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Classical Mythology and Christian Tradition in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
God is now conceived of as something outside man and man's handiwork, and it follows that it must be idolatry to worship that which Phidias and Scopas made … Night will fall upon man's wisdom now that man has been taught that he is nothing. He had discovered, or half-discovered, that the world is round and one of many like it, but now he must believe that the sky is but a tent spread above a level floor, and that he may be stirred into a frenzy of anxiety and so to moral transformation, blot out the knowledge or half-knowledge that he has lived many times, and think that all eternity depends upon a moment's decision.—Yeats, A Vision
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References
1 “The Damnation of Faustus,” MLR, xli (1946), 105–106.
2 The edition used is that of J. D. Jump, Revels Plays, London, 1962.
3 J. B. Steane, Marlowe: A Critical Study (Cambridge, Eng., 1964), p. 159.
4 It is this image of redemption which Faustus recalls before he dies: “yet for Christ's sake, whose blood hath ransomed me … ” (xix.167).
5 See, for example, Cassian, Conferences, i, xx: “By some skilful assumption he twists and turns the precious text of Scripture into a meaning harmful and contrary to the true meaning.” Tr. D. Chadwick in Western Asceticism, Library of Christian Classics, xii (London and Philadelphia, 1958), 210.
6 W. W. Greg noted this connection between Mephostophilis and Faustus' misuse of the Bible in his edition of the play: Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, 1604–1616 (Oxford, 1950), p. 395.
7 See, for example, Exodus vii–xi and Num. xxv.1–2. Cf. Rev. ix.20–21.
8 The Book of Enoch, tr. R. H. Charles (Oxford, 1893), Chs. vi–xi. “Enoch's” doctrine was accepted by Tertullian: De idolatria, Cap.iv, ix, De cultu feminarum, i, ii-iii (Migne, PL, i, 741, 747, 1419–1422). See also Augustine, De civitate Dei, xv, xxiii (pl, xli, 468–471).
9 For these points see, for example, Tertullian, De idolatria, Cap. iv, ix–x, Apologeticus, Cap. x–xi, xxii–xxiv, Ad nationes, ii, xiii (PL, i, 741, 747–752, 380–391, 463–481, 676–677); Augustine, De civ. Dei, ii, xxiv, iii, ii-iv, iv, xxx, vi, vi–vii, etc. (PL, xli, 70–73, 79–82, 136–137, 182–186). For medieval repetition of these ideas see Isidore, Etymologiae, viii, xi, 4 (PL, lxxxii, 314); Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, ii, Pt. ii, qu. xciv, arts. 1 and 4. See also J. Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, tr. B. French, Bollingen Series, xxxviii (New York, 1953), p. 17, who, I believe, underestimates medieval emphasis on the demonic associations of the gods.
10 Tertullian, Apologeticus, Cap. xv, De spectaculis, Cap. x, xv, xxvii (PL, i, 411–419, 716–718, 721–722, 733–734); Cyprian, De spectaculis, Cap. iv–vi (PL, iv, 813–815); Augustine, De civ. Dei, ii, viii–xiv, xxv–xxix, iv, xxvi–xxvii, vi, vi–vii, vii, xxxiii (PL, xli, 53–60, 73–78, 132–134, 182–186, 221–222). Compare Isidore, Eytm., xviii, xvi, xxvii–xxviii, who derives his equation “shows = desires” (xviii.xvi. i) from Tertullian, De spectaculis, Cap. xiv (PL, i, 721). Tertullian (De spect., i) and Cyprian (De spect., iv) stress that the whole purpose of the demons in the plays is to delude the mind by ravishing the eye and ear.
11 Cyprian, De spectaculis, Cap. iv (PL, iv, 813). Cf. Augustine, De civ. Dei, vii, xviii (PL, xli, 208).
12 Augustine, De civ. Dei, ii, xiv and vii; see also ii, viii, xxvi, xxvii (PL, xli, 59, 53, 74, 76). This is probably Augustine's main moral objection to the “histrionic” gods.
13 De idolatria, Cap. i (PL, i, 737–739). Cf. Augustine, De civ. Dei, ii, iv, and vii, xxi (PL, xli, 49, 210–211).
14 Tertullian, Ad nationes, ii, vii, x, xiii (PL, i, 667, 672, 677); Tatian, Oratio ad. Graecos, Cap. xxxiv (PG, vi, 875–878); Augustine, De civ. Dei, iii, iii, vi, vii, ix, xv, xxiii, xviii, xiii (PL, xli, 81, 184–186, 187–188, 468, 570–572).
15 Tatian, Oratio ad. Graecos, Cap. xvii–xix (PG, vi, 842–850); Augustine, De divinatione daemonum, Cap. vi–vii (PL, xl, 586–588), De civ. Dei, viii, xxiv (PL, xli, 250).
16 The teachings of Pythagoras and Plato on metympsychosis were frequently mocked by the Fathers: see Tertullian, Apol., Cap. xlviii (PL, i, 588–589); Tatian, Oratio ad. Graecos, Cap. iii (PG, vi, 811); Augustine, De civ. Dei, x, xxx (PL, xli, 309–311). For Pythagoras as necromancer see De civ. Dei, vii, xxxv. The Neo-Platonists were often mentioned (as occultists) in medieval and Renaissance studies of witchcraft and demonology.
17 De civ. Dei, x, x (PL, xli, 288); tr. M. Dods, The City of God (Edinburgh, 1871), i, 397. See also De civ. Dei, vii, xxxv, x, xxvii, xviii, xviii (PL, xli, 223, 306, 570–571).
18 See the remarks on the character of theological teaching in sixteenth-century Cambridge in D. Cole, Suffering and Evil in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe (Princeton, 1962), pp. 193–195. See also H. Gough, A General Index to the Publications of the Parker Society (Cambridge, Eng., 1855), s.v. “Augustine” and “Tertullian,” where there is evidence that sixteenth-century English divines were thoroughly familiar with the writings of these two Fathers.
19 For references to Augustine's teaching see F. M. Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, ed. M. Summers and tr. E. A. Ashwin (London, 1929), pp. 8, 14, 30, 59–60; H. Boguet, An Examen of Witches [Discours Sorciers], ed. Summers, tr. Ashwin (London, 1929), pp. 15, 31, 97, 142, etc.; L. M. Sinistrari, De la démonialité et des animaux incubes et succubes, tr. (from the Latin) I. Liseux (Paris, 1876), pp. 21, 82, 118, 132, 190, 192, etc.; H. C. Lea, Materials Toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. A. C. Howard, 2 vols. (New York and London, 1957), pp. 264, 266, 296, 326, 348, 354, 372.
20 Guazzo, Compendium, p. 8; Boguet, An Examen, pp. 32, 39, 43, 138; Lea, Materials, pp. 315, 359, 372, 480, 562.
21 Boguet, pp. 33–34, 56–57; Lea, pp. 473–474, 507.
22 Lea, pp. 473, 500; Boguet, pp. 103–104; G. Sinclair, Satan's Invisible World Discovered, rept. from the original edn. of 1685 (Edinburgh, 1871), Preface, A 4. Cf. Milton, Paradise Regained i.390–396, 455–459.
23 Lea, pp. 139, 177, 179, 181, 261, 277, 355, 357, 375, 406, 590, etc. See also Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, ed. L. Favre (Niort, 1884), s.v. “Diana.”
24 Lea, p. 289.
25 Guazzo, p. 11 (Simon Magus and Pythagoras); Boguet, p. 42 (Pythagoras “the philosopher of Tyana”), p. 141 (Apuleius and Lucian).
26 Guazzo, p. 160 (Simon Magus and Zoroaster); Boguet, p. 42 (Simon), Lea, p. 495 (Zoroaster). Zoroaster, legendary founder of the magic arts, aspired to be a stellar god and was eventually set on fire and consumed by the demon he importuned too much. See the Clementine Recognitions, iv, xxvii (PG, i, 1326–27), quoted by Guazzo; and Augustine, De civ. Dei, xxi, xiv (PL, xli, 728).
27 Lea, pp. 206, 209, 213–217, 220, 224, etc. Boguet (p. 61) and Guazzo (p. 54) refer to Satan as “the ape of God,” one of his oldest titles.
28 P. H. Kocher, Christopher Marlowe: A Study of his Thought, Learning and Character (London, 1949), p. 146.
29 Boguet, p. 206.
30 The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus, 1592 … 1594, modernized and ed. W. Rose, Broadway Translations (London, n.d.), pp. 68 (the nymphs), 178–180, 193–194 (Helen).
31 The only passage in the Bible which mentions Lucifer is Isaiah xiv.4. This refers to a king of Babylon, but the Fathers interpreted it as signifying the fall of Satan. See, for example, Origen, De principiis, i, v, 5 (PG, xi, 163) where, however, the demon is not explicitly connected with the star. Characteristic of the general neglect of “Lucifer” as the devil's name in the Middle Ages is its omission from Isidore's chapter “De diis gentium” (Etym. viii, xi), where one would expect it to figure with “Satan,” “Beelzebub,” “Belial,” and “Leviathan.” NED, however, gives a few Anglo-Saxon and ME instances. Lea, p. 285, wonders if a treatise dated 1498 does not offer the first identification of the star and the demon. For Lucifer the astral god see, for example, Ovid, Metamorphoses, ii, 115, 723, iv, 629, 665, xi, 98, 271, 346, 570, etc.
32 The Sermons of Edwin Sandys, D. D. [d. 1587], ed. J. Ayre, Parker Society Publications (Cambridge, Eng., 1842), p. 362.
33 The History … of Doctor John Faustus, pp. 71, 74, 88–89, 147, 149.
34 Tertullian, Apologeticus, Cap. xiv–xv, xviii–xxi, De spectaculis, Cap. xxix, Ad nationes, ii, i, vii (PL, i, 403–419, 434–469, 735, 657–659, 666–667); Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos, Cap. xxi–xxii (PG, vi, 851–858); Augustine, De civ. Dei, ii, xxvii–xxviii, x, xviii (PL, xli, 76–77, 296–297). Cf. The Works of Bishop Jewel [d. 1571], ed. J. Ayre, Parker Society Publications (Cambridge, Eng., 1848), iii, 289; The Works of Roger Hutchinson [d. 1550], ed. J. Bruce, Parker Soc. Pubs. (Cambridge, Eng., 1842), pp. 176–178.
35 The pagan choice of “erring” or “wandering” stars (planets) as gods had been a source of Christian irony long before Marlowe. See, for example, Tatian, Oratio ad. Graecos, Cap. ix (PG, vi, 826).
36 On the heterodox nature of Mephostophilis' astronomy see F. R. Johnson, “Marlowe's ‘Imperial Heaven’,” ELH, xii (1945), 35–44, and “Marlowe's Astronomy and Renaissance Scepticism,” ELH, xiii (1946), 241–250; P. H. Kocher, Christopher Marlowe, pp. 217–219.
37 De spectaculis, Cap. x and xix (PL, i, 718, 735). It should perhaps be noted that when Faustus dismisses Darius, Alexander, and his paramour as unreal (“shadows”), he may also mean that they are merely actors in a play: “shadow” (meaning “a delusive image”) being applied metaphorically in sixteenth-century usage to actor and play. Cf. MND v.i.212, 430, and see NED, s.v. “shadow.”
38 Vila S. Pachomii, Cap. xvii (PL, lxxiii, 85); The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle, ed. M. Day, EETS, O.S. No. 225 (London, 1952), pp. 93–95; Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, xxiii, ii (PL, lxxvi, 670–671). For a 15th-century statement of these ideas see Lea, Materials Toward a History of Witchcraft, p. 267. See also my article “Comedy and Terror in Middle English Literature: The Diabolical Game,” MLR, lx (1965), 323–332.
39 Apologeticus, Cap. xv, Ad nationes, i, x (PL, i, 416, 647).
40 Various opponents of the Elizabethan theatre said that the stage is “a spectacle [italics mine] and a school for all wickedness and vice to be learned in”; that plays are idolatry, the devil's sermons; that playhouses are schools of lust and vice; and that attendance at them was condemned by Augustine, the Fathers, and the Bible. See M. C. Bradbrook, The Rise of the Common Player: A Study of Actor and Society in Shakespeare's England (London, 1962), pp. 69, 72, 74, 76–77.
41 In the witchcraft tradition the adoration of Satan and signing of the pact are followed immediately by orgy and by sexual intercourse with him (as incubus or succubus): see Boguet, An Examen of Witches, pp. 57, 207–208; Lea, pp. 293, 371. This convention probably derives from the patristic conception of idolatry as a double adultery.
42 Jump, Dr. Faustus, glossarial note (p. 14) on “lusty.”
43 NED, s. v. “lusty.” (Archaic usage.)
44 F. S. Boas (ed.), The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (London, 1932), p. 159, glossarial note (v.i.24).
45 Boguet, p. 86 (cf. p. 60); Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, pp. 55, 95.
46 See above, n. 26.
47 Boguet, p. 233; Lea, pp. 232–260.
48 Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in English Poetry (Minneapolis and London, 1932), p. 273.
49 Sc. iii, l. 91, provides the only apparent exception to this rule: Faustus speaks of his “desperate thoughts against Jove's deity.”