Faustus: The Life and Times of a Renaissance Magician

by Leo Ruickbie

  It is in 1510 that we find Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim writing to Trithemius to thank him for his hospitality of the year before. He recalled with fondness their discussions on ‘many things about alchemy, magic, Cabala, and the like.’18 He dedicated his newly completed Occult Philosophy to his mentor – ‘a man very industrious after secret things’ – and sent him a copy for approval.19

  Trithemius may have heartily approved of his young disciple’s work, but things did not go according to plan. Before it was finished the work was ‘intercepted’ and ‘did fly abroad in Italy, in France, in Germany through many men’s hands.’20 It is possible that a copy passed through Faustus’s hands. He would certainly have been very interested in its contents. ‘Magick’ explained Agrippa, ‘is a faculty of wonderful virtue, full of most high mysteries, containing the most profound Contemplation of most secret things.’21 Agrippa dealt in detail with Faustus’s special fields – the divinatory arts of geomancy, hydromancy, pyromancy and necromancy – and more besides.

  Manuscript versions may have been circulated widely, but it would take another twenty or more years before Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy was published. Yet even if Faustus never saw a copy, Agrippa drew upon stories, theories and practices in circulation during Faustus’s lifetime and so reflected the state of knowledge of the occult at that time. There was really little new in Agrippa’s occult philosophy, his only innovation was synthesis – something he did not deny – but that does not detract from the value of his work. Agrippa knew he had to tread carefully and his warning to all of those who were industrious after secret things is revealing. The ancient magicians were not Christians: ‘we must very much take heed,’ said Agrippa, ‘lest we should permit their errors to war against the grounds of the Catholic Religion.’22

  Whilst magicians like Agrippa, Trithemius and Faustus saw themselves as philosophers, the arts they performed were clearly seen as dangerous heresy – as witchcraft – by populist writers like Tengler and were attracting the unwelcome attentions of individuals like the Inquisitor van Hoogstraten. Agrippa’s warning only serves to underline how the magicians’ interest in the wisdom of the pagan past was always suspect to those who knew nothing of it.

  In 1510, with war raging in the north, the Roman public were marvelling at Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. Milan changed hands again and the Medicis were restored to power in Florence. A new anti-French league of Maximilian I and the Swiss, Ferdinand of Aragon, Henry VIII of England and Venice, was joined by the Papal States in 1511. While Henry VIII did little more than entertain his courtiers with an extravagant tournament at Westminster, the other members saw action at the Battle of Ravenna in 1512. The French under Gaston de Foix (1489–1512) won the day, but before the year was out they were forced to retreat from Italian soil.

  There is a gap of six years in Faustus’s record from 1507 to 1513, roughly the length of the Italian wars from 1508 to 1512. Fighting for the Emperor, in whatever capacity, could account for this lacuna and claims he is later reported to have made in 1525 and rumours that he was favoured by the lords of Anhalt23 could support this conjecture, but we will never know for sure. Perhaps he acquired a copy of Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy whilst in Italy, or back home on native soil – certainly he would come to be reminded of its warning.

  7

  The Hellbrand of Erfurt (1513)

  There were portents in the skies and such wonders in 1513. The widely famed scholar Girolamo Aleandro (1480–1542), a native of the war-torn Veneto, noted in his diary for September of that year the extraordinary luminosity of Jupiter. In Paris at the invitation of the French King Louis XII, he pointed out the planet to his students at the Collège de la Marche and together they observed that its brilliance was strong enough to cast a shadow. However, it was not just strange lights in the sky that illuminated Erfurt that year, but the fire of riot and the diabolical radiance of the ‘Hellbrand’ himself.

  It was 25 September 1513 and the Canon of the Church of St Mary’s at Gotha, Conrad Mutianus Rufus, was in an Erfurt inn when he overheard Faustus regaling the patrons with his stories. He wrote to his friend Heinrich Urbanus about it eight days later, still shaking with rage:

  There came to Erfurt a certain Chiromanticus Ephurdiam called Georgius Faustus Helmitheus Hedelbergensis, 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 try not to destroy the philosopher Reuchlin. I heard him babbling at an inn, but I did not reprove his boastfulness. What is the foolishness of other people to me?1

  Faustus must have been entertaining the inn with a display of palmistry and face-reading, and was evidently enjoying some success in the town, for ‘the ignorant marvel at him’ – the ignorant being anyone not as clever as Mutianus thought he was. Mutianus sat there and said nothing. He felt guilty about it later, but sought shelter in intellectual arrogance. But just what did Faustus say? His ‘babbling’ is of much more interest to us now than Mutianus’s high opinion of himself. By calling him a Chiromanticus Mutianus singled out that species of fortune-telling known as palmistry. But what is a Chiromanticus Ephurdiam? The term is usually translated as soothsayer, but we can immediately see that the word Chiromanticus is more precise than this. However, there is no trace of the mysterious Ephurdiam in the Latin grammars and dictionaries.

  Mutianus led a studious life, being an alumnus of Ferrara and Bologna. He was ranked by some of the Humanists alongside Erasmus and Reuchlin despite the fact that he did not publish a single word in his lifetime. In his defence Mutianus bombastically declared that neither Socrates nor Jesus had published either. Urbanus had been his student and later friend, and through him developed an interest in Humanism. The extent of his devotion can be seen in the fact that all of the few poems and many letters of Mutianus survive mainly due to Urbanus. At the time Mutianus wrote to him about Faustus, he was serving as the steward of the Cistercian cloister of Georgenthal near Gotha.

  Mutianus was also intimate with Trithemius – Mutianus had visited him in Sponheim in 1500 and Trithemius had twice stayed with Mutianus in Gotha. Mutianus praised Trithemius as ‘another Hermes’.2 This warns us that we cannot take his account of Faustus as anything other than prejudicial. Mutianus uses much the same language as Trithemius had done in 1507, employing that familiar rhetoric of folly in accusing Faustus of being ‘a mere braggart and fool’. Trithemius and now Mutianus seem to have been engaged in an orchestrated campaign against Faustus.

  The mind of Mutianus ran on narrow trammels. His vision was entirely bounded by the Church. He read widely – poets, philosophers and historians – but restricted himself to taking from them only what was compatible with the teachings of Rome. He believed that it was impious to want to know more than the Church.

  However, he was indulgent towards the magical interests of others as long as they submitted themselves to the dogma of Holy Writ. Only a few weeks before he met Faustus, Mutianus had written to Trithemius recommending his friend Peter Eberbach, who was keen to learn the ‘more honourable mysteries of the magicians with which Trithemius was very well acquainted’.3 Faustus was evidently judged to represent the less honourable mysteries of the magicians.

  It could be argued that because Mutianus was not trying to advance a magical career, his report is more objective than that of Trithemius and that the similarity of their judgements adds credibility to them. However, lack of ambition and the same righteous pontification cannot be taken as signs of reliability. If the bigoted Trithemius did not like someone, it is unlikely that the even more pious Mutianus should have shown any sympathy, especially given the friendship between the two.

  The similarity of the picture drawn by both men, stripped of its venom, shows a wandering occultist, crying his wares in the marketplace, a man forced to seek a precarious living amongst the commonality, an esoteric entrepreneur, a completely opposite type to the well-fe
d clerics. For both Trithemius and Mutianus, who lived their lives within the cloister, philosophy was for the elite, for the chosen few like themselves, and not to be bandied about in front of hoi polloi. Recall his dismissive, patronising words – ‘What is the foolishness of other people to me?’ – and yet he found it necessary to alert Urbanus to this man. Faustus threatened their cosy world of privilege and preferment, and their hold upon the occult mysteries.

  Mutianus was not content to merely disparage Faustus; he called for ‘the theologians to rise against him’. We should not underestimate the theologian of the sixteenth century by comparison to the theologian of today. Van Hoogstraten could arraign wayward thinkers before the Inquisition and even an ignoramus like Pfefferkorn could stir up considerable animosity with his pamphlets, provoking the Emperor into unadvised action. Trithemius himself had Maximilian’s ear on occasion. The theologians could imperil someone’s life and Mutianus clearly had an agenda. He deployed Faustus as a counterpoint to Reuchlin in the wider debate of the period. He was using Faustus as a scapegoat.

  There is the strong possibility that Faustus remained in Erfurt for some time, perhaps on and off for the next seven years at least until our next dated reference in 1520. Unperturbed by the libel of Mutianus – and we might suppose that Urbanus parroted his invective – Faustus may have found the town congenial, certainly the people seemed to have welcomed him. Paracelsus may have been in Erfurt around the same time, drawn by the reputations of the Humanists Crotus Rubeanus (c.1480–c.1539) and Helius Eobanus Hessus (1488–1540), known as ‘deriders of God and men’, and renowned for their hard drinking.4 Faustus, too, may have been drawn by such reputations.

  Both were former pupils of Mutianus, which may have coloured their view of Faustus. However, Rubeanus’s friendship with Ulrich von Hutten – comrade-in-arms of von Sickingen – may have tempered any hostility. In 1520 Rubeanus had just been elected rector of Erfurt University and so was in a powerful position to influence Faustus’s career in the city.

  Hogel’s legendary Chronica of the seventeenth century stated that Faustus arrived at the University of Erfurt, but introduced him with circumspection:

  It is also probably about this time that those strange things happened which are said to have taken place in Erfurt in the case of the notorious black magician and desperate hellbrand, Dr Faust.5

  Erfurt was a natural destination for any wandering scholar. Lying midway between Gotha and Weimar, Erfurt is an antique settlement of obscure origins, first recorded in history when St Boniface made it a bishopric in 741. Mainz absorbed its ecclesiastical independence in 755, but Charlemagne thought the town sufficiently important to grant it market rights in 805. Under charters granted by Emperor Otto I, the archbishops of Mainz ruled the town with a burgrave and advocatus. The burgraviate eventually disappeared and the Counts von Gleichen appropriated the post of advocatus as their hereditary right. After further rulers, rights and charters, the town emerged as a virtual free city, joining the Hanseatic League at its height of importance in the fifteenth century. By force of arms or coin it had acquired lands and titles until it controlled a sizeable territory and income. With its growing wealth it produced one of the finest churches in Germany, the Beatae Mariae Virginis. The first university to embrace the four faculties was founded here in 1378. Erfurt was one of the foremost cities of the Empire: ‘the city of towers’ as Luther called it, or, more poetically, the ‘Thuringian Rome’ according to the historian Ernst Stida (1585–1632). However, incessant feuding with Mainz and ruinous war in Saxony reduced its fortunes and it became a shadow of its former glory.

  When Faustus arrived the university was still a beacon of learning. Luther had been drawn here in 1501, studying for a Bachelor of Arts, as well as Ulrich von Hutten. Luther lived in the Augustinian monastery and his cell was preserved up until the early nineteenth century when it was destroyed by fire.

  According to the chronicler Hogel, Faustus took quarters near the ‘large Collegium’, which the German folklorist Johann Grässe supposed was on the street known as the Michelsgasse. Folk memory of his visit has remained, returned or been reinvented. In the first half of the twentieth century, W.Lorenz took a photograph of a street known as Doctor Fausts Gässchen (‘Doctor Faust’s Alleyway’). It shows a narrow cobbled alley running between two rows of houses, their gutters almost touching along the edges of their roofs. The story goes that Faustus drove along this, the narrowest street in Erfurt, with an impossibly wide load of hay, a feat the townspeople commemorated by naming the alley after him.6

  Faustus secured for himself ‘through his boasting’ – had Hogel been reading Mutianus? – permission to give public lectures on Homer. He was apparently very effective, describing the heroes of the Trojan War in lifelike detail. The students who attended these lectures were eager for more: ‘for there are always inquisitive fellows and there was no question as to what Faust was.’ The story goes that he was consequently called upon to produce a marvel ‘through his art’ and conjure the heroes to materialise and ‘show themselves as he had just described them.’7

  Faustus agreed and a great throng turned out to witness the spectacle. The necromancer conjured the ancient Greek heroes to appear in the lecture hall where each ‘shook his head as though he were still in action on the field before Troy.’8 Whether he hired actors, made use of something like a magic lantern or indeed called forth those antique shades from Hades – as Hogel seemed to believe – the effect must have been electrifying for the audience.

  Faustus had more than heroes up the long sleeves of his magician’s robe: ‘The last of them all was the giant Polyphemus, who had only a single terrible big eye in the middle of his forehead.’ It was the Cyclops who had given Odysseus such trouble on his journey home from the Trojan War who now stood before the students of Erfurt. ‘He wore a fiery red beard and was devouring a man, one of whose legs was dangling out of his mouth.’ The auditorium must have felt suddenly too small for comfort. The eager students in the first row now looked like becoming the monster’s next meal.

  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.9

  It was a tremendous show, but there was more to come. According to Hogel, Faustus was invited to attend the banquet given for the commencement of masters at the university. He sat with delegates from the town council and members of the faculty of theology – who presumably did not rise against him as Mutianus would have them do. The subject of the comedies of the ancient poets Plautus and Terence was raised, and heads shook sadly at the thought of those works lost forever. If only they had them once more, what good they would do for the curriculum and the learning of Latin. Here Faustus astonished the gathering by reciting, not one, but several quotations from those vanished masterpieces:

  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.10

  Faustus phrased his offer carefully, adding the caveat ‘if it would not be held against him’, with full knowledge that the theologians might scotch his proposal. He was right to anticipate their timidity at such a daring offer. It was not just the theologians but the councillors too, who rejected it, fearing that ‘the Devil might interpolate all sorts of offensive things into such newly found comedies.’11 It was the universal suspicion of the age: anything that was not strictly in accordance with dogma might be some stratagem of Satan. Consequently, suspicion must fall on anyone who opened themselves to such potential diabolical pollution. The theologians retraced their steps: one could learn good enough Latin from those works that survived, why tempt Te
mptation itself?

  Entertaining the ‘Anchor House’

  Hogel tells us that Faustus was in the habit of spending much time at the ‘Anchor House’ (Zum Encker) of the ‘Junker N.’, entertaining his host and the other guests with tales of his adventures. Why was Hogel suddenly so coy in naming this squire ‘N.’? We will never know if he was protecting some local lordling, hiding from his disapproval, or simply mystifying an invented character. Hogel’s Zum Encker on the Schlöszergaszen matches the description for the Haus zum Enker on the Schlösserstrasse in Erfurt. The Haus zum Enker was owned by one Wolf von Denstedt. In 1513 he had just married Catharina von der Sachsen. If the story has any historical basis, then Junker N. must have been this Wolf von Denstedt. The Haus zum Enker was also frequented by none other than that Humanist hell raiser Hessus and his cronies.

  Hessus was somewhat Faustian himself. He would distinguish himself as a Latin poet, but not before he became known for less commendable behaviour. He had entered the University of Erfurt in 1504 and soon after his graduation was appointed the rector of the school of St Severus. However, like Faustus in Kreuznach, he was unable to keep this post for long. Under the cloud of some unknown impropriety, Hessus left Erfurt to take up a position at the court of the Bishop of Riesenburg from 1509–1513. In 1513 he returned to Erfurt. However, through heavy drinking and consequently irregular habits, Hessus was reducing himself to a state of ruin. He would later secure the post of Professor of Latin at Erfurt University (in 1517) and associated with many of the prominent Humanists of the time such as Reuchlin, Ulrich von Hutten and Joachim Camerarius.