Anna Legat was delighted to discover that the – or a – real Doctor Faustus was in Kraków at the same time as the fictional hero of her latest novel, A Pact with the Devil, was in the Polish university city. Of course, she had to find out more…
Although made of smoke and mirrors, legends are surprisingly well rooted in history. The story of Doctor Faustus, who sold his immortal soul to the devil, is one such tale.
His legend was first recorded in Faustbuch, a ribald farce about a magician and his fiendish servant, Mephistopheles. Published in Germany in 1587, it captured people’s imagination across Europe and has held it firmly in its grip ever since.
The good Doctor has been made famous in the English-speaking world by Christopher Marlowe who, in 1592, wrote The Tragic History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. In Marlowe’s version, a distinguished German scholar, frustrated with the limitations of man’s knowledge, trades his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge, magic powers and riches.
The scholar-turned-sorcerer travels the courts of Europe, plays devilish tricks on the pope, bishops and kings alike, and even conjures up long dead heroes of antiquity. All of his questions about the nature of the world are answered, except one: Who made the universe? In the end, Faustus regrets his bargain, but it is too late. At midnight, a host of devils carries his soul off to hell.
In Germany, it was Goethe’s opus magnum, Faust, a Tragedy (1790) that immortalised the nefarious magician. The theme of man’s quest for knowledge is retained in Goethe’s epic play, but it spills wider into exploring morality and seeking the Divine. Goethe’s Faustus experiments with eternal youth, sensuality, seduction and bestiality. At the end of his earthly exploits, he is overcome with regret, but unlike Marlow’s hero, he recovers his humanity and is spared.
The Faustian spirit of insatiable scientific inquiry persevered in German literature well into the 20th century, crowned by Thomas Mann’s brilliant take on the legend in Doktor Faustus (1947). Here the hero, a composer, strikes a deal with the devil to enhance his creative genius. He deliberately contracts syphilis to tap into the deepest layers of inspiration through madness. Ultimately, he collapses into incoherence.
Considering that the novel was written immediately after Germany’s crushing defeat in the Second World War, the analogies to the rise and fall of the Third Reich are inescapable.
Similar analogies can be made between Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (1967) and the corruption of the Russian soul in Soviet Russia. In his masterpiece, Bulgakov espouses the Faustian deal on multiple levels: the literati compromising the truth and trading their intellectual curiosity for a life of privilege; Professor Woland (the Master) turning (in)to Satan after his manuscript about Jesus is supressed by the regime; Judas selling Jesus for 30 silver pieces and Pontius Pilate being struck with remorse; and, for the first time a woman, Margarita, being granted her wish by the devil and using it to liberate a condemned soul.
Faustus made an early appearance in Poland. The folklore tale of Pan Twardowski originated at roughly the same time as its German counterpart. Two hundred years later it was retold by a Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz as a humorous ballad, Pani Twardowska. A Cracovian nobleman, Sir Twardowski sold his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and magic powers.
Trying to outwit the devil, he added a clause to the contract, stating that the devil could only take Twardowski’s soul when he was in Rome – a place the sorcerer never intended to visit. Aided by the devil, Twardowski became a rich and influential courtier. He earned King Sigismund’s eternal gratitude when, using a magic mirror, he was able to summon the spirit of the monarch’s beloved wife Barbara.
After years of evading capture, Twardowski was eventually caught not in the city, but at an inn called In Rome. On his way to hell, he managed to slip away, mounted a rooster and flew away, ultimately landing on the Moon, where he lives to this day. His shadow can be seen crossing the face of the Moon on bright nights.
The ghost of Doctor Faustus has been haunting Europe for centuries, but did the man really exist or is he just a phantom?
When researching Renaissance Kraków as a setting for A Pact with the Devil, my historical mystery featuring Nicolaus Copernicus, I made a propitious discovery. Faust walked the streets of Kraków at approximately the same time as my hero. In fact, three men went by that name, and all three with equally colourful reputations.
The first record I found of a Faust with ungodly associations relates to Johann Fust (1400–1466), a financier of Gutenberg’s printer. He was accused of witchcraft in Paris after selling 50 bibles featuring fonts printed in red ink which was promptly mistaken for blood.
The fact that the supposedly hand-written bibles were inexplicably identical gave rise to rumours that the devil had a hand in making the volumes. At the time, Gutenberg’s invention hadn’t been yet widely known in France. Superstition triumphed over progress and Fust was jailed on charges of black magic.
But I could not feature Johann Fust in Copernicus’s story. Copernicus wasn’t even born by the time Fust died. However, Providence smiled on me when I uncovered two more potential candidates, both Nicolaus Copernicus’s contemporaries. The first was Georg/Jörg Faustus (born 1466, Knittlingen), the other, Johann Faustus (born 1480, Heidelberg).
Posthumous accounts, part-factual, part-fantastical, appear to have merged the two individuals into one persona, but it is also conceivable that Georg and Johann were one and the same man who had been very busy indeed.
As early as 1506 records began circulating in Germany of a magical trickster and horoscope caster going by the name of Faust. Upon obtaining a degree in divinity and philosophy from Heidelberg University, Doctor Faustus embarked on a career as physician, alchemist, magician and astrologer. He rubbed shoulders with princes, academics, nobility and wealthy patricians.
It wasn’t long before he diversified into necromancy, fraud, sodomy and blasphemy, claiming that he could speak with the dead and reproduce all the miracles of Christ. The Holy Church denounced him as Devil’s own. Faust would be banished from one city and weasel his way into another. He boasted audaciously that the victories of the Holy Roman Emperor in Italy were due to his magical intervention. He attempted to fly in Venice, but was – allegedly – thrown to the ground by the devil.
He was arrested in Batenburg because he had recommended that the local chaplain Dorstenius should use arsenic to get rid of his stubble. Dorstenius smeared his face with the poison, upon which he lost not only his beard but also much of his skin. I stole that idea for my book.
An account by Johannes Manlius, dating back to 1562, has it that Faust studied at Kraków University and became a confidante of the Jagiellon kings. He reportedly conjured up the ghost of King Sigismundus’s wife, which takes us back to the story of Pan Twardowski.
Faust’s death is dated to 1540. Apparently, he died in an explosion of an alchemical experiment. Reportedly, his body was found in a grievously mutilated state. It kept turning face down despite being placed on its back, thus implying that the devil had taken him. But that was the deal after all.
However we feel about Doctor Faust’s antics, we must concede that he was a true Renaissance man. He sought knowledge and was prepared to pay the highest price for it.
A Pact with the Devil by Anna Legat was published on 14 March.
See more about this book.
References:
Encyclopaedia Britannica (Cambridge University Press)
Frank Baron, Who was the Historical Faustus? Interpreting an Overlooked Source (1989)
Frank Baron, Dr Faustus: From History to Legend (1978)
Jeff Jarvis, The Gutenberg Parenthesis, (Bloomsbury 2023)
Jan Kuchta, Cracovian Warlock of XVI Century. Master Twardowski
For more magic and wizardry, have a look at:
The wizards of west Wales by Alis Hawkins
The magic and science of 18th-century Wales by Susan Stokes-Chapman
Magicians and film-makers, masters of illusions by Liz Hyder
Magic versus jadoo in 1920s British Colonial India by Harini Nagendra
Good Boye or devil dog? Prince Rupert’s poodle by Frances Owen
Images:
- Faust und Mephisto (Faust and Mephistopheles) by Anton Kaulbach, turn of the 19th–20th centuries: Wikimedia (public domain)
- Faustbuch (Historia von D Johan Fausten), 1587: Wikimedia (public domain)
- The Master and Margarita by Vladimir Ryklin: Ryklin Fine Art for Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
- Zjawa Barbary Radziwiłłówny (The Ghost of Barbara Radziwiłł) by Wojciech Gerson, 1886: National Museum in Poznań via Wikimedia (public domain)
- Johann Fust: Wikimedia (public domain)
- Woodcut of Kraków from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493: Wikimedia (public domain)
