Hic iaceo Johannes Faustus, Doctor diuini iuris indignissimus, qui pro amore magiae Diabolicae scientiae vanissime cecidi ab amore Dei: O Lector pro me miserrimo damnato homine ne preceris, nam preces non iuuant quem Deus condemnauit: O pie Christiane memento mei, & saltem vnam pro infiducia mea lachrymulam exprime, & cui non potes mederi, eius miserere, et ipse caue.
VIEW OF WITTENBERG ABOUT 1546
After a woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder
The Stone was found in his study, and his will was fulfilled, and he lieth betwixt a heap of three and thirty fir trees in the fort of the Hill in a great hole where this is erected.
VI
If these will not serve, then shall you hear the testimony of a learned man John Wierus, cap. 4. libro I. de magis infamibus.[42] Which I have translated.
John Faustus, born at Kundling, a little village, learning Magic at Gracovia, where he was openly taught, and exercised it. In sundry places of Germany, with the admiration of many and with manifold lies, fraud, and illusions, with vain vaunting and promises but could do nothing: one example I will shew to the Reader, upon this condition, that he will pass his faith first to me that he will not imitate him: Then rehearseth he one of his knaveries, how he took upon him to make no hair grow upon a man’s face, and took away with a powder which I will not name, both the beard that he had and all the skin, causing such inflammations in his face that it burned all over cruelly. This he committed being taken at Batoburg upon the bank of the river Mosa hard upon the bounds of Gelderland: Another (saith this learned Physician) not unknown to me, having a black beard, the rest of his face somewhat dark and swarthy, witnessing melancholy (for he was splenetic) when he came to Faustus, who readily said: Truly I thought you had been my Familiar, straightway marking your feet, whether long and crooked nails stuck out of them: So likening this man to the Devil, which he thought had come unto him, which Devil he was wont to call Sorarius.
VII
For his death in the same place, thus saith he: At length he was found in a Village of the Duchy of Wittenberg by his bedside stark dead, and his face turned backwards, and the midnight before, the house was shaken as it is reported. Thus far he, an Author not to be doubted of, and approved through Christendom of singular and exact judgment, as appeareth by his writings of the like argument confutation.