IV. THE FAUST LEGEND
BY PROFESSOR KUNO FRANCKE
THE FAUST legend is a conglomerate of anonymous popular traditions, largely of mediæval origin, which in the latter part of the sixteenth century came to be associated with an actual individual of the name of Faustus whose notorious career during the first four decades of the century, as a pseudoscientific mountebank, juggler, and magician, can be traced through various parts of Germany. The “Faust Book” of 1587, the earliest collection of these tales, is of prevailingly theological character. It represents Faust as a sinner and reprobate, and it holds up his compact with Mephistopheles and his subsequent damnation as an example of human recklessness and as a warning to the faithful to cling to the orthodox means of Christian salvation.