In possession of such a power, Faustus soon became tired of his lonely study. He craved the world for his theatre. His travels seem in reality to have been very extensive, while in the popular stories a magic mantle carried him over the whole globe. Conrad Gesner, the great physiologist, who speaks of him with some respect as a physician, comparing him with Theophrastus Paracelsus, reckons him among the _scholastici vagantes_, or _fahrende Schueler_, an order of men already considerably in the decline, and grown disreputable at that period. As early as the thirteenth century, we find the custom in Germany, of young clergymen who did not belong to any monkish order travelling through the land to get a living,--here by instructing in schools for a certain period,--there by temporarily serving in churches as choristers, sacristans, or vicars,--often, too, as clerks and copyists to lawyers or other private men. When they could no longer find a livelihood at one place, they went to another. Their offices became, in course of time, of the most varied and unsuitable order. They were generally received and treated with hospitality, and this may have been one reason why all kinds of adventurers were ready to join them. Their unstable mode of life easily explains their frequenting the society of other vagabonds, who traversed the country as jugglers, treasure-diggers, quacks, or sorcerers, and that their clerical dignity did not prevent their occasionally adopting these professions themselves. The Chronicle of Limburg, in speaking of the Diet of Frankfurt in 1397, says: "The number of princes, counts, noblemen, knights, and esquires, that met there, amounted to five thousand one hundred and eighty-two"; adding: "Besides these, there were here four hundred and fifty persons more, such as _fahrende Schueler_, wrestlers, musicians, jumpers, and trumpeters." The character of the clergy having sunk so low, the Church declared itself against the custom, and at several German councils theological students were expressly forbidden to lead this roving life. It required, however, considerable time for the ancient custom to become extinct, and we learn, among others, from Conrad Gesner, that it still existed at the time of the Reformation.