INTRODUCTION
THE story of the man who sells his soul to the powers of evil in return for material gain, is one of the most ancient in the history of humanity. It is perhaps as old as humanity, for when the light of self-consciousness first began to dawn on man, he no doubt desired to know more than his limited intellect could tell him, or to possess something that the world could not or would not give him. When he looked around, and was frightened at his own littleness, he created gods for his protection, and these gods he endeavoured to propitiate, until they became his tyrants. They were the symbols of his hopes and fears, so that when he was propitiating his gods he was stereotyping the limitations of his own mind. And the most important of those limitations was that he must not look beyond his manufactured gods for the hidden causes of things. A profound instinct nevertheless urged him to probe beyond, and the resulting spiritual unrest, which has always manifested itself spasmodically in the human race, underwent various personifications at different times. The elements of the Faust story were already present in the Garden of Eden—the Tree of Knowledge, the personification of Evil in the Serpent, and the Woman who was tempted to overstep the bounds of what was permitted by the orthodox authority, in order to grasp the Forbidden Fruit. It is significant for the peculiar construction of the human mind, that it was always the Spirit of Evil which led the way to spiritual emancipation. In order to give concrete expression to his almost unconscious thirst for greater knowledge, man had to pretend to himself that this craving was pernicious. His very attempts to free himself from superstition provide the strongest evidence of the tortuous way in which his mind had to work, for it could only rise to a higher conception of its own worth by playing a game of self-deception.
The Faust problem was not peculiar to the Christian era. The Jews had their Solomon and the Greeks their Prometheus, but it was only at the end of the Middle Ages, when the old world was in the melting-pot, that there arose the most famous of all these legends, the most curious element in which is perhaps the fact that there was at the source of it an actual person.
I
The Historical Personage
The first record of an actual magician or adventurer of the name of Faust occurs in a letter written in Latin by the Abbot Trithemius of Würzburg, formerly of the Benedictine monastery of Sponheim, near Kreuznach in the Palatinate, to the mathematician and Court astrologer, Johann Virdung, on the 20th of August, 1507. The learned abbot, whose name is the Latinized form of Johannes Tritheim, writes to his friend in Heidelberg to warn him against a certain Faust from whom the astrologer is expecting a visit:—
“That man, about whom you have written to me, Georgius Sabellicus, who has ventured to call himself the prince of necromancers is a vagabond, an empty babbler and a knave: worthy to be whipped, that he might no longer profess publicly abominable matters which are opposed to the holy Church. For what are the titles which he assumes, other than the signs of a most stupid and senseless mind, which proves that he is a fool and no philosopher? Thus he has adopted the following title: Magister Georgius Sabellicus, Faustus junior, fountain of necromancers, astrologer, magus secundus, chiromancer, aëromancer, pyromancer, second in hydromancy. Behold the foolish temerity of the man; what madness is necessary to call oneself the fountain of necromancy. A man who is, in truth, entirely devoid of education, should rather call himself a fool than a magister. But his wickedness is not unknown to me. When some years ago I was returning from the March of Brandenburg, I met this man in the town of Gelnhausen, where I was told in the inn of many frivolous things promised by him with great audacity. When he heard of my presence, he fled forthwith from the inn and could not be persuaded by anyone to present himself to me.
He sent to me also by a citizen the advertisement of his foolishness, which I remember he sent to you. In that town I was told by priests, that he had said in the presence of many people that he had attained such great knowledge and memory of all wisdom, that if all the works of Plato and Aristotle, together with all their philosophy, had been absolutely wiped out of human memory, he would restore them, like a second Hebrew Ezra, by his genius, totally and more excellently than before.
When I was later on in Speyer, he came to Würzburg, and is said to have boasted with similar conceit in the presence of many people, that the miracles of our Redeemer Christ are no cause for astonishment; he himself could do everything that Christ had done, as often as and whenever he wished. This year, during the last days of Lent, he came to Kreuznach, where he made vast promises in a similar swaggering manner, and said that in alchemy he was the most perfect of any that had ever lived, and knew and could perform whatever the people wished. During this time the office of schoolmaster in this town was vacant, and it was conferred upon him through the intercession of Franz von Sickingen, the steward of your prince, a man who is exceedingly ardent with regard to mystical matters. But soon afterwards he began to practise a most infamous kind of fornication, forsooth, with the boys, and he fled, when the matter came to light, from his imminent punishment.