SOURCE: "From Witchcraft to Doctor Faustus," in The Verbal and the Visual: Essays in Honor of William Sebastian Heckscher, edited by Karl-Ludwig Selig and Elizabeth Sears, Italica Press, 1990, pp. 1-15.

In the following excerpt, Baron discusses the historical background of the idea of a pact with the devil, as well as the case of the highly educated and initially well-respected doctor of law, Dietrich Flade (who was burned for witchcraft in 1589), to draw connections between the witch hunts of late-sixteenth-century Europe and the enduring Faust legend.

Despite the great mass of literature on the Faust legend, the question about the relationship between witch hunting and the Faust legend has not attracted serious attention. The fact is that the stereotype of the persecuted witch, who was generally an uneducated woman, does not appear to be relevant to the lofty idea of the scholarly Faustus. The Faustian pact, with its...