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BEGINNING OF DUBLIN P//^/// qUflfTltlS, FROM BODLEIAN RAWLINSON LITURGICAL MS D. 4 

(14111 CENTURY) 



THE MEDIAEVAL STAGE 
BYE.K.CHAMBERS.VOL.II 



OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
M.CMIII 



Impression of ipaj 
Hrst Edition IQOJ 

This impression has been produced photographically by the 
MUSTON COMPANY, from sheets of the First Edition 



Printed wholly in England for the MusTON COMPANY 

By LOWE & BRYDONE, PRINTERS, LTD. 
PARK STREET, CAMDEN TOWN, LONDON, N.W. i. 



CONTENTS 

VOLUME I 

PAGE 

PREFACE . v 

LIST OF AUTHORITIES xiii 

BOOK I. MINSTRELSY 

CHAP. 

I. THE FALL OF THE THEATRES i 

II. MIMUS AND Sc6.p . . . . . . . 23 

III. THE MINSTREL LIFE 42 

IV. THE MINSTREL REPERTORY 70 

BOOK II. FOLK DRAMA .,, 

V. THE RELIGION OF THE FOLK 89 

VI. VILLAGE FESTIVALS 116 

VII. FESTIVAL PLAY 146 

VIII. THE MAY-GAME 160 

IX. THE SWORD-DANCE 182 

X. THE MUMMERS' PLAY 205 

XI. THE BEGINNING OF WINTER . . . . .228 
XII. NEW YEAR CUSTOMS 249 

XIII. THE FEAST OF FOOLS 274 

XIV. THE FEAST OF FOOLS (continued} , . . .301 
XV. THE BOY BISHOP . . . . . - 33 6 

XVI. GUILD FOOLS AND COURT FOOLS. -. . . -372 
XVII. MASKS AND MISRULE 390 



VOLUME II 

BOOK III. RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

XVIII. LITURGICAL PLAYS i 

XIX. LITURGICAL PLAYS (continued) . . . . 41 

XX. THE SECULARIZATION OF THE PLAYS .... 68 

XXL GUILD PLAYS AND PARISH PLAYS . . . .106 

XXII. GUILD PLAYS AND PARISH PLAYS (continued^ . .124 

XXIII. MORALITIES, PUPPET-PLAYS, AND PAGEANTS . -149 



iv CONTENTS 



BOOK IV. THE INTERLUDE 

CHAP. PAGE 

XXIV. PLAYERS OF INTERLUDES 179 

XXV. HUMANISM AND MEDIAEVALISM 199 



APPENDICES 

A. THE TRIBUNUS VOLUPTATUM 229 

B. TOTA loCULATORUM ScENA 230 

C. COURT MINSTRELSY IN 1306 234 

D. THE MINSTREL HIERARCHY 238 

E. EXTRACTS FROM ACCOUNT BOOKS 240 

I. Durham Priory . 240 

II. Maxstoke Priory 244 

III. Thetford Priory 245 

IV. Winchester College 246 

V. Magdalen College, Oxford 248 

VI. Shrewsbury Corporation 250 

VII. The Howards of Stoke-by-Nayland, Essex . -255 
VIII. The English Court 256 

F. MINSTREL GUILDS . . . . . . . .258 

G. THOMAS DE CABHAM ....... 262 

H. PRINCELY PLEASURES AT KKNIL^ORTH .... 263 

I. A Squire Minstrel . . . . , . 263 

II. The Coventry Hock-Tuesday Show . . .264 
I. THE INDIAN VILLAGE FEAST .... . 266 
J. SWORD-DANCES .270 

I. Sweden (sixteenth century) 270 

II. Shetland (eighteenth century) . . . .271 
K. THE LUTTERWORTH ST. GEORGE PLAY . . . .276 

L. THE PROSE OF THE Ass 279 

M. THE BOY BISHOP 282 

I. The Sarum Office 282 

1 II. The York Computus 287 

N. WINTER PROHIBITIONS 290 

O. THE REGULARIS CONCORDIA OF ST. ETHELWOLD . . 306 

P. THE DURHAM SEPULCHRUM 310 

Q. THE SARUM SEPULCHRUM 312 

R. THE DUBLIN QUEM QUAERITIS 315 



CONTENTS v 

APP. PAGE 

S. THE AUREA MESA OF TOURNAI 318 

T. SUBJECTS OF THE CYCLICAL MIRACLES . . . .321 
U. INTIRLUDIUM DE CLERICO ET PUELLA . . . .324 

V. TERENTIUS ET DELUSOR 326 

W. REPRESENTATIONS OF MEDIAEVAL PLAYS .... 329 
X. TEXTS OF MEDIAEVAL PLAYS AND INTERLUDES . . . 407 

I. Miracle-Plays 407 

II. Popular Moralities 436 

III. Tudor Makers of Interludes . . . . 443 

IV. List of Early Tudor Interludes .... 453 

SUBJECT INDEX 462 



BOOK III 

RELIGIOUS DRAMA 



heje vpon a doune, 

)?er al folk hit se may, 
a mile from J?e toune, 

aboute J>e midday, 
f>e rode is vp arered ; 
his frendes aren afered, 

ant clynge)> so J>e clay; 
]>z rode stond in stone, 
marie stont hire one, 

ant seij? f weylaway * ! 



CHAPTER XVIII 
LITURGICAL PLAYS 

[Bibliographical Note. The liturgical drama is fully treated by 
W. Creizenach, Geschichte des neurren Dramas (vol. i, 1893), Bk. 2; 
L. Petit de Julleville, Les Mystires(iSSo), vol. i. ch. 2 ; A. d f Ancona, Origini 
del Teatro Italiano (2nd ed. 1891), Bk. i, chh. 3-6; M. Sepet, Origines 
catholiques du Theatre moderne (1901), and by L. Gautier in Le Monde 
for Aug. and Sept. 1872. 'The studies of W. Meyer, Fragmenta Burana 
(1901), and C. Davidson, English Mystery Plays (1892), are also valuable. 
A. W. Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature (2nd ed. 1899), vol. 
i. ch. I deals very slightly with the subject. A good popular account is 
M. Sepet, Le Drame chrttien an Moyen Age (1878). Of older works, the 
introduction to E. Du Merit's Origines latines du Thtdtre moderne (1849, 
facsimile reprint, 1896) is the best. The material collected for vol. ii of 
C. Magnin's Origines du Theatre is only available in the form of reviews in 
the Journal des Savants (1846-7), and lecture notes in the Journal gtntral 
de r Instruction publique (1834-6). Articles by F. Clement, L. Deschamps 
de Pas, A. de la Fons-Melicocq, and others in A. N. Didron's Annales 
arche'ologiques (1844-72) are worth consulting; those of F. Clement are 
reproduced in his Histoire de la Musique religieuse (1860). There are 
also some notices in J. de Douhet, Dictionnaire des My stores (1854). 
The texts of the Quern quaeritis are to be studied in G. Milchsack, Die 
Oster-und Passionsspiele, vol. i (all published, 1880), and C. Lange, Die 
lateinischen Osterfeiern (1887). The former compares 28, the latter no 
less than 224 manuscripts. The best general collection of texts is that of 
Du M^ril already named : others are T. Wright, Early Mysteries and 
other Latin Poems (1838) ; E. de Coussemaker, Drames liturgiques du 
pfoyen Age (1860), which is valuable as giving the music as well as the 
words ; and A. Gast, Les Drames liturgiques de la Cathe*drale de Rouen 
{^893). A few, including the important Antichristus> are given by 
R. Froning, Das Drama des Mittelalters (1891). The original sources 
lire in most cases the ordinary service-books. But a twelfth-century manu- 
||rtpt from St. Martial of Limoges (Bibl. Nat. Lat. 1139) has four plays, 
a Quern quaeritis^ a Rachel^ a Prophetae^ and the Sponsus. Facsimiles 
are in E. de Coussemaker, Histoire de ?Harmonie au Moyen Age (18*2). 
A thirteenth-century manuscript from Fleury (Orleans MS. 178) has no less 
than ten, a Quern quaeritis^ a Peregrin*, a Stella in two parts, a Conversio 
Paulij a Suscitatio Lazari and four Miracula S. Nicholai. Two later 
plays and fragments of three others are found in the famous thirteenth- 
century manuscript from Benedictbeuern (Munich MS. 19,486, printed in 
J. A. Schmeller, Carmina Burana y 3rd ed. 1894, with additional fragments 
in W. Meyer, Fragmenta Burana, 1901). This is probably the repertory 
of travelling goliardic clerks. The twelfth-century manuscript which 
preserves the three plays of Hilarius (Bibl. Nat. Lat. 11,331, printed in 
J. J. Champollion-Figeac, Hilarii Versus et Ludi, 1838) is of a similar 
character. The tropes are fully dealt with by L. Gautier, Hist, de la 

B 



2 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

Potsi* titurgique au Moyen Age, vol. i (all published, 1886), and W. H. 
Frcre, The Winchester Troper (1894). I have not been able to see 
A. Reiners, Die Tropen-, Prosen- und Prafations-Gesange des feierlichen 
Hochamtes im Mittelalter (1884). Antiquarian data are collected by 
H. J. Feasey, Ancient English Holy Week Ceremonial (1897), and 
A. Heales, Easter Sepulchres, in Archaeologia, vol. xlii. I have printed 
an important passage from the Regularis Concordia of St. Ethelwold 
(965-75) in Appendix O. The Planctus Mariae are treated by A. Sch6n- 
bach, Die Marienklagen (1874), and E. Wechssler, Die romanischen 
Marienklagen ( 1 893 ). W. Koppen, Beitrdge zur Geschichte der deutschen 
Weihnachtsspiele (1893), and M. Sepet, Les Prophltes du Christ (1878), 
contain valuable studies of the evolution of the Stella and the Prophetae 
respectively. The relation of 'dramatic to iconic art in the Middle Ages is 
brought out by P. Weber, Geistliches Schauspiel und kirchliche Kunst 
(1894). A rather primitive bibliography is F. H. Stoddard, References for 
Students of Miracle Plays and Mysteries (1887). Authorities forEnglish 
facts given without references in the present volume will be found in 
Appendices W and X.] 

THE discussions of the first volume have often wandered 
far enough from the history of the stage. But two or three 
tolerable generalizations emerge. The drama as a living 
form of art went completely under at the break-up of the 
Roman world : a process of natural decay was accelerated by 
the hostility of Christianity, which denied the theatre, and 
by the indifference of barbarism, which had never imagined it. 
If anything of a histrionic tradition survived, it took the shape 
of pitiable farce, one amongst many heterogeneous elements 
in the spectacula of disreputable mimes. For the men of the 
Middle Ages, however, peasants or burghers, monks or nobles, 
such spectacula had a constant attraction : and the persistence 
of the deep-rooted mimetic instinct in the folk is proved by 
the frequent outcrops of primitive drama in the course of 
those popular observances which are the last sportive stage 
of ancient heathen ritual. Whether of folk or of minstrel 
origin, the ludi remained to the last alien and distasteful to 
the Church. The degradation of Rome and Constantinople 
by the stage was never forgotten ; nor the association with an 
heathenism that was glossed over rather than extinct : and 
though a working compromise inevitably tended to establish 
itself, it remained subject to perpetual protest from the 
austerer spirit in the counsels of the clergy. 

It is the more remarkable that the present volume has to 
describe a most singular new birth of the drama in the very 
bosom of the Church's own ritual. One may look at the 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 



3 



event as one will, either as an audacious, and at least partly 
successful, attempt to wrest the pomps of the devil to a 
spiritual service, or as an inevitable and ironical recoil of 
a barred human instinct within the hearts of its gaolers them- 
selves. From either point of view it is a fact which the 
student of European culture cannot afford to neglect. And 
apart from its sociological implications, apart from the insight 
which it gives into the temper of the folk and into the appeal 
of religion, it is of the highest interest as an objpct lesson in 
literary evolution. The historian is not often privileged to 
isolate a definite literary form throughout the whole course 
of its development, and to trace its rudimentary beginnings, 
as may here be done, beyond the very borders of articulate 
speech. 

The dramatic tendencies of Christian worship declared 
themselves at an early period l . At least from the fourth 
century, the central and most solemn rite of that worship was 
the Mass, an essentially dramatic commemoration of one of 
the most critical moments in the life of the Founder 2 . It is 



1 On these tendencies generally, 
see Davidson, 130; Ward, i. 32; 
R. Rosi&res, SocittJ fran$aise au 
Moyen Age^ ii. 228 ; E. King, 
Dramatic Art and Church Liturgy 
(Dublin Review, cxxv. 43). Mediae- 
val liturgiologists such as Belethus, 
Durandus, and Honorius of Autun 
(P.L. clxxii), lay great stress on the 
symbolical aspect of ritual and cere- 
monial. J. M. Robertson, The 
Gospel Mystery-Play (The Re- 
former, N.S. iii (1901), 657), makes 
an ingenious attempt to show that 
the earlier gospel narratives of the 
Passion, those of Saints Matthew 
and Mark, are based upon a 
dramatic version. This, he thinks, 
to have been on classical lines, and 
to have been performed liturgically 
until about the second century, 
when it was dropped in deference 
to the ascetic views of the stage then 
prevalent (cf. vol. i. p. 1 1). But the 
narrative, with its short speeches, 
its crowd of characters and its 
sufferings 'coram populo* cannot, 
on the face of it, be derived from a 



classical drama. A nearer parallel 
would be the Graeco-Jewish'Ef aywyij 
of Ezechiel (first century B.C., cf. 
Ward, i. 3). The Gospel narrative 
is, no doubt, mainly *a presenta- 
tion of dramatic action and dia- 
logue * ; but this may be because it 
was built up around Logia. Of 
external evidence for Mr. Robert- 
son's view there is none. The ritual of 
the first two centuries was probably 
a very simple one ; cf. F. E. Warren, 
Liturgy of the Ante-Nicene Church , 
54. The earliest liturgical dramas, 
even in the Greek churches, and 
those only guessed at, are of the 
fourth (cf. p. 206). Mr. Robertson 
claims support from Gatatians, iii. i 
of? /car* oy>0aX/Lioirff 'Irjarovs Xpiorbs 
rrpotypdcfrr) t'orat/pctytcpo?. Lightfoot, 
however, declares that the meaning 
of npoypafatv is ' write up in public/ 
1 placard/ ' proclaim.' If it cannot, 
as he says, mean ' paint/ still less 
can it mean * represent dramati- 
cally.' 

2 Duchesne, 47: A. V. G. Allen, 
Christian Institutions, 515. 



B 2 



4 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

his very acts and words that day by day throughout the year 
the officiating priest resumes in the face of the people. And 
when the conception of the Mass developed until instead of 
a mere symbolical commemoration it was looked upon as an 
actual repetition of the initial sacrifice, the dramatic character 
was only intensified. So far as the Canon of the Mass goes, 
this point needs no pressing. But the same liturgical princi- 
ple governs many other episodes in the order of the mediaeval 
services. Take, for example) the ritual, of Gallican origin, 
used at the dedication of a church l . The bishop and his 
procession approach the closed doors of the church from 
without, but one of the clergy, quasi latens, is placed inside. 
Three blows with a staff are given on the doors, and the 
anthem is raised Tollite portas, principes, vestras et elevamini, 
portae aeternales, et introibit Rex glorias. From within comes 
the question Qttis est iste 'rex gloriae ? and the reply is given 
Dominus virtutum ipse st Rex gloriae. Then the doors are 
opened, and as the procession sweeps through, he who was 
concealed within slips out, quasi fugiens, to join the train. It 
is a dramatic expulsion of the spirit of evil. A number of 
other instances are furnished by the elaborate rites of Holy 
week. Thus on Palm Sunday, in commemoration of the 
entry into Jerusalem, the usual procession before Mass was 
extended, and went outside the church and round the church- 
yard or close bearing palms, or in their place sprigs of yew, 
box, or withies, which the priest had previously blessed 2 , 

1 Duchesne, 393, 469, with the chcsne, 486) as already in use at 
Ordo dedications Ecclesiae from a Jerusalem in the fourth century, 
ninth-century Metz Sacramentary * Etiain cum coeperitesse hora uncle- 
tfcere printed ; Maskell, Monum. cima, legitur ille locus de evangelic, 
Rit. EccL AngL (1882) I. cccxxvi, ubi infantes cum ramis vel palmis 
196, with text from Sarum Pontifi- occurrerunt Domino, dicentes : 
caL The ceremonies are symboli- Benedictus qui venit in nomine 
cally explained by Hugo of St. Domini. Et statim levat se epi- 
Victor, de Sacramentis, ii. 5. 3 (P. Z,; scopus et omnis populus porro : inde 
clxxvi, 441), who says, 'Interrogate de summo monte Oliveti totum 
inclusi. ignorantia populi. 1 pedibus itur. Nam totus populus 

2 Duchesne, 236; Martene, iii. ante ipsum cum ymnis vel anti- 
71 ; Gast, 69 ; Feasey, 53 ; Use of phonis,respondentes semper: Bene- 
-Sarum, i. 59 ; Sarum Missal, 258 ; dictus qui venit in nomine Domini. 
Sarum Processional, 47; York Etcjuotquot sunt infantes in hisdem 
Missal, i. 84 ; York Processional^ locis,usque etiam qui pedibus ambu- 
148. The custom is described in lare non possunt, quia teneri sunt, 
the Peregrinatio Silviae (Du- in collo illos parentes sui tenent, 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 



5 



The introduction of * Palmeul might make the ceremony 
more dramatic still 2 . Some of the texts used were of a pro- 
phetic character, and the singer of these was occasionally 
dressed as a prophet 2 . At the doors of the church the pro- 
cession was greeted by boys stationed upon the roof of the 
porch, and certain French uses transferred to the occasion the 
dedication solemnity of Tottite portas just described 3 . The 
reading of the gospel narratives of the Passion, which on 
Palm Sunday, on the Monday or Tuesday, and the Wednes- 
day in Holy week and on Good Friday preceded the Gospel 
proper, was often resolved into a regular oratorio. A tenor 
voice rendered the narrative of the evangelist, a treble the 
sayings of Jews and disciples, a bass those of Christ himself 4 . 
To particular episodes of these Passions special dramatic 
action was appropriated. On Wednesday, at the words Velum 
templi scissum est, the Lenten veil, which since the first Sunday 
in Lent had hidden the sanctuary from the sight of the 
people, was dropped to the ground 5 . On Good Friday the 



omnes ramos tenentes, alii palma- 
rum, alii olivarum ; et sic deducitur 
episcppus in eo typo quo tune 
Dominus deductus est. Et de 
summo monte usqce ad civitatem, 
et inde ad Anastase per totam civi- 
tatem, totum pedibus omnes, sed et 
si quae matronae sunt aut si qui 
domini, sic deducunt episcopum 
respondentes, et sic lente et lente, 
ne lassetur populus ; porro Jam sera 
pervenitur ad Anastase.' 

1 Cf. ch.xiv. 

2 Collier, i. 82 ; Ffcasey, 68, 75, 
quoting payments * for the prophets. 1 
their ' raiment/ ' stages ' for them, 
&c., from sixteenth-century Revels 
and churchwardens' accounts. The 
Sarum Processional, 50 (from eds. 
1508, 1517), has 'finito evangelio, 
unus puer ad modum prophetae in* 
dutus, stans in aliquo eminent! loco, 
cantat lectionem propheticam modo 
cjuo sequitur.' Then come alternat- 
ing passages between the 'propheta' 
and ' tres clerici.' Perhaps the latter 
were also sometimes disguised, but 
the Sarum Processional, as well as 
the thirteenth-century Consuetu- 



dinary and the York Missal (MS. 
D), all specify that the clergy, other 
than the prophet, shall be 'habitu 
non mutato.' Several of the London 
records given by Mr.Feasey mention 
an ' angel/ and one of them a 
'chylde that playde a messenger.* 
A Coutances Order of 1573 (Gast^, 
74) forbids ' spectacula . . . cum 
habitibus inhonestis ' at the Gospel 
during Mass on Palm Sunday. 

5 Martene, iii. 72 ; Gastd, 72 ; R. 
Twigge, Mediaeval Service Bks. 
of Aquitaine (Dublin Review, cxv. 
294 ; cxvii. 67) ; Pearson, ii. 296. 

* Sarum Missal, 264. The York 
Missal, i. 102, says, for Good Friday, 
' Diaconus legat Passionem,' but 
MS. D. adds * vel legatur a tribus 
Presbyteris, si sic ordinatum erit.' 
Payments for the singers of the 
Passion are quoted from church- 
wardens' accounts (1447-1562) by 
Feasey , 8 1 . The singing was some- 
times done from the rood loft. 

1 Feasey, 17 ; Use of Sarum, i. 
140 'quarta autem feriaante pascha 
dum passio domini legitur ad pro- 
lacionem ipsius clausulae Velum 



6 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

words Partiti stint vestimenta were a signal for a similar 
bit of by-play with a linen cloth which lay upon the altar * 
Maundy Thursday had its commemorative ceremony of the 
washing of feet 2 ; while the Ttnebrae or solemn extinction, 
one after another, of lights at the Matins of the last three days 
of the week, was held to symbolize the grief of the apostles 
and others whom those lights represented 3 . 

These, and many other fragments of ceremonial, have the po- 
tentiality of dramatic development. Symbolism, mimetic action, 
are there. The other important factor, of dialogued speech, is 
latent in the practice of antiphonal singing. The character- 
istic type of Roman chant is that whereby the two halves of the 
choir answer one another, or the whole choir answers the single 
voice of the cantor ', in alternate versicle and respond 4 . The 
antiphon was introduced into Italy by St. Ambrose of Milan. 
It had originated, according to tradition, in Antioch, had 
been in some relation to the histrionic tendencies of Arianism, 
and was possibly not altogether uninfluenced by the traditions 
both of the Greek tragic chorus and of Jewish psalmody 5 . 



templi scissum est : praedictum York Missal, i. 102 c hie distrahan- 

velum in area presbiterii decidat.' tur linteamina super altare con- 

The same rubric is in the Wells nexa ' ; Sarum Missal^ 323 * hie 

Ordinale (H. E. Reynolds, Wells accedant duo ministri in superpelli- 

Cathedral) 42). ceis, unus ad dextrum et alius ad 

1 J. W. Legg, Westminster Missal sinistrum cornu altaris ; et inde duo 

(H.B.S.), 1469; G. F. Aungier, linteamina amoveant quae ad hoc 

Hist, and Antiq. of Sy on Monastery, super altare fuerunt apposita.' I 

350; Lanfranc, Decreta pro Ord. find the custom in Aquitaine(Z>#//# 

S.Bened.(P.L.c\. 465) 'Ubi dicitur Remew( 1897), 3^6), and in Hungary 

Partiti sunt vestimenta mea sibi, (Dank6, Vetus Hymnarium Eccles. 

sint duo de indutis iuxta altare, Hungariae> 534) 

hinc et inde trahentes ad se duos 2 Martene, iii. 99 ; Feasey, 107 ; 

pannos qui ante officium super altare Wordsworth, 1 84. 

missi fuerant, linteo tamen rema- * Feasey, 84 ; Wordsworth, 290. 

nente subtus missale ' ; Leofnc's * Strictly speaking the Antiphon 

Missal (Exeter, eleventh century), is begun by one half of the choir 

261 ' hac expleta statim duo diaconi and finished by the other ; the Re- 

nudant altare sindone quae prius sponsorium is a solo with a short 

fuerit sub evangelic posita in refrain sung by the choir, like the 

modum furantis. Aliqui vero, ante- secular carole ; cf. ch. viii, and Use 

quam legatur passio domini, prae- of Sarum, i. 307 ; Dank6, Vetus 

parant sindones duas sibi coherentes Hymnarium EccL Hung. II. 

et in eo versu ubi legitur: Partiti 5 Duchesne, 108; Davidson, 134; 

sunt 'vestimenta^ scindunt hinc inde F. E. Warren, Liturgy of the Ante- 

ipsas sindones desuper altare in Nicene Church, 74. 
modum furantis^et secum auferunt *; . 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 7 

At any rate, it lent itself naturally to dialogue, and it is from 
the antiphon that the actual evolution of the liturgical drama 
starts* The course of that evolution must now be followed. 

The choral portions of the Mass were stereotyped about 
the end of the sixth century in the Antiphonarium ascribed 
to Gregory the Great l . This compilation, which included 
a variety of antiphons arranged for the different feasts and 
seasons of the year, answered the needs of worship for some 
two hundred years. With the ninth century, however, began 
a process, which culminated in the eleventh, of liturgical 
elaboration. Splendid churches, costly vestments, protracted 
offices, magnificent processions, answered especially in the 
great monasteries to a heightened sense of the significance of 
cult in general, and of the Eucharist in particular 2 . Naturally 
ecclesiastical music did not escape the influence of this move- 
ment The traditional Antiphonarium seemed inadequate to 
the capacities of aspiring choirs. The Gregorian texts were 
not replaced, but they were supplemented. New melodies 
were inserted at the beginning or end or even in the middle 
of the old antiphons. And now I come to the justification of 
the statement made two or three pages back, that the begin- 
nings of the liturgical drama lie beyond the very borders 
of articulate speech. For the earliest of such adventitious 
melodies were sung not to words at all, but to vowel sounds 
alone. These, for which precedent existed in the Gregorian 
Antiphonarium^ are known as neumae 8 . Obviously the next 
stage was to write texts, called generically c tropes/ to them ; 
and towards the end of the ninth century three more or less 
independent schools of trope-writers grew up. One, in 
northern France, produced Adam of St. Victor ; of another, 

1 Frere, vi. The Gregorian Liber Aemukbatur tamen quaeque gens 

Antiphonarius is in P.L. kxviii, 641 . Christicolarum adversus alteram 

* Radulphus Glaber, Hist, sui decentiore frui. Erat enim instar 

Temporis (t 1044), iii. 4 (Bouquet, ac si mundus ipse excutiendo semet, 

Rerum Gallic, et Frantic. Script, x. reiecta vetustate, passim candidam 

29) * Igitur infra supradictum mille- ecclesiarum vestem induerit.' 
simum tertio iam fere imminente * Ekkehardus, Vita B. Notkeri 

anno, contigit in universe pene ter- Balbuli> c. xvi (Goldast, Rerum 

rarum orbe, praecipue tamen in Alaman. Script. i. 235) 'lubiius, 

Italia et in Galliis, innovari Ecclesi- id est neuma ... si autem tristitiae 

arupi Basilicas, licet pleraeque de- fuerit oratio, ululatus dicitur, si veto 

center locatae minime indiguissent. gaudii, iubilus.' 



8 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

at the Benedictine abbey of St. Gall near Constance, Notker 
and Tutilo are the greatest names ; the third, in northern 
Italy, has hitherto been little studied. The Troparia or col- 
lections of tropes form choir-books, supplementary to the 
Antiphonaria. After the thirteenth century, when trope- 
writing fell into comparative desuetude, they become rare ; 
and such tropes as were retained find a place in the ordinary 
service-books, especially the later successor of the Antipho- 
aarium, the Graduate. The tropes attached themselves in 
varying degrees to most of the choral portions of the Mass. 
Perhaps those of the Alleluia at the end of the Graduate are 
in themselves the most important. They received the specific 
names, in Germany of Sequentiae, and in France of Prosae> 
and they include, in their later metrical stages, some of the 
most remarkable of mediaeval hymns. But more interesting 
from our particular point of view are the tropes of the Officium 
or Introit) the antiphon and psalm sung by the choir at the 
beginning of Mass, as the celebrant approaches the altar 1 . 

Several Introit tropes take a dialogue form. The following is a 
ninth-century Christmas example ascribed toTutilo of St. Gall 2 . 

4 Hodie cantandus est nobis puer, quern gignebat ineffabiliter 
ante tempora pater, et eundem sub tempore generavit inclyta 
mater. 

1 Gautier, Les Tropes, passim ; Chester, Canterbury, Worcester, 

Winchester Troper^ vi ; Dank6, St. Albans, Dublin ; Pamelius, 

Vetus Hymnarium Eccles. Hun- Liturgicon(lfaQ))\\.bll an English 

gariae, 15 ; Julleville, Myst. i. 21 ; Troper in the library of St. Bavon's, 

Creizenach, i. 47. Gautier, i, defines Ghent. Amongst tropes in the 

a trope, 'Qu'est-ce qu'un Trope? wider sense are included the 

C'est Tinterpolation d'un texte htur- farsurae (vol. i. p. 377). Many of the 

gique,' and M. Gerbert, de cantu later tropes are trivial, indecent, or 

et musica sacra (1774), * 34? profane. They are doubtless the 

'Tropus, in re liturgica, est versi- work si goliardi (vol. i. p, 60). 

culus quidam aut etiam plures ante * St. Gall MS. 484, f. 13 (ninth 

intervelpostaliosecclesiasticoscan- century); cf. Gautier, 34, 62, 139, 

tus appositi.' Of earlier writers* cf. 218 ; Winchester Troper^ xvi ; 

Durandus, iv. 5 * Est autem proprie Meyer, 34. It is also in the Win- 

tropus quidam versiculus qui in prae- Chester Tropers (tenth-eleventh 

cipuis festiyitatibus cantatur imme- century), and the Canterbury Tro- 

diate ante introitum quasi quoddam per (fourth century), and is printed 

praeambulum et continuatio ipsius therefrom in Winchester Troper, 

introitus.' Gautier, in, describes 4, 102. Here it is divided between 

a large number of Tropers ; Frere, two groups of Cantore$> and has the 

Winchester Troper^ xxvii, xxx, heading * Versus ante officium ca- 

those of English uses from Win- nendi in die Natalis Domini 9 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 9 

lnt\errogatio\. 

quis est iste puer quern tarn magnis praeconiis dignum 
vociferatis ? dicite nobis ut collaudatores esse possimus. 
Resp\pnsio\, 

hie enim est quern praesagus et electus symmista dei ad 
terram venturum praeuidens longe ante praenotavit, sicque 
praedixit/ 

The nature of this trope is obvious. It was sung by two 
groups of voices, and its closing words directly Introduce the 
Introit for the third mass (Magna missa) on Christmas day, 
which must have followed without a break 1 . It is an example 
of some half a dozen dialogued Introit tropes, which might 
have, but did not, become the starting-point for further dra- 
matic evolution 2 . Much more significant is another trope of 
unknown authorship found in the same St. Gall manuscript 8 . 
This is for Easter, and is briefly known as the Quern quaeritis. 
The text, unlike that of the Hodie cantandus, is based closely 
upon the Gospels. It is an adaptation to the form of dialogue 
of the interview between the three Maries and the angel at 
the tomb as told by Saints Matthew and Mark 4 . 

'Quern quaeritis in sepulchro, [o] Christicolae ? 
lesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o caelicolae. 

non est hie, surrexit sicut praedixerat. 
ite, nuntiate quia surrexit de sepulchro. 

Resurrexi*! 

This is the earliest and simplest form of the Quern quaeritis. 

1 The Introit is : ' Puer natus est rr&.s'vermssacerdotales in Hartker's 

nobis, et films datus est nobis : tenth-century St. Gall Antiphona- 

cuius imperium super humerum rium (J. M. Thomasius, Opera, iv. 

eius, et yocabitur nomen eius 187). 

magni consilii angelus. Ps> Cantate * St. Gall MS. 484, f. \\\ printed 

domino canticum novum.' and facsimiled by Gautier, 916, 

8 Gautier, 219, prints a dialogued 220. 

trope for a feast of St. Peter from * S. Matthew xxviii. 1-7 ; S. 

an eleventh-century troper of St. Mark xvi. 1-7. 

Martial of L,imoges : the Winches- " The Introit is : ' Resurrexi et 

ter Troper^ 6, 103, has one for St. adhuc tecum sum, alleluia : posui- 

Stephen's day (Winchester) and sti super me manum tuam, alle- 

one for St. John the Evangelist's Una; mirabilis facta est scientia 

(Canterbury). Meyer, 35, calls tua. alleluia, alleluia. Ps. Domine, 

attention to the dialogued Christ- probasti me/ 



10 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

It recurs, almost unaltered, in a tenth-century troper from 
St. Martial of Limoges *. In eleventh-century tropers of the 
same church it is a little more elaborate 2 . 

'TROPUS IN DIE. 

Quern quaeritis in sepulchro, Christicolae ? 
Ihesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o caelicole. 

non est hie, surrexit sicut praedixerat, 
ite, nuntiate quia surrexit. Alleluia. 

ad sepulchrum residens angelus nuntiat resurrexisse 

Christum : 
en ecce completum est illud quod olim ipse per pro- 

phetam dixerat ad patrem taliter inquiens, 

Resurrexi! 

Here the appended portion of narrative makes the trope 
slightly less dramatic. Yet another addition is made in one 
of the Limoges manuscripts. Just as the trope introduces the 
Introit) so it is itself introduced by the following words : 

'Hora est, psallite. iube, dompnus, canere. 
eia, eia, dicite.' 

As M. Gautier puts it, the trope is troped 3 . 

In the Easter Quern quaeritis the liturgical drama was born, 
and to it I shall return. But it must first be noted that it was 
so popular as to become the model for two very similar tropes 
belonging to Christmas and to the Ascension. Both of these 
are found in more than one troper, but not earlier, I believe, 
than the eleventh century. I quote the Christmas trope from 
a St. Gall manuscript 4 . 

1 Lange, 22, from BibL Nat. Lat. all of the eleventh century, are 

MS. I240,f. 30 b . As to date (923- described by Gautier, in; cf. 

34) and provenance of the MS., I p. 29. 

follow H. M. Bannister in Journal 8 Bibl. Nat. 1118, f. 40*; cf. 

of Theological Studies ( April, 1901). Gautier, 226; Frere, 176. 

Lange, 4, considers it an eleventh- * Bodl. Douce MS. 222, f. 6 

century Antiphonar from Beaune. (eleventh century ; cf. Gautier, 136), 

* Printed by Frere, 176 ; cf. printed and facsimiled by Gautier, 

Gautier, 219. The version in 215, 219, Du Mtfril, Or. Lat. 149, 

Lange, 20, is incomplete. The gives it from a Limoges Troper 

Limoges Tropers (Bibl. Nat. 887, (B.N. 909, f. 9) : it is also in BJW. 

909, 10849 11x8, 1119, 1 120, 1121), 1118, f. 8 VO , and probably the other 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 11 

1 In Natale Domini ad Missam sint parati duo diaconi induti 
dalmaticis^ retro altare dicentes 

Quern quaeritis in praesepe, pastores, dicite ? 
Respondeant duo cantores in choro 

salvatorem Christum Dominum, infantem pannis involutum, 
secundum sermonem angelicum. 
Item diaconi 

adest hie parvulus cum Maria, matre sua, de qua, vatici- 
nando, Isaias Propheta : ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium. 
et nuntiantes dicite quia natus est. 
Tune cantor dicat excelsa voce 

alleluia, alleluia, iam vere scimus Christum natum in 
terris, de quo canite, omnes, cum Propheta dicentes : 

Puer natus est! 

The Ascension trope is taken from an English troper 
probably belonging to Christ Church, Canterbury *. 
* Quern cernitis ascendisse super astra, o Christicolae ? 
Ihesum qui surrexit de sepulchro, o caelicolae. 

iam ascendit, ut praedixit, ascendo ad patrem meum et 

patrem vestrum, deum meum et deum vestrum. 
alleluia : 

regna terrae, gentes, linguae, conlaudate dominum : 
quern adorant caeli cives in paterno solio: 
deo gratias dicite eia.' 

I return now to the Easter Quern quaeritis. In a few 
churches this retained its position at the beginning of Mass, 
either as an Introit trope in the strict sense, or, which comes 
to much the same thing, as a chant for the procession which 

Limoges MSS. Frere, 145, gives A. xiv (eleventh century). It comes 

it from the twelfth-century St between an illumination of the 

Magloire Troper (B.N. 13,252), and Ascension and the heading ' In Die 

R.Twigge, in Dublin Review (1897), Ascensionis Domini.' It is also in 

362, from a fifteenth-century bre- the St. Magloire Troper (B.N. 1 3,2 52, 

viary of Clermont-Ferrand (Cl. F. f. io v ) under the heading ' In Ascen- 

MS. 67). Here it is sung by two sione Tropi ad Processionem,' and 

boys, and near the altar after the in the St. Martial of Limoges Tro- 

Te Deum at Matins. According pers (Gautier, 219 ; Lange, 20). 

to Gautier, 123, it is also in the Martene, iii. 193, describes it as 

late eleventh-century Nevers Troper sung in the procession before Mass 

(B.N. 9449). at Vienne. 
1 Frere, 1 10, from Cott. MS. Calig. 



12 



RELIGIOUS DRAMA 



immediately preceded. This was the use of the Benedictine 
abbey of Monte Cassino at the beginning of the twelfth century, 
of that of St Denys in the thirteenth 1 , and of the church of 
St. Martin of Tours in the fifteenth 2 . Even in the seventeenth 
century the Quern quaeritis still appears in a Paris manuscript 
as a * tropus V and Martene records a practice similar to that 
of Monte Cassino and St. Denys as surviving at Rheims in 
his day 4 . 

But in many tropers, and in most of the later service- 
books in which it is found, the Quern quaeritis no lofiger 
appears to be designed for use at the Mass. This is the case 
in the only two tropers of English use in which, so far as 
I know, it comes, the Winchester ones printed by Mr. Frere 5 . 
I reproduce the earlier of these from the Bodleian manuscript 
used by him 6 . 



1 Martene, iv. 147 ' " Post proces- 
sionem," addunt Dionysianae con- 
suet* [thirteenth century], "ascen- 
dant iuxta Sancta Sanctorum cjui- 
dam bene cantantes, alii in dextro 
Ifitere, alii in sinistro latere assi- 
stentes, bene et honorifice tropas 
scilicet : Quern quaeritis ; coniubi- 
lantes,et sibi invicem respondentes; 
et cum intonuerint, Quia surrexi^ 
dicens, P&tri, mox Archicantor et 
duo socii eius assistentes in chpro 
regias virgas in manibus tenentes, 
incipiant pfficium." Hunc ritum 
accepisse videntur a Cassinensibus, 
quorum Ordinarium [before 1105] 
haec habet : " Processione finita, 
vadat Sacerdos post altare, et versus 
ad chorum dicat alta voce, Quern 
quaeritis f et duo alii Clerici st^ntes 
in medio chori respondeant : lesum 
Nazarenumj et Sacerdos ; Non est 
hie; illi vero conversi ad chorum 
dicant : Alleluia. Post haec alii 
quatuor cantent tropos, et agatur 
rnissa ordine suo. As usual in 
Ordin&ria (cf. e. g. p. 309) only the 
opening words of the chants are 
given. A similar direction is con- 
tained in MS. Casinense, 199, a 
twelfth-century breviary (Biblu>~ 
theca CasinensiS) iv. 124) : cf. also 
Lange, 21, 23. 

9 Martene ; iii. 173 ; Lange, 24 



(Tours i). 

8 Lange, 26. Cf. the account of 
the Vienne Quern quaeritis (p. 26). 

4 Martene, iv. 148. 

Mr. Frere does not print any 
fytroit tropes from the Worcester, 
St. Albans, and Dublin tropers : a 
leaf is unfortunately missing from 
the Canterbury troper (Frere, 107) 
where the Quern quaeritis might 
have come. It is not amongst the 
few tropes taken by Pamelius, 
Liturgicon (1609), ii. 611, from the 
English troper at St. Bavon's, 
Gherjt (Frere, 142). As the Con- 
cordia Regularis was partly based 
on Ghent customs (cf. p. 307), I 
should gladly know more of this. 

6 Bodl. MS, 775 ; described by 
Frere, xxvii, as MS. E * Its date 
lies between 979 and 1016, since 
Ethelred is mentioned as reigning 
sovereign in the Litany on f. i8 v , and 
inconsequence it hassometimesbeen 
called " The Ethelred Troper." Also, 
as it has the Dedication Festival on 
the 24th of November, it is probably 
anterior to the re-dedication of the 
Cathedral on Oct. 20, 980, since 
this day became subsequently the 
Dedication Festival.' A facsimile 
from the MS. was published by the 
Palaeographical Society (Series ii. 
pi. iii), and it was suggested that it 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 13 

ANGELICA DE CHRISTI RESURRECTIONS. 

Quern quaeritis in sepulchre, Christicolae ? 
Sanctarum mulierum responsio. 

Ihesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o caelicola t 
Angelicae voces consolatus. 

non est hie, surrexit sicut praedixerat, 

ite, nuntiate quia surrexit, dicentes : 
Sanctarum mulierum ad omnem clerum modulatio 

alleluia I resurrexit Dominus hodie, 

leo fortis, Christus filius Dei ! Deo gratias dicite, eia ! 
Dicat angelus: 

venite et videte locum ubi positus erat Dominus, 

alleluia! alleluia! 
Iterum dicat angelus : 

cito euntes dicite discipulis quia surrexit Dominus, 

alleluia ! alleluia ! 
Mulieri una voce canant iubilantes : 

surrexit Dominus de sepulchrd, 

qui pro nobis pependit in ligno.' 

In this manuscript, which is dated by Mr. Frere in 979 or 
980, the text just quoted is altogether detached from the 
Easter day tropes. Its heading is rubricated and immediately 
follows the tropes for Palm Sunday. It is followed in its turn, 
under a fresh rubric, by the ceremonies for Holy Saturday, 
beginning with the Benedictio Cerei. From the second, some- 
what later Cambridge manuscript, probably of the early 
eleventh century, the Holy Saturday ceremonies have dis- 
appeared, but the Quern quaeritis still precedes and does not 
follow the regular Easter tropes, which are headed Tropi in 
die Christi Resurrectionis *. The precise position which the 

is in an early eleventh-century hand, MtS. and does not appear to be 

but possibly copied an earlier text, quite complete. It is facsimiled by 

But surely it would have been Frere (pi. 26*). The printed text 

brought up to date on such a matter in Frere, 1 7,represents both versions ; 

as the Dedication Festival. that in Manly, i. xxi, follows the 

1 C.C.C. Cambridge MS. 473, of Bodl MS. Both Frere and Manly 

the middle of the eleventh century, have * Angelice uocis consolatio f 

described by Frere, xxvii, as MS. CC. where the Bodl. MS., as I read it, 

The text of the Quern quaeritis dif~ has ' Angelice uoces consolatus ' 

fers slightly from that of the Bodl. (clearly in error), 



14 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

Quern quaeritis was intended to take in the Easter services is 
not evident from these tropers by themselves. Fortunately 
another document comes to our assistance. This is the Con- 
cordia Regularis^ an appendix to the Rule of St. Benedict 
intended for the use of the Benedictine monasteries in 
England reformed by Dunstan during the tenth century. 
The Concordia Regularis was drawn up by Ethelwold, bishop 
of Winchester, as a result of a council of Winchester held at 
some uncertain date during the reign of Edgar (959-79) ; it 
may fairly be taken for granted that it fixed at least the 
Winchester custom. I translate the account of the Quern 
quaeritis ceremony, which is described as forming part, not of 
the Mass, but of the third Nocturn at Matins on Easter 
morning *. 

c While the third lesson is being chanted, let four brethren 
vest themselves. Let one of these, vested in an alb, enter as 
though to take part in the service, and let him approach the 
sepulchre without attracting attention and sit there quietly 
with a palm in his hand. While the third respond is chanted, 
let the remaining three follow, and let them all, vested in copes, 
bearing in their hands thuribles with incense, and stepping 
delicately as those who seek something, approach the sepulchre. 
These things are done in imitation of the angel sitting in the 
monument, and the women with spices coming to anoint the 
body of Jesus. When therefore he who sits there beholds 
the three approach him like folk lost and seeking something, 
let him begin in a dulcet voice of medium pitch to sing 
Quern quaeritis. And when he has sung it to the end, let the 
three reply in unison Ihesu Nazarenum* So he, Non est 
hic> surrexit sicut praedixerat. Jte, nuntiate quia surrexit 
a mortuis. At the word of this bidding let those three turn 
to the choir and say Alleluia! resurrexit Dominus ! This 
said, let the one, still sitting there and as if recalling them, say 
the anthem Venite et videte locum. And saying this, let him 
rise, and lift the veil, and show them the place bare of the 
cross, but only the cloths laid there in which the cross was 

1 A full account of the Concordia Regularis and extracts from the Latin 
text are in Appendix O. 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 15 

wrapped And when they have seen this, let them set down 
the thuribles which they bare in that same sepulchre, and 
take the cloth, and hold it up in the face of the clergy, and as 
if to demonstrate that the Lord has risen and is no longer 
wrapped therein, let them sing the anthem Surrexit Dominus 
de sepulchre^ and lay the cloth upon the altar. When the 
anthem is done, let the prior, sharing in their gladness at the 
triumph of our King, in that, having vanquished death, He 
rose again, begin the hymn Te Deum laudamus. And this 
begun, all the bells chime out together. 1 

The liberal scenario of the Concordia Regularis makes plain 
the change which has come about in the character of the 
Quern quaeritis since it was first sung by alternating half- 
choirs as an Introit trope *. Dialogued chant and mimetic 
action have come together and the first liturgical drama is, in 
all its essentials, complete. 

I am not quite satisfied as to the relations of date between 
the Concordia Regularis and the Winchester tropers, or as to 
whether the Quern quaeritis was intended in one or both of 
these manuscripts for use at the Easter Matins 2 . But it is 
clear that such a use was known in England at any rate 
before the end of the tenth century. It was also known in 
France and in Germany : the former fact is testified to by the 
Consuetudines of the monastery of St. Vito of Verdun 8 ; the 

1 I cannot understand why Mr. of the tropers. 
Frere, xvi, thinks that the Quern 8 Martene, iv. 299 ' Saecnlo, ut 

quaeritis was ' a dramatic dialogue aiunt, x scriptae ' : cf. Douhet, 849. 

which came to be used as a trope Martene, iii. 173, cites another 

to the Introit of Easter: but at Matins version from a 'vetustissi- 

Winchester it kept its independent mum rituale ' of Poitiers. If this is 

place/ It is used as a trope a cen- identical with the ' pontificate ve- 

tury before the date of the Con- tustissimum : annorum circiter 800' 

cordia Regularis. mentioned in his list of authorities 

a Why is the Quern quaeritis in (i. xxii) it may be earlier than the 

the Bodl. MS. apparently on Good tenth century. It is certainly not 

Friday ? Perhaps this was an ir- the ' liber sacramentorum annorum 

regular use reformed by Bp. Ethel- 900 circiter ' with which Douhet, 

wold. If so the C.R. must be about 848, would identify it. The Ponti- 

980 or later. This is not impossible ficale was used by Martene in his 

(cf. App. O). In the later C.C.C.C. edition of 1738 ; about the first edi- 

JfS. the Q. q. might, I think, from tion of 1700-6, I cannot say. This 

its position be intended for Easter version is not in Lange, and, as the 

Matins. The version described in omission of the usual first line is 

the C R. differs slightly from that curious, I print it below (p. 29). 



16 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

latter by the occurrence of the Qutm quaeritis in a troper of 
Bamberg, where it has the heading Ad visitandum sepukhrum 
and is followed by the Matins chant of TV Deum l . 

The heading of the Bamberg version and the detailed 
description of the Concordia Regularis bring the Quern quae- 
ritis drama into close relations with the Easter c sepulchre ' 2 . 
They are indeed the first historical notices of the ceremony 
so widely popular during the Middle Ages, Some account 
of the Easter sepulchre must accordingly be inserted here, 
and its basis shall be the admirably full description of 
St. Ethelwold 3 . He directs that on Good Friday all the 
monks shall go discalceati or shoeless from Prime * until the 
cross is adored J 4 . In the principal service of the day, which 
begins at Nones, the reading of the Passion according to 
St. John and a long series of prayers are included. Then 
a cross is made ready and laid upon a cushion a little way 
in front of the altar. It is unveiled, and the anthem Ecce 
lignum crucis is sung. The abbot advances, prostrates him- 
self, and chants the seven penitential psalms. Then he humbly 
kisses the cross. His example is followed by the rest of the 
monks and by the clergy and congregation. St. Ethelwold 
proceeds : 

c Since on this day we celebrate the laying down of the 
body of our Saviour, if it seem good or pleasing to any to 
follow on similar lines the use of certain of the religious, which 
is worthy of imitation for the strengthening of faith in the 
unlearned vulgar and in neophytes, we have ordered it on this 
wise. Let a likeness of a sepulchre be made in a vacant part 
of the altar, and a veil stretched on a ring which may hang 
there until the adoration of the cross is over. Let the deacons 
who previously carried the cross come and wrap it in a cloth 

1 Lange, 29; cf. Creizenach, L return to the choir 'cruce vacua 

49. * nuntiantes: Surrexit Dontinus* 

9 The Verdun Consuetudines do (Martene, iv. 299). 

not. The burial and resurrection s Appendix O. 

of the cross clearly formed no part * Barje feet continued to be the 

of the Good Friday and Easter rule for the Adaratio Crucis. An 

rites. The dialogue takes place 'in exception is at Exeter, where, ac- 

subterraneis specubus,' i.e. the crypt, cording to Pearson, ii. 296, they 

and the representatives of the Manes were forbidden, cf. Feasey, 115. 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 17 

in the place where it was adored l . Then let them carry it 
back, singing anthems, until they come to the place of the 
monument, and there having laid down the cross as if it were 
the buried body of our Lord Jesus Christ, let them say an 
anthem. And here let the holy cross be guarded with all 
reverence .until the night of the Lord's resurrection. By night 
let two brothers or three, or more if the throng be sufficient, 
be appointed who may keep faithful wake there chanting 
psalms/ 

The ceremony of the burial or Depositio Crucis is followed 
by the Missa Praesanctificatorum, the Good Friday com- 
munion with a host not consecrated that day but specially 
reserved from Maundy Thursday; and there is no further 
reference to the sepulchre until the order for Easter day itself 
is reached, when St. Ethelwold directs that ' before the bells 
are rung for Matins the sacristans are to take the cross and 
set it in a fitting place/ 

In the Concordia Regularis, then, the Depositio Crucis is 
a sequel to the Adoratio Crucis on Good Friday. The latter 
ceremony, known familiarly to the sixteenth century as 
'creeping to the cross,' was one of great antiquity. It was 
amongst the Holy week rites practised at Jerusalem in the 
fourth century 2 , and was at an early date adopted in Rome 3 . 
But the sepulchre was no primitive part of it 4 ; nor is it 

1 StEthel wold's Latin is atrocious, 8 Duchesne, 238. For the medi- 

but I think that the sepulchre was aeval ceremony, cf. Feasey, 114; 

made on the altar, not in the hollow Pearson, ii. 293; Milchsack, 121; 

of it, and covered from sight until Rock, Hi. 2, 241 ; Martene, iii. 

wanted by a veil let down all round 129 ; iv. 137 ; Sarum Missal, 

it from a circular support above. 328 ; York Missal, i. 105 ; York 

Cf. the Latin text in Appendix O : Manual, 156, and the Durham 

perhaps it is corrupt. extract in Appetldix P : for that of 

* Percgrinatio Silviae in Du- modern Rome, Malleson and Tuker, 

chesne,49O. The object of adoration ii. 271. 

was a fragment of the true Cross, 4 

' sanctum lignum crucis.' The In- cra 

yention of the Cross by St. Helena century, ed. H. A. Wilson, 77); 

is put ISy tradition t326. Doubtless nor the Sacramentum Gregorianum 

many other churches obtained a (teighth century, P. L. Ixxviii. 86), 

fragment, and used it for the same ' qua salutata et reposita in loco 

purpose : cf, Feasey, 1 16. Thus suo ' ; nor in the Roman Ordines 

the cross used at Rome was 'lignum collected by Mabillon (P. L. Ixxviii) 

pretiosae crucis' (Duchesne, 465 : nor in those added by Duchesne, 

cf. his ed. of the Liber Pontificalis, 451, 464. The Ordines of 954 and 

i 374)- 963 repeat the Gregorian formula, 

CHAMBERS. II C 



18 



RELIGIOUS DRAMA 



possible to trace either the use which served St. Ethelwold 
as a model \ or the home or date of the sepulchre itself. It 
is unlikely, however, that the latter originated in England, 
as it appears almost simultaneously on the continent, and 
English ritual, in the tenth century, was markedly behind 
and not in advance of that of France and Germany 2 . St. 
Ethelwold speaks of it as distinctively monastic but certainly 
not as universal or of obligation amongst the Benedictine 
communities for whom he wrote. Nor did the Concordia 
Regularis lead to its invariable adoption, for when ^Eifric 
adapted St. Ethelwold's work for the benefit of Eynsham 
about 1005 he omitted the account of the sepulchre 3 , and 
it is not mentioned in Archbishop Lanfranc's Benedictine 
Constitutions of io75 4 . At a later date it was used by many 



which is expanded by those of 1215 
and 1319 into ' in suo loco super 
altare.' There is no mention of the 
sepulchrum in the Gallican liturgical 
books collected by Mabillon (P. Z. 
Ixxii). Of English books Leofric's 
Exeter Missal (tenth century, ed. 
F. E. Warren) has no Sepulchrum ; 
nor the Missal of St. Augustine's 
Canterbury (tiioo, ed. M. Rule), 
'reposita in loco solito* ; nor the 
Missal of Robert of Jumi&ges (ninth 
and tenth century, ed. H. A. Wilson 
for H. B. S0c.). Pearson, ii. 316, 
suggests that the cross used for 
adoration was the great rood usually 
placed in the rood-loft, but some- 
times * super altare.' 

1 Ethelwold's Concordia Regu- 
laris was largely founded on that 
of Benedict of Aniane (t8i7 ; cf. 
Miss Bateson in E, H. Review, 
ix. 700), but there is no Easter 
week ordo in this (P. L. ciii. 701 ) 
nor in the same writer's Memoriale 
or Ordo Monasticus (P. L. Ixvi. 
937: cf. his Vita^ c. viii, in Acta 
SS. Feb. ii. 618). Ethelwold also 
borrowed customs from Fleury 
and Ghent (Appendix O). The 
sepulchrum is not mentioned in the 
Consuetudines Floriacenses (tenth 
century, ed. De Bosco, Floriac. 
Vet. Bibl. (1605), 390) ; cf. Creize- 
nach, i. 49 ; nor in the description 
of a thirteenth-century coutumier 



in Rocher, Hist, de ? Abbaye de St.- 
Benctt-sur-Loire> 323. The only 
Fleury Quern quaeritis is of a late 
type in a thirteenth-century MS.; 
cf. p. 32. At Ghent, however, an 
inventory of treasures remaining at 
StBavon's after a Norman invasion 
(1019-24) includes ' tabulas de se- 
pulchro 23,' which appear to be 
distinct from reliquiae 'de sepul- 
chro Domini* and 'de operculo 
ligneo quod super corpus ipsius 
positum fuit in sepulchro' (Neues 
Archiv, viii. 374). Did the pos- 
session of these * reliquiae' sug- 
gest to the monks of St. Bavon's 
the construction of an Easter 
sepulchre ? 

" It is merely a guess to say St. 
Gall. Schiibiger, Sangerschule 
St. Gallens, 69, mentions the se- 
pulchre there, but gives no very 
early notice. The sepulchre was 
known in the Eastern, as well as 
the Western Church, and for all 
I know may have come from Jeru- 
salem (Feasey, 177). As to date, 
Weber, 32, suggests that pictorial 
representations of the Maries at 
the tomb show the influence of the 
dramatic Visitatio Sepulchri as far 
back as the ninth century. His 
chief point is that the Maries carry 
turribula (Cf. p. 25, n. 5). 

8 E. H. Review, ix. 706. 

4 P. L. cl. 465 'adorata ab omni- 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 



19 



Benedictine houses, notably by the great Durham Priory l ; 
but the Cistercians and the Carthusians, who represent two 
of the most famous reforms of the order, are said never to 
have adopted it, considering it incompatible with the austerity 
of their rule 2 . On the other hand it was certainly not, in 
mediaeval England, confined to monastic churches. The 
cathedrals of Salisbury 3 , York 4 , Lincoln 5 , Hereford 6 , Wells 7 , 
all of which were served by secular canons, had their sepulchres, 
and the gradual spread of the Sarum use probably brought 
a sepulchre into the majority of parish churches throughout 
the land 8 . 

There are naturally variations and amplifications of the 
sepulchre ceremonial as described by St. Ethelwold to be 
recorded. The Depositio Cruets, instead of preceding the 
Missa Praesanctificatorum, was often, as in the Sarum use, 



bus cruce, portitores eius elevantes 
earn incipiant antiphonam Super 
omnia ligna cedrorum, et sic vadant 
ad locum ubi earn collocare debent/ 
This does not exclude a sepulchre, 
but probably the locus was an altar 
which might serve as a statio for 
the processions 'ad crucifixum' 
ordered on Easter Saturday after 
vespers and thrice a day through 
Easter week. Such processions 
continued in later ritual to visit 
the cross after its Elevatio on 
Easter morning : cf. York Manual, 

177- 

1 See the description of the 
ceremony by a sixteenth-century 
eye-witness in Appendix P. The 
sepulchrum was also used by the 
Bridgettines of Sion monastery, an 
order of reformed Benedictine nuns 
(G. F. Aungier, Hist, of Syon 
Monastery ', 350). 

* J. D. Chambers citing J. B. 
Thiers, De Exposition 5. Sacra- 
menti< iii. 19. 

3 See the extracts from Sarum 
service-books in Appendix Q. 

4 York Missal, L 106; York 
Manual, 163, 170. 

8 Wordsworth, 278. 
8 Hereford Missal (ed Hender- 
son), 96. 



7 H. E. Reynolds, Wells Cathe- 
dral, 32. 

8 The fullest accounts of the 
Easter sepulchre in England are 
those by H. J. Feasey, Ancient 
English Holy Week Ceremonial, 
129, and A. Heales, Easter Sepul- 
chres: their Object, Nature, and 
History in Archaeologia, xlii. 263 ; 
cf. also Monumenta Vetusta (Soc. 
of Antiquaries), iii. pll. xxxi, xxxii ; 
Parker, Glossary of Architecture, 
s.v. Sepulchre; M. E. C Walcott, 
Sacred Archaeology, s.v. Easter Se- 
pulchre ; T. F. Dyer, Church Lore 
Gleanings, 219; W. Andrews, Old 
Church Lore, iii ; J. D. Chambers, 
App.yuKN ; Micklethwaite,52; Rock, 
iii. 2. 92, 240, 251. Continental or- 
dines and notices may be found in 
Martene, iii. 131, 172, 178; iv. 141, 
145 ; Milchsack, 41, 121 ; Pearson, 
ii. 295 ; Wetzer and Welte, Kirchen- 
Lexicon, s.v. Grab ; J. Dank6, 
Vetus Hymn. Eccl. Hungariae^ 535, 
579. I have not seen this writers 
Die Feier des Osterfestes (Wien, 
1872). On representations of the 
sepulchre in mediaeval art, cf. P. 
Weber, 32, and the miniature from 
Robert of Jumifcges* Missal (ed. 
F, E. Warren for H. . Soc. pi. 
viii). 



20 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

transferred to the end of Vespers, which on Good Friday 
followed the Missa without a break 1 . The Elevatto regularly 
took place early on Easter morning before Matins* The 
oldest custom was doubtless that of the Regularis Concordia, 
according to which the cross was removed from the sepulchre 
secretly by the sacristans, since this is most closely in agree- 
ment with the narrative of the gospels. But in time the 
Elevatio became a function. The books of Salisbury and 
York provide for it a procession with the antiphons Ckristus 
resurgens and Surrexit Dominus. Continental rituals show 
considerable diversity of custom 2 . Perhaps the most elaborate 
ceremonials are those of Augsburg and Wiirzburg, printed by 
Milchsack. In these the Tollite portas procession, which we 
have already found borrowed from the dedication of churches 
for Palm Sunday, was adapted to Easter day 8 . But the old 
tradition was often preserved by the exclusion or only partial 
admission of the populace to the Elevatio. In the Augsburg 
ritual just quoted, all but a few privileged persons are kept 
out until the devil has been expelled and the doors solemnly 
opened 4 . A curious light is thrown upon this by a decree of 
the synod of Worms in 1316, which orders that the ' mystery 
of the resurrection ' shall be performed before ft&plebs comes 

1 At Exeter on the other hand vel cimeterium . . . usque ad ulti- 

Vespers on both Good Friday and mamianuam,quaeclaudatur.' Here 

Easter Eve were sung before the the Tollite portas dialogue is held 

Sepulchre ; and so with the Hours with the levita iunior, vel alius in 

at Tours (Feasey, 130). figura dial^oli grossa voce.' On the 

* Martene, iii. 179; Milchsack, other xhand, in the Ordo Wirce- 
122; Lange, 135. The latter gives burgensis of 1564 the procession 
a Passau fifteenth-century version knocks at the door from inside, and 
which ends 'quibus finitis stantes the respondent 'loco Sathanae' is 
ante altare, mutua caritate se invi- without. 

cem deosculentur, dicentes: Sur- * 'Sacerdos . . . antequam con- 

rtxit dominus vere. Et afparuit gregetur chorus, cum processione 

symoni. Dicatur una oratio de sibi paucorum adiunctorum . . . 

resurrectione. Statim fiat pulsatio.' foribus ecclesiae clausis, secretius 

The Easter greeting and kiss of tollat sacramentum de sepulchre ' ; 

peace Were in use, either before or cf. the fifteenth-century Passau 

after Matins at many chfcrches Breviary (Lange, 135) 'clam sur- 

(Martene, iii. 171, 180) and do not gitur' and the Ordo Sepulturae in 

depend upon the sepulchre. the Missalis Posoniensis of 1341 

* Milchsack, 128, 135 ; cf. Meyer, (Dank6, 579) Maicis exclusis,' 
64. The Ordo Augvstensis &i 1487 I have not noticed any such liraita- 
directs that a procession shall go tion in English rubrics later than 
from the sepulchre ' per ambitum the Concordia Regularis. 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 



21 



into the church, and gives as a reason the crowds caused by 
a prevalent superstition that whoever saw the crucifix raised 
would escape for that year c the inevitable hour of death ' \ 

A widespread if not quite universal innovation on the 
earlier use was the burial, together with the cross or crucifix, 
of a host, which was consecrated, like that used in the Missa 
Praesanctificatoruni) on Maundy Thursday. This host was 
laid in a pyx 2 , monstrance 8 , or cup 4 , and sometimes in a 
special image, representing the risen Christ with the cross 
or labarum in his hands, the breast of which hdd a cavity 
covered with beryl or crystal 6 . Within the sepulchre both 
the host and the crucifix were laid upon or wrapped in a fine 
linen napkin. 

The actual structure of the sepulchre lent itself to consider- 
able variety. St Ethelwold's assimilatio quaedam sepulchri 
upon a vacant part of the altar may have been formed, like 
that at Narbonne several centuries later, by laying together 
some of the silver service-books 6 . There are other examples 
of a sepulchre at an altar, and it is possible that in some of 



1 Milchsack, 119 'quum a no- 
stris antecessoribus ad nos perve- 
nerit, ut in sacra nocte dominicae 
resurrectionis ad sustollendam cru- 
cifixi imaginem de sepulchre, ubi in 
parasceve locata fuerat, nimia vi- 
rorum et mulierum numerositas, 
certatim sese comprimendo, eccle- 
siam simul cum canpnicis et vicariis 
introire nitantur, opinantes errpnee, 
quod si viderent crucifixi imaginem 
sustolli, evaderent hoc anno inevita- 
bilem mortis horam. His itaque 
obviantes statuimus,ut resurrectionis 
mysterium ante ingressum plebis 
in ecclesiamperagatur ' : cf. Pearson, 
ii. 298. 

2 A Finchale inventory of 1481 
(J. T. Fowler, Trans, of Durham 
and North. Arch. Soc. iv. 134) 
includes ( Item I pixis argentea cum 
coopertorio et ymagine crucifixi in 
summitate cpopertorii pro corpora 
x 1 deferendo in passione x 1 / A pyx 
was also used in the Sarum rite 
(Appendix Q). 

* Feasey, 165 ; Dank6, Vet. 
Hymn. EccL Hung. 535. 



4 York Manual, 174 * cuppa in 
qua est sacramentum.' 

5 At Durham (Appendix P) and 
at Lincoln (Wordsworth, 278) ; cf. 
Feasey, 164; Heales, 307. The 
image ' cum corona spinea ' used at 
York (York Manual^ 170) was of 
course the crucifix. A Reformation 
record of 1566 at Belton, Lincoln- 
shire, speaks of 'a sepulker with 
little Jack broken in pieces ' (Feasey, 
165). Either a mere image or a 
mechanical puppet (cf. p. 158) may 
be meant. The labarum is the 
sign of the risen Christ in the later 
versions of the Quern quacritis\ 
cf. p. 35. It figures in nearly all 
paintings of the Resurrection. 

6 Narbonne Ordinarium (1*1400) 
Mevent cum filo pannum, qui est 
super libros argenti super altare 
in figura sepulcri' (Martene, Hi. 
172 ; Lange, 65) ; Le Mans, Ordi~ 
narium 'Tune tres derici acce- 
dentes ad altare cum reverentia 
sublevent palium cum quo sepul- 
chrum fuerit coopertum* (Lange, 
66) ; cf* Pearson, ii. 293. 



22 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

these the altar itself may have been hollow and have held the 
sacred deposit. Sometimes the high altar was used, but 
a side-altar was naturally more convenient, and at St. Law- 
rence's, Reading, the c sepulchre awlter * was in the rood-loft 1 . 
The books were a primitive expedient. More often the sepul- 
chre was an elaborate carved shrine of wood, iron, or silver. 
If this did not stand upon the altar, it was placed on the north 
side of the sanctuary or in a north choir aisle. In large 
churches the crypt was sometimes thought an appropriate 
site 2 . Often the base of the sepulchre was formed by the 
tomb of a founder or benefactor of the church, and legacies 
for making a structure to serve this double purpose are not 
uncommon in mediaeval wills. Such tombs often have a 
canopied recess above them, and in these cases the portable 
shrine may have been dispensed with. Many churches have 
a niche or recess, designed of sole purpose for the sepulchre 3 . 
Several of these more elaborate sepulchres are large enough to be 
entered, a very convenient arrangement for the Quern quaeritis* ; 
a few of them are regular chapels, more than one of which is 
an exact reproduction of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and 
is probably due to the piety of some local pilgrim 5 . Wood, 
metal, or stone, permanent or movable, the sepulchre was 
richly adorned with paintings and carvings of the Passion and 
the Resurrection, with Easter texts, with figures of censer- 
swinging angels and sleeping knights 6 . A seal was, at least 

1 Feasey, 131. In versions of Tarrant Hinton, Dorset, which is 

the Quern quaeritis given by Lange, not amongst those mentioned by 

24, 25, 26, the action is at the altar. Heales or Feasey. 

A Senlis Breviary (fourteenth cen- 4 The performers are sometimes 

tury) has ' elevantes palium altaris ' directed to enter the sepulchre ; 

(Lange, 27), and a Sens thirteenth- cf. e.g. Lange, 28. 

century MS. 'Sublevans tapetum 5 Feasey, 149. There is such 

altaris, tamquam respiciens in se- a chapel beneath the choir of the 

pulchrum' (Lange, 64). But I am Jerusalem church at Bruges. The 

not sure that there was a genuine Winchester sepulchre is a chapel, 

sepulchre in all these cases : cf. but not of the Jerusalem type. At 

P 26. St. Gall the sepulchre was (t 1583) 

* Wlirzburg Breviary (fourteenth in the 'sacellum S. Sebastian! ' 

century) 'descendunt in criptam ad (Lange, 69). 

visitandum sepulcrtnn' (Lange, 53) : 6 J. Britton, Redcliffe Church, 47, 

cf. the Verdun Consuetudines (p. 16), prints a contemporary description 

where there may or may not have of a sepulchre given in 1470 by 

been a regular sepulchre. 'Maister Canynge' to St. Mary 

9 1 have seen a beautiful one at Redcliffe, Bristol, with, amongst 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 23 

at Hereford and in Hungary, set upon it l , A canopy was hung 
over it and upon it lay a pall, also a favourite object for a pious 
legacy. Similar legacies might -meet the expense of the 
' sepulchre light/ which was kept burning from Good Friday 
to Easter morning, and was only extinguished for a few 
minutes on Easter Saturday to be re-lit from the freshly 
blessed 'new fire 2 / Or the light might be provided by one 
of the innumerable guilds of the Middle Ages, whose members, 
perhaps, also undertook the devout duty of keeping the two 
nights' vigil before the sepulchre 3 . This watch was important. 
The Augsburg ritual already quoted makes the possibility of 
arranging it a condition of setting up the se'pulchre at all 4 . 
The watchers sang psalms, and it is an example of the irre- 
pressible mediaeval tendency to mimesis that they were some- 
times accoutred like the knights of Pilate 6 . After the Elevatio, 
the crucifix seems to have been placed upon a side-altar and 
visited by processions in Easter, while the host was reserved 
in a tabernacle. The Sarum Custumary directs that the 
empty sepulchre shall be daily censed at Vesperg and removed 



other adornments, 'Heaven made 
of timber and stain'd clothes ' and 
'Hell, made of timber and iron- work 
thereto, with Divels to the number 
of 13.' This is apparently not a 
Chatterton forgery. Feasey, 166, 
gives a somewhat similar London 
specification, and also (p. 145) de- 
scribes a fourteenth-century wooden 
sepulchre from Kilsby, Northants, 
believed to be the only one in 
existence. I have a suspicion that 
the wooden so-called 'watcher's 
chamber' to the shrine of St. 
Frideswide in Christ Church, 
Oxford, is really a sepulchre. It is 
in the right place, off the north 
choir aisle, and why should a 
watcher of the shrine want to be 
perched up in a wooden 'cage ou 
the top of a tomb? 

1 Dank6, 536, 580. Two instances 
are given. In one the sepulchre 
was sealed, in the other the pyx, 
'sigillo vel clavi ecclesiae.' At 
Hereford 'episcopus . . . cereo 
claudat sepulchrum' (Feasey, 159, 
from Harl. MS. 2081). 



3 Cf. vol. i. p. 126. 

8 Wordsworth, 279; Feasey, 161 ; 
Heales, 272, 299. 

4 Milchsack, 127. 

B G. Gilpin, The Bee- Hive of the 
Romish Church (1579) (translated 
from Isaac Rabbotenu of Louvain, 
1569) 'They make the graue in a 
hie place in the church, where men 
must goe up manie steppes, which 
are decked with blacke cloth from 
aboue to beneath, and upon everie 
steppe standeth a siluer candlesticke 
with a waxe candle burning in it, 
and there doe walke souldiours in 
harnesse, as bright as Saint George, 
which keep the graue, till the 
Priests come and take him up; 
and then commeth sodenlie a 
Jlash of fire, wherwith they are 
~all afraid and fall downe ; and then 
up startes the man, and they begin 
to sing Alleluia, on all handes, and 
the clocke striketh eleuen.' Feasey, 
1 68, quotes De Moleon for a state- 
ment that the watchers at Orleans 
were dressed as soldiers. 



24 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

on the Friday in Easter week before Mass l . Naturally there 
was some division of opinion at the Reformation as to the 
precise spiritual value of the Easter sepulchre. While Bishop 
Hooper and his fellow pulpiters were outspoken about the 
idolatrous cult of a * dead post V the more conservative views 
which ruled in the latter years of Henry VIII declared the 
ceremony to be ' very laudable ' and * not to be contemned and 
cast away V The Cromwellian Injunctions of 1538 sanctioned 
the continued use of the sepulchre light, and by implication 
of the sepulchre itself. The Edwardine Injunctions of 1547 
suppressed the sepulchre light and were certainly interpreted 
by Cranmer and others as suppressing the sepulchre 4 . The 
closely related * creeping to the cross ' was forbidden by pro- 
clamation in 1548; and in 1549, after the issue of the first 
Act of Uniformity and the first Prayer Book of Edward VI, 
the disallowance of both ceremonies was legalized, or renewed 
by Articles for the visitation of that year 6 . Payments for the 
breaking up of the sepulchre now appear in many church- 
wardens' accounts, to be complicated before long by payments 
for setting the sepulchre up again, in consequence of an order 
by Queen Mary in 1554 6 . In the same year the crucifix and 
pyx were missing out of the sepulchre at St. Pancras' Church 
in Cheapside, when the priests came for the Elevatio on Easter 
morning, and one Marsh was committed to the Counter for 

1 Appendix Q. Majesty, 1536 (Burnet, i. I. 435; 

* Hooper, Early Writings (Par- i. 2. 472 ; cf. Froude, ii. 486) ; 
ker Soc.), 45 'The ploughman, be Siry?*, Eccles. Memorials, i. 1.546; 
he never so unlearned, shall better i. 2. 432. 

be instructed of Christ's death and * Dixon, ii. 82, 432, 513, 516; 

passion by the corn that he soweth iii. 37 ; Hardy and Gee, Doc. 

in the field, and likewise of Christ's illustrative of English Church 

resurrection, than by all the dead History ', 278 ; Cardwell, Documen- 

posts that hang in the church, or tary Annals of the Reformation^ 

are pulled out of the sepulchre with i. 7 ; Froude, iv. 281. There 

Christus resurgent. What resem- certainly were sepulchres in 1548 

blance hath the taking of the cross (Feasey, 175). 

out of the sepulchre and going a 5 Dixon, in. 37 ; Wilkins, iv. 32. 

procession with it, with the resur- The Act of* and 3 Edward VI, 

rectidn of Christ? None at all: c. 10 (Froude, iv. 495), against 

the dead post is as dead when they images and paintings, was probably 

sing Jam non moritur, as it was also held to require the demolition 

when they buried it with In pace of many sepulchres : cf. Ridley's 

foetus est locus etus 9 : cf. Ridley, Visitation Articles of 1550, quoted 

Works (Parker Soc.), 67. by Hcales, 304. 

* Articles devised by the Kings * Dixon, iv. 129. 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 26 

the sacrilege 1 . The Elizabethan Injunctions of 1559, although 
they do not specifically name the sepulchre, doubtless led to 
its final disappearance 2 . In many parts of the continent 
it naturally lasted longer, but the term * visiting sepulchres * 
seems in modern times to have been transferred to the devotion 
paid to the reserved host on Maundy Thursday 8 . 

I now return to the Quern quaeritis in the second stage of 
its evolution, when it had ceased to be an Introit trope and 
had become attached to the ceremony of the sepulchre. 
Obviously it is not an essential part of that ceremony. The 
Depositio and Elevatio mutually presuppose each other and, 
together, are complete. For the dramatic performance, as 
described by St. Ethelwbld, the clergy, having removed the 
cross at the beginning of Matins, revisited the empty sepulchre 
quite at the close of that service, after the third respond 4 , 
between which and the normal ending of Matins, the Te Deum> 
the Quern quaeritis was intercalated. The fact that the Maries 
bear censers instead of or in addition to the scriptural spices, 
suggests that this Visitatio grew out of a custom of censing the 
sepulchre at the end of Matins as well as of Evensong 6 . But the 
Visitatio could easily be omitted, and in fact it was omitted in 
many churches where the Depositio and Elevatio were in use. 
The Sarum books, for instance, do not in any way prescribe 
it. On the other hand, there were probably a few churches 

1 Dixon, iv. 1 57 ; S. R. Maitland, (Feasey, 142), and pious legacies 

Essays on the Reformation (ed. begin to direct tombs ' whereas 

1899), 1 86. the sepulchre was wonte to stande.' 

* Hardy and Gee, op. cit. 428. * Davidson, 140; Malleson and 

Art xxiii forbids * monuments of Tuker, ii. 263, 267, 272. The 

. . . idolatry and superstition.' The latest examples of the Quern quae- 

Elizabethan Visitation Articles col- ritis are of the eighteenth century 

lected in the Second Report of the from Cologne and Angers (Lange, 

Ritual Commission make no men- 36, 39) and Venice (Z. f. d. A. xli. 

tion of sepulchres. They generally 77). 

follow pretty closely the wording 4 This respond begins Dum trans- 

of the Injunctions. But the Articles isset Sabbatum. 

of Bentham, Bishop of Lichfield * Cf. p. 18, n. 2. The Sarum 

and Coventry (1565), specify ' monu- Custumary provides for censing on 

ments of idolatry and superstition ' feasts (a) at the anthem ' super 

as including * Sepulchres which Magnificat ' at Vespers, (b) during 

were used on Good Friday '(Heales, or after the Te Deum at Matins 

307). Notices of the destruction of (Use of Sarum> i. 113, 121). The 

sepulchres become numerous, being sepulchre is included only at Vespers 

found, for instance, in the case of (cf. Appendix Q), but the variation 

50 out of 153 Lincolnshire churches I suggest would not be great. 



26 



RELIGIOUS DRAMA 



which adopted the Visitatio without the more important rite. 
Batnberg seems to have been one of these, and so possibly 
were Sens, Senlis, and one or two others in which the Quern 
quaeritis is noted as taking place at an altar 1 . However, 
whether there was a real sepulchre or not, the regular place 
of the Quern quaeritis was that prescribed for it by St. Ethel- 
wold, between the third respond and the Te Deum at Matins. 
It has been found in a very large number of manuscripts, and 
in by far the greater part of them it occupies this position 2 . 
In the rest, with the exception of a completely anomalous 
example from Vienne 3 , it is either a trope *, or else is merged 



1 Cf. p. 22, n. I. The Bamberg 
Agenda of 1-1597 (Lange, 93) has 
an Ordo msitandi sepulchrum 
which opens with directions for 
the construction of a sepulchre, 
which would obviously not be the 
case if the Depositio and Elevatio 
had preceded. Lange rarely prints 
more than the Visitatio^ but of one 
group of texts he notes (p. 135) that 
the MSS. generally have also the 
Elevatio. 

8 Lange's collection from 224 
MSS. supersedes those of Du M^ril, 
CoussemaUer, Milchsack, &c. He 
supplemented it by versions from 
Meissen, Worms, Venice, and Grau 
in Hungary in Z. /. d. A. (1896), 
xli. 77 ; and has not got those from 
the (*) Winchester Tropers (cf. 
p. 12); (b) Autun and Nevers 
Tropers of the eleventh century 
(Gautier,'l26, 219) ; (c) St. Magloire, 
twelfth-century Troper (cf. p. n); 
(ct) Dublin Processionals (Appen- 
dix R); *(e) Laon twelfth-century 
Ordinary (Chevalier, Ordinaires 
de Laon, 118); (/) Clermont- 
Ferrand fifteenth-century Breviary 
(cf. p. ii); (g) Poitiers Ritual 
(Martene, iii. 173); (ft) Verdun, 
tenth-century Consuetudinary ( Mar- 
tene, iv. 299; cf. p. 15). The MSS, 
extend from the tenth to the eigh- 
teenth century. The majority of 
them are Breviaries; some are 
Ordinaries, Antiphoners, Proces- 
sionals ; a few are late Tropers, in 
which, besides the Tropes proper, 
the Holy week Ordo is included (cf. 



Gautier, 81) ; two (B. ff. Lat. 1139 
from Limoges, and Orleans MS. 
178, from Fleury) are special books 
of dramatic repraese&tationes\ cf. 
p. i. 

8 Martene, iii.i 80, from an undated 
Caeremoniale. Lange, 26, only gives 
a portion of the text containing the 
Quern quaeritis proper, which was 
sung as a processional trope before 
the Missa maior. The procession 
had immediately before gone to the 
sepulchre and sung other anthems. 
But the sepulchre played a part at 
two other services. Before Matins 
the clergy had in turn entered the 
sepulchre, found i empty, came 
out and given eacn other the kiss 
of peace and Easter greeting. No 
Elevatio is described; perhaps it 
was still earlier * clam. 1 After Lauds, 
the Missa matutinalis was sung 
' ad sepulchrum * and the prosa or 
Alleluia trope was thus performed: 
4 Prosa Victimae Pasckali. Finite V 
Dicat nobis Maria, clericulus stans 
in sepulcro cum amictu parato et 
stola, dicat f. Angelicos testes. 
Chorus respondeat Die nobis Maria. 
Clericulus dicat Angelicas testes* 
Clericus dicat Surrexit Christus. 
Chorus Credendum est magis usque 
ad finem.' On this prose and its 
relation to the Quern quaeritis cf. 
p. 29. At St Mark's, Venice 
(Z.f.d.A. xli. 77), the position ofthe 
Quern quaeritis is also abnormal, 
coming just before Prime, but this 
version dates from 1736. 

4 Cf. p. 12. 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 27 

with or immediately follows the Elevatio before Matins \ The 
evidence of the texts themselves is borne out by Durandus, 
who is aware of the variety of custom, and indicates the end 
of Matins as \hzproprior locus*. 

No less difficult to determine than the place and time at 
which the Easter sepulchre itself was devised, are those 
at which the Quern quaeritis, attached to it, stood forth as 
a drama. That the two first appear together can hardly 
be taken as evidence that they came into being together. 
The predominance of German and French versions of the 
Quern quaeritis may suggest an origin in the Prankish area : 
and if the influence of the Sarum use and the havoc of service- 
books at the Reformation may between them help to account 
for the comparative rarity of the play in these islands, no such 
explanation is available for Italy and Spain. The develop- 
ment of the religious drama in the peninsulas, especially in 
Italy, seems to have followed from the beginning lines some- 
what distinct from those of north-western Europe. But 
between France and Germany, as between France and 
England, literary influences, so far as clerkly literature goes, 
moved freely : nor is it possible to isolate the centres and 
lines of diffusion of that gradual process of accretion and 
development through which the Quern quaeritis gave ever fuller 
and fuller expression to the dramatic instincts by which 
it was prompted. The clerici vagantes were doubtless busy 
agents in carrying new motives and amplifications of the text 
from one church to another. Nor should it be forgotten that, 
numerous as are the versions preserved, those which have 
perished must have been more numerous still, so that, if all 

1 Lange, 28 (Parma), 30 (Laon), faciunt, antequam matutinum in- 

47 (Constance), 68 (Rheinau), 69 choent, sed hie est proprior locus, 

(St. Gall). At Rheinau, the Elevatio eo quod Te deum laudamus cxpri- 

takes place in the course of the mit horam, qua resurrexit. Quidam 

Quern quaeritis : at Parma, and etiam earn faciunt ad missam, cum 

probably in the other cases, the dicuntur sequentia ilia Victimae 

' sacrista pervigil ' has already re- paschali, cum dicitur versus Die 

moved the * Corpus Christ!/ nobis ct sequentes. 1 Joannes Ab- 

* Durandus, lib. vi. c. 87. He rincensis, deOffic.eccles.(P.L.v&\\\. 

describes the normal Visitatio^ in 54), briefly notes the 'officium se- 

terms much resembling those of pulchri* as 'post tertium respon- 

Belethus (cf. p. 31), and adds sorium/ and says no more* 
' quidam vero hanc presentationem 



28 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

were before us, the apparent anomaly presented by the 
occurrence of identical features in, for instance, the plays 
from Dublin and Fleury, and no others, would not improbably 
be removed. The existence of this or that version in the 
service-books of any one church must depend on divers con- 
ditions ; the accidents of communication in the first place, and 
in the second the laxity or austerity of governing bodies at 
various dates in the licensing or pruning of dramatic elabora- 
tion. The simplest texts are often found in the latest manu- 
scripts, and it may be that because their simplicity gave no 
offence they were permitted to remain there. A Strassburg 
notice suggests that the ordering of the Quern quaeritis was 
a matter for the discretion of each individual parish, in inde- 
pendence of its diocesan use l ; while the process of textual 
growth is illustrated by a Laon Ordinarium> in which an earlier 
version has been erased and one more elaborate substituted 2 . 

Disregarding, however, in the main the dates of the manu- 
scripts, it is easy so to classify the available versions as to 
mark the course of a development which was probably com- 
plete by the middle of the twelfth and certainly by the 
thirteenth century. This development affected both the text 
and the dramatic interest of the play. The former is the 
slighter matter and may be disposed of first 8 . 

The kernel of the whole thing is, of course, the old St. Gall 
trope, itself a free adaptation from the text of the Vulgate, 
and tlie few examples in which this does not occur must 
be regarded as quite exceptional 4 . The earliest additions 
were taken from anthems, which already had their place 

1 Strassburg Agenda of 1513 qualitate commodum fore iudica- 

(Lange, 50) ' Haec prescripta visi- verint.' 

tatio sepulcri observetur secundum a Laon Ordinarium of twelfth 
consuetudinem cuiuslibet ecclesiae.' century (U. Chevalier, Ordtnaires 
Meyer, 33, quotes a passage even de Laon> 118). The change con- 
more to the point from the Bamberg sisted mainly in the introduction of 
Agenda of 1587 ' Haec dominicae the Victimae paschali : cf. p. 29. 
resurrectionis commemoratio cele- 8 Cf. the mil discussion, mainly 
brioribus servit ecclesiis, unde alia- from the textual point of view, 
rum ecclesiarum utpote minorum et throughout Lange's book, with that 
ruralium rectores et parochi ex of Meyer, and Creizenach, i. 47 ; 
ordine hie descripto aliquid saltern Froning, 3 ; Wirth, I. 
desumere possunt, quod pro loci * The Bohemian fourteenth-cen- 
et personarum illic convenientium tury version (Lange, 130) is nearly 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 



29 



in the Easter services, and which in some manuscripts of the 
Gregorian Antipkonarium are grouped together as suitable for 
insertion wherever may be desired l . So far the text keeps 
fairly close to the words of Scripture, and even where the 
limits of the antiphonary are passed, the same rule holds 
good. In time, however, a freer dramatic handling partly 
establishes itself. Proses, and even metrical hymns, beginning 
as choral introductions, gradually usurp a place in the dialogue, 
and in the latest versions the metrical character is very marked. 
By far the most important of these insertions is the famous 
prose or sequence Victimae paschali, the composition of which 
by the monk Wipo of St. Gall can be pretty safely dated in the 
second quarter of the eleventh century 2 . It goes as follows : 

'Victimae paschali laudes immolant Christiani. 
agnus redemit oves, Christus innocens patri reconciliavit 

peccatores. 
mors et vita duello conflixere mirando, dux vitae mor- 

tuus regnat v'ivus. 



all narrative sung by the Ebdo- 
marius : the only dialogue is from 
the Victimae paschali. Martene, 
iii. 173, gives, from a * vetustissimum 
Rituale,' this Poitiers version, not 
in Lange, ' Finitis matutinis, acce- 
dunt ad sepulchrum, portantes lu- 
minaria. Tune incipit Maria : Ubi 
est Christus meusf Respondet 
angelus Non est hie. Tune Maria 
aperit os sepulchri, et dicit publica 
voce : Surrexit Christus. Et omnes 
respondent Deo gratias.' Possibly 
Maria here is the Virgin, who is not 
usually included in the Visitatio. 
But the same anthem opens a 
twelfth-century Limoges version, 
headed 'Oc est de mulieribus' in 
B. N. Lot. MS. 1139, a collection 
of ritual plays. The full text is ' Ubi 
est Christus meus dominus et films 
excelsus ? ' which is not really appro- 
priate to any other speaker: cf. 
Milchsack, 38. A frequent variant 
on * Quern quaeritis in sepulchro, 
o Christicolae ? ' is ' Quern quaeritis, 
o treoiulae mulieres, in hoc tumulo 
plorantes ?'; nor can the two forms 
be localized (Lange, 84). 



1 Lange, 32. These MSS. are of 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries. 
I find no such section in the normal 
text of the Gregorian Liber respon- 
sa/tSj which is the antiphonary for 
the office (P. L. Ixxviii. 769). The 
'antiphonae deresurrectione domini 
ubicumque voluerjs ' of the B. N. 
Lot. MS. 17,436 include the 'Cito 
euntes dicite, &c.,' * Currebant duo 
simul, &c.,' ' Ardens est cor meum, 
&c./ and others which are regularly 
introduced into the play. Another 
commonly used is the Christus 
resurgens with its verse, ' Dicant 
nunc ludaei, &c.,' which the Sarum 
books assign to the Elevatio (Ap- 
pendix Q) : cf. Lange, 77. 

1 Text in Daniel, Thesaurus 
HymnologicuS) ii. 95 ; Kehrein, 
Lateiniscne Sequenzen des Mittel- 
alters j 8 1, and with facsimile and 
setting in A. Schiibiger, Die Sanger- 
schuleSt. Gallens, 90, &c. ; cf. Lange, 
59; Meyer, 49, 76; Miichsack, 34 ; 
Chevalier, Repertorium Hymno- 
logicum, s. vv. ; A. Schiibiger, La 
Sequence de PAques Victimae 
chali et son auteur (1858). 



80 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

die nobis, Maria, quid vidisti in via ? 

sepulchrum Christi viventis et gloriam vidi rcsurgentis; 

angelicos testes, sudarium et vestes. 

surrexit Christus, spes mea, praecedet suos in Galilaeam. 

credendum est magis soli Mariae veraci, quam ludaeo- 

rum turbae fallaci. 
scimus Christum surrexisse a mortuis vere: tu nobis, 

victor, rex, miserere/ 

Originally written as an Alleluia trope or sequence proper, 
a place which it still occupies in the reformed Tridentine 
liturgy 1 , the Victimae paschali cannot be shown to have made 
its way into the Quern quaeritis until the thirteenth century 2 . 
But it occurs in about a third of the extant versions, sometimes 
as a whole, sometimes with the omission of the first three 
sentences, which obviously do not lend themselves as well 
as the rest to dramatic treatment. When introduced, these 
three sentences are sung either by the choir or by the Maries: 
the other six fall naturally into dialogue. 

The Victimae paschali is an expansion of the text of the 
Quern quaeritis, but it does not necessarily introduce any new 
dramatic motive. Of such there were, from the beginning, 
at least two. There was the visit of the Maries to the 
sepulchre and their colloquy with the angel ; and there was 
the subsequent announcement of the Resurrection made by 
them in pursuance of the divine direction. Each has its 
appropriate action : in the one case the lifting of the pall and 
discovery of the empty sepulchre, in the other the display by 
the Maries of the cast-off grave-clothes, represented by a 
linteum, in token of the joyful event. It is to this second 
scene, if the term may be used of anything so rudimentary, 
that the Victimae paschali attaches itself. The dialogue of 
it is between the Maries and the choir, who stand for the 
whole body of disciples, or sometimes two singers, who are 
their spokesmen 3 . A new scene is, however, clearly added to 

1 Malleson-Tuker, ii. 27. It is (Chevalier, Ordinaires de Loon, 

used throughout Easter week, 1 1 8). 

1 Lange,6o. It was interpolated 8 Narbonne, ti4oo (Lange, 65) 

during the thirteenth century in 'duo canonici, tanquam apostoli ; 

a twelfth-century Laon version cf. Lange, 75. 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 31 

the play, when these two singers not only address the Maries, 
but themselves pay a visit to the sepulchre. Now they repre- 
sent the apostles Peter and John. In accordance with the 
gospel narrative John outstrips Peter in going to the sepulchre, 
but Peter enters first : and the business of taking up the 
linteum and displaying it to the other disciples is naturally 
transferred to them from the Maries. The apostle scene first 
makes its appearance in an Augsburg text of the end of the 
eleventh century, or the beginning of the twelfth \ *It occurs 
in rather more than half the total number of versions. 
These are mainly German, but the evidence of Belethus is 
sufficient to show that it was not unknown in twelfth-century 
France 2 . The addition of the apostle scene completed the 
evolution of the Easter play for the majority of churches. 
There were, however, a few in which the very important step 
was taken of introducing the person of the risen Christ him- 
self ; and this naturally entailed yet another new scene. Of 
this type there are fifteen extant versions, coming from 
one Italian, four French, and four German churches 3 . The 
earliest is of the twelfth century, from a Prague convent. The 
new scene closely follows the Scripture narrative. Mary 

1 Augsburg liber liturgicus of has, like the older Roman liturgies, 
eleventh or twelfth century (Lange, * crucifixus in suum locum reponi 
82). debet ' (c. xcviii). Durandus, vi. 87j 

2 Belethus, c. cxiii (P. L. ccii. has an account very similar to that 
119) * fit enim in plerisque Ecclesiis of Belethus, but says ' Si qui autem 
ut cantato ultimo response, cum habent versus de hac representa- 
candelis cereis et solemni proces- done composites, licet non authen- 
sione eant ex choro ad locum quern- ticos non improbamus ' ; cf. alsc 
dam, ubi imaginarium sepulcrum p. 27. 

compositum est, in quod mtrodu- 8 Engelberg (1372), Cividal* 

cuntur aliquot in personis mulierum (fourteenth century), Nuremberg 

et discipulorum loannis et Petri, (thirteenth century), Einsiedeh 

quorum alter alterp citius re vertitur, (thirteenth century), Prague (six 

sicut Joannes velocius cucurrit Petro, twelfth to fourteenth centuries) 

atque item alii quidam in personis Rouen (two, thirteenth and fifteentl 

angelorum qui Christum resurrexisse centuries), Mont St-Michel (four 

dixerunt a mortuis. Quo quidem teenth century ),Coutances( fifteen tl 

facto personae eae redeunt ad cho- century), Fleury (Orleans MS. 178 

rum, referuntque ea quae viderint thirteenth century) ; all printed b; 

et audierint. Tune chorus, audita Lange, 136 sqq. Gaste', 58, 63, als< 

Christ! resurrectione, prorumpit in gives the Rouen and Coutance 

altam vocem, inquiens, Te Deum versions, the latter more fully tha 

laudamus? It is to be observed that Lange. Meyer, 80, discusses th 

Belethus knows no Depositio and interrelations of the texts. 
Elevatio. After the Adoratio^ he 



32 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

Magdalen remains behind the other Maries at the sepulchre. 
The Christ appears ; she takes him for the gardener, and he 
reveals himself with the Noli me tangere. Mary returns with 
the new wonder to the choir. This is the simplest version of 
the new episode. It occurs in a play of which the text is 
purely liturgical, and does not even include the Victimae 
paschali. A somewhat longer one is found in a Fleury play, 
which is in other respects highly elaborate and metrical, 
Here the Christ appears twice, first disguised in similitudinem 
hortolani^ afterwards in similit^inem domini with the labarum 
or resurrection banner. The remaining versions do not depart 
widely from these two types, except that at Rouen and Mont 
St-Michel, the Christ scene takes place, not at the sepulchre 
but at the altar, and at Cividale in a spot described as the 
ortus Christi 1 . 

The formal classification, then, of the versions of the Quern 
quaeritis, gives three types. In the first, the scenes between 
the Maries and the angel, and between the Maries and the 
choir, are alone present ; in the second the apostle scene is 
added to these ; the third, of which there are only fifteen 
known examples, is distinguished by the presence of the 
Christ scene. In any one of these types, the Victimae paschali 
and other proses and hymns may or may not be found 2 . And 
it must now be added that it is on the presence of these that 
the greater or less development of lyric feeling, as distinct 
from dramatic action, in the play depends. The metrical 
hymns in particular, when they are not merely choral overtures, 
are often of the nature of planctus or laments put in the 
mouths of the Maries as they approach the sepulchre or at 
some other appropriate moment. These planctus add greatly 
to the vividness and humanity of the play, and are thus an 
important step in the dramatic evolution. The use of them 

1 Lange, 138. In this text the the apparition 'in sinistro cprnu 

Maries have a locus suus. The altaris,' for at Easter, 1570, divine 

MS. i$ a Processional^ and it may service was performed in a * paradis 

be that the play was given not in dresse* avec la plus grande solennite 

the church, but in the open square, dans la chapelle Notre- Dame, der- 

as was the Annunciation play in the riere le chceur ' (Gaste*, 58). 

same MS. (Coussemaker, 284; cf. * These are of course the 'versus* 

p. 67). It is none the less litur- spoken of with tolerance in the 

gical. Rouen had probably an passage just quoted from Duran- 

6 ortus Christi ' out of which came dus. 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 33 

may be illustrated by that of the hymn Heu I plus pastor 
occiditur in the Dublin version found by Mr. Frere and printed, 
after a different text from his, in an appendix \ This play has 
not the Christ scene, and belongs, therefore, to the second type 
of Quern guaeritis,but, in other respects, including \hsplanctus, 
it closely resembles the Fleury version described above. 
Another planctus, found in plays of the third type from 
Engelberg, Nuremberg, Einsiedeln, and Cividale, is the Heu 
nobis ! internets mentes 2 ; a third, the Heu ! miser ae cur contigit> 
seems to have been interpolated in the Heu f pius pastor at 
Dublin ; a fourth, the Omnipotent pater altissime> with a refrain 
Heu quantus est dolor noster f is found at places so far apart 
as Narbonne and Prague 3 : and a fifth, Heu dolor > keu quam 
dira doloris angustia I is also in the Fleury text 4 . 

Another advance towards drama is made in four Prague 
versions of the third type by the introduction of an episode 
for which there is no Scriptural basis at all. On their way to 
the sepulchre, the Maries stop and buy the necessary spices 
of a spice-merchant or unguentarius. In three thirteenth- 
century texts the unguentarius is merely a persona muta ; in 
one of the fourteenth he is given four lines 5 . The unguentarius 
was destined to become a very popular character, and to afford 
much comic relief in the vernacular religious drama of 
Germany. Nor can it be quite confidently said that his 
appearance in these comparatively late liturgical plays is a 
natural development and not merely an instance of reaction 
by the vernacular stage. 

1 Appendix R. The Heu / pius Ungentarius : 
fas for occiditur does not seem to *dabo vpbis ungenta optima, 

nave been found outside the Fleury salvatoris ungere vulnera, 

and Dublin plays (Chevalier, Re- sepulturae eius ad memoriam 

pert. Hymn. n. 7741). et nomen eius ad gloriam.' 

8 Lange, 136, 141 ; Milchsack, The earlier texts have * aromata . . . 

35. 66. memori,' preceded by ' Mariae can- 

* Lange, 64, 74. tantes " aromata " procedant ad 

4 Ibid. 162. unguentarium pro accipiendis un- 

6 Ibid. 151. The fourteenth- gentis' and followed by 'quibus 

century text runs : acceptis accedant ad sepulchrum. 1 

Tres Mariae; Meyer, 58, 91, 106, calls this scene, 

' aromata preciosa querimus, in which he finds the first introduc- 

Christi corpus ungere volumus, tion of non-liturgical verse, the 

holocausta sunt odorifera Zehnsilber spiel , and studies it at 

sepulturae Christi memori.' great length. 

D 



84 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

The scenic effect of the Quern quaeritis can be to some 
extent gathered from the rubrics,although these are often absent 
and often not very explicit, being content with a general 
direction for the performers to be arrayed in similitudinem 
mulierum or angelorum or apostolorum, as the case may be. 
The setting was obviously simple, and few properties or 
costumes beyond what the vestments and ornaments of the 
church could supply were used. The Maries had their heads 
veiled \ and wore surplices, copes, chasubles, dalmatics, albs, or 
the like. These were either white or coloured. At Fecamp 
one, presumably the Magdalen, was in red, the other two in 
white 2 . The thuribles which, as already pointed out, they 
carried, were sometimes replaced by boxes or vases represent- 
ing the ointment and spices 3 . Sometimes also they carried, 
or had carried before them, candles. Two or three rubrics 
direct them to go pedetemptim, as sad or searching *. They 
were generally three in number, occasionally two, or one only. 
The angels, or angel, as the case might be, sat within the 
sepulchre or at its door. They, too, had vestments, generally 
white, and veiled or crowned heads. At Narbonne, and 
probably elsewhere, they had wings 5 . They held lights, 
a palm, or an ear of corn, symbolizing the Resurrection 6 . The 
apostles are rarely described ; the ordinary priestly robes 
doubtless sufficed. At Dublin, St. John, in white, held a palm, 
and St. Peter, in red, the keys 7 . In the earliest Prague version 
of the Christ scene, the Christ seems to be represented by one 
of the angels 8 . At Nuremberg the dominica persona has 
a crown and bare feet 9 . At Rouen he holds a cross, and 

1 Lange, 24, 51, 64 'coopertis mam manu tenens, in capite fanu- 
capitibus' (Tours, fifteenth century), lumlargumhabens'(Toul, thirteenth 
' capita humeralibus velata ' (Rhei- century), ' tenens spicam in manu ' 
nauVamictibus in capitibus eorum ' ( Rouen, fifteenth century), * tenens 
(Narbonne, 1 1400). palmam in manu et habens coronam 

2 Lange, 36 (fourteenth century), in capite' (Mont St-Michel, four- 

8 Ibid. 27, 36, 53, 64, &c. ; Ap- teenth century), ' vestitus alba 
pendix R. deaurata, mitra tectus caput etsi 

4 Lange, 51, 160; cf. Cone. Re- deinfulatus, palmam in sinistra, 

gularis (Appendix O). ramum candelarum plenum tenens 

Lange, 04 'induti albis et amict- in manu dextra ' (Fleury, thirteenth 

ibus cum stolis violatis et sindone century), 

rubea in facie eorum et alls in 7 Appendix R. 

humeris ' (Narbonne, 1 1400). * Lange, 147. 

9 Lange, 40, 155, 158, 162 'pal- ' Ibid. 143 'quae sit vestita 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 35 

though there is a double appearance, there is no hint of any 
change of costume l . But at Coutances and Fleuiy the first 
appearance is as hortulanus, indicated perhaps by a spade, 
which is exchanged on the second for the cross a . 

It must be borne in mind that the Quern quaeritis remained 
imperfectly detached from the liturgy, out of which it arose. 
The performers were priests, or nuns, and choir-boys. The 
play was always chanted, not spoken 8 . It was not even com- 
pletely resolved into dialogue. In many quite late versions 
narrative anthems giving the gist of each scene are retained, 
and are sung either by the principal actors or by the choir, 
which thus, as in the hymns or proses which occur as over- 
tures 4 , holds a position distinct from the part which it takes 
as representing the disciples 5 . Finally the whole performance 
ends in most cases with the Te Deum laudamus, and thus 
becomes a constituent part of Matins, which normally comes 
to a close with that hymn. The intervention of the congrega- 
tion, with its Easter hymn Christ ist erstanden, seems to lie 
outside the main period of the evolution of the Quern quaeritis. 
I only find one example so early as the thirteenth century 

dalmatica casulamque complicatam perhaps throw light on the relation 

super humeros habeat ; coronamque of the versions to each other. I am 

capiti superimpositam, nudis pedi- sorry that it is beyond my powers': 

bus.' moreover Lange does not give the 

1 Lange, 156 'albatus cum stola, notation ; Coussemaker gives it for 

tenens crucem.' half a dozen versions. 

* Ibid. 159, 164 c in habitu 4 For such overtures cf. Lange, 

ortplani ... redeat, indutus capa 36,62,64; Milchsack, 37, 38,40. On 

serica vel pallio serico, tenens era- the doubtful use of the Gloriosi et 

cem ' (Coutances) ; * praeparatus in famosi at Einsiedeln, cf. p. 4. 

similitudinem hortolani ... is, 6 In the Prague versions (Lange, 

qui ante fuit hortulanus, in simili- 151). The choir, or rather 'con- 

tudinem domini veniat, dalmati- ventus/ introduces the scenes with 

catus Candida dalmatica, Candida the three following anthems: (i) 

infula infulatus, phylacteria pretiosa ' Maria Magdalen a et alia Maria 

in capite, crucem cum labaro in ferebant diluculo aromata, dominum 

dextra, textum auro paratorium in querentes in monumento, 7 (ii)' Maria 

sinistra habens' (Fleury). The stabat ad monumentum foris 

labarum is the banner of Constan- plorans ; dum ergo fleret, inclinavit 

tine with the Chi-Ro monogram se et prospexit in monumentum,* 

(cf. Gibbon-Bury, if. 567) : but the (iii) * Currebant duo simul et ille 

banner usually attached to the cross alius discipulus praecucurrit cicius 

in mediaeval pictures of the Resur- petro et venit prior ad monumen- 

rection itself bears simply a large turn.' 

cross ; cf. Pearson, ii. 310. 4 Lange, 146 (Nuremberg) ; for 

9 A study of the music might later examples cf. Lange, 99 sqq. 

D 3 



36 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

It is in quite late texts also that certain otfrer Easter motives 
have become attached to the play. The commonest of these 
are the whispered greeting of Surrexit Ckristus and the kiss 
of peace, which have been noted elsewhere as preceding 
Matins 1 . At Eichstadt, in 1560, is an amusing direction, 
which Mr. Collins would have thought very proper, that the 
pax is to be given to the dominus terrae, si ibi fuerit> before 
the priest The same manuscript shows a curious combina- 
tion of the Quern guaeritis with the irrepressible Tottite portas 
ceremony 2 . Another such is found at Venice 8 . But this is 
as late as the eighteenth century, to which also belongs the 
practice at Angers described by De Moleon, according to 
which the Maries took up from the sepulchre with the linteum 
two large Easter eggs deux ceufs d'autruche 4 . 

Besides the Quern quaeritis, Easter week had another 
liturgical drama in the Peregrini or Peregrinus*. This 
was established by the twelfth century. It was regularly 
played at Lichfield 6 , but no text is extant from England, 
except a late transitional one, written partly in the ver- 
nacular 7 . France affords four texts, from Saintes 8 , Rouen 9 , 

The hymn generally comes just 6 Lichfield Statutes of Hugh de 
before the Te Denm. A fourteenth- Nonant, 1 188-98 (Lincoln Statutes^ 
century Bohemian version from ii. 15, 23) 'Item in nocte Natalis 
Prague (Lange, 131) has a similar representacio pastorum fieri con- 
Bohemian hymn * Buoh wssemoh- suevit et in diluculp Pasche repre- 
uczy.' At Bambergin 1597 'potest sentacio Resurreccionis domimcae 
chorus populo iterum praecjnere et representacio peregrinorum die 
cantilenas pascales Germanicas ' lune in septimana Pasche sicut in 
(Lange, 95). At Rheinau in 1573 libris super hijs ac alijs compositis 
it is suggested that the Quern quae- continetur . . . De officio succentoris 
ritis itself may as an alternative be . . . et providere debet quod repre- 
sung in German (Lange, 68) ( hisce sentacio pastorum in nocte Natalis 
aut German icis versibus cantatis.' domini et miraculorum in nocte 
At Aquileja in 1495 * Populus Pasche et die lune in Pascha con- 




?cole des 

Ymnum suum : Te Deum ' (Lange, *Chartes, xxxiv. 314, from B. N. Lot. 

67). t 16,309 (thirteenth-century Saintes 

1 Lange, *39, 119, 122, 124; cf. Breviary), begins 'Quando fiunt 

Martene, iii. 171. Peregrini, non dicitur prosa, sed 

3 Lange, 41. peregrini deforis veniunt canendo 
* Z.f.d. A. xli. 77. ista* ; ends with Magnificat and 

4 Lange, 39. Oratio, l Deus qui sollempnitate 

5 Creizenach, i. 56; JullevilJe, i. paschali/ 

67. ' Text in Gastd, 65 ; Du M6ril, 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 87 

Beauvais \ and Fleury M . The play is also recorded at Lille 
In Germany it is represented by a recently-discovered frag- 
ment of the famous early thirteenth-century repertory of the 
scholar es vagantes from the Benedictbeuern monastery 4 . 
The simplest version is that of Saintes, in which the action 
is confined to the journey to Emmaus and the supper there. 
The Rouen play is on the same lines, but at the close the 
disciples are joined by St Mary Magdalen, and the Victimae 
paschali is sung. The Benedictbeuern play similarly ends 
with the introduction of the Virgin and two other Maries to 
greet the risen Christ. But here, and in the Beauvais and 
Fleury plays, a distinct scene is added, of which the subject is 
the incredulity of Thomas and the apparition to him. It 
is, I think, a reasonable conjecture that the Peregrini^ in 
which the risen Christ is a character, was not devised until 
he had already been introduced into the later versions of the 
Quern quaeritis. Indeed the Fleury Peregrini>vt\fa its double 
appearance and change of costume for Christ, seems clearly 
modelled on the Fleury Quern quaeritis. But the lesser play 
has its own proper and natural place in the Easter week 
services. It is attached to the Processio ad fontes which is 
a regular portion, during that season, of Vespers 5 . The Christ 
with the Resurrection cross is personated by the priest who 

1 1 7, from Rouen Ordtnarium (four- Orleans MS. 178 (thirteenth cen- 

teenth century), begins ' Officium tury), begins ' Ad faciendam simili- 

Peregrinorum debet hie fieri hoc tudinem dominicae apparitionis in 

modo ' ; ends ' Et processio, factis specie Peregrini, quae fit in tertia 

memoriis, redeat in choro et ibi feria Paschae ad Vesperas ' ; ends 

finiantur vesperae.' Gast, 68, * Salve, festa dies.' 

quotes an order of 1452 'Domini * E. Hautcceur, Documents litur* 

capitulantes concluserunt quod in giquesde Lille, $$,tomOrdinarium 

isfcs festis Paschae fiat misterium of thirteenth century, ' Feria ii. . . . 

representans resurrectionem Christ! in vesperis . . . post collectam fit 

et apparitionem eius suis discipulis, representatio perejpnorum. Qua 

eundo apud castrum de Emaux, facta cantatur Christus resurgens, 

amotis et cessantibus indecenciis.' et itur in chorum/ 

1 Text in G. Desjardins, Hist, de * W. Meyvr $ Fragmenta Burana, 

la Cath. de Beauvais (1865), 115, 131, with text and facsimile. The 

269, begins ' Ordo ad suscipiendum play begins ' Incipit exemplum 

peregnnum in secunda feria Paschae apparicionis domini discipulis suis 

ad vesperas ' ; ends with Oratio de (mxta) castellum Emaus, ubi illis 

Resurrectione. Meyer, 133, de- apparuit in more peregrin!,' &c 

scribes the MS. as of the first half * Use of Sarum> i. 157 ; Sarum 

of the twelfth century. Breviary \ i. dcccxxix. 

1 Text in Du Mfril, 120, from 



88 RELIGIOUS DRAMA 

normally accompanies the procession cum cruce. At Rouen 
the play was a kind of dramatization of the procession itself 1 ; 
at Lille it seems to have had the same position ; at Saintes 
and Beauvais it preceded the Magnificat and Oratio or Collecta, 
after which the procession started. In the remaining cases 
there is no indication of the exact time for the Peregrini. 
The regular day for it appears to have been the Monday in 
Easter week, of the Gospel for which the journey to Emmaus 
is the subject ; but at Fleury it was on the Tuesday, when 
the Gospel subject is the incredulity of Thomas. At Saintes, 
a curious rubric directs the Christ during the supper at 
Emmaus to divide the * host' among the Peregrini. It seems 
possible that in this way a final disposal was found for the 
host which had previously figured in the Depositio and Elevatio 
of the sepulchre ceremony, 

A long play, probably of Norman origin and now preserved 
in a manuscript at Tours, represents a merging of the Elevatio >, 
the Quern quaeritis, and the Peregrini*. The beginning is 
imperfect, but it may be conjectured from a fragment belonging 
to Klosterneuburg in Germany, that only a few lines are 
lost 3 . Pilate sets a watch before the sepulchre. An angel 
sends lightning, and the soldiers fall as if dead 4 . Then come 
the Maries, with planctus. There is a scene with the un- 
guentarius or mercator^ much longer than that at Prague, 
followed by more planctus. After the Quern quaeritis, the 
soldiers announce the event to Pilate, A planctus by the 

1 The Peregrini start ' a vestiario also contains the * Ordo representa- 

. . . per dextram alam ecclesiae cionis Adae/ and is not native to 

usque ad portas occidentals, et Tours, cf, p. 71. 

subsistentes in capite processionis.' 8 Milchsack, 105 ; Creizenach, i, 

Then the Sacerdos, ' nudus pedes, 90. The beginning and end of the 

ferens crucem super dextrum Klosterneuburg play were printed 

humerum ' comes * per dextram from a thirteenth-century MS., now 

alam ecclesiae' to meet them, lost, by B. Fez, Thesaurus novus 

They lead him ' usque ad taberna- Anecd. ii, i. liii. It began * Prime 

culum, in piedio navis ecclesiae, in producaturPilatuscumresponsorio: 

similitudinem castelli Emaux prae- Ingressus Pilatusj and ended with 

paratum.' * Christ, der ist erstanden'; cf. 

1 Text in Milchsack, 97 ; Cousse- Meyer, 126. 

maker, 21, from Tours MS. 927 4 ' Modo veniat angelus et iniciat 

(twelfth or thirteenth century) ; cf. eis fulgura ; milites cadunt in ter- 

Creizenach, i. 88 ; Julleville, i. 62 ; ram velut mortui.' 
Meyer, 95 ; and on the MS. which 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 89 

Magdalen leads up to the apparition to her. The Maries 
return to the disciples. Christ appears to the disciples, then 
to Thomas, and the Victimae paschali and Te Deum conclude 
the performance. A fragment of a very similar play, breaking 
off before the Quern quaeritis, belongs to the Benedictbeuern 
manuscript already mentioned l . 

It is clear from the rubrics that the Tours play, long as 
it is, was still acted in church, and probably, as the Te Deum 
suggests, at the Easter Matins f . Certainly this waa the case 
with the Benedictbeuern play. In a sense, these plays only 
mark a further stage in the process of elaboration by which 
the fuller versions of the Quern quaeritis proper came into 
being. But the introduction at the beginning and end of 
motives outside the events of the Easter morning itself points 
to possibilities of expansion which were presently realized, 
and which ultimately transformed the whole character of the 
liturgical drama. All the plays, however, which have so far 
been mentioned, are strictly plays of the Resurrection. Their 
action begins after the Burial of Christ, and does not stretch 
back into the events of the Passion. Nor indeed can the 
liturgical drama proper be shown to have advanced beyond 
a very rudimentary representation of the Passion. This began 
with the planctus, akin to those of the Quern quaeritis, which 
express the sorrows of the Virgin and the Maries and St. John 
around the cross 8 . Such planctus exist both in Latin and 

1 Meyer, 97, 125, with text and crum praedicti milites, procidant 

facsimile, ' Incipit ludus immo ex- quasi mortui, nee surgant donee 

einplum Dominice resurrection is.' incipiatur Te Deum , . . . &c. J There 

The episode of the Resurrection is no actual appearance of the 

with the dismay of the soldiers is Rising Christ in any of these three 

found not only in the Tours and plays as originally written. But a 

Benedictbeuern MS., but also in the later hand has inserted in the Bene- 

simpler Coutances Quern quaeritis. dictbeuern MS. directions for the 

Lange, 157, omits this passage, but Christ to appear, discourse with the 

Gastl, 63, gives it; 'Si Mariae angels, and put on the 'vestem 

debeant representarig finito respon- ortulani. 1 

sorio quatuor cleria armati acce- * Creizenach thinks the play (like 

dentes ad sepukrum Domini pannis Adam) was outside the church, 

sericis decenter ornatum et secum because the Maries appear ' ante 

dicant personagia sua. Quo facto, ostium ecclesiae.' But 'ante 9 may 

duo pueri induti roquetis veniant be inside. Mary Magdalen at one 

ad monumentum ferentes duas point is ' in sinistra parte ecclesiae 

virgas decorticatas in quibus sunt stans,' and most of the action is 

decem candelae ardentes ; et statim round the sepulchrum. 

cum appropinquaverint ad sepul- * E. Wechssler, Die romani* 



40 



RELIGIOUS DRAMA 



the vernacular. The earliest are of the twelfth century. 
Several of them are in dialogue, in which Christ himself 
occasionally takes part, and they appear to have been sung 
in church after Matins on Good Friday *. The planctus must 
be regarded as the starting-point of a drama of the Passion, 
which presently established itself beside the drama of the 
Resurrection. This process was mainly outside the churches, 
but an early and perhaps still liturgical stage of it is to be 
seen in the Itidus breviter de passione which precedes the 
elaborated Quern quaeritis of the Benedictbeuern manuscript, 
and was probably treated as a sort of prologue to it. The 
action extends from the preparation for the Last Supper to 
the Burial. It is mainly in dumb-show, and the slight 
dialogue introduced is wholly out of the Vulgate. But at 
one point occurs the rubric Maria planctum faciat quantum 
melius potesty and a later hand has inserted out of its place in 
the text the most famous of all the laments of the Virgin, the 
Planctus ante nescia 2 . 



schen Marienklagen (1893) ; A. 
Schonbach, Die Marienklagen 
(1873) ; cf. Creizenach, i. 241 ; 
Julleville, i. 58 ; Sepet, 23 ; Milch- 
sack, 92 ; Coussemaker, 285, 346 ; 
Meyer, 67 ; Pearson, ii. 384. 

1 A planctus ascribed to Bona- 
ventura (thirteenth century) has the 
titles * Officium de compassione 
Mariae' (Wechssler, 14), and 
' Officium sanctae crucis' (Bibl.de 
ffccoledes Chartes^ xxxiv. 315). An- 
other, the 'Surgit Christus cum 
trophaeo,' is headed in thirteenth- 
ana fourteenth - century MSS. 
' Sequentia devota antiquorum no- 
strorum de resurrectionis argu- 
mentis. Sanctarum virginum 
Mariae ac Mariae Magdalene de 
compassione mortis Christi per 
modum dyalogi sequential The 
chorus begins, and ' tres bene voci- 
ferati schol&res respondent' (text 
in Milchsack, 92 ; cf. Wechssler, 
14). A third, ' 6 fratres et sorores,' 
is headed 'Hie incipit planctus 
Mariae et aliorum in die Parasceves* 
(text from fourteenth-century Civi- 
dale MS. in Coussemaker, 285 ; 
Julleville, i. 58 ; cf. Wechssler, 17). 



Ducange, s. v. Planctus, quotes a 
(thirteenth-century)Toulouse rubric, 
' planctum beatissimae Virginis 
Mariae, qui dicitur a duobus 
puerulis post Matutinum et debent 
esse monachi, si possunt reperiri 
ad hoc apti.' This planctus was 
sung from the * cathedra praedica- 
torii.' On the use of vernacular 
Italian planctus by the laudesi in 
churches through Lent, cf. Wechs- 
sler, 30. The vernacular German 
'ludus passionis* printed by O. 
Schonemann, Der Sundenfall und 
Marienklage (1855), 129, from a 
Wolfenbiittel fifteenth- century, MS., 
seems to have still been meant for 
liturgical use, as it has the rubric 
'debet cantari post crux fidelis et 
sic finiri usque ad vesperam lamen- 
tabiliter cum caeteris sicut con- 
suetum est fieri.' It incorporates 
the Depositio. 



122, with text and facsimile. The 
piece ends 'et ita inchoatur ludus 
de resurrectione. Pontifices : O 
domine recte meminimusj which 
is the opening of the Easter play 
already ? ^ 



CHAPTER XIX 
LITURGICAL PLAYS (continued) 

THE * Twelve days ' of the Christmas season are no less 
important than Easter itself in the evolution of the liturgical 
drama. I have mentioned in the last chapter a Christmas 
trope which is evidently based upon the older Easter dialogue. 
Instead of Quern quaeritis in sepulchre, o Christicolae ? it 
begins Quern quaeritis in praesepe, pas tores, dicitef It occurs 
in eleventh- and twelfth -century tropers from St. Gall, 
Limoges, St. Magloire, and Nevers. Originally it was an 
Introit trope for the third or c great ' Mass. In a fifteenth- 
century breviary from Clermont-Ferrand it has been trans- 
ferred to Matins, where it follows the Te Deum ; and this is 
precisely the place in the Christmas services occupied, at 
Rouen, by a liturgical drama known as the Ojficium Pastorum^ 
which appears to have grown out of the Quem quaeritis in 
praesepe ? by a process analogous to that by which the Easter 
drama grew out of the Quem quaeritis in sepulchro l ? A 
praesepe or c crib/ covered by a curtain, was made ready 
behind the altar, and in it was placed an image of the Virgin. 
After the Te Deum five canons or vicars, representing the 
shepherds, approached the great west door of the choir. 
A boy in similitttdinem angeli perched in excelso sang them 
the * good tidings/ and a number of others in voltis ecclesiae 
took up the Gloria in excelsis. The shepherds, singing a hymn, 
advanced to the praesepe. Here they were met with the 
Quem quaeritis by two priests quasi obstetrices*. The dia- 

1 Printed by Du M&U, 147; 904); it is also in B. N. Lat. 1213 

Gastl, 25 ; Davidson, 173, from (fifteenth century) and Bibl. Maza- 

Rouen Ordinaria (Rouen MSS. rin. 216 (Du M&il, 148). 

Y. 108 of fifteenth century, Y. 1 10 * The * obstetrices ' figure in the 

of fourteenth century); Cousse- ProtevangeliumIacobi,Mi.i%$ so far as this could be ensured by the 
chapter, took the whole ' service ' of the day, just as did the 
deacons, priests, and choir-boys during the triduum 2 . 

If the central point of the Quern quaeritis is the sepukhrum^ 
that of the Pastores is the praesepe. In either case the drama, 
properly so called, is an addition, and by no means an invari- 
able one, to the symbolical ceremony. The Pastores may, in 
fact, be described, although the term does not occur in the 
documents, as a Visitatio praesepis. The history of the 
praesepe can be more definitely stated than that of the sepul- 
chrum. It is by no means extinct. The Christmas c crib ' or 
crhhe, a more or less realistic representation of the Nativity, 
with a Christ-child in the manger, a Joseph and Mary, and 
very often an ox and an ass, is a common feature in all 
Catholic countries at Christmas time 3 . At Rome, in par- 
ticular, the esposizione del santo bambino takes place with 
great ceremony 4 . A tradition ascribes the first presepio 
known in Italy to St. Francis, who is said to have invented it 
at Greccio in 1233*. But this is a mistake. The custom is 

gelium, ch. 13 (Tischendorf, 77). &c. Et ipsi responderunt : Natum 

In the latter they are named Salome vidimus' 

and Zelomi. * Gast, 33. 

1 Gastg, 31 ' Archiepiscopus, * Tille,Z>. ^.309; Pollard, xiii ; 

vel alias sacerdos versus ad Pasto- Durandus-Barth&emy, iii. 411 ; 

res dicat: Quern vidistis, pastores > E. Martinengo-Cesaresco, Puer 

dicitej annunciate nobis in terris Parvulus in Contemporary Review > 

quis apparuit. Pastores respon- Ixxvii (1900), 117; W.H.D. Rouse, 

deant : Natum vidimus et choros in F. L. v. 6 ; J. Feller, Le Beth- 

aneelorum collaudantes Dominum. Mem Vervittois, 10. I find a modern 

Alleluia, alleluia^ et totam anti- English example described in a 

phonam finiant': cf. Meyer, 39; letterof 1878 written by Mr.Coventry 

Sarum Breviary, clxxxviii ; Mar- Pat more's son Henry from a Catholic 

tene, iil 36; Durandus, yi. 13, 16 school at \3sh&9t(Li/eofC.Patmore 9 

'inlaudibus matutinis quasi choream i. 308). 

ducimus, unde in prima antiphona 4 Malleson-Tuker, ii. 212. 

dicimus ; Quern wdistis, pastores t 5 P. Sabatier, Life of St. Francis 



LITURGICAL PLAYS 48 

many centuries older than St. Francis. Its Roman home 
is the church of S. Maria Maggiore or Ad Praescpe, otherwise 
called the 'basilica of Liberius.' Here there was in the 
eighth century a permanent praesepe *, probably built in imi- 
tation of one which had long existed at Bethlehem, and to 
which an allusion is traced in the writings of Origen 2 . The 
praesepe of S. Maria Maggiore was in the right aisle. When 
the Sistine chapel was built in 1585-90 it was moved to the 
crypt, where it may now be seen. This church became an 
important station for the Papal services at Christmas. The 
Pope celebrated Mass here on the vigil, and remained until 
he had also celebrated the first Mass on Christmas morning. 
The bread was broken on the manger itself, which served as 
an altar. At S. Maria Maggiore, moreover, is an important 
relic, in some boards from the culla or cradle of Christ, which 
are exposed on thtpresepio during Christmas 3 . Thepresepio 
of S. Maria Maggiore became demonstrably the model for 
other similar chapels in Rome 4 , and doubtless for the more 
temporary structures throughout Italy and western Europe 
in general. 

In the present state of our knowledge it is a little difficult 
to be precise as to the range or date of the Pastores. The 
only full mediaeval Latin text, other than that of Rouen, 
which has come to light, is also of Norman origin, and is sti