ABSTRACT
A legendary character apparently named after a scholar based at the University of Heidelberg in the early sixteenth century. After the actual Faust's death, the rumour was spread that he had traded his soul to the Devil in exchange for "earthly knowledge"; his career thus became a parable in which science is represented as essentially satanic by virtue of its concentration on the empirical at the expense of the spiritual. The printed version of the legend appeared in 1587, in a pamphlet signed by Johann Spies, usually known as the Faustbuch.
