by Leo Ruickbie
This monk, charged with the task of tearing Faustus away from the Devil, was, according to Hogel, ‘Dr Klinge’, a Franciscan described as ‘neighbouring’.32 Konrad Klinge held a doctorate in theology and is believed to have been Erfurt cathedral’s preacher from 1520 to 1556, again suggesting that the events about to unfold happened, if they did happen, some years after Faustus’s first documented arrival in Erfurt in 1513. We should not overlook the possibility that Klinge may have been in Erfurt some time before his appointment. Frustratingly we cannot be sure, but the important matter is that we do have evidence that there was a Dr Klinge and that he was in Erfurt. There are also traces in other texts that could support this story. He might have been the unnamed pious old man mentioned by Lercheimer and could have been the origin of the similar figure who turns up in the Faustbook. Against the possibility of this event having taken place we have to consider the use of the name ‘Faust’ rather than ‘Faustus’ and the reference to the pact, although Hogel may have changed the original Reichmann-Wambach manuscript to accommodate seventeenth century ideas.
Once summoned, Dr Klinge duly turned up at the Zum Encker and spoke to Faustus ‘at first kindly, then sternly’. He told him of ‘God’s wrath and the eternal damnation that must follow on such doings.’ Klinge added that as Faustus was well-educated he could support himself by less ungodly and more honourable means. 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.’33 Faustus must have been less than overjoyed to be doorstepped by this Bible-thumper, but his reply is recorded as being most civil. Faustus politely pointed out that he had signed an irrevocable contract with the Devil.
We will discuss the question of the pact presently; meanwhile Dr Klinge was not to be put off. Was he rubbing his hands together, thinking of the indulgences he might sell Faustus and of masses sold for the safety of his soul? ‘We will hold mass for you in our cloister’ he promised, ‘so that you will without a doubt get rid of the Devil.’ Faustus was not impressed. ‘Mass here, mass there’ he said, adding ‘my pledge binds me too absolutely.’ He had abandoned God and bound himself by word and blood to the Devil, adding sincerely ‘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.’34
What little patience Klinge may have had now ran out. ‘Well,’ said the monk, ‘then follow your path, you accursed child of the Devil, if you will not be helped and will not have it otherwise.’35
Furious at his defeat, Klinge went stomping off to a higher authority – ‘his Magnificence, the Rector’ and complained about the obduracy of Faustus. He also told the city council – indeed, he must have gone about telling anyone who would listen – what a fiend incarnate Faustus was and how he should be sorely punished for it. The council was moved to take action. Faustus was driven out of town: ‘So Erfurt got rid of the wicked man.’36 Faustus might be counted lucky. Luther later recalled the story of a black magician of Erfurt who was burned to death for his ‘crimes’ not long after.
Klinge was not to enjoy his victory for long. According to Hogel ‘the Lord God afflicted Dr Klinge, so that he despaired of his life.’37 Was it God or Faustus? Such a ‘child of the Devil’, ejected from his home and driven out of the city, could hardly be expected to have only turned the other cheek, would he have not summoned a legion of demons to torment the meddling monk? Klinge may have thought so, but his time had not come. He recovered to write Catechismus Catholicus in reply to rumours that he had become a Lutheran, referring to the fact that he had preached in Erfurt for thirty-six years, from 1520 until his death. Klinge’s end came just before Easter in 1556. He preached at the church of Our Lady in Erfurt on the fourth Sunday before Easter, called Oculi, and on Tuesday he was dead. He was buried in the church’s graveyard, opposite the chancel, and according to Hogel his epitaph could still be seen in the seventeenth century.
Mutianus’s first-hand witness statement supports Hogel’s Chronica, which in conjunction with the strong local tradition gives us several reasons, of differing levels of reliability, to believe that Faustus was in Erfurt. The invocation of Greek heroes is in line with his earlier pronouncements on his superior grasp of Plato and Aristotle, as reported by Trithemius. Hogel’s semi-legendary story thus finds a supporting echo in Trithemius’s contemporary letter. The attempted intervention of Dr Klinge reveals later accretions to the story – the reference to Papists and the pact – either suggesting a later date of the encounter with Klinge, or indicating a purely spurious addition to the legend. That this Dr Klinge was a real person adds some small weight to the balance of probability in favour of this remarkable encounter having taken place.
Dr Klinge was not alone in his concerns – in December 1513 Pope Leo X warned that the Devil was abroad, spreading ‘extremely pernicious errors’.38 There were blasphemers everywhere, taking every sort of holy name in vain and a whole series of socially stratified punishments was laid down for them. But there was worse than blasphemy, there was ‘sorcery, by means of enchantments, divinations, superstitions and the invoking of demons’ and ‘Judaising’.39 Harsh penalties were set to deter malefactors. These concerns had earlier taken concrete form in one of the most scandalous cases of the early sixteenth century: the trial of the great Humanist Johannes Reuchlin by the Inquisition.
Reuchlin was one of the foremost scholars of his day. He had studied at the universities of Freiburg, Paris, Basel and Tübingen, and pioneered research into Hebrew and the cabbala. Reuchlin knew that this line of enquiry was a controversial, not to say dangerous one. He would have been aware that Pico della Mirandola’s cabbalistic studies had landed him in trouble with the Inquisition.
Despite that, he spoke unguardedly in his report to the Emperor on the confiscation of Jewish books instigated by Pfefferkorn. The theological faculty at Cologne examined the report and condemned it as Judaising and heretical. A protracted legal battle with the Inquisitor General, Jacob van Hoogstraten, ensued. The Humanists rallied round, with Ulrich von Hutten and Crotus Rubeanus anonymously publishing the hugely successful Letters of Obscure Men, ridiculing Reuchlin’s enemies. Eventually the Pope suspended proceedings. Technically neither side won, but it was widely seen as a moral victory for Reuchlin. It looked like the Church was losing its iron grip, which has led many to see in Reuchlin’s case a spearheading of what would become known as the Reformation.
Rome’s equivocal judgement and van Hoogstraten’s continued aggression led Ulrich von Hutten to bring in von Sickingen to settle the case once and for all. With his usual bravado, von Sickingen threatened the Dominican Order – the organisation that was responsible for running the Inquisition – with violence unless they could force van Hoogstraten to abandon his persecution of Reuchlin. Reluctantly drawn to the negotiating table the Dominicans signed an agreement with von Sickingen. Van Hoogstraten was deprived of his high offices and the case was duly re-opened.
Sensing a growing tide of revolt, the Pope came down hard on Reuchlin in 1520. He overturned a previous court decision in his favour, ordered Reuchlin to pay a fine, condemned his report and reinstated van Hoogstraten. It is not known whether the judgement was ever enforced, but the protracted affair had used up Reuchlin and he died two years later.
European Jews were a pariah caste and association with them brought with it the same dangerous taint, and yet their possession of the cabbala was an irresistible magnet for magical explorers. Through Pico della Mirandola, Reuchlin and Agrippa, the cabbala attained a central place in Christian occult theory. As such we must suppose that Faustus concerned himself with the subject despite the lack of any documentary evidence to this effect. The name of cabbala would certainly become attached to that of Faustus. An eighteenth-century grimoire masquerading as having been published at Passau in 1505 contains a section on his supposed ‘black cabbala’.
The key role played by Faustus’s old patron von Sickingen forms
another link, albeit a tenuous one. Did von Sickingen seek Faustus’s astrological advice or ask him to magically influence the outcome of his negotiations with the Dominicans? Mutianus added another connection when he called upon the theologians to abandon their case against Reuchlin and persecute Faustus. Given the controversy stirred up by the whole issue, Faustus could not have been unaware of it and given his sympathies, we can be sure that he was of Reuchlin’s party, even if that party was not for him. He would have seen the Humanism that he professed brought before the Inquisition and he would have seen Hebrew studies, including the cabbala, denounced as heretical. All this would have weighed on his mind the next time he pronounced cabbalistic formulae in his magic circle.
8
Meeting Mephistopheles (1514)
Now at last the demonic spirit so central to the tale, so bound up with Faustus, appears, but why so late? There are no contemporary or even near-contemporary references to Mephistopheles in the historical sources. If the real Faustus did invoke him, then he did so quietly and without apparent publicity. The name of this spirit is recorded for the first time around 1580 and the only date we have to go by comes from an unreliable source – Carolus Battus’s 1592 Dutch edition of Spies’s 1587 Historia – but as it is the only source let us entertain it, if only as a chronological fancy.
The Klinge story represented in an even later source – that of Hogel in the seventeenth century – suggested that Faustus signed the pact between 1513 and 1520. According to Battus, Faustus signed it in 1514. The legend tells us that when he signs the pact, Mephistopheles appears to him for the first time, therefore, if there ever was a Mephistopheles, then he too would have appeared in 1514. Of course, it will be argued that he never did.
It would have been a good year for such a devilish spirit to make his first visit to the mortal world. Mysterious signs in the skies over Württemberg had been seen: three moons appeared in the night sky with the middle and largest one bearing the sign of the cross. Virdung had noticed them and wrote a tract on their meaning, publishing it quickly that same year, predicting that the commoners would be industriously conspiring against the nobles. Ulrich von Württemberg’s (1487–1550) extortionate taxation to support his extravagant court helped fulfil the prophecy. With good cause the commoners did conspire and in 1514 took up arms in the so-called ‘Poor Conrad’ uprising. Ulrich was caught out, but after some manoeuvring held the rebels to the Treaty of Tübingen, burdening them with almost a million ducats of the profligate Duke’s debts in return for some small checks on his power that were never realised. Ulrich’s calls to his noble neighbours for reinforcements were heard and he unleashed a vengeful and murderous army upon his disbanded and unsuspecting subjects.
Virdung was particularly mindful that the French king, Louis XII (r.1498–1515), should be on his guard against the events of 1314 repeating themselves. In 1314 the ill-fated Louis X succeeded to the throne to find the treasury empty and the lesser nobles close to revolt; after a short reign he died of suspected poisoning. Louis XII died on 1 January 1515. His contemporaries attributed the cause not to poison, but to the beauty and vigour of his young bride, Mary of England. One thing Virdung did not expect of the moons was the manifestation of Mephistopheles.
The Invocation
Being expert in using his Vocabula, Figures, Characters, Conjurations, and other Ceremonial actions, that in all the haste he put in practise to bring the Devil before him.1
With wand and grimoire tucked under his arm, the dauntless Faustus of legend sets off into the woodland around Wittenberg. He heads for what the Wolfenbüttel Manuscript named as ‘Spesser Wald’, which was identified by Adolphus Ward in 1901 as the Specke, a patch of grazing land near Wittenberg that was previously much frequented by students, including Luther. When the English traveller Fynes Moryson enrolled at Wittenberg university in 1591 he was taken to a spot in the woods and shown ‘a tree all blasted and burnt … where [Faustus] practised his Magick Art.’2 In the Faustbook the sun is setting as Faustus arrives at a crossroads and here with his wand he draws his magic circle, embroidered with the outlandish sigils of his art. At about nine or ten in the evening he was finished: ‘Then began Doctor Faustus to call for Mephostophiles [sic] the Spirit, and to charge him in the name of Beelzebub to appear.’3
According to the Faustbook the spirits fail to materialise at first. The Specke is full of fearsome noise, the wind howls, thunder claps and lightning flashes ‘as if the whole world, to his seeming, had been on fire.’ Just as Faustus’s will begins to falter, the cacophony is replaced by a sweet and charming music. Encouraged, he renews his invocations: ‘suddenly over his head hanged hovering in the air a mighty Dragon.’4
The writer of the Faustbook, like most novelists, does not give the actual form of the conjuration used. The printer Spies said that he had intentionally omitted the magical formulae lest they be put to wicked use. Marlowe, seeing a missed opportunity, described the scene more carefully, showing a familiarity with magic: ‘Within this circle is Jehovah’s name, / Forward and backward anagrammatiz’d’ (I.3.5–15). He also invented or borrowed a suitably Latin invocation for Faustus to hurl upon the howling wind.
There is a confusion (or intentional convergence) in Marlowe’s invocation between the rigorous ritual of high magic that constrains the infernal spirits with the mystical names of God and outright satanism as when Faustus decries the name of Jehovah and calls upon Gehenna. This is a necessary ploy for Marlowe, allowing him to have Faustus congratulate himself when Mephistopheles appears – ‘Such is the force of magic and my spells’ – but reveal that he has lost control of the situation, as Mephistopheles explains ‘the shortest cut for conjuring / Is stoutly to abjure the Trinity, And pray devoutly to the prince of hell’ (1.3.46–53).
Marlowe’s invocation scene captures the tension between two opposing views of magic. Here Faustus, like any other necromancer, believes that it is his power – his knowledge of the art and his skill in operating it – that invokes and binds the spirits to his service. The view that Marlowe puts in the mouth of Mephistopheles, whether he knew it or not, is that of Arnold of Villanova (c.1235–1313), who argued that the demons could not be coerced and that if they did indeed appear at the necromancer’s summons then they did so by their own volition. Any indication to the contrary was simply a ruse on the part of the demons to entrap the necromancer more surely. The theologians’ problem was that they could not accept that God would aid the necromancer in his endeavours. The necromancers had engineered a technological solution that was entirely rational within the theocentric world view of the period: if the invocation of the names of God could be used to drive demons out in the rite of exorcism, then those same names could be employed to raise demons up out of hell to do the magician’s bidding. As always, the theologians were in a bind and went through their usual mental contortions to try and extricate themselves from the problem and at the same time pull the rug from under the necromancers.
The later Faustian grimoires could not, of course, avoid their own formulae for invoking Mephistopheles. With such texts we are firmly on the necromancers’ home ground. There is no indication that it is anything other than the power of magic itself that calls forth and constrains the infernal spirits. One version of the Geister Commando that claimed to have been printed in Rome in 1501 had its ‘Citation for Mephistophilis’ and his ‘Seal or Character for Coercion and Obedience’ to be written on virgin parchment with the blood of butterflies on the night of the full moon. Chapter X of the fearsome ‘Cabalae Nigrae’ contained in the infamous Dreyfacher Höllenzwang (supposedly Passau, 1505) gives another formula of invocation with a further ‘High Conjuration of Mephistophiles’ in three parts requiring lengthy rollcalls of magical words and spirit names to be read out. When at last Mephistopheles appears, if he does, there is a special binding to be performed and, most importantly, instructions are given on how to send him back to the spirit world again.
With a cry ‘as if hell had been open
’, Mephistopheles falls like a lightning bolt onto the Specke, resolves into a globe, forms the shape of man out of fire before finally assuming the ‘manner of a grey Friar’.5 From dragon to man of fire to monk, Mephistopheles flickers through his forms until he settles upon the one most pleasing to Faustus and the writer of the Faustbook. That Mephistopheles finally appears as a grey friar, a Franciscan, alerts us to the resurfacing of Protestant prejudices. Nothing could please the Protestant mind more than casting Mephistopheles as a brother of one of the Catholic mendicant orders. Faustus appears nonplussed at this disguise, but a Renaissance magus would surely have been happier with something more classical, a toga, or some other antique dress. Going through the grimoire I have yet to encounter any other spirit appearing in ecclesiastical vestments. They usually manifest as aristocrats, sometimes soldiers, animals, or in grotesque forms. If his garb appears contrived, it is the assumption of various forms and often at the request of the invoker that rings true as a genuine element from the magicians’ grimoire.
We find Mephistopheles taking other forms elsewhere. The Geister Commando contained in The Seventh Book of Moses calls him Mephistophilis and ranks him amongst the Seven Great Princes.
MEPHISTOPHILIS is ready to serve, and appears in the form of a youth. He is willing to serve in all skilled arts, and gives the spiritus Servos, otherwise called ‘familiars’. He brings treasures from the earth and from the deep very quickly.6
When Marlowe wrote the part for his ‘Mephastophilis’ it seemed self-evident what sort of spirit he was. He needed no other introduction than to acknowledge his master: ‘I am servant to great Lucifer’ (1.3.39). When Goethe came to write his ‘Mephistopheles’ in the eighteenth century he described him as ‘the spirit which eternally denies.’ There was no mention of ‘great Lucifer’ for Mephistopheles had become the Devil himself.7