In this book, poorly printed, and apparently on a private press, Mephistopheles is mentioned as one of the chief Princes of Hell. He is described as a youth, adept in all arts and services, who brings spirit-servants or familiars, and brings treasures from earth and sea with speed. In the Frankfort Faust Book (1587), Mephistopheles says, ‘I am a spirit, and a flying spirit, potently ruling under the heavens.’ In the oldest legends he appears as a dog, that, as we have seen, being the normal form of tutelary divinities, the symbol of the Scribe in Egypt, guard of Hades, and psychopomp of various mythologies. A dog appears following the family of Tobias. Manlius reports Melancthon as saying, ‘He (Faust) had a dog with him, which was the Devil.’ Johann Gast (‘Sermones Conviviales’) says he was present at a dinner at Basle given by Faust, and adds: ‘He had also a dog and a horse with him, both of which, I believe, were devils, for they were able to do everything. Some persons told me that the dog frequently took the shape of a servant, and brought him food.’ In the old legends this dog is named Praestigiar.[2]
As for the man Faust, he seems to have been personally the very figure which the Church required, and had the friar, in whose guise Mephistopheles appears, been his actual familiar, he could hardly have done more to bring learning into disgrace. Born at the latter part of the fifteenth century at Knittlingen, Wurtemberg, of poor parents, the bequest of an uncle enabled him to study medicine at Cracow University, and it seems plain that he devoted his learning and abilities to the work of deluding the public. That he made money by his ‘mediumship,’ one can only infer from the activity with which he went about Germany and advertised his ‘powers.’ It was at a time when high prices were paid for charms, philtres, mandrake mannikins; and the witchcraft excitement was not yet advanced enough to render dealing in such things perilous. It seems that the Catholic clergy made haste to use this impostor to point their moral against learning, and to identify him as first-fruit of the Reformation; while the Reformers, with equal zeal, hurled him back upon the papists as outcome of their idolatries. Melancthon calls him ‘an abominable beast, a sewer of many devils.’ The first mention of him is by Trithemius in a letter of August 20, 1507, who speaks of him as ‘a pretender to magic’ (‘Magister Georgius Sabellicus, Faustus Junior’), whom he met at Gelnhaussen; and in another letter of the same year as at Kreuznach, Conrad Mudt, friend of Luther and Melancthon, mentions (Oct. 3, 1513) the visit to Erfurth of Georgius Faustus Hemitheus Hedebeyensis, ‘a braggart and a fool who affects magic,’ whom he had ‘heard talking in a tavern,’ and who had ‘raised theologians against him.’ In Vogel’s Annals of Leipzig (1714), kept in Auerbach’s Cellar, is recorded under date 1525 Dr. Johann Faust’s visit to the Cellar. He appears therefore to have already had aliases. The first clear account of him is in the ‘Index Sanitatis’ of Dr. Philip Begardi (1539), who says: ‘Since several years he has gone through all regions, provinces, and kingdoms, made his name known to everybody, and is highly renowned for his great skill, not alone in medicine, but also in chiromancy, necromancy, physiognomy, visions in crystal, and the like other arts. And also not only renowned, but written down and known as an experienced master. Himself admitted, nor denied that it was so, and that his name was Faustus, and called himself philosophum philosophorum. But how many have complained to me that they were deceived by him—verily a great number! But what matter?—hin ist hin.’
These latter words may mean that Faust had just died. He must have died about that time, and with little notice. The rapidity with which a mythology began to grow around him is worthy of more attention than the subject has received. In 1543 the protestant theologian Johann Gast has (‘Sermones Convivialium’) stories of his diabolical dog and horse, and of the Devil’s taking him off, when his body turns itself five times face downward. In 1587 Philip Camerarius speaks of him as ‘a well-known magician who lived in the time of our fathers.’ April 18, 1587, two students of the University of Tübingen were imprisoned for writing a Comedy of Dr. Faustus: though it was not permitted to make light of the story, it was thought a very proper one to utilise for pious purposes, and in the autumn of the same year (1587) the original form of the legend was published by Spiess in Frankfort. It describes Faust as summoning the Devil at night, in a forest near Wittenberg. The evil spirit visits him on three occasions in his study, where on the third he gives his name as ‘Mephostophiles,’ and the compact to serve him for twenty-four years for his soul is signed. When Faust pierces his hand, the blood flows into the form of the words O homo fuge! Mephistopheles first serves him as a monk, and brings him fine garments, wine, and food. Many of the luxuries are brought from the mansions of prelates, which shows the protestant bias of the book; which is also shown in the objection the Devil makes to Faust’s marrying, because marriage is pleasing to God. Mephistopheles changes himself to a winged horse, on which Faust is borne through many countries, arriving at last at Rome. Faust passes three days, invisible, in the Vatican, which supplies the author with another opportunity to display papal luxury, as well as the impotence of the Pope and his cardinals to exorcise the evil powers which take their food and goblets when they are about to feast. On his further aerial voyages Faust gets a glimpse of the garden of Eden; lives in state in the Sultan’s palace in the form of Mohammed; and at length becomes a favourite in the Court of Charles V. at Innsbruck. Here he evokes Alexander the Great and his wife. In roaming about Germany, Faust diverts himself by swallowing a load of hay and horses, cutting off heads and replacing them, making flowers bloom at Christmas, drawing wine from a table, and calling Helen of Troy to appear to some students. Helen becomes his mistress; by her he has a son, Justus Faustus; but these disappear simultaneously with the dreadful end of Dr. Faustus, who after a midnight storm is found only in the fragments with which his room is strewn.
Several of these legends are modifications of those current before Faust’s time. The book had such an immense success that new volumes and versions on the same subject appeared not only in Germany but in other parts of Europe,—a rhymed version in England, 1588; a translation from the German in France, 1589; a Dutch translation, 1592; Christopher Marlowe’s drama in 1604.
In Marlowe’s ‘Tragical History of Doctor Faustus,’ the mass of legends of occult arts that had crystallised around a man thoroughly representative of them was treated with the dignity due to a subject amid whose moral and historic grandeur Faust is no longer the petty personality he really was. He is precisely the character which the Church had been creating for a thousand years, only suddenly changed from other-worldly to worldly desires and aims. What he seeks is what all the energy of civilisation seeks.
Evil Angel. Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art
Wherein all Nature’s treasure is contained:
Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,
Lord and commander of these elements.
Faust. How am I glutted with conceit of this!