ABSTRACT
Contemporary evidence of the activities of the historical Faust ceases about the year 1540. The development of the Faust legend begins in all probability not long after that date. Robert Petsch 1 believes that the stories which gradually accumulated around Faust’s name were common property in university circles as early as the middle of the century and that a Latin collection of Faust legends existed before 1570, at least in manuscript form. Be that as it may, the earliest tangible evidence of an attempt to gather together the popular tales is in a manuscript notebook written about 1570 by one Christoph Rosshirt, 2 a teacher at the Sebaldus school in Nuremberg.
