The Nexus of Witchcraft and Male Impotence in Renaissance Thought and Its Reflection in

The Nexus of Witchcraft and Male Impotence in Renaissance Thought and Its Reflection in
Mann's "Doktor Faustus"

Author(s): Winfried Schleiner
Source: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Apr., 1985), pp. 166-187
Published by: University of Illinois Press
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THE NEXUS OF WITCHCRAFT AND MALE IMPOTENCE IN

RENAISSANCE THOUGHT
AND ITS REFLECTION INMANN'S DOKTOR FAUSTUS
Winfried Schleiner, University of California, Davis
In Thomas Mann's novel Doktor Faustns (Ch. 13) the fictional narrator
Zeitblom tells a story of a young man who, believing that his fianc?e
has robbed him of the power to satisfy women other than herself,
accuses her of witchcraft and eventually has her burnt at the stake.
Zeitblom, writing in 1943-44 (the actual years of Mann's composi
tion), says that he and the main character of the novel, Adrian Lever
k?hn, of the case some forty years ago in a lecture by the highly
heard
ambiguous and questionable theology professor Schleppfu? at the
University of Halle. This "revoltierende Geschichte" (as the narrator
calls it?by what is either an Americanism or a Gallicism) is set in the
late fifteenth century and is self-contained as if it were a novella,
though subtly and intimately tied to the main themes of the novel. It
is not only one of the most "revolting" but one of the best and most
elaborately told stories of this kind. Mann (or is it his narrator
Zeitblom or his character Schleppfu??) catches eminently well the
spirit of such cases, reported from the Renaissance, and through the
narrator's comments modern horror and
powerfully suggests disgust.
But while the story has such a ring of authenticity that this reader has
not given up hope of someday finding an extended version of it in a
writer like Ulrich Molitor, Johann Wier, or Jean Bodin, Mann's source
appears to have been two brief cases reported in the notorious Malleus
maleficarum. On the surface Mann focuses on the darkest side of the
Renaissance without to the of in
seeming represent range opinion
those times on such as witchcraft, and
topics impotence, melancholy.
Of course, as a he has to select and to cut a
storyteller through pan
orama of opinion, but, as we shall see, his story is so skillfully told that
to a in Renaissance views of and
person knowledgeable impotence
witchcraft it subtly includes a much wider range of opinion than is at
first apparent.
Besides deepening our understanding of a central passage inMann's
novel, studying the nexus of impotence and witchcraft in the Renais
sance leads to the core of the problematic relationship between body
166
and Mann's Doktor Faustus 167
Witchcraft, Impotence,
and mind as it was often articulated by the medical and philosophical

writers of that period under the heading of "Powers of the Imagina
tion." Thus the is and the reader must bear with
topic quite complex,
me as, in order to highlight Mann's choices, I go beyond what might
seem relevant?that is, beyond what was incor
immediately actually
in the novel. his modern characters in a Renaissance
porated Steeping
understanding of impotence and witchcraft allowed Mann to bypass a
now official-sounding psychological terminology (castration fears,
anxiety neurosis, incest barrier, fetishism, and the like) and to focus
on the emotional, and more cultural ties between
religious, generally
present and past that were important to him. My sketch of Renais
sance opinion not only will illuminate one story from the dense fabric
of the novel, but will show that the episode is pregnant with meaning
because it adumbrates and clarifies the central concerns of the work.
THE MALLEUS MALEFICARUM AND IMPOTENCE
The central importance of male impotence in the entire discussion of

witchcraft is apparent in the late fifteenth-century work by Jakob
Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer (Institor), Malleus maleficarum, the
"hammer" witches, now available in Summers'
against Montague
translation. In the section entitled "An seu
generativam potentiam,
actum Venereum Malefici . . ." (Whether Witches
impedir? possint
Can Impede the Power to Procreate or the Sex Act), the authors, who
as official inquisitors occupy the conservative end of the spectrum,
argue: "Secundo, eadam veritas, scilicet, adulterae, fornicariae,
quod
&c. existunt ostenditur per male
amplius maleficijs, impedimentum
fic?ale actum
super generativae potentiae."1 Temporarily impaired
male is assumed to be the result of witchcraft, which?an
potency
other in the of "adulterous drabs
assumption?consists mainly spells
and whores." The two axiomatic are combined to
assumptions argue
that certain kinds of women are indeed witches. In my con
present
text the first assumption is the more important since it shows that the
sexual sphere is not just one area of many subject to spells, but is
lJ. Sprenger and H. Kramer, Malleus maleficarum, Pt. 1, opening of question 8

(Lyons, 1584), p. 84. In the most readily available edition, the facsimile reprint of the
Lyons, 1669 edition (Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1969), which in its second volume
collects six Renaissance treatises on witchcraft and related this is found on
topics,
pp. 54-55. Montague Summers, Malleus maleficarum (London: Pushkin, 1948) trans
lates (p. 54): "Now the fact that adulterous drabs and whores are to witch
chiefly given
are cast the act of generation."
craft is substantiated by the spells which by witches upon
Since Summers' translation is not always reliable, I will sometimes own.
give my
i68 Schleiner
magic's focal target. While this focal position of sex will not come as
much of a in our era, and Kramer's
surprise post-Freudian Sprenger's
reason for the of sex in these matters de
pre-eminent importance
serves our attention. Witchcraft, not in
they argue, happens only
people's imagination but in fact, and cannot happen without the per
mission of God; "ostensum est etiam quod Deus amplius permittit,
super vim propter maiorem eius
generativam corruptionem, quam
super alios actus
humanos."2 This argument is then backed by the
reasoning of certain medieval and early Renaissance theologians (they
mention Petrus of Palude) that God allows the devil more latitude in
the workings of the generative act, through which sin was first spread
about, as are more to than are other
just serpents subject magic spells
animals.
Again drawing first on Petrus of Palude, they also seek to explain

men are more to such than women: obstruction of
why subject spells
the act occurs as a failure to have an erection
generative "generally"
or as obstruction of the seminal duct?and this, we are told, can
hap
pen more to men. To this rather circular add
easily argument they
one of their own, based on what they perceive as the preponderance
of female witches: "Posset etiam quis dicere, quod ideo, quia plures
murieres sunt, viri, et allicere viros
superstitiosae quam potius cupiunt
quam mulieres."3 The here is that men, not women,
point presumably
are the ones who suffer the bewitched sexual dysfunction which ties
them to the single partner, because the witch (as is the case inMann's
story) is usually female.
Like other writers on this subject, Sprenger and Kramer ask how
one can distinguish impotence due to witchcraft from impotence due
to natural defect and in this context cite the "experiment"
suggested
by Hostiensis, which even the usually forthright Reginald Scot was too
"ashamed to english" as he put it in his Discoverie ofWitchcraft (1584) :
Quando nullatenus movetur, et nunquam cognoscere, hoc
virga potuit
est sed quando movetur et autem
signum frigiditatis: erigitur, perficere
non est maleficii.4
potest, signum
2Malleus maleficarum, pt. 1, sect. 8 (1669 ed.), p. 55; M. Summers, p. 55: Montague
Summers, Malleus maleficarum (London: Pushkin, 1948) translates (p. 54): "It has been
shown, too, that God permits it more in the case of the generative because of
powers,
their greater corruption, than in the case of other human emotions."
3Malleus maleficarum, 1669 ed., p. 56. "Someone could even say that this is so because
more women than men are superstitious [i.e., are witches] and therefore want to allure
men rather than women" (my trans.).
4Reginald Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, Bk. 4, Ch. 8 (London, 1584), p. 82: "When
the penis is in no way stirred and has never been able to the act, this is a sign of
perform
[natural] frigidity; but when it is stirred and becomes erect, yet cannot perform, it is a
sign of witchcraft" (my trans.); Malleus (1669 ed.), p. 56.
and Mann s Doktor Faustus
Witchcraft, Impotence, 169
Hostiensis' distinction does not cover a condition discussed at length

in the next chapter (Pt. 1, question 9) of the Maliens and in many
similar works, in which a man is impotent because through witchcraft
his male organ has been removed or at least he ismade to believe that
it has been removed. This item from the curiosity shop of Renaissance
not deserve mention that many cases were
demonology might except
reported (some of them in certain details quite similar to Mann's

and, more these cases about
story) important, provoked speculation
the role of the imagination in sexual dysfunction and, with the more
Renaissance writers, about the role and force
enlightened speculation
of the imagination in general.
On the question whether witches work by prestidigitatory illusion
to make a male seem to or whether
organ disappear they actually
remove it, the authors of the Malleus are not so benightedly "medi
eval" as they might have been; they did not always accept the state
ments in case reports. On the one hand they are firmly convinced that
diabolic forces can take bodily shapes, for instance interposing them
selves between partners: "Sicut accidit sponso,
marriage qui despon
saverat Idolum, et nihilominus contraxerat cum iuvencula, nee
prop
ter earn This be the core of M?rim?e's
hoc.poterat cognoscere."5 may
well-known novella "La V?nus d'Ille," a tale treated An
recently by
thony Burgess in a full-fledged novel;6 on the other hand, Sprenger
and Kramer hold that witches do not in fact remove the male organ
in the victim's Even so, the "illusion" is not a fault
except imagination.
of the victim's imagination but the result of a stimulus from outside
of it.7
The discussion may have the appearance of scholastic hairsplitting,
but the belief underlying the elaborate view of how diabolical witches
work is that to the life and experience of the victim it does not really
matter whether he only thinks he has lost his organ, for the devil can
call to the imagination the appearance of a smooth body without the
male organ "ut in se sensus iudicent, ac si in rerum veritate ita esset."8
As so often in cases of this kind, the witch's or real ability to
seeming
restore a condition?that is, to undo her used to
previous spell?is
add credence to notions of witchcraft. The case, also sum
following
marized by Scot, is one of the two stories from the Malleus that Mann
5
Malleus (1669), p. 55. "In this way it happened to the young man who was betrothed
to an idol and nevertheless married a young maiden, and was to
consequently unable
copulate with her" (trans. Summers,
6 p. 55).
Anthony Burgess, The Eve of Saint Venus (New York: Ballantine,
1971).
7Malleus, Pars I, Quaestio ix (1669 ed.), pp. 59-60.
8Malleus . .
(1669 ed.), p. 60; ". in such a way that the senses believe it to be actual
fact" (Summers, p. 59).
170 Schleiner
seems to have knit into one continuous tale: "In Ra

oppido namque
venspurg iuvenis iuvenculae adhaesit, quam volens,
quidam relinquere
membrum virile perdidit, praestigiosa utique arte: ut nihil videre aut
tangere praeter corpus In his worry about the loss
planum posset."9
of his virility (the Latin says he was anxius), the young man went to
some cellarium, a store, a tavern (as Summers or, as the
translates)
German translation has it, a Gew?lbe?that is, some vaulted room, pre
a cellar?in order to some wine:
sumably buy
Et residens mulieri cui alteri causam tristitiae

paululum supervenienti
suae enarravit, et ita esse in corpore demonstrabat.
aperiendo singula
Astuta illa, an aliquam suspectam haberet, inquisivit. Et ille utique: talem
et rem gestam narrando manifestavit. Et illa, expe
ipsam denominando,
dit ut per violentiam ubi benevolentia tibi non
aliquam, suffragatur, pro
acquirenda sanitate ipsam inducas.10
At nightfall the young man began to watch a path he knew the witch
(mal?fica) would take. I quote the rest of the story in Scot's lively six
teenth-century language:
Soon after with her, [he] intreated her faire, but that was in
meeting
therefore he hir a towell
vaine; caught by the throte, and with
strangled
hir, Restore me my toole or thou shalt die for it: so as she
saieng: being
swolne and blacke in the face, and his boisterous
through handling
readie to die, Let me I will he was
said; go, and help thee. And whilest
loosing the towell, she put hir hand into his and touched the
codpeece,
Now hast thou even at
place; saieng; thy desire: and that instant he felt
himself restored.11
9Malleus malificarum, Pars II, Quaestio vii (1669 ed.), pp. 127?28. For this story, I am
my own translation, which is more literal than Summers': "In the town of
giving slightly
a young man had an affair with a girl. When he wished to leave her, he lost
Ravensburg
his male member undoubtedly by magic illusion so that all he could see or touch was his
smooth have read the translation by J. W. Schmidt entitled Der
body." Mann would
Hexenhammer. In the edition before me (2nd ed., Berlin: Barsdorf, 1920), the opening
sentence is (Vol. 2, p. 78): "In der Stadt Regensburg an
n?mlich hing sich ein J?ngling
ein M?dchen; und als er es im Stiche lassen wollte, verlor er sein M?nnliches, nat?rlich
durch Gaukelkunst, soda? er nichts sehen und fassen konnte, als den glatten K?rper,
wor?ber er sehr ward." In her detailed discussion of Mann's note-taking
be?ngstigt
from the Malleus maleficarum, Lieselotte Voss does not mention the similarity between
this story and Mann's version (although she identifies the other half of the source,
which I discuss below); see Voss, Die Entstehung von Thomas Manns Roman "Doktor
Faustus": anhand von Vorarbeiten Niemeyer,
Dargestellt unver?ffentlichten (T?bingen:
i975)> PP- 142-50
10Malleus (ibid.): "And after he had sat there for a little while, he told some woman
who happened to come upon him the cause of his sadness and demonstrated in his
that it was so. The astute woman (German trans.: die verschmitzte Alte) inquired
body
whether he suspected He named that girl and told his entire past. And she
anyone.
said: 'If good will does not help you, you should induce her by violence to restore your
health.'"
11
Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584), pp. 77-78.
and Manns Doktor Faustus 171
That a witch undoes her spell under duress or in defense of her life is
not rare in the reported cases, and this kind of violence does not seem
to have led many conservatives to doubt the cases'
validity.12
the as the authors of the Malleus are called
Clearly "witchmongers,"
by sixteenth-century opponents like Reginald Scot (p. 52), derive
much grist for their mill from what is now called relative impotence,
that is, a selective inability, barring intercourse with a specific partner
or all but one, and it is in this context that Sprenger and
excluding
Kramer the case that the other half of Mann's "revolt
report inspired
:
ing story"
Fuit et in oppido Constantiensis dioecesis iuvenis in

Mersburg quidam
tantum malenciatus nullum actum carnalem cum
quod aliqua dempta
una, exercere Multis etiam audientibus retulit,
poterat. quod saepissime
dum earn declinare, et alias terras inhabitare, et capere volebat:
fugam
adhuc interdum nocturno et festine cursu velocis
tempore assurgere,
simo, iam per terram: iam per a?rem volando redire volebat.13
quasi
To underline the seriousness of a witch's interference, Sprenger

and Kramer out that to Canon Law persons
spell according prevent
others or themselves from or are considered
ing begetting conceiving
sunt
homicides, "maleficae, per maleficia talia procurantes, secundum
ultimo . . ."14 In his Fl?au des d?mons et sor
leges supplicio puniendae.
ciers (written in 1559) Jean Bodin, who is about as conservative on
witchcraft as the authors of the Hammer, even more
explicitly empha
sizes the witch's which, as Henri Gelin has out,
transgression, pointed
was called nouer l'aiguillette ("to tie the needle," that is, cast the spell of
impotence on the male) and was believed to happen quite often at the
ceremony in church.15 For Bodin it was particularly detest
wedding
able to desecrate with diabolic charms this ceremony at which people
should be attentive to God's words.16 or
Breaking up marriages keep
12
The best short account of Renaissance treatment of witches (and also of means of
evidence them) is Chapter 2 "Witchcraft" in Wayne Shumaker, The
collecting against
Occult Sciences in the Renaissance (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1972).
13Malleus, Pars II, Quaestio vi, p. 127 (1669 ed.). "And there was in the town of
in the diocese of Constance a certain young man who was bewitched in such a
Mersburg
way that he could never perform the carnal act with any woman except one. And many
have heard him tell that he had often wished to refuse that woman, and take flight to
other lands; but that hitherto he had been compelled to rise up in the night and to come
very quickly back, sometimes over land and sometimes through the air as if he were
flying" (trans. Summers, p. 118).
14Malleus, Pars I, Quaestio vii, p. 57 (1669 ed.). "But witches who do such things by
witchcraft are by law punishable by the extreme penalty" (trans. Summers, p. 56).
15 en Poitou," Revue des Etudes Rabelaisiennes,
Henri Gelin, "Les noueries d'aiguillette
8(1910), 122-33.
16Bodin, p. 452; from Henri Gelin, p. 126.
172 Schleiner
ing them sterile is, he says, similar to cutting an infant's throat; for
through their spells the witches destroy the mutual feeling on which
is based, even the to hate one another and
marriage causing partners
to seek satisfaction in adultery. He adds that sometimes the victim will
even murder the person he suspects of bewitching him?and he may
the one. Because of such serious of this
pick wrong consequences
crime, Bodin argues for strict punishment and disagrees with the le
niency shown a
by judge of Nyort who freed a witch from prison after
she canceled a spell cast on a young couple three days before at their
wedding.
Notions of this kind of debilitating witchcraft, many deriving from
the Church Fathers, were apparently widespread and popular in
Renaissance writes that his find
Europe. Montaigne contemporaries
themselves so tied up in certain bonds (he says liaisons, intending no
doubt les noueries d'aiguillette) that they talk about little else,17 and the
Jesuit Martin del Rio (1551 ? 1608) says that in his time this was the
most common form of witchcraft, "de sorte oseroit on en
qu'? peine
endroits se marier en iour, de Sor
quelques plein peur que quelques
ciers ne charment les mariez."18
TAMING THE IMAGINATION: MONTAIGNE
Close as the conjunction of relative impotence and witchcraft may

have been in some serious Renaissance as well as in
thought, popular
opinion, there were persons with significantly different ideas on the
subject. To the most enlightened and original thinkers of the period,
impaired potency more than anything demonstrated the forces of the
For that reason treats such cases in his
imagination. Montaigne essay
ofthat title (Essais, Bk.
1, Ch. 21, "De la force de l'imagination").
Although Montaigne will later include himself and the reader in
the discussion of the workings of the imagination by saying we and us,
he starts out in somewhat elitist fashion by surmising that witchcraft is
the result of the credulity of the unlettered: "Il est vray semblable que
le principal credit des visions, des enchantemens et de tels effects ex
17 Rat (Paris: Gal
Montaigne, Essais, Bk. 1, Ch. 21. Oeuvres compl?tes, ed. Maurice
limard, 1962), p. 97. See also editor's note, p. 1454.
18 et recherches magiques, Bk. 3, section
Martin del Rio, Controverses 7 (Paris, 1611),
in Henri Gelin, "Les noueries en Poitou," Revue des Etudes
p. 414, quoted d'aiguillette
Rabelaisiennes, 8 (1910), p. 125. On this subject, see also Ren? Benoist, Trakte enseignant
en causes des et enchanteries tant des ligatures et neuds des aiguillettes
bref les mal?fices, sortil?ges,
a curious annotated
pour empescher l'action et exercice du mariage qu'autres (Paris, 1579),
edition of the Book of Tobit, contained in Pierre Mass?, De l'imposture et tromperie des
diables (Paris, 1579), pp. 217-250; and Peter Binsfeld, Tract?t ob der Zauberer Aussag
(Munich, 1591), fol. 26v-27
traordinaires, vienne de la puissance de

l'imagination agissant prin
contre les ames du molles. On leur a si fort
cipalement vulgaire, plus
saisi la cr?ance voir ce ne voient Then he
qu'ils pensent qu'ils pas."19
makes an observation that must have been a milestone in the thinking
about such cases are often the result of
impaired potency: apprehen
sion and fear. To illustrate the of fears, even
power unacknowledged
ones, he tells the story of someone free of any bewitchment or phys
who, how another man
iological impairment, upon hearing person's
hood failed him in a most critical situation, experienced a similar
weakness the next time he was in need of his for at that mo
powers;
ment "l'horreur ce conte lui vint ? coup si rudement
de frapper
l'imagination, qu'il en encourut une fortune pareille" (p. 97). The
memory of his failure haunting and tyrannizing him, he would from
then on be liable to fail. Finally he found an escape from this mental
in a mental trick. "C'est que, advouant mesme et
trap luy preschant
avant la main cette sienne la contention de son ame se
subjection,
sur ce, ce mal comme attendu, son
soulageoit qu'apportant obligation
en amoindrissoit et luy en poisoit moins" (p. 97). Montaigne adds that
by thus freeing the body from the bonds of thought, his acquaintance
eventually cured himself entirely of his weakness.
more than of his
Probably clearly any contemporaries Montaigne,
the Renaissance master of realizes that relative
introspection, impo
tence is primarily a matter of the mind and is to be feared only "aux
[sic] o? nostre ame se trouve outre mesure tandue de
entreprinses
d?sir et de He another case of a French earl
respect" (p. 98). reports
whom he himself helped to overcome his weakness by a ruse. Haunted
by fears of witchcraft and particularly of one man who had been his
bride's suitor and was coming to the wedding, this lord had induced
an relative to celebrate the wedding at her house. When this lady
aged
communicated these concerns to he asked her to leave the
Montaigne,
matter for he had by some good luck a certain piece of flat
to him,
gold engraved with celestial symbols effective against heat stroke and
headache if worn on the head. It was held in place by a ribbon that
could be tied under the chin. I quote the rest of the story in Florio's
translation:
I tolde the
Earle, he might be in danger, and come to some
happily
misfortune as others had done, the rather because some were present,
that would not sticke to procure him some ill lucke, and which was
worse, some shame; but neverthelesse I willed him boldly to goe
spitefull
to bed: For I would shew him the parte of a true friend, and in his neede,
19
Montaigne, Essais, Bk. 1, Ch. 21 in Oeuvres compl?tes, ed. Maurice Rat (Paris: Gal
limard, 1962), p. 97.
174 Schleiner
not for his to a miracle,

in my which was
spare good employ power;
that on his honour me
he would to
alwayes provided, promise faithfully
it very secret; which was that when about he
keepe onely, mid-night
should have his candle him, if he had had no good successe in
brought
his businesse, hee should make such and such a signe to me. It fel out, his
mind was so
quailed, and his eares so dulled that by reason of the bond
wherewith the trouble of his had tied him, hee could not
imagination
runne on and at the houre made the signe
poste: appointed, agreed
betweene us, I came and him in the eare, that under
upon whispered
pretence to put us all out of his chamber, he should rise out of his
bed,
and in jesting maner take my gowne which I had on, and put it
night
upon himselfe (which he might well doe, because we were much of one
stature) and keepe it on till he my had which
performed appointment,
was, that when we should bee gone out of the Chamber, he should with
draw himselfe to make water, and using certaine I had shewed
jestures,
him, such wordes thrice over. And every time he spake them he
speake
I put into his handes,
girt the Ribbond,
should which and very carefully
the plate thereto fastned, just upon his kidneys, and the whole
place
in such a posture. All which when he had accordingly done, and
figure,
the laste time so fastened the ribbond, that itmight neither be untide nor
stirred from his hee should then boldely and confidently returne
place,
to his and not to my upon his bed,
charge, forget spreade night-gowne
but so as it cover them both.20
might
The worked, or as it, the characters

"magic" Montaigne puts magic
more venerian than solar: the earl was able to
proved perform
properly.
avowed method was to on his own not
Montaigne's rely experience,
on by others. In the former case history he insists
exempta rehearsed
that he is certain of the nature and of the sexual
sequence subject's
in fact one even he is about his own.
experiences; may suspect writing
In the second case he identifies his source for the "magic" used as
Jacques Peletier (du Mans), the famous medical doctor, mathemati
cian, and humanist, who indeed had been his guest; and editors of
Montaigne have also identified the bridegroom haunted by fears of
witchcraft.21 The observations are thus remarkable because they rely
on observed sexual not
personally experiences, hearsay.
Furthermore, both cases show that conceives of man,
Montaigne
particularly in regard to his sexual activity, not as animal rationale but
as what he have called animal or even
might imaginosum imaginabun
dum. Renaissance imaginatio should of course not be confused with
Romantic imagination; it was considered the lowest of the mind's fac
ulties. The first case shows someone how to manacle his
learning
20Montaigne, Essayes, trans. John Florio (1603; repr. Menston: Scolar, 1969), p. 42.
21The de Gurson, who married Diane de Foix de C?ndale in 1579; see
Comte
Oeuvres compl?tes, ed. Maurice Rat, p. 1554.
the second demonstrates not that the of

imagination; only power
"magic" lies in the believer but that it lends itself to manipulation by

the lucid skeptic. For Montaigne magic remedies are singeries deriving
weight and respect from their inanit?. Since he realizes that manipula
tion ismorally ambiguous, he closes the case with a subtle palinode:
Ce fut une humeur et curieuse me convia a tel effect,
prompte qui
de ma nature. Je suis ennemi des actions subtiles et feinte, et
hay
esloign?
la finesse, en mes mains, non seulement recreative, mais aussi profitable.
Si l'action n'est vicieuse, la routte l'est, (?d. M. Rat, p. 99)
IMAGINATION AND MELANCHOLY
It is possible that when Montaigne wrote this last story (the first edi
tion of the Essais appeared in 1580) he was familiar with a case
reported by Jan Wier in his "Responce aux arguments contre les sor
ci?res," part of Wier's published dispute with Thomas Erastus (or
Lieber) that followed publication of Wier's De praestigiis daemonum.22
The physician Wier was one of the most courageous defenders of
women reputed to be witches and became the intellectual hero for
their defender in the British Isles, Reginald Scot. Although Wier did
believe in the subtle machinations of the devil and the existence of
witchcraft, he thought that a large number of reputed witches were
sick women, and he can no doubt be credited with personally saving
some from execution. He denied the common charge of illicit sexual
desires leveled against these women, saying that the "stupid, wrinkled,
dried-up hags" most usually accused are not likely to cohabit with
Satan or else.23 In the of Renaissance
anyone language psychology,
these women were melancholies or had turned melancholic
through
violence done to their Was it not true, Wier reasoned,
imagination.
that even people not before suspected of an excess of melancholy all
of a sudden had fallen into the delusion that they had lost their sex
organ through the witchcraft of some prostitute they had frequented?
to the reader's common sense, Wier that these men
Appealing opined
were surely deluded since they usually rediscovered their organ some
time later. And if strong men could be deluded, so he
argued by
an
then delusion was even more
interesting proportional argument,
likely in the cases of women, that is, of the reputed witches: "Et pour
tant si d'un homme estre abruee d'une
l'imagination vigoureux peut
22 Some editions of De praestigiis the dispute, as does the French edition of

append
see
1579 (repr. Paris: Delahaye & Lecrosnier, 1885). On Wier, J. J. Cobben, Jan Wier,
Devils, Witches, and Magic, trans. S. A. Prins (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1976).
23 et discours (Paris: & Lecrosnier,
Wier, Histoires, disputes Delahaye 1885), 11,448-49.
176 Schleiner
si vaine n'en aviendra il pas aux mi

persuasion, pourquoy davantage
serables sorci?res? Si ce qui semble moins est: ce qui est plus doit estre
aussi" (11, 449).
Building primarily on Wier, Reginald Scot argues similarly a few
years later in his Discoverie of Witchcraft, a work that found no favor
with James VI of Scotland, later James I of England: "Now, if the
fansie of a melancholike person may be occupied in causes which are
both false and impossible; why should an old witch be thought free
from such fantasies, who (as the learned philosopher and physicians
saie) upon the stoping of their monethlie melancholike flur or issue of
bloud, in their must needs increase as . . . the
age therein, aptest per
sons to meete with such melancholike
imaginations."24
As Montaigne does, in order to illustrate the power of the imagina
tion Wier an narrated someone en une
reports experience by epistre
imprim?e:
d'avoir oui iurer ? un
Fay souvenance, dit-il, gentilhomme qu'il estoit li?
et encorcell? tellement ne
avoir de femme:
qu'il pourroit plus campagnie
enquoy ie le voulus aider, taschant par divers argumens de luy arracher
ceste Or que ie ne rien, ie fis semblant d'estre
imagination. voyant gaignois
de son avis et le confermer, en monstrant le livre de Cleopatra de la
beaut? des femmes, et y lisois une recepte contenant que l'homme li?
seroit s'il faisoit un d'oeuf de corbeau mesl? de l'huile de
gu?ri onguent
navette, et s'en frotast tout le corps. cela, se confiant es
qu'il Luy oyant
du livre, fit l'exp?rience de l'onguent, et recouvra l'envie d'habiter
paroles
avec les femmes.25
Wier is just as explicit as Montaigne in his disclaimer that the oint

ment have on its own but reasons nevertheless:
might any power
"pource que l'imagination estoit pr?occup?e de fausse opinion, il fal

loit la un remede trouvast bon" (11, 450). The word
gu?rir par qu'elle
of this more than draws on medi
ing reasoning, clearly Montaigne's,
cal tradition in the treatment of certain kinds of "melancholy"
characterized as laesa In the the doctors become
imaginatio. therapy,
stage managers the in the inter
manipulating patient's surroundings
est of a cure. does not use the word "melan
Although Montaigne
in this context, a case he reports of a woman she has
choly" believing
accidentally swallowed a needle and the therapy used to cure her are
consonant with Renaissance on that illness?the
entirely thinking
doctor has her throw up and surreptitiously drops a bent needle into
her vomit (ed. Rat, p. 102).
While this traditional cure of the melancholic imagination through
24
Scot, p. 54.
25
Wier, 11, 450.
Witchcraft, Impotence, and Mann's Doktor Faustus 177
imagination is the context in which Wier, Scot, and even Montaigne

see much of what was reputed witchcraft (and particularly temporary
and selective Wier seems to be more aware than
impotence), anyone
else that the cure of impotence by pretended magic is of a different
order from the cures of melancholies who refused to eat or to urinate
and had to be tricked to those life-preserving activities by elaborate

schemes. For Montaigne the ambiguity of the cure by pretended
magic lay simply in the deception of his friend. For Wier this manip
ulation is questionable primarily because it uses lu
magic, although
cidly on the part of the therapist. Therefore, after reporting how that
special ointment healed the gentleman of his temporary impotence
and after referring to the principle quoted earlier that an element of
imagination has to be cured through the imagination, he adds: "Et
pourtant ie d?sire que les adversaires torchent de leurs yeux ceste
brou?e de superstitieuse cr?dulit? qui leur offusque le iugement"
(11, 250).
In Mann's story, not only does the young girl confess readily that
she used a magic ointment on her boyfriend to tie him to herself, but
the old woman who supplied it reveals a complicated network of ritual
witchcraft involving a pact with the devil, a with a monstrous
meeting
monk, elaborate for various kinds of ointments, and rewards
recipes
for proselytizing. Although Mann has her admit guilt only under
duress, some elements of her are so recondite and also self
story
incriminating that one is reminded of the difficulties encountered by

defenders of supposed witches: the unshakable belief of witches in
their own with other accused criminals?
powers and?compared
their disregard of the dire consequences that revelation of their beliefs
and practices had for them. Therefore their defenders' strategy made
eminent sense: they could well be classified with persons who think that
their bodies are made of fragile clay, or that they are cocks and go about
flapping their wings or that they, like Atlas, hold the entire world on
their shoulders, in short, with "melancholies."
delusionary
Reginald Scot
takes the argument to its logical conclusion: "But if
they may imagine, that they can transforme their owne bodies, which
neverthelesse remaineth in the former how much more credi
shape:
ble is it, that they may falselie suppose they can hurt and infeeble
other mens bodies . . ." The extreme of such
(p. 54). transformation,
the metamorphosis into beasts or the reverse (as in Hans Christian
Andersen's "Mermaid," beloved by Adrian Leverk?hn primarily for
the powerful description of the witch and her habitat), is too large a
subject for my context, but Scot's argument here is clear: if certain
relatively harmless beliefs are patently wrong, then the focal belief
178 Schleiner
that witches do harm strain our even more. Scot even

may credibility
considers the matter of duress in their examination (a topic that had
obvious relevance for Thomas Mann, whose narrator
contemporary
is supposed to be writing in the early forties in Nazi Germany) : "But
what is it that they will not imagine, and consequentlie confesse that
can doo; so earnestlie thereunto, so
they speciallie being persuaded
sorelie tormented, so craftilie examined, with such of favour,
promises
as whereby they imagine, that they shall ever after live in great credit
and welthe . . ."
(p. 54).
If most reputed witches were melancholies with vain imaginations,
to credit to their feats was and there
give extraordinary laughable,
fore the cases the opponents of the are
reported by "witchmongers"
with Of course the cases themselves are often the same
fraught irony.
on both sides, as for example the one already quoted from the Malleus
as of Mann's source, of the man of
maleficarum part young Mersburg
who could not woman but one and was
satisfy any always transported
back to her through the air. Reginald Scot comments on
miraculously
the tale: "And if this be not true, I am sure James Sprenger dooth lie"
(P. 77)
As I mentioned earlier, the authors of the Malleus re
maleficarum
port the belief that witches, with the help of the devil, create the illu
sion of removing male organs, which they then pretend to keep in a
bird's nest or box. To illustrate this illusion, Sprenger and Kramer
narrate and a case that its
very straightforwardly seriously bespeaks
origin as an anti-clerical joke in the tradition o? fabliaux or novellas of,

for the Cent nouvelles nouvelles:
example,
Retulit enim dum membrum et ma

quidam, quod perdidisset, quandam
leficam causa suae sanitatis accessisset. ut
Ilia,
recuperandae quandam
arborem ascenderet, infirmo iniunxit, et ut de nido in quo plurima erant
membra, si quid vellet, posset, induisit. Et cum ille magnum
accipere
quoddam attentasset, non, ait mal?fica, illud et, quia
accipere accipias:
uni ex attineret subiunxit.26
plebanis
As Scot retells this story and argument from the Hammer, he inserts
the ironic remark: "for all must be true that is written
parenthetic
witches" (Discoverie, p. 78).
against
Wier and Scot considerable attention to the remedies
give against
impotence by witchcraft, savoring all the details to poke fun at their
26Malleus, Pars II, Quaestio i, Ch. 7 (1669 ed.), p. 130. Summers translates (p. 121):
"For a certain man tells that, when he had lost his member, he approached a known
witch to ask her to restore it to him. She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree,
and that he might take which he liked out of a nest in which there were several mem
bers. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: You must not take that one;
because it belonged to the
adding, parish priest."
the Wier introduces one of the remedies

opponents, "witchmongers."
by facetiously pledging the reader to secrecy: "Au demeurant, i'en

ici secrettement au lecteur, me
seigneray pourveu qu'il promette
le tenir secret, une fort ridicule, mais de
gu?rison pratiqu?e trop
votieusement, par une femme nomm?e Catherine Lo?, de laquelle ie
les enfans."27 This a waxen of a male
conoy lady shaped image organ
and hung it up in front of the altar of her church, so that (as Reginald
Scot in the same her husband's "bewitched mem
says reporting case)
ber" might be sanctified through the holiness of the mass (Discoverie,
p. 83). To such farcical remedies as urinating through a wedding ring
and spitting into your own bosom, which like the previous story make
fun of magical and "Popish" sensibilities, Scot adds a local remedy:
"The eating of haggister or pie helpeth one bewitched in that mem
ber" (p. 82). Unfortunately?or perhaps fortunately?I have been
unable to find the following remedy which Scot thought unprintable:
"Sir Th. Moore hath such a cure in this matter, as I am ashamed to
write in Latine or English: for in filthie bawderie it passeth all the tales
that ever I heard" (p. 82).
Scot's list is long and varied: like Wier he thought no doubt that "ces
choses sont si absurdes ne m?ritent d'estre r?fut?es au
qu'elles plus
But one wonders whether Scot's to readers
long."28 appeals skeptical
not sometimes have missed their mark. "If read the execu
may you
tions doone witches, either in times in other countries, or
upon past
latelie in this land; you shall see such impossibilities confessed, as
none, having his right wits, will believe. Among other like false con
fessions, we read that there was a witch confessed at the time of hir
death or that she had raised all the ... in the

execution, tempests
winter 1565" (p. 55). Scot ismore uncompromising than Wier in not
admitting the existence of any witchcraft. His case may be called
tragic in the Hegelian sense: with his convictions he was too far ahead
of his time. Copies of his books were destroyed early in the reign of a
king who believed precisely that witches could raise winds and change
their direction.
MANN'S "REVOLTING STORY" RECONSIDERED
After thus the spectrum of Renaissance opinion on the

sketching
of witchcraft, and we return to
subject impotence, possession, may
Thomas Mann's of near Constance (i.e., modern
story Mersburg
27Wier, i, 184.
28
Wier, 1, 445.
18o Schleiner
Meersburg). Mann very appropriately and cleverly places it "gegen

Ende des f?nfzehnten Jahrhunderts,"29 the time of the Papal Bull of
Innocent VIII, Summis Desiderantes Affectibus (1484), which, as W. H.
Trethowan puts it, "set the juggernaut of the Inquisition rolling" and
from which the Malleus derives its impetus.30 If we remember what
seems to be a substantial of the case's novelistic core as
part reported
by the authors of the Malleus and by Scot?that is, the story of the
man able to with one woman, a witch, who mirac
young only perform
ulously foils his escape attempts and has him carried back even
the air?Mann's story is in the richness of its second
through striking
ary themes. Young Heinz is very happy with his beautiful B?rbel, un
til on a trip to Constance he is dared by his companions to prove his
manhood with some loose woman. When he fails (for the first time in
his life), the woman surmises that he must be "des Teufels M?rtyrer," a
that Lowe-Porter translates somewhat as
phrase loosely "possessed."31
As soon as Heinz gets back to Mersburg he makes a date with his
B?rbel and is tremendously relieved to restore his "manly honor."
The narrator comments that he should have been well content at this
point: why should he have cared about anyone else but his lovely B?r
bel? "Aber eine Unruhe war seit jenem Fehlschlag in seiner Seele
und es bohrte in ihm, da? er sich auf die Probe stelle
zur?ckgeblieben,
und einmal, wenn auch dann niemals wieder, der Herzallerliebsten
ein Schnippchen (p. 108). When an opportunity presents it
schl?ge"
self for such a test (an innkeeper's wife, taken with his impressive
follows him down to the wine cellar and offers herself to
physique,
him) he fails again. Here Mann is developing elements from another
case from the Malleus which we have considered: the story of the man
who had by witchcraft lost his member when he was about to drop his
friend, had then met another woman, "et ita esse in corpore de
girl
monstraban" The of action, cellarium or Gew?lbe, the
place suggested
"Keller des Weinwirts" to Mann, and the demonstration of the absence
of the sex becomes?in line with the other source case?a mat
organ
ter of impotence revealed in attempted sexual play.
Both in the Malleus and in Mann's story it is this woman who con
firms in the unsuccessful man the notion that he is bewitched. From
this instant onward Heinz is deeply traumatized and bewildered
29Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag,

1971), p. 107. All my references are to this edition.
30W. H. "The Demonology of Impotence," British Journal
Trethowan, of Psychiatry,
109(1963), 341.
31 trans. Helen T. Lowe-Porter York:
Mann, Doctor Faustus, (New Knopf, 1948),
p. 107.
about himself, "und nicht nur an sich; denn der Verdacht, der sich
schon nach dem ersten Mi?geschick in seine Seele geschlichen, besa?
ihn nun ganz, und da? er des Teufels M?rtyrer sei, litt f?r ihn keinen
Zweifel mehr" (p. 109). As a result of his suspicion B?rbel is interro
gated by the authorities and confesses that in her fear of possibly los
the young man before they were legally wedded she had obtained
ing
an ointment from an old woman which was to have the of
power tying
him to her. This sincere confession leads to the burning of both
witches, the young and the old, side side, in an open square.
by
Heinz der Verzauberte, stand entbl??ten Hauptes und

Kl?pfgei?el,
Gebete murmelnd in der Die vom Rauche erstickten
Zuschauermenge.
und heiser verfremdeten Schreie seiner Geliebten erschienen ihm als die
Stimme des D?mons, der kr?chzend aus ihr fuhr. Von Stund
widerwillig
an war die ihm angetane schn?de behoben, denn nicht
Beschr?nkung
sobald war seine Liebe verkohlt, als ihm die s?ndlich entwendete freie
?ber seine M?nnlichkeit war. 110)
Verf?gung zur?ckgegeben (p.
These last few sentences of the tale" Zeit

"revolting proper?before
blom, the novel's narrator, makes his comments on it?il
indignant
lustrate well the curious narrative and emotional that
perspective
Mann for it and which we can now circumscribe after our
adopted
review of the Renaissance panorama of beliefs on the subject of impo
tence and witchcraft.
It might be thought that the story in some way imitates the perspec
tive of the Malleus maleficarum, for it can in a sense be called a "ham
mer" witches. even Heinz's last name,
against Perhaps Kl?pfgei?el
("knocking scourge") to indicate that he is a "mallet" in the

is chosen
sense of the Malleus maleficarum. Such use of a speaking name would
with Mann's choice of names for the modern characters in the
agree
novel: Zeitblom, Schleppfu?, Leverk?hn, Breisacher are all in some
of the character are chosen to denote, the most
way expressive they
recondite example of this kind being the weak but violence-loving
haut bourgeois Institoris, whose name is identical with the inquisitor
= can no
and co-author of the Malleus, Kramer ( Institor).32 There be
doubt that Mann not only derived the tale's novelistic core from that
32The link Kramer-Institoris was out by Hans Mayer; see Gunilla

pointed Bergsten,
Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus: Untersuchungen zu den Quellen und zur Struktur des Romans,
Studia Litterarum 3 (Stockholm: Svenska Bokf?rlaget, 1963), p. 42 (n. 1).
Upsaliensia,
The names of Breisacher and Zeitblom at the same time belong to a group of names
that Mann derived from names in Luther's time. See also Hans-Joachim Schoeps,
zu einer Quelle des Romans Doktor Faustus," Zeitschrift f?r Religions- und
"Bemerkungen
22 (1970), 345; and Lieselotte Voss, Die Entstehung von Thomas Manns
Geistesgeschichte,
Roman ''Doktor Faustus" (T?bingen: Niemeyer, 1975), p. 141.
182 Schleiner
notorious work (which is in fact later referred to33), but that he read
the relevant sections and
carefully imaginatively.
For one thing, the authors of the Malleus, and Mann following
them, refer several times to Tobit 6:17, the inquisitors' favorite pas
sages linking lust and the devil. Each of their references shortens and
paraphrases the verse differently, and naturally the modern German
translator of the Malleus chooses a slightly different version for each.34
In the discussion of Renaissance beliefs that leads to the telling of the
story, the theologian Schleppfu? is reported to make the point that
the sphere of sex is exceptionally vulnerable not only to sin but also to
magic, supporting his view with the angel's words to Tobias. In fact,
Schleppfu? is using the exact words of the first paraphrase just men
tioned, as in Schmidt's translation, Hexenhammer: "?ber
they appear
die, welche der Lust ergeben sind, gewinnt der D?mon Gewalt"
(p. 106).
While borrowings need not determine emotional perspective and
attitude, elements of the to some
passage appear designed suggest
thing like the historical perspective of the "worthy authors of the Mal
leus" (as the devil later calls Sprenger and Kramer in Adrian's halluci
nation, p. 234): The ceremonies by which the old crone, Barbel's
supposed cohort, had sealed her pact with the devil are "haarstr?u
bend" (p. 110), and thus "die Notwendigkeit, ihre Seele vor ewigem
verderben zu retten, sie durch Darangabe des Leibes den Klauen des
Teufels zu entrei?en, lag auf der Hand" (p. 110). It defies my her
meneutic abilities to separate the Malleus perspective from the views
of Privatdozent Schleppfu?, which are highly ambiguous and elusive:
"Niemals wurde klar," narrator Zeitblom remembers, "ob es
ganz
eigentlich Schleppfu?ens eigene Lehrmeinungen waren, die er uns

vortrug, oder ob es ihm nur darum ging, uns mit der der
Psychologie
klassischen des Glaubens vertraut zu machen"
Jahrhunderte (p. 105).
As for the story of Heinz and B?rbel, we can safely assume that his
view is close to that informing the Malleus, for we know from Zeitblom's
introductory remarks before the tale that Schleppfu? had a definite
view of the "bewitched" Heinz: his inhibition, that is, his impotence,
had come upon him "ganz ohne eigenes Verschulden, durch weibliche
33P.
234. In his account of the genesis of the novel Mann mentions twice that he read
the Malleus in 1943. He also records that he completed the "Hexennovelle" and Chap
ter 13 by March 1944. See Thomas Mann, Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus: Roman eines
Romans in Mann, Gesammelte Werke (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, i960), xi, p. 161 and p.
192. On Mann's excerpts from the Malleus, see Voss, pp. 141-50.
34See for example Malleus maleficarum (Lyons, 1669), I, 56; I, 129; I, 130, and cf.
Hexenhammer, trans. J. W. R. Schmidt, 2nd. ed. (Berlin: Barsdorf, 1920), I, 130; II, 83;
ii, 85.
Hexerei" (p. 107). At the end of the chapter Zeitblom characterizes

the entire as bedenklich as Lowe
theologian's impact ("questionable,"
Porter translates, but also, since the narrator insists on the word's ap
propriateness, "requiring thought").

At the risk of over-reading the little story, I suggest that beyond the
Malleus another voice can be detected which is not Schleppfu?'s,
that of Zeitblom. In the second sentence, the relation
namely story's
ship between Heinz and B?rbel is called "innige Wechselneigung," a

defining phrase that is a touch more aloof than "Liebe." Liebe and
Geliebte are not used until the final two sentences of the story, when
Heinz hears the "shrieks of his beloved" as the voice of the demon,
and when he his manhood "sobald . . . seine Liebe verkohlt."
regains
Similarly, B?rbel is introduced objectively as "Tochter eines Gl?ck
ners," but from the moment she falls into the hands of the inquisition
she is referred to the more or even
only by engaging compassionate
term "Gl?cknerskind." Perhaps one might see the German diction as
reflecting those "leicht ironisch gef?rbten Wendungen" that Schlepp
fu? is reported to have used in his lectures (p. 101), an irony that
would then border on the morbid and sadistic, befitting the Mephisto
phelean role Schleppfu? ultimately plays in the novel. Similarly, the
absurd "asbestos armor" that is to protect the old witch from the
"flames of hell" could be the result of Schleppfu?'s ironical wit.
But it could be a touch added by the skeptical Zeitblom. There are
elements over which a cover-all of irony on the part of Schleppfu?
cannot so easily be stretched, elements which suggest that the diction
may be informed by a different sensibility. The somewhat archaic ad
jective schn?de in schn?de Beschr?nkung, of which Heinz is cured by
Barbel's death, indicates that his inhibition is not vile but only pre
sumed to be so. In addition, the evaluation that the old witch's cere
monies were is the statement,

"hair-raising" immediately preceded by
to the modern reader, that she admitted "nur st?ckweise,
revealing
unter wiederholtem Druck" that these ceremonies had been per
formed. A little later we learn that "zum Ungl?ck des Gl?ckner
kindes" (p. 110), the old woman divulged even more details of her
pact with the devil. Why "zum Ungl?ck," one wonders, if the perspec
tive were that of the Malleus and of Schleppfu?? Just before this
Schleppfu? has claimed that the Inquisition was animated by the most
touching humanity. Indeed, in the very first witchcraft case he had
related, he said that the witch in question had been lucky ("Sie hatte
aber Stern gehabt"?p. 102) to fall into the hands of the Inquisition,
since it brought her to a penitent confession.
The conclusion, which our brief sketch of an intellectual panorama
184 Schleiner
allows us to conceive more fully, is that the emotional attitude inform

ing the tale is to some degree Zeitblom's. Indeed Mann reveals that
Zeitblom?and not Schleppfu??is narrating the tale in its formula
tion here, for he has him say before the story: "Zur Erinnerung an die
mit Adrian gemeinsam betriebenen Studien will ich die Geschichte,
bei der Privatdozent Schleppfu? sehr geistvoll verweilte, in K?rze
hier einschalten" (p. 107). Zeitblom's summary of discussions of the
tale with other students shows that he himself was more indignant
than else at Heinz's behavior in the "Was mu?te er das
anyone story:
Ding mit
anderen Frauen ?ben, da er die eine hatte, die er liebte, so
sehr offenbar, da? es ihn gegen andere kalt und 'unverm?gend'
machte? Was hie? hier 'Unverm?gen', wenn er bei der einen das Ver
m?gen der Liebe besa??" (p. 110).
The theme of what we may call "happiness wasted" is quite promi
nent among those I have discussed as the of the
anti-witchmongers
Renaissance. Wier tells the story of a nobleman who, while bathing at
woman and marries her. He lives
night, pulls ashore a young happily
with her until one of his companions accuses her of being a
phantom.
Deeply upset, the husband draws his sword and threatens to kill their
child unless she confesses her origin. She replies before disappearing:
"Malheur sur m'avoir contrainte de
toy, mis?rable, qui pour parler,
fais d'une femme t'est utile. l'eusse touiours demeur? avec
perte qui
et ton . . ."35
toy pour profit
The similarity of theme or subtheme in these stories is perhaps
minor. But the similarity between the Mann story on the one hand
and the on the other is not minor
"anti-witchmongers"' presentation
or accidental but is informed by similar attitudes. Reginald Scot's
ironic remark, mentioned earlier, that "all must be true
parenthetical
that is written witches" is to Zeitblom's word "haar
against equivalent
str?ubend" for information obtained by torture or his epithet "schn?de"
for Heinz's inhibition. Scot (orWier) relates to the Malleus authors as
Zeitblom does to Schleppfu?: the former retell someone else's story,
transmuting it ironically with their enlightened attitude.
While this point is of some significance, itmay inordinately simplify
the complexity of the novel. For not only is the Malleus specifically
referred to in Mann's novel, but Zeitblom's name, 'blossom of his
time,' chosen by the novelist to have meaning:

is no doubt the classics
and history teacher, who in the forties chooses early retirement in the
face of restrictions on his freedom to teach, is lucid in rejecting the
demonic. Mann's intent was, as he later it, to use an undemonic
put
medium, "das D?monische durch ein und?monisches Mittel zu
gehen
35
Wier, Bk. 3, Ch. 30 (vol. 1, 443).
lassen."36 But emotionally Zeitblom, the former critical humanist, will

come to acknowledge the possible conjunction of the darkest evil
forces with extraordinary genius.
The Catholic Mersburg of Heinz and B?rbel represents in cameo the
world of Zeitblom and Leverk?hn, who have grown up in a district
governed by a Lutheran town called Merseburg. Adrian Leverk?hn,
the Faustian hero who draws significant inspiration from D?rer's am
"Melencolia I" and experiences a vision of the
biguous engraving
devil, corresponds in an important sense to Heinz in his role as des
Teuf eh M?rtyrer (as Heinz is called twice). But not rendering this ex
pression literally, the English translation unfortunately obscures this
important link and possibly demotes the witch story to the subordi
nate rank of something merely "revolting." Heinz sets his peace of
mind (regained by wholehearted acceptance of the hypothesis of de
monic intervention) above his happiness with B?rbel. Under different
circumstances, Adrian also makes something like the traditional "pact"
with the devil: he trades his entire physical and emotional well-being
for his achievement as a
composer.
The explicit the two realms of experience
link between is the Me
phistophelean Schleppfu?. Later when Adrian in his crucial letter to
Zeitblom describes a procurer whom he followed into the house of
prostitution, Adrian himself links the man with both the devil and
he is "so ein Kerl ... im teuflisch redend
Schleppfu?: Wetterumhang,
wie alle Welt dahier mit gestr?ubtem Unterkiefer" (p. 141). The pas
sage must seem obscure to some readers, if its rendering in the official
translation is good evidence: the reference to diabolical speech is
dropped altogether, and the rest is given as "the same vile lingo as
everybody else here" (Lowe-Porter, p. 141). But if the curious notion
that "everybody else here" (in Leipzig) is speaking diabolically repre
sents Mann's idea that such dialectal speech preserves some features
of Luther's language, the reference to the pimp's speech and role as
diabolic becomes central to any reading of the novel. Retrospectively
it clarifies the role of Schleppfu?, who apart from his name has so far
been linked with the devil only once, and that time subtly, through
Zeitblom's application to him of words addressed to Goethe's Mephis
topheles;37 here, the churlish, devilish talking procurer is twice con
nected with Schleppfu?: "[Er] sah meiner nach entfernt un
Meinung
36 des Doktor Faustus in Gesammelte Werke, xi, 164.
Mann, Die Entstehung
37
Zeitblom says (p. 105) : "Wir schrieben das in unsere Wachstuchhefte, damit wir es
In Faust I (11. 1966?67), a student
mehr oder weniger getrost nach Hause tr?gen." says
to the disguised Mephisto: "Denn was man schwarz und wei? besitzt, / Kann man ge
trost nach Hause tragen." (Goethe, Werke, ed. E. Trunz [Hamburg: Wegner, 1949], m,
64). Schleppfu?'s name ("clubfoot") evokes the stock image of the devil.
186 Schleiner
serem Schleppfu? ?hnlich von wegen des B?rtchens, sah ihm sogar
recht ?hnlich, wenn ich's bedenk, oder ist ihm seitdem in meiner Erin
nerung ?hnlicher geworden" (pp. 141-42). Furthermore, Adrian calls
this guide, who was to take him to a restaurant but instead leads him
to the whore house, a "Gose-Schleppfu?" (a small-beer-Schleppfu?).
As in the Malleus, a focal area of the demonic for Mann is the realm
of sex, although it would be na?ve to impute Schleppfu?'s statements
about sex to the author. Readers intrigued with the subtlety of the
male relationships portrayed in this novel (e.g., Zeitblom-Leverk?hn,
Leverk?hn-Schwerdtfeger) may be tempted to view Mann's depiction
of female witchcraft as a of his and the characters'
corollary major
homo-eroticism and attendant fear of women; such readers
might
point also to fearsome visions of females in other novels; in the
Zauberberg Hans Castorp has a vision of two grisly, cannibalistic hags,
with pendulous "Hexenbr?sten und fingerlangen Zitzen," and Peeper
korn views life as a derisive, woman chal
spread-legged constantly
lenging male potency.38 As I have tried to show, however, a discrimi
nating reader will recognize that the story of the "witch" B?rbel is told
through the medium of a skeptic. If this point is insufficiently con
vincing, there is still Zeitblom's outrage at her victimization. Nor
should we forget that even the "witch" Esmeralda, who will in fact
infect Adrian with syphilis, is not all evil, but has touches of a stock
figure, the good-hearted prostitute: before she agrees to sleep with
Adrian, she warns him of her infection. (Possibly Mann derived this
element from a story of a syphilitic prostitute in Giraldi Cinthio's fa
mous Hecatommithi, the collection of novellas that supplied Shake
speare with the plots of Othello and Measure for Measure.)39
Unlike the Malleus, Mann's novel sex as the source of the
presents
of sym
highest creativity, genius?a self-contradictory relationship
bolized by the venereal spirochete that makes and mars the composer
Leverk?hn. The musical figure comprised of the notes h e a e es is
38
Zauberberg (Stockholm: Berman-Fischer, 1959), p. 683 and p. 784. If book reviews
are an index, interest in the topic of Mann's homo-eroticism may receive some fuel
from the recent publication of his Tageb?cher 1940-43, ed. Peter de Mendelsohn
(Frankfurt: Fischer, 1982), although the entire volume contains not half a dozen refer
ences that can be so; see entries for May 8, 1941, June 20, 1942, and July 9,
interpreted
1943. See also Hanjo Kesting's review with the misleadingly sensational title "Dop
pelleben eines Einzelg?ngers," Die Zeit (Dec. 10, 1982), 395-96.
39Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio, Hecatommithi (Venice, 1593), Introduction, no
vella x. My suggestion would not conflict with the accepted view that Mann was model
ing Adrian's experience
on Nietzsche's. In Nietzsche und die Frauen (Leipzig, 1931; a
book used by Mann, as Bergsten has demonstrated), H. W. Brann had conjectured that
Nietzsche contracted his infections deliberately "aus inneren S?hnegr?nden." See
Bergsten, Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus, p. 75.
ingeniously derived from the prostitute's appellation Hetaera Esme

ralda (a clever soggetto cavato unfortunately lost when written in the
note letters b e a e e-flat). The figure dominates Leverk?hn's
English
music just as the infection by the "Milchhexe" (as Esmeralda is called
[p. 497] with reference to the notion of the lac magicum) dominates his
body and mind. Part of the bargain, Leverk?hn says, is that he might
"kein menschlich Wesen lieben" (p. 500), that is, that the witch strike
him with some form of impotence. He refers to this denial of erotic
and emotional satisfaction when he calls himself des Teufeb M?nch
(p. 500). Although the term martyr is not applied to him, Leverk?hn
is even more fully so than Heinz, who only prefigures him in this role,
"the Devil's martyr."40
40Most of the research for this essay was done with support from the Herzog-August
Bibliothek, Wolfenb?ttel. Everett Carter, Wayne Shumaker, Hans Eichner, and Max
Baeumer read early versions of it and made valuable suggestions.

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The Nexus of Witchcraft and Male Impotence in Renaissance Thought and Its Reflection in

Mann's "Doktor Faustus"

THE NEXUS OF WITCHCRAFT AND MALE IMPOTENCE IN

Winfried Schleiner, University of California, Davis

and mind as it was often articulated by the medical and philosophical

THE MALLEUS MALEFICARUM AND IMPOTENCE

The central importance of male impotence in the entire discussion of

lJ. Sprenger and H. Kramer, Malleus maleficarum, Pt. 1, opening of question 8

Again drawing first on Petrus of Palude, they also seek to explain

Hostiensis' distinction does not cover a condition discussed at length

reported (some of them in certain details quite similar to Mann's

seems to have knit into one continuous tale: "In Ra

Et residens mulieri cui alteri causam tristitiae

Fuit et in oppido Constantiensis dioecesis iuvenis in

To underline the seriousness of a witch's interference, Sprenger

TAMING THE IMAGINATION: MONTAIGNE

Close as the conjunction of relative impotence and witchcraft may

traordinaires, vienne de la puissance de

not for his to a miracle,

The worked, or as it, the characters

the second demonstrates not that the of

"magic" lies in the believer but that it lends itself to manipulation by

IMAGINATION AND MELANCHOLY

22 Some editions of De praestigiis the dispute, as does the French edition of

si vaine n'en aviendra il pas aux mi

Wier is just as explicit as Montaigne in his disclaimer that the oint

"pource que l'imagination estoit pr?occup?e de fausse opinion, il fal

imagination is the context in which Wier, Scot, and even Montaigne

and had to be tricked to those life-preserving activities by elaborate

incriminating that one is reminded of the difficulties encountered by

that witches do harm strain our even more. Scot even

origin as an anti-clerical joke in the tradition o? fabliaux or novellas of,

Retulit enim dum membrum et ma

the Wier introduces one of the remedies

by facetiously pledging the reader to secrecy: "Au demeurant, i'en

death or that she had raised all the ... in the

MANN'S "REVOLTING STORY" RECONSIDERED

After thus the spectrum of Renaissance opinion on the

Meersburg). Mann very appropriately and cleverly places it "gegen

29Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag,

Heinz der Verzauberte, stand entbl??ten Hauptes und

These last few sentences of the tale" Zeit

("knocking scourge") to indicate that he is a "mallet" in the

32The link Kramer-Institoris was out by Hans Mayer; see Gunilla

eigentlich Schleppfu?ens eigene Lehrmeinungen waren, die er uns

Hexerei" (p. 107). At the end of the chapter Zeitblom characterizes

propriateness, "requiring thought").

ship between Heinz and B?rbel is called "innige Wechselneigung," a

monies were is the statement,

allows us to conceive more fully, is that the emotional attitude inform

time,' chosen by the novelist to have meaning:

lassen."36 But emotionally Zeitblom, the former critical humanist, will

ingeniously derived from the prostitute's appellation Hetaera Esme

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