of residence of our hero’s parents during his infancy.  But the oldest Volksbuch was written nearly forty years after the death of Faustus, and Widmann’s work appeared even ten years later,—­both, indeed, professing to be founded on the Doctor’s writings, as well as on an autobiographical manuscript, discovered in his library after his death.  Perhaps, however, the assertion of two of his contemporaries, one of whom was personally acquainted with him, is more entitled to credit in this respect.  Joh.  Manlius and Joh.  Wier—­the latter in his biography of Cornelius Agrippa—­name Kundlingen, in Wuertemberg, as his birthplace.

Manlius, in his work, “Collectanea Locorum Communium,” (Basel, 1600,) speaks of him as of an acquaintance.  He says that Faustus studied at Krakow, in Poland, where there was a regular professorship of Magic, as was the case at several universities.  Others let him make his studies at Ingolstadt, and acquire there the honors of a Doctor of Medicine.  Both these statements may be true, as also that he was for some time the companion and pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, the celebrated scholar, whose learning and mysterious researches after the philosopher’s stone brought him, like many other wise men of the age, into suspicion of witchcraft.  Agrippa had a pet dog, black, like the mystical companion of Dr. Faustus, and, in the eyes of a superstitious multitude, like him, the representative of the Evil One.  Black dogs seem to have been everywhere considered as rather suspicious creatures.  The Pope Sylvester II. had also a favorite black poodle, in whom the Devil was supposed to have taken up his abode.  According to Wier, however, Agrippa’s black dog was quite a harmless beast, and remarkable only for the childlike attachment which the great philosopher had for him.  It may be worth remarking, that this writer, although he speaks of Faustus in his biography of Agrippa, makes no mention of his ever having been a friend or scholar of the latter.

In several of the old stories of Faustus, we read that he had a cousin at Wittenberg, who took him as a boy to his house, brought him up, and made him his heir when he died.  If this was true, it would be more probable that he was a native of Saxony than of Suabia.  It is, however, more probable that this narrative rests on one of the numerous cases found in old writings in general, and above all in the history of Faustus, in which the names Wittenberg and Wuertemberg are confounded.  Our hero’s abode at the former place was very probably merely that of a traveller; he left there, as we shall soon see, a very unenviable reputation.  It is true that Saxony was the principal scene of the Doctor’s achievements; but this very circumstance makes it improbable that he was born and brought up there, as it is well known that “a prophet hath no honor in his own country.”