The Historical Dr_ Faustus, c_I466-c_I537

GivL'll thL: obviously legendary or mythic quality both of Marlowe's play and of irs prlllcipal source, the prose Hisforie rf file in the university records as Georgius Helmstetter, Georio de damna{;/e We, and deserlJcd dealh 4 DOrioI' John FallStHs, the fact that Hell11stadt, or some variant thereof. He received his b,lchelor's there was a historical Doctor Faustlls may come as a surprise. Like ckgree within less than the prescribed minimum of a yCJr and Christopher Marlowe, this man was a trangn:ssor both of sexual a half of study, but took longer than most students to cam the and of ideological codes. master's degree, which he ,vas granted only in I487~having beell Until quite recently, research into the traces of this hismri­ held back, n10st probably, by a requirement that a IlwlZisrer artillm cal figure was bed,'viled by several puzzling facts. Sixteenth­ be at least twenty or twenty-one years ·old. The fact that he was century accounts give the man two different names, Georgius and one of only two students in a class of sixty-seven who gave no Johannes, leading some scholars to suppose th:lt there might have indication of a family name or patronymic suggests that he may, been two distinct magicians namL:d Faust (a COllllllon German like Erasmus, have been illegitimate. If, as the university statutes surname) or Faustus. FaustLls appears to have claimed the academ­ required, he t;)ugh[ for two years in the faculty of arts as a Master ic ritles ofMagistCf, or of Doctor-but while a Magister Georgius of Arts, he would have remained at Heidelberg until at least [he Faustus was practising various arts of divination in Gelnhausen, summer of 1489 (Baron 1978: 16-18). Wlirzburg, and Kreuznach in 1506 and 1507 (Palmer and More In addition to the scholastic learning of the nominalist liia I/flld­ 84-86), the records of German universities .rl1L:ntion only a single ('rna to which he was exposed in his formal course of studies, Johannes Faust or Fmt who entered Heidelberg in Deccmber Gcorgius Helmstetter would also have encoLlntered at Heidelberg TSOS, and received a bachelor's degree in Jalluary 1509 (Palmer both the speculative (which is to say occultist) and the philologi­ and Morc 86-87). cal sides orthe new humanist learning. During the 1480s the city However, as Frank Baron showed in Do(/or FallslHsjJ'(l/ll History was home to a number ofdistinguished hUl1lanists, who tended to to Legend (1978), the early accounts of Faustus divide under critical ally thernselves with the exponents of the I'ia /I·lodema. According analysis into twO groups: those written betweell 1507 and the mid to Heiko Oberman, one consequence of the modernists' rejec­ 1530S as immcdiate responses to his activities, and those composed tion of the universal t('nns deployed by Aquinas and the other during the half-century between his c1c;lth (c. 1537) and the publi­ theologians of the Ilia allti'll/il was "a craving to expericnce and cation in 1587 ofthe Germall FCIIlstbook. In the former texts, which apprehend the world free from the tutelage of faith "-a craving, have documentary value, his fIrst name, when it is mentioned, is however, which soon "proved irreconcilable with the platonically Georgius; ill the latter, which show llllmistakable marks of leg­ inspired humanist propensity for a sancia pltilo50phia" (Oberman end-formation, the name has becollle Johannes. Baron also sorted 3R). In the interim, though, there seems to have been a pcriod in OUt the puzzle of the uni\-ersity records: in brief, there are no the late fIfteenth century during which young German scholars, records of the magician faustus for the very good reason that th:lt perhaps especially those trained in t.he via moderna, were able to was not his nall1e-at least until some time after his graduation. find a substitute for the theological speculations challenged by In January 1483 a young Illan from the nearby village of nominalism in that syncretic compendium of Hermetic [heoso­ Hdmstadt enrolled at the University of Heidelberg in the nomi­ phy, Neoplatonic theurgy and Christian Cabala which interested nalist via /tlodema l of the arts faculty; his name appears variously speculative humanists.1 An exchange ofletter~ whose significance was first recognized

Tht: arcs f.c-ul£ it.'s ill ~ lotth c;;" rn Europe a.·n uni\'~ r:;. jti\"""s in the fif(l ' l~IHh c(ntury wen: by Frank Baron ilia kes it clear that this Heidelberg graduate commonly divided bl'{\l : t'~n cxponl.'nt~ ofchc l! iJ .mtiqHo1,.1 phiJ-osn phy ofmc[:lphy...;j­ cal r(':'lii~m dC\,l:lol, ~ ("d 111 rhe thirteenth <.:,-n[ury by Albertlls MJgnu:, and ThomJ~ rmpOr£JIH lOtlldic!i. of this th,,'Il-t'r1)l'rgt'"Ot tradition indud.: thos(" of G~lrin. \)/ alkl:lT Aqullus and [h('ir- SUCCI,.'$S t,H Duns Scocus. \...·ho thought of Llnivt r:;'Jl I1lc[JphysiL';J) 1972 and 19 75. YJtl:$ 19{)4 and 11)7<). Cc..1uhano. TOll1linson .. a nd Crafton. r.:ucgorlt' S- and the rebirlon:;.hips ;unong lhnl'1 :l~ l~xistjJ1g illdt'pl:nd(,ntly ot" our ex­

pCri('I1l' l' or kno,,:Jcdg(' of tht'l1I; and Cxp~) I\Cnh of th.... !'ill HhJdcm:l. il c ri.tlc.ll _Inci sO/TII.:rimL's c Urr()~i\ i dy ~ c l'pril"JI non1inalisIl1, d('n~1 0 p e d in t!H' f~)l)rr~r.:nth C~lll\lry by DOCTOR FAUSTUS 27 \VilliJnl of()cklum. Njchol:-t~ of AUlr\.·courr Jnd J L'an Burtci:1n. practised some at least of the arts of divination which commonly and who as the supposed inventor of divination by water could interested speculative humanists. In October 1534, Dr. Petrus be regarded as a pagan prophet (Baron 1978: 32) . "Faustus" seems Seuter, a lawyer living in the city ofKempten, enclosed two doc­ also to be a humanist cognomen, chosen for its meaning ("auspi­ uments in a letter he sent to his friend Nicolaus Ellenbog, a monk cious"), and as alluding to one or more of the earlier bearers of with humanist interests in the monastery of Ottobeuren. One of the name-most probably the Manichaean bishop with whom St. these, an academic oration delivered by a Heidelberg professor Augustine debated, or the Faustus who in a widely-read patristic to the Emperor Maximilian (who reigned from April, 1487 to text, the pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, is briefly a disciple of January, 1519), may date from the period ofSeuter's own studies the Gnostic heresiarch and magician Simon Magus (Wentersdorf; at Heidelberg, which began in March, 1490. The other, a horo­ Richardson). "The second magus" may be a bow in the direction scope prepared for Seuter by "magister Georgius Helmstetter" of Zoroaster, whom Renaissance genealogies of wisdom com­ according to the judgment of the astrological, physiognomic and monly list as the first inventor of magic. But Faustus is not being chiromantic art (Baron 1989: 298), may also date from the same modest: this admission ofsecondariness puts him ahead ofHermes period: if Helmstetter remained at Heidelberg beyond the statu­ or Mercurius Trismegistus, the usual number two in accounts of tory two years after his graduation, he could have been one of the magical prisca theologia or "ancient theology" (see Walker 1975: Seuter's teachers in the Faculty ofArts. 23,93, and Yates 1964: IS, 131). Moreover, "magus secundus," in Since a doctoral degree was obtainable only in the disciplines conjunction with claims to astrological competence and primacy of law, medicine, and theology, Georgius Helmstetter's proper in necromancy, might reinforce the suggestion of an affiliation academic title was the one used by Seuter: magister. But by the with Simon Magus-who in the Recognitions is denounced as a convention of the time he would have been able, outside aca­ necromancer, and is closely associated with belief in astrology demic circles, to cail himself Doctor (Baron 1982: 17) . It seems (Recognitions II. 13-15, IX. 12 ff., X. 7 ff.). likely that he did so-and that this was the same man whose . The man, as Trithemius describes him, was clearly transgres­ public career as a diviner and magician, beginning in the early sive: a braggart, a blasphemer, and a pederast. He apparently years of the sixteenth century, made the name of Doctor Faustus boasted that if the writings and doctrines of Plato and Aristotle notorious throughout Germany. were wholly lost and forgotten, he "would be able to restore them In August 1507, the humanist Johannes Trithemius, himself a all with increased beauty," just as the prophet Ezra had restored graduate of Heidelberg, and an occult philosopher and magician the lost books of the Law (cf. 2 Esdras 14: 20-26). He claimed as well as a Benedictine abbot, wrote a long letter to his friend "that the miracles of Christ the Saviour were not so wonderful, Johannes Virdung von Hassfurt, an astrologer at Heidelberg that he himself could do all the things that Christ had done, as who had an active interest in magic and divination. In this let­ often and whenever he wished." And when in 1507 Faustus was ter Trithemius described the activities over the preceding year of appointed schoolmaster in Kreuznach, he promptly indulged "in a man who announced himself in what was probably a printed the most abominable kind of fornication with the boys," and fled sheet of self-advertisement as "Magister Georgius Sabellicus, the to escape punishment (Baron 1978: 96-97; Tille 1-3; Palmer and younger Faustus, chief of necromancers, astrologer, the second More 83-86). magus, palmist, diviner by earth and fire, second in the art of In 1513 another distinguished humanist, Conrad Mutianus divination by water" (Baron 1978: 96; cf. Tille 2, Palmer and Rufus, wrote of the recent arrival in Erfurt of a chiromancer More 84). "Sabellicus" is probably a humanist cognomen incor­ named "Georgius Faustus, Helmitheus Hedebergensis, merus os­ porating a learned allusion to Numa Pompilius, the second king tentator et fatuus"-"a mere braggart and fool," who babbled at of Rome, whose origins were among the Sabines or Sabellici, an inn and was marvelled at by the ignorant. But his claims, "like

28 INTRODUCTION DOCTOR I' AUSTUS 29 those ofall diviners, are idle, and such physiognomy has no more to "Doctor Faustus, the great sodomite and necromancer" (Palmer weight than a water spider" (Palmer and More 87-88).1 and More 90). And in 1539, not long after his death, a contempo­ Later notices support the identifIcation of the Heidelberg grad­ rary wrote that "The number of those who complained to me that uate Georgius of Helmstadt with the magician Doctor Faustus. In they were cheated by him was very great. ... his deeds, as I hear, July 1528 Kilian Leib, prior ofRebdorf(near Eichstatt) in Bavaria, were very petty and fraudulent" (Palmer and More 94-95)· recorded that on the fIfth ofJune "Georgius faustus helmstetensis" had said "that when the sun and Jupiter are in the same constella­ The Legend of Faustus tion prophets are born (presumably such as he)"; and onJune 17 of the same year, a soothsayer who calJed himself "Dr. Jorg Faustus Conspicuously absent from the accounts of Georgius Faustus writ­ von Heidelberg" was banished by the council of the nearby city ten during his lifetime is any suggestion that he had a pact with the of Ingolstadt, and being invited "to spend his penny elsewhere, ... devil, an attendant spirit, powers of flight, the ability to devour a he pledged himself not to take vengeance on or make fools of the cartload ofhay, detachable legs, or an affair with Helen ofTroy. Yet authorities for this order" (Palmer and More 89-90). some fIfty years after his death a legend which included all of these Georgius Faustus's expulsion from Ingolstadt may suggest that he features, and which in addition recounted in lurid detail the lam­ enjoyed a somewhat dubious reputation. However, transgressions entations and terrors of his fmal hours, was in print as the Historia and indiscretions of the kind reported by Trithemius, Mutianus 1Ion D . Johann Fausten (1587). This German Faustbook is evidently and Leib did not prevent him from being hired in February Lutheran in inspiration: its demonology, some of its episodes and 1520 to cast the horoscope of Georg Schenk von Limburg, the many ofits turns ofphrase are lifted from Martin Luther's writings Prince-Bishop of Bamberg (Palmer and More 88-89), or from and table-talk (Baron 1978: 70-82; 1982: 67-74). being consulted in 1536 by a close associate ofErasmus's to predict The notoriety of Georgius Faustus made him an apt candidate the fortunes ofa colonizing expedition to Venezuela (Palmer and for demonization by the orthodox. The fIrSt cue for this develop­ More 92, 95-96, Baron 1978: 48-66). One may wonder whether ment was given in 1537 by Martin Luther himself. Prompted, it Faustus guessed that Georg Schenk had little more than two years may be, by news of Faustus's death, or possibly by the publication to live (he died in May 1522, aged fifty-two), or whether he would in the previous year of a collection ofJohannes Trithemius's let­ have been indiscreet enough to share such a guess. But he did ters which included his 1507 account of Faustus, a conversation foretell disaster for the Venezuela expedition-a prognostication at Luther's dinner table on the subject of scoffers (ludificatores) borne out by events, much to the discomfIture of the Nuremberg and the magic art turned to "Faustus, who called the devil his humanist Joachim Camerarius, who had prophesied "an entirely brother-in-law" (Palmer and More 93; WATr no. 3601)-and propitious outcome" (Baron 1978: 59). who must therefore, it is implied, have cohabited with a succubus The only other records ofFaustus's activities are negative in tone. demon. Luther made this the occasion for a string ofcarnivalesque In May 1532 the city council ofNuremberg refused a safe-conduct anecdotes-about a sorcerer who devoured a peasant, together with his horse and wagon, a monk who offered another peasant

This odd title "Helmitheus H edebergensis" may be a mistranscription of"Hemit he us a penny for all the hay he could eat and then consumed half a Hedelbergensis" ("the demi-god of Heidelberg"), or possibly of "Helmstetenlsis] wagon-load before being beaten off, and a man who frightened Hedelbergensis" ("from Helmstadt nea r Heidelberg"). But "Helmitheus" appears away his Jewish creditor by making it seem he had pulled off rather to be a literary allusion to a patristic text that we have already seen Faustus may have known: in the pseudo-Clementine R ecognitions, as first printed in 1504, the debtor's leg (WAI,' no. 3601). These stories reappear in the a statement to the effect that Pyrrha and Erymcthcus were the parents of Helen His/oria as exploits of Faustus himself; so also does Luther's tale and Prometheus is garbled through scribal error into the claim that Pyrrha and of a magician (identifIed in one report of the conversation as the Prometheus were the parents of" Helmit he us" (Richardson 14[-42).

30 INTRODUCTION DOCTOR fAUSTUS 31 abbot Trithemius) who entertained the Emperor Maximilian by Further elaborations of the legend were produced by a succes­ having demons take on the forms of Alexander the Great and sion of Lutheran writers, among whom the most influential was other monarchs (WAY,' no, 4450), Philipp Melanchthon, His references to Faustus in lectures deliv­ Luthe~'s belief that all magicians have a pact with the devil was ered at Wittenberg during the I550S are of particular interest for confirmed for him in 1537 by a Wittenberg student who confessed what they suggest about the legend's antecedents and ideological to have foresworn his faith in Christ and promised himself to "an­ motivation, Linking Faustus with the firSt-century magician and other master" (WATr no, 3618A-B, 3739), Fifteen years later, re­ heresiarch Simon Magus (both attempted to fly up to heaven), counting this same incident, Philipp Melanchthon added the detail he reminds his auditors that in the apocryphal Acts ifthe Apostles of a written pact with the devil; and in 1585 Augustin Lercheimer Peter and Paul Simon is represented as the apostles' great opponent (a pen name for Hermann Witekind, who had studied under (Palmer and More 99), He makes a point of claiming that he Melanchthon) combined this story in his Christian Synopsis ifMagic himself knew "Ioannes" Faustus, whose birthplace he identifies (an important source for the 1587 Historia) with the fIrSt published as Kundling (now Knittlingen-a village some half-hour's walk reference to Faustus's demonic pact (Baron 198s: 535-36), from Melanchthon's home town of Bretten); and he states that Luther may also have contributed more directly to the launch­ Faustus studied magic in Cracow,! He gives a circumstantial ac­ ing of the legend through the stories he helped to spread when his count of Faustus's death at the devil's hands in a village in the former Wittenberg colleague and later radical opponent, Andreas Duchy of Wiirttemberg, and as though to confirm that the man , 'Bodenstein von Karlstadt, died in Basel on Christmas Eve, 1541. In was a servant of Satan, he adds that during his life he "had with early 1542, Luther and his correspondents in Basel and elsewhere him a dog which was a devil, just as that scoundrel who wrote claimed successively that Karlstadt had left be,hind him a noisome De vanitate artium"- the humanist Henricus Cornelius Agrippa­ spirit, and that his death had been caused, not by the plague­ "likewise had a dog that ran about with him and was a devil." Karlstadt was himself a plague to God's church-but by his terror After telling how Faustus twice escaped arrest, presumably by when the devil materialized to carry him off (WABr ix, 621-22, x, demonic means, Melanchthon concludes by refuting the boast of I2-14, 24-30, 49), Johannes Gast, a Protestant clergyman of Basel, this same "Faustus magus, a most filthy beast and a sewer ofmany appropriated these same motifs ofa noisome spirit and ofa death at devils," that all of the Emperor Charles V's victories in Italy had the devil's hands as organizing features ofthe first clearly legendary been won by his magic (Palmer and More I02-03), account ofDoctor Faustus, which he published in his Tomus secun­ Like several ofhis first-century contemporaries, Simon Magus, dus convivalium sermonum (Basel, 1548), Paolo Giovio had claimed the magician and Gnostic heresiarch to whom Melanchthon lik­ in his Elogia doctorum virorum (I546) that the humanist and occult ened Faustus, professed to be God, Simon makes a cameo ap­ philosopher Henricus Cornelius Agrippa had a black dog who was pearance in the canonical Acts if the Apostles : acclaimed by his actually a devil.! Not to be outdone, Gast declared that the necro­ followers as "the power of God that is called great" (Acts 8: IO), mancer Faustus's dog, and his horse as well, were both devils, And this Samaritan magician is converted by the apostle Philip, and Faustus did not simply die in despair: "he was strangled by the devil then, after. seeking to buy the power of the Holy Spirit, cursed 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 This detail is suggestive. In his youth Melanchthon was acquainted with a Johannes slaves of the devil" (Palmer and More 98), who was deeply interested in magic , who practis ed physiognomic and astro­ logical divination, who had studied at Cracow, and who was associated both w ith Heidelberg and also with Georgius Faustus. The man in question was Johannes See Nauen 327· James Sanford, who in ' 569 translated Agrippa's De vallitale into Virdung von Hassfurt, the recipient of Trithcmius's '507 lettcr abollt Faustus; he Engli sh, repea ts the story in his preface (Agrippa '974: 4) . taught at H eidelbcrg and was court astrologer to the Elector Palatine-and had also cast the young Melanchthon's horoscope.

32 INTRODUCTION DO C TOR FA U ST U S 33 by the apostle Peter (Acts 8: 15-24). But he appears to have been luding to his own radical opponents), of those "cunning and a more substantial figure than the polemical narrative in Acts pestilential men" among his contemporaries who have served would suggest. The doctrines of Simon and the sect he founded Satan in this respect, but who are confuted by the Holy Spirit. are refuted at length by patristic writers, including H ippolytus He promptly identifies the same pattern in the age ofJesus and and Irenaeus-according to whom this apostate, antichrist and the apostles: "Thus Christ always conquered the cleverest con­ agent of the devil gave visible form to his heresies by cohabiting trivances of the Pharisees, Peter those of his magician Simon, with a woman whom his followers knew variously as Helena, and Paul those of his Pseudoapostles" (WA xxxviii, 501). Minerva, or Luna. Appropriating a motif from the apocryphal Melanchthon's construction of a parallel between "Faustus Wisdom literature, which he conflated with the Greek myth of magus" and Simon Magus, who by his very presence testified to the the birth of Athena, goddess of wisdom, from the head of Zeus, apostolic mission ofSt. Peter and St. Paul, may thus lead one to sus­ Simon described this woman as his own divine First Thought. pect that he is hinting, with all due modesty, at a similar guarantee The -evil archons whom she had absent-mindedly engendered, through demonic opposition of his own and Luther's quasi-apos­ and who then created the world, imprisoned her within it in a tolic role. Such a suspicion is strengthened by Melanchthon's claim ser.ies of human forms, among them that of Helen of Troy; but to have known Faustus, not just by reputation but in person-and Simon, the originary God, had now descended to save her and all also by a story about an encounter between them which appeared who believed in him (Irenaeus I. 23). in Augustin Lercheimer's Christian Synopsis of Magic (15 85) . The reappearance of Helen in the German Faustbook of 1587 Lercheimer tells us that when Faust, as he calls him, was is one sign of the Faustus legend's affiliation to the patristic ac­ in Wittenberg, "he came at times to the house of Philipp counts of Simon. But Simon Magus and "Faustus magus" (as [Melanchthon]," ofall people, where he received both hospitality Melanchthon called him) have more in common than this. Both and admonitions. Resenting the latter, he told his host one day could be described (to borrow a phrase from Hart Crane's poem as they descended to dinner that he would make all the pots in "For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen") as " bent axle[s] of de­ his kitchen fly up through the chimney. To which Melanchthon votion" (Crane 29)-in the sense that their transgressions against replied, with less than his usual eloquence, "Dass soltu wollassen, orthodoxy were recuperated by the legends which formed around ich sch[e]isse dir in deine kunst" (Baron 1985: 532)-"You'd bet­ them in such a way as to legitimize that orthodoxy. ter layoff; I shit on your art!" The sorcerer did indeed layoff. For, The role of Simon Magus in the legitimation of orthodoxy is as Lercheimer added in 1597, in the third edition of his Christian evident in the pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, where St. Peter, Synopsis, "the devil was unable to rob the kitchen of this holy who defeats Simon Magus in a series of public debates, explains man" (Palmer and More 122). human history in terms of a sequence ofpairs appointed by God: There is perhaps an echo of Luther's and Melanchthon's logic the fIrSt ofeach pair to manifest himselfis an emissary ofevil, the of legitimation in the Historia as well. Lercheimer followed his second an emissary of the true prophecy (III. 59). Thus Cain was story about Melanchthon's ability to resist Faust's devilish tricks followed by Abel, Esau by Jacob, Pharaoh's magicians by Moses, with one about an elderly neighbor's attempt to convert the sor­ "the tempter" by the Son of Man, and Simon Magus by Peter cerer. The two together seem to have inspired the story of the himself (III. 61). Old Man's intervention with Faustus in chapters 52 and 53 of the During the 1530S, Martin Luther developed a view of his own Historia-where, although Philipp Melanchthon has disappeared, function which is clearly indebted to this pseudo-Clementine a trace of him remains in the Old Man's exhortation to remember master-narrative. In his Annotations on Matthew (1538), Luther how St. Philip's preaching converted Simon the supposed God speaks ofSatan's perpetual invention of new calumnies, and (al­ to faith in Christ (EFB 102 [ch. 52]). It is left to the reader to

34 INTRODUCTION DOCTOR FAUSTUS 35 remember how promptly Simon Magus lapsed from his faith-as The Hermetic-Cabalistic tradition encouraged more extreme Faustus likewise does in this same chapter. forms ofprophetic and magical delusion as well. Georgius Faustus, If Faustus could in this peculiar sense be at once a precursor, whose blasphemies johannes Trithemius reported in 1507, was still an en.emy and a guarantor of the Lutheran faith, so also could the claiming t\lVO decades later to be a prophet (Palmer and More 89)· celebrated humanist and occult philosopher Henricus Cornelius Trithemius also wrote about the visit ofa similarly boastful Italian Agrippa, that "scoundrel" to whom Melanchthon likened him. magician,joannes Mercurius de Corigio, to the court ofLouis XII In 1522 the reformer Wolfgang Capito wrote to Agrippa, and ofFrance in 1501. From other sources (among them his own writ­ in an attempt to persuade him to commit himself openly to the ings) it is clear that this magician announced himself as a wonder­ Reformation, reported a conversation with an admirer who had working Hermetic-Christian redeemer; Trithemius's suppression declared that "what Luther sees now, Agrippa saw long ago" of this aspect of his claims raises the interesting possibility that (Agrippa 1970: ii. 729-30). There is some truth to this: Agrippa had he also knew more about Georgius Faustus's H ermetic-Cabalistic been' involved in bitter controversies with the theologians of the affiliations than he was willing to reveal (Keefer 1989: 85-86). Franciscan and Dominican orders since 1509. In the course of the Faustus legend's narrative exfoliation, But Agrippa was a well-known exponent ofwhat Frances Yates the anti-Catholic overtones which had been prese nt in its earli­ termed the Hermetic-Cabalistic tradition-a current of thought est forms became more pronounced, and the legend acquired, in to which Georgius Faustus was also, ifmore peripherally, attached. inverse form, many of the features of the popular genre of saints' This tradition, while encouraging purported restorations of orig­ lives-a genre which it al so helped to displace (Allen 13-4 1) . At inary discourses in a manner that in some ways anticipated the the same time, the carnivalesque elements evident in Luther's an­ Reformers' project ofreturning to the forms ofearly Christianity, ecdotes about magicians were taken up and amplifIed. differed from the latter in its wholesale syncretism, its willingness But whatever it contained of anti-Catholic polemic or of to believe in the underlying congruity ofal1 originary discourses, folktale, the legend remained a repressive narrative-one which "vhether Christian, jewish, Muslim or pagan, and also in its view sought to legitimize Protestant orthodoxy through a terrifying of human empowerment through magical practices understood representation of the wages of transgression. It is no coincidence as a common element of these discourses. Moreover, while this that the period between 1560 and the late 1580s, during which Hermetic-Cabalistic tradition preceded the Reformation by at the Faustus legend received its full narrative elaboration, also saw least a generation, it also encouraged radical evangelical opposi­ the fIrSt major outbreak of witch-hunts in Western Europe-an tion to Luther's doctrines. outbreak in which, with the vehement approval of orthodox During the decades immediately preceding the Reformation the intellectuals, thousands of people, most of them women, were 1 newly available and supposedly ancient texts ofHermes Trismegistus imprisoned, tortured, and judicially murdered. and the Kabbalists, which it was thought could contribute to a res­ toration ofthe pristine verities ofChristianity, aroused considerable In those parts of G ermany where records of the witch-persecutions have received excitement. However, the occultist tradition's emphasis on spiritual the most detailed study (present-day Daden-Wtirrrembcrg and Bava ria). there was a sharp increase of w itchcraft trials aft cr 15 60. peaking ill the I5 gos. and a further wave autonomy and on a deifIcation achieved through spiritual rebirth of perse c uri OilSbetween 158 5 and 1595 (Behringer I T. 13 ). M onter notes that a "rapid was diametrically opposed to Luther's biblical exclusivism and his intensifIca tion of persecution" in the territories. bo th Catholic and Protestant, frolll rejection of free-will; while this tradition undoubtedly helped to Geneva and Sa voy north to Alsace and Lorraine began "sometime b etween the 1560's create a favorable climate for the reception of his early writings, and the I.\80's" (Monter 35). A similar pattern is evident in sourh- ea stern England , w here witchcraft indictments on the HOine Circuit Assizes rOse from less than 40 in it subsequently contributed to radical reforming tendencies which thc 1560s to 109 in the 1570S and 166 in the 1580s (S harpe 108-09)· Across W es tern 8 outflanked or subverted the positions of the magisterial reformers. Europe, the number of w it ch trials increased gr" arly "after about 15 50 " (Klaits 4 ).

36 INTRODUC TION DOCTOR FAU STUS 37 DRAMATIS PERSONAE PROLOGUE

Enter Chorus. (in the order of their appearance, including "mutes)

CHORUS. CHORUS. Not marching now in fields ofThracimene JOHN FAUSTUS, doctor of theology. Where Mars did mate the Carthaginians, WAGNER, a student, and Faustus's servant; also speaks the part of Nor sporting in the dalliance of love CHORUS . In courts of kings where state is overturn'd, GOOD ANGEL. Nor in the pomp ofproud audacious deeds 5 EVIL ANGEL. Intends our muse to vaunt his heavenly verse. VALDES and CORNELIUS, 111ag1Clans. Only this, gentlemen: we must perform FIRST and SECOND SCHOLARS, colleagues Faustus at Wittenberg. of The form of Faustus' fortunes, good or bad. MEPHASTOPHILIS. To patient judgments we appeal our plaud, CLOWN (ROBIN). And speak for Faustus in his infancy: 10 R A FE, a second clown. Now is he born, his parents base of stock, LUCIFER. In Germany, within a town call'd Rhodes; BELZEBUB. Ofriper years to Wittenberg he went, SEVEN DEADLY SINS . POPE. 2. Mars did mate) Mars allied himself with or rivalled. Hannibal's Carthaginian army CARDINAL OF LORRAINE. inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Romans at the battle of Lake Trasummenus in FRIARS . 2 [7 BCE. According to Livy's Historiae xxn. i. 8-12. the battle was preceded by VINTNER. terrifying portents in which the war-god Mars figured prominently. 3-5·) These lines may refer to other plays by Marlowe: lines 3-4 to Dido, Qlleen of CAROLUS (CHARLES) THE FIFTH, Emperor. Carthage or (depending on the dating of Doctor Faustlls) to Edward II, and line 5 to KNIGHT. Tamburlailu. 'ATTENDANTS OF THE EMPEROR. 4· state] Though OED cites this line as an instance of "state" in the obsolete sense of , , "high rank, greatness, power" (OED "state," [6.b) , the word may also ca rry the ALEXANDER AND HIS PARAMOUR. modern meaning of "the supreme civil power and government" ("state," 29). HORSE-COURSER. 6. Our muse] the poet. A metonymic equation ofmuse with poet is evident in Shakespeare, DUKE OF VANHOLT and his DUCHESS. Sonnet xxi. 1-2, and Milton, Lycidas, lines 19-21. THIRD SCHOLAR. valllll) display proudly (OED 4). This B1 reading seems preferable to AI's "daunt" (mea ning "quell" or "overcome"), which is probably a misprint (Greg 41). HELEN OF GREECE. 7-8. perform / Thefarm) a characteristically Marlovianjingle; compare II. iii. 42 ("whose OLD MAN. termine is term'd"), 2 Tamburlaine III. v. 27 ("brandishing their brands") and V. 'DEVILS . iii. 7 ("pitch their pitchy tents"), and TIle lew of Malta I. i. 17 ("Haply some hapless man .. "). 8. Faustus) pronounced as spelled by Henslowe in his Diary: "Fostes." 9· appeal our plaud) appeal for our applause. 12. Rhodes) Roda (now Stadtroda), near Weimar. A U5Tv S '3· Wittenberg) The University of Wittenberg was famous under Martin Luther and D~ ~ Philipp Melanchthon as a Protestanr centre of lea rning. The A-text's "Wertenberg" is an error, prompted perhaps by a compositor's awareness of the Duchy of s - t~Ct ll/l tv t-t4 W DOCTOR FAUSTUS • PROLOGUE 73 Whereas his kinsmen chiefly brought him up. Nothing so sweet as magic is to him, 15 So soon he profits in divinity, Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss: The fruitful plot of scholarism grac'd, And this the man that in his study sits. That-shortly he was grac'd with doctor's name, Excelling all whose sweet delight disputes Exit. In heavenly matters of theology, 20 Till swoll'n with cunning of a self-conceit, His waxen wings did mount above his reach And melting heavens conspir'd his overthrow: For falling to a devilish exercise, And glutted now with learning's golden gifts, 25 He surfeits upon cursed necromancy;

Wiirttemberg as a state allied to England. or by knowledge that Melanchthon and others had claimed that Faustus was born and died in Wiirttemberg (see Palmer and More 101-02, 105-07, II9-21). 14. whereas] where. Compare Dido I. ii. 28, and 2 Tamvuriaille III. ii. 66 and V. iii. 132 . ..17. grac'd] Cambridge degrees were and still are conferred by the "grace" or decree ofthe university Senate; Marlowe's name appears in the Grace Book in 1584 and in 1587 for the B.A. and M.A. degrees respectively. 18. whose sweet delight disputes] "Disputes" may be construed as a verb; more probably the expression is elliptical and means "whose sweet delight comist, in disputes .. .. " Bowas emends to "whose sweet delight's dispute." BI's "and sweetly can dispute" appears to be an attempt to clarify a difficult wording. 20. swoll'II with Clwning of a self-conceit] The phrase implies that Faustus is "pregnant with self-engendered cleverness" (Hamlin 1996: 8). "Cunning" can mean knowledge or erudition, sometimes with negative connotations made explicit in Bacon's essay "Of Cunning" (1612): "We take Cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom" (Bacon 434). 21. waxen wings] an allusion to the story of Icarus (cf. Ovid. Metamorphoses VIII. 183-235): escaping with his father Daedalus from Minos's island kingdom of Crete, Icarus ig­ nored his father's warning about the wings he had made for them and flew too close to the sun . The episode was a favourite of Renaissance moralists and emblem writers. 22. melting heavens col1spir'd his overthrow] Compare 1 Tambur/ai"e IV. ii . 8-I1, where the possibility of heaven conspiring refers to astrological causation as opposed to the will of "the chiefest god." In BI. a comma after "melting" alters the sense: the melting ceases to be an aspect of the heavens' active and conspiratorial power, and becomes instead a consequence of mounting above one's reach . 23. falling to] These words link the metaphors of an !carian (or Luciferian) fall and of gluttonous surfeit. A distant secondary overtone in line 23 ("falling to" in the sense ofeating, as in the B-version III. ii. 59.61) comes suddenly to the fore in line 24 with "glutted now." 25· necromancy] The A-text spelling ("Negromancy," corrected in B to "Necromancie") reflects a common Medieval and ea rly modern corruption of necromantia (d ivination by consultation of the dea d) into m~~ro- or /legroma,.,lia (black magic).

74 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE DOCTOR FAUSTUS· PROLOGUE 75