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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
The story of Theophilus is one of the oldest and most widespread Marian miracles in Christian literature. Theophilus is said to have been a sixth-century priest of Adana in Cilicia, removed from office by a new bishop. Eager to regain his position, Theophilus went to a Jew known for diabolical practices and through him made a written pact with the Devil, sealed with a ring. Theophilus received back his lost status but then began to repent and, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, finally won the document from the Devil. Three days later he died.
1 Ebertshaäuser, C.H., Haag, H., Kirchberger, J.H., and Sölle, D., Mary: Art, Culture and Religion Through the Ages, trans. Heinegg, P. (New York, 1997), 74–8.Google Scholar
2 ActaSS, Feb. I, 486-97; P.M. Palmer and R.P. More, The Sources of the Faust Tradition from Simon Magus to Lessing (New York, 1936), 58-77.
3 Dedeyan, C., Le Theme de Faust dans la litterature européenne, 6 vols (Paris, 1954-67)Google Scholar; J.W. Smeed, Faust in Literature (1975); A. Dabezies, Le Mythe de Faust (Paris, 1972); E.F. DiAmico, ‘The diabolical pact in literature: its transmission from legend to literary theme’ (University of Michigan, Ph.D. thesis, 1979).
4 Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria [hereafter CSM], ed. W. Mettman, 2 vols (repr., Madrid, 1986-8), no.3; Gonzalo Berceo, Milagros de Nuestra Senora [hereafter MNS], ed. A.G. Solalinde (Madrid, 1958), no.24. The most recent study of these works is D.A. Flory, Marian Representations in the Miracles Tales of Thirteenth-Century Spain and France (Washington, DC, 2000), although he does not discuss the Theophilus story.
5 The main vita is the Liber de conversione miranda D. Aegidius Lusitani by André de Resende (c. 1500-73): ActaSS, May III, 400-36. The edition used here is V. da C. Soares Pereira, ‘O Aegidius Scallabitanus de André de Resende: estudo introductório, edição crítica, traduçao e notas’ (University of the Minho [Braga], Ph.D. thesis, 1995) [hereafter Aegidius Scallabitanus]. The main evidence for Giles’s medieval cult is as follows: in 1294 Caterina Eanes stipulated in her will that a lamp was to be maintained at the altar of ‘blessed brother Giles’ in the Dominican house of Santarém: Lisbon, Archivos Nacionais da Torre do Tombo, S. Domingos de Santarém, antiga colecção especial, maco 1, doc. 15; according to a Dominican catalogue of saints, Giles was venerated by the order in the fifteenth century Laurentii Vignon Catalogi et Chronica, ed. G.G. Meersseman, Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica, 18 (1936), 2-4; an Italian manuscript of herbal remedies dated to 24 May 1463, attributed to ‘maestro Gilio diportogallo dellordine di Sancto Domenico’, questions whether miracles recorded at his tomb were performed ‘per arte divina’ or ‘per arte magicha’, since Giles was said to have been a ‘grande negromante’: Washington DC, National Library of Medicine, MS 22, fol. 16.
6 Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, Lapsus et conversio Theophili vicedomini: PL 137, cols 1101-10. Some later versions still set the story in Cilicia, e.g. Fulbert of Chartres, Sermones ad populum, sermo IV (PL 141, cols 320-1), but in others it remained in Sicily, e.g. Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea vulgo historia Lombardica dicta ad optimorum librorum fidem, ed. T. Graesse (Dresden, 1846), 595-6; The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. W. Granger Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1993), 2:157.
7 Marlowe, C., Doctor Faustus: A- and B-Texts (1604, 1616), eds Bevington, D. and Rasmussen, E. (Manchester, 1993)Google Scholar; J. W. von Goethe, Faust: Part One, trans. D. Luke (Oxford, 1987).
8 J. Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews (New Haven, CT, 194s); Bonfil, R., ‘The Devil and the Jews in the Christian consciousness of the Middle Ages’, in Almog, S., ed., Anti-Semitism Through the Ages (Oxford, 1988), 91–8.Google Scholar
9 See A. Bagby, ‘The Jews in the Cantigas of Alfonso X el sabio’, Speculum, 46 (1971), 670-88, and the contrasting arguments of V. Hatton and A Mackay, ‘Anti-semitism in the Cantigas de Santa Maria’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 60 (1983), 189-99.
10 Alfonso X’s version of the Theophilus legend links the eating of the apple in the Garden of Eden to Mary’s power: CSM, no.3, 11.9-14.
11 H. Graef, Mary: a History of Doctrine and Devotion, 2 vols in 1 (1985), 1:170-1.
12 Fulbert of Chartres, Sermones, col. 320B.
13 Graesse, Legenda aurea, 594; Ryan, Golden Legend, 154.
14 See Waxman, S., ‘Chapters on magic in Spanish literature’, Revue Hispanique, 38 (1916), 325–463 Google Scholar; DiAmico, ‘Diabolical pact in literature’, 106 n.32.
15 Dabezies, Mythe de Faust, 307-11.
16 For example, in the early thirteenth-century Les Miracles de Noslre Dame par Cautier de Coinci, ed. V.F. Koenig, 4 vols (Geneva, 1955-70), 1:50-176.
17 See Graef, Miry, 1:205-6.
18 Atkinson, C.W., The Oldest Vocation: Christian Motherhood in the Middle Ages (Ithaca NY, 1991), 101–43 Google Scholar; S.J. Boss, Empress and Handmaid: on Nature and Gender in the Cult of the Virgin Mary (London and New York, 2000), 26-72.
19 For ‘feudal’ language in CSM and MNS, see A. Mackay, ‘The Virgin’s vassals’, in D.W. Lomax and D. Mackenzie, eds, God and Man in Medieval Spain: Essays in Honour of J.R.L. Highfield (Warminster, 1989), 49-58.
20 ActaSS Sept VII, 180-243; Palmer and More, Sources of the Faust Tradition, 41-58.
21 Waxman, ‘Chapters on magic’, 385.
22 Alemparte, J. Ferreiro, ‘La escuela de nigromancia de Toledo’, Anuario de estudios medievales, 13 (1983), 205–68.Google Scholar
23 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, The History of the English Kings, ed. R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford, 1998-9), 1:278-95.
24 Baltazar de São João, ‘A vida do Bem-aventurado Gil de Santarem por Fr. Baltazar de S. João’, ed. A.A. Nascimento, Didaskalia, 11 (1981), 113-219, 150-4: a noble woman fell in love with Giles. When he spurned her advances she accused him of assaulting her. Only on her deathbed did she confess the truth.
25 Aegidius Scallabitanus, 239-41.
26 Ibid., 266.
27 Ibid., 237; de São João, ‘A vida’, 142-4.
28 MNS, no.24, v.746.
29 Examples in Thomas de Cantimpré, Bonum universale de apibus (Douai, 1627), and Gerard de Frachet, Vitae fratrum ordinis praedicatorum, ed. B.M Reichert (Louvain, 1896).
30 Barca, P. Calderón de la, El mãgico prodigioso, ed. McKendrick, M. and Parker, A.A. (Oxford, 1992).Google Scholar
31 Waxman, ‘Chapters on magic’, 367.
32 See introduction to El mãgico prodigioso, 41-2, 64-5; Dedeyan, Théme de Faust, 1:145; H.W. Sullivan, Calderón in the German Lands and the Low Countries: his Reception and Influence, 1654-1980 (Cambridge, 1980).
33 Amescua, A. Mira de, Tealro, ed. Prat, Á. Valbuena, 2 vols (Madrid, 1960), 1:5–153 Google Scholar; English trans, by M.D. McGaha, intr. by J.M. Ruano, The Devil’s Slave (El esclavo del Demonio) (Ottawa, 1989).
34 Christian, W.A. jr., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, NJ, 1991), 150–87.Google Scholar
35 This is particularly clear in the writings of Ignatius Loyola and other Jesuits. See Boss, Handmaid and Empress, 51, 57-8; M.A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (1999), 93.
36 See introduction to El mágico prodigioso, 29-36.
37 Graesse, Legenda aurea, 632; Ryan, The Golden Legend, 2:192.
38 C. Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050-1200 (repr., Toronto, 1995); I. Watt, Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe (Cambridge, 1997).
39 Swanson, R.N., Religion and Devotion in Europe, c.1215-c.1515 (Cambridge, 1995), 170–2.Google Scholar
40 Giles appears in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Portuguese literature that is little known outside Portugal. Modern novels and poems portray him in a Faustian and political, rather than a religious light.
41 Especially Christian, Apparitions, and idem, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, NJ, 1981).