The Chancellor-Archbishop Character Analysis

A political realist and high-ranking Catholic official who hides his true motives under a mask of piety, the Chancellor-Archbishop tells the Emperor that evils afflict his realm. He is also the only counselor who openly challenges Mephistopheles’s proposal that the Emperor resuscitate his state by digging for hidden gold. He does this not to protect the empire, however, but to consolidate his own power by maintaining the integration of Church and State. Later, the Chancellor-Archbishop squeezes lands, taxes, and tithes from the Emperor in exchange for hushing up the fact that his victory over rebels came only because of an alliance with the devil himself.