The dreadful story of Doctor Faustus, written by Christopher Marlowe in the early 1600s hundreds has been an incentive to explore the negative side of the Renaissance. Additionally, a lot of people seem to wonder what his truthful damnation was. The gloomy side of this period could involve the fascination for necromancy and the occult. As well as the attraction to demonology and witchcraft. Throughout the play, Doctor Faustus used many cheap tricks to portray the power he held. However, this cannot demonstrate how his mind and soul were corrupted by the devil and the books he was granted. Although he was making fun of other people and doing tricks, he seemed like the puppet and not the master. For this reason, it is evident that his damnation could have been not reaching the highest position as a theologist but living his life as a simple magician whom people hate. Thus, illustrating that given the power in such a relevant period, Faustus was not sharing knowledge, but instead wasting it.
The English word “necromancy” during the 17th century is a derivation of the Italian word ‘nigromancia’ which means black magic. And it can be traced back to Latin: necromantīa. However, the original word comes from Greek, vεκρομαντεία (nekromanteía). This consists of two words, nekrós – νεκρός (dead corpse) and manteía – μαντεία (divination). (Kapcár 4)
Throughout this century, the divination of dead corpses as the definition of the Greek word, implies how people began to gain consciousness of the dead, and they wanted to find out more about the afterlife. This led to a fascination for the occult and necromancy. People wanted answers; some of them yearn to communicate with the departed. There must have been a concern to practicing necromancy to predict the future or discover latent knowledge. After all, in this period, people were supposed to be curious about life and what it meant to be a human. Hence, it was just a matter of time for them to be concerned about death and its implications. Thus, an interest in these kinds of practices could have started by the need to contact a loved one, perhaps finding out if they went to heaven. Yet, a lot of people probably began to speculate about what would happen if you did not go to heaven. How could their loved ones repent, or how could they save them from eternal doom? Even worse, what would happen to the people who practiced necromancy to fulfill an obnoxious need for answers. Evidently, the fear of hell and everlasting punishment rose as people realized that they could conjure demons and dead spirits from a simple book.
As stated by Kieckhefer,
“The practitioners of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance included the names of angels or saints in their spells, masquerading them as prayers, creating thus a new syncretic form of necromancy that would be practiced by many of the well-known occult figures of the Renaissance (John Dee or Edward Kelly)” (43).
Even though they included names of several religious figures, this practice was still forbidden and condemned by the Church. This is because the Church believed that there was only one God who could do miracles, such as bringing people back from the dead or addressing the spirit of a deceased person. Thus, a necromancer was regarded as a person who does dark or demon magic. Further, in relation to the story of Doctor Faustus, the moment he was lured into the dark arts represents the obscured side of this period. He went from being a common scholar, a theologist, to a puppet to some demons. His supposed passion for knowledge led him to the damnation of his soul. During the Renaissance it was important to contribute to literature, works of art, and humanistic tasks. Things that could improve the way of living through classical learning. However, Faustus did not seem to care much about boosting his skills in theology or expand his knowledge to help people. Alternatively, he is a greedy individual and wants to possess knowledge and abilities that would make him more powerful than everyone; especially kings or people in superior positions, such as the pope. For this reason, necromancy and the alluring to the occult can be regarded as the filthy side of the Renaissance. This side has no respect for the constructive human arts that searched to promote classical and academic ways of teaching and learning.
Furthermore, the fascination for the occult brought along witchcraft. This practice can be traced back to the 10th century. Later on, close to the 17th century when Christopher Marlowe published Dr. Faustus, there was a very infamous case of women being accused of using black magic. “Two Maldon inhabitants, Alice Chaundeler and her daughter Ellen Smythe, were executed for witchcraft in Chelmsford in 1574 and 1579 respectively” (Rowlands 2). These women were executed merely for using magic or playing to be a sort of sorcerer. And it was not proven that they did something bad or used their powers to do harm. On the other hand, Dr. Faustus was recognized as a magician at first. A silly scholar who decided to make cheap tricks to entertain people. Of course, sometimes he was mocking most of them, not really making them laugh. But generally, he served as a jester to people. Anyhow, he got away with not being executed or accused of perpetuating the use of supernatural abilities. Additionally, according to Barrowclough,
“Witches were believed to derive their powers through a pact with the devil, and to be responsible for the ills, and even deaths, of those who crossed them… Typically, witches and cunning folk had their roots in their local community, were poorly educated people and often barely literate, and the distinction between the two was often unclear” (2).
The pact Faustus made with Mephistophilis where he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for power is a clear illustration of the negative aspects of the Renaissance. He reached the devil, signed a contract with his blood, and wasted the knowledge and magical abilities he was given. If he felt in any way inferior or humiliated, he would use his magic to turn things around. For instance, when grew horns to a knight who made fun of him. Clearly, Dr. Faustus played an important role in depicting how power and temptation can corrupt even the smartest person and make him appear immature and ludicrous. Moreover, the distinctions between witches and cunning folks could be blurred because even using white magic to do positive things, does not guarantee everybody would end up cured or be saved heavenly. Any type of magic was still considered outside the laws of nature. Besides, the fact that these people who practiced either white or black magic were poorly educated and barely literate means that they were far away from the intentions of renewing classical learning, and wisdom, as the Renaissance treasured. In the case of Faustus, he was a highly educated individual, who threw all his true knowledge away, just for some power. His ambition was stronger than his desire to foster literature and arts for people who had no access to it.
References
Barrowclough, David. ‘ The Wonderful Discovery of Witches ’ Unearthing the Occult : Necromancy and Magic in Seventeenth Century England. 1970, pp. 1–12.
Kapcár, Andrej. “The Origins of Necromancy or How We Learned to Speak to the Dead.” Sacra, vol. 13, no. 2, 2015, pp. 30–58.
Kieckhefer, R. (1998). Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century. Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press.
Rowlands, Alison. “What Did Thomas Plume Think about Witchcraft ? Reconstructing the Intellectual Outlook of a Little-Known 17th-Century English Sceptic.” The Essex Society for Archaeology and History, vol. 2, 2011.
Somers, Tim. “Jesting Culture and Religious Politics in Seventeenth-Century England.” Historical Research, vol. 95, no. 267, 2022, pp. 19–44, https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htab034.
Talbott, Thomas. “Freedom, Damnation, and the Power to Sin with Impunity.” Religious Studies, vol. 37, no. 4, 2001, pp. 417–34, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412501005777.
Tasioulas, John. “Punishment and Repentance.” Philosophy, vol. 81, no. 316, 2006, pp. 279–322, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819106316063.
Weed, Tim. When Druids and Mystics Ruled Harshly Over the Superstitious Peasants. 2007, pp. 1–147.
