by Leo Ruickbie
With such skilled proponents of astrology on hand, it is surely of significance that the Bishop instead turned to Faustus, an outsider. There is no record that Georg III ever consulted Schöner or Beheim on the subject of astrology, but as members of his court they may have supplied their advice informally or on a quid pro quo basis. Both Schöner and Beheim had better reputations than that usually attributed to Faustus, but the fact that the Bishop preferred Faustus in 1520 is a glowing endorsement of the much maligned necromancer.
A Princely Sum
Two things are immediately striking about the payment: that it was ‘given and presented as a testimonial’, and that it was made on a Sunday. Both of these suggest a public ceremony, at least in the sense of being conducted in the court. In addition, an official record was made of the payment, so this was not some secretive transaction. Then there is the sum paid itself.
Ten gulden was a lot of money in 1520. To put it into perspective, a labourer earned less than two gulden, a craft apprentice three or three-and-a-half gulden, and a soldier received between three and four gulden a month in wages. At mid-sixteenth century prices, a balanced diet would have emptied a Landsknecht’s purse and left nothing over for beer. Even the wealthy Basel printer John Amorbach could only afford sixteen to twenty ‘crowns’ per annum for his son’s board and lodging whilst at university. Looking at the local economy, Faustus’s fee was more than a bookbinder or artist in Bamberg could make per commission. Johannes Schöner received just under four gulden for a single book-binding order. Hans Wolf made about two gulden by helping Dürer paint his portrait of Georg III. Faustus’s contemporary astrologers could earn more, or at least some of them said they could. The Italian Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) claimed to have once turned down 200 ‘crowns’ for a horoscope. Virdung gave a more reliable account when he noted the expense of four Hungarian gold pieces paid to Albertus de Brudzewo for his help with a review of the subject of astrological nativities.
The exact value of ten gulden was difficult to measure in the sixteenth century. The coin could be called a gulden, guilder, or florin – all names that refer to the first gold coins minted in Florence in 1252. Made of silver rather than gold by the sixteenth century, the coin had no standardised value and mostly circulated within localised economies. Generally, the gulden was the currency of the southern imperial states: in the centre it was the thaler, whilst in the north we find the marck. In the contemporary record and the legendary material concerning Faustus, gulden, florin and thaler are all met with, but are not always exactly the same thing. It was not until 1559 that the Holy Roman Empire had an official currency.
If the uncertainties over how much Faustus’s payment was worth have us scratching our heads, then the problem of what he was paid for will have us pulling our hair out. Hans Muller was no doubt an able Kammermeister but we could have wished for a little more detail in his curt entry in the accounts.
Previous research has been hampered by a critical misunderstanding. Most other accounts interpret Faustus’s service as an ‘Indicium’, but are then at pains to explain exactly what this is. After re-examining the original, I argue that the Bishop’s chamberlin wrote ‘Judicium’.9 Judicium means ‘judgement’, as in usage recorded from at least 500 CE of Judicium Dei (‘Judgement of God’), the practice of trial by ordeal, and from the mid-fourteenth century of Judicium Pillorie (‘Judgement of the Pillory’), but more significantly as in the title of Nicolaus de Shadek’s Judicium Astronomicum of 1524. This latter use specifically refers to the practice of astrologia judiciaria, or ‘judicial astrology’.
Judicial or divinatory astrology was concerned with man’s fate, what we might think of as the ‘Judgement of the Stars’, as distinct from astrologia naturalis (‘natural astrology’), which was a sort of astrological weather forecasting. This type of astrology was forbidden by canon law because it denied free will, although if the Bishop was happy to commission such work, his attitude to canon law must have been individual, to say the least, and, anyway, Faustus could easily work his way round the problem with recourse to the old get-out clause that the stars ‘inclined without constraining’. Later in the sixteenth century, Pope Sixtus V would issue a bull outlawing judicial astrology along with the entire gamut of magical arts.
Schöner was quite capable of providing this sort of service. A copy of his horoscope of Johannes Carion survives and he would go on to draw up Luther’s horoscope with his friend Melanchthon. In 1547 he would publish a book dedicated to judicial astrology, De Ivdiciis Nativitatum, with a foreword by Melanchthon. Could this Lutheran connection be the reason why Georg III turned to an outsider for his glimpse into the future?
The Horoscope
Faustus would have begun like any other sixteenth-century astrologer, and by looking at the practices of others we can follow his steps. The sixteenth-century horoscope was quite different in construction from its modern cousin. Instead of the planets plotted on a wheel with the constellations marked at the rim, it was drawn up in a square – the so-called quadrant system – with the twelve houses marked in triangles around a central box and the signs of the zodiac marked on the outside edge, three to each side, or more often within the triangular houses themselves. Each house was thought to govern a particular area of one’s life and so the presence of the planets and their relationships to the others around them determined how these facets of existence would be formed and directed.
The complex tables of the Middle Ages were gradually being replaced by easier to use ephemerides, essentially astronomical almanacs showing the predicted positions for the heavenly bodies. The positions of the planets would be described in terms of degrees, minutes and seconds, placing them within a zodiacal sign. Thus for 23 April 1466 we would find the position of the sun given as 11º 7´ 33´´ of Taurus. However, the astrologer would still need to make adjustments for place and time. The printed ephemeris was usually calculated for a large town at twelve noon and any variation from this would have to be taken into account.
Having drawn out his quadrant, Faustus could determine a number of things. With the Bishop’s place of birth and the exact day, hour and minute of birth, he could construct a complete natal chart showing the course of his life. But Georg III already felt himself to be approaching Domus Mortis, the ‘House of Death’. It is possible that Georg III may have employed Faustus to produce just such a chart as a testament to his life in the same way that Melanchthon sought to demonstrate Luther’s greatness by casting a birth chart for his hero. However, the astrologer was not restricted to birth charts.
Horoscopes were also drawn up to determine the outcome of specific events, such as commercial transactions and even invasions. The chronicler Matthew Paris reported that Emperor Friedrich II (r. 1215–1250) used astrologers to forecast the outcome of his plans and even when to consummate his marriage. It has been calculated that more than 200 events in the reigns of the Habsburgs, from coronations, marriages, battles and the signing of treaties, were dictated by the astrologers’ calculations.
The question then is, what problems were pressing on Georg III’s mind? The year 1520 exhibited all the usual turbulence of disaster and war that we have come to expect of the Renaissance. The religious mind must have been preoccupied by the series of events begun in 1517 and Georg III in particular was known to be greatly troubled by Luther’s rebellion against Rome. Many of his advisors at court had sided with Luther and one of them, Lazarus Spengler, had already written to the influential Willibald Pirckheimer saying that the Bishop was with them. Spengler himself would be threatened by a Papal Bull. Georg III perhaps saw this as a strike too close to home, as Spengler would report with disappointment the Bishop’s changed attitude in a letter of 5 November 1520. Georg III had already commissioned Loy Hering to produce his epitaph and tombstone in 1518–19, so it might be that the Bishop’s thoughts were directed more to the hereafter, no doubt exacerbated by his vacillation between Luther and Rome. Georg III was only fifty years old in 1520, too youn
g, one might suppose, to be contemplating the end, but he was to die only two years later.
If Faustus’s prognostication related to the Lutheran rebellion, then his conclusions did not induce the Bishop to renew his support for the rebels; perhaps they even made him change his mind. Also, if Faustus’s prognostication was about Luther or the Reform movement, then this may explain why Georg III sought an outsider, especially as his most prominent astrologer, Schöner, was a staunch Lutheran. The status of ‘judicium’ as outlawed or at best theologically dubious astrology is another compelling reason to turn to an outsider. If this theory is correct, then this could also explain why such a sensitive document has not survived.
‘Good, Fat Pigs’
As well as the official record, Bamberg also has its tales about the magician. According to Roshirt, when Faustus came to Bamberg he was warmly welcomed and entertained in one of the inns. It also happened that there was a swineherd there who was talking to the landlord, bemoaning the fact that he did not know where to get his hands on a herd of good, fat pigs. For the Faustus of the legends it was an unmissable opportunity to beguile a country bumpkin, especially since ‘the loot from Frankfurt’ was nearly all gone – no mention was made of the Bishop’s generosity. Faustus conjured up a herd of pigs and sold them to the swineherd, warning that he should take care not to drive them through water. Of course, the swineherd disregarded the advice and found that his pigs turned to straw when he attempted to ford a river.
It is a typical and fairly unremarkable magical story. There is something more innocent in the magician’s simple duping of the swineherd than his typical image as a diabolical pact-maker. Faustus’s magic is taken for granted: it is a simple thing for him to bewitch the pigs. However, the tale still makes the implicit acknowledgement that magicians are cheats and should be avoided.
With the Bishop’s gold in his pocket, Faustus had little need of defrauding swineherds, but the early death of Georg III deprived Faustus of one of his most influential and important clients. It not only took from him the possibility of future contracts, but removed a pillar from the edifice of his reputation. Amidst the growing crowd shouting him down, there was now one less voice to potentially add its support. In time there might have been a more permanent place for Faustus in the Bishop’s court, but now there was only the open road.
A Wedding in Munich (1521–1522)
The year 1521 opened with the excommunication of Luther. In a letter written from the Wartburg he raged that all his enemies were inspired by Satan and that he was engaged in a direct struggle with the Devil. Undeterred, he would go on to publish his translation of the New Testament. This was not the only threat to Rome. Suleiman I ‘The Magnificent’ (1494–1566), only twelve months into his sultanship, would lead the Ottoman Turks to capture Belgrade, marking their farthest inroad into Christendom. As if to signal defeat or resignation, Pope Leo X died. Paracelsus was in Constantinople where he would later claim to have discovered the Philosophers’ Stone. The fear of witches was of course still in the air. In his De Strigimagorum Daemonumque Mirandis, Sylvester Prierias cited a wealth of contemporary cases of witchcraft that lead the reader to suppose that the belief in witchcraft was flourishing in Rome and central Italy during the early years of the sixteenth century.
Faustus probably cared little for the plight of Luther and was most certainly unaware of Paracelsus’s discoveries. As a learnéd magician he undoubtedly thought himself above the mere station of ‘witch’. Few magicians have ever shed a tear over the death of a pope and there is no reason to suppose that he was in or near Belgrade, or otherwise much involved at this time with the Turkish problem. Many of the ‘world events’ that occupy historians now had little immediate impact on everyday life, and Faustus must have had concerns of his own. Georg’s money was surely all used up. He needed a new client, a new cause, a new source of income.
In April 1521 François I declared war on the Empire and by summer von Sickingen was fighting in northern France on the Emperor’s orders. He saved himself the trouble of assaulting Sedan’s formidable fortress by concluding a truce with Robert de la Marck. Nearby Mouzon on his flank fell after a brief siege, leaving the way open to Mézières. He had 35,000 men against 2,000 and victory seemed assured, but, according to legend, a deception by Pierre Terrail, Seigneur de Bayard, broke the siege and scattered von Sickingen’s forces. Recalled to the Imperial Court in Brussels, von Sickingen was accused of treason and only received the vaguest promises from Charles V to reimburse his campaign costs. Had Faustus marched with von Sickingen to divine the career of the campaign, or given him astrological advice before he left?
Still spoiling for a fight, von Sickingen marched against the Archbishop of Trier to settle a personal feud, an event that is now seen as part of the wider Knights’ Revolt (1522–23). If Faustus was with him at Mézières, then he could have been with him here. However, added to the possible estrangement over Kreuznach, von Sickingen’s new-found Protestantism could have driven a further wedge between the two men. For the adventurous, the promise of riches to be won in Italy was as strong a siren call as ever, and 1522 is chiefly remembered for the Battle of Bicocca, although we should not overlook the siege of Rhodes, as will become apparent later.
Faustus, so the story goes, was at the Duke of Bavaria’s son’s wedding in Munich. If Faustus did indeed go to Munich, and let us suppose that he did, then it could only have been on 3 October 1522, time enough to have accompanied von Sickingen on his campaign in France.
According to the Faustbook Faustus was sought out by ‘three worthy young dukes’, students of the university, who were agog at the thought of the sumptuousness, ‘pomp and bravery’ that would attend the wedding of the Duke’s son in.10 Faustus conducted the noblemen into a garden and spread his cloak, bidding them to sit upon it. Faustus turned to his travelling companions with a warning. On no account should they talk to anyone, even if spoken to by the Duke himself. Faustus cast his spell and they flew up into the air.
There is no sign of Faustus’s earlier demon horse. He was not, like Luther’s sorcerer, content to ride a common goat or broomstick; he employed a more commodious magical cloak to convey the young noblemen to Munich. We are reminded of the legendary hole in the roof of that house on the Schössergasse in Erfurt, said to have been made to accommodate Faustus on his magical cloak.
The spurious Black Raven (supposedly Lyon, 1469) attributed to Faustus included instructions for performing this feat, but despite the early date given to this text it probably derives from the story in the Faustbook rather than the other way round. Called ‘Doctor Johann Faustis Coat Ride’ the magician is instructed to spread a large red coat on the ground and trace a magical figure in the middle of it. The magician is then told to walk backwards onto the coat – holding tightly another representation of the same magical figure – until he is standing in the middle of the magical figure. The instructions warn ‘do not step your feet outside this symbol, otherwise the trip will not be a happy one.’ The magician must then call upon the spirit Aziel three times, with the final piece of important advice: ‘If you want to leave a room, be sure that the windows are open.’
Luther, of course, had his own opinion on such cloak rides from which the later story of Faustus’s journey in the Faustbook may have derived. ‘As for flying through space on a cloak,’ he said ‘without doubt it can be done for a short or a longer distance.’11 But he also wondered if it was an illusion created by the Devil.
Faustus’s cloak would have conveniently transported the group over the imposing fourteenth-century gates and walls that encircled sixteenth-century Munich. The motto of the city was not then München mag Dich (‘Munich likes you’). Like every other city of the Empire, Munich was suspicious of you. To gain admittance within those walls one was required to show proof of having a relative, friend or place to stay inside.
Founded in 1157/58 by Duke Heinrich (1129–1195), ‘The Lion’, to control the trade route across the River Isar, Muni
ch had recently become the capital of a reunited Bavaria after a bloody war of succession. Faustus and his noble tour group flew over the walls and across the rooftops of, as P.F. puts it, ‘a right princely Town’ that ‘appeared as if it were new, with great streets therein, both of breadth and length.’12 The enlarged town hall and the twin spires of the comparatively new Frauenkirche (constructed 1468–1488) – as yet devoid of their characteristic brass onion-domes – would have been easily distinguishable landmarks.
The old Duke, Albrecht IV (1447–1508), known as ‘The Wise’, had had three sons by his wife, Kunigunde of Austria, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich III: Wilhelm IV (1493–1550), Ludwig X (1495–1545) and Ernst (1500–1560). Ernst had gone into the church and in 1522 was an ecclesiastical official in Passau; he would go on to become Archbishop of Salzburg. Wilhelm and Ludwig both reigned as dukes of Bavaria, despite the fact that their father had willed the everlasting succession of the firstborn (primogeniture). With the support of his mother and the States-General, Ludwig had forced Wilhelm to accept him as co-regent in 1516. Ludwig died without leaving an heir, but Wilhelm’s marriage to Marie von Baden-Sponheim on 3 October would, in time, give Bavaria its next duke.
It is a sign of its general unreliability that the Faustbook refers to the marriage of the Duke’s son, since the son was then the Duke. In 1522 Albrecht had already been lying for many years in the Frauenkirche. It is also an indication of the story’s dubious veracity that the three noblemen of Faustus’s party are ‘not here to be named’.13