The literary ancestor of Herr Doktor Faust is the character of Theophilus, sometimes a late antique bishop, sometimes an unspecified probable cleric. The legend of Theophilus was first imported into France from the Greek East, and it became one of the most popular miracle stories of the later Middle Ages. More importantly, it gave us one of the coolest epithets in an era filled with great ones: the Blessed Virgin Mary, Empress of Hell.

With versions of the story in words and art, prose and poetry, book and performance, illumination and stained glass, and in your choice of local languages, many of the story's trappings could vary. However, the heart of the story would always be Theophilus' bargain with the devil.

Theophilus is either a former bishop who has lost his office due to Church politics, or a cleric with too much of an interest in worldly wealth/property. Either by himself or with the aid of a sorcerer (typically a Jewish or Muslim man), he recites a necromantic incantation to summon a demon/the devil. The devil demands a heavy price to restore Theophilus to his benefice or to supply him with unending wealth: the poor man's soul. But what's a soul when you can be a bishop? Theophilus agrees. In truly medieval fashion, he issues and seals a charter handing over his soul to the devil--charters being legal documents often used by the Church (and obviously secular people as well) to acquire and discharge property. By the 13th century, the language of selling one's soul will also start to appear in some versions.

If you want to be boring and didactic, like Jacques de Voragine in the Legenda aurea, Theophilus quickly comes to his senses and wants to get out of the deal. If you want to have a little more dramatic or artistic fun before you get didactic, like many of the image cycles, Theophilus will get to enjoy his power and/or wealth for a few scenes first, in iconography that adopts the gestures and rituals of homage and fealty. One way or another, however, he'll figure out that in his tristitia (spiritual despair) or plain ol' greed he made a mistake.

But unlike poor Protestant Faust, Theophilus has a chance at redemption. He prays to Mary in her role as mediatrix, ultimate advocate for the salvation of humans in front of her son. Mary takes mercy on him (in proper Christian theology, Mary intercedes with Christ who takes the mercy) and Theophilus will be saved...but there is that pesky legal matter of the charter and his soul.

So Mary, the Queen of Heaven, descends into hell, kicks the devil's ass, and steals back the charter.

In the medieval (and early modern Catholic!) Theophilus legend and the early modern/Renaissance Faust story, the different concerns of the two eras and their elite storytellers are quite visible. On one hand, there's a Church gearing up to evangelize its own laity towards the power of Mary as mediatrix and their own responsibility to pray for forgiveness and do penance in search of salvation. On the other, the themes of forbidden knowledge and the goods of the world versus the goods of heaven versus the goods humanity is not supposed to obtain come to the fore in popular culture (that is, beyond the sliver of medieval university scholars dabblings in the ars notoria). The goals are parallel; the means of achieving them is the same; the other party to the deal is the same; most importantly, the price is the same.

But only the medieval version turns Mary, whose primary qualities in Christian tradition are mercy and mildness, into a sword-wielding destroyer of demons.

I rest my case: the Middle Ages are the best ages.