Faustus, and called himself philosophum philosophorum. But how many have complained to me that they were deceived by him—verily a great number!”
The third witness is the theologian, Johann Gast, who in his Sermones Conviviales describes a dinner given by Faust at Basle, at which he was present. After mentioning the two devils who attended Faust in the form of a dog and a horse, he says: “The wretch came to an end in a terrible manner; for the Devil strangled him. His dead body lay constantly on its face on the bier, although it had been five times turned upwards.” Gast probably makes this last statement on the strength of some popular rumor. Faust seems to have gradually passed out of notice, and we have no particulars of his death which possess the least authenticity. Melancthon, in his discourses as Professor at Wittenberg, Luther in his “table-talk,” and the other Protestant theologians of that period, almost without exception, expressed their belief in a personal, visible Devil, then specially active in their part of the world. Luther even describes the annoyances to which the Devil subjects him, with a candor which cannot now be imitated; and the same belief naturally took grosser and more positive forms among the common people. The wandering life of Johann Faust, as physician and necromancer, must have made his name well known throughout Germany; his visit to Wittenberg and the reference to him in the three works already quoted, would distinguish him above others of his class, and every floating rumor of diabolical compact, power, and final punishment would thenceforth gather around his name as iron filings around a magnet.
The various books of magic entitled Faust’s Höllenzwang (Infernal Influences) were all published with false early dates, after Faust’s name became generally known, and are therefore of no value as evidence. The attempt, also, to connect him with Fust, Guttenberg’s associate in printing, has no foundation whatever.
The original form of the legend is the book published by Spiess, in Frankfurt, in 1587. Its title runs thus: “History of Dr. Joh. Faust, the notorious sorcerer and black-artist:
