Deal With The Devil - Theophilus of Adana, Servant of Two Masters

Theophilus of Adana, Servant of Two Masters

The predecessor of Faustus in Christian mythology is Theophilus ("Friend of God" or "Beloved of god") the unhappy and despairing cleric, disappointed in his worldly career by his bishop, who sells his soul to the Devil but is redeemed by the Virgin Mary. His story appears in a Greek version of the sixth century written by a "Eutychianus" who claims to have been a member of the household in question.

A ninth-century Miraculum Sancte Marie de Theophilo penitente inserts a Jew as intermediary with diabolus, his "patron", providing the prototype of a closely linked series in the Latin literature of the West.

In the tenth century, the poet nun Hroswitha of Gandersheim adapted the text of Paulus Diaconus for a narrative poem that elaborates Theophilus' essential goodness and internalizes the forces of Good and Evil, in which the Jew is magus, a necromancer. As in her model, Theophilus receives back his contract from the Virgin, displays it to the congregation, and soon dies.

A long poem on the subject by Gautier de Coincy (1177/8–1236), entitled Comment Theophilus vint a pénitence provided material for a thirteenth-century play by Rutebeuf, Le Miracle de Théophile, where Theophilus is the central pivot in a frieze of five characters, the Virgin and the Bishop flanking him on the side of Good, the Jew and the Devil on the side of Evil.