e," in which he not
only tried to prove that Dr. Faustus had never been at Wittenberg, but
pronounced his whole story fabulous. An attempt like this would not
surprise us in our own time, the age of historical skepticism; but the
seventeenth century gave credit to narratives having much slighter
foundation. Although this dissertation was full of historical mistakes
and erroneous statements, it made some sensation, as is proved by its
four successive editions. It was also translated into German. All
Neumann's endeavors, however, could not stand against the testimony of
contemporaries, who partly had known Faustus personally, partly had
heard of him from living witnesses, and allude to his death as an
occurrence of recent date.

John Faustus, or rather, after the German form of his name, Faust, was
born in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, probably not before
the year 1490. According to the oldest "Volksbuch" (People's Book)
which bears his name,[2] his parents then lived at Roda, in the present
Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. The same place is likewise named as his native
village by G.R. Widmann, his first regular biographer, who says that
his father was a peasant.[3] Although these two works are the
foundation of the great number of later ones referring to the same
subject, some of these latter deviate with respect to Faustus's
birthplace. J.N. Pfitzer, for instance, who, seventy years after
Widmann, published a revised and much altered edition of his book,
makes Faust see the light at Saltwedel, a small town belonging then to
the principality of Anhalt, and must have had his reasons for this
amendment. A confusion of this kind may, indeed, have early arisen from
a change 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 stud