The Concept of the Pact, and the Difference Between Spoken and Written Promises 74

In the following, a difference will be identified in the Historia between spoken promises and written promises. This difference will aid in identifying the contents and form of the pact as it appears in Spies’s Faustbook, and will also yield a

theoretical backdrop for understanding the role of writing and ritual in pacts with the Devil. The narrative told in Spies’s Historia von Doktor Johann Fausten is instigated by and emanates from the articles in Faustus’s pact with the Devil, which are

surrounded by what will be identified as quasi-juridical rituals that strengthen the rigidity of these articles both in regards to Faustus’s range of action and to the narrative’s direction. The references to this agreement in juridical and quasi-juridical terminology are as frequent as they are diverse. These references, however, clearly differentiate between the written document and the oral pact.

From the outset, the Historia gives significant weight to the written part of Faustus’s agreement with the Devil: the title page invokes the written document, promising that the book contains the story of how Faustus “sich gegen dem Teuffel auff eine benandte Zeit verschrieben” (HDF, p. 3). The document in question is later referred to as Faustus’s “Verschreibung”, “Instrument”, “Recognition”, “brieffliche Vrkund”, “Bekanntnuß”, “Obligation”, “Receß” (HDF, p. 22-23), “Brieff” and

“schreiben” (HDF, p. 103), while the oral promises that precede it are referred to as

74 Small sections of the following chapter, as well as sections from 3.3, have been used in an anthology contribution slated to be published in 2017, and is repeated with permission from the editors. See Muellneritsch, Helga and Rosenhaft, Eve (eds.) 2017 The Materiality of Writing:

Manuscript Practices in the Age of Print, Uppsala: Uppsala University Press.

Faustus’s “Promission” (HDF, pp. 21) and “Versprechen” (HDF, p. 103) – the latter word encompasses both written and oral promise. Currently, the authoritative scholarly edition of Historia von Doktor Johann Fausten is Reclam’s edition from 1988, republished and expanded in 2006, which contains extensive commentary and inclusion of source material facilitated by Stephan Füssel and Joachim Kreutzer.

When these two experts on the Historia explain the above-listed designations for the written and oral agreement, they invariably return to the term “Vertrag”, contract.⁷⁵ It would appear that there is an implied lack of differentiation between written and oral agreement in Füssel and Kreuzer’s commentary, and that the entirety of the

agreement between Faustus and the Devil is gathered under the term “Vertrag”.

A contract, “Vertrag”, can be defined as a bilateral exchange of promises, regardless of whether the medium the promises are conveyed through is ink on paper or oral statements. A contract is simply a set of promises with counter-promises.⁷⁶ The word “Pact”, which is not among the words used in the Historia to describe Faustus’s arrangement with Mephostophiles, is definable as a plebeian substitution for “Vertrag”, a designation for reciprocal promises that according to Adelung’s definition is only commonly used in ordinary life.⁷⁷ This idea of reciprocity has been seen to be where Karl-Heinz Hucke (1992) draws the line of demarcation between pacts from witch processes, which he holds to be one-sided pledges of the apostate’s

75 “Verschreiben” is taken to mean “vertraglich verpflichten”, “Instrument” is translated as “(notariell beglaubigter) Vertrag”, “Recognition” is “Vertragsüberprüfung”, “Receß” is “Vertrag” and

“Promission” is “Versprechen; Verschreibung” (HDF, p. 188).

76 Adelung: “[E]ine gegenseitige Bewilligung einer Zusage, ein Versprechen mit einem Gegenversprechen, zu bezeichnen, besonders eine feyerliche Verabredung einer solchen Bewilligung; im gemeinen Leben, ein Contract, in manchen Fällen auch der Vergleich” (vol. IV, 1161, “Vertrag”). This definition is reflected in Gerhard Köbler’s (2007) Juristisches Wörterbuch, where “Vertrag” is defined as a “zweiseitiges Rechtsgeschäft, das grundsätzlich durch zwei sich deckende bzw. einander wechselseitig entsprechende Willenserklärungen (Antrag, Annahme) zustande kommt.”

77 Adelung: “[E]in aus dem Lat. Pactum entlehntes, aber nur im gemeinen Leben übliches Wort, einen Vertrag zu bezeichnen. Einen Pact mit jemanden machen. Den Pact brechen. Einen Pact mit dem Satan haben” (vol. III, 639-640, “der Pact”).

soul, and Doctor Faustus’s pact, which is a negotiated reciprocal promise.⁷⁸ The importance of separating written document from pact or contract will become clear in the following, as the written document will be seen to contain only one-sided

promises, and not a bilateral pact or contract. As a consequence, references to Faustus’s “Verschreibung” will be seen to point to a one-sided pledge of Faustus’s soul to the Devil, and not the pact or contract that precedes the creation of this document.

The difference between written agreements and oral agreements in Faustian literature, and in related literature featuring the Devil, is profound. Written

agreements, and particularly agreements that are written according to some specified rituals, are regarded as more strictly binding than oral promises, and the handwritten document can be used as tangible evidence of the agreement that was reached. Oral promises, on the other hand, are rarely good enough; the involved parties cannot be trusted to uphold oral promises. Implied in this weighting of material evidence, which is not unique to Spies’s book, is a particular view on the relation between speaking and writing: A living, present person utters living, present words that rapidly

dissipate, while a piece of paper, parchment or vellum, made of dead trees, dead reeds or dead animals, facilitates transference of dead words over time through the medium of dried ink or ink substitute. A glance at Doctor Faustus’s prehistory will show that it is consistently the Devil who requires a written document, and that his reasoning is that man is fickle and unreliable, while the grace of God is an ever-present threat to the ungodly deal struck between the two parties. The need for a written confirmation of a pact arises from distrust, specifically the Devil’s distrust towards man, and the written word is deemed more trustworthy than the spoken.

78 This definition resting on reciprocity is also the basis for Williams and Schwarz’s analysis of what they call Verträge in Jean de Arras’s Mélusine, various versions of the Eulenspiegel and three Faustbooks: “Man hat Verträge bedingte Versprechen genannt und damit den Umstand hervorgehoben, dass die Vertragspartner sich selbst binden – unter der Bedingung, dass die Gegenseite es auch tut” (2003, pp. 13-14); “Wie jeder Vertrag impliziert auch der Teufelspakt Gegenseitigkeit” (p. 26).

An early piece of fiction which centres on a written pact with the Devil is the fourteenth-century story of the bishop Theophilus, a character well-known from plays, poems and morality tales in the European Middle Ages. The story of Theophilus, who employed a Jewish sorcerer to help him arrange a pact with the Devil, gives distrust as the sole reasoning behind the need for a written pact.⁷⁹ The following quote is taken from one of Satanas’s remarks as it appears in Johannes Wedde’s 1888 reconstruction of the play:

Wir Teufel müssen haushälterisch sein.

Wir ließen schon oft uns darauf ein, Daß wir den Leuten Reichtum gaben.

Sie pflegten sich erst an der Wollust zu laben So zwanzig, dreißig Jahre lang.

Wenn aber der Leib ward alt und krank, Dann sind sie auf einen Weg gekommen, Wo uns die Seelen wurden benommen.

Willst Du es aber mit Ernst betreiben, So sollst Du einen Pakt uns schreiben.⁸⁰ (Wedde 1888/2013, p. 35)

Wedde demonstrates that the pact is meant to ensure that the immortal soul in particular does not escape the grasp of Satanas, who is the other contracting party. As soon as the bishop enters into an agreement with the Devil, his body is forfeit, but the status of his immortal soul is still in question. After the Virgin Mary reclaims the physical document from Satanas, Theophilus’s soul is redeemed, yet his body is not.

He must give up his body in order to save his eternal soul, demonstrating that Satanas’s fear of losing the sorcerer’s soul despite their agreement was well justified.

This particular species of the Devil’s distrust towards his human contrahent is also the rationale behind the very early instance of a pact with the Devil in the account of

79 Works that tell and retell the story of Theophilus make up a large tradition, including, but far from limited to, a sixth-century story written in Greek by Eutychianus Adanesis, who claims to have been an eyewitness to the effects of Theophilus’s unholy agreement, as well as Paulus Diaconus’s ninth-century Latin Miraculum S. Marie de Theophilo penitente, which was the basis for Hroswitha of Gandersheim’s tenth-century poem on the same figure, found in her book of legends. (Frenzel 1998b, pp. 683-685)

80 Wedde’s version of the Theophilus legend stresses the difference between body and soul, but the author emphasises in a footnote that the line concerning old and sickly flesh is not «expressly»

described in the originals that he bases his reconstruction on.

St. Basil in Jacobo de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea (ca. 1260), yet here the difference between body and soul is not emphasised. It is a general distrust towards Christian believers specifically which motivates the pact, because Christians, according to the Devil, are deceitful and untrustworthy:

“You Christians are a perfidious lot,” the devil retorted. “Sometimes when you need me, you come to me. Then, when your wish is gratified, you deny me and turn to your Christ; and he, out of the abundance of his clemency, takes you back! But if you want me to fulfil your desire, write me a script in your own hand, in which you profess to renounce Christ, your baptism, and the Christian faith; to be my servant; and to be condemned with me at the Last Judgement.” (Voragine 1993, p. 110)⁸¹

The written pledge in literature concerning the Devil is necessary because the Devil is unable to trust his contrahent, and the authority of the pact resides in and depends on the physical integrity of the material document. The externalised, material promise must survive to be effective. The Ulmer Puppenspiel explicitly ties the pact to distrust between men on the one hand, and distrust of the “hellish domain” towards men on the other: “Mephistopheles. Gleichwie ihr Sterbliche einander nicht traut, also traut euch das höllische Reich nicht. Daher mußt du dich mir verschreiben” (Mahal 1991, p. 77). In Fridericum Schotum Tolet’s Wagnerbuch (1593), the pact is required as insurance, “damit ein jeder seiner Sache umso gewisser versichert sein könnte”

(Wiemken 1980, p. 173). While Williams and Schwarz judge the Devil to be the

“Vertragsbrecher par excellence” (2003, p. 27), the Devil’s fidelity to his promises is never in question when it comes to pacts with the Devil: It is man who is inclined to violate agreements.

In this is gleaned a persistent difference in accountability between a spoken and a written promise, invariably emphasised by the Devil. The spoken word is inherently untrustworthy, while the written word is a trustworthy substitution. The

81 “Perfidi estis uos christiani, quia quando quidem me opus habetis ad me uenitis, quando autem desiderium uestrum assecuti estis, statim me negatis et ad Christum uestrum acceditis. Ille autem quia clementissimus est suscipit uos. Sed si uis ut tuam compleam uolontatem, fac mihi manu tua scriptum, in quo confitearis te abrenuntiare Christo et baptismati et christiane professioni, et meus sis seruus et mecum in iudicio condempnandus” (Varazze 1999, p. 183).

various devils and spirits mentioned above require the human contracting party to repeat what he has said in writing: In further confirmation, so that his soul will not be purloined, so that everyone may be reassured, and so on. The reason is not that the initial word given is likely to be a lie at the time it is given, but that the spoken promise cannot be reliably reanimated at a later time: At the time of death, or at a time when clemency is sought or regret expressed. Writing becomes the physical substitute for two human shortcomings: Poor memory and fickle intentions. When Goethe’s Faust rhetorically asks Mephistopheles whether or not he “has known a man’s word” (GF, l. 1717), the answer would be that he does know it.

Mephistopheles, who during the pact scene in Goethe’s Faust makes his appearance more or less as sixteenth-century Devil for reasons that will be explored in detail later on, knows the word of man from his own literary history, and he knows it to be inherently untrustworthy. Yet throughout this same literary history, the various manifestations of the entity persistently seem to place a greater degree of trust in a man’s word when it is written down.

Writing in itself, however, is not a trustworthy source of information on a living person’s past intentions. Anyone who can write can also attribute what they have written to any other person. There is a weak connection – or no direct connection at all – between words on paper and a living, speaking human being.

Furthermore, written words can, like spoken words, be meant or interpreted

sarcastically, ironically, satirically, fictionally or they may simply be lies. This is why certain rituals are put in place, that ensure that a written pact can be attributed to the correct person and that its contents can be reliably interpreted as sincere, literal, true statements. These are rituals such as positioning of functions relative to one another, standardised formulations, signature, and, unique to pacts with the Devil, blood replacing ink for this last attribution of text to living person.⁸² Laws governing

82 Zelger (1996), quoting Frick (1982), argues that the one-sided signature in blood separates pacts with the Devil from other blood pacts: In other words, blood is normally used to reinforce agreements bilaterally, by mixing blood or drinking blood, but in pacts with the Devil, it is used unilaterally, as pledge rather than contract: “Das Bluttrinken ist als Ritual einer Teilanthropophagie zuzuordnen, und die Blutsbrüderschaft zweier Vertragspartner, deren Blut vermischt wird, ist antiker

contractual exchanges are put in place in order to avoid the misunderstandings that always threaten written language: Certain rituals are followed which avow to the genuineness of the statement, as well as the intended literal meaning.

The name at the end of a legal document will always say the same thing: It always earnestly intends the preceding statement. Additionally, signatures always attest to an event that took place at a particular point in time. This last point is of great consequence to the agreement that is reached between Mephostophiles and Faustus in the Spies-book, as will be shown below. Once a document is signed, the signer cannot add anything to it. Additions below the signature line will not be regarded as part of the agreement contained in the document; the moment a document is signed temporally marks the final, irrevocable closing of an agreement.⁸³ One might be tempted to claim that the name at the bottom of the page is an extension of the signer’s intention, but, crucially, it is not: It may be precisely the opposite. The signature is a frozen intention, removed from the signer. Living human beings have ever-changing intentions, while signatures do not. If they did, the written pact would be worthless. The signature stands in place of the person who signed the document at the specific time of signing, and, as soon as pen leaves paper, it has no part in the living human being that created it, other than the various referential relations that Herkunft. Dagegen ist der einseitige Blutpakt ‘mehr oder weniger (...) ein Privileg des Paktes mit dem Bösen, also besonders mit dem Teufel’ [(Frick 1982, p. 52)] Dies ist einer der Gründe, warum der Blutpakt mit dem Teufel sich von anderen Blutsbündnissen unterscheidet” (Zelger 1996, p. 86).

83 In his habilitation, known as the Strassburger Thesen, Goethe comments on the positioning of the signature relative to the contents of the document the signature is meant to cover. His twelfth thesis states that “[t]he document’s signature does not cover what is written after it” [“Subscriptio

instrumenti non continuo obligat scribentem”] (Goethe in Schubart-Fikentscher 1949, p. 79). Gertrud Schubarth-Fikentscher understands this thesis in spatial terms, to mean that a signature binds the contracting parties to what is written above it, but not to additions below the signature: “These 12:

Subscriptio instrumenti non continuo obligat scribentem meint offenbar, daß die Unterschrift einer Urkunde alles über ihr stehende deckt und damit eine Verbindlichkeit erzeugt, aber nicht darüber hinaus sich auch auf Zusätze erstreckt, falls diese nicht durch diese Unterschrift, oder eine neue, mit gedeckt werden” (Schubart-Fikentscher 1949, p. 79). Such additions must be covered by a new signature, and thus do not modify the already existing agreement, but creates a new agreement. This seemingly mundane insight carries a significant consequence: At the moment a document is signed, its statement is made unchangeable and irrevocable. While Schubarth-Fikentscher interprets the line in spatial terms, there is also this temporal component. To Goethe, time plays a crucial role in contractual exchanges: After the document has been signed, its contents have been fixed.

exist between words and things. The use of blood as writing material in literature concerning the Devil emphasises this temporal aspect of agreements. Blood that is removed from the body will coagulate and die; it no longer takes part in the system in which it previously was a vital component, and a bloodstain will always point back to that precise moment in time when it left a body. It cannot be returned to the body, and it cannot be revitalised outside of it. It is a witness to the fact that it once belonged to a living body, as the signature is a witness to the fact that at one particular moment in time, a living human being intended the words preceding it. The signer’s intention has become a trait of a material object at precisely the moment in time when the document was signed.

The act of signing a Faustian agreement is a singular event, located at one particular moment in time by the coagulation of blood, and requiring the presence of Faustus, the signer. Not only is it Faustus’s own blood that he signs with, but the signature is also a unique shape that only one person can produce. Beatrice Fraenkel’s (1992) categorisation of signs used in the identification of individuals according to Charles Sanders Peirce’s three classes of sign-object relations can shed some light on this relation between signer and signature. Fraenkel points to three types of

identifying sign: The name, for example, is a symbol, pointing to its object in an arbitrary fashion, dependent on conventions of identification shared between sender and receiver. The photographic portrait can be understood as an icon, referring to its object by virtue of visual similarities. The fingerprint, which can only be produced by the person to whom it refers, can, when it is used as identifying imprint, be

categorised as index, because it has a direct relation to the entity that it signifies: It was literally created by the person’s hand. Fraenkel points out that the signature shares characteristics with all three of these categories of identifying signs.⁸⁴ The

84 “Ces trois signes, nom propre, portrait, empreinte [this category includes, but is not limited to, the fingerprint. My note.], peuvent être considérés comme signes élémentaires de l’identité et d’un point de vue beaucoup plus large que celui de l’identité judiciaire. Ils correspondent aux trois catégories fondamentales de signes dégagées par C.S. Peirce, le symbole, l’icone et l’indice, subsumant toutes les relations possibles entre un signe et son objet. (...) Qu’en est-il de la signature vis-à-vis de ces trois signes élémentaires de l’identité? Force est de constater qu’elle possède tout à la fois un caractère symbolique, iconique et indiciel” (Fraenkel 1992, p. 200).

Faustian signature appears to share characteristics with the proper name and the fingerprint, or, in Peirce’s terminology as defined here, symbol and index: The proper name embedded in the signature symbolically, and arbitrarily, points to the signer, while the sign left on the paper is only useful as an identifying mark if it has been produced by the signer, as index.⁸⁵ The Faustian signature’s indexicality hinges not only on the Faustian signature’s material, but also on the uniqueness of the physical sign’s shape. A prerequisite for functioning signatures is the idea that only one person can produce the exact shape of his or her signature; in fact, only one hand can

produce this shape. The signature is in this respect a unique sign, and the act of signing a singular event that requires the presence of the signer.

This short preliminary probing of the difference between written promises and spoken promises indicates that the clear separation of the two types of agreement in the Historia should be taken into account. The word “Promission” is in the Historia not synonymous with “Verschreibung”, as Füssel and Kreuzer imply, because the first refers back to Faustus’s oral promise, which he made before the set of promises referred to with the second term, which is his written promise.⁸⁶ The word

“Verschreibung” invokes the act of writing something down, as does “brieffliche Vrkund”. During the course of Faustus’s biography, he is reminded of his oral promise by the Devil when he attempts to repent, while his written promise is silently presented as damning material evidence after his promised twenty-four years have passed. The first is used as an argument to convince Faustus to refrain from

85 The iconicity of signature touches on an idea that Johann Wolfgang Goethe implies in Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809): The notion that the signature somehow visually resembles the person to whom it belongs. Ottilie’s handwriting gradually takes on the shape of Eduard’s during her work on copying his writing, indicating her infatuation with him, and is an expression of their

uncontrollable chemical affinity for one another. Ottilie’s copying of Eduard’s words is a mere re-presentation of another’s work, but her gradual appropriation of his handwriting throughout the process of copying constitutes a change in identity. When Eduard cries out “Das ist meine Hand!”

(Goethe 1956, p. 88) on seeing the final pages of her work, he indicates that she in one sense has become him: She has gained the ability to produce those unique marks that positively identify the person that made them. See Puszkar 1986.

86 «Nach dem D. Faustus dise Promission gethan» (HDF, p. 21) is the opening line in Chapter 5, preceding the written pact.