by Leo Ruickbie
Made spine-chillingly infamous in Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire novel Carmilla (1872), the Duchy of Styria had been created out of a part of Carinthia in the tenth century. First known as the Carinthian Mark or Windic Mark, the region eventually became known as the Steiermark after the ruling family who took their name from the castle of Steier. In the twelfth century under Margrave Ottokar II (1164–92) the area was raised to a duchy. After its ruling families became extinct, the Duchy passed into the hands of the Habsburgs from the thirteenth century onwards. Lying at the edge of the eastern Alps, the region is mountainous – the highest peak, the Dachstein, soars to almost 3,000 metres. Like Carinthia it was heavily forested, breathtakingly scenic and rich in mineral ores. The hills around Cilli were not noted for the iron-ore deposits that were being exploited in the north of the Duchy, but the town lay on the important trade route running from Pettau on the eastern border of what was left of Hungary to Triest on the Adriatic and on into the Republic of Venice via Görz and Udine where it joined the main commercial artery flowing from Villach and Gastein in Carinthia.
The Grad Komenda lies above the town of Polzela in pine-forested mountainous country. Today, a broken stone lion guards the entrance to a stout stone building with staring black window holes framed with shattered glass. It was mentioned in 1170 as the property of Degnardus de Helenstein and stayed in the family’s hands for around a hundred years. The name of Hartwig, a dean or vicar of the area, was associated with it in the second part of the thirteenth century. From 1323 until 1780 ownership was in the hands of the Knights of St John.20 There is still no documentary evidence to prove that Faustus governed this commandery, but at least we have discovered that the place referred to is real.
If Faustus was at Rebdorf – as it appears from Leib’s journal – then it seems natural that he should mention his Catholic credentials to the Prior Kilian Leib. He might even have arrived wearing the black cloak and white eight-pointed cross of the Order, with tales of far away ‘Hallestein’ and ruinous war against the enemies of Europe.21
At Hallenstein Faustus would have been on the front line against the hordes of Suleiman. Although the Battle of Mohács (1526) that saw the defeat of Hungary and the death of King Ladislas (Lajos) II had been fought some 400 kilometres away, the Duchy of Styria would find itself increasingly near the fighting as Suleiman pursued his territorial ambitions. Its hard country was its best defence, but even so, Styria suffered repeated incursions of Ottoman troops. But Faustus was not there in 1528.
Banished from Ingolstadt (1528)
It was the year of haricot beans, brought back from the New World by Hernando Cortes, of the Austrian evangelist Jacob Hutter’s ‘community of love’, of the burning of the Anabaptist Balthasar Hubmaier (1481–1528) in Vienna, of Baldassare Castiglione’s (1478–1529) The Book of the Courtier, of Paracelsus’s De Kleine Chirurgia, of Melanchthon’s proposed educational reforms and of the banishment of Faustus. When he stayed with Leib, Faustus was clearly en route for Ingolstadt. Twelve days after Leib’s conversation about prophets and Knights of St John in his Wettertagebuch we find Faustus again being mentioned in writing, this time in the records of the city of Ingolstadt:
(a) Minute on the actions of the city council in Ingolstadt.
Today, the Wednesday after St Vitus’ Day, 1528. The soothsayer shall be ordered to leave the city and to spend his penny elsewhere.
(b) Record of those banished from Ingolstadt.
On Wednesday after St Vitus’ Day, 1528, a certain man who called himself Dr Jörg Faustus of Heidelberg was told to spend his penny elsewhere and he pledged himself not to take vengeance on or seek redress from the authorities for this order.22
St Vitus’ Day in 1528 fell on Monday 15 June, making Wednesday the 17th. Faustus had spent less than two weeks in Ingolstadt, but it was long enough to get into trouble and be called before the city council. What is interesting here is the insight into Faustus’s career. He is described as a ‘soothsayer’ (Wahrsager), that is, a fortune-teller or diviner. This clearly tallies with Trithemius’s earlier report of his various divinatory proficiencies and the commission from the Bishop of Bamberg, and shows what sort of services he was offering in the town. It is significant that it was the town council that judged his case, rather than the university or ecclesiastical courts. This could be interpreted to mean that the university did not recognise his degree and, additionally, that his transgressions were not deemed to fall under the jurisdiction of the church – it was not, then, a case of heresy or witchcraft. The formulaic repetition of ‘spend his penny elsewhere’ seems to hint at a financial scandal.
Writing in 1539 Begardi said that many people had complained to him that Faustus had cheated them and ‘left many to whistle for their money’.23 It is possible that Faustus was suspected of coining or passing off counterfeit currency. It would be relatively easy for an experienced alchemist to make his gold go a little further, perhaps using a staining technique, and coining was certainly a widespread crime at the time. The Jesuit Delrio, writing not later than 1599, claimed that both Faustus and Agrippa were notorious for paying innkeepers in bewitched coins that afterwards turned to valueless leaves and filth. Perhaps here is the origin of that tale. Certainly, what Reginald Scot (1584) called the conveying of money was a known and practised art of deception. He detailed the methods of legerdemain by which one may seemingly make money appear and disappear, to be thrown away and still kept, and transformed from one denomination into another. Using such sleight of hand, it would be no great deal to appear to pay for one’s board and lodging whilst actually giving the innkeeper something worthless. However, the phraseology of the judgement was standard legalese for the period. The Carmelite prior Andreas Stoß (1480–1540), for example, was banished from Nuremberg in 1522 with the same wording.
On this bare skeleton of fact, later legends grew up around Faustus’s activities in Ingolstadt. In 1900 Tille published twenty-six references to Ingolstadt, although most of these derived from a very few sources, usually Roshirt or Widmann. An anecdote recorded by Roshirt almost fifty years after Faustus’s visit told of the magician lecturing on philosophy and chiromancy at the university, and Number 7 on the Harderstraße is known locally as ‘Wohnhaus Fausts’.24
Although the official records are quiet on the subject of his employment there, Faustus may have at least attempted to teach at the university, or may have held unofficial classes at the students’ own expense or as a loss-leader for his soothsaying practice. If we are to believe Paracelsus, he would have found Ingolstadt a ‘university of some old scholastics’ and like Celtis may have come to despair of the bad beer and endless turnips on the menu.25
Others contend that Faustus actually studied at the university himself. Writing in 1676, Durrius argued that Faustus had been awarded a doctorate in medicine, while an eighteenth-century Faustbook – the anonymous Christlich Meynenden – stated that he had been awarded the degree of Master by the University of Ingolstadt and was generally known for his good conduct. Neither idea should be seriously entertained. There is no record of Faustus having studied here; Durrius is a late source and the Faustbook is both a late and a legendary one. It is conceivable that Faustus’s name has become confused with that of Johannes Reuchlin who did teach Greek and Hebrew here from 1520 to 1521 before moving to Tübingen. Greek and Hebrew were languages whose aura of mystery among the uneducated may well have led to rumours of magic.26
A story is preserved that combines elements of Roshirt’s anecdotes about the unfortunate Jewish moneylender of Frankfurt and the Bamberg swineherd swindle. Unusually for the Faustbooks, the location of this incident is named. P.F. (1592) called the town ‘Pheiffring’, but there are earlier references to ‘Pffeffering’ (Wolfenbüttel, c.1580) and ‘Pfeiffering’ (Spies, 1588). None of these places can be found on a map of Germany today, but the town in question is undoubtedly Pfifferling, some sixty-five kilometres to the east of Ingolstadt.
At the market in Pfifferling, Faustus
allegedly sold a horse to a dealer, warning him not to ride it through water. More curious than wary, the dealer galloped his mount into a pond where it was transformed into a bale of hay. Half-drowned, the angry dealer tracked down Faustus. Finding him asleep in bed, he tugged violently at his foot to wake him, but to his consternation he pulled off the whole leg. Faustus screamed blue murder and the terrified dealer ran off.
We should never read the legends as factual, but they do provide us with suggestive possibilities. In this case we see that the legend is located close to an area historically documented to have been visited by Faustus and involves the sort of activities that would certainly have had him barred from a city like Ingolstadt if he had tried them there. And banished he most surely was.
15
Entertaining the Emperor (1529–1530)
While Faustus was dealing with Ingolstadt councillors, the Treaty of Cambrai had brought temporary peace between France and the Empire, but Charles V was almost immediately embroiled in countering the increasing militancy of the Reformists. At the Reichstag of Speyer that year, Charles argued for the withdrawal of all concessions made to the Lutherans, but six princes and fourteen cities protested against this action, thereby giving the name of ‘Protestant’ to their cause. Just as it had been during the Peasants’ War, it was the question of self-determination that proved divisive. The Protestants moved to consolidate their position and in 1530 the League of Schmalkalden was formed, threatening the future of Catholicism in Germany.
Elsewhere in 1529 the talk was of more mysterious signs and portents. In Breslau (Wroclaw) Michael Behaim recorded that ‘a most terrifying sign’ had been observed in the sky. It was described as a huge star showing the figures of an old man and an old woman. Over Liegnitz (Legnica) there was ‘the appearance of a great multitude of armoured soldiers bearing bloody swords in the sky’, but Behaim offered no interpretation.1 There was much work to be had for a professional astrologer like Faustus.
In Germany controversy raged over the Carthusian Prophecies. Discovered on a wall in the Carthusian Monastery in Nuremberg, they foretold the fall of the Pope, the nobility and the merchant classes and the coming of the Kingdom of Christ. There was even an undisguised attack on Luther and his ideas. Then there was Paracelsus. He had turned up in Nuremberg where Sebastian Franck (1499–1543) called him a ‘peculiar and wondrous man’, but noted that ‘he stands alone against nearly the whole medical guild’. Paracelsus insulted the city’s doctors and their ‘buxom, fat wives’, and ostracised himself through his quarrelsomeness.2
After being thrown out of Ingolstadt it is anyone’s guess where Faustus went next. In a time of astrological wonders he could be sure to find his services welcomed somewhere. There were still battles being fought under Italian skies and victories to claim for the Empire. He could not have been at the Battle of Landriano with Antonio de Leyva on 20 June 1528 unless he put that demon steed to good use again, but the Siege of Florence (24 October 1529) and the decisive Battle of Gavinana (3 August 1530) could have become candidates for his catch-all claim of having won Italy for the Emperor. Sifting through the hints and traces, legends and lies, we can construct a tentative series of events for the next few years of Faustus’s life.
Cannibal Magic (Vienna, 1529)
In the sixteenth century, Vienna was everything. It was the gateway to the Empire. Suleiman’s invasion of Europe had so far been facilitated by a lack of cohesion between her kingdoms. Despite all the talk of a new crusade, Europe’s princes had so far been content to squabble amongst themselves and let Hungarian blood douse the ardour of her enemies. But the plan, or rather lack of one, had backfired. Suleiman’s bloodlust was not sated. During the period 1516–17 the Ottomans had swelled their Empire with Syria and Egypt. With the fall in 1522 of the island bastion of Rhodes, their power extended over the eastern Mediterranean to the detriment of southern Europe’s shipping routes. From the east they had been relentlessly crawling closer to Europe’s heart. Belgrade had fallen in 1521 and Ottoman raids pressed deep into Poland as far as Lvov and beyond in 1524. In 1526 they captured Buda, looting the city and carting off Matthias Corvinus’s incomparable library. Now Suleiman’s armies were marching on Vienna. If Faustus laid claim to having won all the victories in Italy, why stop there? If he had won Italy for the Emperor, would he not also have tried to save Christendom from the Turk?
Vienna is noted today for its cultural refinements – all cafés and classical music. It is a reputation rooted in the sixteenth century. When Charles V’s brother Ferdinand arrived in Austria to take up the administration of the family’s possessions there, he was just eighteen. Born and bred in Spain, it was the first time he had set foot in his ancestral lands. He brought with him a Spanish court and introduced a southern way of life. However, Viennese culture was not all due to Ferdinand and his courtiers. Regiomontanus had lectured here and the Danubiana society had successfully sown Humanistic ideas.
After years of decline during the fifteenth century due to the Ottoman threat, a plummeting currency and changing trade routes – the new sea-route to the East Indies and the discovery of the Americas – Vienna was not about to welcome this Spaniard with open arms. The burghers revolted against Ferdinand, but as usual were crushed, and were forced to concede a large part of their former autonomy.
In all the 1,152 pages in Tille’s monumental catalogue of Faustsplitter there is only one reference to Vienna and a short one at that. But it was a reference that Manlius claimed had been made by Melanchthon, who has generally been held as reliable by Faustus scholars. Not only that, it is also a reference made by a contemporary – a contemporary Faustus may have met – and so is highly significant. On the face of it, it is a silly story and few people have bothered to enquire into it. The story is undated and was told ten to twenty years after Faustus was dead, but it was told.
It was a long way from the comfortable jostle of houses in Helmstadt to the world-stage in Vienna. But Faustus was in his prime and an experienced traveller. He may have arrived from his commandery in Styria to the south, but given his last known position at Ingolstadt, it is more likely that he would approach from the west. En route he may have stopped at the Faust-Schlössl (or Fauststöckel) near Aschach in Austria, giving rise to the local legends that survive there.
A large box-like structure built around a squat central tower with red roofs and yellow painted walls, the Faust-Schlössl is now a hotel and restaurant. It sits on a small bluff overlooking the Danube; forested slopes rise up behind it. One legend even claims that Faustus had the Devil build it for him and today guests may spend the night in the ‘Dr. Faust Suite’. According to Adalbert Depiny, during his supposed stay there Faustus put the Devil to a number of challenging tasks: high-speed road building, bridging the Danube in front of his galloping horse and even setting up a bowling-alley on the river. The so-called Jochenstein is said to be the remains of one of his skittles. A new element enters the legend – all the outrageous tasks are part of Faustus’s plan to fox the Devil and break the pact. Local traditions disagree whether he was successful or not, either escaping, drowning in the Danube, or being torn to pieces on a nearby mountaintop.
In the Faustbook he took the road out of Augsburg, seventy-four kilometres south of Ingolstadt, following the trade route to Munich and on to Salzburg – another location with its store of Faustus legends. Here the road divides, running south into Carinthia and on to Venice, and snaking north-east to Linz before following the course of the Danube east, past the Faust-Schlössl to Vienna. It is a trek of more than 500 kilometres. But the thirsty traveller would be well rewarded. P.F. reported that there was more wine than water in Vienna.
During Melanchthon’s excessive commentaries on the Scriptures delivered between 1549 and 1560, he related a peculiar tale concerning the Devil, tinged with grudging admiration for the Archfiend:
The Devil is an amazing artificer: he has a power to accomplish things that are natural but which we do not understand. For he can
do more than man. … Faustus the magician devoured another magician at Vienna, who was discovered a few days later in a certain cave. The Devil can perform many wonderful things; nevertheless the Church has its own miracles.3
Speaking in a babble of Latin and German, Melanchthon nonetheless clearly placed Faustus’s abilities within the sphere of Devilry. The tone of censure is apparent, but he gave away little of what he thought about Faustus’s magical feat. Did he think that it was only a trick, or did he really believe that it had taken place as described? His attributing it to the Devil would tend to suggest that he did indeed believe that Faustus had swallowed a fellow magician.
In the Faustbook we read of Faustus eating an improbable quantity of hay at Zwickau and making it reappear again, but he refrains from devouring any of his companions. However, the trick was well known. In 1389 at the court of Wenceslas IV of Bohemia, according to the chronicler Dubravius, the magician Zyto swallowed a competitor called Gouin, all bar his muddy shoes. Whether Faustus swallowed a competitor or a confederate we will never know, but such a deception could not be accomplished without the complicity of the apparent victim.
Melanchthon (through Manlius) gave no indication when this event was supposed to have taken place, still less why it took place in Vienna. His concern, after all, was not historical accuracy, but religious propaganda. Faustus could have performed this feat at any time and in any other place, but it is notable that he did not, at least according to what little we know of his career.
Local Viennese legends preserve strange memories or imaginings of Faustus in the city. He is said to have built a triangular shaped house at Flossgasse 7 – the birthplace of the composer Johann Strauss (1804–1849) – but it is the legend connected with an inn on Am Bühel near the Tiefer Graben that has particular resonance. The legend, first published by Carl Calliano (1932–36) with later variations from Gustav Gugitz (1952), leads us down the stairs of a small house into a cellar bar full of students, artists and travelling entertainers. His reputation for magic and practical joking had preceded him and when Faustus walked through the door he found a warm welcome. The drinkers were clamorous for some display of his art, but first there was a thirst to quench. A servant brought him a large glass, filled almost to overflowing with wine. He clumsily spilt it, whereupon Faustus jestingly retorted that if he spilt it again he would eat him skin and hair. Grumbling with annoyance, the servant returned with another overfull glass and, not quite as accidentally as before, spilt it again. Faustus stretched his mouth wide and swallowed him whole, washing him down with a bucket of cold water. The drinkers gasped in shocked amazement, whilst the innkeeper begged for his servant back. Faustus calmly replied ‘open the door and look at the stairs.’ The innkeeper did as he was told and there was the servant dripping wet and teeth-chattering from the cold water, sitting at the top of the stairs.
