Godfrey
A priest of Provence, who had seduced several women. One of them, a nun, to save herself, asserted that Godfrey had bewitched her.
Arrested and imprisoned, he was tortured until he confessed that he was a magician, and that he had, by means of his breathing and other enchantments, corrupted this woman and several others. He was even induced, in his extreme agony, to speak of his presence at the Witches' Sabbath, and to give a long description of it. After these confessions had been cruelly extorted from the anguish of failing nature, the Parliament of Aix condemned him, on the 30th of April, 1611, to be burnt alive, as guilty of magic, sorcery, impiety, and abominable lust a sentence which was carried into execution without delay.
This horrible affair gave rise to an adventure which has been related by the Abbé of Papon. 66 The process," said he, "contained many depositions upon the power of the demons. Several witnesses protested that after being anointed with a magic oil, Godfrey transported himself to the Sabbath, and afterwards returned to his chamber down the shaft of the chimney. One day, when these depositions had been read to the Parliament, and the imagination of the judges excited by a long recital of supernatural events, there was heard in the chimney an extraordinary noise, which suddenly terminated with the apparition of a tall black man. The judges thought it was the devil come to the rescue of his disciple, and fled away swiftly, with the exception of a councillor Thorton, their reporter, who, finding himself entangled in his desk, could not follow them. Terrified by what he saw, with trembling body and staring eyes, and repeatedly making the sign of the cross, he in his turn affrighted the pretended demon, who was at a loss to understand the magistrate's perturbation. Recovering from the embarrassment he made himself known, and proved to be a chimney sweeper who, after having swept the chimney of the Messieurs des Comptes, whose chimneys joined those of the Tournelle, had by mistake descended into the chamber of the Parliament."
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: German Author, (1749-1832): Johann Wolfgang Goethe, probably the most celebrated of all German writers, was born at Frankfurt-on-the-Main in 1749, his father being a lawyer of some eminence. At an early age the boy showed a persistent fondness for drawing, and assimilated the rudiments of learning with surprising ease; while in 1759, on a French nobleman of æsthetic tastes coming to stay with the Goethes, a warm friendship between him and the future author sprang up, and proved the means of accelerating the latter's intellectual development. Shortly after this a French theatre was founded at Frankfurt, and here young Goethe became conversant with Racine; while simultaneously he made some early attempts at original writing, and began to learn Italian, Latin and Greek, English and even Hebrew. Very soon, however, a little cloud came to darken his horizonjust the cloud which has dimmed the blue skies for so Goethe many youths for at the age of fifteen he became desperately enamoured of a young girl, and as his parents disapproved of the match the pair were separated straightway. At first. Goethe declared himself broken-hearted, and being intensely virile, as all men of might are, he sought consolation in loose-living. But a broken heart seldom proves a fatal malady, and the disappointed lover's restoration to mental health was facilitated betimes by his removal from his native town to Leipsic, where he entered the university, intending to become a lawyer.
At Leipsic Goethe showed slender affection for the actual curriculum, and instead he continued in essay writing and drawing, while he even took lessons in etching. He also found time for another love-affair, but this was cut short in 1768 by his undergoing a serious illness; and, on his recovering therefrom, he decided to leave his present alma mater in favour of that of Strasburg. Arrived there, he became intimate with Jung Stilling, while his taste for letters was strengthened, Homer and Ossian being the masters for whom he chiefly avowed affection; while, though he continued to show himself callous as regards law, he succeeded in becoming an advocate in 1771, whereupon he returned to Frankfurt.
Goethe had already written a quantity of verse and prose, and now, in his native town, he began to do critiques for some of the newspapers there, while simultaneously he commenced writing Goetz von Berlichingen and Werther. These were followed shortly by Prometheus, and in 1774 the author started working at Faust, while the following year witnessed the production of some of his best love poems, these being addressed to Lilli Schönemann, daughter of a Frankfurt banker. Nothing more than poetry, however, was destined to result from this new devotion; and scarcely had it come and gone ere Goethe's whole life was changed, for meanwhile his writings had become famous, and now the young Duke Carl August of Weimar, anxious for a trusty henchman, invited the rising author to come to his court. The invitation was accepted, Goethe became a member of the privy-council, while subsequently he was raised to the rank of Geheimrath and then ennobled. Goethe's life at Weimar was a very busy one. Trusted implicitly by the Duke, he directed public roads and buildings, he attended to military and academic affairs, and he founded a court theatre. But though having all these outlets for his energy he continued to write voluminously, among the most important works he produced during his first years at the Duke's court being Iphigenia and Wilhelm Meister; while in 1787 he made a lengthy stay in Italy, visiting Naples, Pompei, Rome and Milan. Returning to Weimar, he began writing Egmont; while in 1795 he made the acquaintance of Schiller, with whom he speedily became very intimate, and along with whom he worked on the Horen, a journal designed to elevate the literary tastes of the masses. About this period, too, Goethe wrote his play of Hermann und Dorothea, and likewise did sundry translations from Voltaire, Diderot and Benvenuto Cellini ; while the year 1806 is a significant one in his history, marked as it is alike by his marriage and by the entry of Napoleon into Weimar. The conquering general and the German poet each found much in the other to admire, and the latter was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honour; nor did his literary activities show any signs of flagging as yet, for in 1811 he wrote Dichtung und Wahrheit, in 1821 Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre, and a little later he commenced working at a second part of Faust, During the time he was engaged thus he had two famous visitors, Beethoven coming from Vienna and Thackeray from London; and, though the composer imagined himself coldly received, the novelist on the contrary spoke with enthusiasm of the welcome accorded him. But Goethe was now well-stricken in years, his health was beginning to fail, and he died early in 1832.
Few great writers, not even Disraeli or Sir Walter Scott, had fuller lives than Goethe. His love-affairs, besides those cited above, were countless, and his early taste for the graphic arts continued to the end of his days, resulting in his making a vast collection of treasures; while his interest in mysticism, by virtue of which he is included in this volume, manifested itself in divers forms besides the writing of Faust. For, something of a nympholept as he was, Goethe's mind was essentially an aspirational and speculative one, and during his childhood at Frankfurt he used to do symbolical drawings of the soul's aspirations to the deity, while subsequently he became immersed in the study of the Christian religion. Anon he grew sceptical on this subject, his ideas being altered not only by his own ruminations but by his readings in various inconoclastic philosophers, especially Rousseau; and it would seem that latterly his intellect was less engaged by Christianity than by those other and probably more ancient Eastern faiths, his leanings in this direction being demonstrated by sundry works from his pen, notably his West-östliche Divan. One of his note-books, moreover, shows that while a young man at Strassburg he made a close study of Giordano Bruno and other early scientists; while as a boy he was a keen student of alchemy, reading deeply in Welling and van Helmont, Basil Valentine and Paracelsus, and even fitting up a laboratory where he spent long hours in arduous experiments. No doubt it was while engaged in this way that he first conceived the idea of writing a drama on the subject of Dr. Faustus, but be that as it may, his alchemistic and other scientific researches certainly stood him in good stead when ultimately composing this work. The story's main outlines are so well known already-not only by reason of Calderon's and Marlowe's versions, but by the operas of Gounod, Schumann and Berlioz-that it were superfluous if not impertinent to offer anything of the nature of a paraphrase or synopsis here; but it should be said, in drawing to a conclusion, that after all it is mainly on account of Faust that Goethe takes rank as a mystic, and a great mystic, for his rendering of the immortal theme is acknowledged as among the finest things in the whole of mystical literature.