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 Würtemberg, as his birthplace. Manlius, in his work, "Collectanea Locorum Communium," (Basel, 1600,) speaks of him as of an acquaintance. He says that Faustus studied at Krakow, in Poland, where there was a regular professorship of Magic, as was the case at several universities. Others let him make his studies at Ingolstadt, and acquire there the honors of a Doctor of Medicine. Both these statements may be true, as also that he was for some time the companion and pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, the celebrated scholar, whose learning and mysterious researches after the philosopher's stone brought him, like many other wise men of the age, into suspicion of witchcraft. Agrippa had a pet dog, black, like the mystical companion of Dr. Faustus, and, in the eyes of a superstitious multitude, like him, the representative of the Evil One. Black dogs seem to have been everywhere considered as rather suspicious creatures. The Pope Sylvester II. had also a favorite black poodle, in whom the Devil was supposed to have taken up his abode. According to Wier, however, Agrippa's black dog was quite a harmless beast, and remarkable only for the childlike attachment which the great philosopher had for him. It may be worth remarking, that this writer, although he speaks of Faustus in his biography of Agrippa, makes no mention of his ever having been a friend or scholar of the latter.