Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/564

556 as choristers, sacristans, or vicars,—often, too, as clerks and copyists to lawyers or other private men. When they could no longer find a livelihood at one place, they went to another. Their offices became, in course of time, of the most varied and unsuitable order. They were generally received and treated with hospitality, and this may have been one reason why all kinds of adventurers were ready to join them. Their unstable mode of life easily explains their frequenting the society of other vagabonds, who traversed the country as jugglers, treasure-diggers, quacks, or sorcerers, and that their clerical dignity did not prevent their occasionally adopting these professions themselves. The Chronicle of Limburg, in speaking of the Diet of Frankfurt in 1397, says: "The number of princes, counts, noblemen, knights, and esquires, that met there, amounted to five thousand one hundred and eighty-two"; adding: "Besides these, there were here four hundred and fifty persons more, such as fahrende Schueler, wrestlers, musicians, jumpers, and trumpeters." The character of the clergy having sunk so low, the Church declared itself against the custom, and at several German councils theological students were expressly forbidden to lead this roving life. It required, however, considerable time for the ancient custom to become extinct, and we learn, among others, from Conrad Gesner, that it still existed at the time of the Reformation.

The part played by Faustus was at first in some degree respectable, and that of a scholar. An old Erfurt Chronicle tells us that he had come to that city and obtained permission from the university to deliver a course of lectures on Homer. A dark rumor of his magic powers had preceded him; the students, therefore, thronged to hear him, and, deeply interested, requested him to let them see the heroes of Homer by calling them from their graves. Faustus appointed another day for this, received the excited youths in a dark chamber, commanded them to be perfectly silent, and made the great men of the Greek bard rise up, one by one, before their eyes. At length Polyphemus appeared; and the one-eyed Cyclops, with his red hair, an iron spear in his hand, and, to designate him at once as a cannibal, two bloody human thighs in his mouth, looked so hideous, that the spectators were seized with horror and disgust, the more so that the wily magician professed to have some difficulty in dismissing the monster. Suddenly a violent shake of the whole house was felt; the young men were thrown one over another, and were seized with terror and dismay. Two of the students insisted upon having already felt the teeth of the Cyclops.—This ridiculous story was soon known throughout the city, and confirmed the suspicions of the Franciscan monks and magistrates, that the learned guest was in league with the Evil One. It is said that Faustus had previously offered to procure for them the manuscripts of the lost comedies of Terence and Plautus, and to leave them for a short time in their hands, to be copied,—but that the fathers of the city and of the university declined, because they believed this could be done only by sorcery, or with the help of Satan. Now they, sent to him the Guardian of the Convent, Dr. Klinger, in order to convert him and to have masses read for him, for the purpose of delivering him from his hellish connection. But Faustus opposed, was by the clergy solemnly delivered to the Devil, and, in consequence, banished from the city by the magistrates.

We do not know whether it was for similar juggleries, that, when at Wittenberg, the Elector John the Steadfast ordered him to be arrested, as Manlius relates. He saved himself by flight Melancthon, in one of his letters, mentions having made his acquaintance; the whole tone of the allusion, however, expresses contempt.

The character of the miracles he performed soon ceased to have the literary tincture of the one related above, and they became mere vulgar juggleries and exhibitions of legerdemain, suited to the