by Leo Ruickbie
Trithemius would later follow Faustus to Würzburg, taking up the post of abbot of the old Scottish monastery of St James’s. The 1507 letter to Virdung about Faustus was written from there and no doubt the information he had on Faustus was communicated to him when he came to the city. It was in Würzburg that Faustus allegedly chose to make his most dangerous claims. We can imagine him in the market square or perhaps before another audience in an inn, his words silencing the everyday hubbub. We can picture the looks of amazement and shock on the faces of that audience.
There are a number of ways we can view these claims. Faustus was not scandalising Würzburg with the news that he has signed a pact with the Devil – he was never in his lifetime reported to have made that claim – he was instead claiming all the powers attributed to Jesus. Here Trithemius lets the claim stand, evidently confident that it would shock Virdung. However, any stage-magician today could make such claims and apparently demonstrate them without suggesting that he was truly another Jesus. Was Faustus advertising a magic show? Or again, was he suggesting that he could explain that such apparent miracles could be achieved through natural as opposed to supernatural means? Or was he indeed suggesting that, like another Simon Magus or Appollonius of Tyana (2 BCE–c.98 CE), he could rival Jesus with his magic?
We are all familiar with the more well-known miracles like turning water into wine and feeding the 5,000, but there were allegedly many more. The Apostles credited Jesus with performing at least twenty miraculous healings, three resurrections, five exorcisms and many other miscellaneous miracles. Including other sources, such as the apocryphal gospels and even the Koran, there are over eighty miracles attributed to Jesus. Faustus had set himself a challenge.
Later stories of magical banquets suggest that Faustus could perform his own miracles with food and wine. Tricks for walking on water were certainly known. Leonardo da Vinci sketched such a technique and an illustration in Thomas Hill’s Naturall and Artificiall Conclusions of 1581 shows us a figure balancing precariously on floats tied to his feet and the end of a staff, a small boat bobbing in the distance. Faustus, however, went one better than walking on water and was believed to have flown through the air on more than one occasion. Resurrections would fall more generally under the heading of necromancy and Faustus certainly claimed proficiency in this field. There is a formula for just such an operation in what has been called a ‘necromancer’s manual’, the fifteenth-century manuscript catalogued as Codex Latinus Monacensis 849 (hereafter Codex 849) in the Bavarian State Library in Munich. Exorcism, however, was not Faustus’s forté. Rather than drive demons out of people, he had the reputation of calling them in, reputedly threatening Melanchthon and cursing a monastery with a poltergeist. According to Begardi, Faustus also ‘bragged much about his great skill … in medicine’, adding healing – albeit unmiraculous – to the list of his accomplishments. Although Begardi did not report if he had ever been successful in this practice, what he did say suggests that Faustus had acquired an unscrupulous reputation through such claims. Such ‘miracles’ were within the repertoire of Renaissance magicians and later tales told about Faustus credit him with performing magical feats that support this alleged claim ‘to do all that Christ had done’.24
5
Sex Crimes in Kreuznach (1507)
Towards the end of Lent of the present year he came to Kreuznach.1
Trithemius had more to say about Faustus. The events he next described took place about a year after his first encounter with the magician in Gelnhausen, in a town 126 kilometres away – by modern roads – now called Bad Kreuznach, but which was then simply Kreuznach. According to Trithemius, Faustus was there around late March or April of 1507.
Kreuznach lies on the River Nahe, a tributary of the Rhine, and its roots stretch back in time. There has been a settlement there since before Roman times. The Celts who lived there called it something like Cruciniac, and the Romans turned this into Crucinacum when they established a camp in the mid-first century CE. After the legionaries came the Franks. In the Middle Ages the town was ruled by the Counts of Sponheim who built Kausenburg castle on a hill overlooking their domain. Their line died out in the early fifteenth century and Kreuznach changed hands several times. The mineral springs that gave it the prefix Bad meaning ‘bath’ or ‘spa’ were not commercially exploited until the nineteenth century. In the sixteenth century it was the second largest town, after Heidelberg, in the Palatinate.
Across the river from the town centre, but still within the old walls, stands the Historisches Dr. Faust Haus on Magister Faustgasse. It is a three-storey half-timbered building with white-washed walls and black beams – the very picture of Germanic quaintness. The façade is decorated with a large portrait of Faustus and gothic lettering proclaiming the building’s historical connections. A wrought iron sign, intertwined with devils and showing a scholarly figure holding a book, hangs above the door. Picked out in a white, angularly Teutonic script across the black beams running the length of the building is an inscription warning that Satan befriends the drunkard, whilst making an invitation to come in and enjoy a good drink.
Today one can sit down to enjoy a glass of flaming Faust-Trunk with a Mephisto Salat or sizzling Dr. Faust-Schweinshaxe under wall murals depicting scenes from the legend. On special nights visitors are treated to a dramatic sound and light show – thunder crashes, lightning flashes and the floorboards creak overhead as if Faustus were pacing his study. Upstairs there is a life-size wax figure display of Faustus and Mephistopheles as well as reproductions of many of the historical documents relating to the legend hanging on the walls.
Whilst there is no documentary evidence to prove that Faustus ever stayed here, the building is of the right age (said to have been built in 1492)2 and the strength of local opinion brooks no dissent. But Faustus, if he were here, was not about to open a restaurant. From having made grand philosophical and Humanist claims in Gelnhausen he had progressed to comparing his own abilities with those of Jesus in Würzburg. How was he going to better that? Trithemius continued, reporting that Faustus,
with similar foolish pretentiousness made enormous promises, saying that in alchemy he was the most accomplished man ever and that by his skill he could do everything that men could wish.3
Having challenged Würzburg with his heresy, Faustus was now out to woo Kreuznach with his alchemy. However, he could expect little in the way of admiration from Trithemius. Trithemius was disparaging of anyone’s ability in alchemy, not just Faustus’s. In his Annales Hirsaugiensis Trithemius called alchemy a ‘chaste whore’ – a woman who has many lovers but satisfies none of them.4 The result of practicing alchemy could, according to Trithemius, only be a deleterious one:
From foolish men it makes insane ones; from rich men paupers; from philosophers, fatuous men; from deceived men, very garrulous deceivers – all who, though they know nothing, profess to know all things, and, although they are very poor, promise to endow their followers with the riches of Croesus.5
It is true that alchemy was the ruin of many men and a magnet to legions of the most unscrupulous, but it was also the great adventure of the age. Its promises were many and extravagant, and there was scarcely a cash-strapped princeling in the Empire who was deaf to its siren call. However, not everyone presented the art in such a dismal light. As we might expect, its practitioners, as opposed to its critics, saw alchemy and alchemists in a very different light. Paracelsus was quick to their defence:
[Alchemists] diligently follow their labours, sweating whole days and nights by their furnaces. They do not spend their time abroad for recreation, but take delight in their laboratories. They put their fingers among coals, into clay and filth, not into gold rings. They are sooty and black, like smiths and miners, and do not pride themselves upon clean and beautiful faces.6
Stained and sooty-faced, we might expect to find Faustus seeking some position connected with alchemy, but the story takes an unexpected turn. Kreuznach had a vacancy for a schoolmaster an
d Faustus found himself with a new job. It was an important appointment, but no official record of it has survived. He only held the post for a short time and even records for the school itself are deficient.
Today there are three gymnasia in Kreuznach – Gymnasium am Römerkastell, Gymnasium an der Stadtmauer and the Lina-Hilger-Gymnasium – and no one is sure which could have been Faustus’s school. We can immediately discount the Gymnasium am Römerkastell because it only opened its doors in 1971. The Gymnasium an der Stadtmauer is older, having begun life as the Collège de Creuznach in 1807, but not old enough. The Lina-Hilger-Gymnasium was so named in 1959, having been the state lyceum, but unfortunately only has a history dating to 1926. Faustus could not have taught at any of them.
The phrase Trithemius used in his letter – munus docendi scholasticum – means something like the ‘post of teaching-scholar’ – scholasticum by itself would only mean a scholar, or even a schoolboy. The word scholasticum is also used in the sense of a rhetorician or grammarian, that is, one who taught rhetoric or grammar as distinct from mathematics. Teaching rhetoric or grammar in the sixteenth century would mean teaching Latin. The usual translation as ‘schoolmaster’ is not inaccurate, but we should not assume that there was a school, at least in the usual sense of a physical institution set aside for the purpose of education. Faustus could have been employed as a private tutor, but Trithemius’s mention of the town suggests that this was a public appointment.
Before state education, cathedral schools were the most common institution providing pre-university training. It was an ancient tradition, even in the sixteenth century, established by the Third Lateran Council in 1179, re-confirmed and extended by the Fourth in 1215, that every cathedral church (and later any that could afford it) should appoint a master to instruct clerics and impoverished scholars. These schools were, of course, run by the religious orders – the Franciscans were active in Kreuznach from their base at St Wolfgang’s and the Carmelites from the Nikolauskirche – but it is not inconceivable that Faustus was appointed to teach in a cathedral school or its equivalent. Today the Gymnasium an der Stadtmauer stands on the site of the former Franciscan monastery.
Across the River Nahe in the old medieval town a school opened its doors on a narrow street called the Klappergasse in 1707. It was not, however, a new school but one relocated from the former premises of the Carmelites. Their monastery had been disbanded in 1564 and from 1569 onwards had been used as a Calvinist Gymnasium teaching pupils the basics of theology, Latin, Greek, rhetoric, mathematics and something of the natural sciences in preparation for a career in the Church. Based on the evidence of Trithemius’s letter of 1507 it has been supposed that the Carmelites themselves were running a school in the early sixteenth century. This introduces a circularity here that we would want to avoid. That there must have been some sort of schooling available is demonstrated by the number of students from Kreuznach subsequently enrolled at university. It may not have been the Carmelites who were providing that schooling and some have suggested a municipal school, but Kreuznach may not have been affluent enough to afford that expense itself and the established tradition points to a monastic order. The central location of the Carmelite monastery speaks in its favour and this site is also closer to the Historisches Dr. Faust-Haus, although we should not read too much into that. The possibility remains that it was here at Poststrasse 6 in the old monastery that Faustus taught his new pupils, however, there is a question mark over the existence of this school and the evidence, such as it is, is wanting.7
The monks themselves – used to providing such teaching as was required – could not have been happy to have an outsider foisted upon them and we can only speculate that it was the force of his sponsor’s will that carried Faustus’s appointment. This introduces a political element: noses were put out of joint, ambitions stymied. Subsequent events would suggest that the monks or others were quick to conspire against him.
A Man Very Fond of Mystical Things
Faustus’s declarations of his alchemical ability, and no doubt some recital of his earlier claims, found acceptance with at least one person in the vicinity of Kreuznach. To Trithemius’s chagrin this was no clay-brained peasant:
He was appointed through the influence of Franz von Sickingen, bailiff of your prince and a man very fond of mystical things.8
Franz von Sickingen (1481–1523) was one of the great names of the sixteenth century, celebrated by Erasmus and called ‘a peerless ornament of German knighthood’ by Melanchthon.9 His was a name that continued to reverberate long after his premature death. In the nineteenth century the Protestant historian James Wylie praised him as a knight who ‘united the love of letters to that of arms’ and the Marxist historian Ernest Belfort Bax dubbed him ‘the last flower of German chivalry’.10 The dramatist Ferdinand Lassalle immortalised him as a socialist hero in his eponymous play, describing him as ‘A distinguished knight – distinguished in wealth, in character, in genius and in arms.’11
This eulogistic portrait is not so far off the mark as we might suppose. Von Sickingen would in his day be a king-maker and champion of free-thinkers, but in 1507 his greatest deeds still lay before him, although he was already noted for his love of ‘mystical things’. As a ‘bailiff of your prince’, as Trithemius put it, he was the feudal enforcer for Philipp von Wittelsbach, Elector Palatine. At the time he held this office for Ebernburg, Kreuznach and from 1509 for nearby Böckelheim – clearly his recommendation of Faustus for the position of teacher did not hinder his career.
Contemporary portraits show a frowning visage, brow knit imperiously over a sharp eye and a lavish moustache, or, later in life, clean shaven and somewhat rounder in the face, although still conspiring to give a steely look. His family came from near Knittlingen before moving to the castle Ebernburg near Kreuznach in 1448. In the last few years von Sickingen had taken over the running of the family estate after the death of his father Schweikard. He was technically of the lower nobility, of the Reichsritterschaft, or class of free knights, but had been educated at the imperial court of Maximilian I. When Faustus arrived in Kreuznach he had just celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday.
It was no secret that von Sickingen was ‘associated with the magical school’, as Bax put it. Indeed it was said of him that he had been dedicated to the study of magic since his youth. His fondness for things mystical can in part be traced to his father Schweikard who was also reputed to have had a keen interest in astrology, even practising it himself. Adam Wernher of Heidelberg reported to his brother-in-law, the Reformation leader Georg Spalatin (1484–1545), that von Sickingen undertook nothing of importance without first consulting his astrologer. After von Sickingen’s death Wernher discovered an astrological prediction made for him by Virdung for the year 1523 and made a copy of it. His castle doors opened to welcome Humanists, Reformers, occultists and the intelligentsia of his age. These same doors must also have stood open for Faustus.
Von Sickingen did not know Latin, so he could have been looking for a tutor, but it was surely this love of ‘mystical things’ that endeared Faustus to him. Given such an interest it is nearly inconceivable that von Sickingen and Faustus did not meet. Did Faustus promise to endow him with the riches of Croesus? Did they talk of the ancients, Plato and Aristotle? Did von Sickingen catch some glimpse of his future in Faustus’s astrological predictions? Perhaps Faustus reminded him of Aristotle’s supposed advice to Alexander the Great in the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum (‘Secret of Secrets’), to never embark on any undertaking without having first taken the advice of an astrologer. The Secretum secretorum was a well-known text at the time and may have influenced von Sickingen’s view of the importance of astrology.
Their meeting is lost to history. In the halls of Ebernburg there is no more talk of mystical things, only the uninspiring clatter of hotel staff and guests, and in the Historisches Dr. Faust Haus there is no bar bill of a Georgius Faustus and company. If there ever was a record of their meeting, not a
scrap of it has survived.
The Most Nefarious Fornication
According to the highly biased account of Trithemius, Faustus did not distinguish himself by his knowledge of astrology, ‘mystical things’ or by his teaching of Latin whilst in Kreuznach:
Presently, he began to indulge in a kind of nefarious fornication with the boys and when this was at once brought to light, he ran away to avoid the punishment that awaited him.12
If von Sickingen had been his patron up until this point, as we suppose he must have been, he surely disowned Faustus now – if Trithemius is to be believed. But what were these nefarious fornications? The Latin nefandissimo fornicationis genere was translated rather charmingly in 1936 as ‘a dastardly kind of lewdness’, which sounds like nothing more devilish than twirling the end of an extravagant moustache, but no one till now has come up with an alternative translation. The language is of its time and the words ‘dastardly’ and ‘lewdness’ are not much in vogue these days – and I doubt whether they were trying to replicate a sense of Trithemius’s Latin. Some sort of despicable indecency is meant by ‘a dastardly kind of lewdness’, but the Latin seems to be worded in stronger terms: nefandissimo, ‘nefarious’ or ‘wicked’, and fornicationis, ‘fornication’, which is voluntary sexual intercourse between a man and an unmarried woman. In a time when the institution of marriage was sacrosanct, fornication was as serious a charge as adultery, but it also raises the possibility that he did not necessarily sexually abuse the boys themselves because in such an instance we would expect a term like sodomy to have been used by Trithemius.
