by Leo Ruickbie
Ludwig II and Henry VIII were in similar cash-strapped positions and their bids were never more than opportunistic ones. France was the richest kingdom in Europe and François I had pledged half its annual income to the venture. He also had the Pope’s blessing and thus some influence over the archiepiscopal Electors. To win over the German lords he added blood to the promise of cash, claiming that he was a German descended from Charlemagne. It is unlikely whether anyone was much impressed by François’s new genealogy, just as few people would have thought of Charles as particularly German. In 1519 Charles had never set foot in Germany and knew nothing of the language, but like François he was proclaimed the ‘German’ candidate.
There were, however, some real German candidates to contend with. Friedrich III (1463–1525) ‘The Wise’, Elector of Saxony, appeared strong, but played a cautious game. He had some solid support within the Empire, but never openly revealed his intentions, letting others suggest that he was a candidate right up until the end. The other prime challenger was Trithemius’s old patron, the Elector Joachim I von Brandenburg. His vote was eagerly sought by the supporters of both François and Charles, whilst he was himself coveting the imperial crown.
It was not just the electors that the candidates tried to woo. Knights like von Sickingen were also important powerbrokers. In an attempt to win von Sickingen over, François I invited him to Sedan, sending as ambassador Robert III (1491–1537), Count de la Marck, Duke of Bouillon, Seigneur of Sedan and Fleuranges, to escort him. Von Sickingen accepted the invitation. From Sedan he travelled on to François’s court at the Château d’Amboise on the Loire.
The offer was 30,000 kronen-thalers cash and another 8,000 a year for life. The dramatist Lassalle portrayed von Sickingen as manfully turning down François’s bribe, yet Lassalle would have been disappointed to learn that von Sickingen kept what cash François was able to pay him. German banks would not honour French promissory notes and German towns opposed to François’s bid threatened to execute merchants bringing such notes into the Empire. The deal was all but worthless.
On the other hand, Charles’s credit was good. Having the guaranteed revenues of Castile and the Tyrol behind him he was able to secure the services of Maximilian’s old bankers, the Fuggers. Against François’s uncertain promise, Charles was able to pay out 40,000 florins to von Sickingen. In characteristic style, von Sickingen raised a troop of several thousand Landsknechte and marched on Frankfurt. With him was the legendary Georg von Frundsberg (1473–1528), Baron zu Mindelheim, the ‘father of the Landsknechte’.
The troublesome Ulrich von Württemberg had decided that the run-up to the election was an opportune moment to attack the city of Reutlingen. The rumour was that he was acting in French interests. The Swabian League swiftly mobilised and occupied Württemberg – and von Sickingen, ostensibly working with them, exploited the situation to plunder Maulbronn monastery. Charles’s agents bribed the League to remain in the field under Habsburg colours, threatening the Elector Palatine in nearby Heidelberg. Another 30,000 florins brought the Swiss onto Charles’s side, helped by their distrust of Ulrich. With von Sickingen, the League and now the Swiss, Charles had at last secured a powerful military presence in Germany.
François now over-played his hand with disastrous results. The untimely death from syphilis of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, decided François to assert his rights over the Duchy of Urbino in the Papal States. The Pope was furious and withdrew his opposition to Charles. The archiepiscopal electors were given a clear signal and were not now troubled by their conscience in accepting Charles’s bribes.
With the electoral college effectively besieged in Frankfurt, feelings were running high. Riots broke out amongst the townspeople over the impending decision. There was also plague in the city and the electors were keen to depart as quickly as possible. Ludwig II’s vote as an elector was complicated by his young age and, at the last moment, his pro-French advisor was replaced by a pro-Charles one. The Elector Palatine was cowed by the Swabian League on his doorstep. Charles’s enemies now coalesced around Friedrich of Saxony. The English diplomat Richard Pace (1482–1536), in Frankfurt for the election, reported that ‘Friedrich was elected Roman King but … declined the title believing himself not powerful enough to hold it’.2 With rumours of the Swiss army just over the horizon and the very real threat of von Sickingen encamped just three kilometres away, it was the show of arms that cast the deciding vote.
With a thick wad of Fugger bills in their purses and a signed agreement from Charles to implement the imperial reforms that Maximilian had rejected, the Electors voted in Charles, and quit the pestiferous, mutinous city post-haste. Charles may have been jubilant when the news eventually reached him in Spain, but he must have dearly wished for an alchemist. The campaign had cost him over 835,000 florins with almost half of that going into the Electors’ coffers. As Pace wrote only days after the election, the title had been ‘the most dear merchandise that ever was sold; and after mine opinion it shall be the worst that ever was brought to him that shall obtain it.’3
For his crucial role von Sickingen was made Imperial Chamberlain (kammerherr) and councillor. Where von Sickingen was, we might conjecture that there also was Faustus. Von Sickingen would truly have lived up to his later reputation if he had not abandoned his former protégé because of a little local dispute, shocking though it no doubt seemed to the good burghers of Kreuznach. Faustus may have played some role in von Sickingen’s attack on Maulbronn, perhaps signalling a change in the relationship between the alchemist and the monastery after the dismissal of Entenfuß. But more than that, the election of a new Emperor, especially in a situation where so many contenders circled the ring, was a prime opportunity for a magician. Predictions of the future would have been in high demand as Electors and lords tried to determine which would be the winning side. This tentative connection with von Sickingen puts Faustus in the right place at roughly the right time to agree with at least one of the many legends about him.
The Frankfurt Fair
Amidst all this drama of war and politics we lose sight of Faustus. With Entenfuß run out of office it would not be surprising to learn that Faustus was no longer welcome in Maulbronn, assuming he ever was. It is possible that Faustus may have moved on to Wittenberg. Lercheimer refers to him visiting Melanchthon there and Melanchthon did not arrive until 1518, but the evidence points to him being in Wittenberg at a later date: 1527 or 1530. A return to Kreuznach was out of the question and, despite Trithemius’s demise, Würzburg was probably similarly disinclined to admit him through its gates. The Empire was a large place and trying to find Faustus is like looking for a wand in a woodpile.
A legend connected with Bamberg makes reference to ‘loot from Frankfurt’ and a document dated 1520 puts Faustus in Bamberg at that time, tentatively suggesting that Faustus was in, or believed to be in, Frankfurt before 1520. The legend is not an historical source and cannot be relied upon, and Faustus could also (or instead) have visited Frankfurt after 1520, but by skating over this thin ice we can bring in a story about Faustus in Frankfurt to fill the annoying gap in the historical record.
The story concerns professional rivalry and ends in murder. It is striking in this point, since the other dupes and deviousness that infest the Faustbook tales are comic rather than criminal (apart from his habitual stealing from the rich, but even this has a note of popular justice about it). There is also a glimpse here of the sort of illusionist trick that may well have been performed by travelling magicians.
According to the legend as told by P.F., Faustus arrived at the fair during Lent and discovered that four ‘jugglers’ had arrived earlier and were entertaining the crowds by cutting each others’ heads off and sending them to the barber for a haircut. Faustus was annoyed by this ‘for he meant to have himself the only Cock in the Devils [sic] basket’ and set out to find them.4
Faustus observed that when the magicians struck off the head of the first of them, a lily ap
peared in a glass of water, which the chief magician named ‘the tree of life’ – the lily being a common symbol for the Resurrection. The decapitated head was washed and combed by the barber before the magician placed it back on his colleague’s body and miraculously welded the two back together again and into life. As he did so the lily vanished from the glass. The trick was repeated with the other magicians. Faustus bided his time until it was the turn of their chief. Like the others, his head was also struck off and brought to the barber. Stealthily, Faustus cut off the head of the lily and when the other magicians brought their chief’s head back to restore it to his body, found that he was dead.
The story appeared as early as the 1580s. The version that Spies published in 1587 added the moral observation that just as the chief magician was killed, so ‘the Devil gives all his servants such an end at the last and makes away with them’.5 In the Faustbook the conjuring trick is recounted as if it were achieved through supernatural means, and of course for the superstitious that meant the intervention of the Devil. It was also the case that there were travelling magicians or conjurers performing illusions in much the same manner as stage magicians today. In Saint James and the Magician Hermogenes of 1565 Pieter Bruegel the Elder shows us, amid a tumultuous scene of cavorting spirits, a body sprawled on a table, a sword separating it from its head which lies on a nearby platter.
In 1584 Reginald Scot published his account of how this trick, called ‘the decollation of John the Baptist’, could be performed. It required two associates, one to play the body and the other the decapitated head, and a specially prepared table with two holes in it. Scot added that the trick could be enhanced by having the ‘head’ boy inhale brimstone to turn his skin a deathly hue and sprinkling his face with blood. One can imagine how grisly this spectacle must have appeared and how similar methods could have been used by the Frankfurt jugglers. Suddenly, the fabulous nonsense of the legends can be seen to have a possible basis in reality.
This is not the only story of Faustus in Frankfurt. Roshirt (c.1570–75) told two more tales and other local Frankfurt stories persisted for some time. In the eighteenth century a traveller called Rudolph Lang wrote about some stories he had heard whilst in Frankfurt concerning a picture or image of Faustus.6 The popularity and importance of the Frankfurt Fair certainly makes it a possible destination for Faustus and the surviving store of legendary material related to his being here make it a little more probable, but we will never know for sure.
One of the Roshirt stories ended up in the Wolfenbüttel Manuscript and later appeared in Spies 1587 and P.F.’s 1592 version. The location of Frankfurt was lost in the transmission until the story was appended after the wedding in Munich incident, which we will discuss presently, without any sort of narrative reason for its being there. It is a fairly typical story casting both Jews and magicians in a bad light. The deceptions of charlatans were clearly a cause of concern for certain sections of society and such moralising tales tended to feed that fear.
Faustus was at an inn frequented by Jews and for sheer devilment decided to play a trick on one of them. Borrowing money against his leg, which he let the Jew take away as surety, Faustus contrived to extort further recompense for the lost leg when the Jew threw it away, fearing that it would rot and pollute his house. It is a rather lame joke, if you will excuse the pun, but evidently a popular one to have survived three different retellings, not including variations such as that involving a horse dealer in Pfeiffering. Who is not to say that a magician never played such a trick?
Astrology for the Bishop (1520)
Slightly more than 200 kilometres to the east of Frankfurt the next piece of the jigsaw falls into place in the shape of an entry in the accounts of the Bishop of Bamberg. Drawn up by his chamberlain Hans Muller from Walpurgis 1519 to Walpurgis 1520, we read in an ornate hand an entry for 12 February 1520 under the heading ‘Miscellaneous’:
Item. Ten gulden given and presented to honour Doctor Faustus, philosopher, who made for my Lord a nativity or judicium. Paid on the Sunday after [St] Scholastica’s [Day] by order of his reverence.7
This ‘nativity or judicium’ was some sort of astrological prognostication and the chamberlain’s uncertainty in describing it could point to a lack of knowledge concerning such things, or a lack of knowledge concerning this item in particular due to some element of secrecy. Given the hostile letters of Trithemius (1507) and Mutianus (1513) it is a surprise to find Faustus doing business with a bishop. It also shows that despite the best efforts of his enemies, Faustus was able to command respect and win the favour of the high and mighty, an echo of which is perhaps heard in the Faustbook amidst all the moralising verbiage: ‘he had the most famous name of all the Mathematics [astrologers] that lived in his time.’8
The office of bishop of Bamberg was an important one, more important than any other bishopric in Germany. After Heinrich I von Bilversheim (r. 1242–57) secured the title of Prince-Bishop and several rights of sovereignty from the Emperor for himself and his successors, the bishops of Bamberg came directly after the archbishops in ecclesiastical precedence. Faustus’s client was not just any bishop, but the foremost bishop in Germany at that time.
In 1520 the fortieth Bishop of Bamberg was Georg III Schenk von Limpurg. Born in 1470 to a noble family, Georg was not much older than Faustus and well-educated. He had registered at the University of Ingolstadt when he was sixteen and already the canon of the cathedrals of Bamberg, Würzburg and Strassburg. For the summer term of 1490 he enrolled at the University of Basel. There is no record that Georg left with a degree from either institution, and in 1505 he acceded to the bishopric.
Since 1251 the Bishops of Bamberg had resided in the Altenburg overlooking the city of Bamberg. Walking across the narrow bridge over the deep defensive ditch, Faustus would have entered the gatehouse under the watchful eye of the tower looming above him. In the inner courtyard, the palace to his left would have been his obvious destination. The sum Faustus received for his services gives a clue to his reception. Here was an honoured guest, an astrologer of high esteem. No tradesman to come by the side door, but a scholar to be received in the Bishop’s court.
In many ways the Bishop was an unlikely client. Most obviously his high ecclesiastical position would lead us to expect a disinclination towards retaining the services of an astrologer, especially one who been denounced as a necromancer. Beyond this problem of office, Georg III was directly involved in the Church’s war on magic. In 1507 he had issued new laws with strictures against magic prominent amongst them. Georg III made the practice of magic a capital offence, authorised the use of torture and established the punishment as death by burning. Faustus, it might be thought, was walking into the lion’s den.
The apparent inconsistency between Georg III’s persecution of magic and his employment of Faustus leads one to suppose that Faustus was not seen as, or not proven to be, a practitioner of that sort of magic by Georg III. It is not the case that these laws were not enforced or enforceable. In the early seventeenth century they would be put into devastating effect. Nor should we assume that Georg risked his own reputation to consult this particular astrologer when Bamberg was teeming with them. The only conclusion we can arrive at is that the sort of things Trithemius reported Faustus as saying about himself in 1507 were taken at face value by Georg III in 1520 – we might suppose that Faustus stressed his philosophical and astrological credentials over his necromantic and blasphemous ones. In the intervening thirteen years, Faustus proved himself to be more successful than his enemies’ campaign against him.
Despite his new laws against magic, Georg III was an unusually enlightened prelate. His court in the lofty Altenburg became a haven for intellectuals and artists, such as the Humanists Lorenz Beheim and Ulrich von Hutten. Von Hutten even collaborated with Georg III’s Hofmeister (chief administrator) Johann von Schwarzenberg to produce a German translation of Cicero. He later dedicated the 1518 publication of his speech on the Turkish problem to the Bishop. The
brothers Andreas and Jacob Fuchs, Humanists and former pupils of Crotus Rubeanus, were both Church officials in Bamberg and closely associated with Georg III’s court. Georg sponsored the arts by employing Hans Wolf as his court painter and gave commissions to both Loy Hering and Albrecht Dürer. His bookbinder was the respected geographer and astrologer Johannes Schöner (Schonerus, 1477–1547), who would go on to become professor of mathematics and astrology in Nuremberg.
Schöner was an alumnus of the University of Erfurt and had pursued his own studies into astronomy and astrology in Nuremberg. An undated woodcut shows him wrapped in his doctor’s gown, his fringe cut short over a high forehead, hair growing long over his ears at the sides to meet an unpleasant-looking beard of rats’ tails, with heavy bags under his eyes, presumably the result of many a sleepless night gazing at the heavens. When he moved to Bamberg he produced globes showing the latest discoveries in the New World and began printing his own books, dedicating his first work on geography to Georg III in 1515. Schöner’s great interest was astrology and most of his later printed works were devoted to exploring the secrets of the celestial influences. Schöner was also something of a loose cannon. He had fathered a daughter with his mistress and was so altogether lax in his church duties that he was deprived of a benefice in Bamberg. But the Bishop liked him and continued to offer his patronage. One of his undoubted privileges was that he enjoyed access to the Bishop’s library where there were manuscripts already thought to be antique in the sixteenth century.
Schöner was not the only astrologer in Bamberg at this time. Lorenz Beheim was also noted for his skill at astrology as well as his legal acumen and Humanist interests. Willibald Pirckheimer thought him the most learnéd man of his circle and the two corresponded at length on alchemy and astrological medicine. Beheim had met Reuchlin while studying in Italy and had learnt the mysteries of the cabbala from him.