SOURCE: "The Faustbuch and The Golden Legend: The Faustian Reversal of the Saint's Life," in her The Faust Legend: Popular Formula and Modern Novel, Germanic Studies in America, Vol. 53, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1985, pp. 13-41.

Allen suggests that the Faust legend as it developed in Germany in particular appeared during the Reformation as a Lutheran response to the Catholic Golden Legend, a popular rendition of the lives of the Saints, which Martin Luther condemned as idol worship.

If the Faustbuch is a popular formula, where did it come from? What are its popular roots? Why did the Faust formula thrive? I believe the answers to these questions lie in a work rarely mentioned in Faustbuch scholarship, an immensely popular formula for the entire Middle Ages: the Calendar of Roman Catholic Saints, best represented in the collection of saints' legends by Jacobus de Voragine known as The Golden Legend...