THE MEDIAEVAL STAGE

BY E. K. CHAMBERS.

VOL. II

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS M.CMIII

[ii]

Impression of 1925

First Edition 1903

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. 1.

[iii]

BOOK III RELIGIOUS DRAMA

[1]

CHAPTER XVIII LITURGICAL PLAYS

[Bibliographical Note.—The liturgical drama is fully treated by W. Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas (vol. i, 1893), Bk. 2; L. Petit de Julleville, Les Mystères (1880), vol. i. ch. 2; A. d’Ancona, Origini del Teatro Italiano (2nd ed. 1891), Bk. 1, chh. 3-6; M. Sepet, Origines catholiques du Théâtre 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. 1 deals very slightly with the subject. A good popular account is M. Sepet, Le Drame chrétien au Moyen Âge (1878). Of older works, the introduction to E. Du Méril’s Origines latines du Théâtre moderne (1849, facsimile reprint, 1896) is the best. The material collected for vol. ii of C. Magnin’s Origines du Théâtre is only available in the form of reviews in the Journal des Savants (1846-7), and lecture notes in the Journal général

de l’Instruction publique (1834-6). Articles by F. Clément, L. Deschamps de Pas, A. de la Fons-Melicocq, and others in A. N. Didron’s Annales archéologiques (1844-72) are worth consulting; those of F. Clément are reproduced in his Histoire de la Musique religieuse (1860). There are also some notices in J. de Douhet, Dictionnaire des Mystères (1854).—The texts of the Quem 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 Méril already named: others are T. Wright, Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems (1838); E. de Coussemaker, Drames liturgiques du Moyen Âge (1860), which is valuable as giving the music as well as the words; and A. Gasté, Les Drames liturgiques de la Cathédrale de Rouen (1893). A few, including the important Antichristus, are given by R. Froning, Das Drama des Mittelalters (1891). The original sources

are in most cases the ordinary service-books. But a twelfth-century manuscript from St. Martial of Limoges (Bibl. Nat. Lat. 1139) has four plays, a Quem quaeritis, a Rachel, a Prophetae, and the Sponsus. Facsimiles are in E. de Coussemaker, Histoire de l’Harmonie au Moyen Âge (1852). A thirteenth-century manuscript from Fleury (Orleans MS. 178) has no less than ten, a Quem quaeritis, a Peregrini, a Stella in two parts, a Conversio Pauli, 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, 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

[2]Poésie liturgique au Moyen Âge, vol. i (all published, 1886), and W. H. Frere, The Winchester Troper (1894). I have not been able to see A. Reiners, Die Tropen-, Prosen- und Präfations-Gesänge 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. Schönbach, Die Marienklagen (1874), and E. Wechssler, Die romanischen Marienklagen (1893). W. Köppen, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Weihnachtsspiele (1893), and M. Sepet, Les Prophètes 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 for English 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 [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 themselves. 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 object 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[1]. 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 [4]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 principle 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[3]. 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 gloriae. From within comes the question Quis est iste rex gloriae? and the reply is given Dominus virtutum ipse est 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 churchyard or close bearing palms, or in their place sprigs of yew, box, or withies, which the priest had previously blessed⁠[4]. [5]The introduction of a Palmesel might make the ceremony more dramatic still⁠[5]. Some of the texts used were of a prophetic character, and the singer of these was occasionally dressed as a prophet⁠[6]. At the doors of the church the procession was greeted by boys stationed upon the roof of the

porch, and certain French uses transferred to the occasion the dedication solemnity of Tollite portas just described⁠[7]. The reading of the gospel narratives of the Passion, which on Palm Sunday, on the Monday or Tuesday, and the Wednesday 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[8]. 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[9]. On Good Friday the [6]words Partiti sunt vestimenta were a signal for a similar bit of by-play with a linen cloth which lay upon the altar⁠[10]: Maundy Thursday had its commemorative ceremony of the washing of feet⁠[11]; while the Tenebrae 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[12].

These, and many other fragments of ceremonial, have the potentiality of dramatic development. Symbolism, mimetic action, are there. The other important factor, of dialogued speech, is latent in the practice of antiphonal singing. The characteristic 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[13]. 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[14]. [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[15]. 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[16]. Naturally ecclesiastical music did not escape the influence of this movement. 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 beginnings

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[17]. Obviously the next stage was to write texts, called generically ‘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, [8]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 collections 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 Antiphonarium, the Graduale. 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 Graduale 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[18].

Several Introit tropes take a dialogue form. The following is a ninth-century Christmas example ascribed to Tutilo of St. Gall⁠[19].

‘Hodie cantandus est nobis puer, quem gignebat ineffabiliter ante tempora pater, et eundem sub tempore generavit inclyta mater. [9] Int[errogatio]. quis est iste puer quem tam magnis praeconiis dignum vociferatis? dicite nobis ut collaudatores esse possimus. Resp[onsio]. hic enim est quem 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[20]. It is an example of some half a dozen dialogued Introit tropes, which might have, but did not, become the starting-point for further dramatic evolution⁠[21]. Much more significant is another trope of unknown authorship found in the same St. Gall manuscript⁠[22]. This is for Easter, and is briefly known as the Quem 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[23].

This is the earliest and simplest form of the Quem quaeritis. [10]It recurs, almost unaltered, in a tenth-century troper from St. Martial of Limoges⁠[25]. In eleventh-century tropers of the same church it is a little more elaborate⁠[26].

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:

As M. Gautier puts it, the trope is troped⁠[27].

In the Easter Quem 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[28].

[11]

‘In Natale Domini ad Missam sint parati duo diaconi induti dalmaticis, retro altare dicentes Quem quaeritis in praesepe, pastores, dicite? Respondeant duo cantores in choro salvatorem Christum Dominum, infantem pannis involutum, secundum sermonem angelicum. Item diaconi adest hic parvulus cum Maria, matre sua, de qua, vaticinando, Isaias Propheta: ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium. et nuntiantes dicite quia natus est. Tunc 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[29].

I return now to the Easter Quem 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 [12]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[30], and of the church of St. Martin of Tours in the fifteenth⁠[31]. Even in the seventeenth century the Quem quaeritis still appears in a Paris manuscript as a ‘tropus⁠[32],’ and Martene records a practice similar to that of Monte Cassino and St. Denys as surviving at Rheims in his day⁠[33].

But in many tropers, and in most of the later service-books in which it is found, the Quem quaeritis no longer 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[34]. I reproduce the earlier of these from the Bodleian manuscript used by him⁠[35].

[13]

‘Angelica de Christi Resurrectione. Quem quaeritis in sepulchro, Christicolae? Sanctarum mulierum responsio. Ihesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o caelicola! Angelicae voces consolatus. non est hic, surrexit sicut praedixerat, ite, nuntiate quia surrexit, dicentes: Sanctarum mulierum ad omnem clerum modulatio: alleluia! 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 sepulchro, 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, somewhat later Cambridge manuscript, probably of the early eleventh century, the Holy Saturday ceremonies have disappeared, but the Quem quaeritis still precedes and does not follow the regular Easter tropes, which are headed Tropi in die Christi Resurrectionis⁠[36]. The precise position which the [14]Quem 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 Concordia 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