by Leo Ruickbie
According to the legend, Faustus seems to have treated the Zum Encker, or some other property on the ‘Schössergasse’ – Grässe, who tells the tale, does not specify – somewhat familiarly: ‘A house in Schössergasse is still said to have a gap in the roof that can never be closed with tiles because Faust used to fly out of it on his magic cloak.’ Either here or at the Michelsgasse house he was credited with having created ‘a magnificent garden in mid-winter’ from which he ‘provided numerous delicious meals for numerous noble guests.’12 The story of the winter garden found its way into the Faustbook, although transposed to Wittenberg in the nineteenth year of his pact. Other legends place it, or a similar event, in the county of Anhalt and Boxberg castle in modern Baden-Württemberg.13
Again there are precedents. Trithemius told the story of a Jew called Zedechias, a physician in the reign of Ludwig the German, who in the year 876 created a beautiful garden complete with grass, flowers, trees and singing birds, and all in the depths of winter. That we find this story being re-told by Trithemius is significant because it shows that the tale was, to a degree, current in the sixteenth century. That the story subsequently became associated with Faustus is therefore not surprising. Yet we should not overlook the possibility, far-fetched though it seems, that this was no mere tale.
What seemed like a miracle in the sixteenth century is commonplace in the twenty-first. However, the science behind such miracles, although not understood, was known. The principle of refrigeration had been known since at least 1000 BCE in China. Alexander the Great served his soldiers snow-chilled drinks in 300 BCE and Khalif Mahdi used ice to refrigerate his supplies en route to Mecca in 755 CE. An alchemist like Faustus would also surely have been aware of the fact, known since the fourteenth century, that dissolving sodium nitrate in water lowers the water’s temperature. Not quite as ancient, greenhousing was known to the Romans who used the naturally occurring and translucent mineral mica in place of glass to cover heated earth pits at least as early as 30 CE. Alchemy and a classical education could have brought Faustus into contact with the technology to produce the marvels attributed to him.
Hogel relates that sometime during his Erfurt period, Faustus visited Prague. His cronies, Junker N., possibly Hessus and others, gathered at the Zum Encker as was their wont, but missed the entertaining company of Faustus. Consequently, ‘one of the guests jokingly called Faust by name and begged him not to desert them.’ The joke would be short-lived: ‘At that instant someone in the street knocks at the door.’14
Faustus was standing outside, holding the reins of his horse. ‘Don’t you know me?’ he said to the servant who answered his knock, ‘I am he whom they have just called.’15 The servant ran back to report. Junker N. refused to believe it, restating before the assembly that Faustus was in Prague – it was simply impossible that he could now be at their door. However, disbelief is no safeguard against the unbelievable. Hessus was no doubt looking into the bottom of his beerstein and wondering whether this was some sort of delirium.
Faustus, left standing at the door, knocked again. Junker N. and his servant peered out of the window, still not believing that he was there, before opening the door and giving him a hearty welcome. Junker N.’s son took the reins of the horse in some wonder, promising to feed it well, and led it to the stables. Junker N. himself lost no time in demanding of Faustus how he managed to return with such unearthly speed.
‘That’s what my horse is for,’ says Dr Faust. ‘Because the guests desired me so much and called me, I wanted to oblige them and to appear, although I have to be back in Prague before morning.’16
Satisfied and flattered by the reply, ‘they drink to his health in copious draughts.’ Faustus, not content with the local beverage, enquired whether anyone would like to try a foreign wine and it was not just Hessus who said yes. Faustus, ever obliging, asked whether they would prefer Spanish, French, ‘Rheinfal’ (the Istrian wine highly sought after in Germany in the Middle Ages), or Malmsey wine from Greece. Someone – was it Hessus? – called out ‘They are all good.’ Faustus sent for an augur and used it to make four holes in the table, which he then closed with plugs. He brought fresh glasses and tapped from the table each of the four different wines and ‘continues drinking merrily with them.’17
Junker N.’s son came running back into the room in a fluster, crying ‘Doctor, your horse eats as though he were mad; he has already devoured several bushels of oats and continually stands and looks for more.’ Faustus was nonplussed: ‘Have done … he has had enough; he would eat all the feed in your loft before he was full.’ He returned to ‘drinking merrily’ until midnight. At the witching hour the horse uttered a piercing neigh that stopped the drinkers in mid-quaff. ‘I must go’ said Faustus, but delayed to finish his glass. The horse neighed again, but Faustus was difficult to drag away from company. The horse neighed a third time and now Faustus took his leave. His friends saw him outside, their bellies full of wine and happily staggering, where he mounted his steed and rode up the Schlössergasse, ‘but the horse in plain sight rises quickly into the air and takes him back through the air to Prague.’18
Grässe had also heard that ‘he once came riding a horse that ate and ate and could never be satisfied.’19 Writing in 1569, Ludwig Lavater (1527–1586) recalled that
to this very day there are black magicians who boast that they can saddle a horse on which they can in short time make great journeys. The Devil will pay for course and steed, and money for shoeing and saddle. What wonders is the notorious sorcerer Faustus said to have done in our own times?20
The story is a classic necromantic wonder. The author of an anonymous manuscript of the fifteenth century now in Oxford’s Bodleian Library (Rawlinson MS D 252) tells such a tale of summoning a demon in the form of a horse to transport him at great speed over vast distances. Codex 849 has four operations for ‘obtaining a horse’ and Hartlieb too had stories of magical horses obtained with bat’s blood and pacts with the Devil. In The Lemegeton we read of demonic spirits like the horse-fetching Shax and of the horse-shaped Orobas. In the Malleus Maleficarum Kramer and Sprenger also mentioned the use of a horse ‘which is not really a horse but a devil in that form’, adding that ‘one of us has very often seen and known such men’ who performed such magic.21 Then there are all those more general operations for flying we encountered earlier in connection with Faustus in Venice.
Kramer and Sprenger’s Landshut flying story, examined earlier, and that of Faustus in Erfurt share the same context of beer-drinking scholars, suggesting that the story was a not unknown tale. It conveyed elements of the popular distrust of scholarship and the hint of ridicule implied in connection with drinking itself, as well as disapproval of both as leading to the Devil. Even if the story appears to be another typical yarn, Faustus was not unknown in the town to which he supposedly travelled.
Prague, with its Zlatá ulička (‘Golden Lane’) named after the alchemists who toiled there, was an obvious destination for Faustus. Local tradition names a building on Karlovo náměstí in the New Town after our magician. This Faustùv Dùm (‘Faust House’) is said to have been built in the fourteenth century and lived in by a succession of occultists, such as Prince Václav of Opava, John Dee’s collaborator Edward Kelley and Count Ferdinand Mladota in the eighteenth century. According to this same tradition, Faustus had a brother in the Jesuit seminary at the Klementinum in the Old Town, whom he would occasionally visit secretly at night because visitors were forbidden. Faustus was said to have been so impressed by the observatory in the Klementinum that he knocked a hole in his own roof so that he could install a telescope. Rumour has it that this hole was also the one used by the Devil to haul the unfortunate necromancer off to hell. Understandably, the new owners were keen to close the opening. Repair work done in the daylight hours was found undone the next morning with the attic reeking of smoke and sulphur. The story reads like a more embellished version of that related by Grässe of his house in Erfurt. The ghost of Faustus was said
to remain in the Faustùv Dùm, haunting the halls and corridors in the midnight hours. Few owners kept the property for long. Rather fittingly the building is today used as a pharmacy.22
The Magical Banquet
Faustus returned from Prague some weeks later, loaded down with the expensive gifts he had received for his services – at least according to the legend. To celebrate his return he invited his friends to be his guests at St Michael’s – the university’s church and apparently also available as a banqueting hall. Von Denstedt, Hessus (one presumes) and the rest of the gang duly turned up, but found the church empty and no signs of preparation in progress. They no doubt shuffled somewhat ill at ease, stomachs rumbling and throats dry, but Faustus was unperturbed. He picked up his knife and knocked on the table with the hilt. A servant entered and enquired what Faustus wished. Before ordering, Faustus asked ‘How quick are you?’. The servant replied that he was as quick as an arrow. Faustus shook his head, ‘No … you shall not serve me.’ He sent him back and knocked again on the table. Another servant appeared. Faustus repeated his question. ‘As the wind’ replied the servant. ‘That is something’ mused Faustus, but again sent the servant back. He knocked on the table a third time and a third servant entered. Faustus posed the question to him again and the servant answered that he was as fast as thought. ‘Good … you’ll do’ said Faustus and gave his instructions, bidding his guests to wash their hands and sit down. As soon as they did so the third servant and two assistants entered bearing covered dishes: ‘Thirty six courses or dishes were served … with game, fowl, vegetables, meat pies and other meat, not to mention the fruit, confections, cakes, etc.’23
Of course, no Faustian gathering would be complete without strong drink, but ‘all the beakers, glasses and mugs were put on the table empty’, no doubt to the consternation of Hessus. Faustus was not such a poor host as to let his guests go without and so he asked what beer or wine each would like to drink. Going one better than his earlier wine-producing magic, he ‘put the cups outside of the window and soon took them back again, full of just that fresh drink that each wanted to have.’ There was music, too, played by one of the mysterious servants: ‘so charming that his guests had never heard the like.’ Thus beguiled the party ‘made merry until broad daylight.’24
Faustus’s miracle of turning a wooden table into a wine bar and feeding a dinner party with enough for (almost) 5,000, recalls to mind those claims he made in Würzburg about bettering Jesus, but these feats also have their precedents in the magical manuscripts. The Sword of Moses – believed to date from the third or fourth centuries CE – had its spell for appeasing the appetites of famished wizards. Codex 849 also had a spell for producing a magical banquet and one guaranteed to satisfy the most exquisite of tastes. The author or compiler of Codex 849 added his personal warranty when he reminded his reader ‘you have often seen me exercise at your court the art of summoning banquet-bearers’.25 It is an involved operation requiring the conjuration of no less than sixteen spirits.
In contrast to Codex 849, Faustus reputedly brings forth his wine without any magical flimflam, but only a little simple carpentry, or, as in the last example, no apparent preparation at all. However, as the compiler of Codex 849 explains, once the complex operation has been performed, the spirits are primed and ready to be called forth again and more swiftly at a future date with only a brief invocation recited under one’s breath. As Faustus knocked holes in the table, did his drinking companions miss the movement of his lips and the whisper of secret formulae?
Similar stories of magical banquets were already in circulation. Plutarch (c.46–c.120), who enjoyed a particular vogue during the Renaissance, retold a story connected with the legendary Roman King Numa Pompilius. Numa invited a large number of citizens to a feast, but one can imagine their disappointment when the Roman King served up a peasant’s banquet. As the long-faced guests sat down, Numa announced to them that the Goddess Egeria had arrived, whereupon all the mean fair and tableware was transformed into the most luxurious and costly. Michael Scot (c.1175–1234) was believed to have feasted his guests with dishes spirited from the royal kitchens of France and Spain. In 1526 Agrippa wrote down the tale of a certain Pasetes who could make sumptuous feasts appear and, just when the audience was salivating, disappear again. It was a popular story, retold by Francesco Guazzo and Robert Burton in the early seventeenth century.
The particular idea of holding the wine cup out of the window and bringing it back in full is of a similar type to stories told about other magicians. Albertus Magnus was once said to have procured a plate of oysters for a prince in 1248 by simply knocking at the window. In the Zimmerische Chronik Ludwig von Liechtenberg performed a similar feat, magically pilfering a plate from the French king’s table. Rabbi Adam was said to have used similar means to banquet Emperor Maximilian II (1564–1576) in Prague. The similarities here do not necessarily indicate direct borrowings, for as we have seen, the tradition of magic is not just a literary tradition.
Magical assistants are an old idea. Some of the earliest examples are found among the Greek magical papyri of the second to fifth centuries CE. The three-fold testing of magical assistants and the idea of acting as fast as thought later transferred itself to the quintessential Faustian familiar, Mephistopheles, in the Faustbook. The specific testing of familiar spirits to find the fastest also occurs in the Black Raven fancifully supposed to have been published in Lyon in 1469.
Faustus royally entertained his friends at the Anchor House in Erfurt, but he was not above playing meaner pranks on them. One story has Faustus bewitching a group of inebriated drinkers so that they ‘think that they saw grapes, which they would attempt to cut from the vine, but when he [Faustus] put a stop to their hallucinations, each one had someone else’s nose between his fingers instead of grapes.’26 According to legend, he would later repeat the trick at Boxberg castle.
When Philipp Camerarius (1537–1624) re-told the story in 1591 he embellished it and added a sanctimonious conclusion, but the details were the same. There is an element of ‘once upon a time’ that alerts us to the fairytale quality of this yarn and a censure against drinking creeps into it. Camerarius was keen, perhaps too keen, to re-interpret what might otherwise be seen as an amusing tale as an instance of a great Satanic stratagem.
The month of December was almost out and Faustus’s ‘friends’ wanted to test his powers by demanding something that they thought impossible: ‘a full grown vine with ripe grapes.’ Faustus agreed, but commanded them to be silent and sit still until he gives the order to cut the grapes:
By his tricks he so befuddled the eyes and senses of this drunken crowd that there appeared to them on a beautiful vine as many bunches of grapes of marvellous size and plumpness as there were people present.27
His friends pulled out their knives, eager to cut off the juicy fruit, but, obedient to the magician, awaited his command. Faustus held them in suspense:
Suddenly the vine with its grapes disappeared in smoke and they were seen, each holding, not the grapes which each thought he had seized, but his own nose with his knife suspended over it.28
As Camerarius told it, the story was another of those dealing with out of season produce with a macabre twist. The magical feat itself involves no mention of Satanic forces, but Camerarius contrived to make it another example of the Devil’s work. Drunkenness comes into the story too, giving the tale another layer of moral condemnation. Camerarius ended on a stern note.
And it would have served them right and they would have deserved other mutilations, since, with intolerable curiosity, they occupied themselves as spectators and participants in the illusions of the Devil, which no Christian may be interested in without great danger or rather sin.29
Camerarius was a hard man, but no different from many another of his time, happily wishing disfigurement on people who transgress the Church’s rules. Here it was curiosity that Camerarius singled out for reproach. Despite his repeated characterisation of the story as
ridiculous and an illusion of the Devil, Camerarius appeared to have believed it, as well he might. Any stage hypnotist today could produce the same effects and do we understand hypnotism any more than Camerarius did Faustus’s magic?
Accursed Child of the Devil
The legends that grew up around Faustus in Erfurt thus find echoes in much older magical material, but, asked Hogel in his Chronica, ‘what was to be the outcome?’ News of his magical banquets, flying horse, wonderful winter garden and the rest – ‘the man played so many tricks’ – quickly spread, everyone was talking about him, and ‘many of the nobility of the country came to Erfurt to him.’ It was inevitable that ‘people began to worry lest the Devil might lead the tender youth and other simpletons astray’, as Hogel put it, by following Faustus’s example and dabbling in the black art.30
It did not take them long to decide that another monk was required. Hogel’s interpolation of this event shows its late composition. He wrote that because the Junker of the Zum Encker – again not actually naming him – was a ‘Papist’, a monk was sent for, although if Faustus was in Erfurt in 1513 we are still four years away from Luther’s nailing of those famous theses to the door of the castle-chapel in Wittenberg that heralded the Reformation that followed.31 Everyone in 1513 was nominally still a ‘Papist’, Anabaptists and the like aside.
