic light. Faust is a presumptuous man, desirous of overstepping the God-given limits of human
knowledge. To achieve this, he makes a pact with the Devil, acquiring, as his part of the bargain, a variety of
magical powers, most of which he employs in playing trivial tricks. Predictably, he comes to a suitably
drawn-out and gruesome end, while the reader is continually referred to the Scriptures and warned against
such intellectual arrogance. Yet, despite the allegedly didactic intention of the author, this Faust has a certain
implicit nobility in his determination to acquire knowledge.

It was on the English translation of this chapbook that Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragical History of
Doctor Faustus (1604) was based. Compared with the German original, the translation stressed the theme of
intellectual curiosity, and Marlowe emphasized it even more. From the beginning he presents what has come
to be seen as the archetypal dilemma of the Faust figure: his Renaissance-humanist longing to transcend the
limitations of the human intellect is accompanied by a medieval awareness that such longing is doomed to
failure. Reviewing the branches of current knowledge, Faustus rejects each in turn because of its restricted
scope. Like Frankenstein, he complains that medicine cannot bestow eternal life, and he longs instead for "the
metaphysics of magicians," since a "sound magician is a demi-god."'17

Marlowe thus preserves the medieval association between intellectual arrogance and Lucifer's revolt against
God, for ultimately Faust seeks knowledge as a means of attaining godlike powers; he desires to investigate
not merely neutral knowledge but

Unlawful things
Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
To practise more than heavenly power permits.

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 (1.1.78-79; Ridley, 123)

Here we see the explicit association of the alchemist with the overreacher, defying God-given limits, and it is
no accident that, as a prelude to his pact with Mephistopheles, Faustus derides both theology and religion and
flagrantly dedicates his ceremony to Satan (1.3.5-7; Ridley, 126).18 Having bargained his soul away, Faustus
discovers that he has made as poor a bargain as the priest in Chaucer's tale, for, ironically, he learns nothing of
any importance. Mephistopheles' answers to his questions are as evasive and ambiguous as those of a Greek
oracle, and the much-vaunted magical powers amount to little more than cheap conjuring tricks, a device that
recurs in later satirical treatments of scientists.19

These aspects of Faustus's character are taken directly from the German pietist tradition, but Marlowe also
introduces a new theme, which is essentially a Renaissance rather than a medieval one: the tragic wasted
potential of a gifted man.20 He therefore gives us a very different conclusion from the grimly exultant tone at
the end of Spieß Faust. Paradoxically, as Faustus sinks further into despair, the one unforgivable sin of
Christian orthodoxy, his moral honesty and human decency increase. As he insists that his fellow scholars
leave him to his fate and faces the full horror of the consequences of his past deeds, he arouses compassion
and respect rather than condemnation. Indeed, in the subtext of Doctor Faustus, if not explicitly, the alchemist
has effectively attained the moral status of a tragic hero.

The intrinsic ambiguity of the Faust character has inspired a variety of treatments and evoked an even greater
variety of responses, all of which have, in turn, attached to scientists. At one extreme Faust may be regarded
as an arrogant fool making a bad bargain with the wily Mephistopheles, who outwits him until he finally gets
what he deserves. At the other extreme Faust may be seen as embodying the noblest desire of man to
transcend the limitations of the human condition and to extend his powers, for good as much as for evil, a
Promethean figure who asserts the rights of man over a tyrannical order that seeks to enslave him. This latter
characterization of Faustus is the one that predominates in German Romantic literature. Somewhere in
between is the Faust of Lutheran piety, a kind of minor Satan, who rebels against God's restrictions and
refuses to repent and whose inevitable punishment is presented with all the didactic stops pulled out.

The aspects of the Faust stereotype that predominate at any particular time or place vary with the relative
status accorded to man and his intellect, compared with the value placed on obedience to the prevailing
hegemony, whether of church or state. During the medieval period, the pact with Mephistopheles was central,
and Faust was predictably dragged off to hell with the full approval of the audience. However, during the
Renaissance and preeminently in the period of German Romanticism, the nobility of Faust's quest (whether
for knowledge or experience or for some more mysticar truth) was stressed, and the significance of the satanic
connection was left ambiguous. Whichever light he was seen in, however, Faust, like the alchemists, was a
figure of both fascination and dread, providing an awful example of the moral dangers of intellectual
aspirations and pride.…

Notes

…16 See, e.g., Erich Kahler, "Doctor Faustus from Adam to Sartre," Comparative Drama 1, no. 1 (1967),
75-83; and J. W. Smeed, Faust in Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 13.

17Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, 1.1.47, 51-60, in Marlowe's Plays and
Poems, ed. M. R. Ridley (London: Dent, 1963), 122. Subsequent quotations from the play are from this
edition.

18 Gy. E. Szofnyi points out that in this sense Marlowe goes against the neo-Platonic trend of Renaissance
thinking, which treated "white" magic as a religious adjunct ("The Quest for Omniscience: The Intellectual
Background of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus," Papers in English and American Studies I [1980], 147).

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19The device also occurs in H. G. Wells's treatment of Griffin, the Invisible Man, which owes much to
Faustus. See below, chapter 10.

20The passage in which Faustus is shown longing to be less than a man ("This soul should fly from me, and I
be chang'd / Unto some brutish beast! all beasts are happy" [157]) is carefully constructed to recall the
opening monologue, where he twice desired to transcend human limitations ("A sound magician is a mighty
god: / Here, Faustus, try thy brains to gain a deity" [122]).…

Timothy Richard Wutrich (essay date 1995)

SOURCE: "Prometheus Transformed and Transposed: Faustus As the Reformation Prometheus," in his
Prometheus and Faust: The Promethean Revolt in Drama from Classical Antiquity to Goethe, Greenwood
Press, 1995, pp. 67-104.

[In the following essay, Wutrich traces the evolution of the Promethean myth in classical drama and suggests
that elements of this myth converged with the legend of Faust the magician, so that by the sixteenth century,
artistic interpretations of the Faust legend, and in particular Christopher Marlowe's drama Doctor Faustus,
contained aspects of both archetypal stories.]

Magus, Gnostic Philosopher, and Occult Scientist

We have come to the point at which the road from the Caucasus and the road to Wittenberg converge, and it is
on this road that the Promethean and Faustian personae meet, travel together for a while, and ultimately,
almost mystically, emerge as something new. In the present chapter, I shall deal with the magus tradition as it
leads to the Faustus legend, before dealing with the historical Faustus, the rapid rise of the Faustian
mythology, and Marlowe's mighty tragedy. Finally, I shall return to Prometheus to consider where, when, and
how the rebel Titan and the renegade scholar became permanently linked in literature, art, and the history of
ideas.

In chapter 4, I surveyed the development of the Prometheus myth in antiquity after the Aeschylean play
Prometheus Bound, and I began to hint at the eventual convergence of the Titan's story with that of Faustus.
The comical Prometheus of Aristophanes, the civilizing Prometheus of the Protagoras myth, and Heraklides's
Prometheus-the-creator belong to the post-Aeschylean, Hellenic tradition. I also surveyed the Roman
Prometheus, both in literary tragedy (as far as we are able to discem) and, more significantly, in the shows of
the Roman amphitheater. These non-literary shows are immensely important, I argued, for in them
Prometheus is no longer the admirable rebel against oppressive tyranny, but the ignoble rogue getting what he
deserves. Moreover, the Roman Prometheus's story is conflated with that of the Roman bandit Laureolus.

Because the punishment meted out to Prometheus reminded Martial of crucifixion, a typical punishment for
outlaws in the Roman world, Martial was compelled to make the comparison between Laureolus and
Prometheus. The most famous crucifixion in the ancient Roman world was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and
on that ground modern scholars and artists are sometimes drawn to a comparison between Christ and
Prometheus. However, in the early Christian world, on the few occasions when Prometheus and Christ were
compared (and, as Justin Glenn observes, this has been vastly exaggerated),1 the comparison is made not on
the basis of the similar punishment, but because, as divine beings, each figure commanded supernatural
powers. It is thus important at this stage in the investigation to introduce the magus figure, as he will lead not
only from antiquity to the Middle Ages and beyond, but from Prometheus to Faustus.

Consideration of the magus tradition has always been essential in studies of Faustus. A number of scholars
have elected to begin their investigations by considering the prototypes in such early figures as the biblical
Simon Magus, or in Cyprian of Antioch, or Theophilus. Others have investigated the occult-science tradition
of the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance, and found Faustian typologies in those students of the

117
Hermetic and Cabalist books who sought to raise the dead or inspire statues with life. The present study has
enlarged the parameters of the investigation by stepping back to pre-Christian times and considering
Prometheus as an archetype for the Faustus of drama. While the debt to the magus tradition already has been
established for Faustus by others, it is important to consider the magus tradition as a bridge connecting the
Greek Titan with the Germanic overreacher.

The magus figure owns a long and ancient pedigree. E. M. Butler has argued convincingly for the prehistoric
origins of the magus as a ritual hero, and she has investigated the shadowy historical emergence of the Magi,
an ancient Median tribe, renowned for its esoteric learning. Her study, which follows the magus through his
manifestation in the Hebrew and Greek sages of antiquity, the magicians and sorcerers of the medieval,
Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods, and beyond into the twentieth century, demonstrates the power
magic wields over human imagination. Among the important conclusions Butler reaches is the idea that the
Christian church, in sustained efforts to stamp out heresy or heterodoxy, ultimately succeeded in transforming
"the pagan deities into devils, and their priests into black magicians" (264), thus ensuring their banishment
and consignment to outlaw status. As religious studies experts have argued, a strong orthodoxy was
established early on at Rome, and efforts quickly materialized to stamp out heterodoxy.2 The magus of the
early Christian era, therefore, like his pre-Socratic forbear lived and worked on the outside of mainstream,
traditional religious ideas. However, while the early heretics were often hounded by the Roman church, just as
certain pre-Socratic philosophers were persecuted by Greek cities (one thinks of Anaxagoras's forced
peregrinations), unlike their ancient Greek predecessors, heretics from the high Middle Ages onwards were
charged formally with a crime defined particularly by Christian canon law. For the moment I reserve further
comment about heresy as a crime and will move to a discussion of the first heretic mentioned in the Christian
tradition.

The figure named Simon Magus, who is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (8.9 - 13), is the earliest
character in the history of occult science who is relevant to the study of Faustus. In the biblical account,
Simon captivates the people of Samaria with his magic, and the people in turn name Simon "the Power of God
which is called 'The Great Power.'" Simon thus presents himself as a rival to Christ. However, the biblical
Simon is converted. Over the course of the second and third centuries, this heretical Simon seems to have
been confused with another Simon, a Gnostic prophet, whose story was combined with that of the Simon
known from the biblical Acts.3 This composite figure appeared in various writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers,
where he is depicted typically (as in the Acts of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul) as a "magician" who could
change shapes and who had "the devil as his servant" (Palmer and More, 1936: 29). "Simon the enchanter"
was also known in the popular collection of saints' lives, the Legenda Aurea (Palmer and More, 1936: 11 - 12
and 12 n.1 1; 35 - 41). This Simon not only was a heretic, but also claimed to have magical powers, referred to
himself with the Latin cognomen Faustus ("the lucky one" or "the fortunate"), and traveled around with a
former Tyrian whore named Helena, whom he claimed to have saved and, moreover, whom he claimed was
the Helena of Homeric fame (Jonas, 1963: 111).4

Thus, in Simon Magus one finds a magician active on classical soil during late antiquity or the early Middle
Ages (depending on how one chooses to analyze the legend). Like Prometheus, he claims to have special
knowledge and special powers of animation. Especially interesting on this score is Simon's alleged creation of
a boy out of air, an accomplishment of which Simon boasts since he claims God's creation, man, was only
made from earth.5 Finally, Simon not only shares a name with the later conjurer Faustus; he also shares his
paramour.

Cyprian of Antioch, another figure known from the Legenda Aurea, also figures in attempts to find Faustian
prototypes.6 Cyprian's alleged ability to conjure and command spirits, and his attempts to use spirits to assist
him in seducing a young virgin (Justina) connect him with the Faustus story. Also significant are the legends
about Theophilus, a pious Christian led into a pact with the devil, who is ultimately saved by appealing to the
Virgin Mary.7 An especially interesting aspect of the Theophilus story is the blood pact that appears to have

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become a feature of the story for the first time in Germany during the thirteenth century in the Hohes Lied of
Brun von Sconebeck.8

The stories of Simon Magus, Cyprian of Antioch, and Theophilus establish archetypal patterns that those who
wrote the early Faust-Bücher exploited in their accounts of the scholar who had made a pact with the devil in
exchange for magical powers. Yet, these three figures, like the legendary Faustus, are themselves somewhat
hazy and are surrounded by plenty of myths. Consideration of the influence of these legendary figures on
another legendary figure is an interesting and useful exercise in comparative studies. However, one should not
forget to consider those historical figures who share close affinities to Faustus, since they may help us to gain
a deeper understanding of various layers of the legendary character of the Faust-Bücher and Marlowe's play.
Therefore, one needs to look at the lives and deeds of the later Hermetic and neo-Platonic magicians, actual
men active in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, who worked within the then-nebulous area
between occult science and natural science.9

Marsilio Ficino was one of the earliest of those whose studies moved between occult and natural science.
Ficino, incidentally an early translator of Hesiod's Theogony (Raggio, 1958: 57 n.71), was the author of a
neo-Platonic book of magic. He was especially fascinated with the passage in the ancient occult book
Asclepius, attributed to "Hermes Trismegistus" which notes the Egyptian construction of talking, walking
statues of gods (Mebane, 1989: 24 - 25). Ficino, however, still professed himself a Christian; he even took
pains to describe the difference between good magic (magie) and evil magic (goetia; Mebane, 1989: 31).
Ultimately, however, he was unable to reconcile orthodox Christianity with neo-Platonism and Gnosticism.
As Mebane notes, "Daemonic magic … is … a rival religion and cannot be tolerated.… Moreover, the
neo-Platonic and Gnostic religions were in some respects fundamentally opposed to [Christianity]" (33).

In spite of Ficino's failure to bring magic, science, and Christianity successfully and harmoniously together,
others tried to accomplish the same task. Pico della Mirandola is one such figure. Like Ficino, Pico was
Christian and shared the earlier researcher's obsession with the ancient occult tradition described by "Hermes
Trismegistus" on the animation of idols (Mebane, 1989: 44). Pico's contribution to occult science was the
introduction of the Jewish Cabala into Christian-inspired magic (38). For Pico, Cabala was one means of
uniting the Jewish and Christian traditions. He hoped to use Cabala to enhance his understanding of the
Judeo-Christian God. One Cabalistic figure in particular greatly interested him: namely, Adam Kadmon, the
archetypal human who was inspired by "the Word." The figure of Adam Kadmon thus stands in a similar
relation to God as does Jesus Christ who is "the Word made flesh" in Christian theology (47 - 48). The end
towards which Pico aimed in his Cabalist undertakings was a balance between human freedom and creativity,
and human submission to God (50).

The studies and writings of Cornelius Agrippa are perhaps the most important of the medieval and
Renaissance occult science works because through them the Hermetic and Cabalist magic traditions described
by Ficino and Pico were introduced to Northern Europe and have been shown to have influenced, among
others, Marlowe and Goethe (Mebane, 1989: 53). It is also worth noting that Agrippa was a contemporary of
the historical Faustus, and dedicated one of his books, De occulta philosophia, to Johannes Trithemius, the
first man known to have mentioned Faustus in extant documents (64). Agrippa, however, was no mere
translator or transmitter of an earlier, foreign tradition. He elaborated the powers of "transitive" magic, the
magic one works on another, and developed magic, not as a means solely for understanding the Christian God
but for gaining personal goals. This alone makes Agrippa and his ideas on the use of magic comparable to the
Faustus of Marlowe and Goethe. Yet, Agrippa's vacillation in regards to magic as witnessed in his later book,
De incertitude et vanitate scientiarum atque artium (1526) which may be a recanting of De occulta
philosophia also invites comparison with Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, who throughout the play wavers between
delight in magic and regret for his bargain with Lucifer.10

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Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, more easily known as Paracelsus, is the last
important historical occult scientist to consider before moving to a discussion of Faustus himself. His story
warrants mention for, like the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedokles, he seems to have been a polymath;
Paracelsus was a physician in addition to being an occult scientist and author. Moreover, while Paracelsus did
not go as far as Empedokles who claimed he was a god, he did claim to be a prophet. Thus, in Paracelsus one
encounters a figure who is a master of arts and sciences, a figure like the earlier Empedokles who may have
been, as I argued in Chapter 3, one of the models for the Aeschylean Prometheus. However, Paracelsus,
operating in the early modern era and in a specifically Christian ethical system, cannot escape comparison
with Faustus, whose insatiable intellectual curiosity leads him to a rebellion against the Christian God.

Consideration of a number of influential magus-figures from late antiquity to the Renaissance seems to supply
one bridge between the Prometheus and the Faust traditions. Simply put, the occult scientists, from the time of
Simon Magus, seem to continue the work of the pre-Socratic philosophers in challenging established values in
science, technology, religion, and even politics. In the case of the pre-Socratic philosophers, the rebellion was
directed against a narrow view of the gods which in turn threatened the aristocracy and the tyranny that often
looked to the old religion to justify its claims to power. Aeschylus, I suggested, was in part inspired by the
progress of the philosophers in his creation of Prometheus.

In the case of the medieval and Renaissance occult scientists, who were Christians, the revolt, although latent
in most cases, was still at least deviation from Christian orthodoxy. In asserting the belief that humans could
control magical powers, even in so-called "white magic" or beneficent theurgy, the occult scientists claimed
powers comparable to those of the triune God. Furthermore, in some cases, occult scientists asserted that the
aristocracy used its hold on Christianity to keep the masses in its power (Mebane, 1989: 78 - 80). As the
aristocracy, especially the princes, often claimed to rule by divine right, an attack on an established view of
religion amounted to a twofold revolt: one against religion and one against the state. The occult scientist,
therefore, was a breaker of both religious and secular law, in his rebellion against orthodox religion and its use
in the service of the state.11 One recalls at this point the situation facing some of the early philosophers in the
Greek world; however, an important difference separates the hubristic Greek philosopher from the
transgressing occult scientist. Although many gods in the Archaic and Classical Greek world were
pan-Hellenic, worship varied from polis to polis. Orthodoxy and dogmatics in the modern sense were
unknown in the ancient, polytheisticGreek world. Only absolute atheism in the form of failing to worship the
gods was punishable; it was such a charge that was leveled against Socrates.12 The ancient Greek philosopher
thus rebelled against traditional religious ideas or state-sponsored religious tradition, but not against a
canonical holy law. The situation was much different during the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Western,
Christian Europe. Rome provided the supreme religious authority and a highly developed canonical law
which, although distinct from secular authority and secular law, was still recognized and respected by secular
authority. Therefore, in their rebellious activities, the occult scientists, unlike their pre-Socratic forbears, ran
the risk of committing a specifically defined moral crime: heresy. Robert Grosseteste, writing during the
thirteenth century, had defined heresy as "an opinion chosen by human faculties, contrary to holy Scripture,
openly taught and obstinately defended" (Cullen, 1985: 203). Much of occult science would qualify as heresy
under this definition. Later, Thomas Aquinas defined heresy in the Summa Theologia13 as "a kind of unbelief
attaching to those who profess faith in Christ yet corrupt his dogmas" (2a2ae, q.l1, a.1), and specified that
obstinate resistance against Church authority was the "formal element in heresy." Aquinas would permit the
one accused of heresy to abjure and be reconciled with the Church. However, the one refusing to change his
opinion was to be excommunicated and handed over to the secular authorities. Moreover, Aquinas, and many
medieval theologians, held the opinion that the heretic was diseased, and asserted that the duty of the secular
authorities was to execute such a person (Cullen, 1985: 203 - 204).

The occult scientist, therefore, presented a double threat. He was both a heretic and an outlaw. I have
discussed some of the most important historical figures in the Hermetic and Cabalist tradition. The time has
come to discuss the historical Faustus, an occult scientist of particular infamy, who became, in his transition

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into a character of the Faust-Biicher and then the drama, a composite symbol, an amalgam of occult scientists
in general.

The Historical Faust

Contemporary accounts of Faustus exist from the first decade of the sixteenth century onward, and, while they
are not abundant, and after 1540 less reliable as biographical evidence,14 they provide enough material to
form at least a biographical outline for Faustus. After the middle of the sixteenth century, the many and
various legends that surround and obscure the historical figure are codified in the Historia von D. Johann
Fausten, which ultimately influences the creation of Marlowe's character, Doctor Faustus.

Mention of the historical Faustus occurs for the first time in written records in a letter written by the Catholic
scholar and mystic Abbot Johannes Trithemius to the mathematician Johann Virdung in Heidelberg (Mahal,
1982: 101 - 102: Palmer and More, 1936: 83 - 86).15 The letter, dated 20 August 1507, refers to a certain
Magister Georg Sabellicus Faust der Jiungere and outlines the boastful claims he has made. Trithemius calls
him a vagrant and a fool, but notes that Faustus refers to himself as a necromancer, astrologer, the second
magician, palm-reader, aeromantic, pyromantic, and hydromantic. Moreover, Faustus boasts of his great
memory, whereby he claims that should all the works of Plato and Aristotle disappear from human memory,
he would be able to restore them. Christ's miracles are not astonishing for him, and he claims to be able to do
whatever Christ had done as often and at will. Trithemius notes further that alchemy is another subject that
Faustus claims to have mastered in its entirety. Finally, Trithemius states that this Faustus was offered a
position as a schoolmaster at Kreuznach, for which Franz von Sickingen, the famous knight, interceded on his
behalf. However, as Faustus was "urging the most shameful lechery" on the schoolboys, he quickly escaped
from town before the scandal and punishment caught up with him.

A number of interesting factors emerge from Trithemius's account which invite immediate comparison with
the Prometheus legend. Even at this early stage, one discerns the importance of polymathy for the Faustus
story. Like the Prometheus who claims that "all arts which mortals practice are from Prometheus"
(Prometheus Bound, 506), Faustus claims a comprehensive knowledge of various fields, and caps his
hyperbolic claim by professing to greater power than Christ. (This claim also marks both Prometheus and
Faustus as rebels against Zeus and God, respectively.) One also discerns a variation on Promethean
"foresight," and an echo of Mnemosyne's gift (memory) in the claim that Faustus's prodigious memory would
be able to restore all the works of Plato and Aristotle, should they be lost to human memory. Finally, with
Trithemius's anecdote about the "most shameful lechery" which Faustus urged on his schoolboys, one notes a
change from Prometheus's philanthropy to Faustus's alleged pederasty, which hints at the rape of youths by an
adult; not the kindly love of a father, but an authoritarian's sexual abuse of those committed to his care.
Regardless of the role of pederasty in certain philosophical schools in fifth- and fourth-century Athens, in the
context of sixteenth-century Christian Germany, it had no place.16

One finds traces of an historical Faustus documented elsewhere. Records show that in 1509 the University of
Heidelberg granted a Bachelor's degree in Divinity to a Johann Faust. This is problematic on two accounts, for
this person's first name and the first name of the person in Trithemius's letter are not identical, and, the degree
dates two years after the letter in which Faustus is first mentioned (Palmer and More, 1936: 81 - 83; 86-87).17
Four years later, a letter dated 7 October 1513 from Canon Mutianus Rufus to Cloister Administrator Heinrich
Urbanus makes reference to "Georgius Faustus Helmitheus Hedelbergensis" (Mahal, 1982: 102; Palmer and
More, 1936: 87 - 88). Mutianus Rufus calls this Faustus a "boaster and a fool," whose "physiognomy is lighter
than a water spider," yet, who is able to fill the stupid folk with wonder. An entry in a Bamberg accountbook
dating from 1520 lists the pay made to a "Doctor Faustus" for making an astrological forecast for the Lord of
Bamberg (Mahal, 102; Palmer and More, 88-89); an entry in Prior Kilian Lieb's weather-diary for 5 June 1528
records mention of another astrological service rendered by "Georgius Faustus helmstet," in which a prophet's
birth is predicted (Mahal, 103; Palmer and More, 94 - 95). That same year, two acts of the Ingolstadt Council

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mention the expulsion from that town of "one who calls himself Dr. Jorg Faustus von Heidelberg" (Mahal,
103; Palmer and More, 90); a similar act is recorded in Nuremberg in 1532 (Mahal, 103; Palmer and More,
90). Two letters make further mention of Faustus. The authors Joachim Camerarius, on 4 August 1536
(Mahal, 103; Palmer and More, 92), and Philip von Hutten, 16 January 1540 (Mahal, 104; Palmer and More,
95 - 96), however, add nothing substantially new to the tradition. For the year 1539 Philipp Bergardi's "Index
sanitatis" also mentions Faustus (Mahal, 103; Palmer and More, 94 - 95); from the way in which the past tense
is used to refer to him, scholars infer that the historical figure must have died around this time. A sermon by
the Swiss Protestant pastor Johannes Gast in 1548 also helps date Faustus's death, as does the Zimmerische
Chronik of 1565, which also adds that he died "at or not far from Staufen in Breisgau" (Mahal, 105; Palmer
and More, 82; 96 - 98; 103 - 105; see also Henning, 1982b: 38).

Available evidence points to the death of Faustus by 1540. After this point, therefore, one may begin to note
the rise of Faustus legends. Martin Luther, for example, in his Tischreden (Table Talk), mentions "Faustus,
who called the devil his brother-in-law" and who, claims Luther, was capable of destroying a man merely by
clasping his hand. Luther then goes on in the same conversation to tell three short anecdotes of sorcery,
versions of which all later appear in the Faust-Books and in Marlowe's play. These anecdotes include the story
of a man in Nordhausen named Wildfever who devours a peasant, his horse, and wagon, and later restores
them in a hole in a country road (Historia, 40; English Faust-Book, 35); a story of a monk who bets a peasant
that he will be able to eat as much hay as possible from the peasant's wagon, and who then proceeds to eat
more than half until the peasant drives him off (Historia, 44; cf. English Faust-Book, 35); and the story of a
debtor who causes a Jew's leg to be torn out (Historia, 42, cf. 43; and cf. English Faust-Book, 34; Luther,
Table Talk, vol. 54, 241; cf. Palmer and More, 1936: 92 - 93).

Luther's colleague and disciple, the Hellenist Philip Melanchthon, also told stories about Faustus. One of these
interesting stories appears in a publication by Melanchthon's student Johann Manlius. In this story, which is
not organized chronologically, Melanchthon refers to Johannes Faustus of Kundling who went to school in
Cracow and learned magic there. He then relates Faustus's desire to fly to Venice to produce a show, as well
as the story of his death in Württemberg (not Staufen, as in other accounts), and his companionship during his
life with dogs who were, in fact, devils. Two of Faustus's escapes, one from Wittenberg (before his death,
when Prince Johann had ordered his capture) and another from Nuremberg, are also mentioned, as well as his
boast that all the victories of the Kaiser's troops in foreign lands were brought about by his magic (Mahal,
1982: 104 - 105; Palmer and More, 1936: 101 - 103).

The miscellaneous contemporary references to Faustus help form the structure of a biography that permits us
to chart the steps in the transformation of an actual person into a mythic and finally dramatic character. In
spite of its status and reputation as a mere Volksbuch, the anonymous Historia von D. Johann Fausten
represents the most fully developed and most sophisticated non-dramatic prose Faust narrative of the sixteenth
century, which also proves most influential upon Marlowe's treatment of Faustus. Published in 1587 at
Frankfurt am Main by Johann Spies, himself a supporter of a conservative form of Lutheranism (Strauss,
1989: 32), the Historia adopts a strictly orthodox Lutheran view, especially in the sense that none of Faustus's
late attempts to save himself is effective; God's grace alone saves humans (Henning, 1982a: 97; Strauss, 1989:
35). A 1599 version of the Faust-Buch (an alternative name for the Historia), written by Georg Widmann,
also adopts a Protestant viewpoint (Smeed, 1975: 4). These Faust-Bücher were best sellers, written by
educated reformers for the religious instruction of an increasingly literate Germany. Strauss has counted
twenty-two editions of Spies's book alone (Strauss, 1989: 37,31; cf. Baron, 1989: 22, and Henning, 1982a:
99).

The English translation of the Historia as The Historie of the damnable life and deserued death of Doctor
John Faustus … by P. F. Gent[leman] appeared in 1592 the last year of Christopher Marlowe's life, and
presumably the year in which he wrote Doctor Faustus.18 As Smeed has noted, Marlowe's play utilizes the
so-called English Faust-Book's "main sequence of events … using the chorus for those parts that do not lend

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themselves to dramatization"; Smeed also keenly observes that the pattern of events first developed by the
Faust-Bücher persists or influences later versions through the twentieth century (5). Thus, the basic shape of
the Faustus story is set during the last thirteen years of the sixteenth century.

The elaborate sophistication of Marlowe's learned scholar from Wittenberg is remarkable, given the relatively
short time separating Marlowe's play from the shadowy, historical figure, and given the much lengthier time
over which Prometheus developed. In the case of the German character, one may attribute the speedy
development in part to his particular suitability for the propaganda of the Reformation's pastors and in part to
the invention of the printing press, which helped speed the process of printing.19 Prometheus took longer to
mature as a character, but the fullest development of the Titan occurs in drama, too. Now it is time to turn to
Marlowe's play in order to try to arrive at a better understanding of how the Prometheus myth circa 1592
informs the play The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus.20

The Sound Magician As Demi-God

In 1940 Frederick S. Boas, a great Marlovian scholar, wrote in his book Christopher Marlowe: A
Biographical and Critical Study:

Though Homer's Iliad looms large before Marlowe, there is no clear evidence that he read the
Greek epics in the original… of the glories of Attic tragedy there is not the faintest echo
throughout his work (17 - 18).

Although I cannot prove that Marlowe read Homer or the Greek tragedians, I disagree with Boas regarding the
"echo" of Attic tragedy. In fact, I believe there is an agonized rebel scream that calls across the centuries,
uniting the Titan and the scholar of Wittenberg in spirit.

Marlowe's Faustus is not a simplistic figure who can readily be condemned for his transgressions. The
playwright leaves room for debate as to whether the damnation of Faustus is a just end for a sinner or an
injustice against a sage who had every right to question the world and limitations imposed by man and God.21
Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, while engaging in many of the activities documented in the German and English
Faust-Bücher, is more fully realized. No longer merely a wandering scholar, Marlowe's Faustus holds a
doctorate from Wittenberg (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, prologue, 16), where he is a professor. Smeed believes
that Marlowe's improvement on the Historia involves his portrayal of a Faustus who is "psychologically
convincing" and whose learning is stressed not just to emphasize Faustus's arrogance, but also to show
"learning criticizing itself for its own inadequacies" (5). Henning similarly describes the Marlovian Faustus's
yearning for knowledge as "almost boundless" (1982a: 99).

This yearning appears at the very outset of the play as Faustus discusses the academic faculties that he has
studied, mastered, and now rejects out of boredom: first logic (or philosophy, 5 - 10); medicine (11 - 25); law
(25 - 34); and theology (35 - 46). However, metaphysics and necromancy prove to be the fields that attract
him because of their promise of profit, delight, power, honor, and omnipotence.22 As he notes:

emperors and kings

Are but obeyed in their several provinces
But his dominion that exceeds in this [magic]
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man:
A sound magician is a demi-god!
(55 - 59)

There is no delay for Marlowe's Faustus about the initial course of action he must take. He has taken all he
can from the Christian European university's four great faculties; only the forbidden knowledge of the occult

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sciences remains. Faustus is especially cognizant of the power that will be his once he has harnessed black
magic, and stresses this in the line "a sound magician is a demi-god." As a magician, Faustus will be able to
separate himself from other mortals; and, if he is still unable to shed all of his human characteristics, or is
unable to equate himself with the triune God who rules the ethical system in which he lives, at least he will
forge a place for himself in that other sphere between earth and heaven where the demigods and Titans such
as Herakles and Prometheus hold sway.

Mephostophilis, Faustus's companion and foil, similarly resists a simplistic interpretation. Like Faustus, his
genealogy stretches into remote antiquity; in fact, Mephostophilis's ancestors are arguably older. One discerns
similarities between the one who tempts Faustus to sign away his soul and the serpent in the garden of Eden
who tempts Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge saying eritis sicut Deus scientes bonum et malum.
Mephostophilis is not Lucifer, since the authors of the Faust-Bücher and Marlowe take such pains to highlight
the difference between the light-bearing angel who was thrown out of heaven and the particular evil spirit
whom Faustus conjures, and who will serve Faustus during the period of the contract. Earlier, I mentioned the
Etruscan demon Charun's role in the development of the medieval devil. The seductive side of Mephostophilis
does not reflect the ugly, violent Etruscan figure. However, the Mephostophilis who wants to torment Faustus
and drag him to hell can claim Charun of the Roman amphitheater as his progenitor. With Spies's Historia, the
devil specifically named "Mephostophilis" debuts, and his fortune becomes ever-after permanently linked to
that of Faustus.23

Turning from the two chief characters to Marlowe's play itself, I am struck by the way in which Faustus's
opening monologue reads like a cynical version of Prometheus's speeches on the civilizing arts (1.1.1.- 60; cf.
Prometheus Bound 436 - 471; 476 - 506). One would do well to recall that since the earliest literary treatments
Prometheus has always been a character defined by metis, "cunning intelligence" (Detienne and Vemant,
1991: 58). Faustus, like the early Hesiodic Prometheus, is defined by cunning, a word he uses to describe
himself:

I, that have with subtle syllogisms

Graveled the pastors of the German church
And made the flow'ring pride of Wittenberg
Swarm to my problems as th'infernal spirits
On sweet Musaeus when he came to hell,
Will be as cunning [my emphasis] as Agrippa was,
Whose shadows made all Europe honor him.
(1.1.106 - 112)

Of course this cunning has a price. Faustus will pay for it with his soul and by Act Five will lament his
decision in acting against God, something the Greek Prometheus does not do. Faustus says to the scholars just
before his downfall: "O gentlemen, / I gave them [i.e., Lucifer and Mephostophilis] my soul for my cunning"
(5.2.64 - 65).

It is significant that the soul is the commodity that Faustus uses to bargain for more powers. Faustus envisions
himself as a latter-day pagan Greek whose reality is fixed in pre-Christian times, and he declares this proudly
to Mephostophilis:

This word "damnation" terrifies not me

For I confound hell in Elysium:
My ghost be with the old philosophers!
(1.3.57 - 59)

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He echoes this statement after he signs the fatal contract, once again in words addressed to Mephostophilis: "I
think hell's a fable." (2.1.133)

Under night's cover, Faustus begins the incantation in Latin addressed to Belzebub [sic] and Demogorgon24 in
order to conjure Mephostophilis. He succeeds and Mephostophilis appears. Since the shape repels him,
Faustus commands the devil to change "and return an old Franciscan friar: / That holy shape becomes a devil
best" (1.3.27-28). This particular command stresses once again the anti-Catholic stance of the Faust legend. In
addition, Frances Yates is probably correct in asserting that mention of the Franciscans is an allusion to
Francesco Giorgi, the Franciscan monk of Venice who dabbled in the occult (Yates, 1979: 118). In any case,
Mephostophilis complies and returns transformed, whereupon Faustus commands the spirit to serve him.
Mephostophilis, however, explains that this cannot presently be so, for he is answerable to Lucifer and may
not serve without his permission. We learn in fact that, although Faustus raised Mephostophilis with the spell,
Lucifer's servant was already interested in Faustus because he had abjured the Holy Trinity.

In spite of Mephostophilis's warnings, Faustus is not persuaded to turn away from further dealings with hell,
but instead proposes a contract:

Go bear these tidings to great Lucifer:

Seeing Faustus hath incurred eternal death
By desperate thoughts against Jove's deity,
Say he surrenders up to him his soul
So he will spare him four and twenty years,
Letting him live in all voluptuousness,
Having thee ever to attend on me,
To give me whatsoever I shall ask,
To tell me whatsoever I demand,
To slay mine enemies and to aid my friends
And always be obedient to my will
(1.3.86 - 96)

Mephostophilis agrees to deliver the commission. Faustus emphasizes his willingness to enter into the
contract, and Mephostophilis departs.

The scene in which Faustus binds himself to Lucifer by contract is probably the most famous scene not only
in Marlowe's play, but in the Faust tradition in general: it is present in puppet shows, parodies, and chapbooks
right up to the time of Goethe's drama.25 The scene is important in the present dis-cussion for its analogous
relationship to the most famous scene in the Prometheus tradition: the binding of the defiant Titan. For it is
Prometheus bound, whether to a pillar (as in Hesiod and certain sixth-century B.C. vase paintings) or the
Caucasus (as in Aeschylus and two millennia of his imitators), whether known from sixth-century Attic black
figure vase painting, sixteenth- or seventeenth-century editions of Andreas Alciati's emblemata, or the Pieter
Paul Rubens and Frans Snyders oil on canvas masterpiece …, who haunts the Western world's poetic
imagination.

Once Marlowe's Faustus has decided to cast his allegiance with the infernal powers, Mephostophilis returns
ready to offer a deal to Faustus. Mephostophilis promises to wait on him during his lifetime in exchange for
Faustus's soul. Faustus agrees. Mephostophilis then demands the scholar sign a contract in his own blood:

Then, Faustus, stab thy arm courageously

And bind [my emphasis] thy soul that at some certain day
Great Lucifer may claim it as his own.
And then be thou as great as Lucifer!

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 (2.1.50 - 53)

Once Faustus stabs himself, his blood begins to flow, and he prepares to write. However, his blood soon
congeals, and Mephostophilis goes to fetch fire to dissolve the congealed blood (presumably held in some
type of flask [Barnet, 1969: 41]).

Two relevant parallels with the Promethean myth are to be found in this scene. "Binding" and "fire" are terms
of the comparison. Faustus, by signing the contract offered by Mephostophilis, binds himself to Lucifer. This
action of binding unites the scholar with Lucifer, and after twenty-four years of the contract's terms, Doctor
Faustus will become, in a sense, "Faustus bound," a passive object. However, by the terms of this same
contract, Mephostophilis is bound to Faustus and must serve the scholar for the twenty-four years he has left
among mortals. Faustus, for his part, does not hesitate to remind his diabolical companion of the submissive
role he has agreed to play. In Act Two, scene two, when Mephostophilis refuses to tell Faustus who made the
world, Faustus commands him: "Villain, have not I bound thee to tell me anything?" (2.2.76; my emphasis)
For the remaining three acts of the play, Mephostophilis will never be far from Faustus.

Together with binding, fire provides the other link between Faustus in Act Two, scene one, and the
Promethean persona. Like a musical motif, the theme of fire is introduced in this scene of Marlowe's play,
both uniting the German figure with his Hellenic forbear and drawing him further into the realm of Northern
European devilry. As I noted earlier, fire has a longstanding history as a symbol for knowledge, technology,
or creative power. In Hesiod, fire plays an important role, for Prometheus uses fire to cook meat and to make
sacrifice to the gods, two things humans had never done before (Theogony, 535 - 557; 565 - 569; Works and
Days, 42 - 52). In Aeschylus, too, Prometheus's present of fire to man is linked by association to the other
civilizing gifts Prometheus has given humans (Prometheus Bound, 254 - 256). Associations between fire and
power and knowledge remain operative in the Marlovian drama: in Act Two, scene one, Mephostophilis
fetches fire to dissolve the congealed blood with which Faustus will sign the contract. The fire does indeed
cause the blood to become liquid again, and after signing his name, Faustus glances at the contract where the
words Homo fuge! (flee, o man!) appear. The fire has been a transforming agent, which has enabled Faustus to
sign away his soul and enter a contract that will make him an heir to forbidden knowledge and power. There is
a double irony here: flowing blood is usually a sign of life; here the flowing blood is used to sign the contract
that will lead to Faustus's death and that also magically warns him with a Latin message. Moreover, and also
ironically, fire enables Faustus to enter a world of magic and power, (in other words by fire he becomes
master of fire), while at the same time fire also helps bind him, and fire plays a part in his destruction. Act
Five opens with the stage direction Thunzder and Lighttning. As Detienne and Vernant have suggested, in
archaic Greek poetry, thunder and lightning are associated with the fire of Zeus (1991: 78-79); and, the magic
power of binding is incorporated in the thunderbolts that Zeus hurls at his enemies (79-82). At the end of
Prometheus Bound, Prometheus describes a cataclysm that will engulf him in the earth and that is
accompanied by severe meteorological activity sent from Zeus, the master of the universe. Marlowe's Faustus,
too, will be engulf-ed by the tempest, specifically the thunder and lightning, and by supernatural forces. Once
again the Titan and the Wittenberg scholar travel the same path.

There is one final association to make between Prometheus, fire, and Faustus. In the Greek tradition, fire can
represent many things, from the brilliance of intelligence to the spark of life to the flame of love, all positive
associations. In a Christian context, fire often carries negative associations with the flames of hell, the devils,
and, significantly, the most powerful creature in hell, Lucifer. Lucifer, as Marlowe's Faustus learns, is
"Arch-regent and commander of all spirits" (1.3.62) and was once God's most beloved angel whom God
"threw from the face of heaven" because of his "aspiring pride and insolence." Mention of Lucifer and his
crimes at once alerts us to a significant tie with the Prometheus legend on two grounds. First, the name
Lucifer is etymologically significant, for it is formed from the Latin words for "light" (lux) and "to bear or to
carry" (ferre), and means "the light-bearer." Light is one of the effects produced by fire; and as fire has come
to stand for intellectual enlightenment, so, too, has light. In fact, it is worth noting at this point the importance

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of the sun, which "Hermes Trismegistus" calls the secundus deus (a second god) in the Hermetic tradition
(Yates, 1964: 152-153). Second, one will remember that Lucifer was punished for his "aspiring pride and
insolence, / For which God threw him from the face of heaven" (Dr. Faustus, 1.3.66), which again invites
comparison with the crime of the Hesiodic Prometheus. Moreover, after his expulsion from heaven, Lucifer
and his servants tempt man, which reminds one of the Aeschylean Prometheus's endeavoring if not to tempt
man, at least to draw him into his sphere of protection. Lucifer, moreover, promises man great things, not least
of which is enlightenment, which is to say, he promises to bring the divine light (forbidden knowledge) to
man, just as Prometheus had brought fire (and all it actually provides and symbolically represents) to man.

Among its many manifestations, "Promethean fire" can represent metaphorically the fire or heat of sex.
Shakespeare twice uses the metaphor "Promethean fire" to refer to the magic spark in women's eyes (Love's
Labors Lost, 4.3.298 - 300, 347 - 348), and has Othello speak of "Promethean heat," meaning "the life force,"
at that ambiguous moment between dire hate and jealous love when the Moor is about to kill Desdemona
(Othello, 5.2.7 - 13).26 While Marlowe does not use the phrase "Promethean fire" in Doctor Faustus, sexual
fire glows in the scene in which Faustus orders Mephostophilis to present him the "fairest maid in Germany,"
for he states that he is "wanton and lascivious and cannot live without a wife" (2.1.46 - 48). Mephostophilis
produces a fireworks-bearing woman devil, which causes Faustus to decide he would rather not have this "hot
whore" (2.1.152) Here one detects a further connection to an aspect of the Prometheus myth, specifically to
the gods' gift Pandora, a woman who is beautiful to look at but whose appearance conceals an evil being.
Moreover, the punishment by fire, symbolized by fireworks in the scene in Doctor Faustus, should not be
overlooked, as it foreshadows Faustus's ultimate fate, while recalling the punishment Zeus calls down on
Prometheus. However, as Faustus abandons thoughts of marriage, Mephostophilis praises him, promising
instead to supply the scholar with any woman he desires even

were she as chaste as was Penelope,

As wise as Saba, or as beautiful
As was bright Lucifer before his fall.
(2.1.158 - 160)

Given the alleged pederasty of the historical Faustus, it is interesting to note that the spirit Lucifer, referred to
here by the male pronoun, is grouped with two female figures who are, moreover, exemplars of womanhood.
This seems to suggest that not only the heat of female sexuality, but also of male sexuality, will be made
available to Faustus.

Astrology and geography, subjects that Prometheus had mastered (and about which he had told his audience
probably more than they had wanted to know), also interest Marlowe's Faustus. Faustus discusses "divine
astrology" with Mephostophilis (2.2.31 - 70). The review of "astrology" (= astronomy) reminds one both that
the Aeschylean Prometheus boasts of having taught mankind how to read the stars (Prometheus Bound, 498 -
499) and that Faustus, like Prometheus, is always ready to display his learning or enter into intellectual
discourse with an interlocutor on scientific topics that would have been of relevant current interest to many in
the audience watching the play.27 Later, the Chorus enters and relates how Faustus set out on a voyage
through the universe "to find the secrets of astronomy" (3.2), a feat he accomplished in eight days. Having
returned home, he set out again on a new jour-ney, this time "to prove cosmography" or map making (3.20); at
this juncture one thinks of the Aeschylean Prometheus's intimate knowledge of geography.

Magic is the hallmark of the Faust legend, and while Faustus deals with magic throughout the play, Marlowe
reserves the most extended display of Faustus's magic for Act Four. The Chorus opens the act with a summary
in which he relates that Faustus, having seen the courts of the world, returned home, where he was welcomed
by his friends and was questioned about astrology. Faustus's fame in learning spread and ultimately brought
him to the court of Charles V, incidentally one of the historical figures who appears in the play. The final two
lines of the Chorus's speech are noteworthy:

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 What there he did in trial of his art
I leave untold, your eyes shall see performed
(4.16 - 17)

The Chorus refers to Faustus's actions at the court of Charles V in the past tense. He is not opening the
window to present actions, but is showing the audience a magic window that looks in on the past actions of
Doctor Faustus.

The action of the first scene of Act Four moves quickly and establishes the atmosphere of wonder at the court
as the nobles Martino and Frederick hasten to the emperor's court to watch the conjurations of Faustus. They
try to arouse the interest in their noble peer, Benvolio; but Benvolio, who awakens sluggishly from a
hangover, prefers to stay indoors and at his window above where he can look down on the proceedings.

Faustus's actions in the second scene of Act Four show him at last to be a master magician. Earlier, he had
been merely an apprentice to Mephostophilis who performed magic for him (when he conjured up the woman
devil) or who suggested magical pranks (as in Rome), or Lucifer (who called for the Seven Deadly Sins). Now
Faustus stands on his own, and although he calls upon Mephostophilis to carry out his requests (such as
conjuring up the shades of Alexander the Great, Darius, and Alexander's paramour, 4.2.56 s.d.), Faustus is in
charge, making the decisions, and commanding Mephostophilis, as if the infernal spirit were an extension of
himself.

Faustus's magic, like fire in Promethean myths, has both creative and destructive capabilities. In Act Four,
Faustus uses both creative and destructive magic. One may count the conjuring up of Alexander, Darius, and
Alexander's paramour as creative magic. However, Faustus also practices destructive magic in this scene.
When Benvolio, the knight with the hangover, expresses disbelief in Faustus's powers thusly:

And thou
bring Alexander and his paramour before the
Emperor, I'll be Actaeon and turn myself to a stag
(4.2.52 - 54)

Faustus responds in an aside:

And I'll play Diana and send you the horns presently
(4.2.55)

He then makes good his threat, for when Benvolio next appears, his head sports a pair of stag's horns (4.2.75 -
77). Generally in Renaissance drama, the image of a man with horns on his head signifies the comic cuckold;
however, the reference to Actaeon prevents a purely comic reaction to the situation.28

Faustus makes use of magic's destructive possibilities repeatedly in the remaining scenes of Act Four. In the
third scene of Act Four, he calls upon a trio of spirits, Asteroth, Belimoth, and Mephostophilis, to punish
Benvolio, Martino, and Frederick, who had tried to ambush him; in the fourth scene the three knights appear
each with a pair of horns on his head and complaining of the violent treatment received while in the clutches
of the evil spirits. In the fifth scene Faustus cheats the horse-courser by selling him an enchanted horse that
turns into a bundle of hay when the horse-courser rides it into the water; the short bridge scene (4.6) shows
Robin, Dick, the Horse-courser, and a Carter comparing stories of how Faustus has abused them with his
infernal powers. In the seventh and final scene of Act Four, when this band of rustics intrudes upon Faustus in
the Duke's palace, Faustus strikes dumb the four rustics and the Hostess who has come with them to collect
the bar tab.

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In spite of the important role played by binding and fire in both the Prometheus myth and Marlowe's Doctor
Faustus, there is one point in Marlowe's play in which Faustus shows himself to be quite unlike Prometheus.
Act Five, which one might initially read as a compressed, sixteenth-century Christian Prometheuts Bounid,29
ultimately presents the "titanic" Faustus as a fearful man on the verge of repentance, diametrically opposed to
the "old philosophers," whether the Prometheus of myth or Socrates of fifth-century Athens, who stress their
indifference to pain and (in the case of a mortal like Socrates) a readiness for death. Perhaps especially in
contemporary iconography, one notes that Prometheus is absolutely defiant in the face of his tormentor, the
eagle of Zeus. The Rubens masterpiece [Plate 5] most clearly illustrates this where the Titan, strapped to the
mountainside, endures the attack of the eagle with a stern, agonized determination, but with no trace of fear.
The Marlovian Faustus, on the other hand, spends Act Five in fear and trembling. He realizes the folly of his
actions, and accosts himself, "Wretch, what hast thou done!" (5.1.53), words that he repeats significantly a
few lines later:

Accursed Faustus! Wretch, what hast thou done!

I do repent, and yet I do despair:
Hell strives with grace for conquest in my breast!
What shall I do to shun the snares of death?
(5.1.67 - 70)

Later, as he speaks with the scholars, Faustus claims he "pant[s] and quiver[s]" as he remembers his thirty
years in Wittenberg. Finally, in his powerful final monologue (5.2.140 - 197), Faustus spends his last hour on
earth wishing that time would stand still and that he might repent, while he anticipates the hor-rors of hell.
Like Prometheus, who asks the elements to look down on his suffering, Faustus calls out to god: "My God,
my god! Look not so fierce on me!" (5.2.194); but unlike the Titan, who remains firmly the enemy of Zeus at
the end of Prometheus Bound, Faustus ambiguously calls out first to God and at last, the very last, calls to
Mephostophilis.

There are other parallels between the fifth act of Doctor Faustus and Prometheus Bound. The thunder and
lightning described in the opening stage directions foreshadow Faustus's impending doom while at the same
time reminding one of the storm that accompanies Prometheus's descent into Hades at the close of the
Aeschylean play. After Wagner's opening speech, in which he remarks "I think my master means to die
shortly," Faustus appears in the company of Mephostophilis and a group of scholars (5.1.9 s.d.), just as
Prometheus, at the time when he was bound, was accompanied by his persecutors.

At the scholars' request, Faustus has Mephostophilis conjure up Helen of Troy. Helen is a curious figure. In
Doctor Faustus she is like a negation of lo, not the one who is punished, but the one who punishes, and thus is
similar to that other female figure of the Prometheus myths, namely, Pandora. Pandora is a punishment, the
"beautiful evil" (kalon kakon) as far back as Hesiod; and as Pandora caused Epimetheus to burn with lust, so
too does Faustus bum with lust for Helen. Therefore, it is ironical that Helen, the "reward" Faustus receives
after he puts aside his thoughts of repentance out of fear of being punished, is, in fact, another punishment.

In Act Five, Faustus remains a captive of his study; his travels are done, and his doom approaches. Like the
Prometheus of the Greek play, the now-passive Faustus receives visitors, many of whom are sympathetic but
powerless to help or ultimately unpersuasive in their counsel. The Good and Bad Angels appear and might be
likened to the chorus of Okeanids which wavers in its opinions about Prometheus and his actions, and which
has little influence over the Titan. The scholars, too, lament Faustus's fall and express the wish that he had
come to them sooner, but are unable to effect any change. Even the Old Man, somewhat reminiscent of
Okeanos, the aged counselor in Prometheus Bound (but without the ironic humor that seems to be part of
Okeanos's character), tries to bring Faustus to repent but is unable to do so. Ultimately, Mephostophilis,
whose function is similar at this point to that of Hermes at the end of Prometheus Bound, comes to tell
Faustus he is damned:

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 now thou hast no hope of heaven.
Therefore despair! Think only upon hell,
For that must be thy mansion, there to dwell
(94 -96).

The Good and Bad Angels come to Faustus briefly, the first to lament Faustus's fall and the second to gloat
over Faustus's damnation and suggest to him the torments that are about to be his. Faustus stands alone for the
remainder of the scene, until the devils come to drag him off to hell. Like Prometheus who calls out to the
elements, he calls out to the "ever-moving spheres of Heaven" (5.2.143) to stand still and prevent the hour of
his damnation from ever coming. As Prometheus had called to the sympathetic gods to witness his suffering,
Faustus calls out to God and Christ (5.2.152 - 160); and, as Prometheus's supplications are unable to bring
about his immediate release, so, too, does Faustus's lamentation fall on ears that do not hear. Faustus wishes
that the earth might open and hide him from hell, or that "the stars which reigned at [his] nativity" might draw
him up into a cloud, that although his body will not be saved, his soul might rise to heaven (5.2.162 - 170).
After the half hour strikes (5.2.170 s.d.), he begins to think about the pain in store for him. He wishes that he
could imagine an end to pain; one is reminded of Prometheus's punishment which his tormentors threaten will
be ceaseless.

At last, the clock strikes twelve (5.2.189 s.d.), and devils come to drag him away. Faustus calls upon God
again, then orders the "adders and serpents" of hell to "let [him] breathe awhile," to "gape not," and bids
Lucifer to stay away (5.2.195-196). Faustus's last line captures the essence of his character in its vacillation
between renouncing ambitious pursuits and calling on the infernal powers for help. It contains both the
promise that he will recant his entire life's work and a final invocation of his fiendish helper: "I'll bum my
books!—O Mephostophilis!" (5.2.197). The first half of this line seems symbolically to turn the destructive fire
against the creative fire of learning. At the last, Faustus has negated his own existence with his words, even as
he is himself negated from life and the promise of after-life by the gaping mouth of hell and the devils who
pull him into it.

The character traits that Faustus and Prometheus share offer the most significant cause for reflection. The
search for knowledge is a key issue. While later ages have valued the pursuit of knowledge, and Goethe's era
was such an age, too much knowledge has not always been an enviable or morally just thing. The
sixteenth-century attitude towards knowledge was ambivalent. The historical Faustus lived as a contemporary
of Luther, Erasmus, and Dürer, men who devoted themselves to lives of questioning and the pursuit of
knowledge. Yet, while the humanists sought knowledge, they realized the danger of crossing the boundary
from learning into presumption and irreligious ambition. Men such as Luther, Erasmus, and Diirer knew the
Living God as the highest authority and were able to recognize the point at which for them it was no longer
permissible to venture. The Book of Genesis, with its story of the Tree of Knowledge and its forbidden fruit,
gave sixteenth-century Christian humanists reason to refrain from knowing too much. The definitions of
heresy, provided by Robert Grosseteste and Thomas Aquinas, narrowed the parameters of orthodoxy.

However, the boundary was not always so easy to discern, especially for the occult scientists whose lives
seem to have influenced the creation of the Faustus myth: men like Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola,
Comelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus. These men recognized no boundary between what was permissible to
know and what was forbidden, and for their studies in the occult, although conducted ostensibly for the sake
of expanding Christian knowledge, they came dangerously close to heresy. Some who dabbled in the occult
received the formal charge of heresy and were unable to save themselves from being burned at the stake.
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), the famous occult philosopher born shortly after the death of the historical
Faustus, was one such unlucky figure.30 The Doctor Faustus of Marlowe's play becomes the final extension of
the knowledge-seeker, and he is the one who, to use Harry Levin's term (1952), becomes the "overreacher,"
the one whose quest finally takes him beyond the permissible into the forbidden, and who remains ambitious.
In lines from his opening monologue, Faustus recognizes the vast powers that belong to the one who controls

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magic, claiming a larger realm for the magician than the political ruler. At the same time one remembers that
Prometheus, as a Titan, belongs to that race of pre-Olympian beings whose very name, Titan, Hesiod connects
with the idea of ambitious stretching and presumptuous sin (Theogony, 207 - 210). The titanic overreacher
provides the essential equation between the Promethean and the Faustian figures; and Marlowe's Faustus
recognizes this when he proudly claims, "A sound magician is a demigod!" (1.1.59) Faustus sins, therefore,
before he ever signs the contract with Mephostophilis, for he has mastered all knowledge available to humans,
itself a super-human feat, and still craves more. With Faustus the search for knowledge beyond that of his
fellow humans becomes a challenge to God. Like the Hesiodic Prometheus, Faustus strives to match wits with
God.

Intellectual mastery, then, provides a concrete link between Prometheus and Faustus. Here comparison gives
way to actual intersection. Both Prometheus and Faustus have mastered all that is knowable, and, in the
dramatic versions of their stories, tell their audiences so. Both figures are astrologers and geographers. Both
know the power of words: Prometheus, who gave the written word to humans as a gift, has as his secret
weapon the story he knows about Thetis and Zeus, a story he learned from his mother. With words, Faustus is
able to conjure Mephostophilis; with words he enters the contract with Lucifer; and he emphasizes the power
of words in the line he speaks to the scholars before he conjures the shape of Helen: "Be silent, then, for
danger is in words" (5.1.27).

The ability to create human beings represents a special case in a review of the common knowledge between
Prometheus and Faustus. Faustus, in the drama and the non-dramatic tradition, is a necromancer and thus has
the power to recreate human and mythological beings. Prometheus, on the other hand, does not always have
the power to create or re-create life. In Hesiod, the sham sacrifice Prometheus assembles from dead animal
parts, fat and bone, may be a mock creation or reminiscent of creation. The protagonist of Prometheus Bound,
while able to assist in forming human intellect and technology, never lists as one of his accomplishments the
formation of human beings. It is rather in post fifth-century versions of the story that Prometheus first
becomes the creator of humans. This version of the story prevails, however, for a long time in ancient art, in
medieval visual arts, especially illustrated texts of Ovid, and in the early modern retellings of the myth. Of
special interest are two illustrations from the Italian Renaissance, one by Leonardo da Besozzo and another in
the Florentine Picture Chronicle [Plate 3]. In each illustration Prometheus appears "as a bearded sage"
(Raggio, 1958: 52), who wears a scholar's cap and gown. This Prometheus holds an image of man in his left
hand and blesses (or admires?) him with the other (in da Besozzo) or animates him with a touch of his index
finger (in the Florentine Picture Chronicle) in a gesture inviting comparison with Michelangelo's Creation
fresco.31 By the early eighteenth century, Prometheus the creator, and a scholarly creator at that, had become
an integral part of the myth.

The rebellion against God and the subsequent punishment defines another area in the common ground shared
by Prometheus and Faustus. Like Prometheus, who had once been an ally to Zeus, indeed, who had fought on
Zeus's side during the Titanomachy, Faustus, as an academic and student of theology, had once been God's
servant. Like Prometheus who steals fire from the gods and who brings intellectual and technological gifts to
humans, Faustus steals from the Judeo-Christian God's prerogative on knowledge and, in his ventures in
necromancy, ignores the mandate that forbids the creation of anything in heaven or earth. Just as Prometheus
seals his fate as a rebel with the theft of fire and receives the painful, never-ending punishment, Faustus's
involvement in the black arts will earn him consignment to the flames of hell and eternal torment.

The specific form of punishment that Prometheus receives, however, differs enough from that received by
Faustus and requires a momentary pause in the chain of comparisons. Prometheus's punishment might be
compared to a crucifixion, the characteristic punishment for criminals in the Roman world such as Laureolus,
to whom I pointed as one example of the Roman Prometheus. The process of representing Prometheus's
punishment as a crucifixion is also known in the ancient visual arts (Raggio, 1958: 45 - 46), and a comparison
between Prometheus and Christ cannot be avoided. Christ and Prometheus were, in fact, compared by the

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early Christian writer Tertullian (Against Marcion, 1.1.247).32 Yet, as Raymond Trousson has remarked, there
was ultimately no place for Prometheus in medieval Christianity because Prometheus, as a creator, competed
with God (81). It was more usual to find Prometheus cited as the father of idolatry for his creation of clay
figures than as a beneficent creator (Raggio, 1958: 51 - 52).

The comparison of Prometheus with Christ brings Faustus back into the picture. In spite of the medieval
rejection of a comparison between Prometheus and Christ, Prometheus can be reinterpreted within the
Christian tradition as an allegory both of a divinity who suffers on behalf of the human race at the will of God
and of one who suffers punishment from human governors because he is a human who claims to have special
powers. Some Church Fathers, in fact, saw Prometheus as a "prefiguration" of the Christ who suffered so
much for the sake of humanity. Of course, the "prefiguration" is ultimately dismissed for its triviality
compared to Christ's sacrifice (Trousson, 1976: 69 - 70). Similarly, Faustus, through his contract with the
opponent of God, significantly through Lucifer the light-bearer, stands opposed to the Christian ethical system
and is punished by God for his human presumption and ambition, as much as he is punished for his actual
dealings with Lucifer. Yet, Faustus draws sympathy because he is a human character. His rebellion is human
rebellion, whereas Prometheus could only rebel on behalf of humans; Christ, although human, is also part of
the Holy Trinity and thus also intercedes on behalf of humans. Nevertheless, Faustus is tom apart by demons,
and his soul is dragged off to hell, where punishment is without end.

The question remains as to precisely when and how Prometheus and Faustus were brought together. The
common character traits outlined above offer some explanation. Yet, this connection is one made by modern
scholars analyzing the two figures. The authors of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance (and Marlowe
can be included in their number) never specifically made this link. Marlowe never specifically uses the name
"Prometheus" or the adjective "Promethean" in Doctor Faustus.33 In fact, although Marlowe received a
Classical education at Cambridge, there is no certain evidence that he ever read Prometheus Bound either in
Greek or in Latin translation. Perhaps, however, the search for a causal relationship between Marlowe's
Classical reading and his writing of Doctor Faustus is not so important. Perhaps it is even more significant
and speaks more to the universality of the Promethean idea if Marlowe never read Prometheus Bound and yet
wrote a character so remarkably akin to the rebel Titan.

Yet, it is likely that Marlowe, during the course of his education, at least came upon the name "Prometheus" in
the Latin poems of Vergil, Ovid, or Seneca. Studies such as that conducted by Dewitt Talmage Starnes and
Ernest William Talbert in the volume Classical Myth and Legend in Renaissance Dictionaries have also
shown the debt of Renaissance English poets and dramatists to various Classical dictionaries, especially the
dictionary of Robert and Charles Stephanus, which were available at English schools and universities (Stames
and Talbert, 1973: 9). These dictionaries included short entries for various figures of Greco-Roman myth. The
description of Prometheus is telling, for it represents a culmination of the various stories from Hesiod
onwards, with a preference for the late version of the myth in which Prometheus is both the creator of humans
and a sage. Variations exist from one dictionary to another, but the prototype of the Classical dictionaries of
Renaissance England, the Elucidarius Poeticus of the Dutch scholar Herman Torrentinus (first edition, 1498;
eleven editions through 1518) describes Prometheus as the son of lapetos, who fashioned images from clay
and later created men. In addition, according to Torrentinus, Prometheus went to heaven and stole fire with
which he gave his men life. These actions angered Jupiter [sic] who thereafter caused Prometheus to be bound
to the Caucasus and sent the eagle to eat his heart [sic] (Stames and Talbert, 1973: 8). Especially interesting is
the last point, the remark that Jupiter's eagle was sent to eat Prometheus's heart. A later English Classical
dictionary, compiled by Thomas Cooper in 1565, explained the eating of the heart as signifying that
"[Prometheus] was studious and a great astronomer" (123). The figure of Prometheus as astronomer harkens
back to the Aeschylean play; at the same time, one is tempted to see in the figure of the sixteenth-century
astronomer a Renaissance manifestation of Prometheus.

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The aspect of the Prometheus legend that remains constant throughout the Renaissance, regardless of whether
Prometheus is a creator of men, is the punishment in the Caucasus. The binding of Prometheus to the
mountainside and the attack of a great bird sent by Zeus, whether eagle or vulture, remain constant in the
Greco-Roman sources and figure not only in the dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the like which the
Renaissance dramatists are likely to have used, but also in illustrated works such as Andrea Alciati's
Emblemata, especially editions with commentary by Claudius Minos (Claude Mignault), and the previously
mentioned painting by Rubens and Snyders from 1618.34 Also of interest is an illustration in a 1510 edition of
Cicero's Tusculanae Quaestiones, printed in Venice, which shows a standing Prometheus, tied to a rocky edge
and attacked by the eagle. The Prometheus of this illustration looks less like a Greek Titan and, with his beard,
cap, and gown, more like a Renaissance humanist or scientist.35

The icon of the defiant Prometheus bound to a rocky cliff and attacked by an eagle is powerful and potentially
useful both to those who sympathize with the rebel and those who sympathize with the forces of law and
order. The attitude of a given culture towards intellectually motivated rebellion against God, the state, or both,
is reflected in the type of Prometheus myth it produces. Thus, the mid-fifth-century B.C. conception seems to
have placed emphasis on Prometheus as the unjustly persecuted rebel, whereas the Imperial Roman
productions, perhaps especially during the Flavian era, tried to emphasize the just punishment of an
anarchistic rebel at the hands of a just state. The Germanic Titan in the anonymous Historia von D. Johann
Fausten (Frankfurt am Main, 1587) reflects an orthodox Lutheran view in which Faustus is bound to fail, for
he attempts to take his destiny in his own hands, something only God can do. Moreover, in spite of Faustus's
late talk of repentance, he still despairs of grace and thus, as Butler notes, "was incapable of real repentance"
(1952: 6; see also 10 - 11). Furthermore, one detects pride in this despair: Faustus views his own sins as so
great that not even God can forgive them. In his role as the English Prometheus, Faustus reflects the
progressive mentality of the sixteenth century which questioned not only the rebel, but also the ethics
operating in the system against which he rebelled (Mebane, 1989: 114; 122 - 123; 124). How-ever, unlike the
Greek Prometheus who is ultimate-ly reconciled with Zeus, no Faustus until Goethe's Faust (and one must
wait until Part Two of that play) is saved.

While iconography helps link the Classical figure of Prometheus to the medieval and Renaissance figure of
Faustus, in the Faust-Bücher the Renaissance figure is linked to his Classical prototype.36 An allusion to
Prometheus, or at least to Tityos, whose case I shall discuss momentarily, in the Caucasus appears in the
history of the Faust legend and is recorded, with minor variations, in both the Historia (Chapter 27) and the
English Faust-Book (Chapter 23). In this segment of the Faust-Biucher, Faustus, together with
Mephostophilis, visits the Caucasus. Faustus stands in the mountains and beholds many lands and kingdoms.
He looks over all the world and beyond, hoping to see Paradise, but dares not tell Mephostophilis of his
desire. He looks into India and Scythia, and sees fire coming from heaven. He also sees four rivers. At last, he
asks his diabolical companion about the rivers. Mephostophilis answers that Paradise lies in the east, that the
fire Faustus sees is the defense of the garden, the clear light is an angel with a fiery sword, and the water, the
rivers of Paradise. Moreover, he tells Faustus that, although he appears to be close to Paradise, he has never
been so far away.

The story of Faustus in the Caucasus as related in the Faust-Bücher seems to be the first concrete linking of
the two traditions. The connection is made by means of an allusion, but the allusion is significant. Regardless
of the relative obscurity of developed primary sources about the exploits of the Titan, an allusion to the
Caucasus in the mind of any educated person during the Renaissance would have been enough to call forth at
least the simplified figure known from Roman poetry and secondary sources such as the Classical dictionaries,
encyclopedias, and illustrated manuals. From this simple recognition, the reader of the Historia or the English
Faust Book would easily have made a number of associations. He would have recognized that, like
Prometheus, Faustus at this point in his career has become a polymath. His climb in the mountains
symbolically underlines his elevated position above his peers: he stands above the world and above all men
symbolically and actually, and he can survey all human accomplishments. However, like Prometheus, the fate

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of being in the Caucasus also makes clear his status as an outcast, one who is not quite human any more, but
who is also separated from the divine sphere and, indeed, is punished by God. The punishment of Prometheus
in the Caucasus, the point emphasized in the Classical handbooks and illustrated in Alciati's widely known
work, would finally have underlined the similarities and suggested a likely end for Faustus's own hubristic
activities.37 The similarities between the tempting view Mephostophilis offers Faustus and the temptation of
Christ by the devil known from the Gospel of Matthew (4.8 - 9) and the Gospel of Luke (4.5 - 7) would also
have been evident to the Renaissance reader.

Classical mythology, however, also provides the history of another Titan who was punished in the Caucasus.
This figure is Tityos, whom Apollo bound in the Caucasus for the attempted rape of Latona. Tityos, like
Prometheus in some late versions, was attacked by a vulture who ate his liver. The story is not widely known
in its own right; no major author seems to have devoted an entire work to this figure, but his story is
mentioned in a number of major poems, not the least of which is Vergil's Aeneid (6.595ff), a poem with an
uninterrupted history of influence from antiquity onward. With the similarity in the names "Titan" and
"Tityos," and the similar punishment in the same location, confusion or association between Prometheus and
Tityos in the popular imagination is easily made (Scherling, RE, Band VI A,2, cols. 1597 - 1598). The
confusion occurs among artists and art historians as well: Erwin Panofsky notes the confusion of modern
scholars regarding Michelangelo's drawing of Tityos, which he remarks is sometimes misquoted as
Prometheus. Tellingly, Panofsky reports that Rubens used the Michelangelo drawing of Tityos for his painting
Prometheus Bound (216 - 217).

A reiteration of the connection made between Prometheus-Tityos and Faustus in the Caucasus Mountains
occurs, interestingly enough, in two plays presented in Frankfurt am Main about a century and a half after the
appearance in that town of the original Faust-Buch: Unfortunately, one in 1742 October and 1767.38
Unfortunately, neither play text is extant, though announcements of the shows survived, complete with details
of scenes that were to be presented (Palmer and More, 1936: 249 - 251). In both the 1742 and the 1767
productions, Faustus conjures tableaux from antiquity to amuse the Duke of Parma. The 1742 announcement
lists the "vulture of Tityos" as one of Faustus's conjurations, and the 1767 announcement lists the "martyrdom
of Titius" [sic; sc. "Tityos"]. Moreover, in many of the seventeenth-century Faust plays and some of the
puppet shows, Faustus's conjuration of shapes from Classical antiquity ultimately ends with the conjuration of
Helen of Troy, just as in Marlowe's drama. Might the conjuration of Tityos-Prometheus foreshadow the
conjuration of Helen and also serve as a warning to Faustus, which he does not heed, of the dangerous path he
is following? I believe this is the case, and with the scene in the Caucasus in the Faust-Bücher and the
"martyrdom of Tityos" in the Frankfurt Faust plays the Prometheus legend intersects the Faustus legend
concretely.

The road from the Caucasus to Wittenberg stretches many miles and takes many years to travel, especially
when one is tracking a polymorphous Titan and an elusive magician. However, there are many useful signs
along the way from Hesiod to Marlowe which enable the persistent tracker to follow the transformation of the
Prometheus myth. The development of Prometheus as a magician and scientist during the Middle Ages allies
him closely with the occult scientists. With the emergence of the shadowy but historical figure Faustus, and
the rapid, posthumous rise of legends about his magical activities, ground is prepared for a link with
Prometheus. The Historia von D. Johann Fausten makes the first concrete link, although it is a link
anticipated by iconography which shows Prometheus in garb reminiscent of medieval and Renaissance
scholars. Finally, in Christopher Marlowe's full-length drama Doctor Faustus, one sees the sixteenth century's
most profound treatment of titanic ambition and the sound magician as a demi-god.

Notes

1See Justin Glenn's article "Prometheus and Christ," The Classical Bulletin, 62 (Winter 1986) 1: 1-5. Glenn
examines early Christian commentary on Prometheus and Christ, reviews the points of comparison between

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the two figures, and finally considers a few modern theories that attempt to explain the parallels. See also
Trousson's study which includes a chapter entitled "Prometheus Christus?"

2 Opinions about the date at which an orthodoxy was established at Rome are divided. See James McCue's
article, "Bauer's Rechtgldubigkeit und Ketzerei" in the volume Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, edited by Metz,
Schillebeeckx, and Lefebure (1987: 28 - 35). McCue reviews Bauer's standard work on the early church and
heresy, and enters into a debate with Bauer's study.

3 See Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, (1963: 103) for the possibility of two figures named Simon.

4Professor Peter Reid of Tufts University has point-ed out to me that St. Augustine in The Confessions (5.3,
6-7) discusses a famous Manichean named "Faustus," whom Augustine believed was "the devil's decoy."

5 See Palmer and More (1936: 16, 18) for a translation of the passages in Clementine Recognitions in which
Simon makes these claims. Butler, who reviews this passage (1948: 80 - 81), links Simon's efforts at creation
to the Pauline concern about the "evil" nature of matter, the perennial questions about a God who would
create evil, and the later Gnostic and occult-science search for ways of creating life artificially[.]

6 See Palmer and More (1936: 41-42); but cf. Butler (1948: 88) who does not privilege Cyprian as a prototype
for Faustus.

7 See Palmer and More (1936: 58 - 59), and Butler (1948: 91-94).

8 See Palmer and More (1936: 76 n.10); cf. Butler (1948: 92).

9The inexact boundary between occult science and natural science plays an important part in John S.
Mebane's study Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age (1989), and receives specific mention
on pp. 37 - 38. See also Yates (1964: 155) for evidence of the "shifting and uncertain … borders between
genuine science and Hermeticism in the Renaissance.

10Mebane notes (1989: 61-62) that Agrippa's intentions in De incertitude et vanitate scientiarum atque artium
are problematic, and discusses the possibility that the book may be extended irony. Mebane later suggests a
comparison between Agrippa's alleged vacillation and the vacillation of Marlowe's Faustus (71-72).

11Lester Brune (1983) notes, incidentally, that arguments used by the Church to attack magic were also used
against science, since both disciplines seemed to dispense with the orthodox view of religious truth (59) and
apparently placed "human control at the center of man's knowledge" (56).

12See Snell (1982: 24 - 27). Snell notes that ideas such as "faith," "dogma," and "heresy" were "foreign to the
Greeks," and remarks that asebia, "an outrage committed against something sacred," was the "crime for which
the death penalty could be demanded" (26). He goes on to claim that for the Athenians "Socrates was not a
heretic or a dissenter, but an atheist" (26).

13 Bernard Cullen, in his article in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1985: 203), calls Thomas Aquinas's account of heresy "the classic analysis of heresy in the Middle Ages." The
passages from both Grosseteste and Aquinas which I have cited are cited and translated by Cullen in this
article.

14 Smeed suggests that "[a]ccounts dating from later than 1540 should be treated with extreme caution" (I
n.1). The traditional year of Faustus's death is 1540; after this time, Faustus tends to appear in polemical
literature against the devil and witchcraft. In addition, the Faust-Buch is an example of a work that, while

135
claiming to be historia, might be compared favorably with the prose novel. See Baron (1989: passim) for the
Faust-Buch as polemical tract and prose fiction.

15The most important contemporary passages relevant to the historical Faustus are collected on pages 101 -
15 of Der historische Faust, edited by Günther Mahal (1982). Palmer and More have collected these passages
and others, and generally print the original text (Latin or German) and provide English translations.

16Professor Laurence Senelick of Tufts University has pointed out to me the medieval Roman Church's
equation of deviant sexual conduct with heresy, and notes the derivation of the English word "bugger" from
words relating to the Bulgarians, who during the Middle Ages were widely held to be heretics. Moreover, he
has called my attention to "a facetious humanist tradition" in which pederasty, together with the method of
question-and-answer, was considered to be one aspect of Socratic teaching. Finally, he notes that those
convicted of sodomy, like those convicted of other heresies, were burned alive.

17Butler (1948: 122) offers an intriguing answer to the puzzle posed by the two different names. She
speculates that Johann and Jorg might have been "brothers and possibly even twins."

18The date at which Marlowe wrote Doctor Faustus, whether he completed the play during his lifetime, and
the publication history of the play, are questions of perennial interest for Marlovian scholars. Clifford Leech
(1987: 16 - 20) takes up many of these issues. Most recently, Mebane (1989: 120) has reasserted the belief
that 1592 is "the most probable date of the composition of Dr. Faustus."

19 Henning (1982a: 85j fits the invention of printing into his review of Faust in the sixteenth century.
Moreover, there was confusion at an early date between Faustus, the scholar-conjuror, and Fust, the printer
and assistant of Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. The confusion stems in part from the similarity of
the names and the alternative spelling of "Fust" as "Faust." On the title page of one of the Bibles he printed,
Fust's name appears as "Dr. Fust," presumably an abbreviation for something like "Druck von Fust," imprint
by Fust, but from this misunderstanding of the abbreviation, one can see how Fust might be confounded with
Faust and be made a doctor in the process. See Smeed's entire chapter on this curious aspect of the Faust
legend (1975: 99 - 109, esp. p. 102).

20Regarding Marlowe's play I make two assumptions: first, that the original play was written in 1592, and,
second, that the so-called B-text of 1616 is the more authentic edition. All my citations are from Sylvan
Barnet's edition of the play which favors the B-text.

21Mebane, in the chapter of his book on Renaissance magic entitled "Vision and Illusion in Marlowe's Dr.
Faustus," identifies three general categories of scholarly opinion on "Marlowe's attitude toward the subversive
currents of thought which are evoked in the play," These are: (1) Marlowe's beliefs are mirrored in both
Faustus and Mephostophilis; (2) Marlowe offers Faustus as a character who has sinned and deserves
damnation, an "entirely orthodox" interpretation of the play; and (3) Marlowe is ambivalent (1989: 115).

Jonathan Dollimore offers an alternative view in his book Radical Tragedy (1993). For Dollimore, Marlowe's
play is "an exploration of subversion through transgression" (109), and he believes that rather than stopping
further inquiry, Faustus's discovery of limits provokes subversive questioning (110).

As noted above, I believe Marlowe's attitude is ambivalent.

22This opening, incidentally, will become a standard feature of both puppet plays and other dramas dealing
with Faust.

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23 The etymology of the name "Mephostophilis" is obscure. Attempts have been made to explain the name as
if it came from the Greek me photo philes ("no friend to light)" or me Fausto philes ("no friend to Faust") or
from the Hebrew mephir ("destroyer") and tophel ("liar"), or mephostophiel ("destroyer of the good").
Scholars are not united in accepting one etymology, and the name's origin remains shrouded in mystery. See
Butler (1948: 132) and the article "Mephisto, Mephistopheles" in Brockhaus Enzyklopddie (Zwolfter Band.
MAI-MOS. Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1971).

Orthographically, the name can cause confusion. "Mephostophilis" or "Mephostophiles" refers to the
character in the Faust-Bücher and Marlowe's play; "Mephistopheles" and the shortened form "Mephisto" are
the usual spellings from Goethe's time on.

24Demogorgon has occasionally played a part in the complex history of the Prometheus legend. Beginning
with Theodontius and continuing in Boccaccio, Demogorgon, a figure who never appears in any Classical
source, crops up as the progenitor of the gods and, in this role as creator, plays his part in the Prometheus
myth at least through Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. Trousson notes that the name "Demogorgon would be
the corruption of Demiourgos [from the Greek], creator of the world since the neo-Platonic philosophers"
(324 n. 78). Seznec puts it best when he writes: "Demogorgon is a grammatical error, become god" (1953:
222). See Seznec (222; 227; 235 n.56; 282; 306; 312; and 317) and Trousson (89; 321; 325; 328 - 29; 331;
332-333) for further details.

25Otto Heller (1931: 40 - 42) deals with the pact scene chiefly as it develops between Marlowe's play and
Goethe's; but he, too, considers the pact scene as one of the traditional elements in the Faust legend.

26See Starnes and Talbert (1973: 120 - 123) for references to and discussion of Shakespeare's limited use of
the Prometheus myth. The authors also mention a passage in Titus Andronicus in which the proper noun
"Prometheus" is used, again in a context where sexual relations are important. Aaron speaks of Tamora and
remarks that she is "faster bound to Aaron's charming eyes / Than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus," (2.1.16 -
17).

27 Smeed remarks that in the Historia printed by Spies "it requires some effort of the imagination" for
moderns to realize that Faustus possesses knowledge "unlawfully" (1975: 59). Following Dedeyan, whom he
cites, Smeed (82 n.2) notes that "Mephisto's replies to Faustus [in Marlowe] show no more than the wisdom of
a sixteenth-century Humanist." Mebane echoes this idea in his claim that Marlowe's play points to the
absurdity and tyranny of suppressing scientific research and persecuting the scientist-philosopher.

28 An alternative interpretation of the horns is possible and may supplement my primary suggestion. The stag
in Christian iconography often represents Christ: one thinks of the legend of St. Eustace and of Albrecht
Durer's print from c. 1501 on the conversion of Eustace after he has seen a stag with a Crucifix between its
horns. Perhaps Faustus's transitive magic used against Benvolio unveils Benvolio's Christianity, and shows
symbolically the distance between a Christian knight of the Holy Roman Empire and Faustus, the liege of
Hell.

29 There are a number of parallels between the final act of Marlowe's play and the Aeschylean Prometheus
Bound as a whole. Faustus, like Prometheus, is "bound" and cannot move from his location or his
circumstances. Others, such as the scholars, the Good and Bad Angels, the Old Man, and Helen, come to visit
the passive subject, Faustus, just as the chorus of Okeanids, Okeanos, and lo come to visit the passive
Prometheus. Moreover, each of these Marlovian characters has a reflection in Aeschylus's play. Faustus's final
visit from Mephostophilis, an agent of a more powerful being directly responsible for Faustus's fate,
announces the doom about to fall on him, just as Hermes, sent by Zeus, announces the ruin about to fall on
Prometheus.

137
30For a concise account of Giordano Bruno, see the chapter "Giordano Bruno in Legend and History," in
Michel (1973). Yates's discussion in Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964) is a full account, and
includes details on Bruno's predecessors.

31 See Raggio (1958: 52) and her Plate 7c for a reproduction of da Besozzo's illustration.

32 Trousson (1976: 73) calls the citation from Tertullian "the only phrase to my knowledge, which seems to
authorize the thesis of assimilation [between Prometheus and Christ before modern times]." Modern
comparisons are not lacking, and seem to date from remarks made in 1663 by Thomas Stanley in the edition
of Aeschylus's Greek texts he published in London. The comparison spread thereafter to France where
d'Holbach and then Edgar Quinet furthered its dissemination. See Trousson (73 - 76) for a discussion of the
Prometheus-Christ comparison in the modern world and for references. More recently Justin Glenn (1986) has
investigated the associations.

33 The Historia makes no mention of Prometheus or for that matter the Titans, as Levin notes (1989: 5),
although he calls attention to a reference in the Historia of the rebellion of the Giants against the Olympian
gods.

34 The first edition of the Emblemata, printed in Augsburg, dates to 1531. Raggio notes that the illustration of
Prometheus can be compared to a 1497 Italian woodcut representing the punishment of Tityos, which is found
in an edition of the Metamorphoses. The definitive edition of Alciati's Emblemata was published in 1534 in
Paris by Christian Wechel (Raggio 1958: 55 - 56).

Alciati's book was valuable for providing an image of Prometheus Patens; but it also helped confound the
stories of the theft of the fire and the creation of man. Stames and Talbert note that in particular the 1608
edition of Alciati with Minos's commentary, as well as Erasmus's De Conscribendis, Calepine's Dictionarium,
Stephanus's Dictionarium, and Cooper's Thesaurus, added to the confusion. The authors also remark that an
oral tradition probably influenced the transmission of the myth (Starnes and Talbert, 1973: 122).

35 See Raggio (1958: 53).

36 Panofsky, in his thought-provoking introduction to Studies in Iconology (1967) writes about the "active
interest in classical themes regardless of classical motifs, centered in the northern region of Europe" as a
"proto-humanistic movement" (24). He has the visual arts in mind, and his theory of the proto-humanistic
movement in Northern Europe finds support in the representations of Prometheus mentioned above. I find it
fascinating that the reverse is true for Faustus, who, in a literary work, the Historia, is connected with the
Classical figures of Prometheus and Tityos.

37 For a discussion of Prometheus in the visual arts from antiquity to the eighteenth century, see Raggio's
article (1958) and the accompanying illustrations. She provides commentary on the origins of the visual
tradition and pursues the topic to 1762. The strength of her contribution lies in the sections on the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance. The introduction is somewhat cursory, as is the history of Prometheus-related art
works after the seventeenth century.

38I would like to take this opportunity to correct an earlier error. In the article "A sound magician is a
demi-god (Marlowe, Dr. Faustus [1.1.59]): Faustus as the Renaissance Prometheus" which I published in
Shakespeare and Renaissance Association of West Virginia Selected Papers 17(1994): 37-55, reference is
made to "two puppet shows presented in Frankfurt am Main … one puppet show in 1742, and another in
October 1767, during the eighteen-year old Goethe's residence in that city" (49). I erred in referring to these
shows as "puppet shows"; in reality, each show was performed by a troupe of actors. The performance of
1742 was given by the Hochteutsche Comodianten (High-German Comedians), and in 1767 in Frankfurt a

138
troupe directed by Joseph Felix von Kurz performed a Faust play (Creizenach, 1878: 9-12); Palmer and More,
1936: 249-251). Moreover, Creizenach claims that Goethe would have been unable to attend the 1767
performance because he was in Leipzig at that time (183); but since I have been unable to find a precise date
for the performance and the precise whereabouts of Goethe for the entire month of October 1767, it still seems
possible to me that the eighteen-year-old Goethe may have seen the Kurz production of Faust.

Bibliography

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Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Authors: Editions and Translations

Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound. Translated with introduction by David Grene in The Complete Greek
Tragedies. Edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956.

——. Murray, Gilbert, ed. Aeschyli septem quae supersunt tragoediae. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938.

——. Griffith, Mark, ed. Prometheus Bound. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

——. Page, Denys, ed. Aeschyli septem quae supersunt tragoediae. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.

——. Prometheus Bound. Translated by James Scully and C. John Herington. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989.

——. Aesclhylus. Greek with English translation by H. Weir Smyth. Two volumes. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1973.

——. Prometheus Bound. Translated by Philip Vellacott. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologia. Latin with English translations. Herbert McCabe, general ed. New
York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1964.

Aristophanes. The Birds. Translated by William Arrowsmith in Aristophanes. Three Comedies. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1969.

——. The Birds. Greek with English translation by B. B. Rogers. In Aristophanes. Three volumes. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Augustine, Aurelius. Confessions. Translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.

——. Confessions. Latin with English translation by William Watts. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1950.…

Cicero. Tusculan Disputations. Latin with English Translation by J. E. King. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1945.

Hesiod. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica. Greek with an English translation by H. G.
Evelyn-White. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982.

——. Theogony, Works and Days, Shield. Translation, introduction, and notes by Apostolos N. Athanassakis.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.…

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Revised English Bible with Apocrypha. Oxford and Cambridge University Presses, 1989.…

Tertullian. Adversus Marcionem. Edited and Translated by Ernest Evans. Two volumes. Oxford: Clarendon
Press. 1972.…

Vergil. Aeneid. Latin with English translation by H. Rulston Fairclough. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1986.…

Sixteenth-Century German Authors and Faust-Bücher

Benz, Richard, ed. Historia von D. Johann Fausten. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam Jun., 1986.

Luther, Martin. Luther's Works. American Ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann, general eds.
Fifty-five volumes. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1962.

Palmer, Philip Mason, and Robert Pattison More. Sources of the Faust Tradition from Simon Magus to
Lessing. New York: Oxford University Press, 1936.

Editions of Works by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare

Barnet, Sylvan, ed. Doctor Faustus. New York: New American Library, 1969.

Boas, Frederick S., ed. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. New York: Gordian Press, 1966.

Bowers, Fredson, ed. The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1973.

Evans, G. Blakemore Evans, textual ed. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1974.

Gill, Roma, ed. The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe. Vol. II. Doctor Faustus. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1990.…

Secondary Sources
Barnet, Sylvan, ed. Doctor Faustus. By Christopher Marlowe. New York: Penguin Books, 1969.

Baron, Frank. "George Lukacs on the Origins of the Faust Legend." In Four Hundred Years of Faust.
Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1989, pp. 1-25.…

Boas, Frederick S. Christopher Marlowe: A Biographical and Critical Study. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940…

Brune, Lester H. "Magic's Relation to the Intellectual History of Western Civilization." Journal of Thought 18
(1983): 55 - 64.…

Butler, E. M. The Fortunes of Faust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952.

——. The Myth of the Magus. Cambridge University Press, 1948.

——. The Tyranny of Greece over Germany. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.…

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Cullen, Bernard. "Heresy." In Volume Six of the Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Joseph R. Strayer,
editor-in-chief. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985.…

Detienne, Marcel, and Jean-Pierre Vemant, eds. The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks. Translated by
Paula Wissing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

——. Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991.

Dodds, E. R. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951.

Dollimore, Jonathan. Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his
Contemporaries. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. 2nd ed.…

Glenn, Justin. "Prometheus and Christ." The Classical Bulletin. 62 (Winter 1986) 1: 1 - 5.…

Griffith, Mark, ed. Prometheus Bound. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.…

Heller, Otto. Faust and Faustus: A Study of Goethe's Relation to Marlowe. St. Louis: Washington University
Studies, 1931.

Henning, Hans. "Faust im 16. Jahrhundert." In Der historische Faust: Ein wissenschaftliches Symposium.
Knittlingen: 1982 (a).

——. "Nach 500 Jahren—unsere Kentnisse vom historischen Faust." In Der historische Faust: Ein
wissenschaftliches Symposium. Knittlingen: 1982 (b).…

Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963.…

Leech, Clifford. Christopher Marlowe: Poet for the Stage. New York: AMS Press, 1987.…

Levin, Harry. "A Faust Typology." In Four Hundred Years of Faust. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1989.

——. The Overreacher. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Raw and The Cooked. Translated by John and Doreen Weightman. New York:
Octagonal Books, 1979.…

Mahal, Günther, ed. Der historische Faust: Ein wissenschaftliches Symposium. Knittlingen. 1982.…

Mebane, John S. Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1989.…

Michel, Paul-Henri. The Cosmology of Giordano Bruno. R.E.W. Maddison, trans. New York: Cornell
University Press, 1973.…

Palmer, Philip Mason, and Robert Pattison More. Sources of the Faust Tradition from Simon Magus to
Lessing. New York: Oxford University Press, 1936.

Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York: Harper
& Row, Publishers, 1967. [Reprint]…

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Raggio, Olga. "The Myth of Prometheus: Its Survival and Metamorphoses up to the Eighteenth Century."
Journal of the Warburg and Courtland Institutes XXI (1958): 44 - 62.…

Scherling, Karl. "Tityos." Real-Encyclopddie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart: J. B.

Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1936, cols. 1593-1609.…

Seznec, Jean. The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance
Humanism and Art. Translated by Barbara F. Sessions. New York: Pantheon Books, 1953.

Smeed, J. W. Faust in Literature. London: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Snell, Bruno. The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature. Translated by T. G.
Rosenmeyer. New York: Dover Books, 1982.…

Starnes, Dewitt Talmage, and Ernest William Talbert. Classical Myth and Legend in Renaissance
Dictionaries. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973.…

Strauss, Albert. "How to Read a Volksbuch: The Faust Book of 1587." In Four Hundred Years of Faust.
Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1989.

Taplin, Oliver. The Stagecraft of Aeschylus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.…

Trousson, Raymond. La Theme de Promethée dans la Litterature Européene. Deux Tomes. Geneve: Librairie
Droz, 1976.…

Yates, Frances A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.

——. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.…

Ian Watt (essay date 1996)

SOURCE: "The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus," in his Myths of Modern
Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp.
27-47.

[In the following essay, Watt demonstrates that through his play Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
guaranteed the longevity of the Faust legend while altering it to suit Renaissance tastes as well as his own
individuality and Faustian-like temperament.]

The English Faust Book

The Faustbuch was a tremendous success, on an international scale. Within two years there were some sixteen
German versions, including additions to the original book, and a version in verse. The story soon spread
abroad, with translations into Low German, Dutch, and French. In England the story of Faust had been
referred to as early as 1572. In 1592 there appeared The Historie of the Damnable Life, and Deserved Death
of Doctor John Faustus … according to the true Copie printed at Franckfort, and translated into English by P.
F. Gent.1 This English Faust Book was actually a rather free adaptation, but it was to be almost the sole
source of major elements of Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of
Doctor Faustus, which was probably written later in the same year.

Christopher Marlowe

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Through a whole series of fortunate coincidences the cunning of history ensured that the story of Faust, unlike
many other popular vagrant tales, was not relegated to the limbo of forgotten ephemera. More than anyone
else it was Marlowe who established the myth; his tragic version of Faust's story lived on in the literary and
theatrical tradition until Goethe finally gave it much larger scope two centuries later.

The three greatest pieces of luck in this process were: first, that the English translation of the Faustbuch came
out in the period when the great age of the Elizabethan theatre was beginning; second, that it became known
to Marlowe, then the country's greatest dramatist, in the last year of his life and at the height of his powers;
and third, that Marlowe happened to be an anima naturaliter Faustiana himself.

Adapting the Faust story to the stage at this time had important implications. Most obviously, the Elizabethan
theatre was a popular and vital force in its own right, and heavily influenced the way the narrative was
presented for the stage; moreover, the dramatic form, of its very nature, required that the story be reduced to
its essentials. Although a great deal of the miscellaneous buffoonery of the Faust Books remained, Marlowe
did much to elevate the central character and his life to tragic dignity. He omitted many of the more
demeaning features of the story as it had come down to him: for instance, the petty aspects of Faust's magic
powers are reduced—there is less of the tedious moralizing, much less of the alchemical tricks, and none of the
activities as picklock, calendar-maker, and weather-forecaster to which the petit-bourgeois mind of the author
of the Faustbuch made Faust turn as practical ways of using his astrological talents. And while Marlowe's
Doctor Faustus no longer shows the comic cowardice Faust exhibits in the Faustbuch, the role of Helen is
transformed, largely by a process of omission. Marlowe gives us the famous invocation and then she simply
disappears, leaving her role as Faustus's paramour to our imaginations, whereas in the Faust Books she lives
with Faust and has a son.

To this process of elevation by omission must be added the more positive transformations brought about by
Mar-lowe's poetic greatness. There is, perhaps, nothing more difficult in literature than to give reality to the
three basic themes of the Faust myth—the excitement of know-ledge, earthly beauty, and spiritual damnation.
Marlowe triumphs in all three, and in so doing for the first time gives his protagonist a movingly sympathetic
voice.

One basis for this identification with Faust is personal and psychological. The evidence about the life of
Christopher Marlowe is almost as puzzling, and yet richly suggestive, as that for George Faust; it allows us to
infer that—for all the differences of period, education, and career—the two men had many basic intellectual and
moral attitudes in common. Restless, vain, ambitious, they both waged a lonely, devious, and bitter warfare
against many of the established opinions of their time, and the circumstances of their own dangerous and
disappointing lives.2

Marlowe seems to have gone far beyond George Faust in the boldness of his anti-religious thought and
expression.3 He was suspected of heresy.4 According to his friend, the dramatist Thomas Kyd, speaking under
the pressure of torture and imprisonment, Marlowe was accustomed to "iest at the devine scriptures gybe at
praiers, & stryve in argument to frustrate & confute what hath byn spoke or wrytt by prophets & such holie
men."5 Much the same allegations were made by a government agent, Richard Baines, who spoke of
Marlowe's "damnable Judgment of Religion, and scorn of God's word." Marlowe, he said, had argued, among
other things, that the human race was older than the Book of Genesis implied; that "Moyses was but a Jugler"
who imposed upon "the Jewes being a rude & grosse people"; that "Christ was a bastard and his mother
dishonest"; that the twelve disciples were "base fellowes neyther of wit nor worth"; and that "the first
beginning of Religioun was only to keep men in awe."6

Marlowe's defiance of established orthodoxy was not limited to religious matters. According to Baines, he
said that "all they that love not Tobacco & Boies were fooles"; and that "St. John the Evangelist was
bedfellow to Christ."7 There was also an interest in the occult: he was associated with a somewhat mysterious

143
circle of speculative intellectuals, sometimes known as "The School of Night," who were interested, among
other things, in magic.8 Finally, he also belonged to a marginal social milieu—the London street people of
tavern-brawlers, petty cheats, and daggers for hire: he apparently served as a government agent, and there are
records of his being, as Kyd put it, rash "in attempting soden pryvie injuries to men."9

Marlowe's last days on earth embodied the conflicts of his life. On May 18, 1593, the Privy Council ordered
his arrest, possibly because of his alleged heretical remarks; but before the matter could be taken further, he
was killed in a tavern brawl with three men, none of them very reputable, and two of them government agents
or spies.10

Marlowe's major contributions to the substance of the Faust myth may be summarized under three headings:
individual vocational choice; academic alienation; and eternal damnation.

The Academy and Vocational Choice

The original Faust may not have earned his self-assumed title of Dr. George Faust of Heidelberg, but he was a
compulsive aspirant, if not to learning itself, at least to its prestige, and its rewards. In his later literary
reincarnations the academic connection became central, no doubt because it fitted into a deep-seated tradition:
the ancient punitive myths of the dangers of knowledge, like Pandora's box, or the tree of knowledge in
Genesis. In the Middle Ages, this tradition took the form of assuming a necessary connection between the
pursuit of knowledge and the practice of nefarious magical arts: many learned men, including the great
scholar Albertus Magnus, to say nothing of all eighteen popes between John XII (965-72) and Gregory VII
(1073-85), were popularly converted into practitioners of black magic.11 The connection between learning and
magic was strengthened by the fact that magic—especially astrology and alchemy, not then clearly
distinguished from astronomy and chemistry—was taught in universities. Several early accounts state that the
historical Faust had studied at Cracow, which was famous for its magical studies;12 and many of the
practitioners of neo-Platonic magic, especially those who sought to apply it to the control of the material
world, were accused of having made pacts with the devil: the charge was made against two of Faust's most
famous contemporaries, Paracelsus and Agrippa, who were widely regarded as sorcerers and practitioners of
black magic.

There was probably another reason for strengthening Faust's academic connection. By transferring him to the
most famous of the new German universities, Wittenberg (founded in 1502), and by making him a genuine
doctor of divinity, a neat polar opposition was effected between Faust and the most famous of Wittenberg's
teachers, Luther. The fame of Wittenberg must itself have helped to identify Faust as representative of the
dangers of intellectual professions, a characteristic which was to cling to him as the myth developed.

It was the Faustbuch that had definitively transferred Faust to Wittenberg, arousing indignant comment in so
doing. In the third edition of his work on magicians, a distinguished alumnus of the university, Augustin
Lercheimer (real name Witekind), protested that the real Faust actually "had neither house nor home at
Wittenberg or elsewhere … lived like a vagabond, was a parasite, drunkard, and gourmand, and supported
himself by his quackery" (S, p. 120). But what most aroused Lercheimer's indignation was the libel on his
university: "That in such a university, a man whom Melanchthon used to call a cesspool of many devils
should have been master, to say nothing of Doctor of Theology … would be an eternal disgrace to the degree
and honourable title."13

The Faustbuch does not pay as much attention as Marlowe to the intellectual aspects of the story. Still, in its
own crude and inchoate way, it presents the basic conflict: the wish to go beyond the current bounds of
knowledge, which leads the hero of the Faustbuch to embrace magic because mere "men are unable to instruct
me any further" (HF [Historia von D. Johann Fausten: Neudruck des Faust-Buches von 1587, edited by Hans
Henning (Halle, 1963)], p. 22). When Mephistopheles tries to close off Faust's questions about hell on the

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grounds that the truth will only make him unhappy, Faust rather grandly answers: "I will know, or I no longer
want to go on living" (HF, p. 38).

The author of the English Faust Book, unlike the original George Faust or the author of the Faustbuch, seems
to have been university-educated. He makes Faust, for the first time, a genuine intellectual: the "Rectors and
sixteene Masters" who examine him find that "none for his time were able to argue with him." There is no
equivalent singling out of Faust's exceptional intellectual capacity in the Faustbuch, nor in George Faust's
own description of himself in the visitors' book of the University of Padua as "Doctor Faustus the unsatiable
Speculator" (S, pp. 135-36, 176).

Marlowe set his Faustus much more firmly in an academic environment. He added most of the scenes with the
scholars, who hardly figure at all in the Faust Book; and although the play is very far from being simply a
dramatized philosophical debate, it shows a much wider range of knowledge than do earlier versions. More
importantly, it gives a much greater intensity to Faust's intellectual life. This is particularly evident in
Marlowe's first scene, which has no model in earlier versions of the story.

In this opening scene we see Faustus in his study passing all the branches of academic knowledge under a
very unfavorable review:

Settle thy studies Faustus, and begin

To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess.
(1.1.30-31)14

He begins with logic—unmentioned in the Faustbuch—but soon decides that if its "chiefest end" is merely "to
dispute well," he need "read no more" since he has learned that art already; in any case, he thinks that "A
greater subject fitteth Faustus wit." Next he considers medicine; but he has already won fame as a doctor, "Yet
art thou still but Faustus, and a man" (1.1.53). Medicine would only be worthwhile if it would work miracles:
"Coulds't thou make men to live eternally / Or being dead, raise them to life again, / Then this profession were
to be esteemd." The law is a career fit only for "a mercenary drudge." Even theology, which promises so much
more, ends up by demonstrating that since no human being can escape sin and the wages of sin is death,
religion teaches us that "we must die, an everlasting death" (1.1.47).

Only magic remains. Magic has always stood as a promise to take the individual beyond the present limits of
his knowledge. More particularly, it offers the very powers in which Faustus has found orthodox knowledge
to be deficient: the philosopher's stone might give immortal life; and necromancy might raise the dead. The
demonic spirits will enable man to transcend the boundaries of the learning he has acquired; they will
"Resolve me of all ambiguities" (1.1.87). In the famous lines Faustus loses himself in rapture at the thought of
what magic will bring him:

O, what a world of profit and delight,

Of power, of honour, of omnipotence
Is promised to the studious artisan!
All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command, Emperors and Kings,
Are but obey'd in their several provinces:
Nor can they raise the wind, or rend the clouds;
But his dominion that exceeds in this,
Stretcheth as far as does the mind of man.
A sound Magician is a mighty god:
Here Faustus try thy brains to gain a deity.
(1.1.54-64)

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Here we feel we are in touch with a consciousness very typical of the conception of the Faustian man as the
myth later established him, a universalist view of knowledge, and an absolutist view of the primacy of the
individual ego. The particular role Faustus gives to magic is very close to the equation of knowledge and
power that inspired Marlowe's contemporary, Francis Bacon: in the development of applied knowledge, the
divinization of man and the complementary displacement of God are immanent. It is significant that, whereas
Faustus's assertion that "A sound Magician is a mighty god" ("Demi-god" in the 1616 text) has no equivalent
in the Faustbuch, Marlowe—presumably by accident—makes him echo George Faust's claim to be "the
demigod of Heidelberg" (S, p. 87).

From a historical perspective, the particular situation in the opening scene of Doctor Faustus can be seen as a
symbolic enactment of a crucial rite of passage in modern society: the problem of choosing an intellectual or
academic specialty, with all its momentous importance for the individual's future life.

Here again Marlowe is closer than the Faust Books to what we can suppose to be the motives of the original
George Faust. In the Faust Book the pact with the devil clearly manifests a wicked pride that is not content
"with that vocation whereunto it hath pleased God to call them" (S, p. 142); the closest Marlowe comes to this
orthodox warning against trying to better one's station in the social order is when the chorus concludes the
play with the reflection that Faustus's "hellish fall" should warn the wise against unlawful knowledge, "whose
deepness doth entice such forward wits, / To practice more than heavenly power permits" (Epilogue, lines
7-8).

Academic Alienation

The medieval idea that it was the individual's religious and moral duty to stay within his assigned place in the
social hierarchy was directly contrary to the ideology of modern individualist society, which supposes that
each individual should have the same equal opportunity both to make a free choice of career and to attempt to
realize it as best he or she can. The social and academic systems are supposed to provide equality of
opportunity in preparing each individual for a vocational choice, with all its fateful consequences. Theoretical
support for this egalitarian attitude had already been latent in the ideas of both the Renaissance and the
Reformation, and a real, though uneven, expansion of educational opportunity had occurred, especially in
Protestant countries. One probable basis for the development of the Faust story, indeed, was the popular
response to the enormous spread of university education. Wittenberg was but one of the many new
universities that proliferated in Germany during the sixteenth century. A similar expansion occurred in
England, where admissions to Oxford and Cambridge apparently tripled in the three decades between 1560
and 1590.15 The need for educated ministers of the new Church of England was one reason for this: such
primarily religious motives led to the foundation or expansion of several colleges, and created many
scholarships to send poor boys to university.

In this Christopher Marlowe was a typical case. Son of a Canterbury shoemaker, he went to King's School
Canterbury on a scholarship, and then to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, on money given by the humanist
Archbishop Parker. Marlowe was intending to take holy orders, but when he left Cambridge in 1587 it was to
make his living as a writer. He belonged to a group of writers, the "University Wits," who, as their title
indicates, represented some kind of collective reaction to the disparity between the vast expectations that the
academy aroused and the meager opportunities of realizing them that society afforded. The careers and
achievements of the University Wits—who included Thomas Lodge, George Peele, Robert Greene, and
Thomas Nashe—were various, but had some traits in common, two of which are particularly important for our
theme. First, though the Wits had been formed by classical humanistic studies, and most of them were
considerable translators from Latin literature, they were necessarily interested in the more popular vernacular
literary forms—drama, topical pamphlets, and prose fiction—which had a larger audience. Second, they were
restless, "Bohemian," unsatisfied, and scornful: angry young men who found no satisfactory position. Perhaps
coincidentally, most of them died young.

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The University Wits were not an isolated historical phenomenon. For instance, the incompatibility between
the hopes aroused by university learning and the lack of vocational opportunities available to realize them are
the subject of the Parnassus Plays, produced in about the year 1600 by the students of St. John's College,
Cambridge. These plays dramatize the dusty answers that the two main characters—Philomusus, a lover of the
Muses, and Studioso, a lover of learning—encounter as they make their way through the academic curriculum,
and, even more dispiritingly, after they go out to face the world.16 They discover, of course, that the actual
occupational choices open to students are derisory: humiliating dependence on a patron, or casual and
demeaning jobs.

The academic employment crisis that resulted from the great expansion of university education in the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was not merely sociological; it had—or was thought to
have—ideological implications. Thus Thomas Hobbes blamed the revolt against Charles I on the universities,
whose Greek and Roman history made people admire "the glorious name of liberty," and therefore see
monarchy as "tyranny." "The core of rebellion … are the universities," Hobbes wrote, "For it is a hard matter
for men, who do all think highly of their own wits, when they have also acquired the learning of the
university, to be persuaded that they want any ability requisite for the government of a commonwealth."17
Mark H. Curtis finds Hobbes's view exaggerated; he argues rather that "the universities were dangerous …
because they prepared too many men for too few places." Thus in the early seventeenth century the two
universities were graduating more than 400 students every year, which Curtis calculates as 100 more than
there were vacancies in the church. This is only one aspect of a more general process by which the lack of
"opportunities to use their training and talents to the full" led to the formation of "an insoluble group of
alienated intellectuals who individually and collectively became troublemakers in a period of growing
discontent with the Stuart regime.""18

There is, then, good circumstantial evidence for seeing Marlowe as a particular—and very early—case of a
more general modern phenomenon: the growth of an alienated class of intellectuals or, as they were then
called, "malcontents." Many of the emotional and ideological tendencies of that class find their expression in
Doctor Faustus.

For the intellectual elites of the Renaissance, Greece, and Rome were not important merely as a stimulus to
popular and republican political ideas; they also provided liberating ideals of artistic achievement, pagan
sensuousness, and heroic example. It is significant that the only experience Marlowe's Faustus seems to regard
as wholly living up to his ideal expectations is the appearance of Helen. He first summons her up for his
students, who have decided that "Helen of Greece was the admirablest lady that ever lived" (5.1.10); later, to
prevent Faustus from repenting and thus escaping from his clutches, Mephistopheles decides to let him have
"heavenly Helen" as his "paramour." This is the devil's supreme recourse, and when she appears, between two
Cupids, Faustus's rapture is transcendent:

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships?

And burnt the topless Towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss;
Her lips suck forth my soul, see where it flies!
(5.1.91-94)

Seeing her also inspires him to imagine a glorious role for himself:

I will be Paris, and for love of thee,

Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sack'd,
And I will combat with weak Menelaus
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea I will wound Achilles in the heel,

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 And then return to Helen for a kiss.
(5.1.98-103)

Of course, the supreme possibilities of life are derived from the literature of the past; it is through reading that
Faustus can imagine for himself a heroic lover's role so fulfilling that for Helen's glory he will be happy to
sack—is it even, or especially—Wittenberg? All that is precious for Faustus is derived from books;
transcendental aspirations belong to the imagined past; what lies ahead is the hell of the real world, unless
some magic miracle occurs.

The opening scene of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, then, enacts the fateful moment when the individual
attempts to make a vocational choice that can satisfy the expectations that learning and literature have opened
up to his imagination. Of course the vast discrepancy between theory and practice, between what education
professes to achieve and what it can actually bring about, has been both an evident fact and a philosophical
issue since the days of Plato; but what gives the moment when the student "sounds the depths of what thou
wilt profess" an even greater importance in modern society is the wide range of choices offered. and their
determining role in the individual's whole economic and social future.

Behind the play's simple antithesis of sin and punishment we can discern the inevitable contradiction between
transcendental hopes that, at least since the Renaissance, education has awakened in the invidual mind, and
subsequent disappointment with the world as it is. Faust is very particularly the intellectual's myth; how many,
since Marlowe's Faustus, have in their various ways "tried their brains to get a deity," so that they, can realize
their book-born expectations? In this, Marlowe's Faustus can reasonably stand as a prototype of one of the
central, and rather unreal, assumptions of modern secular individualism. This individualism has retained some
of the transcendental aspirations of both the Renaissance and the Reformation, but it cannot find or create a
world in which they can be carried out; only magic can do that. So we may say that, although he could not
know it, Marlowe's Faustus is damned not only by Protestant-ism, but by a larger force which Protestantism
had done much to bring to birth; he is damned as a result of modern individualism; he damns himself forever
so that he can escape from the hell of its unrealized aspirations, which is all he can find in the here and now.

Perpetual Damnation

The effect of Marlowe's play does not much depend on our belief in the wickedness of black magic or in the
actual existence of the devil. However heretical Marlowe's general views may have been, in Doctor Faustus
there is no dissent from orthodoxy in these doctrinal matters. The play's dramatic effect largely depends on its
presentation of issues which were central to the Counter-Reformation's war on secular hedonism and
antinomian individualism: the reality of the terrors of hell, the immortality of the soul, and the possibility of
eternal damnation.

After the fatal contract is signed, hell is the first subject Faustus raises. Initially he does not believe in eternal
torment. "This word 'damnation' terrifies not him," he declares of himself; for he "confounds hell in Elysium,"
the pagan afterlife where he hopes his ghost will "be with the old philosophers" (1.3.61). Mephistopheles
soon, however, disabuses Faustus of his belief that "hell's a fable," remarking, "Aye think so still, till
experience change thy mind" (2.1.128-29). By the end of the play Faustus knows how wrong he was to think
that hell is a "mere old wives' tale," and that "after this life" there is no "pain" (2.1.135-36).

The last scene, like the first, has no real equivalent in the sources. It is Marlowe who for the first time
dramatizes the force of Faustus's damnation by presenting the death directly. Through Faustus's great
soliloquy the experience is rendered subjectively. As we hear the clock strike the stages of Faustus's last hour
on earth, the true nature of the conflict is enacted: it is the solitary ego against time. When Faustus fails to stop
the clock—"The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike" (5.2.68)—and then when the clock strikes
twelve—"O, it strikes, it strikes, now body tum to air / Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!" (5.2.108-9)—we

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experience with him the terrifying reality of the temporal clause of the original compact. "Ugly hell gape not,
come not Lucifer, / I'll bum my books, ah Mephistopheles," Faustus cries (5.2.114-15); and then he is carried
into the gaping jaws of the hell-mouth, an appropriately backward-looking piece of stage furniture from the
morality plays.

Alas! the soul is not part of the temporal order. The question of the immortality of the soul is raised explicitly
both at the beginning and at the end of the play. Before signing the compact, Faustus justifies binding his
"soul" to Lucifer (2.1.50) by saying that he has the right to dispose of it as he wishes (2.1.68). But the
contract, of course, would not be worth Lucifer's while if he was not going to have Faustus's soul for an
immeasurably longer time than the twenty-four years specified. This becomes a central issue in the
penultimate section of the soliloquy, where Faustus develops what was only a brief reference in the Faustbuch
into a final plea that Christ should

Impose some end to my incessant pain:

Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd.
(5.2.93-95)

The reflection that this is impossible makes Faustus inveigh against the immortality of the soul as a heavy and
unjust burden that God has placed on man. He continues:

O, no end is limited to damned souls,

Why were thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or, why is this immortal that thou hast?
Ah Pythagoras' metempsychosis, were that true
This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'd
Unto some brutish beast.
All beasts are happy, for when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements,
But mine must live still to be plagu'd in hell.
Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me!
(5.2.96-105)

Man's unique exposure to endless torment makes Faustus ache to be only an animal—and thus reject what was
commonly supposed to be God's supreme favor to man in putting him at the top of the hierarchical order of
creation; and it may be that it is in this final curse that Marlowe makes his most heretical personal statement.

It was certainly on the issue of the eternity of damnation that the individualist intellectual tradition of the
seventeenth century fought its most tenacious, though still very cautious, battle against traditional Christian
eschatology. Dissent from the doctrine that the majority of souls would be eternally damned, and that
watching their torments was one of the pleasures of the saved, was a dangerous heresy. The Socinians tried to
mitigate the orthodox doctrine by maintaining that only the souls of the blessed had eternal life, and that at
some distant date God might mercifully annihilate the wicked; but the Socinians were not tolerated in most
countries, and it was equally inadvisable to hold Origen's view that God had the power to save any soul, even
that of Satan.19

Logically, of course, the idea that the soul is an independent entity that is not subject to the ego's direction
contradicts the central assumption of individualism; the derivation of that word means "that which cannot be
further divided." Even a century after Marlowe the immortality of damned souls was a doctrine dangerous to
contest openly, so that notable dissenters from orthodoxy on this point—including John Locke and Isaac
Newton—did not express their opinion in public. Locke, however, wrote a private treatise in which he deduced

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from the Bible that there were two different resurrections: the just would be resurrected as spiritual bodies, the
unjust would be resurrected as ordinary bodies to "be cast into hell fire to be tormented there" for a suitable
period. However, he argued, the unjust "shall not live forever" because that would be contrary to the biblical
assertion that the wages of sin is death.20

Marlowe's personal beliefs were probably close to complete atheism; but in Doctor Faustus he does not seem
to have attempted to challenge Christian doctrine directly; and Locke's reluctance to make a public challenge
to the eternity of hell-fire suggests one strong reason why.

Marlowe and the Myth: Some Concluding Reflections

Martyrdom is the test of faith, and the old-fashioned view of Marlowe's Faustus is that, as George Santayana
put it, he is "a martyr to everything that the Renaissance prized,—power, curious knowledge, enterprise,
wealth, and beauty."21 A martyr? Isn't that straining matters rather? Admittedly, Faustus is decent enough; he
is loyal to his emperor, revered by his students, generous to his servant; but there is no suggestion of any wish
to serve others, or to sacrifice anything for them, that we can see.

Moreover, apart from the moments of regret or fear of the future, the course of his life between the fateful
compact and the dreadful reckoning passes before us like something no more guilty than an exceptionally
extended post-doctoral sabbatical: he just has the extra luck to be able to include hell, Olympus, and the starry
skies on his tour, as well as Venice and Rome; and the students, surprisingly enough, make no objection, and
remain loyal to the end.

So when it is all finished, and Faustus in stark terror cries out for divine mercy, we feel that, although his end
may be legally fair and theologically orthodox, it is not just. It is unjust for the same reasons that most of us
find life unjust: because the punishments seem greater than our crimes; because we do not really feel we have
committed "crimes"; or perhaps because from childhood on we have never been wholly persuaded that our
demands on life are unreasonable. Unless we too believe in hell and the immortality of the soul, Faustus
stands in the imagination as the man who is punished just for wanting to have everything—like everybody else.

Nicholas Brooke has written that "all the positive statements of the play, supported by the finest verse, are
against the declared Christian moral."22 From the first and last scenes, together with the intervening
discussions of hell and the apostrophe to Helen of Troy, we can reasonably conclude that Marlowe's main
contribution to the Faust myth was to give a new scope and intensity to the basic conflicts of emerging
individualism. Thus the opening scene, in which the discovery of the vanity of orthodox knowledge prepares
the way for the specious promises of magic, can be considered a particular historical manifestation of a much
more general and enduring complementarity: the infinite expectations and chilling disillusionments that
characterize the educational system in a society where freedom of belief and vocation are regarded as the right
of every individual. What Marlowe thought about hell we do not know; but we can surmise that bitter
experience of the world had led him to concur with Mephistopheles's contrast of the "eternal joys of heaven"
with sublunary existence: "Why this is hell, nor am I out of it" (1.3.76). One hell, in short, is indubitably
real—that of daily existence: as Mephistopheles says, "where we are is hell / And where hell is must we ever
be" (2.1.123-24). As for the doctrine of eternal damnation, it was a problem which Marlowe could neither
resolve nor dismiss. On the one hand Counter-Reformation society had made the eternal punishment of
sinners one of its primary weapons for maintaining any sort of moral and social order; and—as the many plays
of the period about rebels, malcontents, and atheists show—it equated heresy with every kind of criminal and
treasonable behavior. Marlowe had lived his life under that shadow; and yet it was too dangerous for him to
declare publicly, as Locke was later to imply, that the autonomy of the individual cannot co-exist with the
possibility of eternal damnation, in theory—or in practice, unless the individual is willing to pay the ultimate
price.

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In the later days of individualism, of course, being willing to go to hell was a standard notion of the price
individualists must pay. This is attested by such contemporaneous youths as Arthur Rimbaud, who wrote A
Season in Hell (1873), and Huckleberry Finn, who decided in 1884 that to be true to his feelings about what
he ought to do was to affirm "All right, then, I'll go to hell."23 When Faustus is about to sign away "both body
and soul to Lucifer" (2.1.132-33), his blood congeals; he takes this as a warning portent against writing the
words "Faustus gives to thee his soul," but then reflects "Why shouldst thou not? Is not thy soul thine own?"
(2.1.68-69).

He learns that it is not. Whatever may have been Marlowe's own personal beliefs we can be sure that he was
correct in assuming that his audience would have accepted the validity of this discovery. Like the witches of
the period who confessed because they really believed that they did the devil's bidding, so Faustus and his
audience really believed that the unalterable terms of the individual's life included the soul—an invisible but
immortal stranger within, God's hostage, with the devil permanently in waiting.

Which is why we must see the sixteenth-century Faust not as the martyr of individualism but as its scapegoat.
During a period of great ideological tension he became the symbolic figure upon whom were projected the
fears of the anarchic and individualistic tendencies of the Renaissance and the Reformation; his damnation
was the Counter-Reformation's attempt to anathematize the hopes that a more optimistic generation had
cherished and that history had disappointed. The anathema, finally, was itself to fail; but it left behind the
myth of Faust, which was itself a new form of a more ancient and punitive mythological pattern that made
knowledge and immortality a threat to the divine power: when Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of
Eden, "the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil"; the expulsion is
necessary "lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever."24 The legal
form of the obligation that Faustus signs in his own blood gives the punishment a highly modern form; for, as
Henry Sumner Maine wrote, "society … is mainly distinguished from preceding generations by the largeness
of the sphere which is occupied in it by Contract."25

Whether the historical George Faust, or the heroes of the Faust Books, or Marlowe's Faustus, made
knowledge their primary goal is another matter; certainly Marlowe's Faustus soon loses sight of his
intellectual quest. We also notice that none of his grand early ideas of working for the general good, such as
walling "all Germany with brass" (1.1.39), are carried out. More seriously, perhaps, we observe that the scope
of the play, as it proceeds, shrinks from the whole world and the heavens into the narrow locality of
Wittenberg and nearby Anhalt. Such is what W. W. Greg describes as "the progressive fatuity of Faustus's
career."26 The themes of knowledge and damnation are present, but they do not dominate a text that also
contains miscellaneous adventures and farcical tricks: these have their own kind of dramatic effect, and even
human truth, but they undeniably represent a comedown from the heights of ambition, pact, and punishment.

We cannot, then, say that Faustus sells his soul for any one thing: knowledge is one thing; the right of the
individual to damn himself if he chooses is another; but there is also much persisting concern with commoner
matters: power, pleasure, jests, and winning the acclamation of the great. All these are contained in Marlowe's
Faustus, a fact which justifies us in echoing Cleanth Brooks's conclusion that Faustus's retention of his
individuality is "at once his glory and his damnation."27

Notes

1 That is, "P. F., Gent[leman]." A somewhat modernized version of the text is available in S [The Sources of
the Faust Tradition from Simon Magus to Lessing, edited and translated by Philip Mason Palmer and Robert
Pattison More (New York, 1936)], pp. 134-231. Since this chapter was written, a critical edition based on the
1592 text has been published: see The English Faust Book, ed. John Henry Jones (Cambridge, 1994).

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2A succinct account of Marlowe's life is available in Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, ed. John D. Jump
(London, 1962), pp. xvii-xxi. William Urry, Christopher Marlowe and Canterbury, ed. Andrew Butcher
(London, 1988), provides a study of Marlowe's family.

3See especially Paul H. Kocher, Christopher Marlowe: A Study of his Thought, Learning, and Character
(Chapel Hill, 1946), pp. 23-32.

4 John Bakeless, The Tragicall History of Christopher Marlowe (1942; Hamden, CT, 1964), 1.76-77.

5 Kocher, Christopher Marlowe, pp. 24-25.

6 Kocher, Christopher Marlowe, pp. 34-35.

7 Kocher, Christopher Marlowe, p. 35.

8 Kocher, Christopher Marlowe, pp. 7-18, 138-60.

9Doctor Faustus, ed. Jump, pp. xvii, xix.

10Frederick S. Boas, Christopher Marlowe: A Biographical and Critical Study (Oxford, 1940), pp. 265-77.
See also Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (London, 1992).

11 See Butler, The Myth of the Magus [1948; Cambridge, 1993], pp. 94-95.

12S, p. 101, citing Johannes Manlius, Locorum Conimunium Collectanea: "When he was a student at Cracow
he studied magic, for there was formerly much practice of the art in that city and in that place too there were
public lectures on this art"; see also L. Thomdike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York,
1934), 4.451-53, 456-57.

13Christlich Bedencken [Christian Reflections], 1597; complete version in Alexander Tille, Die Faustsplitter
in der Literatr [Faust References in Literature] (Berlin, 1900), pp. 92-97.

14 Unless otherwise indicated, quotations are taken from a modernized form of the A text of Doctor Faustus,
ed. W. W. Greg, Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. 1604-1616: Parallel Texts (Oxford, 1950). Act, scene, and line
numbers given are from this text; as Greg gives no line numbers, I use those in Michael Keeper's 1991 edition
(Peterborough, Canada). The A text is taken from the first published version of Doctor Faustus, which was
printed in a black letter quarto of 1604; it is shorter, and its greater forthrightness seems to make it, on the
whole, better than the longer and tidier B text of 1616. Differences between the A and B texts have caused
considerable debate as to whether Marlowe intended Faustus to be damned or finally saved; see, for example,
William Empson's posthumous Faustus and the Censor: The English Faust-Book and Marlowe's "Doctor
Faustus" (Oxford, 1987), pp. 162-63.

15Lawrence Stone, "The size and composition of the Oxford student body 1580-1910," in The University in
Society, Volume 1, Oxford and Cambridge from the Fourteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century, ed. Lawrence
Stone (Princeton, 1974), pp. vii, 5-7, 82-83.

16 J. B. Leishman, The Three Parnassus Plays, 1598-1601 (London, 1949).

17Behemoth, English Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Sir William Molesworth (London, 1840), 6.168, 192-96,
236-37.

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18Mark H. Curtis, "The alienated intellectuals of early Stuart England," Past and Present 23 (1962), pp. 27,
28.

19 On Marlowe and the Socinian or Arian heresies, see Boas, Marlowe, pp. 110-12, 257.

20D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (Chicago, 1964),
pp. 94-95.

21 George Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets (1910; New York, 1953), p. 135.

22
Nicholas Brooke, "The moral tragedy of Doctor Faustus," Cambridge Journal 5 (1952), cited from
Marlowe: Doctor Faustus, a Casebook ed. J. D. Jump (London, 1969), p. 109.

23 Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, ed. Leo Marx (Indianapolis, 1967), p. 244.

24 Genesis 3.22.

25Ancient law, (1861; London, 1887), p. 304.

26 W. W. Greg, "The damnation of Faust," Modern Language Review 41 (1946), p. 103.

27 Cleanth Brooks, "The unity of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus," cited from Jump, ed., Marlowe, p. 221.

Further Reading
Criticism

Baron, Frank. Doctor Faustus from History to Legend. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1978.

Examines the historical figure of Faustus and the development of the body of legend surrounding him.

Baron, Frank. "Who Was the Historical Faustus? Interpreting an Overlooked Source." Daphnis: Zeitschrift für
Mittlere Deutsche Literatur, Band 18, Heft 2, 1989. pp.297-302.

Examines indications in original source materials, including an exchange of letters from 1534, to support the
theory that a student named Georg Helmstetter was the historical Faustus.

Berghahn, Klaus L. "Georg Johann Heinrich Faust: The Myth and Its History." In Our Faust: Roots and
Ramifications of a Modern German Myth, edited by Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand, pp. 3-21. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.

Discusses Faust as an archetypal German symbol. The critic included discussion of Spies's Historia of 1587
through Goethe's nineteenth-century text.

Butler, E. M. The Fortunes of Faust. Cambridge University Press, 1952, 356 p.

Discusses a range of literary and philosophical approaches to the characater of Faust and to the Faust legend
throughout different eras of world literature and popular culture.

Druxes, Helga. The Feminization of Dr. Faustus: Female Identity Quests from Stendhal to Morgner.
University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993, 148 p.

153
Maintains that a male Faustian figure was no longer a viable literary device after the Industrial Revolution of
the nineteenth century. The critic identifies male authors including Stendahl and Hnery James who presented
female characters as Faustian seekers of knowledge in their works.

Guilloton, Doris Starr. "A Study of Motifs in German Faust Texts (Volksbuch, Lessing, Goethe)." Teaching
Language Through Literature, Modern Language Association Conference XVII, No. 2 (April 1978): 1-11.

Suggests that both language and literature can be effectively taught through study and comparison of the three
Faust texts in the title.

Heller, Otto. Faust and Faustus: A Study of Goethe's Relation to Marlowe. Washington University Studies,
N.s., Language and Literature, No. 2. St. Louis: Washington University, 1931, 176 p.

Seeks to refute the argument that Marlowe's Faustus is not a source for Goethe's Faust.

Prokhoris, Sabine. The Witch's Kitchen: Freud, Faust, and the Transference, translated by G. M. Goshgarian.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995, 196 p.

Feaudian psychoanalytic approach to Goethe's Faust.

Scaff, Susan von Rohr. "The Duplicity of the Devil's Pact: Intimations of Redemption in Mann's Doktor
Faustus." Monatshefte 87, No. 2 (Summer 1995): 151-69.

Contends that Thomas Mann's adaptation of the Faust legend comprises both a critique of German culture
under Fascism and the possibility of redemption.

Shattuck, Roger. "Faust and Frankenstein." In Forbidden Knowledge. From Prometheus to Pornography, pp.
77-107. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.

Contrasts the literary treatment in Goethe's Faust and Shelley's Frankenstein of the consequences of human
desire for "forbidden knowledge."

Spivack, Charlotte, ed. Merlin Versus Faust. Contending Archetypes in Western Culture. Lewiston, NY: The
Edwin Mellen Press, 1992, 197 p.

A variety of essays which present Merlin and Faust as opposing "manifestations of the archetypal Wise Old
Man" and which analyze these manifestations as they appear in modern literature.

Wentersdorf, Karl P. "Some Observations on the Historical Faust." Folklore Vol. 89, No.2 (1978): 201-23.

Provides a history of occult sciences as well as the context of historical and theological controversies in the
sixteenth century that contributed to the Faust figure becoming a compelling literary symbol.

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Source: Literary Criticism (1400-1800), ©1999 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.

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