_par excellence_. Into the Faust-book there drifted endless necromantic
lore from the Middle Ages and earlier times. It seems to have had some
connection with Jewish legends of magicians who invoked the _Satanim_,
or lowest grade of elemental spirits not unlike the "elementals" of
modern popular spiritualism. It was the story of a Christian selling his
soul to the powers of darkness, and it had behind it one of the poems of
Hrosvitha of Gandersheim which relates a similar story of an archdeacon
of Cilicia of the sixth century, and also the popular tradition of Pope
Sylvester the Second, who was suspected of having made the same bargain.
Yet, as Lebahn says, "The Faust-legend in its complete form was the
creation of orthodox Protestantism. Faust is the foil to Luther, who
worsted the Devil with his ink-bottle when he sought to interrupt the
sacred work of rendering the Bible into the vulgar tongue." This legend,
by the way, is a peculiarly happy one, for Luther not only aimed his
ink-bottle at the Devil, but most literally and effectively hit him with
it, when he wrote those books that changed the face of religious Europe.

The _Historie_ had an immense and immediate popularity, and until well
into the nineteenth century it was reproduced and sold throughout
Europe. As we read it, we cannot but wonder what manner of man it really
was who attracted to himself such age-long hatred and fear, and held the
interest of the centuries. In many respects, doubtless, his story was
like that of Paracelsus, in whom the world has recognised the struggle
of much good with almost inevitable evil, and who, if he had been born
in another generation, might have figured as a commanding spiritual or
scientific authority.

Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury in 1564, two months before
Shakespeare. He was the son of a shoemaker, and was the pupil of Kett, a
fellow and tutor of Corpus Christi College. This tutor was probably