Merlin, of Tannhaeuser, of
Robert the Devil, and of that Theophilus who was converted by flowers
sent him from Paradise by the Virgin-Martyr St. Dorothea. Of another
Theophilus, an eastern monk of perhaps the sixth century, we are told
that, like Faust, he made a written compact with the devil, but
repented and was saved by the Virgin Mary, who snatched the fatal
document from the devil's claws and gave it back to the penitent.

But there is one early example of the wizard-legend where the magician
is saved from his pact with Satan not so much by the counter-charms of
the Church as by the purity and steadfastness of Christian maidenhood,
and for this reason I think the poet Shelley is right in regarding this
legend as 'the true germ of Goethe's _Faust_.' It is the story of
Cyprian and Justina, who were among the many victims of the persecution
of the Christians by Diocletian, about 300 A.D. Cyprian was a sorcerer
of Antioch whose diabolical arts failed to overcome the sanctity of
Justina. He confessed himself conquered and withdrew into the desert as
a Christian hermit. The story has been dramatized by the Spanish poet
Calderon in his _Magico Prodigioso_, a part of which has been finely
translated by Shelley. The beautiful picture of St. Justina by Moretto,
where Cyprian is kneeling before her and a white unicorn, the symbol of
chastity, is crouching in the foreground, is well known.

With the Reformation another spirit arose and legends took a different
form. In the Protestant world the orthodox magic of the Roman Church
lost its saving power and was regarded as no less diabolic than all
other black art. He was irretrievably lost who had once given over his
soul to magic and the devil (and the devil was at this time, as we know,
a very real personage--real enough to have an inkpot hurled at his head
by Luther). The revival at the Renaissance of speculation and research,
combined as it was with all kinds of fantastic hopes of discovering
prime matter, the 'Philosopher's stone,' and elixirs of life, bred in
the popular superstition a mysterious awe and attached to almost all
scientific investigation the epithet 'black,' or diabolic, as opposed to
the 'white art' of holding communion with good spirits. Alchemy and
astrology (words meaning merely what we call chemistry and astronomy)
became words of hellish import, and he who practised these arts was in
league with Satan. Thus were regarded such men as Lully, Roger Bacon,