The Faust Figure and Imagery of the Male Witch in Early Modern Art and Literature Yvonne Owens 1,775 Words Fig. 1. A woodblock illustration of Mephistopheles appearing to Doctor Faustus from a 1631 edition of Tragical Historie of D. Faust, the play by Christopher Marlowe in which Faust sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge and power In 1487, the year the Malleus Maleficarum was published in Speyer, a young man identified with the humanist cognomen of Faustus graduated with his Master’s degree from the University of Heidelberg, formally registered with his patronym of Georgius Helmstetter. 1 His dates being estimated at c.1466—c.1537, 2 the historical Dr. Faustus was a contemporary of the humanist philosophers Giovanni Pico della