Theophilus, a legendary coadjutor-bishop at Adana in Cilicia, who, when deposed from his office through slanders, gave his soul in bond to the devil, and consequently was reinstated the next morning. But he was soon overtaken with remorse, and through forty days' fasting and prayers prevailed on the Virgin to make intercession for him. She tore the bond from the devil, and laid it upon the breast of the repentant sinner as he lay asleep in the church. Theophilus then made a public confession of his crime and of the mercy of the Virgin, and died three days after. This forerunner of the Faust legend must have reached the West during the 10th century. It was treated by Roswitha, by Hildebert of Tours, and in a 14th-century Dutch metrical version (published by Blommaert, Ghent, 1836). The first dramatic handling of the subject was in French by
Rutebeuf (q.v.); then repeatedly during the 14th and 15th centuries in Low-German (Theophilus, in Icelandic, Low-German, and other Tongues, in Dasent, Lond. 1845). See A. Ebert, Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters, iii.