Note 11 — Front matter

Notably, of course, the famous one of Theophilus, ostensibly written by one Eutychianus in the sixth century, but known to the West through a Latin version made by a Naples deacon named Paulus, probably toward the close of the ninth century. (It may be found, with the metrical paraphrase ascribed to Bishop Marbod, in the Bollandist “Acta Sanctorum” for 4th February. Better known in our day, though not in hers, is its dramatization by the nun Hroswitha—one of many.) Another, scarcely less popular in the Middle Ages, though strangely overlooked by later writers, was the tale (first told in the “Life of Basil” ascribed apocryphally to his contemporary, Bishop Amphilochius of Iconium) of the senator’s valet who fell in love with his master’s daughter, won her by signing away his soul to the Devil, and was saved only through the aid of St. Basil, who forced the fiend to surrender the contract. I find the story (it is a long one) first told in the West by Hincmar of Rheims (d. 882) in his response “De divortio Lotharii,” who credits it to Amphilochius. Its influence in the Occident would seem, therefore, to be of about the same age as that of the Theophilus legend, which, in several respects, is less like the later witch-stories. After Hincmar the anecdote appears often. Of modern writers on witchcraft, Roskoff alone mentions it, on the basis of a vague allusion of Schwager’s; and Schwager had evidently sought for it in vain, misunderstanding it to be in Basil’s “Dialogues.” Amphilochius’ “Vita Basilii” may be found in the “Vitae Patrum,” and in the Bollandist “Acta Sanctorum” (June, vol. iii.).