 Helen was so beloved by early medieval Christians that she even took on some of the roles of the Virgin Mary.During the Renaissance, the French poet Pierre de Ronsard wrote 142 sonnets addressed to a woman named Hélène de Surgères, in which he declared her to be the "true", French Helen, rather than the "lie" of the Greeks.Helen appears in various versions of the Faust myth, including Christopher Marlowe's 1604 play "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus", in which Faustus famously marvels, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"