THEOPHILIIS, one of the most important precursors of Dr. Faust, was, to the legend, coadjutor-bishop at Adana, in Cilicia. After the death of his bishop, being unanimously chosen successor, he declined the proffered honor, but was shortly after ward, at the instigation of slanderers, deposed from his former office by the new bishop. He now had recourse to a Jew magician, who took him to a midnight meeting of devils, whose chief ordered him to deny Christ and Mary, and to give a bond makine over his soul. The result was that next morning he was re-instated in his office and dignities by the bishop; and now, presuming on the support of his confederates, he began to assume a supercilious and domineering manner. But he was soon overtaken with remorse, and, through 40 days' fasting and prayers, prevailed on Mary to intercede with her son for him, and to get back the letter from the devil, which she laid upon the breast of the repentant sinner, as he lay asleep in the church. Theophilus then made a public con fession of his crime, told of the goodness of the virgin Mary, and died three days after. This legend, whose origin is traced back to an unknown Greek, of the name of Enty chianus, was brought, during the 10th c., through an equally unknown Neapolitan pri?,st, named Paulus, to the west, where it very quickly spread far and wide. Before the end of the century it was put into Latin verse by Roswitha, and still better, by the bishop of Rennes, who died in 1123 (printed in the Acta Sanetorum, Feb. 4, and in Hildeberti Turonensis et Marbodi Opera, published by Beaugendre, Par. 1708). Gauthier de Coinsy (died after 1286) turned it into a beautiful French poem (printed in M'itares de Rutebeuf, published by Jubinal, 2 vols.); and the Rhenish compiler of the Alte Passional admitted it among his legends of Mary (ffarienlegenden, published by Pfeiffer, Stuttg.
1846). A Dutch metrical version, in the 14th c., was published by Blommaert (Theo philus, Ghent, 1836). The first dramatic handling of the subject was in French by Rutebeuf, a distinguished troubadour of the 13th c. (GTuvres, published by Jubinal, 2 vols., Par. 1839); then repeatedly during the 14th and 15th c. in Low-German (Roman awl:4 and andere Gedichte in altplattdeutscher Sprache, published by Bruns, Berl. and Stettin, 1798; Theophilus, in Icelandic, Low-German, and other Tongues, by Dasent, Lond. 1845). The legend of Theophilus is also not seldom to be found inserted in large works, and frequent allusions to it occur in Latin, German, Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic, Swedish, French, and even Spanish literature. It has even been pictorially represented in French churches. With the 16th c. it seems to have disappeared. However much the various versions differ from one another in the minor circumstances, the essential traits remain throughout unchanged; that Theophilus made a compact with the devil in order to recover lost property; that he attained his object, but at the same time noth ing more (nothing whatever of magic art), and that Mary rescued the repentant sinner. Through this legend of Theophilus, the oldest known instance of a compact with the devil, there runs a lenient spirit (derived from paganism, and which the Roman Catholic church was able to sanction by interposing the virgin Mary), which distinguishes it markedly and essentially from the stern Protestant shape of the devil's compact in the Faust-book, which, with vigorous consistency, requires the consignment of the contract ing; party to hell.