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Theological And Dramatic Concepts Of The End Of Man In The Middle Ages

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Theological And Dramatic Concepts Of The End Of Man In The Middle Ages

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Content This d issertation has been m icrofilm ed exactly as received 65-12, 261 KELLY, G enevieve Ruth, 1 9 2 7 - THEOLOGICAL AND DRAMATIC CONCEPTS OF THE END OF MAN IN THE MIDDLE AGES. U niversity of Southern California, Ph. D ., 1965 University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright hy GENEVIEVE RUTH KELLY 1965 THEOLOGICAL AND DRAMATIC CONCEITS OF THE END'OF MAN IN THE MIDDLE AGES V ? , o - V Genevieve f , Kelly A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Comparative Literature) June 1965 UNIVERSITY O F SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA TH E G RA DUATE SC H O O L U N IV ER SIT Y PA RK L O S A N G E L E S, C A L IFO R N IA 9 0 0 0 7 This dissertation, written by been presented to and accepted by the Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of D O C T O R , O F P H I L O S O P H Y Date..... GENEVIEVE RUTH KELLY under the direction of h Dissertation Com mittee, and approved by all its members, has Dean Chair, \ ) c ~ o M ~ £ G'LidtA A**,*/ r, JZ(QoOCCl-ct A/r $ ' INTRODUCTION CONTENTS Page 3 PART I. THEOLOGICAL APPROACHES Chapter I. GODLIKENESS.............................................. l8 II. UNION WITH GOD............................................ Q III. THE BEATIFIC VISION:, THE ENJOYMENT OF KNOWLEDGE ...... 53 IV. ATTEMPTS AT SYNTHESIS..............'.................... 8l PART II. THE DRAMATIC MATERIALS V. EASTER PLAYS............................................. 119 VI. CHRISTMAS PLAYS................................" .... 1^5 VII. PLAYS FOR OTHER SEASONS * . l6l VIII. PASSIONS IN FRANCE.................................. . . l8j IX. PASSIONS IN GERMANY................................ 230 X. OTHER EUROPEAN PASSIONS................................. 263 XI. CYCLES................................................... 275 CONCLUSION . ...................................................318 BIBLIOGRAPHY.....................................................33^ ix INTRODUCTION Q. What is the chief end of man? A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. The first article of the Shorter Catechism, one of the most familiar Puritan contributions to modern Christianity, would have rung strangely on medieval* ears; indeed, it is doubtful whether the early Church could have satisfied a Reformation catechist. Yet the question of man's "chief end" received the devoted attention of the Church's best minds and pervaded their thought from the second century on. At the same time the nature of man's end never became, except on its mystical fringes, the subject of major controversy; the field for speculation was never fenced off by dogmatic formulae and remained open to many-sided conjecture throughout the middle ages and beyond. A stirring variety of opinions and approaches might therefore be ex pected. Whether the doctrinal influences, varied or not, extended to the laity remains open to question. Did the theologians achieve their purpose of cultivating thought and changing life? Were their careful ly reasoned hopes confined within their school and cloister walls? This study approaches the question through the religious drama. The liturgy of the Church was the cradle of the biblical dramas at least; and, even at their most developed and mercenary, the biblical cycles would, of all the plays, he most likely to retain their earlier eccle- j siastical influences. The few individual authors who can he traced j even conjecturally to specific plays were minor churchmen or at least clerks. The churchly patronage of university and even primary educa tion throughout the period supports the assumption that the anonymous ! compilers had the beginnings of a theological education. Churchmen acted in many of the cycles and appear to have directed some of them. The occasional references to the drama in guild or town records, it is true, are concerned solely with the use of the productions as tourist j attractions and business ventures; hut the mixed motives were at least ' decently veiled behind prologues or aftersermons of avowed devotional intent. The sermons still attached to some of the extant manuscripts ! suggest that preaching and drama were considered partners in the education of the laity. Indeed, as succeeding chapters should indi cate, despite scattered efforts at popular appeal to the point of sensationalism, the overall tone of the plays is reverent and didac- ; tic. From time to time the playwrights themselves make their didac tic intent clear. Eustache Mercade in his prologue to the Vengeance ’ de hostre Seigneur signifies his teaching aim; his plays are like paintings and sculpture in their educational purpose: A plusieurs gens ont moult valu | Qui n'entendent les escriptures, i Exemples, histoires, pointures, j Faictes es moustiers et palais, ! Ce sont les livres des gens lais. j En especial 1'exemplaire ! Des personnages leur doit plaire ; i Qui sont des fais de Jhesucris I Selonc que mettent les escript j 5 Et les livres de saincte eglise.-'- • Even Jean Michel, the most elaborate and subtly developed of the pas sion composers, insists that his dramatic monument has been composed pour esmouvoir les simples gens, les ignorans et negligens a sentir de Nostre Seigneur ce dont on peult estre meilleur par exhortacion vulgaire.^ The avowed didactic intent did not necessarily mean close control of the drama by the Church. The Church's reliance on the secular arm for money, staging, actors, and audience demanded that it avoid extremes of control or interpretation. To some extent, then, it should be possible to study the drama as a reflection of the Church's efforts to convey theology on a popular level. Whether the popular educational efforts of the drama included instruction on a theological level deep enough to convey the nature of man's destiny and to reflect the variety of theological speculation, or whether theoretical motivations toward the highest good were lost in the minutiae of ritual observance or the trappings of pageantry is the problem this study investigates. The larger field into which it fits is that of thematic research in the medieval drama, an area that, thanks to scholarly preoccupation with the vexing critical and histor ical problems surrounding the texts, is still largely open to study. In a much more limited way the essay may serve to develop an aspect of ^Eustache Mercade, Mystere de la Passion, ed. J.-M. Richard (Paris: Picard, 18 9^), p. xix. ^Jean Michel, Le mystere de la Passion (Angers i486), ed. Omer Jodogne (Gembloux, Belgique: Editions J. Duculot, 1959)* H* 102-106. the medieval theological scene not hitherto explored. Convenient and excellent as the numerous existing surveys of medieval drama are, they naturally do not have space for extended treatment of every motif; indeed the critical pursuit of origins, dates, authorship, influences, and the like is still preeminently at tractive. 3 Those works dealing more specifically with the theology of the medieval drama have, like Duriez^ or Prosser,^ either handled 3carl J. Stratroan, Bibliography of Medieval Drama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 195a), is the key to the drama and its historical and literary study, and lengthy citations here are there fore unnecessary. Most helpful as Background for this study were Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933)* for the Latin plays; Edmund K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903), for general European development; Hardin Craig, English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Grace Frank, The Medieval French Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 195^0, summarizing and Bringing up to date the larger and older works of Louis Petit de Julleville, Histoire du the&tre en France; les mysteres (Paris: Hachette, 1 8 8 0), and Gustave Cohe.n, Le the&tre en France au moyen ctge (Paris: Rieder, 1929“ 1931) • In the absence of a study devoted specifically to German medieval drama, Maximilian Rudwin, A Historical and Bibliographical Survey of the German Religious Drama (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 192*0, must be supplemented with the German emphasis of Wil helm Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas; Erster Band: Mittel- alter und Fruhrenaissance (2. aufl.; Halle: Max Niemeyer, 191l), and Heinz Kindermann, Theatergeschichte Europas; Band 1: Das Theater der Antike und des Mittel&lfcers (Salzburg: Otto Muller, 1997) • Alfredo Cioni, Bibliografia delle sacre rappresentazioni (Florence: Sansoni Antiquariato, 1 9 6 1), is a guide to the dramaticactivity in Italy, which is not discussed here; its disjointed character and apparently slight influence, as well as its language, placed it outside the scope of this study. ^Georges Duriez, La theologie dans le dr&me religieux en Alle- magne au moyen-^-ge ("Memoires et travaux publies par des Professeurs des Facultes catholiques de Lille," Fasc. XI; Lille: R. Girard, 191^-). ^Eleanor Prosser, Drama and Religion in the English Mystery Plays; a Re-evaluation ("Stanford Studies in Language and Literature," No. 23; Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1 9 6 1). theology generally for a single national literature or have selected a different sub-genre for comparative analysis.^ Besides comparing national dramas in a single study, this essay hazards a somewhat different method. Both Duriez and Prosser sought their theology in the popular works of devotion, pastoral work, and preaching with which they assumed the medieval playwrights would have "been most familiar. There is no point in quarreling with the method, particularly when studies of sources must remain largely conjectural. At the same time it would seem that a study of the theological roots, the philosophers and men of the schools who fed the popular sources, would not only he another method of opening up the theological milieu of the dramatists hut should he significant in bringing out concepts prohahly available to the dramatists hut left unused. A silence, too, can express an attitude. Accordingly, this search begins with the Fathers of the Church and some others whose paternity has been disputed. Ancient philosophy and the Bible, the obvious nurseries of early Christian thought, have been set £o one side. They are the sources of theology, but their medieval interpretations came by way of the Fathers. Modern critiques of the same sources, therefore, hardly appear germane. The populari zation of medieval theology in the preaching of the period is for the ^S. M. Lansdown, "The Use of Theology in the English Miracle Plays," (unpublished Master's thesis, University of Reading, 1951)> was not available for this study. Howard Rollin Patch, The Other World, according to Descriptions in Medieval Literature (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1950), deals primarily with a uni versal concept of a lost realm of innocence in the folklore back grounds which the middle ages inherited; it touches only incidentally on the drama. most part excluded here. Its development as a genre has been studied elsewhere,? and further detailed study of its dramatic influence would O overlap both Prosser and Duriez. Man in the medieval thou^t under discussion most generally refers to Christian man, the sole creature capable of communion with God. The medieval idea of end included elements of purpose and final cause. As the theologians discovered that the purpose for which man was created involved immortality and a supernatural exist ence, their discussions of purpose flowed into considerations of es- ?Gerald Robert Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval Eng land (2d rev. ed.; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1 9 6 1); J. W. Blench, Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Dames and Noble, 1 9 8*!-). The exceptional case is the preaching of Meister Eckhart and others of the mystics. Their ser mons cannot strictly be considered as popularizations of a tradition; not only were they somewhat outside the contemporary stream, they were vehicles for flow of thought and only incidentally popular. ^Volumes useful in the search for teleological references were Sydney Cave, The Christian Estimate of Man (London: Duckworth, ISk-k); Karl Hagenbach, A Text-Book of the History of Doctrines (New York: Sheldon, 186* 1 - , 1 8 6 2); Arthur C. McGiffert, A History of Christian Thought (New York: Scribner, 1933)J J* L. Neve, A History of Christian Thought (Philadelphia: United Lutheran Publication House, 19*1-3“ 19*1-6); Reinhold Seeberg, Text-Book of the History of Doctrines, trans. Charles E. Hay (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1952); H. B. Workman, Christian Thought to the Reformation (New York: Scribners, 1911); Frederick C. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Vol. II: Mediaeval Philosophy (rev. ed.; London: Bums, Oates, & Washbourne, 1952); Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: Random House, 1955); Johann Eduard Erdmann, A History of Philosophy, trans. Williston S. Hough (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1890-1 8 9 2); Frederick Denison Maurice, Mediaeval Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1 8 7 0); Friedrich Ueberwag, A History of Philosophy, from Thales to the Present Time, trans. George S. Morris, with additions by Noah Porter (*l-th ed.; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1 8 8 5); M. de Wulf, History of Medieval Philosophy, trans. E. C. Messenger (New York: Longmans, 1925-1926); Kenneth Escott Kirk, The Vision of God, the Christian Doctrine of the Summum Bonum (The Bampton Lectures for 1 9 2 8; London: Longmans, Green, 1931)* chatology. End "became chronological, the culmination of purpose. Related questions of evil and evil-doers, their origins and end, have .; I "been glanced at only incidentally. Such a casual attitude seems to ; reflect the medieval viewpoint. The damned were an unfortunate "by product of a divine plan for the good. The impression of greater em- ■ phasis sometimes produced "by the dramatists seems to have resulted more from the search for theatrical effect than from any conviction as to the centrality of the doctrine. The shifts of thought relating to man as the image of God have "been considered only when they are intimately connected with an authority's ideas of end. References to the minutiae of the "blessed state— mansions, crowns, thrones, aureoles, and the like— have also "been sidestepped. Once the theological traditions of man and his end have "been chronicled and cataloged, it is possible to survey the drama for the uses its craftsmen made of the tools at their disposal. Only an ac quaintance with the totality of the continental production, not merely with the English mysteries alone, can lead to an appreciation for the incredible variety of thought and emphasis achieved by the medieval dramatists in the interpretation of the same basic materials. Thus the plays must be surveyed as wholes in order to sense not only the ■ • ’ I connotations of specific phrases but the total thrust of the dramatic ; arrangement. The extant Latin and vernacular mysteries of England, I Prance, and Germany, together with productions from their related i j dialect areas, are, accordingly, summarized and studied by their j forms. The dramatic elaboration of the plays cannot be equated with ; I their chronological development. Both simple and complex plays may be | 10 found throughout the period. Nevertheless, the convenience of com paring theological treatments of similar subjects outweighs the dan gers of oversimplification. Thus chapters are devoted to the Easter plays, the Nativity plays, other occasional plays, the passions, and the full-scale cycles. Excluded from this discussion are the miracle plays. The current of popular superstition, legend, and devotion that ran through the period, yet outside the tradition of serious theological study, had its greatest influence, naturally, on the miracle plays. These scenes from the lives of the saints stress the sensational and bizarre elements of popular religion at the expense of theological endeavor in a way that the biblical plays avoid. The secular plays have also been omitted as obviously lacking in suffi cient theological material for purposes of comparison. As in the theological chapters, the closing date for the selec tion of plays has been placed just prior to the Reformation. Although the plays were suppressed at various times throughout the sixteenth century in their respective countries, the exclusion of the later plays should avoid the extraneous polemic influences from reformation and reaction that could conceivably cloud the presumed medieval unity of their theological content. To make this study even remotely definitive, the relations of the liturgy both to medieval theology and to medieval dramatic devel opment should have received consideration. Still, liturgiology is an extensive discipline in itself, and limits of space and time have necessitated its exclusion. The study concludes by pulling together and comparing the theological strands with their dramatic treatments in an effort to dis cover agreements, oversights, adaptations, and attempts at synthesis. In details of presentation, it should he noted that the policy regarding translations differs in the two main sections. In Part One, where the flow of exposition would he interrupted hy quotational leaps from one language to another, translations appear in the text, origi nals for verification in the footnotes. In Part Two, where the origi nal is frequently vital to the feel and impact of an example, the original quotation must he part of the text. Translations have heen provided in the footnotes for those dialects that have little relation to modern French and German (i.e., Anglo-Norman, Cornish, Breton, and in some cases Middle Low German and Provencal). The medieval spell ings in all their wild luxuriance are left unchanged from those of their texts as published. Regarding another point of usage, the treatment of the plays may often sound as though the communal character of many of the plays is heing ignored. Many of the more developed plays Show ohvious signs of formation from earlier, disjunct sources. Their use in production, often over decades, would lead to such a conclusion even if the lin guistic and metrical evidences did not exist. In discussing such plays, the terms author, composer, and playwright are clearly conven- j tions. There are other instances, however, when even anonymous plays j show commandingly original or consistent signs,.of reworking hy a sin gle hand; in these cases the term playwright may appropriately he ap plied to the thoroughgoing editorial work displayed. These cases will | become clear in the course of the drama discussion. The rather loose ! 12 use of terms has the advantage of preserving the term editor for the modern scholar publishing the original text. It is possible with surprising ease to classify the medieval treatments of the end of man as concepts of the beatific vision em phasizing respectively the enjoyment or the understanding accompanying the vision, and as notions of communion which in their extreme devel opments become union or deification. The syntheses appear to be pre carious and spasmodic, even though each of the elements entered the thinking of the church very early in its history. Part One will devel op the various strands of medieval thought about human worth and des tiny. PART OWE THEOLOGICAL APPROACHES PART OWE THEOLOGICAL APPROACHES In general the medieval doctrine of the end of man developed in two parallel streams that seldom converged. The knowledge and vision of God became the standard interpretation of the schools; union with God was the contribution of the mystics to the total doctrine. Each approach virtually ignored the other. Each stream, it is true, had its tributaries. Occasionally an-individual theologian succeeded in achieving a synthesis or at least attempted to subordinate one doc trine to the other. A few generalized in a way that ignored the tech nicalities of both schools. On the whole, however, the ease with which the works of an individual writer can be classified is remark able. The dual distinctness is the more astonishing when the diverse and casual origins of each are considered. The nature of man's end is discoverable in the New Testament only by implication and becomes still further subordinated to other themes in the immediately succeeding centuries. This doctrinal vagueness is hardly surprising. The effort of the second-century writers to understand the main lines of their New Testament sources and to make them comprehensible to an increasingly varied audience may well have drained the subapostolic teachers of their originality. Again, the uneasy situation of the early Church in the Roman Empire hardly encouraged bold, far-ranging speculation; the Church needed 1^ 15 defensive weapons, not speculative toys. The subapostolic literature is accordingly popular rather than original and apologetic rather than systematic. These characteristics work against any rapid and compre hensive development of the subject of human destiny: it is enough for the Christian to give a good account of himself before a hostile world and to await the glory of heaven, whatever that glory may be. In view of this general apathy, then, it is the more interesting to discover amid the pious generalities occasional prefigurations of a variety of doctrines. Typical of such adumbrations is a passage in the Doctrina, a handbook for second-century catechists. Brief though it is, its sum mary of the Great Commandment is founded in the creativeness of God. Man owes love to God because he is God's creature.-^- Clement of Rome immediately picks .up the reference and expands its reasoning.- As in all these germs of doctrine, his development is inci dental to a practical application to the Christian life. The redemp tion of life for which the Church exists has for its purpose the res toration of all creation to its pristine state. The Christian should therefore take his Creator as his model. In the contemplation of God's patience and peaceableness towards all His creation, he will see his own duty of living harmoniously with his neighbors. In this way he will exemplify and restore to humanity the peace and order pervading all of God's created natural realm. The imitation of Christ's atti tude is the road to his harmony, for ^■"Doctrina," The Apostolic Fathers, ed. J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer (London: Macmillan, 1 8 9 8), i. 2. 16 in him we see mirrored God's faultless and sublime face; through him the eyes of our mind have been opened, through him our foolish, darkened understanding springs up to light; through him the Master has willed that we should taste im mortal knowledge. 2 Faithful to his New Testament models, Clement has here interwoven a number of purposive ideas. For his successors his suggestion of imi tating Christ would mold pagan concepts of deification into a new Christian purpose of godlikeness. Man's end as eternal peace and con templation would reach its fullest treatment in Augustine and then fade from view for his successors— perhaps they despaired of improving on his perfection. The phrase "immortal knowledge" would fire both mystical and scholastic imaginations to endlessly varied elaboration. Still another aspect was touched upon in the Epistle to Diog- netus. Here, too, the framework is the Christian's heavenly homeland. God will give men the kingdom of heaven; this is the purpose for which He created them and endowed them with reason in His own image. The knowledge of His purpose is sufficient in itself to inspire them to a joyful imitation of His goodness. The context of a future kingdom suggests the possibility of perfecting the imitation, even though the specific reference probably relates to Christlike living in this world.3 2Aldc TOUTOU EVOTTTp L^O]J,G0OC TT}V Ot)JtU)VlOV HOCl UTt£pT(XTT|V 0(j) liV aUTOU* &L& TOUTOU T| VEU)X0Tiaav T1U&V o l OCp0aA|J,Ol t tJ q Hap 6 CaQ‘ 6 La toutou h a a u v E T o q n a u eaHOTcoirevn & L a v o u a f|]j,ov a v a S a A A e i eiq to cpdjq- & La toutou r)06A .7iaev o bePTroTTiQ tt]c; dc0av<5tTOU yvabaeojc; nyncQ Ye u a a a 0 a i . 1 Clem, xxxvi. 2; cf. xix. 2. O Diog. x. l - i ) - . The suggestion culminates in Tatian's apologetic Address to the Greeks. If reason and understanding constitute the divine image in the human being, the imitation of the divine in the exercise of reason should culminate in union with the Divine Spirit.^" Tatian's method is hortatory rather than logical, but the seed is there. After lying dormant for a few generations, it is to have an awesome flowering in the mystical tradition. That Tatian's urgings were not at once taken up is explained by the many roads toward a blessed destiny that his contemporaries dis cerned; yet each of the doctrines has been enunciated. The peaceful enjoyment of God suggested by Clement of Rome, even more his hope of ever-increasing immortal knowledge in the contemplation of God; the joyful obedience to God in His own kingdom; the imitation of God in an ever-perfecting exercise of God-given reason resulting in a final union with Him*--all these are the faint trails developing into separate and distinct medieval roads which come together only sporadically and temporarily. The first road to be developed was that of godlikeness. The heretical tendencies of this notion were soon found too great to be overcome, and godlikeness merged into the idea of union. How this took place will be discussed in .the next two chapters. ^Oratio ad graecos, recensuit Eduardus Schwartz. ("Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literature," Bd. IV, Hft. 1; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1 8 8 8). English trans.: "Address to the Greeks," tr. J. E. Ryland, The Ahte-Nicene Fathers; Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, rev. A. Cleveland Coxe (New York: Charles Scriber's, 1926), II, 59-82. CHAPTER ONE GODLIKENESS For the Eastern Church the road of deification which Tatian and the author of the Diognetus letter had first pointed out quickly became the favored route to blessedness. It was also the first to be abandoned in the middle ages; William of St. Thierry and Isaac of Stella are its only medieval proponents. Yet in its later, diluted form of godlikeness, the idea of deification continued to attract the mystics and became part of their elaboration on the mystical union with God, The early popularity of deification as a Christian teaching must have been brought about by its familiarity to pagan converts. As Dean Inge has observed, the idea of salvation as the human acquisi tion of divine attributes was widely diffused throughout the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Christian era. Initiates of the Orphic mysteries assented to the doctrine. The Hermetic books also emphasized the vision of God by imitation of the divine as the end of life.^- -4?lates from Thurii and Petelia, cited in Orphicorum fragmenta, ed. Otto Kern (Berlin: Weidmann, 1922), pp. 107* 10^-105. Translations in Hellenistic Religions: The Age of Syncretism, ed. F. C. Grant ("The Library of Religion"; New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1953)> PP* 108- 109. Cf. Corpus hermeticum; texte etabli par A. D. Nock et trad. A.-J. Festugiete (Paris: Societe d'Edition "Les belles Lettres," 19^5-5^)* xi. 20; i. 26. On the whole subject of deification in the mysteries as an influence on Christianity, cf. W. R. Inge, Christian Mysticism ("The Bampton Lectures, 1899"; London: Methuen, 1 8 9 9)* Appendix C, pp. 356-72. 18 19 Under the influence of the mystery religions, the notion and practice appeared in other ways. The founders of philosophic schools were paid divine honors hy their disciples; even the practical Romans could not escape the deification of their emperors hy their eastern subjects. It is hardly surprising, then, that the doctrine should have infiltrated at least the Hellenistic fringes of Christianity despite its largely Judaic heritage. Actually, the Jews and the Romans were the only ancient peoples realistic enough to misunderstand the idea. To Hellenistic Christians the idea would have heen more amorphous, less shocking, than to their Jewish brethren. The pagans lacked the tran scendent notion of deity which particularized the Jews. Since, to the Greeks, the gods were only wiser and more powerful than humans, the distinctive characteristic of a god must have heen immortality. Thus deification and immortality seem to blend together and become almost synonymous. The First Epistle to Timothy distinguishes God as He "who only hath immortality." Early Christian writers were fond of quoting the Psalm passage, "I said, Ye are gods," with this interpretation.^ Immortality is the theme of writers who adopt a doctrine of deifica tion. Theophilus of Antioch is the first case in point. Although his treatise To Autolycus attacks pagan religion in defense of Chris tianity, his adaptation to the ideas of the mysteries is unmistakable. For Theophilus the nature of man’s original creation determines his ultimate goal, and Theophilus' chief concern in defining that Tim. 6:l6. 3ps. 82:6. 20 nature is human immortality. God, he explains, originally made man neither entirely immortal nor mortal hut free to elect either state. The man who inclines to the things of death seals his mortality. The man who steadily obeys God receives immortality from Him as his re ward and becomes God.*4 ' There is no record that his contemporaries took official action to condemn Theophilus, and he is still counted among the Fathers of the Church. Perhaps his parallel emphasis on God as Creator and therefore different from even immortal man preserved him for orthodoxy. Nevertheless, even those who adopted his wording tended to soften it further with explanatory detail and qualifications. In the West, for example, Irenaeus continued to echo the pagan mysteries. The New Testament writers were clearly in the forefront of his thought, but he permitted himself some extremely original elabora tions. Among these is his theory of recapitulation, which includes a formulation of man's end. He seems to have understood a reference to adoption in Ephesians as the process of becoming godlike.^ Again god likeness consists in immortality. The deifying process was deflected by the first Adam's misuse of his free will to disobey God; in conse quence all mankind participated in his fall and with him lost the divine image and its immortality. When Christ became man, his obedi ence, to the point of death, restored the development interrupted by the disobedience of the first man. As a new Adam, Christ took his S?rois livres & Autolycus; texte grec etabli par G. Bardy, trad, de Jean Sender ("Sources chr^tiennes," 2 0; Paris: Editions du Cerf, 19^8), ii. 2^-25. English translation: "To Autolycus," tr. Marcus Dods, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, II, 89-121. ^Eph. 1:3-12. 21 place as generator and leader of a new race of righteous, immortal men, restored images of the divine.^ While there is no question that Irenaeus is working with New Testament phrases, his particular interpretation seems to have been shaded hy some of the pagan notions he attempts to refute, perhaps to a greater extent than he realizes. In at least one passage, however, he maintains a clear distinction between the two kinds of immortal being: God forever teaches and man forever learns from God.7 Irenae us' disciple, Hippolytus, was not so careful in his distinctions. His statement of creation toward immortality might as easily come from some of the secret books he vilifies. God made man compos ite, neither pure god nor pure animal, but with the promise of either. His next statement is as definite as Irenaeus was cautious: "If thou art desirous of also becoming a god, obey Him that has created thee "8 t i • • Thy body shall be immortal and incorruptible as well as thy soul; for thou hast become God. All the things that fol low upon the divine nature God has promised to supply thee, for thou wast deified in being born to immortality.9 ^"Adversus haereses," ed. A. Stieren, Opera quae supersunt omnia (Lipsiae: T. 0. Weigel, 1853)} iii* 20. 2; iv. 3 8* 3* English trans.: "Adversus haereses," trans. Alexander Roberts and W. H. Ram- baut, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, I, 315"5^7• 7lbid., ii. 2 8. 3« 6e 0eA.eLQ hoa 0eo q y e v e a S a i , vn&Hove taj TtETtot- T|k6ti . . . . Werke: Philosophumena, herausg. P. Wendland, ("Grie- chische christliche Schriftsteller," Bd. XXVI; Berlin: Kirchenvaeter- Kommission der preussischen Akademie, 1916), x. 2 9. 6e oc0ayaxov to aajp.a Hat acpbaptov 6 c y , a (tuxir ysYovac; yap 0eoq. boot b t TiapaHoAouOs C ©eu}, xauxa napEKSiv ETcflYYEXxa I , 0EOQ, OTl E 0EOt:O L f | 0T 1Q , C X0dvaXOQ Y£VVT10£ i . < £ . x* 3 ° * 22 His exposition of the idea does little to soften its alien nature. God sent the Logos to exhibit manhood as an aim for all men. The imi tation and confession of likeness to the Redeemer brings about the im mortality granted the Son of God. It is hardly surprising that, de spite his orthodox intentions, Hippolytus has slipped out of the pa tristic canon. In modified form his influence is nevertheless dis cernible in his successors. Clement of Alexandria, the Eastern contemporary of Irenaeus and Hippolytus, frankly recognized that creating a Christian philosophy from classical teachings was a separate enterprise demanding its own methodology even while utilizing classical forms. As it concerned the end of man, however, his methodology seems to have consisted in apply ing philosophical terms to theological concepts without materially altering the concepts. Philosophical content had to give way instead. Both gnosticism and deification undergo very considerable loss of meaning at his hands. The true gnostic becomes simply the mature, in formed Christian who imitates the righteousness of God as it was dem onstrated in Christ.^ For this kind of life Clement uses the terms gnosticism and deification interchangeably.-^ The immortal life, the life of Christlike imitation, is perfected by continued meditation; ^Les Stromates, trad. Marcel Caster ("Sources chr^tiennes," 30; Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1951- ); English trans.: "The Stromata, or Miscellanies," trans. W. Wilson, in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, ii. 19* •^Clemens Alexandrinus herausg. im Auftrage der Kirchenvater- commission der Konigl. preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, von Otto Stahlin. Bd. 1: Protrepicus et Paedagogos ("Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte," Bd. 12, 15, IT, 39; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1905-1936); English trans.: Christ the Educator, trans. Simon P. Wood ("Fathers of the Church," Vol. 23; New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 195^-)> i• 12. 23 the perfect knowledge of oneself is also the knowledge of God which in its turn brings about godlikeness. Superficially, then, it would seem that deification is for Clement little more than an exalted word for moral daily living to the point of habit. From time to time he even cautions his readers against too literal an understanding of his ex position ("being assimilated to the Lord as far as is possible for us beings mortal in nature," "assimilation to God, then, so that as far as possible a man becomes righteous") Perhaps his apparent steps beyond a merely moral explanation are nothing more than rhetorical extravagances such as every good teacher of his time seemed to regard as essential; rhetorical or not, they do obtrude"on any attempt to reduce Clement1s view of deification to mere ethical conduct. Upon occasion the nature of deification be comes in Clement's mind a sort of union with God, along with the uni fying process which belief in God establishes in the believer himself. Increased knowledge harmonizes the mind and spirit of a man and unifies him, producing tranquillity of soul. In this newly achieved impassi- TO bility "it is possible for the Gnostic already to have become God." When he is thus freed from liability to feelings, passions, and de sires, the believing man is "deified purely into a passionless state" and becomes a unit. The holy soul contemplating God in himself "is as 12dc,KoA.oi30a)Q tw 0E(J) Kara to 6uvoct8v rip/lv, eTi\,vtf\po lq Ttjv tyvoiv PTtapxotauv. Stromateis ii. 18. •l ^ T o p t ( |) & u v o c t 6 v too tp 6 tt(|) t 6 v y v o o o t l k 6 v ti'Sti y e v e o O o c i 0 e 6 v . E,; yh,p aoo4ppoatfvT) e v T c a p a a T o o a e i Y e v o p i E v n , e o o u t t iv k r c i C H o n o S j a a kooV 0 E U ) p o n a a a 6 locA e otitooq t E ^ o y . o i o u T a .1 v t a i a ftuvoqiiv 0Ey. Ibid., iv. 23, 25- far as possible assimilated to God." Whatever the interpretation of Clement's view of deification, it is indisputable that he found the rationale for the doctrine in God's purposive creation of man; God's action in an overflow of crea tive energy made a being capable of knowing himself and God in himself; and, as a being created by God, man becomes worthy and desirable to God lk on his own account. It was perhaps this lofty view of man's worth that inspired a kind of Christian humanism in the middle ages. For his immediate successors, however, Clement's notion of deification was the more compelling. His greatest and most enthusiastic disciple, Origen, followed his master's thought on deification, particularly earthly deification. The wise man who no longer requires anything is nearest the Deity be cause his rich self-possession in contemplation renders him a partaker of the highest good. The earthly life is continuous with the eternal life, where deification will be complete. Origen places greater em phasis on the possibility of completing and perfecting the deified life where Clement saw it as an eternal process. His point of argu ment is the Pauline phrase, "God will be all in all. "^-5 The statement cannot be adequately explained unless God becomes "all" in each indi vidual. This must in turn mean that the understanding will be cleansed from every sort of vice and wickedness so that all the soul can feel, understand, or think will be God and nothing but God, when God will be the measure and standard of all its movements. That God should - ^Paidagogos i. 3• Cor. 15:28. 25 ■become "all in all" Origen further interprets to mean that all crea tures will ultimately he purged from wickedness.^ This universal!sm, so startling to the orthodox, tends to ohscure the fact that Origen has measurably watered down Clement’s heady brew of deification. Equating deification with purification, although it transforms the doctrine unrecognizably, at the same time lengthens its life and con siderably broadens its possibilities for influence. Clearly the aspect of the earliest Christian literature on man’s end that appealed most strongly to the Alexandrian' school was the idea of imitation and its permutations into and out of deification. The successors of the early Alexandrians might have gone further or achieved more orthodox compromises, but in the generation following Origen's death the Arian controversy began. By comparison, Origen’s deviations became unremarkable, and man's end became un unregarded backwater outside the swirling arguments over Christ's beginning. Suc cessive tides of Nestorian, Eutychian, and Monophysite variations hardly freed Eastern Christians for non-controversial speculation until the sixth century. The single peaceful exception was Gregory of Nyssa. On the Making of Man displays Gregory as an opponent of the classical notion of man as a microcosmic reflection of the greater world; man is for Gregory the image of God, and there is no need to obscure the image with classical trappings. God was under no necessity ^^Werke, Bd. V: De principiis, herausg. Paul Koetschau ("Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte"; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1913)j English trans.: "De Principiis," trans. Frederick Crombie, in the Ante-Wicene Fathers, iii. 6. 1-3. 26 when He created man. Rather, His abundance of love inspired the cre ation of a being capable of witnessing His glory, enjoying His good ness, and observing and sharing all His bounty. The kind of creature most capable of appreciating Him would naturally be an image of Him self, a being participating in all goodness, since the Deity is Him self the fulness, indeed the incomprehensible transcendence of good.1^ This goodness of the image was blurred by the fall, and thenceforward man was burdened with the slow, laborious task of reassimilation to God. Gregory makes an original contribution here by distinguishing the essence of God as a combination of the beautiful and the good. The contemplation of these qualities in God brings about the soul's assimilation to God, a continuing process death cannot interrupt. The notion of assimilation is a distinct softening of the idea of godlike ness, but it is derived from familiar elements. When the soul frees itself from the material desires which ally it to the animal creation, it is ready for the unimpeded contemplation of the Beautiful. By its essence..the Beautiful is capable of attracting to Itself every being that looks to it. Since the Beautiful and the Deity are one, the soul will in its purified state have an affinity for God and will then par ticipate in the Good which is also God. Drawn by its love for the truly Beautiful, the soul will achieve an eternal beauty "which the ■^"De opificio hominis," Opera quae reperiri potuerunt omnia, ed. P. Morell ("Patrologiae cursus eompletus, Series graeca ; Paris: J. P. Migne, 1 8 6 3; English trans.: "On the Making of Man," trans. H. A. Wilson, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Hicene Fathers, Second Series, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Hew York: The Chris- tian Literature Company, 1893)> ch. 5* 27 insolence of satiety cannot touch." In the state for which it was created, the soul will he like the divine nature, complete and content in itself, requiring no external interest or support. And so hy a uni versal purgation God will become, as Origen has explained, "all in all" as God offers to all mankind a participation in the blessings which are in Himself; it is by this participation that all mankind may be said to be in God.'*'® Thus in these ambiguous, emotional phrases, ideas of godlike ness flow into terminology from which medieval mystics can draw in their expositions of union with God. With one exception— and that in the West— the decline of the doctrine from its early Hellenistic ex pression is complete. While the East was modifying deification and fusing it with ideas of union with God, the West of the sixth century found one last classicist to enunciate a doctrine of deification in its traditional form. That Boethius1 attitude may have been pagan as well as classi cal does not obviate the need to discuss him here. The middle ages accepted him as a Christian father, and throughout the period the in fluence of his Consolation of Philosophy has to be reckoned with. When the tattered figure of Philosophy appears to Boethius in his pri son dream and undertakes to comfort him in his misfortune, she does so in the best tradition of classical rhetoric. Thus she argues that the * 1 O "Dialogus de anima et resurrectione," Opera quae reperiri potuerunt omnia, ed. Joannis Christ'iani Wolfii ("Patrologiae cursus completus, Series graeca"; Paris: J. P. Migne, 1 8 6 3); English trans.: "On the Soul and the Resurrection," trans. William Moore, in the Wicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, V, 428-68. 28 man who Is dignified "by carrying within himself the likeness of God has no need to seek happiness in wealth or any other exterior good. His only conceivable end is blessedness, and blessedness is therefore the sovereign good. Here the argument makes its leap from logic to faith. "It were impious to think of God" as less than the sovereign good; "where fore ... we must needs confess that blessedness itself is God." It follows that since men are made blessed by the obtaining of blessedness, and blessedness is nothing else but divinity, it is manifest that men are made blessed by the obtaining of divinity. And as men are made just by the obtaining of justice, and wise by the obtaining of wisdom, so they who obtain divinity must needs in like manner become gods. Wherefore everyone that is blessed Is a god, but by nature there is only one God; but there may be many by participation.^9 Again the word participation saves Boethius from heresy as far as his successors are concerned. But even with the outstanding usefulness of his negative arguments concerning exterior goods, which were to be come the foundation for virtually all the arguments of the sententiae and summae until the rediscovery of Aristotle, his successors were still wary of attributing divinity to themselves. They continued to move from his uncompromising expression to qualified statements of quoniam beatitudinis adeptione fuint homines beati, be- atitudo vero est ipsa divinitas, divinitatis adeptione beatos fieri manifestum est; sed uti institiae adeptione iusti, sapientiae sapientes fiunt, ita divinitatem adeptos deos fieri simili ratione necesse est. Omnes igitur beatus deus, sed natura quidem unus, participatione vero nihil prohibet esse quam plurimos. Philosophiae consolatio, ed. Ludo- vicus Bieler ("Corpus christianorum, Series latina, Vol. 9^-; Tura- holti: Typographi Brepols, 1957); English trans.: The Theological Tractates, The Consolation of Philosophy, ed. and trans. E. K. Rand and H. P. Stewart ("The Loeb Classical Library"; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953)> lit* 10. ■union or assimilation. In the East, particularly, the blending of the two notions con tinued unchecked. Maximus the Confessor exemplifies the movement. His master, Pseudo-Dionysius, 20 had concentrated almost exclusively on the notion of divine union; yet as the first of Dionysius' commentators, Maximus could with equal ease utilize ideas of imitation in his exposi tion of the master's divine hierarchy* The idea of a hierarchy of creation was universally familiar from Neo-Platonism; Maximus appears to have taken what he could from Dionysius and then to have gone to Plotinian sources for still greater elaboration of detail in his exposition of creation. The eternal manifestation of God by the production of beings after the pattern of their ideas is creation. The Divine Triad was motivated to the crea tion of these expressions, these creatures, by nothing but an effusion of pure goodness. All the creatures taken together make up a hierar chy in which each of them occupies a place determined by its degree of perfection. Some of these creatures are capable of determining to a certain extent what they will become and their consequent place in the hierarchy; they are capable of increasing or decreasing their likeness to God through their voluntary actions. Any voluntary increase in divine resemblance is accompanied by an enjoyment of God which is its own reward; and any voluntary nonparticipation entails an exclusion from this enjoyment which is its own punishment. As one of these mediating beings, man was originally created 2QCf. infra, P.3J+. 30 on the borderline "between pure spirit and pure matter, intended as their connecting link. It would he the human function to gather up the multiplicity of matter into the unity of intellectual knowledge and reunite it thus to God. Actually man did just the opposite by lessening unity in turning away from the knowledge of God toward the knowledge of things, thus nearly relapsing into non-being. God thereupon took the initiative in restoring the unity of human nature by bringing together the natures of body and soul in the person of Christ, and this reunion constitutes salvation. The end of man's restlessness is to rejoin the immutability of God. Thereafter Maximus closely parallels Dionysius in a doctrine of unity. He has, however, added his own interpretation of imitation and godlikeness as 21 a partial function of both human and celestial creatures. It was this more moderate interpretation that John of Damascus adopted, and his very moderation contributed to the popularity which made him the standard Eastern authority. Once more, in his view, man has his foundation in the goodness of God. God did not find satisfac tion solely in self-contemplation but brought into being creatures de signed to enjoy His benefits and share His goodness.^2 With Maximus, John sees man as a connecting link between the invisible and the vis- pi "De variis difficilibus locis sanctorum Dionysii et Gre- gorii," Opera omnia ("Patrologiae, cursus completus, Series graeca"; Paris: J. P. Migne, i8 6 0), XCI, 1072-85, 1304-312. 22 "He.fide orthodoxa," Opera omnia quae exstant, auct. J. P. Migne ("Patrologiae, cursus completus, Series graeca ; Paris: Apud Editorem, 1860-64); English trans.: "Exposition of the Orthodox Faith," trans. S. D. F. Salmond, in Hicene and Post-Hicene Fathers, Second Series, ii. 2. 31 ible. The likeness of God in man refers to the invisible portion of man, his mind and free will, which enable him to imitate God in vir tuous living and, so far as it is possible, be G o d l i k e . ^ 3 The conjunc tion of natures appears most clearly in a comparison of this life with the life hereafter. In this life man more nearly resembles animal existence; in the life to come he is changed, deified by his inclination and near ness to God "in the way of participating in the divine glory and not in that of a change into the divine being.And here, although John seems to draw together the phraseology of all his Eastern predecessors, deification has in reality declined to the contemplation of God in His presence, "ever seeing Him and being in His sight and deriving unceas ing joy from Him."25 Christianity has finally shaken off its bonds with the mystery religions. Translated by Burgundio of Pisa in the twelfth century, The Orthodox Faith became something of a model for the medieval sententiae, and its moderating influence thus joined the stream of thought flowing from East to West. If the enthusiastic speculation of the East could so disguise the doctrine, it is not surprising that in the more practical West the notion of deification should very nearly sink, out of sight. There is a single reference to the idea in a sermon by Isaac of Stella. He does 23Ibid., ii. 1 2. 0£Ol>y,£VOV b£? jl£TOX]i THQ 0ELCXQ EAAdqi^EGOQ , Hal OUK elq xriv 0Eiav p,£0 1PToqiEvov ouatav. Ibid. 2 ^Opc6vTec, a u T ^ u c x e I , n a l o p o b y - s v o i, n a l aA.r)KTOv t ^ v ait'auToO Eucppoauvnv Kap7iou]iEvoi , alvoOvTSQ autdv aftv n a x p l n a l a y l a ) n v s u v i a T i , e i q t o I j q a n E l p o u q auoovac; to3v aiujvoov. Ibid., ' iv. 27- 32 not elaborate it and apparently uses it only for rhetorical conveni ence, a single allusion to an idea no longer alive. Preaching on the beatitude "Blessed are those that mourn," he urges his brethren to renew their inward contemplation. Since they are likenesses of God, their best knowledge of God will come from the study of themselves. Apart from such meditation they are only beasts; it is from within themselves as images of God that their power of deification comes. His reading must have given some content to the idea, and the fact that he invokes it so earnestly indicates the emotional appeal it had for him; nevertheless, the reference stands alone.^ William of St. Thierry urges the same sort of self-contempla tion as an aid in knowing and loving God. Increasing knowledge and love will result in a closer likeness to God; but for William godlike ness is only a waypoint to the consummation of a composite end that unites the vision of God with the mystical union. Fuller treatment of William's entire thought on man's end is therefore reserved for the next chapter.^7 Deification thus ends its career as a Christian idea on the same faint note in which it had its beginnings. Clearly its greatest popularity was closest to the period of Hellenistic understandings of 26 Si vis teipsum cognoscere, te possidere, intra ad teipsum, nec te quaesieris extra. Aliud tu, aliud tui, aliud circa te. Circa te mundus, tui corpus, tu ad imaginem et similitudinem Dei factus in- tus. Redi igitur, praevaricator ad cor. Foris pecus es, ad imaginem mundi: unde et minor mundus dicitur homo; intus homo ad imaginem Dei, unde potes deificari. "Sermo II," Sermones, auct. J. P. Migne ("Pat rologiae, cursus completus, Series latina'1; Paris: Apud Editorem, 1855). 27cf. infra., p. ^0. Christianity,, when deification virtually meant immortality and when the worth of the soul was magnified to such an extent that the distance "be tween humanity and deity was not so very great. The increasing preci sion in defining the nature of God, of Christ, of the Trinity, inevi tably widened this distance; and the qualifications that make the doc trine palatable to a more rigorous orthodoxy could not be introduced without altering the doctrine beyond recognition. The doctrine of union with God, as will be seen in the next chapter, tended to assimi late the ideas previously attached to deification; and the mysticism of the middle ages became the richer for it. CHAPTER TWO UNION WITH GOD Although the notion of deification had virtually disappeared hy the twelfth century, at the heginning of the sixth century, Eastern theologians has "become so imbued with the definition of man's end as deification that it had "become almost an orthodoxy. The qualifica tions of a Tatian toward the notion of unity had virtually been ig nored. The writings that turned the tide-were the pseudo-Dionysian letters and treatises. So strong was their influence that they modi fied even the writings discussed in the previous chapter and provided a continuing source of inspiration and imitation for a millennium of mystics. The four treatises, purporting to be the work of an Athenian disciple of the Apostle Paul, appeared just prior to the beginning of the century. Their authenticity seems to have been questioned at the Council of Constantinople, 533; hy some anti-Monophysites against whom ; they were adducedj but thereafter acceptance was general, encouraged perhaps by their enthusiastic and 'uncritical sponsorship on the part of' Gregory the Great. They were translated into Latin by John Scotus Eri-; 1 | gena and in this form were extremely popular throughout the medieval ' West. They were commented by Hugh of St. Victor, Thomas Gallus, Robert; Grosseteste, and Albertus Magnus, among others. 3^ \ 35 A close attention to the Corpus Areopagiticum is demanded quite as much hy its ambiguity as its importance. Dionysius ("Pseudo- Dionysius" is far too impersonal a term for a personality so impas sioned) had a profound disdain for the meanings of words and a despair of their adequacy that have in turn been the despair of his transla tors and readers. "We do but use the elements and syllables and phrases and written terms and words as an aid to our senses."'*' God is in reality so far beyond all human capacity that language and all other human expression can no more interpret Him than the senses can apprehend Him. Dionysius regularly uses terms of Light, Good, Peace, and Beautiful as descriptions of God and then denies that such terms are descriptive because God is the inaccessible cause of all things and transcends both what can be affirmed or denied of Him from human knowledge of His effects. Unhappily for his readers, Dionysius’ posi tive descriptions are so much more persuasive than his denials that his affirmations remain in the memory long after Dionysius himself has denied and forgotten them. His medieval readers experienced this dif ficulty, and many of his denied statements approached formulization in later medieval writings. His description of God as Peace, Augustinian though it at first appears, is a first step toward his doctrine of union with God. It is the Divine Peace which is the source of all attraction and union; through participation in Peace all creatures are united in Him and in ^■"De divinis nominibus," Patrologia, Series graeca, vol. III. English trans.: On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology, trans. C. E. Rolt (London: SPCK, 1920), 4. 11. 36 each other. 2 If Dionysius describes God as the Beautiful, he is thinking of God as the creative Cause which moves the world and holds every created thing in existence "by its yearning for its own ideal beauty. God as the Good is the goal of everything in its yearning for its Exemplar as it imitates the abundance of goodness which forbade God Himself to remain unfruitful.3 If all things tend toward the Good and the Beautiful as their goal, it would seem that such union might not be impossible for men. Although few men are willing to empty themselves of extraneous inter ests to concentrate on this union, those who are willing to forsake their affairs and initiate themselves into contemplation may, even in this life, enjoy a communion so close that it may be spoken of both as union and deification.^ Thus the select spirits may enjoy a foretaste of the hereafter, when we are incorruptible and immortal and attain the blessed lot of being like unto Christ, then we, with our mind made passionless and spiritual, participate in a spiritual illumi nation from Him, and in an union transcending our mental faculties, and there, amidst the blinding blissful impul sions of His dazzling rays, we shall, in a diviner manner than at.present, be like unto the Heavenly I n t e l l i g e n c es.5 2Ibid., 1 1. 1. 3ibid., if. 1 0. ^Ibid., 1. 5. 5t6t£ 6e, otoov atpSapTOi kou d 0avaTcu notl xP i*cjto£ l6ou kou p,a.K 0cp i.ujT&T'nQ scp iKU)y,E0a, xfjv ]i£v opa- Triq auToo ©eocpavE tote; ev mxvayvoiq ©Eojptoac; oc 7toTcA.iipou]i£voi, (pavoraraLQ iiapiiapuycu^ riy,aq Tcep lau ya^oucrri^, '&Q touq iia0Tj- T&Q EV EKELVTl Ttj 0£LO.TQCTT| )!£TCX]i,Op(pU)0£ I * THQ 6£ VOTITT1Q OtUTOU cpooToboaCcxQ ev cxtcocOei next duAu) xaj vy ysxExovTEc;, xal thq im£p vouv^EvdbasoDQ ev toclq^toov imepcpavGov cxktCvcjov ayvcbaTOiQ naX y,ocKaptoac; ett;l3oA.ou(; , ev 0elotepcx y,i,y,r|aEi, to5v imEpoup- avCoov vooov. Ibid., 1. if. 37 Divested of its verbiage and excitement, this passage seems merely to say that the end of man is an unutterahle closeness, not likeness to God in contemplation of the Good, the Beautiful, and the Peaceful. The qualifying phrases of similar passages in the Celestial Hierarchy jus tify such a conservative interpretation: the purpose of the entire angelic hierarchy is to confer divine resemblance and union with God on all creatures ("insofar as it is possible," "insofar as it can be said without sacrilege") by making themselves perfect images of God through contemplation. Dionysius stipulates that in spite of every angelic achievement of closer resemblance to the divine, God remains the ever- transcendent Source of all their perfections.^ Dionysius' influence was not immediate. The preoccupation of Western churchmen with thorny questions of organization left them lit tle time or inclination for systematic doctrinal treatises. The single, and highly original, exception in this speculative wasteland was John Scotus Erigena. He attempted a synthetic, systematic struc ture covering all of creation in his Division of Nature, five books of dialogue notable for the dull rigidity of their arguments and the live ly devotion of their prayers. The discussion, between a master and a terrifyingly intelligent student (the only one who for centuries seems to have understood his argument), ranges among all the forms of nature as Erigena saw them. ^De caelesti hierarchia in usum studiosae iuventutis, ed. P. Hendrix (HTextus minores," Vol. 25; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1959)• Eng lish trans.: Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, tr. John Parkes (London: Skeffington, 189*0> 3* 2; k-. 2. 38 The first and last divisions, God at the beginning and end of time respectively, can he spoken of only in the most general terms. While God must not he spoken of merely as heing— He is ahove all terms of wisdom and goodness— yet He cannot he categorized in any descrip tive terms from finite language. What then can he the relationship of man, a mere created heing, tothis ineffable Being? The link is the created world. As a concession to the error and ignorance resulting from the fall of man, God created the present world, a perceptual metaphor designed to lead man hack to God. All division into parts involves the idea of return to the whole, the final unchanging rest in the undivided One, when the divine Word alone will be the universal Man above all individual men. Having become pure in tellect again, man will first attain plenary knowledge of all the in telligible beings in which God makes Himefelf manifest, then will be raised from this knowledge of ideas to wisdom itself; finally even pure thought will be lost in the transcendent darkness of that inaccessible Light. The beatific vision will be seen beyond all vision, not seeing light but engulfed in it.1 Describing the nature of the final union, Erigena leans heavily on Maximus, "a divine philosopher," utilizing enthusiastically his figures of iron molten in fire, and air illumined by light. On his total thought Etienne Gilson irresistibly remarks, It is easy to imagine the stupefaction of Scotus Erigena's contemporaries before that immense metaphysical and theolo- ^"De divisione naturae," Patrologia, Series Latina, Vol. CXXXII. Translations: tfber die Entheilung der Natur, ubersetz. Ludwig TToack (Berlin: L. Heimann, 1870-7^); On the Division of Nature, Bk. I (Annapolis, Md.: The St. John's Bookstore, 19^0), i. 8. Cf. Gilson, op. cit., pp. 119-28. 39 gical epic, hardly "believable and yet guaranteed at practi cally every point "by the authority of Denis, Maximus Confes sor, the two Gregorys, or any one of the many ecclesiastical writers the astonishing erudition of the author enabled him to invoke.° It took four centuries of theological development before Eri gena was sufficiently appreciated to become an influence. Then, as the later mystics began to study him, he became a means of uniting the almost-forgotten concept of deification with that of •union. The schoolmen, for the most part, ignored him; Thomas Aquinas, for example, bypassed Erigena for his sources. He remains interesting as a Western expression of a long period of Eastern Christian development. It is quite possible of course that the monastic devotees of the middle ages would have found their own way to a doctrine of union. Certainly Bernard of Clairvaux developed his own interpretations of his early predecessors even though his inspiration derives from them. He had the boldness to anticipate the ultimate human destiny in the humil ity of monastic life. This imperious dictator to popes founded his up ward steps of humility before God in a self-abasing love which yet as pired to spiritual h e i g h ts.9 This lofty destiny was dictated for him by the innate nobility of man as the image of God. It was in an act of pure love that God created man in His image and resemblance; the image lies in the free ^Gilson, op. cit., p. 127. 9"De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae," .Select Treatises of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, ed. W. W. Williams and B. R. V. Mills (Cam- bridge: The University Press, 1938). English translation: The Twelve Degrees of Humility and Pride, tr. Barton R. V. Mills (London: SPCK, 1 9 2 9), ch. 1. will with which man loves God. Even if sin has distorted and defaced the image, the original majesty it gained in reflecting God was so great that it is still capable and desirous of reattaining the original likeness. Man's will naturally loves God as God loves Himself, and man loves himself as God loves him. Therein reposes a perfect accord of wills which can he achieved through practice in contemplation.!® The culminating point of human knowledge is reached hy man in the ecstasy in which the soul is somehow separated from the hody as it empties and loses itself to a sort of deification of love as it flows wholly into the love of God. From Dionysius come his metaphors of liquefaction hy fire and illumination hy light. This union with God does not, to he sure, involve identity of natures or substances "between man and God, only a oneness of will and affection,"a communion of wills and an agree ment of love."11 God's love desires nothing hut human love in return; for He knows that the happiness of His creatures lies only in returning “ I O His love. Bernard agrees with his predecessors that ultimate feli city is attained only in future blessedness, hut the intensity of love and union Bernard introduces into the limits of earthly life outdoes the mystic efforts of even the Greek fathers who were Bernard's tea chers. So closely allied to this interpretation is the Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei, hy William of St. Thierry that it was for some l^Sermones super Cantica canticorum, ed. J. Le Clercq [et al.] (Rome: Editiones Cisterciences, 1957-5&)» English trans.: The Song of Songs, tr. hy a religious of CSMV (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1952), 80-8£. Hlhid., 71. l^Ihid., 8U. time attributed to Bernard. The similarity is not surprising. His contacts with Bernard so influenced William that in 1135 be resigned his own ahhacy to enter the Cistercian foundation of Signy. Like Ber nard William makes much of self-knowledge: if the soul is indeed the likeness of God, then self-contemplation will be an aid in knowing God. After the fall God left man with memory and self-consciousness for that purpose. The reanimation of the memory of God is enough to liberate the fallen will and turn it toward its true good, and this turning also sets it on the road, just as without this conversion it is neither good nor even spirit. The act of turning, it is true, does not place the soul in God as in the air its body breathes, but in faith the soul is started and advanced through hope and love toward Him who created it that it might turn to Him who alone can be its good and thus become like His goodness. It is the attempt to imitate God's: goodness that advances the soul toward Him. Thus prideful attempts at knowing God through speculation are all in vainj it is pious love which God re quires.^ The contemplative life is not one of -understanding but of see ing. For after all, does not the future life itself consist of seeing God and thus willing His will? The incapacity to choose anything other than God's will is part of what it means to be like God; the other aspect is the final, eternal enjoyment of a blessedness like His. ~ * ~ 3 un traite de la vie solitaire: Epistola ad fratres de Monte- Dei; edition critique du texte latin par M. M. Davy, trad. fran9aise par M. M. Davy ("Etudes de philosophie medievale," XXIX; Paris: J. Vrin, 19*1-0), ch. 8 6, 90-91- k2 These elements will compound a resemblance so close that it may he spoken of as union with God.-^ This end, this consummation, this per fection, this peace, this joy of the Lord, this silence in heaven are in the nature of things the permanent characteristics only of heaven,^ hut the diligent pursuit of contemplation in this life can produce in stants of the final vision that will in themselves further the soul's growth toward the ultimate godliness. This almost unthinking devotion to union through contemplation endured for almost a century, hut during this time the rigid scholastic method against which these twelfth-century mystics fought so vigorously was making itself felt to such an extent that it became the very means by which the fourteenth-century pursued devotion. At first glance it might appear that Meister Eckhart, for example, had merely taken devo tional exhortation from the monastery to the marketplace. Closer study reveals a methodology as rigid as that of Thomas Aquinas j it merely has a different foundation, a neo-Platonism renewed hy fresh contact with its ancient sources rather than through Dionysius and the Eastern Church. Closer study hy his contemporaries also showed them a shocking equation of God, Being, and Oneness that resulted in the post-mortem condemnation of 1329* Despite the condemnation, the teaching on the soul and its destiny which Eckhart derived from his concept of God strongly influenced even the more conservative of his successors. l^Ihid., 1 0^. • ^La contemplation de Dieuj introduction, texte latine, et tra duction de Jacques Hourlier (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1959)> i* 7- l6Ihid., i. 6. Since, in Eckhart's view, there can he nothing other than God, the creature is a nothingness. It exists only as a manifestation of the divine fecundity and to the extent that it shares in the nature of the intellect and the intellectual. Being is continually imparted to the creature, never rooted in him. Yet in the soul is a secret, divine element, the citadel of the divine intellect, simple as the intellect itself, uncreated and uncreatable. To -unite with God, man only has to look within himself. By becoming conscious of its own limits and vol untarily denying them, the soul gives up everything that makes it a determined and particular being. Once unshackled, the soul perceives in itself only the continuity of its being with the being from which it derives. Such a notionof the return to God naturally makes little distinction between -union with God in this life and in the life to come. Indeed, in one of his Parisian disputations Meister Eckhart -undertakes the defense of the thesis that the enjoyment of God in the present life is: nobler than His praise by the souls in bliss. He founds his wholly scholastic argument on the superiority of the intellect over the will: since Being is the object of the intel lect and the Good the object of the will, and since Being is superior to the Good, the knowledge and enjoyment of Being, possible in this life, is greater than the act of will, completable only in the life to come.^ In thus giving up its individual characteristics, the soul contemplating God finds itself. - t - 7Quaestiones Parisienses, ed. Antonius Dondaine ("Opera latina auspiciis Instituti sanctae sabinae," Fasc. XIII; Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1936), pp. lh-2h. Ii4 This detachment is the soul's highest virtue, and the highest degree of this highest virtue is poverty; for after reaching this de gree of perfection man knows nothing, can do nothing, owns nothing, wants nothing. The soul has lost itself in losing its sense of self- determination hy its return to God. It follows then that all the con ventional moral prescriptions and even the sacraments themselves are next to useless except as crutches for the beginner in the search for oneness. But once he has achieved the supreme virtue of renunciation, man blends with God in the beatitude of a common unity, the end of all religion and the essence of salvation; for in his own person Christ united God and man and thus made possible so close an imitation that man can ultimately be spoken of as deified--"The fire changes into it self whatever is brought to it."-*-® For if man came from God, he is in some sense partaking of God's being, not merely of His image; and the union is thus already in process. As the source of all things, God is also their goal. To bring all things back to himself is the purpose of all that God does. All creatures desire this unity and long to return to the source whence they came— in their source is their rest.- * - 9 The extreme positions of Meister Eckhart were to find their fifteenth-century echo in Nicholas of C u s a . 2 0 Eckhart's immediate_ - i Q "Justice Is Even," Meister Eckhart, a Modem Translation, by Raymond Bernard Blakney (New York: Harper, 19^1). Predigten, herausg. von Josef Quint ("Deutschen Werke," Bd. 1; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1958). 19"Etemal Being"; cf. "Honor Thy Father," "Into the Godhead," "Good Hinders the Best." ^^De docta ignorantia ("Opera," Vol. I; Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1932). English trans.: Of Learned Ignorance, trans. Germain Heron (New Haven: Yale University Press, 195^)> chs. 9-10* followers, however, contented themselves with the earthier, more prac tical devotion of Suso and Tauler. In Jan van Ruysbroeck and the anon ymous De adhaerendo Deo, the fourteenth century had still other origi nal expressions of the mystic tradition. The devotional anthology De adhaerendo Deo was attributed hy its fifteenth-century contemporaries to Albertus Magnus. Perhaps the strong dependence on Dionysius which this work exhibits suggested the attribution; Albertus had included a commentary on Dionysius among his numberous works. To the anonymous but austere compiler of the De ad haerendo, the purpose of life is contemplation. As man is the image of God in the three powers of the soul— the understanding, the memory, and the will-— the knowledge of God and the love of the highest good constitute at once the rest of the soul and its perfect development. Perfection in this life is the unfolding of these powers. This un- ; folding is brought about by single-hearted striving to center one's soul in God. Not only the company of the world is to be eschewed but also subtle books and irrelevant talk— all of these are snares of the Devil to keep the soul attached to the world and its impedimenta. Only the mind bare of impressions, ideas, and all attachments can dwell with God in the same simplicity of pure apprehension as though it were already in eternity. 22 Such a derivative narrowing of all of human life would of course have desiccated both church and civil life. It remained for ^De adhaerendo Deo: Of Cleaving to God, trans. Elisabeth Stopp (Oxford: Blackfriars, 19^7)> ch. 3* ^%bid., ch. J+. K6 the richer, more vital mysticism of Jan van Ruysbroect to give new point to contemplative life as a seeking of the end of life, even though his complexity was a source of some doctrinal embarrassment. His Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage is the fullest development of the tripartite idea which pervades all his work. The soul may meet her Bridegroom in three ways: first, according to the way of "beginners, the active life; then, through the meditation of the interior, God- desiring life; and, finally, through the "superessential, God-seeing life, which few men can attain or taste, "by reason of the sublimity and high nobility of that l i f e ."^3 The purpose of each kind of life has its foundation in the cre ation of man by God in His goodness in order that the bliss and the richness which He is Himself might be revealed to rational creatures, "so that they might taste Him in time, and enjoy Him outside time in eternity.Special dividends are, however, attached to the attain ment of the highest life: those who already as it were have their so journ in heaven "are noughted and lost in God, and God in them, so that there is no other thing between God and them but time and their mortal nature." Freed from their bodies by death, they immediately enjoy eternal bliss, "and they shall see and taste and enjoy the fathomless riches of the being of God, eternally and forever."~5 ^3The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage . . . trans. C. A. Wynschenk, ed. with introduction and notes by Evelyn Underhill (Lon don: Dent, 1916), Prologue. 2^Ibid., i. 2. 25lbid., i. 10. i j - 7 Although, this union with God can only he consummated in the future life, it will then he nothing hut a continuation and perfection of a process hegun in this life. The aim of this life is seeking to rest in God, above all created gifts, above all acts of virtue, ahove all feelings. He who successfully rests in this way can even in this life join in vision the God who transcends light and conception. The result of this highest experience is the confession that God is incom prehensible and unknowable.27 The soul merely rests, lost to itself, flowing into "the wild darkness of the G o d h e a d ."28 Ruyshroeck's style is a constant ebb and flow of similar images, continually returning to the same thought and calling upon all the imagery and phrases of his mystic predecessors. In effect, although his lack of method would hardly have been approved by Eckhart, and his poetic effusiveness might have a caused a lifting of scholastic eyebrows, Ruysbroeck's thought is not so different from scholasticism as Eckhart's. Although he ignores the scholastic discontinuity between this life and the next, his idea of union includes that of vision and contemplation; part of the union is the beholding of the "rich and generous outflowing of God, according to the longing of all spirits. "29 As he develops, however, his enthusiasm for the notion of unity carries him still farther. He pays his respects briefly to the sacra- ^Ibid., i. 2 5. ^Tbid., i. 2 6. ^®Ibid., ii. 6k. Of. "Le livre des sept cl&tures," vol. I of Oeuvres de Ruyshroeck 1’Admirable, trad, du Flamand par les Benedictins de Saint-Paul de Wisques (Brexelles: Vromant, 1915)> ch. 19* ^Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, ii. ifO. l j -8 ments as means toward union, tut his strongest emphasis is upon the direct experience of God through contemplation. And his praises of the delights of this contemplation, the soul's resting in its know ledge of union with God, do not always make clear which life he is d e s c r i b i n g . Finally he can refer to a vessel so filled with God that it lives entirely filled with light, breathes love, and an nihilates itself in union with G o d . 3 1 On the whole, however, Ruysbroeck teeters on the brink of pantheism without falling. His discussions of union stress the mutual responses of individuals: God and the spirit in His presence "sparkle and shine one into the other, and each shows to the other its face." Each of the yearning spirits demands and offers all that it is and so fulfils l o v e .3^ It is this thrust toward a direct experience which leaves the strongest impression from Ruys- broeck's work. Amid the disturbing currents of the later fourteenth century, Jean Gerson returned to an even more conservative mysticism within the framework of the new nominalism. Indeed, despite his dependence on the mystical fathers, his writings have a practical, devotional turn unexpected in a Chancellor of Paris. True, God has not created men be cause He needed them or could become richer or better thereby but be- 3°"The Sparkling Stone," trans. C. A. Wynschenk, with The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, ch. 11; cf. The Adornment ii. 2. 33-Oeuvres, vol. 1 : Le miroir du salut eternel, ch. 1. 3^The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage ii. 5^+. 49 cause He desired partakers of His goodness. The function and perfec tion of man are thus the knowledge, vision, praise, and love of God.33 The participants in God's bounty do not, however, partake of it in any severely mystical sense. If the root and end of the contempla tive life are the love of God and the loving union of the soul with God, this union is not to be interpreted in any deeply mystical sense. The enduring harbor of the soul in God is that of loving desire rather than of the intellect--a desire that impels, unites, and satisfies.3^ But Gerson expends considerable effort in combatting the notion that this union involves any kind of absorption of the soul's own being into God, as the Epistola ad fratres de Monte-Dei had been interpreted and as Ruysbroeck seemed to suggest. He even regards the customary similes with some reserve: the drop losing itself in the wine jar, any compari son with transubstantiation, the iron heated in flame, air illuminated by the sun, and magnetized iron— each has its limitations. The spirit of man simply rests in the contemplation of the Spirit of God and thus becomes similar.35 it is ironical that the work of so cautious a man should contribute to the final Dionysian upsurge of Nicholas of Cusa and his intuitive, learned ignorance of a God so much the embodiment of contraries that nothing could be posited of Him. 33"La mendicity spirituelle," Initiation a la vie mystique, pres, par, Pierre Pascal (Paris: Gallimard, 19^3), i. 2-9* bh "La montagne de contemplation," Initiation a la vie mystique, ch. 1 0. ~ ^De mystica theologia speculativus, ed. Andre Combes (Lucani: In Aedibus Thesauri Mundi, 1953), vii. 35* 2-3; viii. 40-42. 50 The supremely transitional fifteenth century had still greater anomalies to offer, among them the brief life of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. He is strikingly illustrative of the spirit of his varie gated, turbulent age. His broad receptiveness to knowledge from what ever source led him to renewed studies of the Cabala and of other non- Christian sources. When, at the age of twenty-four, his enthusiasms found expression in a proposal to defend nine hundred theses from these various sources, he touched off a heated controversy which ended in the suppression of his project by Innocent VIII. In the course of the struggle, however, he was able to get off one magnificent broadside in his own defense, the Oration on the Dignity of Man. Strongly neo-Platonic in his ideas of God's ineffableness, Giovanni almost went a step beyond his masters in his view of man. God in His creation made man midway between angel and animal, assigned him a place in the middle of the world, and addressed him: "Neither a fixed abode nor a form that is thine alone nor any function peculiar to thyself have we given thee, Adam, to the end that according to thy judgment thou mayest have and possess what abode, what form, & what functions thou thyself shalt desire. ..." 0 supreme generosity of God the Father, 0 highest and most marvelous felicity of man! To him it is granted to have whatever he chooses, to be whatever he wills.3° Stemming from his ideas of God's power and forebearance in granting man ■J°Nec certam sedem, nec propriam faciem, nec munus ullum pecul- iare tibi dedimus, o Adam, ut quam sedem, quam faciem, quae munera tute optaveris, ea, pro voto, tua sententia, habeas et possideas. ..." 0 summam Dei patris liberalitatem, summam et admirandam hominis felicita- tem! cui datum id habere quod optat, id esse qUod velit. De hominis dignitate, ed. Eugenio Garin (Firenze: Vallecchi, 19^2). English trans.: Oration on the Dignity of Man, trans. Elizabeth Livermore Forbes (Lexington, Ky.: Anvil Press, 1953)> ch. 51 a free will, Pico's discussion yet helps clear the way for a new and less theological humanism. But his own concept of human destiny looks toward a celestial end partly attainable on earth through mystical ex perience. The man who can recognize that happiness does not lie in fulfilling any earthly ambition may realize his basic unity with God as he withdraws in contemplation into the center of his own unity; then his spirit, made one with God in the divine darkness, will have achieved the high purpose for which it was created.37 Modified by notions of attraction and participation, the dei fication of man, popular in the early church, has become a doctrine of union. In this development the Pseudo-Dionysian writings were the chief source of medieval inspiration. By contemplation the soul may even in this life unite with God by attraction to its own ideal beauty, by yearning for the abundant goodness of its Exemplar. Erigena's en thusiastic adoption and elaboration of Dionysius was diluted in Bernard of Clairvaux to the emptying of the free will into the flow of God's love. William of St. Thierry further qualified the notion to an ulti mate resemblance of the soul to God, when it should enjoy a blessedness like His. It remained for Meister Eckhart to realize the full force of the Dionysian writings. For him the likeness of the soul to God is such that it need only deny its own finiteness to be reunited with God in a divine imitation that borders on deification. Like him the author of the De adhaerendo eschewed as crutches the reliance on eccle siastical forms and literature; the soul of itself can experience God. 37lbid., ch. J+. 52 This ineffable joy in the wild darkness of the divine light is further elaborated by Ruysbroeck and Pico della Mirandola, then considerably moderated by Jean Gerson into a return to the Augustinian usage of peace and rest. Almost without exception the writers who are concerned with man's end as deification or union have been writing for a monastic audience, although it is clear that the later mystics had a reading public among the laity as well. It is difficult to imagine their subtle paradoxes and careful distinctions as material for dramatiza tion, and the references in the plays to ideas of union are scattered and generalized. The mystic tradition has been traced in this detail for a different purpose. It has contributed to an atmosphere pervad ing the later plays. The mystics, perhaps even more than the scholas tics, are united in their emphasis on the individual worth of the human soul. If its destiny is to become "noughted and lost in God," still, within it is the likeness to God in such a degree that it may by its very likeness experience Him directly in a free-flowing response of love. This new emotionalism is surely a contribution to the drama in its efforts at creating experience for its spectators, a kind of lay man's mysticism. The worth of man, the appeal for the living response to God in return for His love, and above all the aim of the drama at directly eliciting this response will appear again and again in the chapters dealing with the plays. CHAPTER THREE THE BEATIFIC VISION: THE ENJOYMENT OF KNOWLEDGE When Clement of Rome introduced "immortal knowledge" into his description of the vision of God which the saints would eternally enjoy,1 he prepared the way for a kind of speculation far removed from his own poetic devotion. By the end of the second century the possi bilities of the idea for a formal philosophic statement had been real ized, to some extent at least, by Athenagoras. An Athenian philosopher turned Christian, he might be expected to employ the terms of philosophy in the rationalization and descrip tion of his own experience. Here his efforts were primarily directed toward a discussion of the reasonableness and nature of the resurrec tion. His seminal argument for the nature of the human end, precise and Aristotelian though it is, is introduced almost casually as a foundation for his deductions concerning the resurrection. He accepts the Aristotelian definition of an end as a good and then premises human creation for the end of a continuing intellectual good. The final cause of rational judgment is the occupation with the object for which it is adapted, the unceasing delighted contemplation of Him who is the source of judgment and knowledge. For God Himself acts accord ing to reason. He has therefore created man not for His own use, since He needs nothing, but in order that there might exist perpetu ally such a "being as man, capable of knowing through reason the good ness and wisdom of God. It follows that, since the cause demands eternal existence for continued appreciation, man must he eternal to 2 fulfil his end. The method of argument was to he classicized hy Boethius and Augustine and thus hecome familiar to their medieval stu dents. Athenagoras would have heen amazed at the number and endless variety of proofs and deductions this strand of preparatory arguments— which must have seemed admirably clear and sufficient to him— would be subjected to at the hands of those thorough-going scholastics. Certainly the clarity of the reasoning was not at once apparent to his contemporaries. Tertullian seems rather to have been familiar with the concepts of godlikeness and knowledge used by Irenaeus; but his practical, legalistic mind had difficulty appreciating Irenaeus' effusiveness. His own argument is spare, almost narrow. Man was cre ated to know God. For this purpose man had to be created worthy of knowing God. God therefore endowed him with "free will and a mastery of himself"— gifts which made him the very image of God. The Creator ■ f then provided His newly made creatures with the world for their habita tion, in which to rehearse their relations with God and His laws. When their performance has been perfected, God will promote them to the ad vanced habitation of the higher world. Tertullian further implies that the nature of this higher life will be an unobstructed knowledge 2 Libellus pro christianisj oratio De resurrectione cadaverum, recensuit Eduardus Schwartz ("Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur," Bd. k, Hft. 2; Leipzig; J. C. Hinrichs, 1 8 9 1). English trans.: "On the Resurrection," trans. B. P. Pratten, in The Ante-Hicene Fathers, II, 1^9-162, cap. 25. 55 of God.3 Augustine and John Scotus Erigena developed knowledge of God as part of their doctrines; with these exceptions Tertullian had no disciples until the twelfth century. Anselmus of Laon is strongly reminiscent of Tertullian in his narrow concentration on a single intellectual aspect and, in this respect, unlike his master at Bee, Anselm of Canterbury. The extant writings hy Anselmus show a complete dedication to the requirements of teaching; indeed his fame rests on the Glossa interlinearis, one of the two hasic medieval commentaries on the Vulgate. He also left a hrief compilation of sententiae, hardly more than the skeleton of lecture notes; its outline style pauses only now and then to pose and answer questions in more detail. One of these fuller answers entails a hrief discussion of the end of man. Anselmus first establishes that the divine Essence is the highest good, lacking nothing. His fullness of love prompted the cre ation of angels and men so that God should not he alone in the enjoy ment of His beatitude.^ His possession of men is complete because the men created to be sons became slaves through their transgressions. Anselmus thus agrees with Tertullian that the emotions proper toward God include fear as well as love. The human position is so lowly that God is not only invisible but incomprehensible until the resurrection, ^Adversus Marcionem ("Corpus christianorum, Series latina," Vol. I; Tumholti: Typographi Brepols, 1953) • English translation: "The Five Books against Marcion," trans. Peter Holmes, in The Ante- Nicene Fathers, III, ZG^-b'jb, ii* b, 6, 8. ^Systematische Sentenzen, herausg. Franz P. Bliemetzrieder ("Beitreige zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters," Bd. XVIII, Hft. 2-3; Munster: Aschendorff, 1919)j i* 2, 4. 56 •when the good will he raised in pure intelligence to the knowledge of God alone, to the perception of His unvarying immutability. Here Anselmus ostensibly pays his respects to the mystics. God will so en tirely illumine every creature, as, predictably, the sun, air or fire, iron that each will see only God rather than his fellows; and so God will be all in all. The emphasis is upon the vision of knowledge and not the absorption of union, however. (How far removed Anselmus is from Origen appears in his next paragraph, which deals with damned and their eternal deprivation of the vision.)5 If Anselmus felt some joy at the prospect of the final knowledge he describes, his spare Latin does not disclose it. Rather unexpectedly, Anselmus' lost warmth is recaptured by his obstreperous student, Abelard. The warmth of enjoyment he ex presses in the soul's ultimate knowledge of God marks him as an ex ceptional synthesizer amid the growing emphasis on vision as knowledge, and he is discussed in more detail in the following chapter. His em phasis on the vision as beatitude fades with his successors into vi sion only. Abelard was immediately succeeded by Robert of Melun, whose teaching is memorialized by his fellow countryman, John of Salisbury. His extant works include questions on controverted passages of Scrip ture and the inevitable collection of sentences. Insofar as his out line forms are subject to comparison, his teaching repeats that of Abelard. The joy of the soul will be the vision of God according to its capacity (whence God may be said to be "all in all"); the resur 5lbid., ii. 11. 57 rection of the "body, unnecessary in itself, will spur the "blessed to increased glory and praise.^ The Cistercian followers of Bernard and William of St. Thierry tended to study them rather than their Greek and Augustinian sources, and their spirituality consequently "became inbred. Aelred of Rivaulx, on the other hand, seems to have popularized among them the early scholastic concepts of the "beatific vision. The "blessed will see God in His "beauty and brilliance, with all His creatures, upholding and governing all things. "From all this will be bom such an affection, a love so ardent and so tender, a charity so sweet, a joy so full, and such a force of desire that fulness will not lessen the desire nor the T desire the fulness. The grip of this interpretation of immortal knowledge on the medieval mind is perhaps best demonstrated in Peter Lombard. Even though his tendency in resolving disagreements among authorities is to prefer Augustine, his interpretations of Augustine have a notably scholastic bent. It is clear to the Master of the Sentences that the end of man, the ultimate purpose of his will, is happiness, equating with eternal life and God Himself. Does not the Prophet say, "I have seen an end of all perfection; but thy commandment is exceeding ^Questions de Epistolis Pauli, Vol. II of his Oeuvres, ed. Raymond M. Martin ("Spicilegium sacrem Lovaniense: Etudes et docu ments," Fasc. 18; Louvain: Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense Bureaux, 1938), Rom. 2:9. 7 La vie de recluse, La priere pastorale; texte latin, trad., et notes par Charles Dumont ("Sources chretiennes," No. 7 6; Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1 9 6 1), ch. 3 3. 58 O j ■broad"? Love, therefore, which is the "exceeding ’ broad" commandment, | is the end to which every action should he referred; and, as Augustinej explains in the Enchiridion, love is itself the enjoyment of God and j ' [ one's neighbor.^ ! Whoever, then, has love as his end has God for his end; i i for, as Augustine and the Apostle Paul have pointed out, Christ has I fulfilled all law in love. ^ It might therefore appear to the j uninstructed that all men of good will have a single end to which they direct their several wills, the vision of God; and minor ends are to subserve that one ultimate end.-1 - - 1 - One may with propriety, however, speak of different degrees in which the vision is attained according to the respective goodness and capacity of the individual saint. Thus, although the householder of the parable gave every worker in the vineyard a denarius, signifying attainment of life eternal on the part of all the blessed, still Christ could refer to the different mansions in his Father's house, which can only mean the greater clarity of body and glory of soul for those who deserve i to view God most closely, "for one star differeth from another star I i in glory." Peter then adduces a long passage from Augustine's De Trinitate in support of an interpretation which so appealed to his Sps. 119:96. | 9 t ^ Libri quattuor sententiarum (2d ed.; Florence: Bonaventura, 1916), ii. 3 8. 1, citing Enchiridion 121. 32. ^Ibid., ii. 3 8. 2, citing Rom. 10:4 and Sententiarum Prosperi 190. ^Ibid., ii. 38. 3* 59 successors that it "became the standard method of reconciling the 12 biblical references in applying them to man's end. To many, he continues, it seems that all the blessed also see everything God sees, though in less clear and exalted fashion. Nothing is more worthy of knowledge than the Trinity, to see that God is three in one; and it is this direct knowledge that gives to the blessed their -unique beatitude, according to their individual capacities for understanding. The varying degrees of knowledge do not, it must be understood, alter the saints' enjoyment: each enjoys 13 to the fullest-that knowledge to which he is capable of attaining. These cool, logical formulations are obviously only the silhouette of an idea. Alexander of Hales is generally credited with the distinction of molding Peter Lombard's expository technique into the brilliantly dialectic teaching form of the summa, in which each element of an argument is tested against its objections. He is also famed for his incorporation of the newly available Aristo- ; telian corpus into the predominantly Augustinian and neo-Platonic j I theology of the early middle ages. j I His use of Aristotle still seems somewhat tentative, however; certainly in the sections of the Summa theologiae dealing with the | summum bonum, a section that might have relied heavily on Aristotle, i the Metaphysics is cited only in passing, the Ethics not at all. j Augustine and Boethius remain the two basic sources. In this doc- ; ^ Ibid., iv. k-9. 1, citing Mt. 20; Jn. 14; De Trinitate 4. J. j ^Ibid., iv. Jj-9. 2-3. Peter does not identify those with whom j he differs on this topic. I 6o trine the deceptively Aristotelian appearance of his argument in outline is still the result of following the derivatively Aristo telian method of his patristic sources. Thus the familiar beginning of Alexander's argument is that everyone wants to he happyj happiness is thus the highest good; and as such it is desired naturally— to desire otherwise is fault of 14 poor training or perverted human choice. The highest good, more over, is not the sum of individual goods hut simple of itself; all goods therefore flow from the highest g o o d . - 1-5 But God is Himself the greatest Simplicity and the source of all heing as well as of all goods; so the greatest good must equate with God, and it is thus man's duty through knowledge and love to attain his Good by attain ing God. The unfinished nature of the Summa does not permit inquiry into the precise nature of this attainment, if Alexander even in tended to discuss it. That his novel method was not at once uni versally received is attested somewhat scornfully by his younger colleague, Roger Bacon, who still preferred the monograph and un diplomatically styled the master's work "heavier than a h o r s e . Yet Bacon himself was to go to the same wells and come up wetter. Bacon deals with the subject of man's end primarily in his ^Summa theologica, iussu et auctoritate Bemardini Klumper, studio et cura pp. Collegii s. Bonaventurae edita (Claras Aquas j (Quaracchi): Collegium s. Bonaventura, 1924- ), I. 1-3* ! 15Ibid. | ^"Opus minus," Opera quaedam hactenus inedit a, ed. J. S. Brewer (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1 8 5 9)> par. 15. ; 61 ! Opus m.ajus. Intended as it was, to correlate all the learning of his j ! time in the service of theology, it has little original material; | its one distinction is an eclectic point of view, which, however, selects only those sources designed to uphold his own scholastic bias. Following the famous opening book on the causes of intellec- ■ tual error, the survey of philosophy and science culminates in a summary , of moral philosophy, since the end of learning is the under standing of truth in order to do good. His chief source is, natur ally, Aristotle, leavened with Avicenna; his conclusions are also influenced by Seneca, whom he quotes extensively and with an air of discovery as a philosopher no longer widely known.^ The movement of the section is from consideration of felicity as an end suitable to man, its nature, and virtue as a means of at taining it, to a detailed summary of Seneca on the same subject. Wisdom in this life is more than knowledge; it is an affection for future felicity bom of an understanding of the nature of this feli city. His definition of felicity closely follows that of Boethius, participation in God, enjoying His goodness. The description of this goodness, however, comes from Avicenna. The soul becomes an intelligible world containing in itself the whole universe and the • order of things, "namely God"; and the ultimate bliss is the per- .......... . . j ~ ^Opus majus, ed. J. H. Bridges (Oxford: Clarendon Press, j 189T“190oT7 English trans.: Opus majus, trans. Robert Belle Burke j (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928), vii. 1 5. j The section assumes that Pope Clement IV, at whose request the work was written, is unfamiliar with Seneca. Since Clement before his | entry into the priesthood was famed for his learning as an advocate, Bacon's assumption appears to be a true reflection of the obscurity j into which Seneca had fallen, not merely a polite accommodation to j * 1 R ception of perfect order. 1 Accordingly, the hest of the virtues leading to this conglom erate felicity are intellectual, hut the truly perfected wisdom is not merely intellectual. It combines perfect knowledge with the sweetness of love, and the harmony of these produces peace in this life as well as in the next.*^9 Bacon's esoteric definition of per fect knowledge precludes the interpretation of this harmony and peace as more than lip service to the Augustinian synthesis. Clearly, knowledge produces for Bacon its own love, and nothing more is neces sary. This affection for knowledge explains the extensive quota tions from Seneca's arguments for virtue as the strong mind with which Bacon concludes his work. If he sees a discrepancy Between Seneca’s wholly temporal virtue, the mind freed from its passions and desires, and the Boethian understanding that sharing God's deity con stitutes man's good, Bacon does not attempt to harmonize the doc trines. The total impression is, therefore, scholastic rather than j ] synthetic. Bonaventura, Bacon's Franciscan colleague, assigned to theology! the same purpose Bacon had seen in ethics: making men good through 21 contemplation. But though he abjures philosophy as such and aims, | a superior whose intellectual capacities were inferior to his own. j ^Tbid., vii. 1 . - * - 9pbid.; cf. vii. 3« 5* | | ^Ibid., vii. 3* 18* citing De vita beata ix. j 21 "Commentarii in quattuor libros Petri Lombardi," Prolegomena ; ad sacram theologiam exoperibus eius collecta, ed. Thaddeus Soiron ("Florilegium patristicum, tarn veteris quam medii aevi auctores com- j plectens," Fasc. XXX; Bonnae: P. Hanstein, 1932), III Sent. 35* !• 63 particularly in his later works as the Minister General of his order, at devotional practicality, his orientation is still unshakahly scholastic and intellectual. His occasional efforts at mystical feeling seem forced and uncomfortahle. True, the blessed St. Francis despised intellectual exercise and enjoyed wordless, en tranced yisions of God, the imitation of which Bonaventura feels bound to enjoin upon his order. The contemplative methods he suggests, however, incline to the scholarly, and he himself is most at ease when he is reducing all knowledge to the service of theology or charting the regions of the unknowable. This charting is most confidently done in the Breviloquium, an abbreviated theology in which each statement is justified by a brief train of reasoning. The method here is that of an appar ently strict chain of deductive logic; from time to time, however, the student gets the impression that its author discovers a link too big for the chain as it stands and runs back to strengthen links here and there to bear the new weight. New material is in serted in what appear to be mere recapitulations preparatory to the next deductive step. The chain thus achieves interest by its very unexpectedness. The first links establish God as the first principle in the traditional scholastic manner and prove his perfection. Then Bonaventura introduces the articles on God's best creation, man. Since the Principle from which the perfection of the universe pro ceeds is perfect, It acts from Itself because it needs nothing g i t - out side Itself. It thus has the effect of three-fold cause on any creature, efficient, exemplary, and final. God as cause brings every creature into being, is Himself its example, and or- 22 dains it to a purpose. By the very height of its own benevolence the First Principle made both angelic and human spirits capable of achiev ing beatitude. The human creation was then endowed with free will because the reward of beatitude must be merited. 23 Without explaining why beatitude should be defined as a reward, Bona ventura moves to his next surprise, deriving the soul as the image of God. A form capable of achieving beatitude is capable of holding God in memory, intellect, and will and is thus in itself an analogy of the Trinity— a unity of essence and a trinity of powers. The analogy, the image of God must, further, be immortal in order oh to continue in beatitude. Bonaventura expresses a delighted and almost naive wonderment in the glory of man as God's greatest work. His enthusiasm is not confined to the human spirit and intellect but carries over into admiration for the body and its "supreme elegance, ingenuity, and adaptability. on "Breviloquium," Tria opuscula (3d ed.j Quaracchi: Collegium s. Bonaventura, 191l)• English trans.: Breviloquium, trans. Erwin Esser Nemmers (St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder, 19*1-7), ii. 1. k. . 23Ibid., ii. 9. 2. 2Vbid., ii. 9. 3- 2^" . . . cum summa venustate et artificiositate et ducti- bilitate." Ibid., ii. 10. k. 65 The whole man, then, in the image of God is capable of beatitude; and this capability in Bonaventura's thinking gives rise to a striking conclusion regarding purpose in the present life. Because the ability to know is part of what it means to be the image of God, it follows that a rational creature is capable of learning righteousness; because a creature with free will is capable of obeying the principles of justice, it follows that the consummation of beatitude is granted only to those who have observed justice and loved righteousness. Bonaventura then neatly charts the glory of the blessed. Their reward is substantial, consubstantial, and accidental. The substantial reward is the "vision, enjoyment, and possession of the one highest good, namely, God, whom the blessed will see face to face . . . whom they will enjoy eagerly and agreeably, 2 6 whom they will possess eternally." The consubstantial reward is the resurrection of the body for the convenience of the soul. The accidental reward of an added glory is conferred upon those of the blessed who have suffered martyrdom, received the gift of pro phecy, or maintained continence. Thus each soul, reflecting the Trinity in its creation, enjoys a trinity of blessedness. Bonaventura here demonstrates an effort at synthesis little more successful than Bacon's. The beatific vision is taking on . . . consist it in visione, fruit ione, et tentione, unius summi boni, scilicet Dei, quern Beati videbunt facie ad faciem . . . quo fruentur avide et delectabiliter, quern etiam tenebuht sempiter- naliter." Ibid., vii. J. 1. 66 characteristics of "both knowledge and enjoyment; yet the enjoyment is still dependent on the knowledge. As he attempts to work in an idea of union with God, Bonaventura finds it so far removed from his intellectual tastes that he can use it only in the vaguest, most general ways. To say that the soul is united to God seems to Bonaventura to mean only that it associates with God so as to enjoy Him. The very rationality of the soul is a harrier to any concept of -union as absorption in God; the soul was made rational so that of its own accord it might know how to find delight in God. Union with God is presence with Him, from which comes a wondrous delight. The analogy of man's upright stature as a figure of his coming union with God is indicative of Bonaventura's hesitancy in using the con cept. The uprightness of stature manifests the union of the soul with God because it symbolizes the striving of the soul to exercise its highest faculties in God's presence, to cling to its greatest Good.^f Bonaventura sedulously avoids the analogies of metal in j fire and air in sunlight. Indeed, the union Bonaventura expresses is quite as suitable to earthly life as to heavenly and often merely refers to the quiet pO | of contemplation. Even when he attempts to instruct his "brethren I in the means to ecstatic visions like those of their founder, he j " ~ ~ ' j ^Pbid., vii. 7* 3* Cf. Reduction of Arts to Theology, ch. lk.\ i pO De reductione artium ad theologiam," Tria opuscula. Eng lish trans.: The Reduction of Arts to Theology, trans. Sister Emma | Th^rese Healy (St. Bonaventure, N. Y.: St. Bonaventure College, 1939)> ch. 2 2. I 67 emphasizes the vision, not the union. The brethren must pray, live in holy fashion, seek truth, and by thus striving "mount step by., step until we come to the high mountain where we shall see the God of Gods in Sion."^ How far he is from Dionysian concepts of union is illus trated by De triplica via, where, again, the nature of eternal bliss is systematized as the reward of possessing eternal peace, seeing clearly the highest truth, and fully loving the greatest good. Nevertheless, mystical influence seems to be at work when ever Bonaventura considers the nobility of" man. He comments that the first step in the contemplation that leads to eternal bliss is the inner consideration of the soul as the image of God.30 This reiteration of man's worth and the practical devotion of Bona- ventura's intellectualism made him a favorite with medieval popu- larizers. As a result he is echoed rather frequently by the drama tists. Among Bonaventura's disciples who dealt with the theology of man, Matthew of Aquasparta, before his own appointment as Minister General and eventually cardinal, was also famous at Bolpgna for his ^9" . . . veritatis spectaculis intendendum et intendendo gradatim ascendendum, quousque veniatur ad montem excelsum, ubi videatur Deus deorum in Sion." "Itinerarium mentis in Deum," Tria opuscula. English trans.: The Mind's Road to God, trans. George Boas (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1953)> 1* 7* 3°"De triplica via," Tria opuscula. French trans.: La triple voie. trad. R. P. Valentin et M. Breton (Paris: Eds. franciscaines, 1952), 2. 5« Cf. The Mind's Road to God 7* 2-lj-; The Reduction of . . Arts to Theology, ch. 25* skill in teaching and disputation. His extant writings, however, are nothing hut pale shadows of Bonaventura. In his Quaestiones disputa- tae de gratia he touches briefly on the nature of human purpose in the course of considering whether that purpose can he achieved without the aid of God's grace. If that which is finite cannot of itself attain the infinite, and if the end of man, namely beatitude, is infinite, then man cannot come to it unaided. In the course of upholding his proposition, Matthew summarizes the varying philosophical positions he has gleaned from the City of God. He then points out that if the soul could he happy through virtues of its own— if happiness were a quality peculiar to the spirit as spirit— then it could never he unhappy, a patently false conclusion. Therefore— his logic gratefully returns to the security of Augustine— human striving for blessedness will achieve only misery without divine aid. The end of the intellectual creature is the highest good, a good capable of being known and loved, in whose image the creature is made and ordained. Augustine's famous prayer, "Thou hast made us for Thyself," determines what the highest good will he. It is the office of God's grace to make the soul a partaker of itselfj thus blessed, eternal, and infinite, the soul is at last pro portioned to God's own infinity; and so the original problem of the disproportion between the finite soul and the infinite God is re- S1 solved. If the first Franciscans furnished the thirteenth century with its theme of vision, the first Dominicans were quick to pick it up and ^•^Quaestiones disputatae selectae ("Bibliotheca franciscana scholastica medii aevi"; Quarrachi: Typis Collegii, 1S±K), Q. 5. elaborate it. In the study of the Dominicans, however, the canoniza- j tion of hoth St. Thomas Aquinas and his system, together with the modern revival of Thomist studies, has tended to obscure the intellec- j | tual achievements of his contemporaries. The previous paragraphs have j I I shown that both the summa technique and its application to the vision ; i t of God as man's end were current among the Franciscan schoolmen. Among' the Dominicans Albert the Great has long been recognized as a major source utilized by Thomas Aquinas, and in no area did he give his disciple more resources to draw from than in his discussion of human ends. Although the greater part of his teaching career was spent at 1 Cologne, where Thomas Aquinas came under his influence, Albert had first made his reputation at Paris. The encyclopedic character of his < mind is indicated by the vast scope of his works, dealing as they do ! with subjects in the areas of the natural sciences and psychology, as well as with the more traditional subjects of politics, polemic, j Scripture commentating, philosophy, and theology. In this sense he was : truly Aristotelian. His procedure in determining the good also follows Aristotle, with discreet use of the Arabic commentators. Starting from the Ethics (the first schoolman to do so), Albert agrees that the good is j i I that which all creatures strive for, an act, as Algazel supplements, j whose perception is accompanied by delight. A demonstration of the j statement follows: everything created has some end and thus desires j that end; an end, however, is a good; therefore, everything created de- j j sires the good. A second, slightly different proof is driven home by ■ the authority of Dionysius: if even the demons desire to live and know the good, as Dionysius states, how much more do less corrupted "beings desire it. Algazel's additional definition is proved in simi lar fashion, as is a supplementary clause from Avicenna.32 The next question begins with the usual Augustinian quotation for the usual 33 proof of God as the highest good to prove God the final cause. Fur ther, God Himself is not only the cause of all good "but in His nature fills the Aristotelian requirement of a unified, simple Good; so God 3 I 4 - is douhly the Good. Hence theology as opposed to philosophy is not the study of being as being, but of the Being who is the ultimate end and of what man must know to reach that end; it is the supremely en joyable known in the light of revelation. And the light of revelation shines on an immortal life de signed for the enjoyment of God. Outside of this universe, of course, there is neither place nor time but blessed life only, and not a life blessed on account of its place but on account of its object, the supremely enjoyable Good— a particularly lofty viewpoint with which Thomas himself may have concurred, although it is lost in the present eschatology of the Thomist Summa. Although Albert pays lip service to the notion of the speculative intellect as the agent of contemplation, ^^Quaestiones de bono (Summa de bono q. 1-10), ed. Henricus Kuhle ("Florilegium patristicum tam veteris quam medii aevi auctores complectens," Fasc. XXXVI; Bonn: Peter Hanslein, 1933)> I? citing Dionysius, De div. nom. J+. 23* Cf. Ethica I. 6. 1. 33ibid., II. 2, citing Augustine, De trin. viii. 3* ^^Ethicorum libri X, ed. August Borgnet ("Opera omnia," Vol. 7; Paris: Louis Vives, 1891), I. 2. 71 his own concept of enjoyment in love as man's highest end aligns him 35 with Bonaventura rather than with his pupil. That the Franciscans Alexander of Hales and Duns Scotus hoth agree with Thomas in their emphasis on knowledge as end indicates once again that the theme in its freedom does not provoke differences even in orders noted for dif fering . The greatest of the Dominicans seems to have intended his mag num opus, the Summa theologiae, as a "beginning textbook replacement for the Sententiae of Peter Lombard. Although the Summa is infinitely more systematic and exhaustive, its structure still betrays a class room setting. If the methods of the summae are any indication, the thirteenth-century lecture hall could have been an engrossing and even entertaining place; and Thomas has here perfected and refined his pre decessors. Each major division of theology is handled by a series of questions. Following the statement of the question, a series of ob jections is raised from authorities, philosophical, patristic, or Scriptural^ or from the results of logical processes; statements to the contrary are produced in the same way; and then, when suspense is at its peak, the master responds. After the response he answers the previous objections and so neatly ties up the entire question. Under Aristotelian influence no doubt, Thomas reserves the question of ends for the second major part of his work. Here Thomas establishes the premise that all actions which may properly be called human, that is, those under the direction of the will, have an end in view. There is ^Ethica I. 6. 1. Cf. Sententiae II. D. 3&U* 2-C; Summa theologiae I. 2. 7-1 0. 72 one last end of human life since neither the principle in execution nor the principle in intention with regard to man can he infinite (if there were no last end, there would he no desire and no one would hegin to work at anything).36 While it is true that God is the last end of all things, only man has heen fitted to acquire his end, hy knowing and loving God.37 Thomas then considers one hy one the things in which man's happiness consists, following a pattern originated hy Lactantius.3® Lactantius merely stated his points; Thomas argues them. By negative definition he disallows all the popular notions of happiness. Thus it is possible to state that no created good can constitute human happi ness. Happiness is that perfect good which entirely lulls the appe tite, and the perfect good can only he God.39 Just how a man can he happy in God is handled in Question III. Once more Thomas narrows his thought hy a series of negations and qualifications to a precise positive statement. God is man's end; the attainment of that end or its enjoyment is an operation on man's part. This operation has nothing to do with the senses. Neither is the final enjoyment an act of will; on the contrary, Christ said, "This is eternal life: that they may know thee, the only true God.”^ There fore man's happiness consists in the knowledge of God, which is an act 3^Summa theologiae (Leonine ed.; Turino: Marietti, 19^8). English trans.: Summa theologicaj trans. Fathers of the English Dom inican Province (London: Bums, Oates, and Washhoume, 1912-25), Q. 1, arts. 1-6. 37ihid., art. 8. 38ppvqne Institutes iii. 2. 39g-umiaa theologiae, Q. 2. ^Jn. 17:3* of the intellect To refine the definition further, happiness is not an opera tion of the practical, hut of the speculative intellect. If happi ness must he the operation of man's highest power, his intellect, and if the speculative function of his intellect is that which is delighted in for its own sake as the practical is not, and if the contemplative life has more in common with God and the angels, then perfect happi- k2 ness consists entirely in contemplation. It follows, at least for St. Thomas, that the speculative in tellect does not concern itself with speculative sciences or with sub stances hut with the vision of the divine essence. The foundation of the conclusion is a quotation from I John already utilized by nearly all of his predecessors: "When He shall appear, we shall he like to JiO Him; and we shall see Him as He is." 3 If man is not perfectly happy, his proof runs, "so long as something remains for him to desire and seek," and if the object of the intellect is the essence of a thing, then the intellect attains perfection only insofar as it knows the es sence. The simple knowledge that God is cannot fully satisfy the soul until it achieves union with the God about whom such a deduction is possible.^ One can imagine the astonishment of the writer of I John at this elaboration of what must have seemed perfectly clear to him. The component parts of happiness next require the same careful ^Arts. l-if. ^Art. 5- Jn. 3: 2. ^. . . Primo, quidem, quod homo non est perfecte beatus, quandiu restat sibi aliquid desirandum et quaerendum. Art. 8. distinction. Briefly, delight may he said to he necessary for happi ness if the delight is regarded as an adjunct to the essential -vision of God; vision, however, as the cause of the delight ranks before de light; comprehension is also necessary in its sense of attainment, though not in its sense of full understanding, which, as the previous article explained, is possible only to God; rectitude of will is neces sary not only to the attainment of happiness hut concomitantly (since the will of him who sees the Essence of God necessarily loves in sub ordination to God, and this is what makes the will right); the body also is admitted as necessary to happiness in this life and a conveni ence in the life to come.^ All these stipulations seem to suggest the necessity for a recapitulation. Thomas reassures his students: Now that man is capable of the Perfect Good is proved both because his intellect can apprehend the universal and perfect good and because his will can desire it. And therefore man can attain happiness.^ The attainment of happiness in this life, however, can be admitted h-7 only with extreme caution and careful limitations. 1 It remains to describe how exactly the soul may be said to see the invisible God, and Thomas did not live to complete the eschatolo- gical section of the Summa theologiae. His ideas on the subject, IV. ^Quod autem homo perfecti boni sit capax, ex hoc apparet, quia et eius intellectus apprehendere potest universale et perfectum bonum, et eius voluntas appetere illud. Et ideo homo potest beatitu- dinem adipisci. Q. V, art. 1. ^TArt. 3• 75 therefore, have to be put together from the Supplementum, the antholo gy of his earlier writings and lectures appended to the Summa, in com bination with the comparable sections of the Summa contra Gentiles. The method of this latter work is both more positive than that of the Summa theologiae and more concise. Each chapter begins with a brief thesis or exposition; a series of continuing or parallel arguments up holds the thesis; occasionally opposing arguments are stated and re futed. The Summa contra Gentiles thus adumbrates the positions in the Summa theologiae in a different order, working from the concepts of end and God as the end of man before handling the erroneous ideas com monly held in regard to human ends. The Summa contra Gentiles explains the union of the soul with God in the beatific vision in this way: "If the divine essence is seen, it must be done as His intellect sees the divine essence itself through itself, and in such a vision the divine essence must be both what is seen and that whereby it is seen."^ Now this is only possible because the divine essence is not composed of matter and form but of form only: For, since the perfection of the intellect is what is what is true, in the order of intelligible objects, that object which is a purely formal intelligible will be truth itself. And this characteristic applies only to God, for, since the true is consequent on being, that alone is its i l .8 . Si Dei essentia videatur, quod per ipsammet essentiam divinam intellectus ipsam videat: ut sit in tali visione divina essentia et quod videtur, et quo videtur. Summa contra Gentiles (Leonine ed.; Turino: Marietti, 193^)> iii. 51* 2. English trans.: On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, trans. A. C. Pegis et al. (Garden City, N. Y.: Hanover House, 1955-56). own truth which is its own "being. . . . So, it is manifest that the divine essence may "be related to the created intellect as an intelligible species by which it understands, but this does not apply to the essence of any other separate substance. Yet, it cannot be the form of ano ther thing in its natural being, for the result of this would be that, once joined to another thing, it would make up one nature. This could not be, since the divine essence is in it self perfect in its own nature. But an intelligible species, united with an intellect, does not make up a nature; rather, it perfects the intellect for the act of understanding, and this is not incompatible with the perfection of the divine essence. ° The divine essence is then united to the intellect as to its form so as to be both that which is understood and that by which it is under stood. The term united must, however, be understood loosely, not as though the divine essence were in reality the form of our intellect, or as though from its conjunction with our intellect there resulted one being simply, as in natural things from the natural form and matter: but the meaning is that the proportion of the divine essence to our intellect is as the proportion of form to matter. ^0 It seems clear that Thomas' own intellectual attainments and tastes influenced his working out in unprecedented detail a vision ^cum enim intellectus perfectio sit verum, illud intelligibile erit ut forma tantum in genere intelligibilium quod est veritas ipsa. Quod convenit soli Deo: nam, cum verum sequatur ad esse, illud tantum sua veritas est quod est suum esse, quod est proprium soli Deo .... Manifestum est igitur quod essentia divina potest comparari ad creatum ut species intelligibilis qua intelligit: quod non contingit de essentia alicuius alterius substantiae separatae. Nec tamen potest esse forma alterius rei secundum esse naturale: sequeretur enim quod, simul cum alio iuncta, constitueret unam naturam; quod esse non potest, cum essentia divina in se perfecta sit in sui natura. Species autem intelligibilis, unita intellectui, non consituit aliquam naturam, sed perficit ipsum ad intelligendum: quod perfectioni divinae essentiae non repugnat. Ibid., iii. 51. 4. 50 Quod quidem non debet intelligi quasi divina essentia sit vera forma intellectus nostri; vel quia ex ea et intellectu nostro efficiatur unum simpliciter, sicut in naturalibus ex forma et materia naturali sed quia proportio essentiae divinae ad intellectum nostrum est sicut proportio formae ad materiam. Summa theologiae supp., Q. XCII, art. 1. 77 "beatific "because of its satisfying knowledge of God, even if "both God and the soul had to -undergo some dehydration to "become thus explicable. There is little room for concepts of worship and service, and it hsg been noted that the idea of union has nothing of its Eastern richness; even Augustine's rhetorical exuberance seems out of place in Thomas' formulations. Despite his membership in the Franciscan order, Duns Scotus seems more the spiritual descendant of Thomas Aquinas, even, after the manner of descendants, in his famous rebellion against Thomist author ity. On the subject of the end of man and the nature of the beatific vision, Duns Scotus generally concurs with Thomas; but he makes a point of arriving at the same conclusions by different dialectical roads. His independence is clear when his writings are compared with the Thomist summae; fewer than a dozen points of any kind are quoted by Duns. As a dialectician he is even more rigorous than Thomas; he must not only quote his authorities but prove them and demonstrate even the reasoning behind the objections he does not intend to uphold. If anything, he is more passionless than Aquinas and remote'" indeed from the vivid enthusiasm and rhetorical heat of his favorite author ity, Augustine. With this temperament, he is all the more surprising in his one substantial eschatological difference from Thomas. Thomas insists on the intellectual purity of the beatific vision: it is cog nition and therefore solely an operation of the intellect. With Duns Scotus the will has priority over the intellect: true, the cognition of God is an act of the intellect; but the vision is not complete until the -will has exercised the soul's knowledge in turning to the discov ered good. Replying to the favorite argument for the intellectual view point, the Apostle Philip's plea to Jesus, "Show us the Father and we shall he satisfied," Duns makes an appeal to context rare for his age. The discussion giving rise to Philip's words, he points out, has nothing to do with the future life hut rather with Jesus' claim to he God, a digression from the larger subject which does indeed concern the future life.^l If, then, happiness is an act of the practical in telligence, ethics is provided with its foundation, the inquiry after C 50 the good hoth in concept and deed in order to see and love God. Even when they were unconscious of their ultimate source, the theologians who viewed human destiny as the knowledge of God owed their definitions and method to Aristotle, and much of the medieval work in this area is the rediscovery and refinement of this source. Athenagoras had employed the Aristotelian argument as one familiar to his contemporaries and therefore useful in defending the new Christian doctrine of the resurrection. Tertullian, the one church father who defines knowledge as end outside the Aristotelian tradition, was not significantly drawn upon hy his successors. Anselmus of Laon, on the other hand, utilizing Aristotle hy way of Augustine, was drawn to the ^Summa theologica, ex universis operihus eius concinnata . . . per Hieronymum de Montefortino (Nova ed.; Rome: Sallust, 1900-13), Q. 3, art. 4. Duns Scotus did not himself write a summa, of course; the edition cited is a convenient collation of his Paris and Oxford lec tures, disputed questions, treatises, etc.> to illustrate his total thought in comparison with the Thomist Summa. 79 intellectual definition of end even more strongly than his Christian source as he defined blessedness as pure intelligence perceiving God's unvarying immutability. Abelard and Robert of Melun invested the no tion with more warmth. Aelred of Rivaulx had the last popular expres sion of the notion. Henceforth the scholastics subjected it to endless analysis. Peter Lombard's preference for Augustine amid conflicting authorities led him to redress the balance slightly in finding enjoy ment in the perception. Alexander of Hales merely repeated the Aris totelian argument, as did Bacon, simply by summarizing the philosophi cal arguments. Bonaventura, in his admiration for the human body as well as the soul, injected a certain naive enthusiasm into the famili ar argument, an enthusiasm which his disciple, Matthew of Aquasparta, lost once more in the complexities of the disputed question. The greatest elaboration of the method came from those scholastic giants Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus. Their refinements of argument tended to obscure their essential agreement in defining man's end as an intellectual operation accompanied only by the joy of perceiving the final Good. Awe-inspiring as the achievements of the scholarly thirteenth- century friars were, their constructions could not long remain without reaction. The mystics of the fourteenth century, some of them members of Thomas' own order, were to bring this reaction about, perhaps too thoroughly. Their motives are not difficult to -understand. They had only to read the early fathers to see how much richness of connotation had been lost in the new scholarly precision and how much of the more popular and recent mystical work was being ignored by the intellectuals of the -universities. Nevertheless this chapter should have indicated that the intellectual interpretation of the beatific vision was not peculiar to Thomas Aquinas, that it pervaded the thought of several centuries. That this was so was due in large measure to the universal influence of Augustine's combination of impassioned thought and pel lucid rhetoric, which he nowhere employed to better effect than in his discussions of the end of man. He was, indeed, the first of the Church fathers to synthesize the doctrines foreshadowed by his predecessors; and for many centuries he was without a successful imitator. Even dur ing the final centuries of the medieval period, when other apparent syntheses appeared, they seemed to be so because their authors ignored rather than assimilated the preceding arguments. These more general developments will be studied in the next chapter. CHAPTER POUR ATTEMPTS AT SYNTHESIS Apart from the ideas of union and knowledge, the most impor tant, and perhaps the most enduring, concept is that of enjoyment and peace as perfected hy Augustine. Where the scholastics, in deference to his authority, developed notions of enjoyment in the presence of God, their attention was still so concentrated on the act of knowing God that feeling was generally subordinated to perception. To the most de voted of the scholastics the true knowledge of God was sufficient to hear its own enjoyment with it. For them the notions of union and con tinuing development suggested hy deification were incomprehensible ex- ; cept in the most general terms. Throughout the period, however, there were exceptions, mature thinkers who attempted a balance or superficial theorists who gave the appearance of balance almost by accident. The creative synthesis achieved by Augustine grew from his elaboration of the more general and tentative suggestions of his pre decessors. The Shepherd of Hernias had reflected the Petrine notion of joy in the possibility of observing God's law fully in His own country In his apologetic efforts to show that Christianity fulfils the Greek [ ■ - M - , II | ..................... — - | ,, I II. |, ■ I ■ — I. ■■ ■' ^ ' '■ " ' - I | l / I I ' xDer Hirt des Hermas, herausg. von Molly Whittaker ( Die grie- : chischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte," T. * 1- 8; Berlin::Akademie-Verlag, 1956). English trans.: "The Shepherd of Hermas," in The Apostolic Fathers; an American Translation, by Edgar J.i Goodspeed (Hew York: Harper, 1950)> Vis. I. i. 6; I. iv. 1; Par. I. j i 8l 82 striving for truth, Justin Martyr quite incidentally suggested the be atific vision. The eternal bliss of heaven will be characterized by 2 the enjoyment of God. On the theme of human destiny Lactantius was a worthy forerun ner of Augustine, however pedestrian might seem the body of his writ ings in comparison with those of Augustine. Into the mysticism of his contemporaries he injected a measure of practicality. Part of his life was spent in Constantinople— the Divine Institutes was begun there--so it was not from ignorance that Lactantius avoided the Hel lenistic trend toward godlikeness and union to develop his own doc trinal pattern. Perhaps it was the lifelong influence of the Cicer onian style: a truly persuasive rhetoric has no room for subtleties of thought. Perhaps his intention of compiling a revised manual of Christian apologetics kept him single-minded. He approaches his task in the classic spirit, inquiring first after the chief good and end of life and actions and setting up re quirements for such an end. It must have reference to man alone; it must belong peculiarly to the mind; it must be attainable by virtue. His -understanding of God's purpose in the creation of mankind paral lels that of his predecessors. God created man and made him a rea sonable being in order to have an appreciative spectator of His own energy and power. The spectator of the divine works is also obli- ^Apologies, ed. G. Rauschen ("Florilegium patristlcum, tarn veteris quam medii aevi auctores complectens,"Fasc. II; Bonn: P. Han- stein, 1911). English trans.: "The First Apology," trans. Thomas B. Falls, in The Fathers of the Church (New York: Christian Heritage, 19^8), I. 8, 10. gated to be an actor in the world those works f o r m e d .3 And for Lac tantius man's guiding principle is drawn from his Roman heritage, I , legal training, and Ciceronian reading. Man is horn to justice. Lactantius is careful to give justice Christian qualifications, hut the influence of Rome is there. Justice is owed hy a man to his God as to his Father and Creator; it is owed to other men as his brothers produced hy the same God.^ Justice toward God is expressed in love and fear; for the same Being who creates a man has parental, corrective, punitive power over him.^ Lactantius' God, like Tertullian's, is a Roman of the old school. Man's duty to his fellows, however, is un adulterated love, as to brothers, which creation hy the same God has made them; for the first time since the New Testament this noble con cept has received a full-scale development. The practice of justice, i.e., piety towards God and love to wards one's fellows, then, constitutes virtue, the human end; and * 7 virtue merits immortality, as Seneca has shown.1 The chief good, 3"De j L ra Dei," in Opera, ed. S. Brandt et G. Laubmann ("Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum. latinorum," Vols. 19* 27; Vindobonae: F. Tempsky, 1890-97)* English trans.: "A Treatise on the Anger of God," trans. William Fletcher, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, VI, 269-80. ^Epitome institutionum divinarum; Epitome of the Divine Insti tutes, ed. and trans. E. H. Blakeney (London: SPCK, 1950), ch. 3^-• ^Epitome, loc. cit. ^Ihid., 59* 7"Divinae institutiones," in Opera, ed. S. Brandt et G. Laub mann. English trans.: Divine Institutes, trans. Sister Mary Francis McDonald ("The Fathers of the Church," Vol. *+9; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 196*0, iii. 12. Lactantius is the only source for the Seneca quotation he cites; the work from which it is taken is no longer extant. Cf. Seneca's Opera quae supersunt, suppl., ed. Fridericus Haase (Lipsiae: B. G. Teuhneri, I896-I9 0 7), .p. 21. 8 * ) - therefore, is found to he immortality alone, hardly an original con clusion; yet the motive of the argument is to prevent earthly pleasure in God's service from coming to an end. The quality of the immortal life is therefore little changed from the earthly; it becomes worship and service in the presence of God Himself, in the society of the bro- Q thers whom the worshiper has already learned to love. This honest, workaday point of view here receives its first development since Hermas; and, coupled with Lactantius' exposition of the brotherhood of man, it takes on new attractiveness. From these modest beginnings Augustine developed his own mas sive, compelling doctrine. His concern with the question of human ends extended throughout his scholarly career and appeared in most of his treatises. In the Retractations, which he composed toward the end of his life as a bibliography and commentary on the entire body of his writings, he corrected only one of his many eschatological statements.^ So it would appear, in this area at least, that his thought developed steadily and consistently from his initial interest in the philosophi cal description of the Christian end. One of his earliest writings is an attempt in the classical manner to show that philosophical positions thus far established re garding the end of man do not in fact offer satisfactory solutions. On the Happy Life is a symposium, supposedly a record of a birthday celebration at Cassiciacum. Participants in the conversation are Augustine's mother, his son, and friends who have followed him to this 8 Q Ibid., vii. 5-6, 2 6. Cf. infra, p. retreat; the conversation, incidentally, is a true discussion in the Platonic manner rather than the series of monologues with interjected yeses familiar to him from Cicero. The level is that of philosophy rather than theology, and the method is that of definition and syllo gism. His first position is that the soul's basic lack is truth and that nothing else will satisfy its longing; thus the wise possess be atitude despite pain and misfortune, while the vicious are really mis erable despite wealth, pleasure, and fame because their souls are emp ty. The fulness of truth is resident only in God; and truth will be in the soul when, after the soul has cast out every vice, God is resi dent there and perfectly beheld and enjoyed as the source of truth. In the Retractations, however, Augustine expressed his displeasure with himself for not including the body as a participant in happiness and carrying the happiness of soul and body over into eternal life in an unmolested union.-1 "1 - The Augustinian synthesis receives its full development in the City of God, as Augustine draws together the full maturity of his thought and experience in a mighty effort to defend his faith against its pagan traducers. After attempting to show the folly and unworthi- ~ ^De beata vita liber, ed. Michael Schmaus ("Florilegium pat-' risticum tarn veteris quam medii aevi auctores complectens," Fasc. XXVII; Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1931). English trans.: De beata vita, trans. Ruth Allison Brown ("Catholic University of America: Patristic Studies," Vol. LXXII; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of Ameri ca, 19^4), ch. 35* • ^Retractationum libri duo, recensuit Pius Knoll ('Corpus scrip- torum ecclesiasticorum latinorum," Vol. XXXV; Vindobonae: F. Tempsky, 1902). English trans.: Retractations, trans. Lawrence William Faul- stick (unpublished Doctoral dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 19^5)> 2. 4. 86 ness of competing "beliefs, he "bases his case for Christianity on the greatness of man and the end intended for him "by his Creator. First he completes an argument designed to display faith as a means of know ledge and then moves to the purposes for which knowledge is the tool. His definition "became classic for the scholastics: We are said to enjoy that which in itself, and irrespective of other ends, delights us; to use that which we seek for the sake of some end "beyond. For which reason the things of time are to "be used rather than enjoyed, that we may deserve to enjoy things eternal ... .12 The knowledge men have of the world and of themselves suggests that they are images of God, very far removed from Him, it is true, yet nearer Him than any other natural work and destined to he restored to closer re semblance. Men exist, know they exist, and delight in "both their existence and their knowledge. For Augustine even the marring 1 P Quod ea re frui dicimur, quae nos non ad aliud referenda per se ipsam delectat; uti vero ea re, quam propter aliud quaerimus. Unde temporalihus magis utendum est, quam fruendum, ut frui mereamur aeter- nis. De civitate Dei libri XXII, recensuit Emanuel Hoffmann ("Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum," Vol. XXXX; Vindohonae: F. Tempsky, 1899“1900)* English trans.: The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods, George Wilson, and J. J. Smith ("The Modern Library of the World's Best Books"; New York: Random House, 1950), xi. 25. The extent of Augustine's familiarity with classical Greek philosophy is still under scholarly consideration. He appears to have read Greek poorly and re ceived most of his views on early Greek philosophy at second hand. Most of Plato had not been translated into Latin, but perhaps he had seen the Meno, Timaeus, and Phaedo. Aristotle's Categories seems his sole acquaintance with an author for whom he had little appreciation. Augustine's closest philosophical connections were with neo-Platonism, and he often parallels passages of Plotinus' Enneads, the one title which it is certain he knew at first hand. Concerning Augustine's use of Plotinus in developing his own outlook, cf. F. Cayre, Initiation a la philosophie de Saint Augustin ("Bibliotheque Augustinienne; Etudes— philosophie, Ho. I; Paris: Desclie de Brouwer, 19*1-7)> PP* 61-83; L. Grandgeorge, Saint Augustin et le n6oplatonisme (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1 8 9 6). "^Ibid., xi. 26. 87 of the divine image hy original sin has not laid the soul entirely waste; it is still greater than the world and all material objects Despite its continued worth, however, the soul is not self-sufficient. In reality the soul is for God's ultimate use: God loves souls because He loves Himself and His souls participate in His good ness. To say otherwise, by Augustine's definition of fruor. would im ply that God is in need of some good from his souls without which He cannot experience enjoyment, "and no sane man will say that."^ The earthly city has not yet discovered its fundamental re quirement but rather "gapes after earthly joys, and grovels in them as if they were the only joys."^ The heavenly city, however, has begun to understand the nature of its existence, which is eternal and has as its end the highest and ultimate good.If In general Augustine appears to draw his definition of end from his agreement with the moral philos ophers. The chief good is that which leaves nothing further to seek .in 18 order to be happy. It is sought for itself alone; it is an end. Even Plato discovered that such a chief good can only be G o d . There is thus philosophical sanction for the conclusion that the end, God, ■^"De quantitate animae," texte, trad., et notes par Pierre de Labriolle in Oeuvres (Bruges: Desclee de Brouwer, 19^-8). English trans lation: The Greatness of the Soul and The Teacher, trans. Joseph M. CdL- leran ("Ancient Christian Writers," Ho. 9j Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1950), ch. 73* •^^De doctrina Christiana libros quattuor, ed. Henr. Jos. Vogels ("Florilegium patristicum, tarn veteris quam medii aevi auctores com- plectens," Pasc. XXIV; Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1930)• English trans.: On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr. ("The Library of Lib- eral Arts," No. 80; New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958), i. 31* 3^-* ~^De civitate Dei xv. 15. ^Ibid., v. 12. • ^Ibid., viii. 8. ^jhid., viii. 4-5* 88 must "be uninterruptedly enjoyed with an eternal certainty if the soul 20 is to he finally happy. Salvation is, therefore, the life of the world to come. Some of Augustine's most deeply felt writing develops the quality of this final happiness: There we shall enjoy the gifts of nature, that is to say, all that God the Creator of all natures has bestowed upon ours-- gifts not only good, hut eternal— not only of the spirit, healed now hy wisdom, hut also of the hody renewed hy the resurrection. There the virtues shall no longer he struggling against any vice or evil, hut shall enjoy the reward of victory, the eter nal peace which no adversary shall disturb. This is the final blessedness, this the ultimate consummation, the unending end. And thus we may say of peace, as we have said of eternal life, that it is the end of our good .... For peace is a good so great, that even in this earthly and mortal life there is no word we hear with such pleasure, nothing we de sire with such zest, or find to he more thoroughly gratify ing . 21 Augustine's use of the analogy of peace may at first glance appear an artful accommodation to the longings of his audience, battered and com plaining as they were from the barbarian assaults which brought about his writing of the hook; when it is recalled, however, that Augustine himself died as the Vandals were storming the gates of his own see of Hippo, it seems reasonable to suppose that a longing for central and ■ultimate peace possessed his being as well. The supposition receives 20Ibid., xi. 1 3. ^-*-Ibi enim erunt naturae munera, hoc est, quae naturae nostrae ab omnium naturarum creatore donantur, non solum bona, verum etiam sem- pitema, non solum in animo, qui sanatur per sapientiam, verum etiam in corpore, quod resurrectione renovabitur; ibi virtutes, non contra ulla vitia vel mala quaecumque certantes, sed habentes victoriae praemium aetemam pacem, quam nullus adversarius inquietet. Ipsa est enim bea- titudo finalis, ipse perfectionis finis, qui consumentem non habet finem. . . . Quapropter possemus dicere fines bonorum nostrorum esse pacem, sicut aetemam diximus vitam .... Tantum est enim pacis bonum ut etiam in rebus terrenis atque mortalibus nihil gratius soleat audiri, nihil desiderabilius concupisci, nihil postremo possit melius inveniri. Ibid.. xix. 10, 11. 89 further support from the frequency with which ideas of peace and home land appear in his earlier writings and from the theme of his Confes- P P !! sions. His references culminate in a definition of peace: the per fectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. The peace of all things is the tranquillity of order."^3 This ultimate peace stems from the soul's uninterrupted vision of God. The blessed see God in themselves, in Him, and in all His new creation: And, along with the other great and marvellous discoveries which shall then kindle rational minds in praise of the great Artificer, there shall he the enjoyment of a beauty which ap peals to reason. ... He shall be the end of our desires who shall be seen without end, loved without cloy, praised without weariness. . . . There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end with out end. For what other end do we propose to ourselves than to attain the kingdom of which there is no end?2^ P P Cf. De quantitate animae j6; De doctrina christianae 10-11; also De catechizandis rudibus (3~durchgesehene aufl. der 2. ausg. von Gustav Kruger, Sammlung ausgewahlter kirchen- und dogmengeschichtli- cher Quellenschriften," Hft. b', Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 193*+).; English trans.: The First Catechetical Instruction, trans. and annotated by Joseph P. Christopher ("Ancient Christian Writers," Ho. 2; Westminster, Md.: Hewman Bookshop, 19*4-6), 25, * 1 - 7 j Opera omnia, Vols. XXXVI-XXXIX: Sermones ("Patrologiae, cursus completus, Series latina"; Paris: J. P. Migne, 18*4-1-77); English trans.: Sermons on the, liturgical Seasons, trans. Sister Mary Sarah Muldowney ("The Fathers of the Church," Vol. 3 8; Hew York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1959)> 2* 4- 2 . J; 252. 9> 2 5 6. 3i Confessions: texte etabli et trad. Pierre de Labriolle (Paris: Soci^te d'edition "Les belles lettres," l^bb-bj); English trans.: Con fessions and Enchiridion, trans. Albert C. Outler ("Library of Christ ian Classics," Vol. VII; London: SCM Press, 1955)* ^ De civitate Dei xix. 1 3. cum caeteris rebus, quae ibi magnae atque mirabiles vider buntur, rationales mentes in tanti artificis laudem rationabilis pul- chritudinis delectatione succendent. . . . Ipse finis erit desiderior- um nostrorum, qui sine fine videbitur, sine fastidio amabitur, sine fatigatione laudabitur. . . . Ibi vacabimus, et videbimus, videbimus, et amabimus; amabimus, et laudabimus. Ecce quod erit in fine sine fine. Ham quis alius noster est finis, nisi pervenire ad regnum, cujus nullus est finis? Ibid., xxii. 30. 90 The single reference to "a beauty which appeals to the reason" is as close as Augustine gets to the combination of the Beautiful and the Good which so appealed to Gregory of Eyssa. It will also he Thomas. Aquinas' guide to the harmonization of the difficult Eastern Fathers, a harmonization achieved at the expense of the deeper levels of meaning they displayed. Augustine himself deals with the concept of union as seldom as possible. Union is merely a manner of describing the loving enjoyment of God in His presence. He has, nevertheless, woven a rich tapestry of feeling and reason in which each element balances the other in a way the scholastics were unable to maintain.^5 In the mystic enthusiasm which through Boethius and John Scotus Erigena invaded the Western Church, Lactantius' and even Augustine's practical, though emotional, treatments seem to have been respected but not developed. Oddly enougb, both the generalization and the warmth reappear in the initiator of scholasticism, Anselm of Canter bury. Erigena had already enunciated the priority of reason over authority, even the authority of the Church fathers. Respect is due them, but their authority actually inheres in that of the truth they have discovered and transmitted; consequently if natural reason super sedes patristic conclusions, it must have the last word; for the com mon source of both reason and authority is the divine Wisdom which ul timately will supersede them both. Yet for Erigena reason was a kind ^Qpera omnia, Vol. XXXII: De moribus eeclesiae catholicae ("Patrologiae, cursus completus, Series latina"; Paris: J. P. Migne, l84l-77); English trans.: "On the Morals of the Catholic Church," trans. R. Stothart, in Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, ed. Whitney J. Oates (New York: Random House, 19^ - 8), ch. 1 1. 91 of roving speculation rather than a rigorous process of deduction and conclusion.It was Anselm of Canterbury who made logic the tool of his faith. In this spirit he develops his argument on the end of man in subordination to his much more famous argument for the existence of God. The rational mind alone is capable of rising to the investigation of the Supreme Being since it is similar in essence. Thus the more earnestly the rational mind devotes itself to learning its own nature, the better does it achieve knowledge of God. Wow the mind alone of all created beings is capable of remembering, comprehending, and loving itself. If mind is a true image of God, then the same activities hold true of God since it is inconceivable that the mind should have come upon such excellent qualities by chance.^7 It follows that the rational creature ought to devote his high abilities in the service and love of the Supreme Good. From this springs a corollary argument for man's eternal end. It would be im pious to suppose that the capacity for loving God which He created in the soul could be lost. The soul must therefore have been created 28 eternal that it might eternally love its Creator. Thus Anselm ar rives at his triumphant conclusion: in the enjoyment of that blessed ness, it will be impossible to turn the soul aside by any fear or 2%e_ divisione naturae ii. 1 6; iv. lU; iii. 1; i. 6 6. 2f"Monologion," in Opera omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 19^6); English trans.: Proslogium, Monologium . . . and Cur Deus Homo? trans. Sidney Norton Deane (Chicago: Open Court, 1903)? ch. 66-6 7* 2®Ibid., 69. 92 deception; in the experience of that blessedness it will he impossible pq not to love it eternally. As an argument for eternal life, the emphasis of the passages is on the everlastingness of the enjoyment of God. The nature of the enjoyment must be inferred: it seems to combine elements of communion in love replying to love, of knowledge in the enjoyment of truth, and, as the Proslogium shows, of communion in the enjoyment of God with other eternal souls. In the devotional Proslogium Anselm alternately addresses his soul and his God as he pursues his thread of thought, which is a heightened form of the argument in the Monologium. It closes with a plea for the attainment of his end, "I pray, 0 God, to O 0 know thee, to love thee, that I may rejoice in thee. Despite his beginning use of logical method in a scholastic spirit, Anselm is as yet far from the scholastic conclusion that enjoyment is knowledge. He still maintains a grip on the notions of communion, love, and enjoy ment in the synthetic Augustinian spirit. Quite incidentally, Anselm is apparently the originator of a { doctrine popular with the dramatists, that man was created to praise God in the place of the angelic ranks who fell with Lucifer. Anselm proves this in one of his most agile deductions He then explains that the holiness which man lost in the fall was his original posses- OQ "Proslogion," in Opera omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, ch. 26. 3^"Cur Deus homo?" in Opera omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, I. l6. 93 sion, granted "by God for the exercise of praise and enjoyment in eter nally loving and choosing God for His own sake, since only holy "beings 32 can so choose. Anselm of Canterbury, then, is Augustinian, and that with a whole-hearted, intimately experienced conviction. The extra doctrinal flourish of man's creation as an angelic substitute should not obscure his Augustinian interpretation of end as fulness of know ledge and enjoyment of God in the activity of praiseful love. Like Anselm, Hugo of St. Victor aims at an Augustinian expres sion, though without Anselm's logical apparatus. The high place he gives to the pursuit of knowledge arises from his view of the mind's dignity in that its Creator has made it capable of contemplating Him- 33 self. Even in his practical treatise on the sacraments and their administration, he finds it necessary to lay theological foundations in the redemptive purpose of the sacraments, then to look back to the human origins and the fall which made redemption necessary, and fin ally to look forward to its consummation. Man has as his end the ser vice of God. The world was ordained to serve man, as man to serve God. But the so-called service of God is really to man's advantage since in this service he finds his own happiness. God, all sufficient to Him self, does not stand in need of service from anyone. The service which he renders God and receives from the world makes up the total of man's 32Ibid., II. 1. 33 Didascalicon de studio legendi; a critical text by Brother Charles Henry Buttimer ("Catholic University of America Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Latin," Vol. X; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1939)* English trans.: Didascalicon; a Medieval Guide to the Arts, trans. Jerome Taylor ("Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies," No. 6k; New York: Columbia University Press, 1 9 6 1), i. 1. 9b "benefit— the latter to supply his needs, the former to constitute his happiness. Thus, though he was created last, man is the final cause 3^ of all creation; and therein lies his dignity. Despite his vigorous "beginning, Hugo's energies flag toward the end of his work. His de scriptions of man's final "bliss are pallid, almost unthinking, sum- 35 maries of Augustine. Rather unexpectedly Hugo's controversial contemporary, Abelard, maintains a hold on the August inian viewpoint "by the warmth of his conclusions, even though they have "been arrived at in the dialectical spirit. While his development of dialectical method in his major works seems to have obscured his positive beliefs from his contempor aries, some of his occasional pieces illustrate his kinship with Anselm. In the Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian, Abelard relaxes somewhat from the rigid procedures of his previous works and combines two favorite medieval devices in a framework for his argument. In a dream the three participants approach him and re quest him to act as judge for their competitive discussion. The over all approach is that Christianity has not controverted but rather ful filled both Jewish religion and philosophic speculation. Almost im mediately Abelard becomes prosecutor as well as judge. He harshly 3^-1 "De sacramentis fidei christianae," in Opera omnia, ed. Canonicorum regularium S. Victoris Parisiensis ("Patrologiae, cursus completus, Series latina," Vol. CLXXVI; Paris: J. P. Migne, 1880). English trans.: On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith, trans. Roy J. Deferrari ("Publications of the Mediaeval Academy of America," No. 5 8; Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 195l)> I* 2. 1. 35Xbid., II. 18. 20, 22. dismisses the Jew, who obstinately refuses to recognize his arguments; and the dialogue turns into polite conversation between the philosopher and the Christian. They agree on the subject of natural law, and the Christian invites the philosopher to consider the more important topic of the chief good and its means of access. The philosopher agrees that the sovereign good is the object of all study and predictably defines it as the end or good whose possession grants happiness. He then main tains that to him who enjoys mature virtue the relative misery or com fort of the body is a matter of indifference and that the perfection of the future life consists in. its greater opportunities for the prac tice of virtue unhampered by bodily weaknesses and desires. The Chris- 4,. tian maintains, however, that the absence of evil and of the possibil ity of doing wrong in the future life makes for an actual increase in happiness, for which reason it is spoken of as a reward. With suspi cious readiness the philosopher replies, "Why, truly, I must admit that you are an excellent philosopher, and I lack the audacity to raise objections to so convincing an argument." Both the philosopher and the Christian then agree that the practice of justice in the pre sent life is its highest good, leading in its turn to the pleasures of the future life. Since the supreme good is that which makes human essence bet ter and nobler, God, who alone is capable of bringing about such a change, is the supreme good. It is, indeed, the participation in the vision of God and the enjoyment of that vision which bestows blessed ness; from this vision grows the continuing love for God on the part of the "blessed: We shall -understand, with the eyes of the heart.... Seeing Him will satisfy all our desires in every possible manner, for in Him we shall he granted everything necessary to true "blessedness. This vision of the divine majesty will he for us an un failing light, a supreme holiness, a perpetual repose, a peace ahove experience, in a word, all good, all joy.3° Thus is revealed an unsuspected depth of feeling in a reputed logician and the first of the elaborations of the beatific vision in a way which combines knowledge with communion and enjoyment. It is the more striking because the balance thus tentatively achieved by one gifted spirit was lost be his less original disciples. Abelard's reflection of the beatific vision became with his successors merely vision. During the remainder of the twelfth century, interpretations flowed from classroom and cloister and differed accordingly. For the mystics, vision was the culmination cf an ecstasy possible in this life, an overflowing love for God that virtually united the soul with the divine. For the schoolmen, vision was tantamount to immortal knowledge. During the thirteenth century the lines were still more clearly drawn, but they blurred again in the rising uncertainties of the fourteenth century. Both mysticism and scholasticism might lead ^ Turn quippe perfecte tunc verissime cuncta cognoscuntur, a nobis . . . per oculos cordis .... Ejus quippe visio sic omnibus nostris per omnia satisfaciet desideriis, ut ipsa per se omnia nobis conferat, quae verae beatitudini sunt necessaria. Ipsa ilia divinae majestatis visio nobis erit lux indeficiens, sanctitas summa, quies perpetua, pax omnem sensum exsuperans, omne denique bonum, omnis vir tue, omne gaudium. "Dialogus inter philosophum, Judaeum, et Christi- anum: Dialogue entre un philosophe, un juif, et un chretien," in Oeuvres choisies d'Abelard; textes pr^sentes et trad, par Maurice de Gandillac ("Bibliotheque philosophique"; Paris: Aubier, 19^5)> P* 312. 97 to charges of heresy. Worse, hoth mystics and scholastics might find themselves caught up in political action that disturbed if it did not destroy their ideologies and that "brought them into contact with the orists outside the limits of theology. These more practical students in their turn frequently found theological concepts in unexpected con texts. William of Occam had stirred up considerable controversy by logical methods and epistemology that controverted his scholastic pre decessors even before his quarrel with the pope inspired his more ex treme political writings. For all his methodological innovation, he seems to have acceded to a traditional view of man's end. His intro duction to the Hundred Theological Sayings reads almost like a creed summarized from his scholastic forebears and their master Aristotle: The soul is imbued with a natural longing to know its goal because it is endowed with reason and is made in the image of God. Thus, as Aristotle teaches, it strives toward the good. At this point William abandons his attempt at a philosophical foundation and thus implies a thoroughgoing criticism of the earlier schoolmen. It is by revelation that the soul recognizes God as its end. William places the seat of enjoyment of this end in the will rather than in the intellect, dis tinguishes nicely between the possible created happiness of the will and the object of this happiness, and defends the freedom of the will with reference to its ultimate end.37 He makes no further attempt to 37s. C. Tomay, Ockham: Studies and Selections (La Salle, 111.: Open Court, 1938)} PP* 175“11, 188. There are no modern editions in the original of the Sayings; cf. Gilson, ojo. cit., p. 783* 98 draw out the applications of the concept in his polemic. Not so his disciple, Marsilius of Padua. Marsilius, did not, however, owe his extremes entirely to the influence of his teacher. The Defensor pacis was probably written in 132^ while Marsilius and Occam were both still at Paris and, therefore, well before Occam's own polemic concern with political theory as he developed it during his stay with Ludwig of Bavaria. Marsilius' con clusions were perhaps all the more shocking to his contemporaries be cause his foundations were so impeccably Aristotelian and scholastic. The benefits of peace are necessary to sufficiency of life, as Christ was aware when he decreed the announcement of peace as a sign of his birth.38 It is the purpose of the state to insure those bene fits and to create "leisure for those liberal functions in which are exercised the virtues of both the practical and the theoretic soul."39 In addition, since living well has both its earthly and eternal as pects, the state must provide for the cultivation of those virtues necessary to the achievement of the future world. And this is the rationale for a priestly class in the state. Adam, like other creatures, was created for the glory of God; unlike them, he was made in God's image so that he might be capable of I j .p v participating in eternal happiness. ^ The fall, however, made neces sary a retraining toward goodness throughout the history of Israel, as oO Defensor pacis, ed. R. Scholz ("Fontes juris germanici anti- qui"; Hanover: Hahnsche, 1932-33)* English trans.: The Defender of the Peace, trans. with an introduction by Alan Gewirth ('^Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies".; New York: Columbia University Press, 195&)} I. I- 1. 39ibid.. I. k. 1. ^°Ibid.. I. 6. 1. 99 I j recorded in the Old Testament, until its culmination in the coming of j ! Christ, hy whom the happiness of the original end is restored. And this is the historical background for the priestly class in the state. It is from the two different ends of the temporal classes and the priestly class that the remainder of the argument takes its iconoclas- j tic course. Iconoclastic in a different way, Raymond of Sebonde, like Marsilius, maintains a traditional approach to the end of man. Born in Barcelona and professor of theology, philosophy, and medicine at the University of Toulouse until his death (ca. 1^35), he is now recalled for his influences in opposite directions on Montaigne, the "gentle skeptic," and on Peter Canisius, the militant polemicist of the Counter-Reformation. While Raymond's supposed overemphasis on natural theology at the expense of Scripture brought his Theologia naturalis ; to the Index in 1599, it was for his contemporaries a healthy counter- agent to the extremes of nominalism. Wo doubt they were startled by the vast array of conclusions he; was able to unwind through his deductive method, a method all the more : obvious because denuded of the dialectical apparatus of scholasticism. The clarity of exposition uncompromisingly reveals the amazing argu ment. Man's honorable estate as the highest rank of creation suggests i not only the existence of one who is responsible for such an order of j things but also a certain similarity between man and God. Raymond has j previously established God's freedom from all need; thus the entire ! creation has for its purpose the communication of His goodness, His i i liberality, and His uniqueness. The resemblance to God lies in man's ! 100 free will, a term which in Raymond's usage includes not only the will hut the intelligence as well.^ 1 And because this will is, like God, not subject to time or place, it follows that its purpose and destiny are likewise not so subject. His supreme destiny must therefore be h-2 intellectual, spiritual, and invisible. As such it must be the eternal presentation of the will in all its aspects to God in communi- ^3 cation, enjoyment, and their apex, loye. It follows from the worth of man that his second duty is to love his fellows out of respect for the image of God resident in them as well. Further, since the image is of an eternal God, it must be eternal as well; it follows that the union in joy given by God is also eternal. Searching for a description of this joy, Raymond uses a num ber of characteristics— delight, repose, contentment, tranquillity, sweetness, satisfaction, an "immortal liveliness."^ "Whoever has this joy has every perfection, every good which man could have or desire."^ Such enjoyment naturally presupposes immediate face-to- face vision, but the emphasis is continually on the enjoyment rather than on the knowledge implied in vision. Unlike his more extreme pre decessors, Raymond has here balanced the traditional elements rather than ignored them for a brief moment of synthesis. I n La theologie naturelle de Raymond Sebon, trad. nouvellement par Michel Seigneur de Montaigne (‘ 'Oeuvres completes"; Paris: L. Conard, 1932-35)> ch. 19. There is no modern ed. of the original Liber creaturarum; cf. Gilson, oj). cit., p. J02. ^ Ibid., ch. 8 8. ^Ibid., ch. 108-1 0 9. Ibid., ch. 150. ^Ibid. , ch. 1 5 1. I d Although his route was different, winding through renewed classical studies, the conclusions of Marsilio Ficino and even some of his reasoning were remarkably similar to those of Raymond of Sebonde. The founder of the New Academy in his resumption of the early Church's attempt to harmonize Christian doctrine with Platonic philosophy saw the Christian life as the return to God through contemplation; a goal admittedly unattainable in this life necessitates and undergirds be lief in the immortality of the soul. The Commentary on the Symposium, the reported proceedings, as it were, of the Florentine reinstitution of the banquet commemorating Plato's birthday, is particularly inter esting as an attempt at a new synthesis. Attempting a definition of love, Ficino becomes involved in the method and purpose of creation itself. For the first time since the early mystics, ideas make their appearance in a discussion of end. The work of creation is differently defined by Ficino, but the emana tions from the Divine Mind have their place in his explanation. The bringing together of forms and ideas effected the orderliness and beau ty of creation, a continuing activity of God in relation to His world. The various facets of the circling activity are named, according to their aspects, Beauty, Love, the Good, Truth.^ God has illumined the soul with all of these aspects in order that they might lead the crea- W ture to the bliss which consists of the enjoyment of Himself. 1 Ficino ^Commentary on Plato's Symposium; text and translation by Sears Reynolds Jayne (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri, 19^), i. 6; ii. 2 . J+7 Ibid., iv. 5* 1C2 likens this enjoyment to a rich banquet for all the creatures of God, 1 ^ 8 where He "sweetly detains them forever." Ficino's preoccupation with beauty and its enjoyment as a pre rogative of human destiny kept him from coming full circle in conceiv ing the return to God as a union in the tradition of Dionysius and Erigena, his closest medieval parallels. His emphasis is rather on man's fulfilment of his own nature and return to his own idea in the presence of God: Joined then by love to our own Idea, we shall become whole men, so that we shall seem first to have worshipped God in things, in order later to worship things in God; and shall seem to worship things in God in order to recover our selves above all, and seem, in loving God, to have loved ourselves. ° Ficino did not delve into the implications of his moderating thought; his was an attitude of rediscovery, enthusiasm, and renewed apprecia tion for neglected phases of Christian thought and relationships. A further effort at synthesis comes from an unexpected quarter. Savonarola, the passionate reformer, prophet, and dreamer of dreams, was theologically the most conservative of scholastics. From his entry into the Dominican order he was a fervent ascetic and student. His later charismatic development, while it unquestionably affected his attitude toward papal authority and thus earned him the heretic's brand, seems to have left untouched his early-crystallized and entirely ^Ibid., iv. 6. ^■9ldee tunc nostre amando coniuncti, integri homines evademus, ut deum primo in rebus coluisse videamur, quo res deinde in deo cola- mus, resque in deo ideo venerari, ut nos ipsos in eo pre ceteris am- plectamur, et amando deum, nos ipsos videamur amasse. Ibid., vi. 19* anti-humanistic theology. With regard to human destiny, his argument begins with the instinctive search of every creature for happiness, the classic ap proach in fact. Since man is the image of God, the happiness he seeks must involve some ineffable union with the Prototype, by participation in the divine goodness. This participation must, then, involve a su pernatural end. By the gift of God’s grace the Christian is enabled to preserve himself and develop toward this end, through simplifying his life and purifying his h e a r t .50 This end, supernatural as it is, cannot be found in any created good but consists solely in the contem plation and enjoyment of God. It will be noted that Savonarola's syn thesis is almost accidental. Whereas his scholastic predecessors had been unable to avoid emphasizing either knowledge, the action of the intellect, or enjoyment, the action of the will, at the expense of the other, Savonarola seems to find no difficulty in the exercise of both at once. The essence of beatitude is in the operation of the intellect in knowing God. By contemplation a certain happiness is attainable in this life and partakes truly of the essential beatitude; but the com pletion of beatitude is possible only in the life to come. Pull en joyment of God, the perfection of beatitude, is impossible to mortals, although even the inchoate happiness possible to them is achieved only through ascetic Christian living, not by philosophy. Once more the student is struck by the fragility of the achieved synthesis: the RQ De simplicitate christianae vitae, a cura di Pier Georgio Ricci ("Edizione nazionale delle opere di Girolamo Savonarola"; Rome: Angelo Belardetti, 1959), i* 8-9- 104 harmony of knowledge and enjoyment is forced Toy ignoring the careful dialectics of scholasticism's golden age. Perhaps the urgency of re plying to competing views of happiness effected or excused the over sight . This chapter has reviewed those writers who throughout the middle ages maintained their hold on an eclectic doctrine of the end of man. Their foundations in the early church lay in Hermas' suggestion of the two cities and the Christian's possibility of joyful obedience in his own city; to this Justin Martyr added the idea that God could be enjoyed. Lactantius and Augustine had much in common. Both made use of a classical philosophical approach in the Roman tradition. Both found their arguments for eternal life not in present human misery or de pravity but in the continuing worth of a being made by God. They saw being as of such value that it must be eternal if God is not to fail in His purpose of creating man to love Him forever. The action of mutual love allows the creature to participate eternally in his Creator's goodness and blessedness, and the eternal life finds its earthly ex pression in the practice of loving justice toward all fellow creatures. The words appealing most to Lactantius in describing eternal blessed ness were worship and service. Augustine found ideas of peace, order, and harmony mixing with his description of the perfect vision of God. Neither placed emphasis on the notion of union with God in the strin gent mystical sense. Augustine's tremendous influence in other areas of theology tended in this area also to give him precedence over Lactantius. 105 Anselm, creatively logical though he attempted to he, could not avoid making use of Augustine's expressions. An everlasting life of eter nally choosing God will he characterized hy communion in love and en joyment of truth hy souls so like their Maker that they are worthy of occupying those places in the heavenly ranks lost hy the fallen an gels. Hugo of St. Victor also defined the service for which man is ordained as the joyful contemplation of God. Ahelard, despite his in fluence on scholasticism, also followed Augustine in this respect. In the late middle ages the return to this kind of synthesis was almost incidental. William of Occam in his nominalist rehellion once again suggested that revelation rather than reason discloses God as man's end; his version of the knowledge of God included elements of enjoyment as he seated contemplation in the will rather than in the intellect. His disciple, Marsilius of Padua, founded his political system on the doctrine that man is the image of God and as such de serves to participate in eternal happiness. Raymond of Sehonde took the idea of man as the highest level of creation for the point of de parture in his argument that the image of God resides in the human possession of free will and intelligence; human destiny therefore con sists in the eternal presentation of the will to God in the enjoyment of love and communion. Ficino added to the notion of enjoyment the sensuous, long-lost imagery of an eternal "banquet. Savonarola, de spite his ascetic "bent, finished off his austere argument for man as the image of God hy redefining the notion of union. Designed for •union with his Prototype, man fulfils his end hy the contemplative en joyment of God. 106 In all their approaches to the notion of end, then, the medie val thinkers made full use of their early theological heritage. The foregoing chapters, have followed the permutations of their arguments from the generalized references of the early church through the final generalizations of the late medieval philosophers "bent on using man's end to define other areas of philosophy. After the doctrinal slump of the first medieval centuries, Erigena drew the bewildered attention of his age to the complex possibilities of the faith and the values of reason in the study of that faith. The new direction was eagerly followed by the Anselms of the eleventh century. The rational mind, most like the essence of God, must therefore be capable of conceiving God and enjoying Him in life temporal and eternal. The idea was to receive precarious balance with Abelard as the vision of God which bestows blessedness in its percep tion. The vision lost some of its emotional force with Robert of Melun and Peter Lombard, but the twelfth-century mystics made up the loss in their impassioned search for godly enjoyment in the contempla tion of God even in this life. Both the Franciscans and the Dominicans of the thirteenth cen tury spun out the niceties of the intellectual aspect of the vision, whereas the mystics of the fourteenth century went even farther than their twelfth-century counterparts down the road of doctrinal obscur antism in veiled allusions to union with Being as the only antidote to nonbeing. By the fifteenth century the problem of end had become inci dental to the polemic of political and philosophical discussions. Whatever their definitions of human destiny, the theologians were 107 agreed on the worth of man as the image of God and the highest expres sion of His love and goodness in creation. Clearly the dramatists had ample resources if they cared to use their heritage. In some ways they paralleled the theological development. The statements of the less developed occasional plays tend to generalize on the nature of man's end while the passions and cycles have opportunity to discuss specific references. They are all in agreement on the worth of humanity and frequently utilize the doc trines of redemption to emphasize this worth. The following chapters will discuss the uses of this doctrinal complex in the various kinds of mystery plays. PART TWO THE DRAMATIC MATERIALS PART TWO THE DRAMATIC MATERIALS At first glance the biblical plays seem composed of incidents so 'uniformly selected by their content, so obviously dependent on each other, and so literally handled that they can almost be reduced to collections of formulae. Thus students of the genre can speak of con ventional entities like "Mary Magdalene in gaudio," "the harrowing of hell," or "the setting of the watch" without misunderstanding. It should follow that a historian could dip into the plays at any scene and come up with a conventional interpretation to be collected into a theology of the drama. This was M. Duriez' approach, and the composite authorship discernible in the majority of the plays, together with their liturgical origins, would make such an expectation'all the more reasonable. It is the purpose of this part to suggest that a receptive reading of the plays actually discovers clearly defined indications of theological variation and highly individualized presentations of tra ditional doctrines. This unexpected variety appears not only in the addition of original material to the traditional biblical or apocryphal sources but even more in the selection, juxtaposition, or even exci sion of their materials by the dramatists. The delicate shadings of emphasis thus achieved make it impos sible for a student of the plays merely to collect theological state- 109 110 ments or allusions from the plays and compare them with their scholas tic or patristic sources. One must analyze the selection, placement, and emphases of groups of scenes, and very often only a view of a play in its entirety will reveal its controlling theme. Thus, while clarity of arrangement would dictate a study of the themes of the plays in an order parallel with that of the theological chapters, such an approach would fail to give the true flavor and multi-doctrinal thrust of the plays in their entirety. The danger is the greater in that the "body of Continental mysteries is unfamiliar to English readers (indeed, they are compared so infrequently in the critical writings that one must suppose that scholars have yet to take into account the entire corpus of the medieval drama), and there is no overall survey which can he referred to here. At the risk, then, of interrupting the flow of exposition and comparison of doctrinal approahces, it seems neces sary to summarize the action of the major types of plays and cycles and to indicate their overall techniques of expression in addition to citing those passages with unmistakably theological references. It will then he possible to group the results and compare them with their theological foundations. To explain the arrangement of the chapters in this section, it is first necessary to glance at the development of the Latin plays and their liturgical settings. Throughout the middle ages biblical plays were produced from Dublin to Constantinople, from Jerusalem to Riga. Karl Young has located Latin texts in churches throughout Europe.'*' ■*Young, o£. cit., I, 269-TO, ^59_6o, V76-8 1, 625-2 6; II, 59-63> 5^2, et passim. Ill In these Latin plays the generalized feeling of music-comedy formulae is particularly strong— with some justification. The plays were com posed as chanted documentaries. Their content was drawn from the "biblical narratives of the lectionaries. It is just these "basic simi larities which make the study of variation in detail so interesting to the student of motifs. Whatever the sources of the comic and secular elements in the medieval drama, it seems certain that the mysteries originated in the dramatic possibilities of the mass. Young has pointed out in detail the symbolic and dramatic elements in the mass itself. 2 It is not surprising, therefore, that with such pre-dramatic preparation, the musical settings should make strides toward dialogue in the antiphonal use of choirs and soloists. It is no small step from the antiphonal use of such tropes as the "Quern quaeritis" in the office for Easter to full-scale dramatizations, but the narrative sections of the lectionary seem to have provided just such an impetus. Once the idea of joining costume and the actions of the women conversing with the angel at the empty tomb to the dialogue already available in the "Quem quaeritis" had taken hold, the process of depicting additional sections of the resurrection narratives with bits of dialogue from other portions of the liturgy or lines of familiar chants and hymns was astonishingly rapid. Young's massive study is given over to showing the stages by which the separate ceremonies commemorating the Passion and Easter were 2Ibid., I, 79-111. 112 turned into scenes for dramatization. The early "Quem quaeritis" tropes and processions were so successful that they were soon expanded. In some instances the expansions were nothing more than the addition of appropriate antiphons from other liturgies to increase the dialogue at the sepulchre. More typically additional hits of action were used to gain the increased scope: the women were shown the gravecloth.es, which they might in turn show to the disciples j the women were per mitted to question among themselves about removing the stone from be fore the sepulchre and in some cases to add brief chants of lamenta tion. Sometimes these were familiar antiphons, at other times non- liturgical sentences inspired by their actions. Young infers from the manuscripts of this elementary type of play that performances took place as early as the second half of the tenth century and continued through the fifteenth century.3 The eleventh-century sequence "Victimae paschalis," in which the disciples question Mazy Magdalene and receive her report of seeing the risen Christ, made a further opportunity for expansion. The same motive, it may be hoped, governed the introduction of the rather anti- semitic antiphon, "Dicant nunc Judaei." Both suggested further expan sion of scenes introducing Peter and John with the antiphon, "Currebant duo." The first part of the scene frequently gained an original touch with the women planning to purchase spices. By the middle of the twelfth century the figure of Christ had been introduced in a brief sketch of the garden appearance to Mary 3The succeeding paragraphs summarize the results of Young's collection of the liturgical plays. 113 Magdalene, which provided another occasion for originality in stanzas of lyrical lament. The unguentarius "became either a walk-on or "brief chanting part, and in at least one of these germinal plays the guards at the tomb were struck senseless by two angels bringing lightning in the form of candelabras. Each of these elements received elaboration in the fully developed Easter plays of Origny-Sainte-Benolte (l3th-l^th c.), Klosterneuberg (l3th c.), Benediktbeuem (l3th c.), and Tours (l3th c..). The Klosterneuberg Or do Paschalis introduced the harrowing of hell in five lines of suitably adapted chant. The Tours play added appearances of Christ to the assembled disciples. The narrative of the travelers accosted by the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus was the Gospel lection for the Monday following Easter, and, in keeping with the overflowing festivity of the season, a number of churches produced a Vespers dramatization, Feregrinus, which was already well established by the twelfth century. The more ambitious of these plays undertook to provide arguments for Christ as he endeavored to persuade the disciples of the resurrection. Even the simplest had some form of the tantalizing stage direction, "Ac postea ab oculis eorum evanescat." Some of these plays added other appear ances to the assembled disciples and a scene for the doubting Thomas. Occasionally a displaced scene with the Magdalene intruded. The Peregrinus is one of the few liturgical plays with evidence of perfor mance in England, at Lichfield and Shrewsbury. Around the Christmas season were grouped the shepherds' plays for Christmas Day and the visit of the Magi for Epiphany. The slaugh ter of the innocents would sometimes be attached to the Officium 114 Stella; otherwise, as the Ordo Rachelis, it would "be performed on the Feast of the Innocents. Sometimes the Christmas Day celebration con sisted of an Ordo Prophetarum, a procession of Old Testament prophets foretelling the birth of Christ, based on the pseudo-Augustinian ser mon "Contra judaeos, paganos, et arianos sermo de symbolo." Occasion ally the major feast days developed other themes, like the raising of Lazarus, for which the Feast of St. Lazarus (December 17) would have presented a production opportunity.^ Similarly, there is a play on the conversion of St. Paul for his feast day (January 2 5). 5 Plays in honor of the Virgin Mary also developed; the presen tation in the Temple (November 2l) from the apocryphal gospels, the annunciation (early in the month of December), and the dramatizations for the Feast of the Purification (February 2). The Latin Old Testament plays are of special interest as ex ceptions to the rule. They have no extant vernacular counterparts, either as individual plays or scenes in the larger complexes; nor is it clear that they were designed for particular feast days. They will be discussed in somewhat more detail when the vernacular Old Testament plays are handled. The two Latin eschatological plays, the Sponsus from Limoges and the Tegemsee Antichristus, both date from the twelfth century and lack easily identifiable associations with the liturgy. They too will be discussed more fully with their vernacular counter parts. The liturgical celebrations of the Ascension and Pentecost occasionally bordered on the dramatic but generally stayed within the confines of pageantry. Their contribution to the theatre was the 115 development of elaborate machinery that would make possible the later complicated staging of the vernacular dramas. With the exceptions noted, the dramatizations confined them selves to the lections suitable to the festal office. What elabora tion took place was aimed at filling out the action suggested in the biblical narrative for a particular holy day. Thus, although incipi ent characterizations and subplots came into being, the time limits fixed by the liturgical framework of the plays, their use of chanted hymns and sequences as dialogue, and the separation of the presenta tions by their festal, dates could not encourage developed theological interpretation. Few of the plays permitted even a connected view of the Passion; none of the offices allowed for a creation play; still less was there scope for the extended creation-to-judgment panorama demanded by medieval theology. True, some of the hymns and sequences appropriate to the office for a particular play and therefore utilized by its composer contain doctrinal allusions. Mediator, homo, Deus, descendit in propria, ut ascendat homo reus ad admissa gaudia is the second stanza of "Transeamus usque Bethleem," commonly sung by the shepherds of the liturgical nativity play as they cross the playing space from their pastures to the manger. The passage appropriately re lates Christ's purpose in taking on humanity to God's purpose in creat ing man for Christ's presence. In the same way the Ordo Rachelis, de picting the slaughter of the innocents by Herod, makes use of a pro- 116 cessional of the white-clothed innocents chanting, "0 quam gloriosum est regnum in quo cum Christo gaudent omnes sancti amicti stolis alhis; sequentur agnum quocumque ierit." But this is nothing more than the usual antiphon of vespers for the Vigil of All Saints, a tradition so natural as to require hardly a moment's thought, much less extended theological reflection. Further, insisting on the theological effect of a doctrinal chant is tempered "by the suspicion that the maker of the play, like the committee planning a modern Sunday school pageant, has selected his chants with an ear attuned to their atmosphere rather than to their theology. The relation has obviously occurred to some poet of the church and may even be considered as part of the devotional milieu, but that it has entered the playwright1s dramatic plans seems open to question. This feeling regarding the atmospheric tendency in the choice of expression is further heightened by the consideration that the liturgical Latin plays were written to be sung, are in fact librettos. Their writers were trying for emotion rather than reflection. Thus the contributions of the Latin plays were the establishment of a tradi tion for plot selection and the indication of ways in which dialogue, action, and characterization could extend the given biblical narrative. Performances of these liturgical plays continued to be given in some churches and cathedrals well into the sixteenth century; but, if the1 incidence of the extant plays is indicative, they flourished during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The obvious popularity of the Latin plays could not but have 117 encouraged their composers to more extended efforts. But as the dia logue and action increased in complexity, the advantages of spoken dialogue and translation must also have become obvious. At the same time the movement toward vernacular composition must have furthered dramatic development. Several exchanges of spoken dialogue could take place in the space of a single chant. It would then become necessary to elaborate the dialogue to explain to the audience the concepts hitherto veiled in Latin song. Attempts at clarification may well have influenced the grouping of single plays into passions and cycles. Though production conveniences in such a proceeding cannot be ignored, yet the fulness of the interpretations in the larger plays and their purposeful movement would not have been possible without their ex panded scope. The vernacular playwrights, then, had a collection of festal plays for Easter, Christmas, Epiphany, and certain other feast days for which a selection of Old Testament scenes had been developed. Be cause bilingual and vernacular versions of these plays exist both sep arately and as easily distinguishable parts of complete passions and cycles, critics are tempted to assume that the composite plays devel- • oped from the simple ones. Yet late plays are sometimes very simple, and some early plays are remarkably complex. This balancing factor must be borne in mind during the course of the following chapters, where, for the sake of convenience in comparison, the order of arrange ment is often that of simple to complex. 118 The discussion of the occasional plays will "begin with the Easter plays, followed hy a chapter on the Christmas plays. Chapter Seven will conclude the discussion of individual plays with a consider ation of the Old Testament, the eschatological, and some miscellaneous productions. The full-scale passions will "be discussed according to their origins, French, German, and other dialects. A final survey chapter will deal with the cycles. In each case the aim of the analy sis will he not so much a summary of the entire play as a comparison of original with traditional features in an effort to determine the drama tic emphases and theological intent of the action. Examples of speci fic theological references will he collected following each summary. Again, the reader must envision the groupings here arranged in neat developmental patterns as a ferment of constant experimentation; of juxtaposed, even clashing, ideas; of increasing individual confidence amid the growing dependence on dramatic conventions. No ordered aca demic discussion can fully represent the much more complicated and interesting reality. CHAPTER FIVE EASTER ELAYS The simplest vernacular Easter plays closely parallel their Latin counterparts, often with even less elaboration. The remaining fragments of the early thirteenth-century Les trois Maries, for example, are rather inept French verses containing nothing more than the conventional planctus and Mary Magdalene's report of the resurrec tion on the "Victimae paschalis pattern."-1 - Grace Frank points out their intermediary character: "The French dialect suggests a lay per formance, hut the relationship to purely liturgical texts is so close that the piece could have been used in some none too exigent church to supplement and illuminate its Easter service."2 On the other hand, the Seinte Resureccion of the same period shows an Anglo-Norman author so much at home with his biblical and legendary sources that he is able to use them with considerable free dom to achieve a formal, dignified effect. The extant fragment begins with the burial and breaks off with the setting of the watch. It in troduces the legend of blind Longinus healed by the blood of Christ as he thrusts a spear into the Saviour's side and is then imprisoned to insure his silence. There are effective touches of characterization: -^"Les trois Maries, mystere liturgique de Reims," ed. Paul Meyer, Romania XXXIII (1904), 239-^5* p Frank, o j d . cit., pp. 85-8 6. 119 120 a wily Pilate,, vaunting guards, a timid Nicodemus. 3 Developmental variety is even more strongly marked in Germany. Some of the earliest vernacular plays show a degree of elaboration entirely lacking from Easter plays of later centuries, which follow a very simple liturgical pattern. The most elaborate of the Latin plays also come from Germany and set the pattern for the thirteenth century. The Klosterneuberg play climaxes with a harrowing of hell and consider ably lengthens the setting of the watch and their subsequent bribery by the Jews. The close resemblance of the even more skilful setting of the watch in the Benediktbeuern fragment suggests that it, too, may have included a harrowing of hell. In the Klosterneuberg play the resurrected Christ, "Reformator ruine veteris,"^ makes the descent into hell after his garden appearance to tytary Magdalene. The scene is very brief. Christ chants the "Tollite portas, principes, vestras" of Psalm 2k, a usage for which the Gospel of Nicodemus has given centuries of authority.^ The devil queries, "Quis est iste rex gloriae?" and Christ, responding, "Dominus fortis et potens," breaks down the gates and is greeted by the souls of the patriarchs with the traditional Easter antiphon: Advenisti desiderabilis, quern expectabamus in tenebris, ut educeres hac nocte vinculatos de claustris. Te nostra ^La seinte resurrection, ed. T. A. Jenkins, et al. ("Anglo- Norman Texts, ' 1 k‘ , Oxford: Blackwell, 19^-3), 8l pp. ^1. k$, Young, o]D. cit., I, k23> ^"Gospel of Nicodemus: Christ's Descent into Hell," trans. A. J. B. Higgins, New Testament Apocrypha, comp. Edgar Hennecke, ed. Wil helm Schneemelcher, trans. ed. R. McL. Wilson (Philadelphia: The West minster Press, 1963“ ), v. 1. 121 vocabant suspiria; te larga requirebant formenta; tu fac tus es spes desperatis, magna consolatio in tormentis.° Then without rubrics to indicate further action for the welcoming souls in hell, the play returns to earth and to the announcements of the women to the disciples. Thus enters into the dramatic tradition one of its most effective tools for combining theological with theat rical climax. Even the earliest German vernacular play recognizes the cli mactic quality of the scene and expands it. The Ml-7-line fragment of the Muri Osterspiel permits Christ to interpret his mission in a haughty speech to the devil: ir hant mir hie gevangen (des mac mih wol belangen) nu lange mine hantgetat, vil menge sele, diu mir hat gedienet staetechliche da von wil ih mih vlizen, daz ih si danne loese und ih die helle toese, so daz ih iuh da binde und ih min gesinde sam mir vuere von dan, nu hat erloeset si min tot, ^ ce rehte von so starcher notO The dramatist pays passing attention to the notion of Christ's incog nito earthly form tricking the devil into procuring his death so that he can liberate his souls and restore them to his presence. The souls reply, somewhat disjointedly, with a German paraphrase of the "Adven- ^Cited in Young, 0£. cit., I, 151. ^"Muri Osterspiel," Das Drama des Mittelalters, herausg. Richard Froning (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 196*0, frag, iv, 1 1. IT- * 1 - 1 • 122 istl desiderabilis," leaving the impression that theology has not yet become a comfortable usage for the dramatists. The 1188-line Innsbruck Osterspiel, one of the earliest pro ducts of the fourteenth century, adds to its attempts at interpreta tion the tendency toward the buffoonery characteristic of the German mysteries. The manuscript, from the second quarter of the fourteenth century, indicates the transitional character of the play by the re tention of Latin chants for the traditional scenes. The action begins with the ceremonious entrance of Pilate to judge the Christ arraigned before him. The crucifixion takes its course, and the filling in of background and purpose are left to the harrowing of hell. When Christ announces his arrival to liberate the captive patriarchs, Adam has the temerity to ask why the Lord has been so long about it. Christ coun ters by asking Adam why he sinned to begin with and receives renew;ed attempts at explanation from both Adam and Eve. Despite this inauspi cious beginning, the blessed are freed; and when a damned soul also attempts to sneak out, Lucifer, stopping him, is given the opportunity to explain his own fall. The scene is further extended by introducing the farcical lament of Lucifer over hell's depletion and the efforts of Satan and his fellow devils to soothe their master by a stepped-up recruitment program, involving the terrified but comic excuses of the newly-damned souls. Comedy appears on earth as well in the domestic scenes with the spice-merchant and his apprentice, after which the resurrection takes its routine liturgical course, with a plea at the end for an offering for the "armen schuler." In its own way the comedy serves as 123 something more than a foil to the climax of liberation. As an exten sion of the scene, it helps maintain the value of God's ultimate pur pose for his men by contrasting the triviality of their own worldly concerns and motives. It would seem, however, that the playwright is still not truly at ease with his materials. The attempt at theodicy and the increased importance thus achieved for the harrowing of hell slows the climactic action. This slowing of the action is offset somewhat by the homely vernacular translations of the chanted materi als. Christ liberates the souls in hell with refrains from "Venite, benedicti patris mei": Nu kunt, myne vil liben kint, dy von mynem vater bekomen sint! ir suit mit mir ewiglich besiczen mynes vater rich. « • • • • • Nu kunt, myne vil lyben kint, dy von mynem vater bekomen sint, in mynes vater rich, daz uch hereit ist ewiclichl® A medieval audience still unaccustomed to hearing church plays in its own language must have found the intimacy of these simple lines immensely appealing. Closely related to the Innsbruck play are the Berlin Oster- spiel, of which only the merchant scene remains, and the Vienna Oster- spiel. . The relationship consists more in similarity of materials and order than in the use of the same dialogue in the same spirit. The Latin chants are in some cases replaced by German songs; in the strong ly traditional sections the chants are left unchanged. The manuscript ^"Innsbruck Osterspiel," Altdeutsche Schauspiele, ed. Franz Joseph Mone ( ‘ Quedlinburg: Gottfried Basse, 18^1), ii. 303“306, 333“36. 12k is dated lkj2, and its dialectical peculiarities suggest German Bohemia or Schleswig as its place of origin. The comic spirit in this play is pronounced. The precursor promises his audience that if they will only keep quiet and not move about or make rude: remarks, Wir wellen haben ein osterspil Das ist vrolich und kost nicht viel.-^ Almost it seems that the playwright is using the resurrection as an occasion for the exercise of his comic genius. He surrounds his plot with 1183 lines of dialogue interspersed with operetta-like sing ing and dancing by the Jews and the watch. The beginning is tradi tional enough: Pilate announces the execution of Jesus, "den vil valschen man,"-1 -0 and helps the Jews plan a watch to keep the disciples from stealing the corpse. The comic possibilities of the watch are merely suggested in a single boasting speech; they are struck sense less by seven angels, who call on Jesus to arise; immediately thereaf ter the soldiers awaken and realize their shame; the harrowing of hell proceeds conventionally and expeditiously. The hostile attitude of Pilate toward Jesus and the absence of speeches by the expectant pro phets from limbo suggest that the playwright is making use of the doc trine without direct recourse to the Gospel of Nicoderaus. Adam and Eve have time only to set the scene and recall the sin that imprisoned them when Christ appears with his attendant angels before the gates of hell. Similarly Lucifer and Satan have had no Q "Vienna Osterspiel," Fundgruben fur Geschichte deutscher Lit- teratur, herausg. Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (Breslau: Georg Philipp Aderholz, 1 8 3 7), H, 2 9 8, 11. 6-7. 10p. 2 9 9, 1 . 1 0. 125 previous opportunity for consternation. Now, at the first strains of "Ir teufel, tut uf eure pforten,"-1 -0 they determine upon resistance. The angels nevertheless "break down the door; Christ hinds Lucifer; Eve "boldly asks why he waited so long, and in this play Christ mildly re plies with a version of "Venite benedicti": Komet, ir gebenedeiten ewigleich Mit mir in meines vater reich Das euch ist bereit von anagene, Ich wil euer ungemach nicht erlengen. ^ Then begin some extended comic scenes. Again the playwright adds some original touches: the devils do not attempt to replenish hell but follow the paradise-bound saints in a forlorn attempt to recapture stragglers. For dramatic purposes the wailing of Lucifer over his empty realm is paralleled by a scene with Pilate and the Jews bemoan ing the empty grave; the wife of Caiaphas enters the discussion with some uncomplimentary remarks, and the general recriminations end in blows given and received with a good deal of farcical noise. Without transition the merchant farce follows, interspersed with the plaints of the Maries. When the women receive their salve as a gift from the merchant, his termagant wife scolds both merchant and servant at length until they both flee to France in search of peace. Even the conventional course of the resurrection appearances is worked over as the playwright prolongs the Magdalene's doubts by giving Christ a long and somewhat pointless speech as a gardener. The revelation scene is also paraphrased at some length as Christ worriedly seeks to stop the flow of lamentation his lighthearted impersonation 10P. 299, I- 10. 1I L P. 305, 11. 19-22. 126 caused: Maria, du viel liebes we ip, Deine sele und auch dein leip Sullen haben das ewige leben, Das ich dir zu lone wil geben, Und wisse das mein heiliger leichnam, Den ich von Mariam meiner mutter nam, Hat uberwenden den tot Und kan vorbass geleiden keine not. The scene of announcement to a disbelieving Thomas is paralleled by the doubts of Peter and John. Comedy reappears briefly as Peter attempts to race John and falls, with loud complaints about a possible broken back and a sprained knee. The concluding speech to the audience is given by a recovered Peter in a speech paraphrased from some liturgi cal play as he displays the sudarium and admonishes, Beide vrauen und man, Lobet den selbigen got, Der uns leip und sele gegeben hot. ^ As might be expected, the theology in a play so given over to comedy is hardly detailed. At the same time it crops up in unexpected passages and apparently represents the playwright's own contributions to his sources, as in Peter's speech above and in Christ's consolation of Mary Magdalene. To these speeches may be added Jesus' interpreta tion of his resurrection. As Michael summons, Stant uf, herre Jesu Christ, Wenne du ein warer erloser bist. Hilf den armen nu aus not und pein, Die in der helle beiten dein. Jesus replies, Ich ben erstanden, als ich habe gesprochen 12P. 329, 11. 13-20. ^p. 336, 11. h-6. 127 Und wil erlosen mit kraft Die meine hant hat geschaft. Durch sie "bin ich mensche worden Und uf dem ertreich erstorhen: Das tat ich alles umbe das . Dass ich sunete meines vaters has. Added to the specific phrase "mit mir" of the "Venite henedicti" is an impression of power expended on behalf of humanity. Whether the audi ence perceived the scattered references in their comic surroundings is a valid question. The blending of theology with comedy achieves suc cess only in the Redentin Osterspiel. Here the playwright has at least managed to emphasize the worth of the human creatures for whom Christ has done battle. Often considered the best of the Easter plays, the Low German Redentin play is another fairly extended work (2025 lines) of two parts on the Innsbruck pattern. The action begins with the council of the Jews drawing Pilate into their plans to foil the disciples in any attempt to steal Jesus' corpse. The resurrection and harrowing of hell then make up the body of the first scene, well prepared for by the expectancy of the souls in limbo and the preparations of the devils for defense. Following their liberation, the souls are led to paradise by the angel Michael, and the frustrated soldiers, like feudal knights concerned about the loss of their fiefs, are left to explain the empty grave to an irate Pilate. The second half of the play is a farce in the style of the Innsbruck play. Even more satire is introduced, and the devils attempt to replenish hell with members of the more unpopular trades and professions. The speaker of the epilogue then finds it ^P. 302, 11. 11-22. 128 necessary to explain that the comedy was all in fun and to return to a serious note of purpose: got gheve, dat wy alto male hy em hlyven in synem ewighen rike: des helpe uns got alghelike] wente got heft uns alle ghewraken unde heft der duvele helle tohraken unde heft uns dat paradis ghegheven, dar wy scholen ewighen myt em leveni1^ The farce is not the unrelated appendage it might at first ap pear. The tone of light-hearted mockery emphasizes the Easter spirit of triumph over all the forces of hell; for the faithful, death has lost its sting and hell its terrors. The farce thus serves as some thing more than comic relief from the intensity of the victory scene. The skilfulness with which this climax is developed would in itself justify the play's reputation. The spiritual triumph is preceded "by the confusion of the watch and thus "builds "by stages to its peak. The first section of the play masterfully achieves what for most of the German dramatists remains only an ideal— the depiction of a parallel triumph hy Christ over his enemies on earth and in hell. The ironic town watchman observing and singing to the sleeping watch, their hang dog explanations to the impotent Jews and Pilate after their epic boasting, both serve as the earthly frame for the enactment of the spiritual victory. For this harrowing of hell the Gospel of Nicodemus is the source, this time closely followed. The author heightens both -L^May God grant that we all stay with him/ in his eternal king dom]/ God help us all to this end]/ For God has avenged us all/ and has harrowed the hell of the devils/ and has given us paradise,/ where we shall live with him in eternity. Redentiner Osterspiel, herausg. Carl Schroder (Norden: Diedrich Soltau, 1893). English trans.: The Redentin Easter Play, trans. A. E. Zucker ("Records of Civilization," the dramatic and theological content of his source. The devils are resolute and numerous, hut Christ gains their stronghold alone and dismisses them with a contemptuous Wech rat van hynnen, ^ alle der helle ghesynnen. The theme of liberation pervades the scene and colors the constant use of the conventional term losen hy the souls in hell as a gleaming 17 angelic light rouses them to expectant hope. 1 The playwright defi nitely interprets Christ's incognito life on earth as a divine trick for gaining access to hell. Where the Gospel of Nicodemus had merely suggested through Satan's speech that Christ feared death— And now that he is dead, he prepared that we may secure him here. For I know that he is only a man, and I heard him saying: My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.— the Redentin Satan is superbly confident: Jhesus de prophete unde grote here, De dar sprak, dat he got were, den wylle wy schyre untfangen: he is an en cruce hanghen wo mochte he godes zone syn wente he vruchtet des dodes pyn?^^ Lucifer, as in the Gospel of Nicodemus, sees through the words, hut hy then Satan's blunder in obtaining Jesus' death cannot he undone. The emphasis in Christ's own speeches— and the playwright very considerably enlarges upon the single sentence allotted to Christ hy his source— Vol. 32; New York: Columbia University Press, 19^1), 11. 2015-21. 130 is once again on liberation and the victory thus achieved: ik "bun de erste und de leste, ik "bun de slotel David: de mynen scholen wesen quidI ik hehhe an deme galghen ghehanghen dorch de, de mynen willen deden! dar mede schal Lucifer werden hunden wente an den junghesten dachI dat is em ewich pyne unde eyn grot slach! myne leven scholen vor dy wol ghenesen.2® There is some indication that this victory was intended to save God from creating additional angelic replacements: das hun ik nu up ghestan under wyl to der helie gan unde halen dar ut Adam myt Even und alle myne leven, de to der vroude synt ghebaran, de de Lucifer myt homude heft verlaren. The purpose in creation seems, moreover, to have had a hedonistic fla vor, according to Adam's experiences: de vader an der ewicheyt de schup jy Adam in aller wunnicheyt de ik in deme paradise hebbe vorloren. 22 The ultimate destiny of the blessed comprehends enjoyment of the pre sence and companionship of ChristThere is also a clarity of vision in the contemplation of God; one of the playwright's most successful adaptations of traditional material is his paraphrase of "Venite bene- dicti": kamet her, myne benedieden! gi scholen mer nene pyne liden. ik wil ju voren an mynes vader rike, 2011. 560-62, 572-78, 58^. 221 1. 277-79. 2 111. 253-58. 23ll. 521-2 6. 131 dar gy scholen ewichlike hesitten de lutteren clarheyt. de sunder ende is ju bereyt.^ The most apparent concept is that of rest. Whether the playwright felt the need dramatically for the concept as a foil to the sufferings of the saints or whether, with Augustine, he sensed that peace was the longing of his audience--or himself--cannot he determined. Of the em phasis, however, there can he no douht. It runs through the expecta tions of the saints, e.g.: des wille wy uns alle vrowen, wy sholen ewichliken myt em rowen. ? The conducting angels emphasize it at the expense of other ideas: ik wil se hrynghen an des paradises stede dar se hehhen stedcn vrede. do das gade hehelik was, do he schup de werlt unde allent, dat dar jnne was, do schup he en paradis der wollust, . dar inne rowen scholde des mynschen hrust. Altogether, in its relatively narrow scope, the play has managed to include a fully rounded idea of the end of man and a reasonably de tailed treatment of how Christ brought about his purposes. And all of this teaching occurs in a superbly crafted theatrical medium. The Trier Osterspiel is,' by contrast, very simple— 188 lines of Latin chant mingled with free vernacular translation. The three Maries make their plaint, learn of the resurrection in the conventional "Quem quaeritis''' dialogue, and leave the scene free for the garden ap pearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene. The play closes with a brief 2^11. 587-92. 2511. 371-72. ^°11. 677-78, 735-38. 132 sermon "by Mary Magdalene., as she announces the resurrection to all faithful disciples. The perfunctory nature of the entire play makes its few theological phrases somewhat suspect. There are critical, considerations, however, which may alter this surmise. From its early language and strongly liturgical character, Froning, the most recent editor of the play, concludes that it is much earlier than its late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century manuscript would indicate.^ If his conjecture is correct, then the conclusion could represent the work of a later producer-copyist trying to give some theological point to his original without tampering with a con tent not so concerned. The only possible phrase he had to develop was the paraphrase of Christ's "Noli me tangere," which adds the single interpretive line "hy van hayt dye werlt ewygen fromen"— not a very pO specific statement. u The Magdalene's announcement therefore elabor ates as it concludes: Ich muess das werlych jheen, das ich yn liebennych hayn ghesheen, der dae leyt vor alle sundern den bytteren doet un manyge angest un groesse noet jemerlychen hayt geleden, das her uns muchte gefreden myd dem ewygen vader syn her hayt vorrycht dye ewyge pyn un wyl uns nu dye ewyghe freude geben in dem ewyge leben, dye her uns gar dure ghekaufft hayt myd syme roessenvarben blode roet.29 Even here the phrasing is still very general, and the particular turn ^Froning, o j d . cit., pp. K6-b7. pQ "Trier Osterspiel," Froning, o j d . cit., 1 . 1 ^ 9 . 29ll. 171-82. 133 of the editor's concepts difficult to determine. His notion of atone ment seems to he that of ransom; his idea of eternal life vaguely re flects the idea of presence with God, though whether from a mystical or a scholastic viewpoint does not appear. A stylistic feeling that so brief a play might he overloaded hy a heavily theological sermon may well have prevented him from going into detail. In the one con cise speech, however, is packed a good deal of feeling for the impor tance of a humanity worth God's suffering. Again in the fifteenth-century Erlau collection, Latin chants are interspersed in the vernacular dialogue; hut here the vernacular is much more than a paraphrase. The collection includes three plays for Easter, a 1331“line "Visitacio sepulchri in noete resurreccionis," a "Ludus Marine Magdalenae in gaudio" in 71^- lines, and a "Ludus Jude- orum circa sepulchrum Domini," in ^77 lines. The Mary Magdalene play is introduced hy a chorus of devils to make certain that the audience understands the Magdalene's state of danger, which might not other wise appear from the charm of the scenes as she meets her lover, ig nores Martha's repeated warnings, engages in a singing match with her lover, and finally wakes to a sense of sin, goes repentantly to Jesus, and is forgiven. The "Visitacio sepulchri" is an admirable farce of cross purposes among the spice-selling doctor, his wife, and his ap prentice on which the appearances of the three Maries and their laments at intervals seem intrusive. Finally the resurrection occurs, together with the Magdalene scene in the garden and the announcement to the disciples, the coursing of Peter and John to the tomb ending the play. Much shorter, the "Ludus Judeorum" sticks closely to its 13^ intent and produces a tightly-knit play. After worried discussion be tween Pilate and the Synagogue, the watch is set, the soldiers boast ful until the angel appears; then they awaken and report to Pilate and Caiaphas, and a second watch is attempted, quite unsuccessfully as angelic choruses continue to frighten away all comers; the resurrection is followed by the harrowing of hell and the binding of Lucifer; unity is preserved by a concluding judgment of Pilate on the timorous sol diers. The advance in dramatic innovation in the Erlau plays has been achieved at the expense of theological development. None of the plays, either by arrangement of scenes or statement within the scenes, manages a connected impression of the rationale underlying the action. Two somewhat unrelated ideas do stand out, however. In the "Ludus Jude- orum" harrowing of hell, Christ makes a point of liberating all his believers; hell is to be reserved only for Jews and heretics. Added to this universalist teaching is the notion of presence with God, sus tained by both the "Visitacio" and the "Ludus Judeorum." Peter closes the first play by admonishing the audience . . . zu piten Jhesum Christ, der durch unserm willen gemartert ist, das er unser sund vergeben well und uns zu im gesell in das fron himelreich [fuhren will.]3P In the "Ludus Judeorum" the presence of God is the chief benefit the souls liberated from hell are to enjoy; Christ promises, 30 K. F. Kummer, ed., Erlauerspiele; sechs altdeutsche Mysterien nach einer Handschrift des 15. Jahrhunderts (Wien: A. Holder, lofe), 11. 1323-2 7. Ich wil euch furn sicherleich zu meinem vater in das himelreich. And the saints reply, Fur uns in das re ich dein, und zu deinem vater uns gesent, da wir lehen immer an end.3^- In these slender indications there is nothing of the fully thematic treatment of the Redentin play. The fifteenth-century Resurrect ion from the Billiotheque Ste. Genevieve MS. 1131 partakes of the qualities of the simpler German plays and the equally simple, though prohahly much earlier, Anglo- Norman Resurrection. Both Whittredge and Jubinal surmise that this play, like the others in the manuscript, may have "been part of the j repertoire of the century-old Confrerie de la Passion in Paris. Al though "both plays are clearly intended for separate productions, : stylistic similarities and borrowings suggest that the same author : j composed both the Nativite in this collection and the Re surre ct i on ; j 32 : the consternations in hell are the same in both plays. ; An apparent prologue of the creation and fall makes a sudden transition to the setting of the watch and the expectancy of the souls j in limbo. Their liberation is followed in the usual manner by the j laments at length of the three Maries with St. John, their purchase of i spices, the discovery by the guards of the empty tomb and their suspi cions of each other leading to a fight, and the appearances to Mary ] 1 i Bill. 420-27* 32Achille Jubinal, ed., Mysteres in^dits du quinzieme siecle . . . d'apres le ms. unique de la Bibliotheque Ste Genevieve (Paris: Techener, 1837)^ II* cf. Nativite, 1 1. 66>9 ff. Magdalene and to the other Maries. Despite occasional humorous, even farcical, touches, the play is generally soher and traditional--after all, it has little more than 700 lines in which to accomplish its purpose. Its theology is accord ingly generalized, hut surprisingly pervasive. The nature of the joy for which God has created man remains undefined: "grant joie," "la vraie gloire," "joie et clarte," "elarte pure en joiex repos sanz paine," "soiez glorifiez" are conventional phrases which recur.33 Christ sums up the playwright's attempts at superlatives when he deliv ers the released souls to paradise and leaves them, En gloire, en joie, en repos, Vous metray cy, car achever Mestoit mon fait . . .34 The playwright makes a point of man's creation to replace the fallen angels. Their envy— Et pour ce que plus nous esnoie Leur donra la parfaite joie— 35 serves to make them slightly ridiculous in defeat as Christ empties hell and at the same time, with dramatic economy, serves to underline the human dignity which seems to he the playwright' s chief theme. At the creation God enlarges upon the dominion he has given Adam and the care with which He has created a pleasurable world for humanity.3^ And the humans reflect His pleasure: 33p. 3 1 6, 1. 1 6; p. 317, 1. 2; p. 341, 1. 14; p. 342, 1 1. 6-7; p. 342, 1. 9- 34p. 3 4 4, 1 1. 21-2 3. 35P- 336, 11. 25-26. 36p- 319, 11. 12-18. 137 En ce "beau lieu sy profitable, Sy graciex, sy delitable.37 The inclusion of the prologue., difficult though it makes a transition, serves to throw into stark relief the miseries of the saints in hell (medieval courtesy generally canonized the Old Testament patriarchs). The action thus seems to emphasize not so much the greatness of Christ's victory (though this is not diminished hy a fairly long diab lerie) as the urgent necessity for it. Indeed, the playwright's inter pretation leans toward the legalistic ransom theory: Or faulte que je le en aquite. Paie en ay 1'aquitement Et delivre tout quitement, Et le rachat par le trahu De mort que j'ay souffert et heu, Et passe par sydurtrespas Qu'autre de moy ne peust pas Avoir passe ... o Au profit de l'umanite. Christ even shows the saints his wounds: Resgardez sur quel parchemin Vostre delivrance est escripte.^9 The saints perceive the costliness of this payment, and their praises reinforce the doctrine at some length.^ 0 And once again, with econom ical use of direct statements to that purpose, the playwright has suc ceeded in impressing his audience with their human worth, a unifying theme of this carefully developed short play. Probably intended for performance during some part of the Easter season is a group of miscellaneous plays related to the resur rection but not directly portraying it. While these individual exam- 37p. 3 20, 1 1. 7-8. 39p. 31a, n. 2^-2 5. 38p. 339. 11. ^-13. ^Opp. 3b2-kk. 138 pies have little theological interest, they are included here as hack- ground for the treatments of similar scenes in the passion plays and cycles, where they gain full significance in context and treatment. A Grahlegungsspiel, Lucerne Burgerhihliothek MS. 177; dated 1^9^+ and signed hy its composer, Mathias Gundelfinger, is a signifi cant representative of the miscellaneous individual plays produced at the end of the fifteenth century. Although a portion of the text is missing at the beginning of the play, it seems to have heen complete in itself, unattached to either a passion or an Easter play. In view of the hrief scope of the subject, it has received a rather elaborate treatment (the extant portion amounts to 503 lines). With its stately speeches and processions, the action is more closely aligned to that of a pageant than a play. There is, in addition to the usual proces sional and recessional of the players, a burial procession as the cli mactic and virtually the only action of the play. The present text begins in the middle of one of Mary's numerous laments. Thereafter Joseph of Arimathea obtains permission from Pilate to bury Christ's body, licodemus assists him in the descent from the cross. The set ting of the watch concludes the play. In between, bracketing the burial procession, are extended, rather lyrical laments. In two instances the playwright inserts some theological con tent. There is some feeling for the application of Christ's death to his purpose for man in one of the Magdalene's laments: uff das du herr uns arme sunder vom tod erlest und gottes kinder geberest, das mir ewiclich 139 I lt besessen dines vatter reich. Joseph of Arimathea enlarges upon the idea slightly hy adding the notion of -union in one of his prayers: Darah han ich kain verdrussen, ich hoff du laussest raich geniessen hy dir in dines vatters reich. da man sich frewet ewiclich.^2 The Proclamator ends the play with the fullest of the play's slender theological treatments, as he reviews the importance of a deliverance purchased at the cost of so much suffering: von euch treih den schepfer rain, der uns so kostlich haut erlost, sein kostharen leih durch uns enhlost, dar zu sin hlut vergossen hant, und doch gethon nie kain missetant •und ouch sin haligen gaist uffgeben, das er uns helf in das ewig l e h e n . ^ 3 Lucifer, his attendant devils, and the patriarchs called for in the cast of characters do not appear in the extant text. Presum ably they had a scene at the lost beginning of the play, very likely a consternation in hell. The missing scene might have provided addi tional theological direction to the piecej as it stands, it is curi ously pointless and bland. The composer may have felt that he was not dealing in scenes traditionally appropriate for theologizing. He per mits himself only generalized, though sincerely felt, expressions of the worth of creatures for whom their Creator would die. A bilingual Ascension play is contained in a manuscript frag- ^-"Ludus depositionis Jesu," Schauspiele des Mittelalters, aus Handschriften herausg. Franz Joseph Mone (Karlsruhe: C. Macklot, 18h6), 1 1. 229-3 2. ^211. 195-98. ^ll. ^91-97. 1* 1 - 0 ment from St. Gall (MS. 1006). The play derives what content it has hy borrowing standard scenes from the final portions of the fuller Easter plays. Jesus appears to the disciples and his mother; Thomas disbelieves their report until Jesus appears to him also; in fairly lengthy speeches taken from a variety of Gospel sayings, Jesus in structs his disciples and announces his ascension; he gently refuses Mary's dolorous request to be taken with him; Peter is confirmed as head of the church and the apostles commanded to preach with the aid of the promised Holy Spirit. The means of ascension and even the -stage direction at its occurrence are tantalizingly absent. The play ends with speeches by the two angels foretelling Christ's return. Again, the total theological purpose of the play is not apparent. In deed, it is a play like this, collecting carefully hewed-to Scriptural materials without interpretation even in the vernacular paraphrases, that throws into relief the theological intent of the more developed plays. The Gospel sayings are assembled without a discernible pattern. The only purpose Christ himself assigns to his sufferings is that the world "der ewigs todes nit erstirbt."^ In England, although separate Easter plays appear to have been performed at Bath, Leicester, Morebath, Reading, Kingston, and other towns,the only detached resurrection play now extant is preserved in the Bodleian MS. e Museo l60. A note appended to the play instructs ^"St. Gall Christi-Himmelfahrtsspiel," Schauspiele des Mit- telalters, ed. F. J. Mone, 1. 108. ^Craig, op. cit., p. 3 1 8. 141 the producer to play the Burial on Good Friday and the rest on Easter, quite in accord with the common European liturgical observance of the Depositio and the Visitacio.^ The use of church music within the play, the accumulation of responses and antiphons at the end, and the uncomplicated meters suggest a vernacular paraphrase of a long- accepted liturgical play. The first part consists largely of the plaints of the three Maries and Joseph of Arimathea; it ends very simply with the arrival of Nicodemus, the descent from the cross, and a final extended, almost hysterical, lament hy the mother of Jesus. In the second part of the play, to the conventional resurrection scenes is added a novel re pentance of Peter at some length and his comforting by Andrew and John. Hardin Craig comments that the laments "are more elaborate than anything else of the sort to be found in the English mystery plays" but, with the exception of Peter's lament already noted, they follow the continental pattern very closely, presenting little variation ex cept a summary of the crucifixion reported by the Magdalene to Joseph of Arimathea. The use of the pattern, however, is freely turned and embel lished by the playwright and made to bear a greater weight of doctrine than is common to the form. In general the laments create an impres sion of the bitterness of Christ1s sacrifice and lead therefore to the inference of the nobility of the creatures on whose behalf the sacri- ^Young, o£. cit., I, 112-^8, 239-306. ^Craig, o£. cit., p. 3 1 8. lb-2 flee is made. In this play the inference is made explicit: Such cruell rigore to the kinge of blisse; The lord that made all. Thus to suffere in his humanitee, And that only for our iniquiteei 0 makere of menl what loue and pitee Had thou for vs so thrallI In the Magdalene's review of the crucifixion, the "I thirst" from the cross is interpreted in the same manner: His thruste was of charitee; For our faithe and fidelitee, He ponderite the rigore, Off his passion done so cruellye; For the helth of mannys saull cheflye He thrustid & desirede.^9 The crucifixion is discussed at length apparently for the purpose of enforcing its doctrinal importance. Again Joseph of Arimathea builds his attempts at hopeful consolation on the necessity for Christ's resurrection to complete the work of redemption: 1 pray yow, leve all this! He that hingeth here of his humilite, From deth shall arise, for right so saide hee; His wordes must nedes be trewe: This is the finale cavse and conclusion, To bring our mortall enmy to confusion And his powere to subdewe. For this cawse he descendit from the hevynly place • • • • • • For that cawse he did our natur take, Thus, by deth, to sloo deth, ffor marines sake, And to restor hym to b l y s s e . 5 0 The greatness of Christ's sacrifice is further enforced by references ^"Resurrection," The Rigby Plays, ed. F. J. Fumivall ("Early English Text Society," Extra Ser. 70j London: Oxford University Press, 1 8 9 6), 1 1. 103-1 0 8. ^11. 215-20. 5°11. 337-^8. 1^3 | j to his former glory, though the nature of this bliss is unspecified. j 51 These references are frequent throughout the laments. i The more to emphasize the greatness of the redemption brought about by such suffering, the playwright ignores the dramatic opportun-j ities presented by staging the harrowing of hell. Christ merely re- j lates this event— very briefly— in the course of his appearance to the three Maries: I am resene fro deth, so may ye tell; I haue deliuert my presoners frome hell, And made tham sure for a y e 152 The event of releasing becomes a part of the women's resurrection mes sage to the apostles, but they add no interpretation of the nature of man's eternal surety. Altogether, the playwright has aimed at enforc ing a deeply emotional experience of a single doctrine at the expense of related teachings and dramatic effectiveness. To be sure, the repeated laments of the women which make up the body of the play do more than bear the weight of teaching the play wright aimed at; they also serve a dramatic purpose as they build up an intensity of suspense relieved only by the culminating appearance of Christ. The concentration is on the earthly event which rewards the faithful disciples for their hopes. One wonders whether the con- , centration thus achieved appealed to a medieval audience as much as more dramatic representations. The most obvious problem facing the Easter playwrights has been 11 • 396, 658-61, i*88-<*. 5211. 1536-38. the creation of an interpretive hut suspenseful background for the resurrection without including the passion which constitutes that background. They have had to convey a sense of victory without bring ing before the audience the contrasting defeat which gives the victory meaning. The adaptation of the Maries' laments from models available in lyric poetry and the dramatizing of the harrowing of hell from the Gospel of TTicodemus are popular devices for filling in this background. The use of the devices has been extremely varied and often influenced by the playwright's theological purpose. The purpose here has been to suggest the seriousness of Christ's redemptive act and by inference to intimate the worth of the creatures for whom their Creator would under go sue}? pain. The specific doctrines of the end of man do not receive extensive treatment; the contrast between the Creator's suffering and the creatures' need for this redemptive suffering, however, provides a foundation for the larger plays to build on in detailing their doc trines of end. The problems faced by the dramatists of the Christmas scenes are different and in some respects simpler. The feeling of the litur gies for Advent and Christmas is that of expectation rather than total fulfilment. The world awaiting salvation is content, with the appear ance of the infant Saviour, to rest a little before the final saving act; and this effect of expectation and joyful tranquillity is on the whole characteristic of the Christmas plays, as the next chapter will attempt to show. CHAPTER SIX CHRISTMAS PLAYS The simplest of the Latin Christmas plays, the Offieia pas- torum, merely imitated the Easter Visitacio sepulchri. The dialogue attached to the procession thus "became, "Quern quaeritis in praesepe, pastores, dicite?" with an appropriate response, by obstetrices in the place of angels. The absence of detail in the two Gospel narratives of the birth of Christ comparable to that of the resurrection narra tives at once imposed the necessity of improvising dialogue and charac terization. Such improvisation may at first have seemed unduly auda cious . Another hampering factor may have been the wide popularity of the creche and the resulting difficulty of supplanting a popular and established representation with dramatization. In any event all the extant Latin plays of the nativity are extremely simple. The plays of the Magi at Epiphany are more impressive as well as more numerous. Appropriately, they were sometimes performed during the oblation rather than after the customary reading of the Gospel. The simplest of them depict the meeting of the kings, their guidance by a star drawn on a string to the manger, and an ensuing "Quern quaer itis" dialogue. The next degree of complication introduces Herod, most generally accompanied by his courtiers and in various stages along the road to the ranting figure he becomes in the vernacular llj-5 lk6 plays. Other developed forms Incorporated the visit of the shepherds, either in historical order as a prelude to the Magi play or imbedded in the latter. In the plays from Freising, Compiegne, and Sicily, even the slaughter of the innocents is suggested, though not carried out onstage. In the Laon Ordo stella the scene is represented in its entirety. In some instances, as evidenced hy the twelfth-century Freising lectionary, the twelfth-century St. Martial trope, and the Fleury playbook of the thirteenth century, the flight into Egypt and the massacre become the content of a separate play, the Ordo Rachaelis. The early medieval producers soon found that it was also pos sible to elaborate the Christmas plays by prologues or prologue plays dealing with the prophecies of Christ's coming, the Ordo prophetarum. The dramatization had its origin in a spurious sermon of Augustine, "Contra Judaeos, paganos, et Arianos sermo de Symbolo." It was often used as a lection during some day of the Christmas season. The prea cher arraigns the Jews for their disbelief and summons their own pro phets, one by one, to witness against them. For good measure he cites Virgil, Nebuchadnezzar, and the Erythraean Sybil.-*- To divide the dia logue among the prophetic impersonators was the obvious next step, and the passage to a musical setting presented no problem. There was oc casional variation from the original sermon in the prophets selected. The Laon and Rouen plays took no small risk when they introduced Bal aam with his ass. The extant Latin plays do not really explore the dramatic possibilities of the procession of the prophets, but they do "*Texbs of the plays mentioned here appear in Young, op. cit., II, 3-12^; II, 126-31 includes the text of the sermon. 1^7 indicate the possibilities inherent in an Old Testament cycle. Of all these germinal Latin plays, the Benedikfcbeuern Christ mas play is the only one that unites the individual scenes. In addi tion it inserts a debate between Augustine and Archisynagogus after a brief prophets' scene; it also includes the annunciation and calls for a hideous death scene from Herod as a climax to the slaughter of the innocents. As with the Easter plays, it is impossible to cite a neatly chronological development from simple Latin play to complex vernacular play. Still in existence is a fragment of a thirteenth-century Pro phet enspiel from Marburg, hardly later than the full-blown Latin Ordo prophetarum from Laon; and from the second half of the century comes the bilingual Pegauer Herodesspiel, which by its very title indicates considerable development in the shift of emphasis from the Magi to the tyrant. Some of the simplest of the German Christmas plays come from the fifteenth-century Erlauerspiele. These Christmas scenes include a 58-line "Ludus in cunabilis Christi," notable for a chorus of mock ing Jews inserting themselves into the chants of worship; a "Ludus trium magorum" in 35^ lines with the usual scenes of the kings at wor ship after inquiring of Herod, although in this play they are accom panied by shepherds in the absence of a specific announcement; and the flight into Egypt and the slaughter of the innocents, merely announced and lamented. The length of the plays sufficiently indicates their lack of development, but even these brief characterizations have some 148 curiously individual features that keep reappearing in the German drama.^ The fifteenth-century Hesse Weihnachtsspiel is another example of familiar elements uniquely arranged; in this case they make a charm ing pastoral operetta of Latin and German hymns and carols. After the annunciation Joseph's doubts are stilled hy the customary angel. The nativity scene is an extended lullahy as Joseph and Mary rock the in fant Jesus hy turns, with attendant angels and a chorus of young girls of the village; the infant Jesus himself has a small singing part. Comedy makes its appearance with the announcement to the shepherds as endless angelic repetitions are necessitated hy one hard-sleeping shepherd. Joseph too has comic difficulties trying to persuade the feather-headed girls to leave their swains long enough to make the hahy some pahlum and to quiet their boisterous rejoicing around the manger. A satirical consternation in hell intrudes itself from the Easter plays; the devils promise the worried Lucifer a huge membership campaign to make up for the losses he foresees and begin inviting types of sinners at the close of the play. The satire is real; the intrusion only apparent. Throughout this frothy musical comedy there runs an undercur rent of wondering theology. Almost every player is given a speech showing his awareness of the theology significant for the nativity. They all acknowledge that God is with them in the infant form of Jesus for their salvation. The nature of this salvation is usually only ^Kummer, ojd. cit., pp. 5"9> 15“30* lh-9 hinted at; but it is made specific in the two speeches foretelling the harrowing of hell. The "Quintus cantor" explains, das wel die helle zubrechen unnd wel sich an den tufeln rechen und helffen den sundern uss der noth, die da sint gewest funfftusent iar doth!3 A "Quarta puella" adds, mir mogen wol mit eren singen und loben ummermere, wan es kummet nach die stuhdt, das da verblichet sin rotter munt unnd lit in dem grawe dot I . (got helff unss uss aller not!) With this information established in the earlier scenes, Lucifer's consternation becomes not only dramatically fitting as a satiric con trast with the preceding pastoral calm but provides an effective cli max to the action as well. Lucifer clearly foresees the danger to his realm when Christ die helle wel . . . zubrechen unnd wel die sele lossen alle.5 The Proclamator at the beginning of the play seems to indicate for the first time that attendance at the play is itself a means of grace, an extremely loose interpretation, considering the nature of the play: Darumb swiget alczu mole und lod von werem schalle: so wirt uch gegeben zu lone ^ in dem himmel die ewige crone! Perhaps the audience is seen as presenting themselves in worship with ^"Hessisches Weihnachtsspiel," Das Drama des Mittelalters, ed. R. Froning, 11. 547-50* S.1. 553-58. 5n. 81^-15. 6li. 13-16. 150 the shepherds. For this the unusually perceptive "Quarta puella," standing near the creche, has an interpretation: Wu sollet er alle merken ehin dye da mit gode in denn himmeln woln lehin das got hot uffinhar gemacht den hertin in der nacht. • • • » • • also sint se zu erne kummen: der sollen se nemen grossen frommenl Ihesus das kint wel en darunib gehen gross freude und das ewige lebeni? Thus even a brief play— the total length is only 884 lines— manages an elementary theological interpretation. Another example of a complex play antedating a simple one is provided by the fourteenth-century St. Gall Weihnachtsspiel, the earli est complete nativity play in German. If this 108l-line play had been prefixed to the passion from the same library, a cycle would very near ly have been formed. A short procession of prophets introduces the ac tion of Mary's betrothal and the annunciation. Joseph's doubts are not yet recorded, an ignoring of what the English plays later found a rather obvious source of comedy. Christ's birth is in pantomime, and the scenes of the kings and the shepherds follow. Amplification comes in the presentation at the temple, the slaughter of the innocents, the flight into Egypt, and the climax from legend of the Egyptian statues falling in obeisance as the Holy Family enters the land. Despite its relative complexity of plot— or perhaps because it attempts too much too briefly— the play seems rough and disconnected. Except for Herod's lively scenes, there is little interaction between Tll. 519-22, 529-32. 151 the characters; indeed, most of them introduce themselves to the audi ence like characters in a pageant. Similarly, there is little attempt at theological interpretation of the versified "biblical paraphrases that constitute the speeches. One of the kings adds a petition to his adoration, und hilf nach disem lehen mir das ich mit froden kom zu dir. Simeon, during the presentation in the temple, reinforces this slight suggestion of presence and peace with God hy suggesting that presence as the original purpose of creation: Das din aingebomer sun her nider des menschlich kunn bringe wider an sin alte gewonhait.9 The December 28th commemoration of the slaughter of the inno cents may have suggested that episode to the playwright as a suitable climax to his Christmas play; beyond that, he suggests in the angel's speech warning Joseph to flee to Egypt that the flight and return fore shadow Christ's burial and resurrection.'1 " 0 Similarly, the opening speeches of David and Solomon intimate that they are not merely taking part in a formal procession of the prophets but, with their compan ions, represent the patriarchs in limbo awaiting their liberation.'1 ' ' 1 ' The generalized idea of liberation is really as close as the play comes to a concept of salvation. Even then, the need for salvation and the purpose of life once salvation has been accomplished apparently lie 8"St. Gall Weihnachtsspiel," Schauspiele des Mittelalters, ed. F. J. Mone, 11. 800-801. 9n. 861-6 3. 10il. . 993-ioo8. ^li. . 52-6 3, 115-19* outside the playwright's intent. While France, too, can show examples of simple nativity plays of relatively late date, the fifteenth-century MS. 6lJ of the Musee Conde in Chantilly has points of interest in addition to its simplici ty. It seems to have "been copied hy nuns of the convent of S. Michel at Huy near Liege and contains Walloon versions of moralities and two nativity scenes. The nativities— if they are separate plays and not separate acts of one play— are very close in many respects to the liturgical pattern. They include the customary antiphons and tropes in Latin or in vernacular translations, hut the introduction of shep herdesses lends color to the theory that the nuns themselves performed the plays. The nativity begins directly with the birth of Christ, con tinues with the announcement to the shepherds and their adoration, and concludes with the adoration of the wise men. A strikingly original character touch is Herod's masterly and successful hid for popular support in a noble speech of abdication when he hears of the birth of the new king. His people refuse their consent, and his position is thus strengthened. What appears to be an optional continuation, now incomplete, provides for a ranting Herod with his jester as a foil and the visit of the Maries to the creche. The addition of these original touches evidently left the play wright without energy for theologizing. His only interpretations are brief and general. Saint Anne, visiting her daughter, addresses the gathered women, Or ameil bien, me douches filles, je vous en prie, 153 car par luy nous yrons en paradis.^ An additional announcing angel in the shepherds' scene makes it clear to them that the news of great joy does not apply merely to the earthly or political fulfilment of their hopes: Aiourduy, le roy des ciel at daingnee naistre de la Vierge Marie, affin que l'homme et la famme perdus fust rapellez h la joie celeste lassus. ^ In the hands of an indomitably theological playwright, however, even a Christmas play need not he entirely lyrical and pastoral, as the Ste. Genevieve Nativite demonstrates. The nativity play in the Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve MS. 1131, though probably a bit earlier than the Chantilly play, is considerably more complex. It begins with the creation and fall as a prologue, and this is tied to the nativity scenes by including the incident of Seth's journey to paradise for the oil of mercy and the angel's promise of a redeemer in reply. The place of a procession of prophets is taken by their complaints from hell. The prologue moves without further transi tion from Seth's errand and his planting of the tree of the cross to the laments of Adam from hell. There Isaiah and Daniel make up the procession of prophets by quoting other Old Testament prophetic pas sages in addition to their own. The nativity proper is preceded by the betrothal of the Virgin Mary, the annunciation, and Joseph's doubts. The birth and announcement to the shepherds then follow con- 1 2"lTativit£," Nativites et moralites liegeoises du moyen-^ge, publides avec une introduction et des notes d'apres le ms. 617 du Musde Conde a Chantilly par Gustave Cohen (Bruxelles: Palais des Acad emies, 1953), 11. 197-98. ^ll. 77-8 0. 15^ ventionally. Within the 199& lines of the play characterizations and dialogue are deftly handled, and the total effect is impressive. The shorter Trois Roys (15^2 lines) was designed for double use, either as a second act to the nativity, once more demonstrating the growing fashion for completeness, or to he played hy itself. It includes, besides the title scene, the slaughter of the innocents and the flight into Egypt, the whole connected hy the use of the Sower whose false directions to the pursuing soldiers is rewarded hy a mirac ulous crop; it is the activity of the Sower, preparing his ground, sowing his crop, etc., that separates and at the same time bridges the conventional scenes. In addition to this original touch, a horrific ending is provided as devils carry Herod off to hell. Whittredge notes that the diableries are used with real dramatic effect as a re curring commentary throughout the play to build up to the harrowing of hell in the following "Resurrection" as a vivid illustration of the magnitude of Christ's victory.-^ Both plays hy their free use of simultaneous staging show an author very much at home with his dramatic tools. Neither can he he said to ignore the theological thrust of his materials. As in the "Resurrection" from the same manuscript, the cre ation of man is seen as the act of God to replace the heavenly seats left vacant hy the fallen angels: Or vueil former a mon ymage Homme, qui aura d/vantage Par mon plaisir et seignorie ^Ruth Whittredge, ed., La nativite et le geu des Trois Roys (Bryn Mawr, 19kk), p. 23- 155 Sur toutes choses qui ont vie, Pour recovrer de paradis Les sieges dont jetay jadis Lucifer par sont grant orgueil. ^ The devils' annoyance at the scheme is a borrowing from the "Resurrec tion," though in this play their lines have been removed to the scene of consternation in hell following the hopeful comments of the pro phets. In a single concise speech Adam conveys his pleasure in crea tion: Bien pert que tu ez mes amis Quant en ce biau lieu tu m'as mis Ou est la joie sanz finir.-*-° His confidence is a trifle ironic and may have been intended by the playwright as a faint parallel to the pride whereby Lucifer too lost his place. All this preparation makes it possible for the playwright to give real theological weight to the annunciation scene. God first explains his purpose to Gabriel: Ma promesse vxieil accomplie Certainement sanz defaillir, Et cez prophetes que j'o la Crier en enfer lone temps a, Je ne puis plus leur cry souffrir. Mez cielx me convient aourir Et pour eulz devandray hommej Mort souffreray pour celle pomme Qu'Adam manga . . . En Nazareth tu t'en yras, Marie ou temple trouveras, A qui to diras de par moy Que je voudray naistre de soy, En luy voudray char et sane prendre; De moy sera touzjours servie Et touz humains racheteray, Et gloire et joie leur donrray.^ 15U. 95-101. l6ll. 109-111. iTn. I21k~k2. 156 Gabriel takes it upon himself to interpret in concise antitheses to Mary: Par toi est joie recouvree Qui par Evain estoit perdue. Un tel enfant tu concevras Dont a ton cuer grant joie auras: D'Adam veult paier le forfait.-*-° This faint reflection of the ransom theory does not appear in the angelic announcement to the shepherds, hut the playwright again makes a specific interpretation in addition to the biblical statement: A Dieu soiez, mes bons amis, Qu'i vous doint paix et paradis.-*-9 ‘ j The composer has thus conveyed the idea that the enjoyment and peace for which man was created deserve God's efforts to bring them about at whatever cost. In the relatively brief, 1562-line span of the "Trois Roys," the playwright, with masterly staging in simultaneous short scenes, can include a great number of disparate incidents but cannot overcome the diversity of his material to achieve any unity or emphasis of doc trine. One of the most poignant scenes in medieval drama is the do mestic spontaneity of the pre-massacre setting as Bietris and Ysabel quietjly boast to each other of their children. The strong dramatic contrast the author achieves with this scene against their heartbroken laments after the event must have left so vivid an impression on his audience that the conventional solace of the sermon lost its force: Diex leur la meillieur voie, De paradis la noble joie, A laquelle nous doint venir. l8ll. 125^-75. 1911. 1937-38. 2011. 157 Herod's death added to the climax suggests that here the composer is entranced with his dramatic tour de force and has for the moment lost his interest in doctrine. Very similar to the French plays is the Digby play collection in the Bodleian Library. Each of the productions in the manuscript seems to have been designed for stationary performance and simultane ous staging. None of them belongs to a cycle in the usual English sense, and there is no mention of a trade or guild responsible for pro duction. The only true mystery in the collection, the "Slaughter of the Innocents and the Purification," is, from the statement of the title, the seventh in a series of eight plays in honor of the Virgin and St. Anne which were performed during the Feast of St. Anne over an 21 eight-year period. The other seven plays have been lost. Each was a somewhat extended performance if this play is typical; it contains the whole body of the nativity in addition to its stated subject mat ter. Craig surmises from the five-stress quatrains imposed upon a simpler four-stress metrical pattern that the plays were written or P P partly compiled in the fifteenth century and later revised. Comic elements appear rather frequently. In addition to the usual ranting Herod, there is a notable characterization of a cowardly soldier. Watkyn is a would-be knight of great timidity whom the bereaved mothers, in a rather tasteless effort at lightening a tragic moment, vanquish with their distaffs. ^■"Slaughter of the Innocents," Fumivall, op. cit., 11. 25-28. 22craig, o£. cit., pp. 31^-1 5* 158 The Poet correctly states in his epilogue that "our eloquens he hut r u d e . Nevertheless he attempts some interpretation in the presentation scene, which he uses as a serene finale to his tragic theme. Symeon has truly prophetic insight as he awaits the Holy Fam ily in the temple. His description of Christ's earthly presence shows some influence from the notion of the beatific vision: Thu art so gloryous, so blissed, and so bright, that thi presence-to me shuld be gret solas. I shall not reste, but pray hothe day and night, 2i^ Tyll I may behold, o lord, thi swete face. To the traditional "Nunc dimittis" he adds, Of the derk dungeon let the gates brest be-fore the face of thyn people alle. Thu art the light and the hevynly skye To the relevyng of folk most cruell. 5 The poet thus interprets Luke 2:31-32 as a reference to the harrowing of hell. But he looks beyond this triumph to the final end: Record of prophetes, thou shalt be redemp- tour, and singuler repast of euerlastyng lyf. ffor thy seruauntes a dwellynge thou shalt purchase, 2g brighter than berall outher clere cristall. Engaged as it is in encouraging devotion to the Virgin, the play cannot be expected to handle either the end of man or his redemption at length. Apart from its purpose the piece is theologically undistin guished. 2 31. 553. 2 5ll. Mi- 9-5 8. * 1 - 09-ML2 . s6ll. ^99-5 0 0, 505-5 0 6. 159 In contrast with the ^66-line Digby play, the longest nativity play dates from the same century. The French tendency toward elabora tion at the end of the fifteenth century, so notable in the passions, the Actes des Apfitres, and the Viel Testament, is also represented by an Incarnation et nativite played in the Rouen market-place at Christ mastime, 1V 7IK The action required two days and 12,800 lines merely to get as far as the announcement to the shepherds and their Bethlehem journey. The elaboration is achieved by a subplot involving the Sybil's prophecies to Octavian, the confounding of his heathen idols, and his own adoration of the advent of Christ announced through the Sybil's further ecstasies. This subplot, threading its way through the repeated councils of the devils, the usual expectation in limbo, a process in heaven, the legendary selection of Joseph by contest as Mary's husband, and the annunciation itself, creates an entirely leg endary but not ineffective air of expectancy for the birth itself. The whole production was obviously aiming at the spectacular and gi gantic; a cast of seventy-eight characters was distributed among thirty-one playing stations. Despite some good dramatic moments and the air of expectancy, the total effect inclines to dullness. The author or copyist of the manuscript did bestow one distinction on it, however, In the margins he meticulously indicated his sources— the Scriptures, Peter Comestor, Nicolas de Lyre, the Golden Legend, and the pseudo-Augustinian Sermo contra Judaeos. His full and slavish use of his sources undoubtedly contributes to the overall turgidity of this dramatic epic. His chief use of them, however, is to fill in the biblical action with l6o legendary incident. Of actual theological content there is a surpris ing dearth. The trial in heaven is prefaced by the complaints of the souls in limbo and emphasizes the beatific vision in a way unusual for such scenes; Adam bemoans his present lowliness, Qui fust jadis de Dieu tant anobliel Encore pirs et chose trop plus dure; Tous sont privez de voir la clere et pure Face de Dieu, la beaulte infinie Qui l'appetit des anges rassasie.2^ Michael, recommending some action in heaven, points out that the great spaces left in the heavenly hosts by Lucifer's fall and expulsion with his cohorts have yet to be filled, thus repeating an idea already 28 familiar from earlier French plays. In view of the untheological nature of their biblical sources, the Christmas playwrights have nevertheless demonstrated considerable theological awareness. In general this awareness has been expressed through the prophetic interpretations of materials common to the Easter plays. Thus the characters around the creche look forward to the redemptive culmination of the life God has here initiated. In their interpretations they explore the ransom theory of redemption to some extent, suggest the notions of presence with God and the beatific vision as ends for man's creation, and nod to the doctrine of man's 27 Pierre Le Verdier, ed., Mystere de 1'incarnation et nativite de notre seigneur et redempteur Jhesus-Christ, represente a Rouen en 1^7^ (Rouen: Cagniard, l8 8k-8 6), II, 6 5. 28Ibid., II, 109. replacing the fallen angels. Much more than in the Easter plays the dramatists create an atmosphere of rejoicing and invest each of these ideas with appropriate figures of speech to indicate the. enjoyment inherent in the final human estate. A greater theological variety will appear in the next chapter as the playwrights work with materials for other seasons of the church year. In some instances the methods are experimental and receive no further development; in other cases the contributions to the larger passions and cycles will "be apparent. CHAPTER SEVEN PLAYS FOR OTHER SEASONS The study of the medieval mysteries is at its most tantalizing in the consideration of the biblical plays attached to neither the Easter nor the Christmas season. The astonishing variety of approach, subject matter, and treatment defies systematization. The remaining plays to be discussed are therefore grouped here quite artificially. Many have no great theological significance in themselves but illus trate the materials available to the makers of the comprehensive passions. Others are even more elaborately doctrinal than the compound drama. The allegorical treatment of Old Testament subjects is a case in point; although the method still appears in some detached plays, it is only implied in the larger cycles. The plays that follow will be handled in the biblical order of their subject matter. Also included are a few English plays which, now separate, are in reality the sole survivors of their cycles. Of the curious Norwich cycle (apparently heavy in Old Testament plays but without either a passion or a judgment) only the "Creation and Fall" remain, and this in a fragmentary version of 1533 (the com plete play is an entirely different version from I5 6 5 ).1 The records of the grocers' guild responsible for the annual productions of the -*-Craig, og. cit., pp. 299-301* 162 163 play show that they made every effort to achieve a splendid and luxuri ous effect in their staging of the play. Their audiences must have received the impression that deep enjoyment of himself, his helpmate, and his surroundings was the way in which the first man was intended to express his adoration. That such staging represented a well-established theological tradition is indicated hy the Anglo-Norman Adam. Produced between 1109 and 1 2 0 1, the play suggests an early attempt at a cycle, In 9^2 lines its scenes include not only the creation and fall but also Cain and Abel and a procession of prophets; it appears to be incomplete as it now stands. Already there seems to have been the feeling that iso lated scenes during widely separated festival celebrations failed to convey the flow and purpose of human life as the church saw it, a sus picion enhanced by the inclusion of a creation at a time when liturgi cal offices had no place for it. The style of the Anglo-Norman poet is refreshingly simple, but in detailed stage directions he insists on an elaborate production. Paradise is to be hung with silks, ornamented with fragrant flowers and foliage, and planted with various trees from which fruits are p hanging, "so that it may seem a most delectable place." Thus even his stage directions serve his theology; for not only does he achieve convincing characterization and motivation, but the weight of theology ^Le mystere d'Adam; an Anglo-Norman Drama of the Twelfth Cen tury, ed. Paul Studer ("Modern Language Texts"; Manchester, University Press, 19^-9)* English trans.: Adam, a Religious Play of the Twelfth Century, trans. Edward Noble Stone (Seattle: University of Washington, 1 9 2 6),rubrics preceding 1. 1. 16b the brief scenes are called on to bear is considerable. Adam's delight in his luxurious paradise is to be merely the foretaste of his enjoy ment in his appointed place among the heavenly hosts: Escote, Adam, e entent ma raison. Jo t'ai form£, or te dorrai itel don: Tot tens poez vivre, si tu tiens mon sermon, E serras sains, nen sentiras friczion. Ja n'avras faim, por bosoing ne beveras, Ja n'averas frait, ja chalt ne sentiras. Tu iers en joie, ja ne te lassaras; E en deduit ja dolor ne savras. Tute ta vie demeneras en joie; Tut jors serra, nen estrat pas poie. The element of knowledge pervades the dramatist's work far more than his biblical source. He finds in that knowledge dominion, mastery, and power. En celui est grace de vie, De poest^ e de seignorie, De tut saver . . .^ It is this feeling for knowledge that is to give unending human life its flavor. And it is, of course, the premature aiming at this know ledge which constitutes the first sin. The theme is of particular interest because in this play it antedates the great era of scholastic Listen, 0 Adam. Hearken unto me./ I formed thee; now this gift I add in fee:/ Thou mayest live alway— if thou loyal be— /And hale and sound, from every sickness free./ Thou'It hunger not, nor thirst shall thee annoy,/ Neither shall heat nor cold thine ease de stroy,/ Nor weariness thy perfect bliss alloy,/ Nor any suffering abate thy joy./ All of thy life in pleasance thou shalt spend;/ "Twill not be short— a life withouten end I 11. 50-5 8. ^Therein is found of life the dower,/ Dominion, mastery, and power,/ Knowledge ... 11. 2*1-9-50. Cf. 209-211, 233-3*b 255-58, 265-6 6, 307-3 1 0. 165 emphasis on knowledge as the end of man in eternal life. As a probable reflection of Anselm's thinking, the play demonstrates how quickly an alert dramatist picked up a growing theme from a contemporary theologi an. The succeeding scenes of the play are carried out without the faintest hint of allegorical treatment. There is no suggestion that Abel is a type of Christ slain by his evil brethren; rather, the scene somewhat incongruously enforces the importance of paying tithes. The prophetic procession, which remains unfinished as the manuscript breaks off, returns to a concentrated unity as the individual prophets make their speeches. Again, even the most attractively allegorical figures, like Abraham, who also can prefigure the sacrifice of Christ, or Moses, who in liberating Israel from Egypt can represent the redemp tion of Christendom, are not treated in this sense. Their prophecies are made to refer to the coming of Christ, and in many cases the speeches are balanced by references to Adam. His liberation by Christ will restore him to the life of knowledge for which he was originally intended. This highly original work remains unrivalled among the extant plays. The only thing even approaching it in form and arrangement is the much later Low German mystery, the Sundenfall, by Arnold Immessen. The climax of the Sundenfall, the annunciation to St. Anne of the coming birth of Mary, a virgin worthy of bearing the world's savi our, suggests that its author developed it from a celebration of St. Anne's Day. At the hands of this highly ingenious manipulator, how ever, the germ is expanded into a theological drama of the fall and 166 redemption of the human race.5 The name of the author is known only from an acrostic in the prologue. Similarly, the date of composition can only he identified from the internal evidence of a reading-copy. If the Johann Boken who signs the manuscript as its copyist is the same Boken who was Altarist of the Kloster Frankenberg in Goslar from 1^91 to 1 5 0 8, the play may prohahly he dated in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The author shows considerable learning in his use of Latin Scripture texts uncommon for the usual run of mysteries and in the way in which he combines a simplified use of the trial hy the daughters of God with an altered procession of the prophets. Here he also demon strates, along with his own originality, his familiarity with the more developed French-mysteries. The relative complexity of his work is further indicated hy the fact that of all the German mysteries only the Frankfurt-Alsfeld and Heidelberg passions and the Eger Fronleich- namsspiel are longer than the 3962-line Sundenfall. The title of the play was assigned by its first editor some what misleadingly since the creation and fall are merely the beginning of a total drama of redemption which is worked out by the procession of prophets and the trial in heaven, climaxing with the angelic an- ^With the editor, I assume, on the basis of the dramatic move ment of the play, the conventional ending with a hymn, and the unusual length of the play as it stands, that the play is an entity. It should be noted that there is weighty scholarly disagreement with this view point, namely. Creizenach, o£. cit., I, 229 (the play is incomplete as it now stands), and Heinzel, Beschreibung des geistlichen Schauspiels im deutschen Mittelalter (Hamburg: L. Voss, 1 8 9 8), p. 169 (the play was designed as a prologue to a lost passion). ■ l6j nouncement to St. Anne of the Virgin’s "birth. The author’s skill in the handling of his materials is demonstrated from the start. The Creator sets the theme of the entire drama "by explaining to his newly formed ranks of angels that He has made them with free wills which they must carefully guard. If they sin— and here the Creator makes a graceful, not to say extremely forethoughtful, tribute to Augustine— they immediately fall into sin's bonds, a permanent readiness to sin.^ As he works out .this doctrine, Immessen constructs a fall of Lucifer even more subtle than the fine scenes of some Eng lish cycles. Lucifer decides to exercise his free will to become like God. His subsequent enmity to the human race is motivated by his de termination to keep the descendants of Adam from usurping his former angelic rank; in this way he retains a little of his lost power by 7 frustrating God's intent. The fall of man shows the same careful attention to dramatic and theological detail. The serpent, introducing himself to Eve, casually breaks off and eats some of the forbidden fruit to make his later suggestion the more irresistible. The closeness of the dialogue in this scene to that of the biblical narrative places the foregoing heavily theological scenes in even stronger relief. Yet the simple biblical scenes, with all their starkness, follow up the previously made theological points by their very arrangement. Just as the devils are rejoicing over the fall, Cain appears, the first and best illustra- ^Der Sundenfall, herausg. Friedrich Krage (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1913), 11. 280-81*. Tll. 103-106, 852-59- 168 tion of the readiness to sin, the earthly bondage of all mankind in comparison to which the bondage of the succeeding patriarchs in limbo becomes the logical result. The notion of bondage is completed at Adam’s death as the devils hale him off. In his single-minded pursuit of his theological objective, Immessen eschews both comedy and pathos. Both the flood and the sacri fice of Isaac are handled with simplicity and dispatch. The introduc tion of Arnold's highly original procession of prophets provides the only good-humored relief, the author's one admission that his audience might not share his own powerful concentration. Melchisedek, the mysterious but celebrated priest, and the psalmist David discuss the plight of the patriarchs in limbo with a wealth of Scriptural refer ences, and finally, with a fine disregard for chronology, decide to discuss the problem with King Solomon, whose wisdom is bound to sug gest some expedient. Solomon, in an interval between his phenomenal judgments and the reception of the Queen of Sheba, suggests a confer ence of prophets and sibyls. The combination of the procession of prophets and the process in heaven begins with a great feast and many toasts. The drinking scene is a rousing one pervaded by a light operatic atmosphere. There after the assembly settles down to extended speechmaking. Prophets alternate with sibyls; the tendency of the prophetic content emphasizes the necessity not only of a saviour to liberate mankind from the power of sin and hence of the devils but the requirement.of a virgin birth as well and thus foreshadows the climax of the piece. Arnold's introduction of the process in heaven is equally ori- 169 ginal. Solomon, with the approval of the assembly, appoints the pro phet Isaiah to seek audience with the Creator and convey the desire of the assembly for the release of the patriarchs. Isaiah carries out his commission, quoting his own prophecies as justification for his re quest . The Creator at first denies the petition. Simultaneous stag ing here permits the plaints of Adam, with Lucifer gloating, and the first decision of Joachim and Anna to visit the temple. As they at tempt to sacrifice, however, the priest Ruben forbids them admittance O on the grounds that they are childless. Meanwhile the conferees try again, this time appointing David as their representative. David's embassy is successful; the Creator commands the archangel Michael to free the souls in limbo. At this point Justice objects. Here Arnold's treatment of the strife among the allegorical daughters of God is ab breviated. Instead of drawing in the traditional four daughters, he assigns speaking parts to only Justice and Mercy. The Creator satis fies the demands of both by proposing Himself as the Saviour through a virgin birth. There follow Gabriel's announcements to Joachim and to Anna that they will have a child, a girl of unspotted purity; David proclaims the coming liberation to the prophets and patriarchs; and the play concludes with the presentation of the child Mary in the tem ple. The concluding hymn is the "Sancta maria virgo, succurre miser- is." The well-constructed theological thrust of his total arrange- O Arnold is here making use of the "Protevangelium of James"; cf. New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemel- cher (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959)) i. 2. 170 ment very considerably relieves Arnold of the necessity for specific theological pronouncements. When they concern the nature of man's end once he has replaced the fallen angels, they center on the idea of peace. Freedom from hell and the enjoyment of peace following the Saviour's reduction of the devils' fortress constitute the themes of the prophetic speeches: Uppe den hyramel, der hilgen stede, Wert vorkundiget de hilge vrede, q To troste der mynschen salicheit. The coherence and interest of this collection of unpromising materials appear even more striking when the Sundenfall is set beside a full- scale Old Testament cycle. Here the dangers of turgidity and excess which Arnold avoided become all too obvious. Except to note it as an example of the massive extremes to which the French cycles went in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, there is curiously little to discuss in the fifty thousand lines of the Viel Testament. The creation and the fall are followed by a succession of scenes literally portraying the more theatrical events of the Old Testament. The only variation is the process in paradise, a continued trial on the merits of a substitutionary atone ment to set right all the misdeeds and perversions of God's intent taking place in the world of the playing space. The pageant moves right through Daniel and Esther, ending with the legend of Octavian and the Sybil, a whole series of sybils from many nations, chorusing the forthcoming nativity to les Humains. The entire collection would 9ll. 3099-3101. 171 have taken twenty-five days to produce, hut Frank surmises that it represents not a cycle hut a repertoire from which directors could select groups of scenes adapted to their production resources.^ Theologically,, the creation is the most interesting of the scenes. Here the playwright manages to convey the weight of his the ology hy the power of his versification and the richness of his vocab ulary. The importance of man's creation has its point in that of the heavenly powers, as the Creator soliloquizes: Pour demonstrer nostre magnificence Et decorer les trosnes glorieux Nous qui sans per regissons les sainctz cieulx En hault povoir et digne eternite, Demonstrerons triumphes gracieux, Pour refulcir gloire et felicite. • « • • • • Par quoy de faict pour euvre magnifique, Corame puissant, parfaict et glorieux, Creons le ciel qui conceme et implicque En son pourpris les corps hien eureux. 11- Following the accepted hierarchy of nine ranks of angelic heings, the playwright's own creation is majestic in its piling up of sounds and images of splendor: "pour refulcir," first are created "trois belles hierarchies," which include cherubim "pour joyes et melodyes,ac companied hy thrones and seraphim "pour resonner les haultz sons d'armonyes."^ Then come the lower ranks, "enclins a fulcir joyes et .,11l collaudacions. ■^Frank, o^. cit., pp. 1 9^ 19 6’ n. 1. n James Rothschild, ed., Le mistere du Viel Testameht (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1878-9 1), 1 1. 1-9, 17-20. 121 1. kb-k^. 1311. k6-kj. 1^11. 51-52. 172 Ainsi seront, sans faire autres eschanges, Es lieux preveux ordonnez dignement, En nous rendant souveraines louenges Par tous les cieulx universellement.-*-5 Their Maker then Instructs the entire sublime procession to Collauderez nostre divinite, En resonnant joyeux chantz de musique Pour demonstrer gloire et felicite; En ce manoir de haulte eternite, Par legions serez resplendissans, Pour apparoir le magnanimite Ou vous serez en tous biens florissans, En ces haultz trosnes dignes et puissans Corroborant nostre exaltacion, Posez et mis es sieges triumphans On hault pourpris de jubilacion.l° The Creator explains, Vous estes mis chacun en ordonnance, Par legions esleux reveremment, Pour explaner nostre magnificence .-*-7 The heavenly hosts then celebrate this magnificence rather well in an assortment of lyrical verse forms until Lucifer begins to make his propaganda among them. Man's purpose, then, is to take his place in the harmonious ranks of creatures celebrating the power of God; specifically his place is that forfeited by the fallen angels, a traditional concept by 1 O now. In keeping with this glorious destiny, he is Ung homme plein de sapience, Qui sera veritablement Faict a nostre ymage et semblance. The idea of man as the image of God carries its own endorsement of man's worth, but the playwright seems to add by the sumptuousness of 1511. 57-60. l8ll. 886-89. l8ll. 74-8^. ^ n . 690-97. ITn. 185-88. 173 his description that the beauty of paradise is a further tribute to that worth. Here the new beings are by their very delight in creation to have a kind of prefiguring share in their ultimate service of praise. The author reserves his most ingratiating expressions for God's exposition of this concept: Adam, nous te avons apreste Ce lieu de divine puissance, Ou tu auras felicite De toute noble esjouissance Icy feras ta demourance En ce beau paradis terrestre, Ouquel auras gloire et plaisance A tous costez, dextre et senestre, • • • • • • Icy prendres vostre desir A garder par bonne equite Ce beau lieu, pour vous resjouir Plain de toute suavity.20 This creation play, then, is of particular interest for two reasons. It provides evidence of the continuing popularization in the drama of fairly technical notions of man as the image of God and his creation as an angelic replacement. More, it succeeds admirably in casting an aura of delight around the purpose of man as an eternal servant of God in his praise-giving existence. The completeness of the Viel Testament is without parallel among the remaining Old Testament plays, even though the literal spirit is similar. The so-called Dublin "Abraham and Isaac," in a manuscript of the mid-fifteenth century, has not been attached to any one town or PI cycle, although its dialect suggests a Northampton origin. It is a 2 0 1 1. 738-^5, 878-8 1. ^■*-Craig, 0£. cit., p. 308. lT1 ! - dignified and rather spirited play which, in its review of God's pur pose in creation, is pertinent to this study. Here God Himself ex presses the general human bewilderment: At my bidding was wrought bothe goode man & synnere, All in ioy to have dwellid, tyl adam to syn fell. His unkindnes hathe displesid me, truthe for to tell, For many a thing made I for his ioy 8s daliaunce. ^ Whi sholde he displese me that I loued so well. Again there appears the note of pleasure in creation; but the hedonis tic tendency is qualified by the worshipful response of the good man, in this case Abraham: 0 gret god on hye that al the worlds madest,' And lendist us oure leving here to do thi plesaunce, With swete counfort of the erthe all oure hertys gladest, To the be honoure, to the be ioy & all dewe obesaunce.23 This kind of understanding on Abraham's part is of course a theatri cally effective setting for the test his faith is about to sustain. In the Brome "Abraham and Isaac," also of the fifteenth century, the theatrical possibilities of the piece entirely absorb the playwright. Apart from these English plays, the only other separate Old Testament plays in the vernacular are known by fragments. The bilin gual Gottingen Spiel von Jakob und Esau (late : fourteenth century), the Heresburg Josefspiel (thirteenth century), the Braunschweig Simson- spiel (of uncertain date)> all continue the literal tendencies of the Abraham's Sacrifice," The Hon-Cycle Mystery Plays, ed. Os born Waterhouse ("Early English Text Society, Extra Ser., vol. CIV; London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1909)> 11• 3“ 7• 23ll. 35-38. 175 plays already discussed. The notable exception to these simple dramatizations is the Latin Ordo de Ysaac et Rebecca. This twelfth-century fragment attempts a full allegorization, in which Esau represents the Jews whom God is to forsake for the adopted people achieved through Christ1s sacrifice. The only play based on material from the Acts of the Apostles which does not include large amounts of miracle play material is the Digby "Conversion of St. Paul." Craig stigmatizes it as "degenerate in the worst fifteenth-century way, . . . verbose and pompous to the point of unintelli'gibility. Despite its verbosity, the play says nothing to the point for this study. Although eschatological subjects were relatively popular in the drama, the Book of Revelation seems to have been largely impene trable to the playwrights. Most of the eschatological pieces origi nate in the judgment parables of the Gospels. The Limoges Sponsus (eleventh- or twelfth-century), one of the two remaining liturgical plays from eschatology, is typical of the method. In this play of the wise and foolish virgins the opening chant of announcement sets the theme of watchfulness for the Bridegroom, identified as Christ, whom the virgins are to go out to meet. The identification makes oppor tunity for allusion to the Saviour's redemption and purpose: Adest Sponsus, qui est Christus, vigilate, virginesI Pro aduentu cuius gaudent et gaudebunt homines. Hie pependit ut celesti patrie nos redderet, Craig, o]o. cit., p. 3 1 3. 176 . 2*0 Ac de parte inimici liberos nos traheret. ^ There is nothing of the allegorization favored Toy the mystics, which would interpret the parable as the soul's meeting her Bridegroom in mystical contemplation and union; the playwright's interpretation is truly eschatological. The terms are very general; for the center of interest is the plight of the foolish virgins, and the dramatic impact of the play comes from their helpless lamentation— with refrains in French— rather than from theological content. The denouement of re jection by Christ in a brief speech and their delivery to hell by the devils is a pale prefiguration of the vivid expansion these climactic scenes are to receive in the Thuringian Zehn Jungfrauenspiel. This brief bilingual play from the end of the fourteenth cen tury represents a more allegorical treatment of its materials than its Latin predecessor. The Invitatorium conveys to the assembled virgins the invitation to the Bridegroom's wedding feast and bids them be alert since the event may happen any night or day. The Prudentes de termine at once to give their strength to godly things and meditation, but the Fatuae decide to allow themselves thirty years of pleasure be fore entering a nunnery. The Fatuae then drop off to sleep, and the summons comes. Frantic, the Fatuae beg oil from the Prudentes, who explain carefully that the oil of good works is non-transferable. The Dominica Persona arrives then and pronounces judgment: the Prudentes are introduced to the Virgin Mary and to eternal blessedness; the wildest pleas of the Fatuae to God and to the Virgin fail to bring re- ^5"Sponsus," The Drama of the Medieval Church, ed. Karl Young, 11. 1-2, 7-8. ITT suits, and the Devil receives them and leads them off among the audi- 2 6 ence as they sing an admonitory planctus. In its somewhat revival- istic attempt to emphasize repentance while there is yet time, the em phasis of the play stresses the woes of hell and slights the joys of heaven. At the same time, its references to the contemplative life suggest a slight mystical influence, even though doctrines of union are not otherwise intimated. Despite their apocalyptic titles, the so-called Antichrist plays take most of their material from the Gospel parable of the sheep and the goats. The twelfth-century Ludus de Antichristo from Tegemsee is the procedural model for a number of apocalyptic vernacular plays and remarkable among the Latin plays for its originality of treatment. The Holy Roman Emperor brings the kings of the earth under tribute, conquers the King of Babylon, and thus frees the Holy City from the Babylonian yoke. The Emperor then deposits his crown in the Temple with the declaration that Christ alone has power over all the earth. He returns to his duties as king of the Germans. While the rejoicing is still general, the hypocrites, under instruction from Antichrist, subvert the King of Jerusalem and his subjects. Antichrist himself then appears for the conquest, accompanied by Hypocrisy and Heresy; he subdues all the rulers except the king of the Germans, whom he con verts by the demonstration of his miraculous powers.. At last Syna- goga also submits. Now the prophets Enoch and Elijah begin preaching and reconvert Synagoga briefly until Antichrist slays them. Just as ^ Das Spiel von den zehn Jungfrauen, ed. Otto Becker (Breslau: M. & H. Marcus, 1905), pp. 96-12A. 178 Antichrist is celebrating his enforced total peace, a clap of divine thunder disperses his hosts; Ecclesia alone remains, chanting trium phantly. The emphasis throughout this brief play (4l6 lines) is on the conflict and the subtle dangers of heresy. A single note of purpose appears in the prophetic preaching which converts Synagoga: Most ram Christus sumpsit infirmitatem, Ut infirmis conferret firmitatem. • • • • • • Moriendo mortem mortificavit; A Gehenna credentes liberavit. Hie seculum per ignem iudicabit, Universos in carne suscitabit. A reprobis salvandos separabit; Malos dampnans bones glorificabit. ' This sermonic summary of the nature of redemption does, however, imply the worth of the creatures for whom the redemptive warfare was con ducted even if the nature of the glorification to which the good will be separated is not specified. In plot the Zurich Antichrist play follows the Latin closely, with consequently few references to questions of eternity; again it is concerned primarily with the conflict itself. One phrase by Enoch is evocative even though it lacks the neat precision of its Latin model: Gedenkt an den waren Krist Der durch uns all gemartert ist Umb unser ewigs hail.^ ^"Antichrist," The Drama of the Medieval Church, ed. Karl Young, 11. 335-^8. nO Zuricher Antichristspiel," Fastnachtsspiele aus dem funf- zehnten Jahrhundert, ed. Adelbert von Keller (Stuttgart: Litterarische Verein, 1853) > H* 56-5 8. 179 The only medieval French play on the theme, the so-called Jour du jugement, is, despite its more inclusive title, also an extended ( 2^38 lines) Antichrist play. Free of the political implications of the Tegernsee Antichristus, this fourteenth-century piece gains its elaboration by a faithful dramatization of the major points of simi larity between Antichrist and the true Saviour. Young has located the chief source for the medieval figure of Antichrist in Adso's tenth- 29 century Libellus de Antichristo. J Almost every one of Adso's phrases receives a scene. Thus there is an annunciation to the mother of Anti christ by devils; a nativity scene; healings, preaching, and the raisf ing of a corpse in a series of public ministry scenes. By these means, in spite of the preaching and martyrdoms of Enoch and Elijah, returned to earth as God's witnesses, the world and the church are sub jugated. The Pope at first remains firm (a bit of much-needed papal publicity, no doubt), but his martyrdom quickly persuades the remain ing faithful cardinals to submit. At this final, desparate moment the angelic hosts arrive to reinforce the faithful. The last battle culminates in the final judgment as God ap points the Apostles to separate the risen multitudes according to their deeds. The wicked faithfully delineate themselves by their speeches; they include archbishops, abbesses, kings, prevosts, advo cates, an avaricious man representing the type, and a usurer with all his house— he is the only one to receive the Father's individual at tention and maledictions. The good are distinguished by their atten- 2 9 ■ Cited in Young, o£. cit., II, 370, including a text, pp. k$6- 500, from E. Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen (Halle: M. 180 tion to almsgiving, the usual interpretation of the parable of the sheep and the goats, to which the play now resorts as a model. The wicked are driven to hell hy companies of devils; and the blessed, preparing to depart for paradise, end the play with the customary "Te Deum." The purpose of the play as a whole is carefully explained by the prologue of the Prescheur, a review of man's history which closely parallels the prophetic sermon in the Antichristus from Tegemsee: God made man in His own image, but those primordial crea tures lost His company through their sin and had only the languors of limbo until the coming of Christ-- Vestuz de nostre humanite Vint faire au Roy d'iniquite, Lequel il vainqui en morant En la croiz, et d'inqui courant L'ame en enfer descend!, Et a tous ses amis rendy L'eritaige de paradis Qu'il avoient perdu jadis. Par lui fu en croiz la Mors morte; A tous les bons ouvry la porte De paradis qui est ouverte Aux justes selon leur desserte.-5 With the way to God thus reopened, man's duty is simply to remain faithful and good until the end of the world, when his joy will be completed as Christ appears: Aux bons dira par amitie "Vous eustes de moi pitie, Avec mon pere esperitable Hiemeyer, 1 8 9 8). ■^^Le Jour du jugement, mystere frangais sur le grand schisme, ed. Emile Roy (Paris: Bouillon, 1902), 11. 59-70. This editor's at- tempts to relate the play to the Great Schism are no longer accepted; cf. Frank, og. cit., p. 133. l8l Venez en joye pardurable. "3^ Throughout the play the author takes every opportunity to re inforce the dramatic action with didactic speech. One theological curiosity of the play lies in Antichrist's assumption that the world he seeks to subjugate will be most easily conquered by promises of eternal bliss. There is no attempt to soothe with present pleasures or to play material benefit off against eternal security. Thus Anti christ's speeches sound as much like sermons as the prophets': Je puis trestoutes choses faire, Si suis venuz en cest repaire Pour vous mener en paradis Dont li ange churent jadis.^ The wicked archbishops confess, Oil qui a vous ce sont randu Seront en joye pardurable, Hors seront de la main au dyable, Et les menroiez en paradis: Si vous disirrent. 33 Antichrist is then moved to still finer promises, which contain almost every element of the dramatist's conception of human bliss: A ceux qui de bon cuer me servent, La joie en paradis deservent, Ou touz jours avec moy seront. Cil qui de bon cuer m'ameront Compains seront de mes richesses. Cil qui de cuer me serviront, II ne perdront mie leur poinne Pour verite je vous tesmoigne. En paradis trestuit seront De coste moy, et me feront Tuit service, comme a mon perej Je suis soulaux, je suis lumiere, Je suis joye, je suis confors, 311 1. 133-36. 3211. 597-600. 3311. 752-57. 182 ; I I En paradis, ma maison for, Tuit my arny sauve seront. 3^ These are very considerable expansions on the ideas of the original j | play. The Latin Antichrist play had simply allowed the prophets to j promise that Christ's return to earth would inaugurate his eternal j I I reign, judgment of the world by fire, and glorification of the good. J The consummation which in the Antichristus is left to the imagination j I of the audience is most thoroughly developed by the French playwright. ! The reign of Antichrist comes to an end with the appearance of God to render judgment; it is prefaced by the expression of hope on the part of the good Christians, Que qui en Dieu se fiera Et Entrecrist n'aorera L'ame de luy en sera mise En joie qui ja ne faura.35 God then proclaims His purpose: Justes suiz, droiz est que je juge En maniere de vray juge: j Touz les mors vueil resusciter, j Les bons de tout mal acquitter, j Et les mauvais mettre en 1'ordure ' D'enfer; tuit morront par arsure j Cil qui ou mont seront trouve, j Et puiz seront le esprouve j En paradis, en corps et ame, ; Et le mauvais touz jours en flame ^ i Seront, sanz nul confort trouver.-5 And the purpose is unalterable. The damned plead with the Virgin to intercede; she agrees somewhat doubtfully and is entirely unsuccessful j t in her petitions. Her mediation was effective, God informs her, only | ^ll. 9*1-5-b9, 1018-27. 3511. 1*1-31- 35 • 36H • 1705-715- 183 while souls could still display faith in calling upon her. Now that 3T their fate is obvious, no repentance will serve. The Judge then appoints the Apostles to act as His delegates in separating the masses of the good from the wicked. Their remarks during this selection, adapted from the Beatitudes, are pertinent in the interpretations as signed the "biblical sources. Matthew: Ceux qui avront vescu sanz^lasme Seront en joye pardurable. Luke: Li bon seront bien cognoissant Des biens qu'avront fait en leur v i e .39 James: Envers vous sera debonnaires, [Beneure,] li Touz puissance; Saichiez qu'il est bien cognoissans Des biens que pour li fait avez. Belles feTstes, or savez, Com avez servi grant seigneur. Guerredon en arez grigneur Que ne pourrxes estimez. 0 The speeches of the other Apostles reinforce these general ideas. God then pronounces sentence: Yenez sa, li beneure; De tout mal estes espure; Persevez le regne mon pere, Desormais vueil qu'il vous appere, Pieca le vous ay apreste, Appareilliez vous a este Des le conmancement dou monde, Vous estes tuit de pechie monde, Jamais jour pechier ne pourroiz 3T11. 183^7. 3911. 193^35. 3811. 1911-12. ^ 11. 2253-60. 181* Tout sera fait ce que voudroiz, Et avrez joie pardurable, En vous n'ont plus pouoir li deable. Pour ce vous a abandonne , Mes peres son saint paradis. St. John the Baptist, St. Luke, and St. Paul make the appropriate re sponses : Par dessa sera vostre hostez Sainte gens, trestuit estes roys, Jamais jour n'avroiez nuls desroiz, Fain ne soif, meschief, ne mesaise, Jamais chose qui vois desplaise Ne verrez ne ne panserez, Touz jours mais en joye serez, Et serez tuit empli de grace, Et si verroiz Dieu en la face, Plus grans merites avrez que anges. Disons tuit a cellui loange i Qui est, qui fut et qui sera, Qui seanz vous hebergera, Et par cui vous avez victoire Des deables, et estes en gloire j Qui jamais jour ne panra fin: I A li serons touz jours afin I Que jamais n'en departiron. Seigneur, al^ s’en sont | Le deable, et si ont ; Les ames anmenees En enfer; la seront Plus que chose dou mont A touz jours tormentees, Et nous joie avrons. , Te Deum or chantons A hautes alienees.^ j S This small, rhymed summa has managed to include every notion of scho- j i lastic theology on the final end of the blessed, even to Thomas Aquinas'j chilling idea that an essential part of the bliss of the blessed is the ^ 11. 2311-32. ^ll. 21*12-38. 185 eternal contemplation of God's justice to the damned. It is a long, grim distance from the cheerful, almost humanistic hedonism of the French creation plays. Although it participates in some of the characteristics of pre vious judgment plays, the Rheinauer Weltgerichtsspiel of 1^67 is unique in the exclusion of Antichrist scenes while still remaining fairly ex tensive— 925 lines. This fulness is achieved by prologues in which Zephaniah and Gregorius represent the Old and the New Covenants in balanced agreement on the signs of the world's end and by considerable elaboration of the parabolic material. Following the usual sheep-and- goats judgment, Christ presides over the enthronement of the Virgin and the coronation of the Apostles; there is a lengthy judgment and dismissal of the damned, again despite their many pleadings and the repeated intercessions of the Virgin and the Apostles. Finally hell is forever locked, and the blessed find their welcome in heaven. This dour little piece appears to be a New Year's greeting. Matthew 2k was the appointed Gospel for the last Sunday of the year, and the speaker of the prologue politely bids, "got verlich uns ein giit selig jar."^3 It must nevertheless be remarked that the overall severity of the play is relieved by the homely warmth of Christ's loving speech to the well-doers: GSnd her zu mir min lieben kind, die hie zti der rechten siten sind, ir sond frolich hie bi mir stan ^■3"Rheinauer Weltgerichtsspiel," Schauspiele des Mittelalters, ed. F. J. Mone, 1. 3^* 186 und mit mir in das himelrich gan. mit vatter kumpt uch engegen und git [uch] sinen segen: ir sond hillich gesegnot sin, ir hand getan den willen min. an min siten wil ich uch setzen, des wil ich uch ergetzen. trank und spis sond ir niesen, der uch niemer mag verdriesen, und uwer schmacheit und ellend das sol hlit nemen ein end. ir sond hut hahen ze Ion das himelrich ze Ion, das hat uch min vater bereitt. . vor langen zitten in ewikeit. If the eschatological plays add nothing new to concepts of end scattered throughout the other plays, they at least form a convenient summary and illustrate the -unity of the dramatic ideas. This chapter has completed the survey of materials available to the makers of pas sions and cycles and indicated some of their problems. Already before them and current with them were a variety of viewpoints and methods for treating and enlarging upon their biblical materials. They must now coordinate these materials into wholes which would have both dra matic intensity over an extended series of performances and coherent interpretations even though diverse elements made up those wholes. That they succeeded in varying degrees the following chapters will show. ^ 1 1. 3I 1J 1—8 3- CHAPTER EIGHT PASSIONS IN FRANCE The possibility of combining the Easter and Christmas materials to construct a dramatic life of Christ would seem to he a fairly obvi ous procedure. The content of the continental passion plays bears out such a combination to some extent. In the course of elaborating the life of Christ, however, the continental playwrights dropped the cre ation, judgment, and Old Testament scenes which were to give the Eng lish cycles their characteristic grandeur in the cumulative effects of simple play following upon simple play. Only in Germany did the Fron- leichnamsspiel occasionally enlarge its scope to include at least the creation and some representative Old Testament development. Their concentration on the life of Christ allowed the conti nental playwrights to develop their scenes in some detail. In this development they realized the dramatic ironies inherent in simultane ous staging; they very soon discovered that careful arrangements of scenes could convey doctrine as well as atmosphere and could contri bute most potently to the development of a theme. Now, they found, a doctrine might be conveyed rather than said. They also discovered a number of ways to state the events and meanings of the creation and fall apart from the straightforward presentation of the scenes. The passions are here discussed in an approximately chronolog ical order except in those cases where obvious influence of one play 187 on another dictates the juxtaposition of "both. The earliest full passion play extant in France is the Passion du Pal.atinus from the latter part of the thirteenth century, with re visions in the early fourteenth century. This dating puts the final reworking of the play very close to the recopying of the present manu script, an unworn reading copy. The composer's use of the narrative Passion de jongleurs as a main source, probably through a still earli er play now lost, and the peculiarities of his dialect, designate him as the first of a group of playwrights working in western Burgundy and adapting each others' versions. The other plays in the series are the Passion de Sion, the Passion d'Autun, and the full-blown Passion de Semur. The swiftly moving action of the first of these passions may be partly accidental, , the result of crowding nearly every Gospel inci dent from the entry into Jerusalem through the report of the resurrec tion to Peter into 1996 lines. For the most part the author moves his characters from scene to scene with the utmost economy of speech and action. Yet, faced with the familiarity of his audience with every scene in the play, the author still manages some originality in his treatment. He demonstrates irony in combinations of scenes and real reflection upon the motives of his characters. The passion is also marked by some timid attempts at lyrical passages, which at least succeed in being strophic, and some remark ably effective realism and comedy. The entry into Jerusalem is accom- only in a fragment and not discussed here. panied by a unique arrangement of antiphonal singing and dialogue among the children of Jerusalem. The scenes following— the Host's reception of Jesus and his companions at the last supper,, Mary Magdalene's re pentance and anointing of Christ, Judas' cavils, the last supper, the agony in the garden, the trials before Pilate and Herod— are all de manded by the author's biblical and poetic sources and set the pattern for succeeding passions. Originality in handling the sources appears in several ways: Judas is motivated by a desire to recoup his lost percentage from the sale of the ointment; his bargainings with the Jews gain irony by their simultaneous staging with Christ's agonized pray ing in the garden and his speeches on temptation to the weary disci ples. Comedy enters in Annas' discovery that he cannot make up the demanded price. The Marques, whose sliced-off ear is replaced by Jesus, emerges as a convincingly and consistently tough characteriza tion; any gratitude he may feel is not allowed to interfere with the execution of his duty; and he admiringly recognizes a kindred spirit in the smith's wife, a harridan who herself forges the nails when the ner vous smith excuses himself. The scourging scenes aim at brutal realism, as the guards urge each other on in vivid, idiomatic language until both are exhausted. Apart from Mary's lament, the legend of blind Longinus is the author's only insertion in the actual crucifixion scenes. It is Longinus who thrusts the spear into Christ's side, receives his sight, and thus recognizes deity; he receives a forgiving word from Jesus just before the "Consummatum est.” The harrowing of hell is the longest single scene in the play, 190 exceeded only by all the trial scenes taken together. It is extended hy the rejoicing of the devils over Judas' suicide. Their joy turns to nervous quarreling as they consider the possibility of their con quest by the newly dead Christ. Satirically they list the kings, counts, cardinals, prelates, lawyers, and usurers they will lose if hell should fall; then they hasten to arm themselves as heavily as * they can. The climactic quality of Christ's arrival in hell is empha sized by the absence of the liturgical repetitions from Psalm 24, showing the particular and attentive efforts of the composer to avoid mere convention here and to force the attention of his audience upon his great scene. Enfer flees in terror at the very sight of the Saviour; and, despite his furious efforts to rally his forces, Satan is left deserted. In disgust, he concludes, Or m'en irai en Lumbardie A touz jours mais user ma vie, En despit du roy Jhesucrist.2 Thereafter, although the soldiers detailed to guard the tomb are amusingly boastful and terrified on cue and the spice merchant identifies himself as a graduate of Salerno but proves to be a long- winded quack, the scenes of resurrection are familiar, brief, and pale copies of the liturgical drama. Complete only in their combination, they serve the dramatic purpose of easing the audience from the climax of the play to its conclusion. The final speech is a conventional benediction. 2 x ✓ La passion du Palatinus, mystere du XIV~e siecle, ed. Grace Prank (Paris: Champion, 1922), 11. lhlS-20. 191 The Passion d'Autun has been transmitted in two manuscript copies of the fifteenth century. The version copied hy Philippe Biard in 1* 1-70 is part of a collection of passions intended for reading. Its 2117 lines closely follow the pattern set By the Passion du Palatinus. A slight strengthening of the characterization of Judas as a hypocrite moved hy "grant envie" is offset hy the loss of the Marques as an out standing personality. The incidents of John's loss of his mantle as he reconnoiters the palace for Peter and the plea of Pilate's wife are added. The composer increases the heartlessness of the smith's wife hy having her sing as she forges. To the realism of the Palatinus scourgings he adds the detailed conversation of the soldiers as they nail Christ to the cross. Longinus is handled more sympathetically, as a hlind heggar tricked into his spear thrust hy the mocking sol diers— a well-intentioned effort at contrast. To the words from the cross is added the conversation of the thieves. The descent into hell is handled briefly and almost perfunctorily. Psalm 2k is the frame work, with Adam replying on hehalf of the waiting souls. There is not even the suspicion of a diablerie. The comic scene of the unguent ari- us is also omitted, and the play closes with a sermon hy the Christ after his appearance to Mary Magdalene. The passion copied hy Antoine Roman is almost a synopsis of the Biard version, only 937 lines long. It is necessarily even flat ter than the Biard version. Numerous passages common to Palatinus and Biard are here omitted or drastically pruned. Judas' approach to the Jews is absent. Much of Christ's trial before Pilate has been cut. The mockeries are omitted also, and in their place the Veronica legend 192 and Christ1s admonition to the wailing daughters of Jerusalem are in serted. The passion ends with the conversation of Pilate, Nicodemus, and Joseph of Arimathea as they regret the death of Christ and casti gate the Jews. Apparently aiming at a truly Lenten spirit of sorrow ful, dignified devotion, the copyist has only produced a weaker drama. The last and most ambitious of these Burgundian plays is the Passion de Semur. The manuscript is dated 1^88, hut the play itself may well have been earlier.3 Its 9582 lines required two days for a complete performance. Although it retains the basic structure and distinguishing scenes of the Burgundian group and, like most of the other French passions, concludes with the resurrection, its opening compass is grander, almost cyclic. The creation and war in heaven precede a number of Old Testament scenes— Cain, Noah (with the scene of his drunkenness, unusual even in the English plays), Abraham and Isaac, Moses, a procession of.prophets that includes the sybil. Thus little room is left in the first day for more than the preparation of Christ's ministry— the betrothal of Mary (with the complete narrative of Joseph's blooming rod), John the Baptist (including his beheading as a parallel and preparation for the crucifixion), and a triumphant ending in the temptation of Christ. The selection of scenes and the climax for this day thus place considerable stress on Abelard's inter pretation of man's redemption as lying in Christ's obedience. The disobedience of the first creatures is made good by the obedience of Christ in his creaturely garb. The concluding speech invites the O Frank, Medieval French Drama, p. 176. 193 audience to return the following day to witness the culmination of this obedience, "le prix de no redempcion.The unifying effect of this emphasis on obedience as redemption slightly alters the emphasis of the otherwise conventional action on the second day. The harrowing of hell now becomes the reward of the triumphant Christ for the obedience which led him to death. The playwright is a craftsman of obvious merit. He has not only developed a unifying theme over a two-day period; he has also dis played technical skill in uniting the individual elements of his sources. Grace Frank has observed that his comic and farcical scenes not only relieve the intense pathos or sadistic realism of his serious scenes but also serve as transitions for scenes of varying subject matter.^ The appearance of minor characters from scene to scene is another of his unifying techniques. The playwright further displays considerable originality. To the legendary scenes already found in the plays he inherited, the comic bridges, and the Old Testament mater ial of the first day he adds a number of scenes with allegorical fig ures. Lucifer is accompanied by Orgueul, Despit, and Dame Oyseuse. Esperance and Charity, daughters of God, plead with Him on behalf of fallen humanity in a scene which owes nothing to the debates of the four daughters of God which later French passions develop; Sina- goga disputes with Ecclesia, accompanied by Innocencia and Temperantia. In some instances these diversions obscure the playwright's steady ^""Passion de Semur," Le mystere de la passion en France du XlVe au XVIe siecle, £d. Emile Hoy (Dijon: Damidot, 1903-190*0 > ^Frank, Medieval French Drama, p. 177* 19^ march to a thematic climax, "but he is clearly studying, the advantages of variety in unity. From their related sources and structures, it would he reason able to conclude that the group of passions from Burgundy would main tain a similarity of theological outlook. In reality this is not the case. To similar materials each playwright brings more or less devel oped attitudes of his own. At the same time there is a clear develop ment from play to play as each playwright surveys his predecessors' work and discovers new possibilities. Thus the Palatinus author is not yet thoroughly conversant with the theology of his materials— or else drama concerns him more. The power and emphasis of his harrowing of hell have already been noted. In the scenes building up to it, however, the expressions of purpose are varied. Christ thinks of his coming death not as a warfare or liberation but as a ransom ("Ainsz que ma vie soit pour le peuple finee")’^ The choruses of children at the triumphal entry agree; to their conventional quotation of Psalm 118:26 they add: Sauvez nous', Diex Adonay, Lons tens avons mes esboy • • • • • • Par toy serons nous rachete. Or est Diex serans descendus.f Christ's words to his disciples at the last supper indicate a recipro cal attitude: Vous estes tuit li mien ami, Et grant paine avez pour mi. Je vous en rendrai guerredon 61. Til. 55-59. En paradis, en ma maison Sus les douze sieges serez Au Jugement et je i serai Qui desus touz les jugerai. Perron, tu es mout mes amis, Tu demourras ci avec mi. This promise of his presence, which to Peter and the disciples in this context seems to indicate nothing more than a joint heavenly dominion, is repeated to the penitent thief. To the Gospel source the suggestion of peace is added: Ou moi en paradis laissus Vous en menrrai en mon repos.^ Christ's own references to his descent into hell, hoth before and after the event, merely acknowledge its occurrence and not its reason. Thus the few expressions of purpose here tend to cancel each other out. With the dramatic scene of victory over hell the audience is left to create its own interpretation. The verbal references do not speak with a single voice. The Passion d'Autun, less effective dramatically, is, in the Biard version at least, more single-minded in its doctrinal thrust. Christ's closing sermon refers to the creation of man and his sin without further stating the purposein creation. The nature of the final human destiny is developed throughout the play. A novelty among the French plays is the speech of the Host who has provided Jesus and his disciples with the supper; he makes a confession of faith in reply to Jesus' grateful words as a good guest: 811. I6k-J2. 9u. 1^35-36. 101 1. 337-^ 990-93, 1722-23. 196 Et tous ceulx qui tiendront ta voye Arons de paradis la joye.^ There are delicate forecasts of man's end in Christ's praise of Mary Magdalene as she anoints his feet: Tant fait elle a que m'amour aura TP En paradis qui tous jours durera.^ An intimate quality is given to Christ's explanation of his mission to Pilate: Mais il [mon royaume] est ou ciel coloquer, La son mes gens tous logier.13 Christ's speech calling his souls from hell emphasizes not their des tiny hut the cost of ransoming them: Mes amy, or en venes, Quar en paradis mestier aves. Bien rayson est que en venes, Quar je vous ait moult chier racheter. The theme of ransom is the unifying doctrine in the play. Christ has a long speech from the cross on this theme.^ It ends with a plea to the audience to enter into a vicarious experience of the price of re demption: Vuille santir ma passion En ton corps par compassion. Et se tu n'as pitie de moy, Au moins ayes pitie de toy. -IJ-La passion d'Autun, ed. Grace Frank (Paris: Socidte des anciens textes franyais, 193^0> H* 96-97 (Biard); cf. Roman, 11. 82- 8 3 . “ 1211. 216-17 (Biard). ^ll. 803-804 (Biard). lifll. 2012-15. ^ll. 2060-2117. l6ll. 211^-117. 197 Christ also speaks the concluding sermon to the audience on the same theme: Pour vous ai ge este tout deffait, Pour vous pechids et pour vous meffait. Je vous ait tous d'enffert gecter. Et tous ceulx qui haptisier seron Et qui en moy de hon cueur croyron Aurons de paradis la fleur. Entendes moy, dames et seigneur, Panses trestuit de hien faire, S'ares de paradis la g l o y r e . 1 T In keeping with its scope the Passion de Semur discusses even God's motive in the whole complex of creation. The Creator regally addresses His newly made angels, Nous vous avons forme par divine science, Car nous voulons qu'il soit de nous recong- noissance, Et loe voulons estre de vostre noble essence Et qu'a nous comme Dieu randez obeissance. The angelic disobedience makes necessary the creation of a substitute, a familiar doctrine by now: the Semur playwright duly mentions it but spends his creative efforts on celebrating the nobility of man. The Creator comments on the success of His latest work: Or est forme et bel et gent, Pere sera de toute gent, Nous luy donrons pour son douhaire Grace, beault^, sans nul desplaire, Et science pour luy doubter, Et force pour tout surmonter. ^ Adam is conscious of his debt to God for his introduction to the blessings of existence: 17n. 2037-2 0 5 6. 191 1. ^68-7^. l8ll. 205-208. 198 Jamais ne pourray deservir, Tant vous puisse amer ne cherir, 0 vraie Deite parfaicte Qu'il m'aves forme de la terre. En adorent vous veul requerre Commant me debvray maintenir. He must also be conscious of his human worth as a creation, for after his fall he groans, "He las moy, j'ay perdu ma gloire."2- 1 - The theme of reachieving this glory preoccupies the Semur playwright, and it is the nature of the glory rather than the means of regaining it that primarily concerns him. This interest is observable in some situations that are not ordinarily so treated by the other playwrights. One of the Sibylline pronouncements concerns the pur pose of the coming redeemer for his people, whom he will reconduct "en sa gloire." 22 David, among the souls awaiting Christ's appearance in limbo, touches upon the idea of union as part of the coming glory: Avec ly nous en menera En sa gloire de paradix. Even the shepherds at the nativity are gifted with unusual insight; one of them comments on the worth of humanity thus to receive redemp tion: Car ung grant prophette jadix Anonca que de paradix Nous devoit ung grant pastour naistre Lequel viendroit pour ceulx repaistre Quil sont dignes d'avoir sa grace.2^ And his companion prays, Le Dieu quil est nez bonnement 201 1. ^81-8 7. 231 1. 8605-6 0 6. 211. TO1 ! - . 2^11. 2jQ0-Qk. 221. 16^3. 199 Nous gart du monde transitoire Et nous octroye a tous sa gloire.2^ John the Baptist at his beheading, voicing an apparently conventional prayer, refers to the nature of his hope of glory: Par ta tresgrant misericorde Et par ta puissance divine, ^ Resoy raoy en joie qu'il ne fine. It is natural therefore that the harrowing of hell should give the Semur playwright an opportunity he can grasp with unusual effect. Again he is aware of the doctrine of ransom and pays graceful homage to it as he enlarges upon the liberty thus achieved; then he devotes himself to visual imagery evoking the delights of paradise as Christ welcomes his newly redeemed souls: Venez tous en salvacion, S'ares participacion De la joie quil toujours dure. Du commandement Dieu mon Pere J'ay rachete eeulx du servaige Qu'il m'a donne en heritaige. Je les ay acquis par mon sang, Et du lieu serf rendu au franc. Ceulx quil aront fait mon command, Bailie leur antree et passaige. Encor veul ge te ordonne Que tous mes saintz ayent eoronne De roses, de lis, de florettes, De toutes autres viblettes. Coronne les avec les anges En feste, en joye, et en louanges, Ung chascun selon leur merite.^7 The playwright culminates and summarizes the point of his drama as an 25n. 2834-36. 261 1. 4100-103. 27n. 8740-4 2, 8781-8 5, 8795-8 0 4. 200 angel sums up to the newly admitted thief: "Dieu A souffert en humanite „ Mort, pur rendre vye pleniere. The line of developed French plays in the Paris tradition be gins with a long Passion de notre Seigneur in the Ste. Genevieve MS 1131, one of Greban's sources. With different legendary foundations, it stands apart from the nativity plays or the resurrection play con tained in the same manuscript. The passion is probably a late four teenth-century version of an earlier play and has some truly original touches. Even the traditional scenes are handled with an expert ful ness which makes a weighty whole of over sixteen thousand lines. The poetic and dramatic development of the production is obvi ous from the realtively narrow scope of its subject matter. The play is truly a passion. It begins with the supper in Bethany at the house of Simon the Leper and Christ's anointing by Mary Magdalene. The raising of Lazarus is smoothly connected to the opening scenes by Mary's report of her conversion to Martha just as their brother falls ill. Thereafter the triumphal entry and the last supper take their traditional course, with an interesting exception. At the supper the resurrected Lazarus entertains the company with his experiences in hell, a miniature inferno which owes nothing to Dante. The arrest and trials are full of incident: Pilate's son and daughter join their pleadings to their mother's without effect on Pilate; the smith's wife appears in her customary virago role and is assisted by one of the executioners; Veronica is included; and there is a short debate be 2811. 8577-78. 201 tween Church and Synagogue. Synagogue is vanquished not hy ecclesi astical reasoning hut hy a host of angels chanting "Hostis Herodes," an appropriate introduction to the supernatural power to he displayed in the harrowing of hell and the resurrection. The suspense before these events is well handled in scenes of the descent from the cross and the burial; a further effective hit of delaying action is brought about hy the introduction of the spice merchant at this point. He is not a comic figure here; instead, his speeches are a source of slow-moving, sensuous poetry as he catalogs and praises his wares in words which can almost he touched. Following the harrowing of hell and the resurrection, the play ends with a ser mon by the believing centurion, who invites the congregation to join him in singing the Te Deum. The employment of simultaneous staging for the agony in the garden and the parallel bargaining and planning of the betrayal is not an innovation, hut its deft handling fully realizes its possibilities for dramatic irony. The only minor character to receive dramatic treatment is a hypocritical servant of Christ who reports his lord's activities' to the Jewish council. He shows a hasty penitence when his ear is struck off during the arrest and sheds it just as hastily when his ear is restored; he finally emerges as the chief torturer and exe cutioner. The many rudenesses of the trial scenes and the number of the interspersed torture scenes account in great measure for the unu sual length of the play. The playwright dwells on Christ's sufferings with the apparent intention of setting off the greatness of the tri umph achieved thereby. To that end the speeches of the believing 202 centurion, Hicodemus, and Joseph of Arimathea provide a transition as they summarize the action and purpose of the play and indicate their faith in the forthcoming triumph. The climax is a well-fought harrowing of hell in which Satan is hound in place of the liberated Adam. Christ conducts the released captives to paradise. He then appears to the three Maries in an un usually extended scene; accompanied hy attendant angels, he explains his purpose at some length. This added weight for the resurrection scenes is another indication of the playwright's artistry. He thus balances the scenes of torture and defeat. The sober triumph of these concluding scenes fittingly represents the tone of the entire play, a serious, unified production. Despite a prologue which states that the play aims at being a devotion to Our Lady by setting forth the sorrows she witnessed, the theology of the play is remarkably unified in its presentation of a single, well-developed doctrinal complex. As Satan discovers to his chagrin C'Jhesu m'a tous jours deceu"^), Jesus appeared in human form as God incognito; and when he submitted to death, he was free to ap pear in force before the gates of hell, to liberate his beloved humans, and to reconfirm them in a perpetual vision of himself in the presence of God despite Satan's efforts to keep them from his own lost bliss. The preliminary sermon, it is true, places its emphasis, very practically, upon the present repentance and service of the audience: ^°"Passion de nostre Seigneur," Mysteres inedits du quinzieme siecle, £d. Achille Jubinal, I, 291 > 1* 3i cf. I, 2 9 6, 11. 1-6, 9~12« 203 Que tel Seigneur fait bon servir Qui sy bien le scet deservir, Qui a le servir veult entendre, II li scet bien bon loier rendre. Or ly prions tous sanz faintize Qu'il nous doint faire tel servize, Par confesse et par penitance, Et par vraie repantence, Par quoy nous puissions trestuit estre La sus en la gloire celestre. x Thereafter, however, the playwright makes it clear that loyal earthly service is invariably rewarded by a reign in heaven in the clarity of God's presence. Indeed, there is a contrapuntal quality in the alter nation of the two themes. At the last supper Jesus adjures his disci ples to obey his new commandments— Du retenir n'aiez pas honte Car qui loyalement lez tenra A bonne fin s'&me venra--^ because it will lead to heavenly rule with him: Establir vous vueil loy mouvelle, Qui sera avenant et belle, Que ceulz qui bien le garderont En mon regne avec moy seront.3 The Bon Larron, making his petition on the cross, recognizes Christ's power and begs to share its triumphant vision: Is est trestout sire des angles Et sy veult ceste mort souffrit Pour tous ceulx d'enfer garantir Qui ly vouront mercy crier. Doulz Diex, je vous vueil deprier Que j'aie de vous celle grace g. Que m'£tme vous voie en la face. Jesus, speaking from the cross to his mother, endeavors to comfort her Q - n 82 oxII, 1 4 3, 1 1. 22-p. 144, 1. 1. II, 174, 1 1. 16-1 8. Qq Q), °3II, 1 7 8, 1 1. 17-2 0. I, 247, 1 1. 7-13. 20* 1 - by referring his own present service to the vision he will thus achieve for his servants: Je muir pour sancte aporter Hez a ceulx qui sont trespasser. Se tu me vois ore lassez En ce tourment qui sy me tranche, Hors en seray dedans dimenche. Lors seront maintes &mes liees Qui sont pie£& du corps parties. Les "bonnes joye demenront, Avecques moy tousjours verront. ^ The angels celebrating his death refer to the new vision thus made possible for humanity: Vous estes tous hors du pdril D'enfer, celle orde vil pueur; Pour ce je vous aport lueur Et lumiere de paradis. Par Adam qui pecha jadis Tous estoient en enfer mene, Mais la mort Jhesu ramene gg Vous a trestous a sauvement. Joseph of Arimathea, performing, as he thinks, his last service for Christ— Beau doulz pere de bon servise Tousjours mais vous vueil servir. Or vueilliez que je deservir Vostre trds-coulee amitie puisse, Par quoy avec vous je me truisse Quant departiray de ce monde— 7 is answered by Nicodemus1 reference to vision: Dieu pere plain de verite, Car me vueilliez donner la grace Que je puisse veoir vostre fgge Quant la mort me fera fenir. ^ The harrowing of hell is prepared by John's reference to the failure 85ll, 2*1-9, 11. 21-29. 87ll, 276, 11. 20-25- 86II, 253, 11. 16-23. 88II, 277, 11- 3-6. 205 of vision endured "by the saints as he attempts to comfort Mary: Vous n'y povez rien conquestor; II veult sauver tous sez amis; Dame, pour ce son corps amis En tel paine et en tel durt£ Pour eulx getter de l'obscurte n D'enfer, qui est tout plain d'ordure. * The contrast gives the greater brilliance to Christ's triumphant invi tation to the liberated saints: Venez a moy beneure Venez a moy; j'ai enduray La mort pour vostre deliverance Mes sains qui avez ma sanblance Yssez hors trestuit de cest estre. Adam, bailie-moy ta main destre; Venez hors de l'obscurite D'enfer ou a tant de durte; Sy serez en ma conpaignie.9° Adam, rejoicing, replies, "Enfer pour moy donner clarte."91 Then Christ conducts the saints to paradise and leaves them there to go about the business of resurrection with the graceful parting speech, Regardez tous se il a cy Beau lieu; je le vous abandonne. Mon pere a chascun de vous donne Un lieu tout pour 1 'amour de moy.^2 The grace and moderation of this speech do not find a peer until Greban succeeds in creating a balanced, highly developed passion which still is guided by restraint. The dangers to which a large passion is subject are fully illustrated in the Passion d'Arras. The loss of control in this work is the more interesting since it cannot be blamed on the unbalanced enthusiasms of several arrangers. 89ll, 2 5 0, 1. 2^ 4-p. 251, 1. 2. 9°h, 2 9 6, 1 1. 16-23. 91II, 297, 1. 5. ^TL, 297, 11- 23-2 6. 206 The Passion d'Arras is one of the few medieval plays that can he attri buted to an individual. Its author is probably Eustache Mercade (d. ca. lMj-0). Since he signs the Vengeance Jesus-Christ, a stylistically similar miracle play included in the same manuscript with the passion, the attribution of the passion to Mercade seems reasonable. Long an official of the Abbey of Corbie, Mercade was also for some time dean of the faculty of ecclesiastical law in Paris; his preparation must therefore have included qualification as a bachelor in theology and doctor of laws at a time when the Confrerie de la Passion was obtain ing its dramatic monopoly in Paris. He was much praised by his contemporaries for his skill as a rhetorician. Presumably his extensive passion helped earn this fame. It was probably composed at the beginning of the fifteenth century and was performed, with or without the Vengeance, well into the sixteenth century. When the difficulties of production are taken into account— the twenty-five thousand lines require four days of playing time and from sixty to a hundred players on each day— this theatrical history represents an enthusiastic acceptance difficult for a modern reader to understand. Even the author seems to feel that he may have overelab orated his material; he feels called upon to defend its length, and he thereby suggests that a cyclical passion of this nature was still un usual for the period. The action is divided into four parts: the birth and child hood of Christ, first day; the public ministry, second day; the pas sion, third day; the resurrection and, exceptionally, the ascension, fourth day. If it were less stiff and verbose, Mercado's work might 207 deserve its medieval fame. He displays originality and theatrical sense in one respect at least— his handling of the trial in heaven. The dehate among the four allegorical daughters of God was current in the literature available to Mercade. Bonaventura had first suggested the treatment in an exegesis of Psalm 8 5: 1 0 .^ 3 A number of French and German playwrights recognized the theatrical appeal of the trial and used it as an individual scene or a short series in simultaneous stag ing. Mercade has gone even farther and made the continuing debate among the conflicting allegorical figures of Mercy and Truth, Right eousness and Peace, Wisdom and Love the framework which connects his individual scenes throughout the entire action of the drama. There are individual features of real interest as well: Christ's boyhood contest with the doctors in the temple is a finished scholastic debate with syllogisms, proofs, and premises; Mary Magda lene's professional wantonness in gaudio is more than usually aban doned, and her repentance is apparently motivated from sheer disap pointment in the general refusal of her charms; Judas betrays Christ in order to maintain the support of his family; Longinus is character ized as a blind veteran, a retired knight, who still retains his sol dierly toughness. In addition, the structure of each day's action is built up with a sure hand. The death of Herod provides a sensational climax to the drawn-out conflict of the first day, and the peaceful return of the 93"Sermo I j _ n festo annuntiationis beatae Virginis," in Opera omnia s. Bemardi, ed. Joannis Mabillon ("Patrologiae, cursus com- pletus, Series latina," T. 1 8 3; Parisiis: Apud J. P. Migne, 185*0, col. 383-90. 208 Holy Family to Galilee marks a serene atmosphere of victory at its close. The inclusion of almost every Gospel incident in the second day gives the performance a sense of movement; it breaks off dramatically with Judas' suicide and the devils' capture of his soul. The author manages at the same time to create an atmosphere of suspenseful expec tation for the events of the third day. The depressing tone estab lished in this third day by lengthy scenes of alternating brutality and sentimentalism are fully and effectively balanced by the extended treatment of the victory scenes on the fourth day. In the light of these advantages, why Mercade should have had to numb the attention and try the endurance of his audience remains an enigma. Ironically enough, it seems to be Mercade's well-meant inten tion of enforcing his doctrinal teaching which most often offends his hearers' patience and thus runs the risk of failing in its purpose. Each day opens and closes with a sermon, and at the conclusion of the cycle the Prescheur expounds the purpose which the drama ought to have given its audience (Mercadd cannot even be quoted briefly): Doresnavant euvres faisons Dont sa grace acquerir puissons, Servons le, nous ferons que sage, Nous n'y recepvrons nul doramage, Mais en grant contemplacion, En la montagne de Syon, Nous arons la felicite De voir sa saincte dditd, Qui est la joye placitive, Et la gloire contemplative Qui Dieu donne a ses bieneures, Lesquelz il a tant hounourds Que d'aurdolles glorieuses Et de couronnes precieuses II a decords haultement En son glorieulx firmament. Si faisons tant par noz. merites 209 Que noz ames soient eslectes Pour parvenir aux haultains biens. Qu’il a ordonnes pour les siens.-^ The scholastic note of vision, which might he expected of a Paris-educated playwright, is maintained throughout the play. The en tire drama opens in heaven, where the hosts of heaven are praising God for their vision of his majesty. Mercy begins to plead that man, too, Qui est en lieu tant inhumain En lieu tenebreux plein d'exil, ^ might share the glorious sight. The argument treads delicately around the idea of propitiation which the legalism of a trial might otherwise suggest. Wisdom adds her pleas,. Affin qu'il ait la vision De ta haulte fruicion.9° The angels remind the Creator that man was made for this vision to fill the vacant "beaux lieux imp^riaux':' left by the fallen angels and that, unless God acts now, His act of creation will have been energy wasted.9T God's decision for the redemption contains no idea of sub stitution or propitiation; He assumes mortality in order to gain en trance into hell. The exposition is brilliantly clear; and the con stant recurrence of the theme, which in a shorter, less expository play would reinforce the unity of his theme, here only detracts by its rep etition and extension of speeches already overlong. Mary comments on the coming redemption during the nativity scenes; so do the Magi; so 9^Le mystere de la passion, texte du manuserit 697 de la Bib- liotheque d'Arras, dd. J.-M. Richard (Arras: La Societe du Pas-de- Calais, 1 8 9 3), 11. 2^921-^0. 95ll. 87-88. 96n. 513-14. 97n. 715-890. 210 ' does John the Baptist, at length; Christ's teaching on the subject is considerably e x p a n d e d .98 At the same time, some subtle and effective variations on the conventional doctrines can be sifted from the verbiage. Christ has a concise and heroic statement of purpose for the disciples in the gar den: Pour vous ay ung grant faith empris Et vous ay monstre grant amour Quant pour vous jetter de douleur Et de tenebres racheter. 9 Then, when Christ's own nerve fails at the prospect, the angel Michael delicately reminds him of the decision: . . . par amour et charite Pour eviter le desconfort Des humains.1 0 0 And Veronica achieves an admirable epitome of the gospel and the pur pose of man as she addresses the cross-burdened Christ. Qui pour nous va mort endurer, Pour nous rendre nostre heritaige, is the understanding she expresses to the Christ. Mercade has imbibed some of the enjoyment which Thomas Aquinas felt and expressed as a part of the perfect knowledge of God. His de light takes on an almost hedonistic note as he discusses paradise. To the penitent thief Mercade's Jesus for once conveys a limitless meaning in a single word added to the Gospel saying: 98u. 3872-7 6, 3966-6 8, 6505-6 6 0 7, 7369-7775, 9212-1^, 110b2- I 4 . 31 99li. 1 1618-2 1. 1001 1. 1166^-6 6. 10111. 15913-16. 211 Au jourduy serez en plaisance Avecques moy en paradis.- ' - ° 2 The playwright also makes effective use of the legend that the thieves' souls were immediately led to their respective destinations "by an angel and a devil. Michael, as he receives the penitent soul, congratulates him, Vientent en consolation, En joie, en plaisir, en liesse, Vientent recevoir la promesse Que mon doulz seigneur t'a promis, Vientent dedans son paradis.1^3 The Saviour's words of comfort to his mother convey the same delight most strikingly as the suspended Christ subdues his pain to say, Et quant resuscite sera Ho joye renouvellera Et. arons totale plaisance. The synthesis finds its "best expression in the liberation of the saints from hell. The angel Michael announces to the guards at hellgate, Tantos en seront hors jetes Et mis en consolation, Ils aront plaine vision 1 f)Pv De la gloire de lassus aront John the Baptist echoes: Li beguins nous vient racheter, Pensons a joie demener, Et benissons de nous tristesse , Pour nous donner joye et largesse. Christ himself leads the saints to paradise, and Mercade briefly rises to the high lyricism the medieval poet could attain: 10211. 16625-26. 10511. 17622-25. 103ll. 17562-6 6. lo6ll. 20938-42. 1( % 1. 16900-902. 212 Venez en paradis terrestre La fait il joyeulx et Lei estre. Mes amis ve cy le jardin Rempli de consolation De joye et consolation, Ce lieu est nomine paradis C'est le fleur de toute leesse Ou vous n'arez jamais tristesse Ne desplaisir.1^7 The concluding point of the play is the synthesis. The final recon ciliation of the allegorical daughters closes the entire drama as God announces to them the completion of His redemption: Et pouez voir l'humain lignage Qu'il a ost'e hors de servage, Avec lui les a amen.es Et d'aureoles couronnes IIz ont de nous la vision En joie et contemplation. The grandeur, balance, and poetic excellence which Mercade could only aim at are attained hy Arnoul Greban, undoubtedly the greatest of the medieval dramatists. Like Mercade, he received a bac calaureate in theology at Paris, but he knew how to make a theological point in a dramatic context, how to demonstrate what Mercade could only repeat. His success is the more impressive in view of the still greater length of his four-day treatmentj yet in his hands the conven tional and hitherto literal passion becomes an elaborate, beautifully constructed life of Christ which seldom flags in either interest or theatrical impact. For the drama historian a further importance attaches to Greban in that he is one of the few playwrights who wrote under conditions 107ll. 210kk-10k% 21213-20. lo8ll. 2kfkl-k6. 213 known to literary historians and thus used easily demonstrable sources. During his student days he lived in the cloister of Notre Dame and sup ported himself by playing the organ and training the cathedral choir boys. Since there is a record of a request from Abbeville in l^t-52 to borrow an acting copy of his passion, Paris performances must have taken place well before this date. Greban received his degree in li)-56. His masterpiece is therefore the more astonishing as a by product of his busy student days. Although he uses Mercade's material extensively, he humanizes it and at the same time creates conflict and tightens the dramatic texture. At times he even reverts to the simpler traditions of earli er plays. His skill in composition and characterization: is entirely his own. To establish the theological foundations of Mercade's trial in heaven, Greban composes a creation prologue. Here he introduces the first of the recurring councils in hell with which he not only balances the disputes in heaven but creates the conflict which Mercade lacked. The cosmic scale and importance thus achieved for his subject justify the extent of his treatment. The prologue closes with Seth's seeking the oil of mercy and the prototypal deaths of Adam and Eve. The way is thus cleared for the remainder of the first day's action: the immedi ate introduction of Adam and the prophets in limbo gives point to the process in heaven. A detailed presentation of the birth, infancy, and childhood of Christ is given still more weight by the concurrent coun cils of devils trying to penetrate the implications of these dimly un derstood events. 2l4 The second day, like that of the Passion d'Arras, is given over to the public life of Christ up to the betrayal, the beginnings of the Sanhedrin trial, and Peter's denial as the suitable symbol of the ulti mate loneliness of Christ's sufferings of the day to come. To Mer cade 's already full treatment Greban adds further incidents of his own — the Oedipus tradition of Judas, the wedding in Cana, the conversa tions with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman at the well. Again good use is made of the repeated councils in hell; here they are played off against the worried councils of the Jews as Jesus' followers increase to the detriment of their own authority. This complex of scenes is nicely contrasted with the alternating demonstrations of Christ's selflessness. The third day concentrates on the trials before Pilate and Herod, the stations of the cross, the crucifixion, the harrowing of hell, and as a final note of hopefulness for the day to come the iron ical setting of the watch over the tomb. In addition to the resurrec tion the fourth day includes repeated appearances to various groups of disciples (all those given any elaboration in the Gospels), Christ's ascension together with Adam and the prophets, the coronation in para dise, and on earth the events of Pentecost, concluding with the final scene of the process in heaven in which Justice declares herself satis fied with the events as fulfilling her stipulations at the trial which began the cycle. Throughout the play Greban's style is immensely impressive for the careful construction and calculated balance which anticipate-the techniques of classicism. Indeed, it is dismayingly easy to concen- 215 trate on the facility of his technique, the beauty and variety of his metres, and the individuality of his characterizations to the disad vantage of his solid theological substratum. Greban's efforts to give dramatic tension to the theological intent of his work are perhaps more conscious than those of any of his predecessors or contemporaries. He illustrates his capacity from the beginning of the creation prologue. He is the only playwright to enlarge upon the accepted ideas of God's desire to receive praise and obedience; here he develops the concept of a creative bountifulness in God mingling with His desire to give and receive love. He embeds the idea in a fine Thomist- Aristotelian explanation: Pour louer nostre majeste et departir nostre bonte non principiee, non faicte, infinye, seule et parfaicte • ••••« esmeu d'un vouloir desireux, volons faire creacion, affin que la relacion de createur a creature soit realement en nature, Et en nous seul selon raison par celle subtille achoison, nous produirons nouvelles choses dont les ydees sont encloses, re lui s an s et e mellement, en nostre seul entendement. ^9 At the same time Greban can make a purely theoretical argument clear to laymen in their own terms; the next moment the Creator sounds like a feudal lord: Mes amis, mes vrays serviteurs, mes champions et conducteurs, ^•°^Le mystere de la passion, publ. d'apres les manuscrits de Paris avec une introduction et un glossalre, par Gaston Paris et G. Raynaud (Paris: F. Vieweg, 1 8 7 8), 11. 2^9“72. 216 de leal vouloir vueillez tendre a nous retribuer et rendre le service que me devez.H° In handling the creation of man, the playwright is again unique in the explicitness with which he emphasizes the nobility of humanity; the majority of the dramatists leave the idea implicit in the willing ness of God to suffer for His creation. Greban introduces the alle gory of man upright as indication of his destiny: Or es tu forme pour le mieulx, homme, la face vers les cieulx, tout droit pour noter et entendre la region ou tu dois tendre: c'est ou ciel seul, vers aultre non.-L- L- L Even when he echoes the convention that the human creation is designed to reinforce the heavenly ranks, Greban gives an extra touch of empha sis to man's nobility in himself by having Lucifer acknowledge it: Ce hault triumphant de lassus a nostre grant honte et diffame a voullu creer homme et fame doues de si haulz privileges, qu'ilz seront pour remplir les sieges dont nostre tourbe est fourbanie.ll^ The most poignant expression comes from Adam himself, transgression completed, as he looks back on his lost magnificence: 0 tres noble nature humaine, pur ruisselet de deite, miroir de pure eternite a l'ymage de Dieu molee, or es tu par moi violee, par moy ta noblesse est pardue. 0 pur effect de cause ardue, Fin or de reppose myniere, ray cler d'etemelle lumiere, fontaine yssant de roche vive, rosete de beaulte nayve procedant de glorieux plains, 11011. 313-17- ■ 11111. 556-60. 11211. 661-66. 217 113 nature humaine, je te plains. And, since man was created for the vision of God, the absence of vision is Eve's chief lament as Greban introduces the dispute in heaven: Icy languissons en grant peine qu'a la vision souveraine . ne poons venir ne attaindre. At the same time he introduces the subordinate themes of enjoyment and peace which will weave through the main theme to the end of the play. Isaiah adds them as he carries the plaint forward: Quand parvendrons nous a la joye qui james ne deffauldera? quand naistra celluy qui sera redempteur de nature humaine? Nostre charge s'allegera, tout paradis s'esjouyra, et tout le monde fera feste si plantureause et magnifeste que Paix y tendra son domaine. Misdricorde, deeply moved by these sighs, recalls to the Creator His original purpose in creation and the nobility of the creatures now languishing in their distant gloom: C’est pitie que 1'homme fut fait en si noble et haulte excellence, quand peche ainsi le deffait et prive de sa prefference. vray est que du commancement ce beau monde totallement voustes creer par vray desir et meu d'un gracieux plaisir de participer vostre bien a aultruy qui de soy n'est rien. 11311. 835-47. 1151 1. 1968-8 9. ^ll. 1801-8 0 2. ll6ll. 2080-83, 2115-2 0. 218 Sapience reinforces the plea with a learned exposition on this crea ture's dignity and function as the image of G-od: Quand ymage de Dieu se nomme, je dis qu'il convient hien a l'omme, car, comme G-enese maintient, l'omme represente et contient 1'ymage de Dieu imprimee, par quoy sera plus suhlimee se 1 'ymage qui tout compasse veult prendre en soy 1 'ymage basse, par ce point 1 'ymage increee joindra celle aui est creee avec soy en beatitude. Michael speaks for the angelic ranks as formally as an advocate: Considerez quel grant prouffit en ensuivra par ce moyen; ce beau regne celestien sera par ce point restably: homme honore et anobly, qui en tel noblesse venu sans fin sera vostre tenu, et du bien qu'il possedera tousjours graces vous rendera. 110 When the father gives his decision in everyone's favor by determining that His Son will take on mortality, the original nobility of human creation is justified in its further ennobling: 0 tres chere nature humaine en ta noblesse primeraine, belle, doulce, clere et seraine entre mes fais, Regarde quel honneur te fais, regarde par qui tes meffais seront reppar^s et reffais au parvenir; Bien eureuse te dois tenir, quand a ton fait entretenir tu aras pour toy soustenir telle potence; Pour toy mettre en magnificence 11T11. 3188-98. ll8ll. 18970-78. 219 n'argue point d 1impacienee: tu as le tresor de clemence tout desconvert. Le don de mercy t'est ouvert., peulx tu mieulx estre reconvert, que mon propre filz soit convert de ta nature?H9 These themes reappear as the waiting souls voice their laments through out the early part of the play.^2^ They each receive subtle allusion 121 in the calling of the disciples. With even more expertness Greban combines in Christ's teaching the beautiful Paix soit toute vostre possesse, paix soit toute vostre richesse with the following discourse on love as the new commandment and culmin ates with the promise of dominion: Et comme mon pere me donne la regne, je vous 1 'abandonee, affin qu'a ma table seez avec moy buvez et mangez en mon hault royaulme de joye. Christ1s words from the cross to his mother may suggest a universal application although they preeminently display the poet's capacity for deeply intimate lyricism: Soiez vostre cueur appaisant, car la mort et son dart pesant james ne me dominera. Vivant suis en perhennite, et en amoureuse unite tousjours avec vous demourray. Greban's facility for deeply-felt, lyrical verse displays it- 1191 1. 3291-3310. 12011. 23198-213. 12111. 109^1-11089. 1221 1. 1 8 2 9 8 - 12311. 291T2-TT- 220 self at every opportunity. It is therefore a measure of his control ling theological intent that he should ignore the opportunity for lux uriant verse and imagery offered hy the harrowing of hell. Instead, he has Christ explain, Ne te lerray quoy que je face, quoy qu'au trosne mon pere soie, que de grace ne te pourvoye pour toy conduire et gouverner et finalement admen'er . en mon royaulme perdurable. And the prophets' speeches of thanks are not only heartfelt hut appro priately scholastic: Or n'est il riens qui nous ennoye puisque nous voyons la presence de la haulte magnificence qui a sa gloire nous avoye. Tout nostre grief dueil est en voye et avons de joye affluence, contemplans la divine essence dont le voir tout hon cueur esjoye. ^ Greban occasionally permits a degree of absurdity in his eagerness for rationalizing the gospel. The Magdalene has become almost terrifying ly intellectual: C'est bien raison done que je face sa haulte volonte benigne, et la vraye essence divine ^ en dois mercier sans cesser. To dramatize the ascension, Greban makes a miniature pageant of the theological point that the rescued souls accompany Christ from the terrestrial paradise to heaven upon his ascension. Adam makes the announcement to the other souls: Enffans, bien devons habonder -^li. 27602-6 0 7. 125n. 26325-3 2. 1261 1. 29533-36. 221 in liesse et joie excellante, car en la joumee pres ante Jhesus, nostre vraye redempteur comme puissant triomphateur en l'arehe du ciel montera et lors il nous transportera avec luy en parfaicte joye en quoy de tout "bien la mon joye nous pourrons contempler sans fin. The souls are all properly impressed. Eve praises her redeemer for the "logis glorieux"; Isaiah rejoices in the presence of God. Jeremiah rhapsodizes, Quel joyeI quel envoisementl quelz chants par joyeux entrechanges menrront huy anges et archanges • ••••• pour nous mener a tel haultesse plaisant, singuliere en noblesse et pour tel Men distribuer; Ezekiel praises the vision of God, ou jamais nul jour n'arons faulte remirans de ta clere face la vision qui nous reface de tant que cueur peut desirer, et desirans toy remirer en parfaicte finicion, n'arons quelque imperfection qui jamais dessus nous s'applique. 1 pn David recalls the original purpose of refilling heaven. The dis ciples remaining on earth are drawn into the atmosphere of celebration. Just before leading this triumphal procession on high, Jesus gives final instructions to the apostles to go into all the world preaching pour la gloire du ciel acquerre qui est mon royaulme infiny.-*-29 Matthew expresses the grateful wonder of all the disciples: 12^1 1. 32784-93- 1281 1. 3278*1-934. 129ll. 33084-85. Si parfaicte la nous doint Dieux qu'au haultain estat ou il regne le voyons en beneure regne qui james ne terminera. 30 Thus Greban supplies his own dramatic summary of his developed .theology. Even here his use of his sources forces him to a synthesis to which his full development of the doctrine of vision would not otherwise have led him. In 1^ 36 Angers produced "moult triumphantement et sumptueuse- ment" a version of Greban's passion revised and enlarged by their local physician, Jean Michel. The extent of his elaboration is indi cated by the fact that his passion takes the full four days to get through the crucifixion, with no attempt at resurrection or Pentecost scenes. Thus three-fourths of the first day's action is new material introduced by Michel; roughly two-thirds of the material for the second and three days is Michel's work; only one-third of the final day's ac tion originates with him, as he is forced to accept the fuller, tradi tionally respected material of the crucifixion. The elaboration is achieved not merely by lengthened speeches, though Michel has little of Greban's formal restraint, but by the ad dition of new scenes to heighten the motivation of his characters and to tighten the interlocking of scenes so essential to the dramatic irony of simultaneous staging. In Greban's original passion Judas merely identifies himself as a king's son who has murdered his father and married his mother. Michel lets the audience see each event. 13°11. 3^08^-87. 223 The scenes showing the worldliness of Mary are paralleled hy the worldliness of Lazarus ("qui sera habilld Lien richement en estat de chevalier, son oyseau sur le poing, et Brunamont mainera ses chiens apres lui.") The events and extended speeches of the last supper are relieved and heightened hy the scenes of Judas' gathering of the watch, a noisy, swaggering hand. These examples of Michel's methods for achieving realistic detail in his additions are indicative of his gen eral preference for realism. He renounces the allegorical element in Greban and deletes all Greban's scenes of the trial in heaven. The dramatic problem thus raised of filling in one of Grehan's primary techniques of conflict is handled hy Michel in three ways. He creates a Jewish background of much greater sophistication than Grehan's; an almost historical emphasis upon social and political fac tors, rare in medieval dramatists, gives pointto the doubts and con flicts of the Jewish hierarchy. Their assessing of the meaning of Jesus' teachings in a turbulent period is made even more difficult hy the number of his supporters among their ranks. Michel still relies on diableries, and his parallel councils in hell are invariably color ful. A final, more artificial device is the inclusion of a number of fight scenes; in addition to the requisite turmoil at the arrest of Christ, there are the capture of the two thieves and a stirring hand- to-hand duel between Judas and his father. Without exception these additions are carefully worked into the Greban material without dis turbing either rhyme or sense. Only occasionally does the new materi al even retard the action of the moment, though the total effect is somehow more ponderous. 224 Michel also displays a capacity for "building up climaxes. The "baptism of Jesus follows a consternation in hell and takes on added dimension from the rejoicing in heaven as saints and angels look to ward the consummation of the redemption thus initiated. The martyrdom of John the Baptist closes the first day as an effective foreshadowing of Christ's own death. The resurrection of Lazarus at the end of the second day is made portentous as well as prefigurative "by the hellish and earthly councils which accompany it. Michel's extended treatment of the trials leaves him without a telling climax for the third day; he can only begin Christ's trials "before the Jewish leaders in an at mosphere of gloomy suspense effective in its own quiet way. At odd variance with the disciplined complexity-of much of Michel's versification is the overdone emotionalism he permits most of his characters to display. His most striking poetic effect is his deft use of the rondeau to tie individual scenes together or to heighten a lyrical scene of climax. At Matthew's dinner the pharisees and publi cans debate in a rondeau which gives a different emphasis to each repetition of the refrain; Peter's repentance after his denial is a rondeau of great emotional force. Too often, however, the force of emotion gets out of hand. Even the extended sermons intended to be didactic take on a revivalistic cast, as when Jesus comes to the per oration of his woes to the pharisees and addresses his audience gener ally: Ploures, pecheurs, ploures, ploures, ploures les pech^s que aves fais, amendes vos vicieux fais par penitence bien fermee de bon propos et affermee de charity foy, esperance, affin d'eviter la sentence.-*-31 Mary Magdalene's penitence following this plea is naturally hysterical. Later she confesses to the seven deadly sins, with tears for each. The laments at the cross are Letter left to the imagination. Admittedly, the Michel passion, at the end of a long line of religious spectacles, is forced to extremes merely to overcome the monotony of tradition. But, like the later German playwrights, Michel ascribes great value to the vicarious emotion of his audience. Thus Veronica receives the kerchief from Christ, ejaculates over the heauty of his image impressed thereon, and admonishes the audience to flee sin, a contempler de Jesus Crist la peine, la resplandeure de beaulte supernelle, soubz forme d'homme, divine et supernelle qui gloire perempnelle nous peult donner en etemel demaine. -*-32 The total impression of constant action and streaming emotion, dramatic though it is, tends to overwhelm the didactic purpose of the play, even though the didacticism is much more pronounced than in Grdban. Indeed, the exaggerated expression of emotion may have been at least partially an attempt to redress the dramatic balance. An extended "Prologue capital" reviews not only the action of the play but the teaching each section is intended to convey. The purpose of creation is here pursued. The familiar theory that man was to replace the fallen angels is amplified by a discussion of the angel- 131jean Michel, Le mystere de la passion (Angers i486), ed. Omer Jodogne (Gembloux, Belgique: Editions J. Duculot, 1959)> 11 • 10787-93. 13211. 26803-807. 226 ic vision and enjoyment. Some indication of the glory of this end is given in the playwright's enthusiastic description: Les autres anges purs et clers, congnoiscans que leur createur estoit digne de tout honneur, tres humblement s'humilxerent devant le trosne et adorerent, au premier instant de leur estre, Dieu, tout puissant seigneur et maistre, remply d'infinie honte. Et lors, leur franche voluntd, a Dieu dignement conformee, leur fut en grace confermee et demourerent hieneureux lassus au regne glorieux, sans jamais vouloir Dieu hayr n'a son vouloir desoheyr et sans jamais choir en peche. Et ont leur desir tant fiche a fruyr du hien souverain que chascun a son desir piein d'etemelle felicite; Et ont leur intellection si ravie en dilection qu'ilz ayment Dieu si ardamment qu'il n'est humain entendement viateur qui le sceust comprendre.133 Hundreds of lines later Michel comes to the point that man was created for the same contemplative activity as he reinforces the heavenly hosts: Et pourront en joye perempnelle les saulv^s veoir Dieu face a face, remplis de lumiere et de grace selon qu'ilz le pourront congnoistre, conserves en pardurable estre, sans croistre et sans diminuer, sans veillir et sans immuer, fruysans en leur congnoiS9ance de la haulte et divine essence autant qu'ilz le pourront entendre et qu'en Dieu se pourra estendre 133ll. ii - 3 0 - 4 9 , 1*61-65. 227 la capacite de chaseun.13^ Once the audience has had time to forget the sermon., however, the idea is given very little further attention. The angel Michael celebrates Christ's withstanding the temptation of the devil "by rejoicing over "les sieges en gloire haultaine" which are about to be refilled .-*-35 Jesus himself, pronouncing the Beatitudes, comments on the pure in heart, who shall not only see God but Ilz verront Dieu sur toute chose et fruyront de son e s s e n c e .135 The penitent thief enriches the idea in his joy upon first viewing paradise, the foretaste of his final bliss: L'ame du bon larron 0 saincte vision benoiste, o lumiere celestielle, je voys en la gloire etemelle ou l'ange de Dieu m'amonneste. Gabriel Ceste ame vouldray transporter ou lieu de gloire enlumine ou le doulx Jesus a mene ses amys pour les reconforter. ^' Apart from these speeches, the references to man's end and Christ's aim in redeeming him are carried over from Greban (the calling of the disciples, the angelic comfort in the garden, the penitent thief, the fifth word from the cross). In the absence of the process in heaven, where Greban expounded them fully, these allusions lose their repetl-/.' tive, thematic value. And at least once Michel's eclectic attitude toward his sources leads him to an interpretation at variance with the ^ll. 862-73. n. 8991-92. 135n. 3218-23. 13Tii. 28902-909. 228 theme inherited from Greban. The crucifixion at an end, God announces His satisfaction: Done ques, par divine clemence, au pecheur faisant penitence, donne pleine remission au moyen de la passion de Jesus plein d'obedience. Et, pour la sienne reverence, en grande consolacion, pour sa remuneracion, lieu de paix aux hommes j'asigne. 3 This legalistic detail of reward for obedience hardly fits with the adoption of Grehan's doctrine that Jesus' incarnation deceived the devil ("je le congnoys bien maintenant, . . . haro, dyables, il m'a deceu"-^-39) and brought him in triumph to liberate his own; nor does Michel introduce it anywhere else as a kind of counterpoint. It must be concluded that Michel's tightening of the dramatic structure of his passion, successful though it is, discloses him as primarily a man of the theatre rather than of the church. His doctrinal message suffers accordingly. Beginning with the Passion du Palatinus, the French passion plays have shown a steady development. If the notion of enlarging an Easter, play into a passion had its rise in Burgundy, the playwrights of Paris were quick to pick up the device and elaborate it. In two centuries the 1996-line skeleton of the Passion du Palatinus became the 30,000-line giant of the Michel passion. Technical skill increased and thematic elaboration occurred simultaneously. Theological empha sis depended to some extent on the individuality of the playwright, 138n. 28613-21. 139u. 28^06-408. even when he was working with inherited materials. Development could he due to the use of individual themes appealing to a specific play wright or to the almost accidental synthesis of doctrines, partly resulting from the theological training of the later authors, partly expressive of the growing desire for completeness. Thus the notes of ransom, triumph, and presence with God in the Palatinus passion are repeated, with a new attention to the notion of enjoyment, in the Pas sion d'Autun and find their synthesis in the Burgundian family with the combination of knowledge, vision, and enjoyment and the new empha sis on the nobility of man in the Passion de Semur. In the Paris fam ily the concept of redemption as a heavenly trickery in the Ste. Gene vieve passion is repeated only by Michel; the predominant ideas of ser vice and union, too, are somewhat solitary manifestations of an indi vidualistic composer. With Mercade the attempts at extended thematic synthesis begin; his emphasis nevertheless remains on the ideas of triumphant liberation of the saints to the vision of God. The syn thesis finds its most graceful and penetrating expression in Greban; as a result of his dependence on his predecessor the synthesis contin ues in Michel. Increasingly also the playwright emphasizes the value to his audience of experiencing the sufferings of the actors and so uniting with Christ; to this end the expressions often become exag geratedly sentimental. In their more limited way the German plays of the following chapter show a similar movement. CHAPTER NIKE PASSIONS IN GERMANY To return from the superb thematic essays which constitute the late French drama to the German passions of the thirteenth and four teenth centuries starkly contrasts the divergent methods of the two traditions. The German passions, even at their most extensive, never exceeded nine thousand lines. When their playwrights did attempt the scope of the French passions, they handled their materials much more simply and directly than the French dramatists. Only exceptionally did they achieve the intertwining of motivation and incident that characterized the developed passions of France, and their poetic re sources were never comparable. This lack of development may not have been due entirely to inexpertness on the part of the German play wrights; the German passion performances seem to have been closely related to the celebrations of Holy Week, a framework which in itself limited possibilities of elaboration. Despite this dramatic simplici ty— or perhaps because of it— theological elements are often more easily discernible. In the passions, as in the other forms of the religious drama, Germany is of particular interest for the transitional forms still ex tant. By the beginning of the fourteenth century the Benediktbeuern players had replaced or supplemented their undeveloped Latin passion with a version which, by courtesy, may be called bilingual. Mary Mag- 230 231 dalene in gaudio uses the vernacular and inserts vernacular phrases in her speeches of repentance; John and the mother of Jesus also lament in the vernacular. In short, at the two scenes in which he inserts original material the playwright makes certain he is understood. Otherwise the action of the play is carried forward in Latin with lit tle deviation from the "biblical narrative. In so "brief a play (321 lines) the coverage of incident is astonishing: a "blind man is healed in a single interchange of dialogue; accompanied hy chanting children, Jesus triumphantly enters Jerusalem; Mary Magdalene in gaudio pur chases cosmetics and entices a lover; she repents as the result of an angelic vision and anoints Christ at supper; Jesus replies to Judas and Simon with the parable of the two debtors; Lazarus is resurrected; Judas sells his lord; Peter denies him during the capture, immediately after the garden scene; the trial and crucifixion include the Longinus incident. The very conciseness of the scenes limits interpretative com ment. The Magdalene's brief prayer at the feet of Christ— Ich chume niht uon den fuezzen dein, du erloesest mich uon den sunden mein, unde uon der grozzen missetat, da mich deu werlt zuo hat braht. — prefigures aptly the prayer of the world which Jesus answers by his crucifixion. Curiously enough, the closing interpretative sermonettes are spoken by both Joseph of Arimathea and Pilate. Joseph’s interpre tation hints at a substitution theory: lnLudus de passione," The Drama of the Medieval Church, ed. Karl Young, 11. 125-28. Jesus von gotlicher art, ein mensch an alle sunde, der an schuld gemartert wart, ob man den vurbaz funde. 2 What thrust the play has seems to "be directed toward the ruinous char acter of human sin and the costliness of God's reply. What made the reply worthwhile for God fails to draw the playwright's speculation. This diminutive passion was enough, despite its briefness, to encourage German playwrights to more extended efforts. Modeled in some degree on the Benediktbeuern play, the Vienna Passionsspiel, of which only a fragment remains, demonstrates how little impetus was needed for this sort of creation. If the extant fragment is any indi cation, the Vienna play, early though it was (probably the first third of the fourteenth century), may well have been the most original of the German dramas. It is the only play that includes a prologue in heaven. Since the playwright's interest lies in the double fall of Lucifer and of man, the actual work of creation is left untouched. The prologue be gins with Lucifer's boasting and fall. In his ruin and envy— wie uns werde der man, der -uns erbe sol besitzen— 3 he determines upon vengeance, and the temptation of Eve and Adam im mediately follows. The purposeful telescoping of the author's materi als is shown in the first parents' immediate transportation to hell upon their eviction from paradise. At once they are joined— not with- 211. 306-309. 3 "Das Wiener Passionsspiel," Das Drama des Mittelalters, her- ausg. Richard Proning, 11. 57“5^. 233 out the "broad satire usual in the German Easter plays— "by representa tive sinners. A chanted interlude introduces the second part, which opens with Mary Magdalene in gaudio as a representative sinner still on earth. Her repentance is again brought about by angelic intervention. Her anointing of Christ at Simon's supper is the Saviour's first, powerful appearance in the play as the restorer of union between God and fallen man. Once the suggestion has been made, the play moves directly, after another chant, to the last supper (where the manuscript breaks off) and, presumably, to the passion as the culminating act of restoration. The author's demonstrated purposefulness and originality make the loss of the rest of the play more than usually distressing; one can only guess at what effects and teaching he achieved apart from his inherited tradition. The passion fragment as it now stands is 533 lines long; the complete play must therefore have been a fairly Qxtended piece, made even longer by the operatic nature of its chanted bridges and back grounds. By contrast the 13^0-line St. Gall Passionsspiel of this period creates by its brevity a deceptive impression of simplicity. Following the prologue, spoken by Augustine, there are scenes of Christ's preparation: the wedding at Cana, the preaching of John the Baptist and the baptism of Christ, the temptation, and the calling of Peter and Andrew. Interspersed are scenes of Mary Magdalene as an un repent ing young fribble lectured by Martha. Why she ultimately re pents (without angelic assistance) is not explained; the woman taken in adultery is the opening scene of the passion proper, with Mary no 23k where around; yet it is Mary who anoints Jesus at Simon's supper in the next scene. The healing of the man blind from birth and the raising of Lazarus are the only other scenes included before the last supper; thereafter the capture, trial, and crucifixion follow in the conven tional way. The resurrection scenes immediately following the harrow ing of hell are very brief. Including only the three Maries and the scene in the garden with Mary Magdalene, they seem to have been insert-- ed only to give the audience time to recover from the foregoing climax. It should be noted that this play also retains something of the oper atic cast of the liturgical drama; the actors are required to chant in numerable hymns between their spoken lines, a circumstance which would considerably increase the performance-time beyond the brief reading length of the play. Mone suggests that the very order of the scenes carries for ward the theological thrust in the mind of the playwright. The selec tion of scenes from Jesus' public life, unprecedented in the German drama, is controlled by a theological purpose beyond that of the au thor's Johannine source. The marriage at Cana (out of its correct or der, at the beginning) is an allegory of the initial union between God and man before man's sin, typified by Mary Magdalene, destroys the union. The scene with the adulteress then becomes a reassuring hint of the reconciliation possible for the Magdalene and justifies with both dramatic and theological unity the comparatively large share the Magdalene has in the crucifixion and resurrection scenes. This inter pretation gains in credibility by the very different construction of 235 the play's thirteenth-century predecessors. Additional weight for the interpretation can he found in the lines of the play itself. Martha makes a very personal application of Christ's "I am the resurrection and the life" as she responds, Ich geleuben, dass du hist godes sun und heilger Crist, der in dise werlet ist kommen . mir und -uns alien ze grozen frommen. Again, Augustine, to whom the playwright assigns the transitional speeches, introducing the last supper, outlines for his audience the doctrine of transubstantiation and their duty to participate thus in union with Christ and his s a c r i f i c e . ^ Christ himself, in his speech to the penitent thief, allots more emphasis to the notion of union than his hihlical source does: Du salt hi mir vor warheit noch hude und uramer ane leit in dem paradyse sin , hi mir und dem vatter min. The same emphasis appears in Christ1s expansion of Psalm 2b as he van quishes hell: Ir hellen vursten dunt of die dur, und gehent mir mine knethe hervorJ • • • • • • Wol uf, ir sollent and swere vorhaz lehen ummermere hi mir und hi dem vatter min, do sollent ir hit vreuden fin.f Thus the playwright has imposed the unity of a theme on a variety of passages from the life of Christ. He seems to have aimed not only at ^"St. Galler Passionsspiel," Schauspiele aus dem Mittelalter, herausg. F. J. Mone, 11. 502-505* 51 1. 591-609. 61 1. 1126-29. Tll* 1256-57, 1 2 7 9-8 2. 236 the theological notion of union hut to have emphasized the vicarious experience of the audience in worship and in play attendance as a means toward experiencing union with Christ in this life and earning it for the life to come. The convenience of this doctrinal bargain evidently made a strong impression on the composer of the Augsburg passion; he exploits the notion even more thoroughly. The Augsburg Passionsspiel, a moderately extended play of 260k lines, begins in medias res with Achilleus, a Jew despite the associa tions of his name, marveling at the raising of Lazarus and deciding it must be reported to the Sanhedrin, already upset by having their money- changing tables overthrown. Jesus is introduced in the supper at Simon's, and the two scenes go on simultaneously. This rather novel and adept opening moves into the conventional scenes of the last sup per, betrayal, and trials, with simultaneous staging once more making effective the scene of Peter's denial during the trial scenes and the tidings brought to Mary. The stations of the cross include a scene with Veronica; the crucifixion, descent from the cross, and setting of the watch follow each other concisely, with the resurrection culminat ing the body of the play. A sort of after scene depicts the harrowing of hell; in this instance the devils are all unsuspecting and mock the expectant patriarchs for their hopes. Once more the Proclamator in conclusion insists that the recollection of Christ's pains thus dramat ically presented of itself brings grace to salvation. Throughout, the Proclamator has inserted brief devotional messages between the scenes, rather as Bach's passions use his meditative arias and chorales be tween the recitatives and action choruses. 237 ■Whether the author intended it or not, his straining for effects to increase the audience's vicarious union with Christ in histoiy is carried out at the expense of a unity of doctrine. In those passages where the St. Gall playwright managed a consistent emphasis, the Augs burg author dissipates his efforts in generalities. Thus, while the passing of the cup at the last supper entails a fairly lengthy speech hy Christ, his subject is a general interpretation of his death as the means to eternal life without explaining either: Meinen leib will ich euch geben, das ir ewigclich mugen leben, Dar zu mein rosenfarbes blut; das sol stercken ewem mut Hie und ymmer ewigclich das solt ir glauben sicherlich. und lasst euch das ain dachtemus sein, Das ich in tod fur euch werd geben, damit ich euch bring ewigs lebenJ Das trinckend all und denckend mein, das ir ewig bey mir mugt seini° His attempts at preparing the disciples for his death are no more spe cific, a slight expansion of John 16:16-2^: Ain clain zeit secht ir mich nicht; daraach gar kurtzlich wider gschicht, Das ir mich secht vor euch leben. untotlich wirt mir gegeben Und alsdann on leyden wesen, so ich vom tod bin genesen, Und denn zu dem vatter kommen; Q das wiit euch bringen grossen frummen. The Magdalene becomes after her repentance a particular confidante of 8 "Augsburger Passionsspiel," Das Oberammergauer Passionsspiel in seiner altesten Gestalt (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel, l88o), 11. 3S1-86', 3BB-90, 393-9^.--- 9n. 55-62. 238 Jesus, sufficiently so to feel emboldened to plead with him to forego the cross which they both foresee. Jesus explains gently, but just as generally, Das ich am creitz sey gestorben, mit meinem tod hab ich erworben Dem mentschen frid und saligkait.^ The angel who comes to comfort Christ in his garden agony points out the necessity of freeing the saints in hell as well as securing eter nal life for the saints on earth.Christ himself merely informs the 1 Q liberated captives, "Selig sollend ir ewig sein. None of the other plays from the fourteenth century remains, though numerous productions are recorded. The next extant play, the Donaueschingen Passionsspiel, belongs to the second half of the fif teenth century. Its ^106 lines place it among the longer German plays even though It represents a concise, bare treatment in comparison with its extended French and English contemporaries. In the general plan of its scenes it closely resembles its German predecessors. Mary Magdalene in gaudio introduces the action as she disports herself (at chess) with the gentlemen of Pilate's court. It is Simon's refusal of her invitations and his return invitation to a supper to meet the Saviour that prompt her first movements toward repentance. Her thoughtfulness is nicely handled by the stage directions, which call for her to push the game from her suddenly and to remain deep in thought in her own "mansion" throughout the succeeding scenes. Final ly she announces her decision and purchases the ointment. The supper 1011. 1^9-51. 1:L11. 577-78. 12l. 2i j - 29. 239 with Simon is wrenched out of its place to give the important first scene to the Magdalene's repentance. In view of this introduction, the following scenes of the temptation of Christ and the "beginnings of his public life seem distinctly out of place. The composer has devoted an unusual amount of his playing time to Christ's public ministry. Thus the play includes a number of heal ings, Christ's scathing denunciation of the Jews as hypocrites, the scene from John 4 with the woman at the well, the raising of the widow's son of Nain, and finally the scenes already familiar: the healing of the man bom blind, the woman taken in adultery, the chas ing of the traders from the temple, the raising of Lazarus, all inter spersed with a considerable amount of contentious dialogue with the Jews. Mary finally appears with her ointment; the entry into Jerusalem takes place; and the council of the Jews receives Judas' offer of be trayal to close the action of the first part of the two-day drama. Once again the playwright's choice and arrangement of scenes seem to disclose a theological as well as a dramatic intent. He ap pears to have followed the thought of the St. Gall Passionsspiel in opening with the scene of Mary Magdalene in gaudio as an allegory of the alienation of humanity. By this interpretation the following scene of Christ's temptation reflects the theology of Abelard in his suggestion that the obedience of Christ as the second Adam overcomes the disobedience of the first. The following selection of scenes then becomes understandable as foreshadowings of the new union between man and God which the crucifixion will establish as the final act of obedi ence. Above all, the meal at Bethany with Mary and Martha and Lazarus 2^0 "becomes a symbol of the communion of the resurrected with God. The second day "begins with the last supper and the Gebhsemane scene; again stage directions are full: Christ is to fall on the ground cruciform and remain so the length of a paternoster, then get to his knees and begin his speech. Thereafter the composer's originality seems to give out: betrayal, trials, stations of the cross, and cruci fixion follow each other in routine fashion. The single original ex ception is the characterization of Barabbas, who, following his release in Christ's place, becomes a gleeful helper, passing around a wine- flask and providing heavy-handed humor. The descent from the cross renews the writer's inspiration. Mary swoons and laments again and again, interspersing a dispute between the allegorical figures of Christiana and Judea; in the first round the dialogue closes with a chilling address to the spectators to take everlasting vengeance on the Jews; the second round ends in a bodily combat that defeats Judea, of course. Another hearty drinking scene accompanies the setting of the watch, and the resurrection is handled with some ceremony, cordons of angels crowning and robing Christ and accompanying him in proces sional to hell's gate. The harrowing of hell has a much greater ex tension than would appear from a casual comparison of its length with those of other plays. The harrowing of hell scenes most often achieve their development by the elaboration of diableries as the forces of hell .worry about and prepare for invasion. This sort of activity is notably absent from the Donaueschingen play. The emphasis is upon the reunion of Christ with the saints in limbo, and there are speeches from nearly the entire Old Testament calendar. The binding of Lucifer 2kl is a unique feature of the scene. The final scenes before the manu script breaks off, the appearance to Mary, the consternation of the •watch, and the "Quern quaeritis" with the three Maries, are all handled perfunctorily as if, after lavishing himself on his climax, the play wright found himself running short of time and enthusiasm. There are enough similarities with the Ste. Genevieve passion to suggest an influence— in both plays Malchus, the servant who loses an ear to Peter's sword, becomes one of Christ's bitterest enemies after his healing; Christ is bound by a Jew named Mosse; the comedy of the watch-setting scenes is similar even though both plays strictly avoid the comic opportunities of the Maries and the merchant. Never theless, in its dramatic verve, fertility of invention, and carefully didactic selection of scenes,-the Donaueschingen play bears the mark of an original and perhaps great mind. His theology, too, is marked by original touches. The Abel- ardian approach to Christ's obedience leads him to suggest that the obedience of the redeemed saints constitutes their likeness to Christ and their eternal purpose in existence. The Proclamator, introducing the entire work, leaves his audience in no doubt as to its message: Gott uns alien geben hat die zehn gebot dar nach zeleben, den sinen ouch ewig frod zegeben, die sinen willen hie uff erden tun. Jhesus Crist Marie sun, die uns armen sunder zegiit geschechen sind vom hochsten gut dar umb das er uns selig macht.-*-3 ■ ^ " D o n a u e s c h i n g e r Passionsspiel," Schauspiele des Mittelalters, herausg. F. J. Mone, 11. 3^-^-5* 2k2 Christ enforces the same idea in the footwashing scene, an unusual selection on the part of a playwright: Wann ich iich han exempel geben, wie ich han getan in minem leben, das ir ouch tugent des gelich, , so mogen ir hesitzen das himelrich. He has already attached a rider regarding obedience to his forgiveness of Mary Magdalene: Stand uff, dir sind vil sund vergeben, gang hin und fur ein seligs leben, din gloub hat dich hie selig gemacht. gang, hab diner schwoster acht, bis by ir und halt dich schon, so wirstu besitzen des himels tron. ^ Above all, Christ so interprets his own mission;: Wann ich gan zu dem vater min, dem sol ich statz gehorsam sin, , dar umb sond ir in froden leben. The one exception to this thematic unity is the failure of the liber ated saints to recognize the theme of obedience. Instead, Adam thanks his saviour for the renewal of his soul's health: Des danck ich her von hertzen dir, das du bist gewessen so gnadig mir und mich erlosest dise sturid, des wirt min arme sel gesunt.-'-f This exception may represent a failure of the playwright to assimilate a model (although no such interpretation appears in the other extant plays), or it may be just one more indication of an originality which refuses to be trammelled even by a theme of his own development. The Sterzing Passionsspiel of the late fifteenth century is ^ll. 1813-16. l6ll. 1973-75. 1511. 337-^2. 1T11. 3899-902. 243 representative of a group of plays developed and produced almost inter changeably throughout the century in various towns of the Tyrol; Ster- zing, Bozen, Halle, and Brixen all have records of production and manuscript copying of each other's plays.^ (Vigil Raher, one of the producers working with this group, even directed performances in Trent and Cavalese. The Sterzing play is an extended one of 4334 lines designed to occupy three days. The action.of the first day Begins with the council of the Jews and ends with the trial Before the Jews, most of the time in Be tween Being taken By Christ's discourse at the last supper. The sec ond day takes the action through the descent from the cross with, for a German play, an unusually small number of drawn-out torture scenes and Boisterous rudeness around the mockery of Christ. Another unusual feature is the inclusion of an episode on the imprisonment of Joseph of Arimathea. The main subject matter of the third day is the harrow ing of hell, with extensive welcomes from the waiting patriarchs; the first part closes with the three Maries (without Mary Magdalene's solo scene) and the coursing of Peter and John. The serious scenes are followed By a farcical Teufelsspiel on the familiar theme' of refilling hell with dishonest tradesmen. The concentration of the playwright's treatment is apparent from the start. As in the Augsburg passion, the plot omits all the 1 Q xoJ. E. Wackernell, Altdeutsche Passionsspiele aus Tirol ("Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte, Litteratur, und Sprache Oesterreichs," Bd. I; Graz: K. K. Universitats-Buchdruckerei, l897).> pp. ii-xv. 19 Ibid., p. ix. 2kk scenes of Christ's public life. The additional space thus available for the council of the Jews is utilized to great effect; the author heightens the inherent conflict of the scene by introducing three council members who support Christ. The scenes of plotting and legal istic debate contrast sharply with the moving lyricism of Christ's speeches at the last supper as he foresees and laments the bitterness of his death and institutes for his people the new law of love. The garden scene continues the contrast through simultaneous staging with Judas' collecting and arming of the watch. During the second day's performance simultaneous staging again plays off Christ's calm and dignity before Pilate against Judas' hysteria of repentance. The day ends on a saddened note of defeat. Since the performances seem to have been planned for the appropriate days of Holy Week, the mood of sadness would be entirely correct for Good Friday. The third day assists the overall unity of the passion by again starting with the council of the Jews as they debate the advis ability of setting a watch. The character of Pilate as a hardheaded administrator is heightened as he explodes the Jews' illogical argu ments. They express skepticism, he remarks, which they undermine by their pleas for a guard. The victory of the resurrection is carried out and emphasized with solemn, colorful pageantry. Angels confer a crown on Christ and present him with banners of victory. The harrowing of hell shows a thoroughgoing dependence on the Gospel of Nicodemus not hitherto displayed in the German passions. The devils in their debates represent a considerable expansion of the single dialogue be 2b5 tween Satan and Hades in the source. They thus create a striking par allel with the council of uncertain Jews. After freeing the saints, Christ carries on his victory.hy pro ceeding to earth, where he first frees the imprisoned Joseph of Arima- thea. Again in the Easter scenes the text appears to have heen taken from a liturgical play as if the tradition is hy now classic. The laments of the women are unusually hrief. The spice merchant is an optional scene. One hy one the enemies are confounded: the cowardly soldiers on watch fall to recriminations and swordplay; the Jews un successfully seek Joseph of Arimathea; the final "bribery is slyly used hy the author as the culminating defeat. The confident plotting of all Christ's enemies has ended in defeat. The concluding Teufels- comodie is hy now standard; the author uses local references and a set of errant tradesmen different from those of other plays, hut his method is similar. The building up of the play from a series of locally shared productions has given it an unusually strong eclecticism in its sub- themes and passing references. The result is an unconscious synthesis. The note of presence and union with Christ recurs with some frequency. In this connection the use of lengthy passages from John 1^ and 17 is significant; the vine simile and John 1 6, equally significantly, do not occur. The long speech of Christ at the last supper is most carefully staged. It is broken up hy scenes of Judas with the Jews; thus the audience is given relief from a steady, sermonic stream of words and kept alert to the sense of the passages. The footwashing scene in volves an expansion of Christ's reply to the reluctant Peter: 2b6 Pettre, wasch ich dir die fuesse nicht, So sag ich dir, wie dyr geschicht: Es ist dein grosses unhayl; Wan dw wirst hahen kainen tayl Mit mir an meines vatters reich: Das soltu wissen sicherleich. ^ The centurion at the crucifixion has an unusual speech; his convention al confession of faith "becomes a well-informed prayer: Von gantzem hertzen des pit ich dich, Das dw auch parmung habst uber mich, So wiird ich, herre got, an alien wan Das ewige lehen mit dir hanl2^ The Precursor's otherwise conventional prayer at the beginning of the 22 third day also includes this theme. And again the Precursor exhorts the audience to experience the drama as an earthly, prefiguring union with Christ: Das sull wir hewt mit schmerzen Begraben in unsere hertzen Und sullen der magt rainen Ir leyd helffen pebainen Und jammer mit ir tragen, Das uns wirdt abgetzwagen Unser siindt und mis set at, Das wir kummen an die stat Der statten frewdt und salikait, Dye uns von got ist beraydt In seinem fronnen himelreych. The note of peace appears in Christ's speech of liberation to the saints in limbo: Get dan mit mier alle, die Meinen willen tetten ye. Ich wil ewch nach disem jamer geben Ein freydenreiches leben In meines himelischen vaters reiche; 20"Sterzinger Passionsspiel," Altdeutsche Passionsspiele aus Tirol, herausg. J. E. Wackernell, 11. 366-71• n-i 11. 2^68-71. 2211. 2390-91. 23ll. 1275-85. 2^7 pj± Dar in erfrewt ewch ewikleich. It appears as part of Christ's earthly victory and promise. Christ's speech to Mary Magdalene contains a universal reference: Und wer leht nach dem willen mein, Der sol mit mier in freyden sein.25 Once there is a reference to the idea of vision, a theme thus far almost non-existent in the German plays. Christ promises the pen itent thief not merely the company hut the vision of God: Dw wirst noch hewt sein mit mir In dem wunikle ichen paradeis c Und sechen den vater, sun und heyligen geist. The overall feeling, however, is that of triumph. The careful arrangement of the action is bulwarked hy constant references to the coming victory of the Saviour. The suffering Christ is in reality a mighty ruler in warfare with his enemies. Even in trial and defeat he maintains a kingly dignity and silence, confident in his coming dis play of naked power. Erlosen is a recurrent verh in military as well as in theological contexts. It appears in the angel's prophecy to Seth, as an expansion of Christ's "Sitio" from the cross, in Nicodemus' recollection of his Interview with Christ, in the devils' premonitions, in Christ's instructions to Michael for the care of his liberated 27 saints, and in his appearance to Joseph of Arimathea. 1 Even the women at the tomb add the theme to their conventional Latin lament: Ipse erat nostra redemptioi 2S.l. 339^99- 25H. 3556-57. 26H. 20^5-49. 2T1 1. 79^-9 8; cf. 1 1. lH-lA, 329^-97, 2*1-12-15, 2597-623, 3227-29, 3232-33. 2k8 Ich mag wol klagen von sendem hertzen Meines lieben herren schmertzen Und seinem piterlichen tod, Der uns hat erlost von der helle not. Er ist gewesen unser trost, Der uns von der helle hat erlost. A hrief interpretation "by an angel to the risen Christ praises him for his obedience and founds his monarchy on it: Es ist wolpracht der propheten geschrift; Dw has vertreiben der sunder gifft Und hast aus deiner parmherczikayt Gebalt erworben der menschayt Gotes erbelter sun ze werden, Dy da recht thuen hie auf erden.29 Altogether, the play powerfully achieves in both speech and action the aim stated by the Precursor in his epilogue to the first day, as he reviews: Was Jhesus um -uns hat erlitten Und von dem ewigen todt erstritten, Und hat uns pracht zw dem ewigen leben.3® The Halle passion, copied by Vigil Raber for his own private library of plays, was prepared for a seven-day production in 151* 1 - • It utilizes the Sterzing passion and another source which has not been identified. The additions to the Sterzing play total over two thou sand lines. They include a preliminary consternation in hell: Lucifer, undecided whether Christ is really the God-Man, determines upon tempt ing Judas to a betrayal and stirring up the enmity of the Jews. The council of Jews which follows is given still greater conflict by the addition of two more members. A nice sense of irony is displayed in their laments over the dear, dead days of detailed, strictly enforced 28ll. 3^60-67. 29n. 3152-57. 3°ii. 1187-89. 2i^9 law which Christ's individualism has made a past era. The playwright has thus set out "both his earthly and heavenly forces at the beginning of the action. The scenes of Judas' temptation are given a vivid foil in added, original scenes for the mother of Jesus. She is aware of the forces beginning to move against her son and faces him with her fore bodings. When he confirms them, she can only express sorrowing resig nation. Even greater irony is achieved by bringing the faithful mother together with Judas in a scene in which he seeks to give her false re assurance. The scene between Jesus and his mother is also immensely useful to the playwright as a review of the theology of redemption. In answer to her anxious questions Jesus foretells his suffer ings and death and promises upon his resurrection to come to her first: Dan die zeit ist ieczund kumen (Als du aus dem prophetn hast vemumen), Das ich soil leiden tod und pein Und alles menschlich geschlecht erlosn sein, Dann es muess ye erfullet werden, Darumb ich kumen pin auf erden. • • • • • • Am dritten tag (so soltu wissn) So wirdt ich habm die hell zurissen Und uber wunden all mein marter und leiden, Auch dich erlosn aus klagn und bainen; Dan ich will dir am erstn erscheinen.31 Horrified, Mary begs him to reconsider, or at least to permit her to die in his place. But this, Christ explains, would create enormously difficult theological problems, undoing prophecy and putting her sin less into limbo. Raber's originality reappears, after a routine last supper, ^"Haller Passionsspiel," Altdeutsche Passionsspiele aus Tirol, herausg. J. E. Wackernell, 11. 306-312, 327-32. 250 in the arrest. He includes the Johannine incident of the soldiers falling to the ground as Christ identifies himself; this together with the customary incident of the ear allows the playwright to dis play once more his nice sense of irony. The soldiers return, and re port their success to Annas in epic terms. The crucifixion is some what novel in the appearance of the devil to Pilate's wife; it is a vain attempt on his part to avert the crucifixion, which now seems to him ill-advised. The introduction of the Veronica incident also repre sents an innovation in the German drama. Rater's next addition appears in the tone of John's speeches as he attempts to comfort the sorrowing Mary. Full of faith, he reminds her that Christ promised to rise from the dead and that he has now accomplished his deepest purpose: The harrowing of hell and the resurrection take place as in the Sterz ing passion. The tomb guards then tell their story; and Lucifer in hell laments his mismanagement, with the usual satiric consolations from his assembled devils. ready overwhelming theme of liberation; yet he does not omit any of the more varied ideas from the Sterzing play. He has one more original note in his treatment of man's end: Lucifer's attitude in this play is a little different from those of other dramatic devils; there is a Dein liebes kind hat uns erlest All von des teufls panden Und von weltlicher schann Mit seinem heyligen tod. The few theological additions made by Raber heighten the al- 3211. 1176-78. 251 reluctant admission that man has a right to usurp his own lost place: Ir merckht auch woll das gross verlangen, Das da fuem unsere gfangen, Die do sind in der vorhell weyfc, Und freyen sich der selbn zeit, Das sy uns werden genumen Und in ir recht vater land kumen.3 3 Raher divided the total action of the play over the days of Holy Week. To complete the sequence, he prepared a Vorspiel. With the themes of the Halle passion already clearly set out, he was able to work up a consistent treatment of Christ's public life. He builds nicely on the parallel uncertainty of the devils and the Jews. Satan is sent to tempt Jesus to determine whether he is the prophesied re deemer. After a succession of healings the Jews also are undecided about the treatment to accord this new prophet. Testing him with the adulterous woman leaves them still uncertain about his endorsement of the law of Moses, but after his sermon on the bread of life they scent heresy and attempt to stone him. The resurrection of Lazarus brings about the conversion of some of the Jewish spectators, and the council determines upon action. The determination is confirmed by Christ's triumphal entry and eviction of the merchants from the temple. The final scenes record the Jews' unsuccessful attempts to discredit Christ publicly in scholastic debate and their resulting decision to take him secretly. On this note of suspense the play ends. Apart from the logical development of these scenes and the perfect realism of the merchants holding weekly market in the temple, the play is stylisti cally undistinguished. -11. 80-85. 252 Raber carries forward the theological synthesis in his opening by combining suggestions of both substitution and ransom: Warer got, des menschen kindt, Das er auf hueb der welde sundt, Der mocht unns all erlosen Durch sein marter unndt sterbens wessen Unnd solt umb unsern willen Alle weissagung erfullen, Damit yederman auf erden Widerumb mocht selig werden. « • • • • • Das hat er than so willigckhlich Unnd nam die menschlich natur an sich, Lebet auf erden in armuet gross Unnd starb zum lesten nackhent und plos, Erlost unns von der helle gluet Durch vergiessen seiner rossenfarben bluet, Dar durch er unns woldt ziechen, Das wier die sundt sollen fliechen Unnd seiner marter ingedengckh sein, So kam wir nimer mer in pein.3^- The note of battle is sounded in Christ’s inclusion in his teaching of the sermon on the good shepherd battling for his sheep: Meine schaff hem mein stim mit gir; Wan si haben mich erkent Unnd volgen mir nach behent: Das Ewig leben ich in berait, Sy zergeen nit in ewigckait; Wan was mir mein vatter hat gegeben, Dem selben mag niemant wider streben. The chanting of the boys during the triumphal entry effectively com bines the sequence "Salve rex, fabricator mundi" with Christ's task as the redeemer of the world he has c r e a t e d . 3 6 These are almost the sole theological intimations in a tightly plotted series of actions. They are at least consistent in announcing the fuller doctrinal development of the days to follow. 3^11. 21-38. 3511. 761-67. 36ll. 1552-53. 253 The editor of the Sterzing and Halle plays has distinguished 37 numerous instances of their influence on the later German passions. The Eger Fronleichnamsspiel and the Frankfurt-Alsfeld passions were particularly affected. The influences may well have come from one of the earlier versions of the Sterzing play. The earlier Frankfurt Dirigierrolle was another source for the later plays; the later pas sions from Frankfurt, Alsfeld, and Heidelberg show a strict develop ment from the Dirigierrolle. But again the later playwrights imposed their own thought structures and feelings on the materials they in herited. This individuality is most remarkable in the Frankfurt Pas- sionsspiel. Frankfurt was well known from the mid-fourteenth century on for the regularity and splendor of its productions. Hot only are they at tested in the city chronicles hut also in the existence of the Frank furt Dirigierrolle, a director's prompt-book from this period. During the last quarter of the century, however, the town's resources or sup plies of talent apparently dwindled; there were no performances ■until the final decade of the century and then only three are recorded. From the 1^93 performance has come the extant manuscript of a two-day passion, valuable to students of production for the numerous marginal notations by the director of a still later performance. Al though the extant passion is twice the length of its Dirigierrolle model, it is still, like the Sterzing passion, based on the Gospel of John. Much of its extent is the result of dramatic and affective 37wackernell, o£. cit., pp. cxlviii-cl. 25^ repetitions— of Mary Magdalene repeatedly refusing to repent, of Judas carrying on extended negotiations with the Sanhedrin during the pass- over preparations, of numerous strophic Marienklagen. Pait of the extended treatment, however, results from the playwright's attempt to illustrate and contrast scenes of dissension with examples of God's action to "bring about the reunion of humanity to Himself. The contrast is achieved by giving major roles to the mock ing, vituperative Jews of the synagogues. The choice of this device may well have reflected bigotry on the playwright's part and could well have advanced the cause of antisemitism in Frankfurt. Or the device may have been the dramatic response to the medieval taste for trials and debates. Nevertheless the contrasts are dramatically strik ing. The usual procession of the prophets intersperses the prophets' speeches with heated arguments between Augustine and the Jews. Each of Christ's scenes of healing or forgiving is set off by the vilifica tions or plottings of his Jewish foes. In this grim passion the machinations of the Jews take the place of the diableries more usual in the other plays. Since the play is devoted to the earthly life of Christ, it ends with the burial. This abjuration of the supernatural is as appropriate as it is strik ing. It fulfils the solemn note of the total action and places dramat ic emphasis upon the weight of Christ's sufferings for the humanity he wishes to reunite with himself. The reuniting action also stands out: the healings, the forgiv ing of the adulterous woman, the repeated appearances of Mary Magdalene on the road to conversion, all constitute cases of healing serenity 255 in the midst of dissensions. This emphasis is borne out in Christ's speeches as he invites his disciples to follow him. Calling Peter and Andrew, Christ says, Wolt ir mir wesen undertan, so suit ir ewig leben han in mynes vatter riche: „ das wischet sicherliche To John, James, and their companions, Und wolt wol enden myi gebot, so wil uch ewiglichen got freude und uramer ewig leben mit yme yn syme riche g e b e n . 3 9 To Matthew and others grouped around him, Ir herren, wer mir folget nach und ist zu mytier lere jach, in finsterkeit der engat; ewig licht er uramer hat. nu fulget, so wirt bereidt . uch freude in ganczer stedickeit. Other elements of Christ's teaching further the idea of pres ence and illustrate how the playwright achieves doctrinal emphasis by slight alterations of his inherited materials. Christ's good shepherd sermon in the Halle Vorspiel had, by carrying through the biblical ■ > 4 speech to its end, foreshadowed the strife and victory appropriate to that passion treatment. The Frankfurt playwright, by stopping short of the strife motif, reemphasizes his theme of obedience and union: Alle myn liebe scheffelin horten gerne die stymme myn: sie kennen mich und folgen mir eben, dar urab geben ich ine ewig leben. ^ ^ "Frankfurter Passionsspiel," Das Drama des Mittelalters, herausg. R. Froning, 11. 337-^0. 3911. 3^3-66. ^ 11. 3^7-52. ^ 11. 17la-Mt-. 256 To his idea of reunion Christ adds that of service and obedience as the marks of the reunited "being who thus gains sonship. Wer sunde thut, der ist ein knecht der sunden, daz verneinet michJ keyn knecht hlihet ewiglich by synem herren, das ist war: syn son der blibet offenbar by yme ewigliche do in des hymels thron. His preaching of the Beatitudes maintains the same theme. The obedi ent, pure, and meek inherit "das hymmelrich und das ewig l e b e n ."^3 This is the theme with which the consoling angel comforts Christ as he speaks his terror in Gethsemane: 0 richer konig der ewigen selikeit, der killich der marter ist dir bereit I den saltu nu werden drincken! so wirdet ' gar versincken der wemde sere gemeinlich: davon sich frawet als hymelrich! dan din marter noch ernert alle menschliche natuer und erfrawet die engelische creatuer!^ Similarly, the penitent thief receives an extra phrase of reassurance in a passage already expressing union: Du salt noch hude mit mir in dem paradiss frone! das saltu. ummer von mir hanJ^5 The Alsfeld passion, though closely related to the Frankfurt Dirigierrolle, has none of the striking scenes of conflict between the Jews and Jesus. The manuscript bears notations of performances in 1501, 1511, and separate nativity and Easter performances in 1517* ^ll. 434-4o. ^ 1 1. 2233-52. ^31 . 1037; £f. 1 1. 103^-65. 4511. 4121-23. 257 Earlier town records have not teen preserved, "but it would seem that a play as ambitious as this must have been built upon a fairly lengthy theatrical tradition. The playwright was at least familiar with the work of his contemporaries. In additon to his reliance on the Diri gierrolle , he took over the Trier Marienklagen almost word for word. At the same time his passages are heavily weighted with liturgical fragments. An incurable moralizer, the dramatist takes his didactic goal so seriously that a whole host of devils are required to give comic balance to the three-day production. The play begins with the preaching of John the Baptist and ends with a Pentecost scene. The devil-play preceding John's appearance is typically satirical as Lucifer marshals all his forces (including his mother, Hellekrugk) to withstand the coming of Christ which is rumored on earth. The devils are again active in the betrayal and trial scenes, help Judas hang himself, attend the crucifixion, and are fi nally vanquished in the harrowing of hell. Despite its ambition and extent, the total effect is more sincere than able, with little depth of thought. The playwright displays a faith more robust than rea soned. The Proclamator, introducing the first day, issues an earnest call to the audience to experience with Christ the pains of his pro pitiatory act: he bedencke dan yn dem hercze synn das groiss lyden und den bittern toid und alle die manchfeldige noitt, die unser her gelidden hott vor unsser alle missetadt! synt en das nu nit hot vordrossen, hie hot darumb sin blut vorgossen al an dem fronen crucze here: sso soln mer es em dancken sere, 258 wann hie es ted durch unsser willen, das hie damidde mochte gestillen synes hymmelsches vatters grosses zornnl mer weren anders alle vorlom!^ A continuing theme is, however, lacking. The burghers of Alsfeld seem never to have found a creative arranger, and the materials of previous plays are put together as if by a committee. In some instances the attempts at emphasis are a trifle ludicrous. Composing the harrowing of hell, the arranger by now no doubt felt that the "Venite benedicti patris mei" was a hallowed tradition he dare not omit. Indeed, after Christ's statement, it is echoed like a Gilbert and Sullivan chorus by Adam and Eve and all the souls in limbo ("Ich wel uch furen yn mynes vatter rich. . . . Hie wel uns foren yn syn riche . . ."), assisted by angels: Uss dyner mynneclichen gotheit ist gefloissen des mentschen selikeytl an ende und ewigk leben wollestu en, herre, gebenl^T Thus in this play synthesis appears accidental; references to conven tional notions of propitiation, union, and peace occur but are never quite assimilated.^ The use of the Frankfurt-Alsfeld materials in the Heidelberg Passionsspiel is even further obscured by its novel arrangement. This 6125-line play, preserved in a reading manuscript of 151^> begins with the preaching of John the Baptist and includes an unusually extensive resume of Jesus' public life. The playwright attempts to harmonize ^"Alsfelder Passionsspiel," Das Drama des Mittelalters, herausg. R. Froning, 11. 8-20. ^ 11. 7071- jb. ^ n . 7786-87, 7868-69. the Gospels into a single full account very literally depicted; he seldom does more than versify the Vulgate. The teaching of Christ in cludes the Beatitudes, the giving of the Lord's Prayer, the incident of Caesar's tax, and the bread-of-the-world speech. Beginning with the Samaritan woman at the well, many of the incidents are preceded by the extensive dramatization of their Old Testament prefigurations in the best typological tradition. These interpretations are not achieved entirely without strain: the falsely accused Susanna prefigures, not quite accurately, the woman taken in adultery; Samson and Delilah pre figure the betrayal; Elisha's vengeance on the mocking children fore shadows the vengeance on the mocking soldiers who scourge Christ. A prophet closes each prefiguration scene with an interpretive sermon- ette. Nothing like these treatments is otherwise known to the medie val drama. Even the liturgical play of Isaac and Rebecca is handled allegorically rather than typologically. The extensive treatment of the prefigurations is especially strange against the underplayed liter alism of the New Testament scenes. This unique parallelism leaves little time for additional interpretation and demands stringent abridgment of longer scenes from the inherited plays. The possibilities of simultaneous staging are ignored; Mary Magdalene in gaudio and in repentance, a standard source of relief in earlier plays is here given a single scene; Lazarus sick ens and dies in a sentence; the Marienklagen are startlingly brief. The Veronica and Longinus scenes are held over from the Frankfurt- Alsfeld plays. Like the Frankfurt playwright, the Heidelberg author makes very little use of Teufelsscenen. The prefiguration sketch of 260 Job is an inescapable occasion; Satan appears to Pilate's wife in her dream; at the crucifixion there is a scene unusual to the German drama as Satan and Gabriel stand on either side of the cross, prepared to strive for the soul of Christ. These are the only indications of supernatural warfare as a part of the meaning of the passion. The play ends with the descent from the cross (prefiguration: Jonah in the whale) and the imprisonment of Joseph of Arimathea. It would appear that this learned experiment, exegetically interesting though it is, is a dramatic failure and very nearly a the ological nonentity. The Old Testament prefigurations make interesting little plays in themselves, and by their very interest they interrupt the steady, climactic flow of Jesus' life and sacrifice. They re lease the playwright from the necessity of developing a theological theme. What interpretations do appear are for the most part inherited from his sources: the calling of the disciples is lifted unchanged from the Frankfurt passion, as is the paraphrase of the Beatitudes.^ The one doctrine the playwright insists upon is that of redemption as propitiation. The doctrine is the theme of the Regierer's introduction Wie Cristus vnnser here leydenn Woltt an seiner menscheyfct Angst, pein vnnd jamerkeytt, Dar zcu auch denn bitteren doitt, Domit er vnns erloist vss noitt.50 ^^Heidelberger Passionsspiel, herausg. Gustav Milchsack ("Bib- liothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart," Bd. CL; Tubingen: Gedruckt fur den Litterarischen Verein in Stuttgart, l88o), 11. 31^-69* 393-^24. 501 1. 9-Ik. 261 The idea is heightened in Jesus' own discourse to the disciples at the last supper: Wann jch tin vonn meinem vatter kommenn Alle der welt zeu frommen; Dar vmb hin jch auch geborenn, Das jch soli stiellenn raeines vatters zomn.^l Why such appeasement should have "been necessary and why man should he worth such suffering is left unexplained. From the comparative fail ure of this, the longest of the German passion plays, it is a revela tion indeed to return to the formal grandeur of the fifteenth-century French passions. Clearly, the German passions did not achieve the extensive development of the French dramas. Perhaps their playwrights never in tended it. Their apparent custom of playing the various sections of the passion on the appropriate days of Holy Week militated against the full development of the nativity and its preparation which "became a popular device among elahorators of the French plays. The German playwrights tended to "be more literal, less legendary than the French; and their versification never became complex. Similarly, the theolo gical themes of the Germans for some time remained discrete. Through out the St..Gall, Augshurg, and Donaueschingen passions, the notions of ransom with the purpose of reuniting man to God held sway. The em phasis on vicarious experience in the plays is thus easily explicable. The suggestion of substitution in the early Vienna fragment is a soli tary one. The later plays tend toward eclecticism. In the Sterzing and Halle plays the interpretation of redemption as a triumphant liber 51!!. 3715-18. 262 ation is accompanied Toy notions of union, peace, and vision in the purpose of redemption. This mixture is repeated in the Alsfeld and Heidelberg plays, rather accidentally, it would appear. The Frankfurt passion returns to the original notion of union hut exploits a redemp tive theory of obedience in connection with it. CHAPTER TEN OTHER EUROPEAN PASSIONS The widespread popularity which Young noted for the liturgical drama is almost as great for the vernacular. If the attempts at dra matic representation In Italy are too elementary and those of Spain too late for inclusion in this study, there remain some highly original passions from Brittany, Provence, and Cornwall. There is also evidence of the genre in England. The single passion play extant in England has to he extracted from an early sixteenth-century miracle play of Mary Magdalene in the Digby collection. Unique in requiring stationary staging in the con tinental manner, it contains in compact form most of the features of the continental passion play. The passion section is then followed by an extensive treatment of the Magdalene's postbiblical career as the apostle to Marseilles and as .a desert anchoress who is fed by angels and finally translated to heaven. A comparison of metres indicates that the legendary material is a late addition to a fairly simple li turgical play of Lazarus and the resurrection, converted into a pas sion play and then into a miracle.^ Mary Magdalene is the daughter of a lord whose castle is in Jerusalem. She is corrupted by the King of the World, assisted by al- ■^Craig, o£. cit., pp. 315-17- 263 legorical figures representing the seven deadly sins; hut the appear ance of a good angel to her in a dream converts her to repentance. She anoints Christ's feet at Simon's supper. Christ forgives her: I for-geyffe the thi wrecchednesse, And hoi in sowle he thou made therby'J^ Mary thanks him: Blyssyd he thou, repast cont emplatyf, Agens my syknes, helth and medsyn.3 Christ promises her that she ■will he a partner in his bliss, and she prays for grace ... to rest in lyth, In quyet and in pes to serve the nyth and day Her report to Lazarus links her scenes with his death and resurrection. The trial and crucifixion of Christ are not staged, a procedure with a precedent in the Erlau plays. Instead, the King of Marcylle is intro duced to begin the subplot. Christ's death is announced by a yelling devil who also reports the emptying of hell, the resurrection, and the failure of all his efforts to recognize Christ in earth: with many a temtacyon we to’ chyd hym to a-trey, to know whether he was god or non. yet, for all ower besynes, bleryd is ower eye, for with his wyld werke he hath wonne hem everychon. The Maries lament the crucifixion and hail their lord, who died "mannys sowle to bye from all thraldam. "8 Thereafter the resurrection appear ances take their course, with an extra one for the Magdalene in which ^"Mary Magdalene," The Digby Plays, ed. F. J. Furnivall, 11. 666-6 7. tLl. 680-81. TLl. 77h-7 5. 511. 983-86. 6l. 1007. 265 she receives her apostolate. The action thus far has taken 1132 lines; the remainder of the play's 2144 lines is given over to the Magdalene's saintly exploits in Marseilles. The references to man's end are the conventional phrases of the English mysteries— "joy everlasting," ""bliss "bright," "everlasting salvation,/ in joy to dwell without fear," "everlasting light," "bliss so bright/ in presence of that king."7 There is one felicitous refer ence to God's purpose in creation— "he made heaven for our speed"^ Otherwise, apart from the unusual references to life as wholeness and health already noted, the play is remarkable only for a unique expres sion of Abelard's contention that all men desire the same end. A re verse prayer is assigned to the heathen priest officiating in Mar seilles : Golyas so good, to blysse may yow bryng, with belyall, In blysse ewer-lastyng, that ye may ther In Ioy syng be-fore that comly kyng, that is ower god In f e r e .9 In the literature of the minor European dialects there are three dramatic complexes worthy of remark. Provence had a succession of mysteries in its rich literary production; Britanny also had a pas sion; and the mysteries of Cornwall seem to owe more to these provinces than to either England or France. The Proven9al passion contained in the Didot manuscript was copied in 1345; it is relatively brief (2370 lines) and bare but still Tll. 1 0 7, 8 2 7,: 1 5 2 2, 1 5 9 7, 1 6 6 6, 1 9 3 8, 2 0 5 7, 2 0 7 4, 2 1 0 5, 2 1 2 0, 2 1 2 6, 2134-35. 8l. i486. 9ll. 1244-48. 266 a respectable length for its period (the only earlier passion, Pala tines, contains 1996 lines). The actual passion scenes are introduced by the healing of the man born blind, the resurrection of Lazarus, the woman taken in adultery, the entry into Jerusalem, and Simon's supper. The ■..'treatment of these traditional scenes appears to have no direct influence from the extant French passions. It is a supremely serious production] for the most part its composer stays close to his Gospel sources. His few departures are therefore the more startling. The Oedipus legend attached to Judas appears here in a form even fuller than that used by Greban and Michel.10 This is the only play in which Malchus is converted by the restoration of his ear. The crucifixion returns to tradition; the episode of Longinus is treated briefly as the only addition. The harrowing of hell is, however, still another exam ple of the playwright's originality. It is by no means clear that his originality has theological significance. What he adds to his sources seems to emphasize the notion of enjoyment in the presence of God. There is a closing phrase to Christ's promise to the penitent thief: E heu te promet leialment Que tu seras huey Ab mi la sus en paradis On hes delieyt ses tota fis.^ The same notion is joined to the traditional "Come, ye blessed" with ' L < ^I?he Oedipus motif is conflated with the Moses tradition to explain how Judas became separated from his parents. Judas as a baby was saved from death at the hands of Herod's soldiers when his mother placed him in a small ark in the river; he thus was floated to a strange country, where he was found and adopted. - ^La passion provengale du ms. Didot; mystere du XlVe siecle, ed. William P. Shepard (Paris: H. Champion, 1928), 11. lbk-2-k5• 267 which Jesus greets the souls in limbo: Amic mieus, venet vo*n a mi. E ayat guach ses tota fi, Lo mayor guach que hanc hom vis, La ins en mig de paradis.12 On the arrival in paradise, God the Father joyfully greets His son: Tot lo mon avet restauret. Benezeyt siat e Iauzat2l3 But the conventional notion of dominion is added to that of presence as Christ issues his invitation to the saints: Venet ne e sezet prop mi E ayat guach ses tota fin. Car anc fezet mo mandament, Si crezet Dieu omnipotent, La corona vos pauzi sul cap: Que tut siat rey coronatz. ^ He seems thus briefly to have synthesized all the possibilities of man's restoration. It is so casually done that one cannot help wonder ing if the playwright realized what he was saying. In his favor is the delicate control displayed throughout this serious play. The man who can so control the force and emotion of the laments, for example, in an era given to sentiment must at least be allowed the benefit of the doubt. If its editor is justified in assigning the Breton Burzud braz Jezuz to the end of the fourteenth century despite the 1530 date of its earliest manuscript, then it would be at least a remote source for a number of incidents in the Greban-Michel passions. On the other hand, these scenes may as easily be provincial adaptations from the 1211. 1750-53. ^ll. 1798-99. ^ll. 1802- 807. 268 French plays, the innovations of the capital making their impact on the provinces. The tone of this passion is extremely solemn and the production relatively simple, requiring only forty-three characters for its 56OO lines. The action begins with the supper at Bethany in the house of Simon; again Lazarus entertains the company with a Breton version of the Inferno. An extended dialogue between Jesus and his mother intro duces the passion scenes proper. She is imagined as fully aware of the sufferings in store for her son and begs him. to reconsider their necessity and to forego them out of deference for her own anguish in witnessing them. Jesus' explanation in refusal is gentle but firm and demonstrates that the playwright may have borrowed his material but not his theology: Me, am youll franc, gant fin anquen, A men dastum lighez humen, Ha ho disaren apenet, Maz ahint quenef dan nef seven, Da cargaf an sichou louen, Evel am eux plaen ordrenet.^ The playwright may have seen a version of the passion containing a trial in heaven. Such a scene seems to be in his mind as he writes dialogue for Jesus which defends the requirements of justice. The notion is confused by a dialogue between Jesus and Reason in Gethsem- ane; here Reason insists on the need for Christ's death as a ransom. ■^De toute la force de ma volonte libre, et au prix de mor- telles douleurs, je veux reunir les enfants des hommes et faire cesser leur penitence, pour qu'ils viennent avec moi joyeusement au ciel, y remplir les sieges de la felicite, comme je l'ai regie expressement. Le grand mystere de Jesus, passion et resurrection; drame breton du moyen-Age, ed. et trad. Hersart de la Villemarqu^ (2me ed.; Paris: Didier, 1866), p. 20. 269 Indeed, the playwright seems intent upon citing every possible motive for redemption. Christ's absolution of the penitent thief includes an almost unique reference to the merit aspect of his crucifixion as re payment for the world's sin: Men larar dit: em merit glan, Ez vizy yvez en dez man Guen ef, dit men bry, em nifver, En baradoes, em gres, esant A pep langour hac a tourmant, En joa excellant hac autier.16 Despite the variety of redemption teachings Jesus has enunciated, he invariably expresses an idea of union with his creation as the end of his sufferings. The most lyrical expression is the expansion of his third word from the cross: Sechet cref am gref quen devry Gant hoant da ren den pep heny Dan joa han abry benniquet An barados, dan repos glan; Se eu pepret an sechet man, Ham holt poan a pan ouf ganet.^7 Novel in other respects, the play is unique' in the introduction of a Fury in dialogue with Judas Iscariot. It cannot have been much comfort to Judas, but the Fury takes an impeccably Augustinian view point in explaining the creation of even a creature so apparently foredoomed as he: •^Je te l'annonce: Purifie par mes merites, tu seras, toi aussi, en verite, avec moi aujourd'hui au nombre des miens, en Para dis, dans mon sein, libre de toute langueur et de toute torture, dans une fdlicite parfaite. p. 1^1. ■^Une grande soif me tourmente; je desire ardemment conduire tous les hommes a la joie, a l'asile bienheureux du Paradis, au saint repos; telle est ma soif perpetuelle, et tout mon souci depuis que je suis ne. p. 1^2. 270 Doe, an roe "bras, nez croeas quet Da bezaf dampnet eguyt af Quent se, ha te ha pep heny A croeas lem eguyfc hep muy En e ty da glorifiaf.1® The end attained and the redemption completed hy the resurrection, Christ announces: Me so breman Autrouglan oar an bet, Ne quel hep sy nep heny ma miret Ma bout dougiet hac enoret; ret eu; En ouf hep muy ezed; an squient Oar ann holl re dre se me so regent; Pa em sentent ez dalchent ann hent beu.-1 -^ Thus, whether he has considered the contradictory implications of his soteriology, the Breton playwright has undoubtedly achieved complete ness and regards the life of presence with God as that for which man was created. In Cornwall the production of mysteries and miracles was so settled that amphitheatres were built for the purpose, with playing spaces 120 to 130 feet in diameter surrounded by seats of stone or turf (the theatre at Land's End overlooking the sea must have been truly spectacular). The three-day cycle seems to have been most firm ly entrenched; audiences simply planned on camping around the theatre during the course of the production. The festive as well as pious in tent of these gatherings is apparent from the epilogue. Its speaker, T f t Dieu,. le grand Roi, ne te crea pas pour &tre damne a cause de lui; loin de lk, toi et tous les hommes, il ne vous cr^a que pour la gloire de sa Maison. p. 93* 19 . . . En moi plus qu'en personne reside 1'intelligence, et par elle je dirige les hommes; en m'obeissant, ils suivront le chemin de la Vie. Maintenant, je suis le Seigneur souverain du monde; per sonne assurement ne pourra m'emp^cher d'y £tre craint et honore comme je dois l'^tre. p. 1 7 9* 271 after commending the three-day work to the audience for their medita tion and example, instructs the minstrels to begin their music for the PO dancing to follow. The only remaining example of the Cornish drama is found in two manuscripts, the earliest from the sixteenth century. It has a number of peculiarly Celtic features. The first day is de voted to the creation and fall and a number of Old Testament sketches. There is a fine touch of lyricism in Eve's somewhat inaccurate report of her temptation: My pan esen ov quandre clewys a'n nyl tenewen vn el ov talleth cane a vghaf war an wethen. With unusual fire, for a medieval Eve, she threatens to leave Adam un less he too will eat the forbidden fruit. The two fallen creatures then enter into a heated bargaining session with the Creator over the amount of land they are to have for their punitive toil. The selection of Old Testament stories includes a full treat ment of David and Bathsheba and the building of the temple by Solomon. The sequence closes with the prophecy of the legendary Maximilla. Like many of the continental passions, the series is without a nativity; the passion scenes begin with the journey of Christ and his disciples to Jerusalem, with healings and preaching along the way. During the trial scenes the playwright attempts legal and scholastic detail for which Resdrrexio Domini nostri," Ancient Cornish Drama, ed. and trans. Edwin Norris (Oxford: Parker, 1 8 5 9)/ H- 2 6k^-b6. 21As I was walking about/ I heard on one side/ an angel begin ning to sing/ above me on the tree. "Origo mundi," 11. 213-16. 272 he appears to lack the "background. Jesus is accused "by the doctors In pseudo-learned terms, and his silence before their absurdities is un derstandable. The day closes with the descent from the cross and is in other respects conventional. The third day opens with the imprison ment of both Nicodemus and Joseph, includes the harrowing of hell, and proceeds with the resurrection in the usual way. Here there is in serted another unique scene, a full-scale enactment of the death of Pilate, brought about by a vengeful St. Veronica. The ascension, as Christ is received by a wondering chorus of angels, leaves only the dancing to complete the festivities. The literal interpretations characteristic of the passions are carried to ertremes in the Cornish plays. The playwright's attempts to convey his theological notions to an untrained audience present him with problems he is evidently -unable to overcome. Thus the task of suggesting man's worth as the image of God involves him in grotesque anthropomorphisms: Uy a'd wra ty then a bry haval d'agan face whare Adam saf yn ban yn clor ha treyl the gyk ha the woys preder my the'th whul a dor haval they'm a'n pen the'n troys Adam himself in the same play, however, indicates a subtler view of similarity in the reason and will he admires, Ow formye tek ha dyblans 22 / We make thee, man, of clay,/ like to our face, presently. . . . Adam, stand up in glory,/ and turn to flesh and to blood;/ think I have wrought thee of earth,/ like to me from the head to the feet. 11. 65-6 9. 273 ty ru'm gruk pur havel thy's rag governye ow bewnans yma loer orth "both ow brys.^3 The playwright's chief concepts of the end for which Jesus enters the world seem to he those of union and peace, if his very general phrases can he given any interpretation. In the triumphal entry the welcoming children call, Map dauid thy's lowyne me a'th pys agan sawye ha'ghan dry the wlascor nef ihesu myghtem ysrael me a hys thy's lowene kergh thy's ov ene gans el . pan wraf a'n beys tremene. Even when the playwright is no longer attempting to adapt his phrases to children, only his rubrics make it possible to tell the difference. His discussions of Jesus' mission greatly oversimplify his Johannine source: "I shall not drink wine again," Jesus tells his disciples hys may thyllyf yn ow gulas ha why gynef gans ow tas hep dyweth-va prest yn ioy yn creys me re ysethas avel seruont ow seruye ha why gynef re drygas yn temptacyon yn pup le ha thywhy me re ordynas glas nef ynny rak tryge kepar del ordenas ow tas dy'mmo vy yn lowene may wrylleugh yn lowene ^^Me create fair and bright/ thou hast done me, very like to thee./ To govern my life/ the will of my mind is enough. 11. 86-9 0. ^Son of David, joy to thee./ I pray thee to save us/ and bring us to the kingdom of heaven. . . . Jesus, king of Israel,/ I pray joy to thee,/ bring my soul to thee by an angel,/ when I shall leave the world. "Passio Domini nostri," 11. 271-7^-j ^26-30. 27b keffrys drybry hagh eve i war ow bos yn vhelder.^ j The liberation from hell uses a translation of the "Venite benedicti": | A enefow ol warbarth deugh gynef ol why a wharth . keramys re wruk both ow thas • • • • • • a a adam thy’so cres \ yn weth the ol ow fleghes j myns yv guyryon S yn paradys deugh thu'm clos I th'agas prenne me a ros ! gos ow holon • • • • • • myhal yn scon gorr:*y th'y , yn tekter hag yn mur ioy. Thus the more provincial of the medieval mysteries are interesting for their dramatic oddities exemplifying scenes which were either lost from! the main traditions or not needed by playwrights capable of supplying thought as well as action in their works. The theology is thoroughly traditional and never gets beyond a conventionalized interpretation of : Augustinian doctrines. That development could occur, if only by super imposing later doctrines on earlier, is clear from some of the English cycles;' their thematic growth is the subject of the next chapter. ^^Until that I enter into my kingdom./ And you with me, with ; my Father,/ without end ever in joy./ ... I have sat in the midst,/ j like a servant serving,/ and ye have dwelt with me/ in temptation ev erywhere;/ and I have ordained for you/ the kingdom of heaven, there to dwell,/ like as my Father ordained/ for me in joy,/ that you may in bliss/ likewise eat and drink/ of my food on high. 11. 726-2 8, 803-833*: ^6o souls, all together,/ come with me; all ye shall laugh,/ ! as many as have done the will of my father./ . . . Ah, ah, Adam, peace ! to the'. / also to all my children,/ all who are innocent I/ In para- { dise come to my glory,/ To purchase you I have given/ the blood of my j heart./ Michael, put them forthwith there,/ in pleasure and in much joy. "Resurrection Domini nostri," 11. 155_7T* CHAPTER ELEVEN THE CYCLES The Digby plays witness to the existence of single plays in England, and Craig cites evidence for the stationary performance of passion plays in London and the south of England. Oddly enough, the miracles, too, seem to have developed as individual performances without showing the French tendency to group themselves into lengthier complexes. On the whole, however, the cycle is the characteristic form of the mystery in England. In their creation-to-judgment span the purpose of mankind is an ohvious theme for coordinating a variety of scenes which would otherwise appear disconnected. Admittedly, a full passion with a creation prologue and Old Testament scenes is very nearly a cycle. Yet its concentration on Christ's liberation of the saints from hell clearly establishes man's restoration to his original created state as a unifying theme. Thus, while the action of a passion may sweep from heaven to hell, its main action still has the unity of a limited period and action, no matter how detailed the treatment or how prolonged the approach to the climax. The basic unity of the form must have attracted its continental practitioners quite as much as the convenience and possibilities of its staging. The cycles, indeed, seem not to have developed as the response to a need for still greater theological scope but as a convenient means of extending the Corpus Christi celebrations; processions became 275 in turn pageants and then plays, performed on the pageant wagons used for the processions. The use of wagons at once destroys the effects of suspense, dramatic irony, and simultaneously developed themes that are so sedulously cultivated in the great passion traditions. The play wright must instead rely on the variety of his successive settings, on the repetition of his dominant ideas from scene to scene, and on the cumulative force and cosmic scope thus produced. If the method of the cycle is different, its unity of thrust within a serial development has a power all its own. In England this power was increased hy the con densed playing time, usually a single day. The creation-^to-judgment span, coupled with a loving attention to each detail of the climactic passion scenes, necessitated the deletion of numerous scenes popular with the continental playwrights. Most of the scenes concerning the varied teachings and events of Christ's public ministry were therefore omitted. Since the variety of doctrines arising from the teachings sometimes detracted from the overall purposiveness of the larger pas sion, the necessities of cyclic production also contributed to theolo gical unity. In the development of this form, German plays again, as they so often seem to do, show transitional stages of forms that in other countries are extant only in their fully developed states. A case in point, the so-called Innsbruck Fronleichnamsspiel, is as yet little removed from the liturgical Corpus Christi procession and appears to be nothing more than speeches for representative characters in the pro cession at their appointed stations. Thus Adam and Eve are followed by an alternating assortment of New Testament apostles and Old Testa- 277 ment prophets in speeches not always resembling their biblical utter ances but emphasizing the coming and the mission of Christ. The three kings and the Pope close the ceremony. They explain that the apple eaten by the first parents is a prefiguration-in-opposite of the saving flesh of Christ partaken of in communion. The prophets, disciples, and other unrelated characters of the pageant interlard their speeches with phrases indicating eternal life as the goal of the salvation drama: Wir schullen balde czu em gan, und en innclichen enphan in grosser Froude und in grymme mit suffczender stimme. Du bist unser aller trost, lob und ere sy dir gegeben hy und dort in dem ewigen leben. Ich habe in dem geiste erkant, daz hymmelriche stet an gotes hant, er mag ez geben wem er wil, es hat keyn ende noch keyn czil. Daz er uns wil geben noch disse czit das ewige leben. daz ist aller vroyden spil und vroyden mit vroyden uberigk vil, so gros und so manigwalt, daz ist ungehort ungeczalt, dy vroyde nymant can geachte noch vol [denken] noch trachten.^- It is apparent that they leave their audience without a consistent explanation of either the purpose or nature of the life they praise. Like the form, the thought is transitional; and, if this pageant is typical of the Corpus Christi processions in general, one is inclined "^"Innsbrucker Fronleichnamsspiel," Altdeutsche Schauspiele, herausg. F. J. Mone, 11. 33-36, 5^-56, 517-20, 523-^2. 278 to respect the judgment of a posterity that lost the remainder. The Eger Fronleichnamsspiel, on the other hand, in a manuscript from lk8o, is a fully developed cyclic drama.^ Requiring three days for the performance of its 8312 lines, it is exceeded in length only hy the related Frankfurt-Alsfeld passion. The first day begins with an extended creation scene and moves through a selection of Old Testa ment events before climaxing in the birth of Christ. The final two days do not fulfil this cyclic promise: they are nothing more than a two-part passion play culminating in the resurrection of Christ and a number of appearances to his disciples. But the staging is a great deal less complex than that of most passions, and the play is well suited to processional performance. Scenes follow each other without transitions; there is not even a vestige of simultaneous staging, al though the late date of the manuscript indicates that its author should have been aware of such technical developments. Similarly in his sim ple handling of his materials he foregoes the uses of dramatic irony. The absence of such technical flourishes need not be inter preted as lack of skill; the composer may well have aimed at a simpli city which would not detract from but underline his controlling idea. Certainly in no other play has the theology of obedience been worked out with such single-minded concentration. The Salvator does not say why he has created the angelic hosts. He admires their splendor, and p “ ^Another play deserving mention but unavailable for study is the Kunzelsauer Fronleichnamsspiel, supposed to be unique among the German plays as a true cycle, from creation to final judgment. In three day-long parts, it also contains features usually thought of in connection with the French plays, as the process in heaven among the allegorical daughters of God and the dispute between Church and Syna- 279 "mit reichem schall" the ranks of angels joyfully chant responses. Lucifer's act in taking his seat on God's throne is not so much an -ex pression of pride as an act of "betrayal on the part of the servant God trusted most: "[Du] hast dich in untreu verpflicht. After his "ban ishment the angels renew their obedience: In deinem dienst sei wir berait, Zu loben deine wirdigkait. ^ The creation of man is therefore designed to replenish the ranks of faithful servants, and man's obedience will be rewarded with eternal earthly dominion. The scenes following the disobedience of Adam and Eve are carefully selected to pile disobedience upon disobedience and to show its hereditary taint as Cain kills his brother and is in turn killed by Lamech. The widespread disobedience of N0ah's contemporaries is relieved by his faithful submission, and the author then begins to select foreshadowings of the ultimate obedient servant, Christ: Abraham, Moses combatting the disobedient Israelites, David, Solomon, the prophets. Again, the faithfulness of Joachim and Anna prefigure the Virgin's faith. Her submissive response to the annunciation is paralleled by the obedience of Joseph; Mary's husband demonstrates his own submissiveness to the priest in becoming Mary's guardian when she has completed her temple service and to the angel in spite of his gogue. The complete text of this intermediate play has not yet been published; cf. Rudwin, o£. cit., p. 6k. ^Egerer Fronleichnamsspiel, herausg. Gustav Milchsack ("Bibli- othek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart," Bd. CLVI; Tubingen: Gedruckt fur den Litterarischen Verein, l88l), 1. 132. ^11. 313-1^. 280 delicately pantomimed doubts. Throughout what would normally he a traditional Weihnachtsspiel, the elements of service and obedience re appear to distinguish the section.^ Indeed, one of Mary's responses to a magus constitutes a rare reference to the treasury of merit; she thanks him for his gift and promises Si sol dir wol bezalt werden, Wan du hi stirbst von diser erden, So wirstu dan haben den lan,^ Im himelreich die ewig kran. The emphasis upon Marian doctrine is another characteristic of the play. Not only does Mary style herself the handmaiden of the Lord, placing the ground of her service in her creation by God, but by her continued obedience in offering her son in sacrifice, like Abraham, and submitting to her maternal sufferings as she witnesses those of Christ— and the Marienklagen in the play are numerous and extended— she shares in the obedience of Christ which redeems mankind. She de serves fully as much as Christ the attention Iof the audience, as the Conclusor reminds them at the close of the first day: Das man gedenck an goz almechtigkeit Und an Mariam, die reinnen meidt.^ The daily introductions and interspersed commentaries by angels repeat the necessity of the audience's participation in these sufferings as their share of the obedience: Das solt ir betrachten, frau und man, Und solt alle schweigen und still stan And der stat, da ein itlichs ist, ^Cf. Melchior's speech, 11, 2105-1 0 8; Mary's response, 11. 2109-112; Caspar's speech, 11. 21^3-53, 216^-6 8. 611. 2137-^2. Tll. 2779-80; cf. 11. 2819 ff. 281 Und bedencken die marter Jhesu Crist, Und die in seinem herzen bewein „ Und nit als hert sein, als die stein. The next two days are given over to the ceremony of joint obedience. As a prelude to the passion itself, the conversion of Mary Magdalene is portrayed. The Magdalene's inordinate desire for the unlimited freedom of pleasure is interpreted as a "bondage to the devil, and her submission to Christ is bewailed by Sathanas, Magdalena die was unser stette dienerin Die hat ich pracht in meinen orden: Die ist mir nun bekert worden, Das sie mir ist entgangen, Die ich lang zeit het gefangen. The whole sequence of scenes constitutes a little harrowing of hell. Beginning the second day with Simon's supper gained the com poser a necessary unity and compression. At the same time it robbed him of a scene basic to his theme of obedience, the temptation of Christ by Satan. An Abelardian doctrine of- salvation as obedience would place the weight of the redemptive act on Christ's withstanding of Satan as the foil to the original fall. The Eger composer trium phantly and originally surmounts the difficulty by climaxing the se cond day's action with the lengthy, though polite, strife between the Virgin and her son. Mary repeatedly pleads with the Salvator to forego death or at the very least to accept death in a less painful form. The author blandly ignores the possible implications of using Mary as the Devil's substitute. The Saviour's temptation is subtly rendered all 811. 2813-18. 9ll. 3011-18. 282 the stronger coming from his mother, and the obedience therefore the more triumphant as Christ repeatedly withstands her pleas with the ex planation, "Also stet mein vatters urteill. Mary's final acceding reunites her with him in an alliance of redemption. The author's stress on obedience in the face of suffering appears once again in the garden scenes. Here Christ's laments go well beyond the brief prayers of the Gospels as he envisions the pain his obedience must entail. The angel's consolation bears the same emphasis: Got vatter in der ewigkeit, Der trost dich mit seiner gotheit Und sterckt dich in der marter dein, Darumb das du thust den willen sein. Zu einr zaignuss den kelch bring ich dir Ganzlich nach seiner begir, Der soil vergossen werden Fur alle sunder auff erden, Die lang zeit seindt gepunden fast An des leidigen teiifels ast. Christ's submission completes his victory: Got vatter mein, ich pin bereit, Zu tragen alle arbeit. Vatter almechtiger, durch dein gepot Wil ich gern leiden den todt: Doch hat der geist uber wunden den leichnam mein, Das er wil leiden die martter und pein. Vatter,ich wil sein gehorsam dir: Was du wilt, das geschech mit mir. Against this expression of supreme obedience Judas' betrayal stands out sharply as a supreme disobedience. The rather extended treatment given to Satan's coming for his soul at his hanging is thus justified. The third day takes its traditional course with few comments ■^1. 3850 et passim. 1I L 11. ^252-73. 283 from the author. The mockeries of the Jews are particularly severe, the scourging and the crucifixion peculiarly sadistic to emphasize the price of the Saviour's obedience. One original effect heightening his purpose is achieved by the author in enlarging upon the "Sitio" : Mich durstet also serr Nach dem armen sunder Und nach den sellen, die do sein Lange zeit in der helle pein Gewessen umb ir missetat Der sol heut aller werden rat. The harrowing of hell is then the reward to all mankind for Christ's obedience. The playwright makes little here of the possibilities for conflict and action. The issue is a foregone conclusion; even the devils are in no doubt of their fate and hardly attempt a defence— once again the author has altered his source, the militant Gospel of Nicodemus, to suit his theme. Adam welcomes the victorious servant: Ich sich die handt, die mich beschaffen hat, Wol mich, das er also drat Uns losen wil von diser pein; Des wil ich iramer frolich sein In dem ewigen leben.^ The nature of the eternal life thus gained is developed by the poet in harmony with his doctrine of creation. The idea of union in service would best serve the notion of a creation to replace the fallen angels, and this idea does in fact appear. An angel welcomes the peni tent thief: Wir sollen dich fum zu preise In das fron paradeise, Des soltu wonen ewigkleich 1211. 6552-57. ^ H . 7502-506. 28k Bei mis in seinera himelreich.1^ The liberated, souls of the patriarchs rejoice in similar terms. Das ich nun und ewigkleich Wonen sol hei dem schoepffer rein^ is their theme. With it- is combined in one case the notion of vision, as one "salvata anima" rejoices, Das mich got hat erlost Und mich mit andern sellen trost; Das wil ich frolich mit im gan ^ Und mein schoepfer vor augen han. The serenity of this climax with its absence of dramatic violence has to some extent robbed the traditional Easter scenes of their point. They have no place in the author's scheme as symbols of earthly vic tory when the conflict itself has been spiritual and moral. He plays them somewhat perfunctorily and lets them serve as the closing movement away from the climax, thus obviating the necessity for a final Teufels- scene as comic relief. In any case, if the audience actually obeyed the author's injunctions to empathize at every sorrow, it would by now have no more emotion to spend. Very possibly the first English cycle to develop was that at Chester, a three-day cycle. Though the celebration of the plays had no doubt begun on Corpus Christi Day about 13^+7 j later performances were changed to Whitsun. Craig finds "nothing improbable" in the at tribution of the entire cycle to Ranulf Higden (d. 136^), a monk of the Benedictine foundation of St. Wexburgh's. The attribution is par ticularly interesting for this study in that Higden certainly wrote ^ll. 7050-55. ^ll. 7537-38. l6 l l . 7550-53- 285 the Polychronicon, a Speculum curat orum, an Ars componendi sermones, and a collection of Distinctiones theologicae. The suggestion by Craig that a continental passion was adapted by the composer prohahly does not sufficiently emphasize the difficulty of finding a pattern like the Chester cycle in any of the extant plays. Craig is on firmer ground when he praises the originality and skill the arranger brought to his materials. "So unified in style and purpose was it that to their latest day the Chester plays suffered less at the hands of re visers and redactors than did any other known cycle of mystery plays. "-*-7 On the basis of this consistent adherence to an earlier style and thought, the cycle is here handled first even though the late dates of the five extant manuscripts would, taken by themselves, place the cycle not only last among the English plays but outside the 1 8 chronological scope of this discussion. The dramatic unity of the cycle as it now stands bears out critical opinion favoring the stylistic unity of the plays. Two plays are devoted to the creation and fall; they include the fall of Lucifer and that of man, both handled simply and rather literally. As Craig points out, the total impression is that of a peasant household in which the Father lays down his rules and the children take without mur mur the results of their disobedience."^ Three Old Testament scenes, IT Craig, o£. cit., p. 168. l8The manuscripts, most of them in the British Museum, range in date from 1591 through 1 6 0 7. The enumeration and datings of W. W. Greg are cited in Craig, p. 1 7 8, n. 1. ^Craig, ££. cit., 183-3* ) - . 286 one of them a prophet play almost overweighted by the dramatization of Balaam and his ass, make the connection with six detailed nativity plays. The temptation and the woman taken in adultery symbolize the public life of Christ, and the passion follows in six plays, culminat ing with the harrowing of hell. The resurrection in two plays is fol lowed by an ascension and pentecost. The whole cycle ends with three eschatological plays, a carefully chosen procession of prophets tradi tionally interpreted as heralding the final coming of Christ, an Anti christ play of some skill, and a judgment closely based on the parable of the sheep and the goats. The total effect is one of naive simpli city, with little comedy, considerable reliance on the devotional ef fect of the miraculous, and an overall feeling that eternity is just outside the circle of daily life and still within touching distance. Thus when the playwright attempts to extend himself and indi cate the greatness of God, a sense of strain appears in his style. The effect of greatness is essential to his portrayal of God's might in creation as deserving from His creatures the obedience and desire for His presence which motivated the creation, but the playwright can not quite bring off his effect: I am greate god gracious which never had beginninge. The wholle foode of parente is set in my essencion; I am the tryall of the trynitie that neuer shall be twynninge; Peareles Patron Imperiall and Patris Sapentia. My beames be all beatytude; all blisse is in my buyldinge; All myrthe is in my Mansuetude Cum Dei Potentia. Bothe Visible and eke Invisible, all is my Weldinge; as god greatest and glorious, all lyeth in mea licentia. For all the mighte of the maiestye is magnified in me, 287 20 Prince principall proved in my perpetuall prudens. He suggests to the newly created heavenly beings the reciprocality of such a bond: Doe your endeavour and doubte ye not under my domynacion to sitt in Celestyall safetye, all solace to your sending, for all the lyking in this Lordshipp be loue to my lawdation; throughe the might of my most Maiestye your mirth • shall ever be mending.2- ^ - The angels agree in unison: Wee thanke the lorde, full soverayntlie that us hath formed so cleane and cleare Ever in this blisse to abyde, thee bye, graunt us thy grace Aye to bide h e r e . ^ 2 Lucifer, too, understands his creatureliness, and that he should not find his completion in the company of his Creator but desire a status of his own constitutes the heinousness of his sin. The playwright de velops his theme with a subtle sense of climax. Lucifer's first state ments are almost, but not quite, refrains of the angelic chorus: Lord, throughe thy grace and mighte thou hast vs wrought: nyne orders of Angelles here as you may see: • • • In thie blisse full righte they be, And I the principall lord here in thie sight. 23 The burgeoning pride of the last line of the refrain comes more and more in evidence as the choruses are repeated with variations; thus P0 "The Fall of Lucifer," The Chester Plays, ed. Hermann Deim- ling and Dr. Matthews ("Early English Text Society," Extra Ser. Vol. LXII, CXV; London: Humphrey Milford, 1892- 1916), 1 1 * 5 - 1 ^ * 2111. 21-28. 2211. 57-60. 2311. 29-30, 39-^0. 288 the playwright makes plausible and unforgivable the First Angel's fall. The Chester playwright has given this detailed attention to the creation and fall of Lucifer to indicate the nobility of man, created to fill the void left by the fallen angels. To restore man to the company he has forsaken is Christ's purpose in death. The playwright suggests this primarily by the additions and emphases he gives to the customary usage of Scriptural phrases. For example, he makes a varia tion upon the bare words of the newly instituted sacrament: Jesus hands round the cup with the words, For more together drink not we, . in heauen blis till that we be. ^ A slight expansion emphasizes the reassurance given the penitent thief: iMan, I tell thee in good fay, for thy beleefe is so veray, in paradice thou shalt be to day, With me in my blisse.^ And Joseph of Arimathea turns a delicate variation on'the prayer, A] swet Iesul Iesul swet Iesu.’ that thou must dye, full well thou knewe lord, thou graunt vs grace and vertue, to serve the in our lyfeJ That they to thy Blisse renew ^ All that euer to thee be true. The playwright makes certain of his didactic purpose by pre facing the harrowing of hell with a fairly extended series of pro phecies from the saints imprisoned there, and Adam reviews his crea tion ("Me thou madest, lord, of clay,/ and gave me paradice in to ^"Christ's Betrayal," 11. 101-1 0 2. 2 5"Passion," 11. 721-2^. 26Ibid., 11. 861-6 6. 289 27 play") and the separation from God which his sin brought about. Christ's traditional challenge at the gates of hell is therefore great ly expanded by the composer to emphasize the restoration he is now bringing about; a brief reference to the doctrine of ransom appears in the climax of reunion and illustrates the playwright's urge to theolo gical completeness: For man, that sometyme did amis, to his blisse he will bringe. (Tunc Iesus accipiet Adam per manum.) Peace to the, Adam, my Darlinge, and eke to all thy ofspringe, that righteous were in eirth lyvinge; from me you shall not sever. To blisse now I will you bringe, ther you shall be without endinge; Michael, lead these men singinge to ioy that lasteth ever. Michaell: Lord, yobr will done shall be. come forth, Adam, come with me I my lord vpon the Rood Tree _ your sinnes hath forbought. Adam accepts with renewed determination: Goe we to blisse, then, owld and vonge, and worship god, alway weldinge.^9 Again, making the most of his opportunities for repetition, the author gives the risen Christ an attractive monologue on the sermon from John 6 and adds to the original material of the sermon a further reference to union; the notion of peace here becomes a subordinate theme: 2^"De Descensu Christi ad Inferos," 11. 1-2*1-. 2 8Ibid., 1 1. 177-20* 1 - . 2%bid., 1 1. 275-5 8. 290 I am very prince of peace and kinge of free mercy; who will of sinnes haue releace, on me the call and cry. And if they will of synnes cease I graunt them peace truly, and therto a full riche messe in Bread, my own hody. I am very "bread of lyfe, from heauen I light and am send, who eateth this Bread, man or wyfe, shall lyue with me, without e n d e . 3 0 The speech then "becomes an admonition to the audience to eat of the bread worthily or run the danger of condemnation. The author's didactic turn of mind was naturally -unable to forego the unsurpassed teaching opportunity in the disbelief of Tho mas. The speech following the "Blessed are they that have not seen" becomes a closing admonition to the entire audience: That I am that same body that borne was of meek Marie, and on a Crosse your soules dyd bye vuppon good fryday. Who so to this will consent, that I am god omnipotent, as well as they that be present, my Darlinges shalbe aye.31 In his depicting of the ascension the playwright again ties together and repeats his theology and at the same time looks forward to the themes of his eschatological plays. The ascension is represented by a lyrical conversation between Christ and welcoming angels at heaven's gate. They question him about the symbolic drops of blood still on head and body, and he answers, 3^"De Resurrectione," 11. 162-73* on "De Christo duobus Disciplilis . . . apparente," 11. 257-7 6. 291 This hloud shall witnes hear to me, I dyed for man on. the Rood tree, and rose with in dayes three; such loue I loued them aye. How graciously that I them bought, and for good workes that they wrought, euerlasting blisse that they sought, to prove the good worthy.32 The Chester cycle includes not only the Antichrist play but the prophetic prologue which prepares for it. At the end of the play the two prophets slain by Antichrist are resurrected by the archangel Michael after his victorious battle with Antichrist and carried to "Heauen blis" evermore to be in God's presence. The note of resto ration is even stronger in the final judgment scene, and to it is added an allusion to final wholeness for the restored. The play wright lines up saved popes, kings, and emperors over against damned popes, kings, queens, and emperors. The saved have of course served their stint in purgatory after late and hasty repentance on earth, but they dare to express their hopes as the damned do not: Worshipped be thou, high Iustice, that me hast made in flesh to ryse; now wott I well those that haue bene wyse shall come into thy welth. Graunt me, lord, amongst moe, that purged am of synne and woe, on thy right hand that I may goe to that everlastinge healthe. A saved king explains his hairbreadth escape, 3^"De Ascentione salvatoris Iesu Christi," 1 1. 133”52. 33"De prophetis," 1 1. 723-3 0; cf. 1 1. 605-6 0 8, 613-1 6. But, lord, though I were sinful aye, Contrition yet at my last day, And Aimes dedes that I dyd aye, hath holpen me from hell. But well I wott that ilke way that Abraham went, weind I may, for I am purged to thy pay, , with thee euermore to dwell. 3 When Jesus appears in the clouds to pronounce his final judgment, the sentence of explanation he offers is, When thou had done this Trespace, yet wayted I which way best was, thee to recouer in this Case into my Companye.35 The unity of the Chester cycle is thus achieved by the repeated note of restoration to the company of Christ; the playwright enriches this basic theme with figures of healing, wholeness, and peace which still never overshadow his basic themes. He has few technical devices and relies primarily upon speeches and sermons to make his didactic points. He thus has the advantage of being -unmistakable; and the relative brevity of his cycle, together with its three-day distribution, saves him from prosiness. The larger ambitions of the York playwrights or the York guilds presented them with problems in this respect. Greater length offers the temptation of greater didacticism at the risk of greater dullness and the parallel difficulty of maintaining both theme and interest. Here the York guilds were most fortunate in their play wrights and redactors. The York plays, the longest of the cycles, developed by split- 3^"Iudicio novissimo," 11. 101-108, 133-J+0. 3^Ibid., 1 1. 373-7 6. 293 ting into brief scenes the fuller plays of other cycles as the pros perity of the various guilds demanded. Its greatest expansion seems to have taken place before as clerks' lists of the plays show. The number of plays on lists and manuscripts range from forty-eight to fifty-seven and represent a tremendous undertaking for a single day's performance. The extant manuscript dates from 1^35 or thereabouts and contains forty-eight plays. The sincerity and directness charac teristic of the English plays is perhaps most marked in the York cycle, the briefness and pointedness of each scene no doubt contributing to this heightened impression. Although the basic scenes have been expanded into separate plays to account for the greater fulness of the cycle, the public life of Christ is still not filled in with greater detail. On the con trary, three scenes from the death and assumption of Mary have been inserted between Pentecost and the last judgment. The entire cycle is notable for a dual theological emphasis. The subordinate theme of obedience in the temptation builds to the victorious climaxes, one after the other, of the harrowing of hell and the resurrection in spite of devils, watches, or tyrants. The impression is that of the soli tary hero doing battle for his friends. The single eschatological play, the last judgment, reinforces the idea of triumph, even without the final struggles implied in the missing Antichrist scenes. The sheep-and-goats framework is heavily loaded with speeches of summary and explanation as God the Eather explains his creation and reviews the disobedience and pride that led to man's conquest by the devil and the subsequent need for reconquest by Christ in his death and the lib- 29k eration of the prisoners from hell. The judgment now becomes the cul mination of the battle and the final victory. The dual emphasis of the cycle may be due at least in part to the two major revisions distinguished by the variations in verse forms which Craig has so carefully studied. The earlier plays and revi sions of the cycle are those which seem to link the theology of obedi ence with that of union. Thus the fallen Lucifer of this series is moved by envy; he had not wished God to take human form and now deter mines so to mar the image that God will no longer consider either an incarnation or the uniting of man with Himself. 1 God promises His faithful angels that they Sail wonne in welth withoutyn ende, & all-way wynly with me wake.3° 39 Adam himself finds his dignity in his likeness to God. God advises him, For this skille made y you this daye, My name to worschippe ay where; Lovis me for-thy and loues me aye For my makyng, I aske no more. And Adam promises praise and obedience: A Lord I sene we shalle do no thynge But loue the for thy grette goodnesse, We shall a-beye to thi gudnesse, to thi biddyng, 3^Craig, o£. cit., p. 222-33* ^"Man's Disobedience & Fall." York Plays, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885) , 11 . 1 -2 2 . ^"The Creation to the Fifth Day," 1 1 . 1 1 -1 2 . 39"God Creates Adam & Eve," 11, 51-52. ^Ibid., 11. 65-68. 295 Jil And fulfille it, both more and lees. At the baptism of Jesus, John expresses his humility, That place that I yarne moste of all, Pro thens come thou, lorde, as I gesse, How schulde I than, that is a thrall, Giffe the baptyme, that rightwis is. And has ben euere?^2 The deed performed, John makes a prayer of his own on the note of re union: But in this ded, lorde, right no blame This day by me. And bryngis all these to thy home ^ that trowes in the. The obedience theme dictates the inclusion of a temptation scene, and it is significant here that the York cycle retained this scene while the Wakefield plays, where obedience was no longer an emphasis, did not. Satan here notes his success in winning mankind's obedience since the first sin; the rumors he has heard of a redeemer, however, lead him specifically to test the obedience of Christ, For so it schall be knowen and kidde If godhed be in hym hidde, If he will do as I hym bidde ) | ) | whanne I come nare. Of all the extant Transfiguration scenes, only the play in the York cycle introduces interpretive comment on man's end. Here God the Father is assigned a speech which aptly draws together the sweep of ^1Ibid., 1 1. 76-8 0. kp "The Baptism of Jesus," 11. 113-17* ^ Ibid. , 11. 151-5^. ^"Temptation of Jesus," 11. ^9-52. 296 this series in the cycle: Ye ffebill of faithel folke affrated, Beis noyt aferde for vx in feere, I am youre God that gudly grayth Both erthe and eyre wt clowdes clere. This is my sone, as ye haue saide, As he has schewed by sygnes sere; Of all his werkis I am wele paied, Therfore till hym takis hede and here. Where he is, thare am I, He is myne and I am his, Who trowis this stedfastly Shall byde in endles b l i s s e . 5 Almost the only play of this earlier series remaining among the passion and resurrection dramas is that of Christ's garden appear ance to Mary Magdalene. After a full exchange of explanations Christ addresses a concluding speech to the audience: To my god and my Fadir dere, To hym als swithe I schall assende, For I schall nowe noght longe dwelle here, I haue done als my Fadir me kende, And therfore loke that ilke man lere, Howe that in erthe ther liffe may mende., All that me loues I schall drawe nere, . , Mi Fadirs blisse that neuere schall ende'. In this summary the playwright again makes his combination of obedi ence with union. The combination is even more strongly'emphasized in the ascension scene. Here the playwright makes his point by select ing John IT— actually a part of the last supper discourse in the Gos pel— as the subject of Christ's forty days' instruction to his dis ciples. Almyghty god, my Fadir free, ^"The Transfiguration," 11. 169-8 0. h-6 "Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene," 11. 126-33. 297 Als thou haste geuen me pleyne poste, Of ilke a flesh graunte me my hone, That thou me gaffe myght lyffand he In endles liffe and with the wonne. That liffe is this that hath none ende, To knawe the Fadir, moste of myght, And me thy sone, whanne thou gon sende To dye for man with-outen plight. ' For the apostles he continues the prayer, Thou halowe thame, fadir, for-thy, In sothfastnes so that thei may Be ane as we are, yowe and I, In will and werke, hoth nyght and day And knawe that I ame verilye Both sothfastnes and liffe alway; Be the whilke ilke man that is willy . _ May wynne the liffe that laste schall ay. Then, turning to the apostles, he reproves them for their lack of faith and explains that the forthcoming ascension is an anticipation of the last judgment, when all men shall so ascend— And witte ye wele, so schall thei That wirkis my wille in youthe or elde, A place for thame I schall purveye In "blisse with me ay in to belde.^9 This reiteration of emphasizing phrases is not characteristic of the more sophisticated editor who carried out the last revision of the cycle under the influence of the Alliterative Revival. His work extends over most of the passion and resurrection scenes, and he ap parently revised "The Creation and Fall of Lucifer" to set thetheme for his handling of the central scenes. In these scenes the ransom of Christ's death bought his way into hell; here his victory liberates the ^f"The Ascension," 11. 33-^* ^Ibid., 11. 73-80. ^Ibid., 11. 151-5*K captive saints for their original purpose of enjoying the beatific vision of God. To achieve this in his creation scene, the playwright employs numerous images of light. Lucifer's glorying in his brilliance as if it were his own suggests the pride that brings about his down fall; and for contrast he is given a plaint from the dark ordure of hell after his fall. Christ's return to his sovereignty in this brilliance is the angel's encouragement to him during the agony of Gethsemane: For dedis that man done has Thy dede schall be dight, And thou with turmentis be tulyd. But take nowe entente, Thy bale schall be for the beste, Thurgh that mannys mys schall be mende; Than schall thou with- outen any ende Rengne in thy rialte full of reste.5® The themes of battle and triumph are handled more in act than in word, however. Craig has already noted how each short trial play leads sus- 51 pensefully to the next. The playwright makes the most of Christ's apparently defeated silence before Herod; in the roughness and harsh ness of his alliterative metre he evokes the stark cruelty of the cru cifixion scenes. The meaning of these scenes is not openly explained until the final triumphant appearance to the disciples: What thynke ye, madmen, in youre thought? What mournyng in youre hertis is brought? I ame Criste, ne drede you noght, her may ye se The same body that has you bought vppon a tre. "Agony and Betrayal," 11. 117-22. Thus was I dight youre hales to beete, and "bring to hlis. For yowe thusgatis thanne haue I gone, Folous me grathely euerilkone. The delicacy with which the reviser handles his slightly divergent viewpoint aids his dramatic efforts without obviously conflicting with his more didactic predecessors. In one respect he may have reinforced them. The starkness of his trial and crucifixion treatments must have brought about a deeply-felt empathy in his audience. Here they not only saw the price of obedience but felt in the play some foretaste of what the theologians meant by union. The Wakefield cycle, so similar in Craig's opinion to the York that an independent origin is p r e c l u d e d ,53 ps a thirty-two pageant production. If follows the Old Testament selections of the York cycle with the addition of a prophets play. The nativity is reported in full, with a prologue play of Caesar Augustus anticipating the birth through rumored prophecies, and with the well-known double version of the shepherds' play. The life of Christ is even more abbreviated than in the earlier pageant cycles. The boy Jesus appears in thetemple disputing with the doctors; the preaching of John the Baptist is fol lowed by the baptism of Jesus. Apart from these introductory scenes, nothing of the public ministry remains; the action moves immediately to the conspiracy of Pilate with the Jewish leaders and the offer of betrayal from Judas. It must be admitted that the sacrifice of public incident and the consequent emphasis on the doctors and officials ^^"The Incredulity of Thomas," 11. h-3-^6. 300 pitted against Christ, whether in anticipation of his "birth, in contro versy with him as a hoy, or in planning his death because of his dan gerous teaching, make for a high degree of unity. The scenes of trial and crucifixion move in all their brutal realism directly to the har rowing of hell, as effective as the York play in its opposing speeches of hope from the imprisoned souls and of heightened worry on the part of the devils building to the actual arrival of Christ. The post resurrection scenes omit the plays relating to Mary and move directly from ascension to judgment. The judgment has as its kernel the tradi tional sheep-and-goats parable in a treatment like that of the York play. This original kernel has been revised, probably by the "Wake field Master," to include a farcical introduction and conclusion of devils and sinners respectively gloating and moaning over their sins. The flavor of comedy and satire, along with the introduction of an original and complex metre, which characterizes the "Wakefield Mas ter" appears in five other plays, the Noah, the first and second shep herds ' plays, Herod, and the scourging, with additional signs of his hand in the revision of Cain and Abel. It is the work of the "Wake field Master" in fact that is so often envisioned when the medieval English mystery play is thought of rather than the simpler, more di rect effects of the great body of English mysteries. His mastery is primarily technical; the theological thrust of the pageant, suffici ently clear and unified though it is, comes from the earlier composers of the cycle. The purpose of creation takes note of the traditional doctrine 301 of refilling heaven and in addition emphasizes the human enjoyment intended by God: I gif the witt, I gif the strenght, of all thou sees, of brede & lengthe; thou shall be wonder wise. Myrth and Ioy to haue at will, All thi likyng to fulfill, and dwell in paradise. The same blessing is given at Eve's creation: Ye both to gouerne that here is, and euer more to be in blis, ye wax in my blissyng. Ye shall have Ioye & blis therin, whils ye will kepe you out of syn, I say withoutten lese. Ryse vp, myn angell cherubyn, Take and leyd theym both in, And leyf them there in peasse. The obedient cherub adds his own instructions: We thank the, lord, with full good chere, that has maide man to be oure feere. Com furth, adam, I shall the leydj take tent to me, I shall the reyd. I rede the thynk how thou art wroght, and luf my lord in all thi thoght, That has maide the thrugh his will, angels ordir to fulfill. The hint given by the cherub is given more fully in the fallen Luci fer's speech. Indeed, the Wakefield Lucifer is the only one among the English devils who so fully expresses his understanding and chagrin: Who wend euer this tyme haue seyn? We, that in sich myrth haue beyn, That we shuld suffre so mych wo? Who wold euer trow it shuld be so? Ten orders in heuen were ^ The Creation," The Towneley Plays, ed. George England and Alfred W. Pollard ("Early English Text Society," Extra Series Vol. LXXI; London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1897)> H* 166-215. 302 of angels, that had offyce sere; of e.ch order, in thare degre, the teynd parte fell downe with me: ffor thay held with me that tyde, and mantenyd me in my pride; Bot herkyns, felows, what I say— the Ioy that we haue lost for ay, God has maide man with his hend, to haue that hlis withoutten end, the neyn ordre to fulfill, that after us left, sich is his will. And now are they in paradise; hot thens thay shall, if we he wise. The procession of the prophets makes a point of drawing in a variety of purposes in Christ's coming to relate it to man's end. Bliss and truth are promised hy Moses as the largess of the greater prophet to come: I warne you well that some prophete shall com hereafterward, full swete, And many meruels shew; Man shall fall till his feete, ffor cause he can hales heete, Thrugh his awn thew. All that will in trowth ren shall he saue, I warne you then, Trust shall his name he. David emphasizes ideas of freedom and light: Therfor, hoth emperoure and kyng, Ryche and poore, hoth old and ying, temper well youre gle, Agans that kyng lyght downe, . ffor to lowse vs of pryson, And make vs all free. Now haue I songen you a fytt; loke in mynd that ye haue it, I rede with my myght; he that maide vs all with his wytt, sheld vs all from hell pytt, And graunt vs heuen lyghtI 55pbid., 1 1. 250-6 7. The Noah play begins with a speech of summary which includes only the replacement theory; cf. 1 1. 10-3 6. 303 The Sibyl prophesies the triumph of Christ as a warrior: A new kyng comes from heuen to fyght Agens the feynd, to wyn his right, so is his mercy heynd. All the warld shall he deme, And that haue seruyd hym to wheme, Myrth thaym mon betyde.5° In Christ's scene with John the Baptist the idea of victory is main tained, as opposed to that of union in the separately revised York play: I graunt the, Iohn, for thi trauale, Ay lastand ioy in hlys to hyde; And to all those that trowys this tayll, And saw me not yit gloryfyde. I shal he boybt of all thare hayll, And send them socoure on euery syde; My fader and I may thaym auayll, Man or woman that leyffys thare pryde.^ Even when he quotes from a discourse with an ohvious theme of union, like that in John 1*4-, the early Wakefield playwright still brings out the concept of knowledge: In my fader house, for sothe, is many a wonnyng stede, That men shall haue aftyr thare trowthe, seyn after thay he dede And ye shall lyf in heuen; Then shall ye knaw, I wys, That I am in my fader euen, and my fader in me is. And I in you, and ye inf t me, and ilka man therto.-5 In those few instances when the "Wakefield Master" inserts -^"The Procession of the Prophets," 11. 19-27* 1*1-5-62, 172-80. 57„. 58„, 57,1 John the Baptist," 11. 225-32. 'Conspiracy," 11. * 1 - 36-65. 30^ theological content into his dialogue, he maintains the attitude of his predecessors. There is, for example, his original treatment of a conversation between Mary and Jesus as in her grief she pleads with her son to let her help hear the cross; Jesus' reply is once more a statement of purpose: Ffor sother, moder, this is no nay on cros I must dede dre, And from deth ryse on the thryd day thus prophecy says by me; Mans saull that I luffyd ay I shall redeme securlv. Into blis of heuen for ay I shall it bryng to me.59 Although the idea of union rather than knowledge appears here, the Master has picked up a subordinate theme that also occurs in the earlier plays, perhaps still under the York influence. It reappears with overtones of enjoyment in Christ's conversation with the travelers on the road to Emmaus: Crist behovid to suffre this, fforsothe, right as I say, And sithen enter into his blys vnto his fader for ay, Euer to won with hym and his, where euer is gam and play; Of that myrth shall he neuer mys ffrom he weynde hens away.®® Nor is the suggestion of ransom out of keeping with the rest of the plays. This is a theme which the "Wakefield Master" reviews with great tenderness in his highly original speech of Christ's appearing to the assembled disciples after the resurrection; here theology be comes at once a moving paean and a plea: 59"The Scourging," 11. 326-2 9. 6°"Peregrini," 1 1. 202-233. 305 To ded can luf me dryfe and styrryd my hart roytt. Or syn who wil,l hym shryf'e thyes woundys shalhe his boytt. ffor oon so swete a thyng my self so lefe had wroght, Man sawll, ray dere derlyng to hatell was I broglrt; ffor it thay can me dyng to hryng out of my thoght, On roode can thay me hyng yit luf forgate I noght. luf makys me, as ye may se strenkyllid with "blood so red; luf gars me haue hart so fre it opyns euery sted; luf so fre so dampnyd me it drofe me to the ded; luf rasid me thrug his pauste it is swetter then med. wytterly, man, to the I cry thou yeme my fader fere, Thyn awne sawll kepe cleynly whyls thou art wardan here; slo it not with thi "body synnyng in synnes sere, On me and it thou haue mercy for I haue boght it dere .°-*- The idea of union again appears in the earlier reviser's treatment of the ascension, as the angels make their promise to the upward-gazing disciples: Ryght as he from you dyd weynde so com agane he shall, In the same manere at last ende, To deme hoth greatt and small. Whoso his hyddyng will ohey, And thare mys amende, With hym shall haue hlys on hy, And won ther withoutten ende. 2 Thus what in the York cycle appears to he a dual thrust of union and knowledge hy obedience and hattle becomes in the Wakefield revisions a simplified synthesis of knowledge, union, and enjoyment at the price of ransom. The revisers in hoth cycles seem in their own ways to have sharpened the theology they inherited from the original plays. At least the plays common to hoth cycles, apparently early and retained 6l"Thomas of India," 11. 102-115- (Cp "Ascension," 11. 286-93* 306 without change, are still more devotional at the expense of the intel lectual in their theological formulations. In the harrowing of hell liberation and peace are suggested only in the most general terms: Now is the tyme certan My fader ordand her for, That thay shuld pas fro payn, In blys to dwell for euermore. And my folke that were most fre shall pas vnto the place of peasse. • • # • • • And thay that, lyst to lere my law, and lyf therby, Shall neuer haue harmse here, bot welth as is worthy. Com now furth, my childer all, I forgyf you youre mys; With me now go ye shall , to loy and endles blys. ^ Moses and Isaiah share the closing speech of thanksgiving without fur ther detailing the nature of their joy: Make myrth both more and les, and loue oure lord we may, That has broght vs from bytternes In blys to abyde for ay.°^ The few references in the early resurrection are contained in a conventional address to the audience by Christ on the meaning of the Corpus Christi celebration: Sen I for luf, man, boght the dere, As thou thi self the sothe sees here, I pray the harbely, with good chere, luf me agane; • • • • • ' • lo how I hold myn armes on brede, "The Deliverance of Souls," 11. 2b-l-hk, 309“310, 3^-1“k2, 363-66. ^Ibid., 11. 397-^00. The to saue ay redy mayde; That I great luf ay to the had, well may thou knawJ Som luf agane I wold full fayn Thou wold me shaw. Bot luf noght els aske I of the, And that thou fownde fast syn to fie; pyne the to lyf in charyte Both nyght and day; Then in my hlys that neuer shall mys Thou shall dwell ay. The literal use of "bihlical sources and the Gospel of Nicode- mus in these pivotal plays of the cycles makes their retention hy the revisers of hoth cycles particularly interesting. Even if an aura of tradition made them sacrosanct, the revisers had no hesitation in shaping their own interpretations in the revision surrounding the plays. Perhaps, therefore, these kernel plays constituted their in spiration in their openness to varying interpretations. The so-called Ludus Coventriae, in a manuscript of 1^68 which cannot he definitely attached to any one town, presents in addition to its critical enigmas, some unusual features of subject matter and theology. The cycle is unique among the English plays in its inclu sion not only of a conception and betrothal of Mary hut of a trial of Joseph and Mary; in a variation of the procession of prophets alter nating speeches hy kings with those hy prophets; in the inclusion of the process in heaven (placed a trifle awkwardly after the long line of prophecies would render inexplicable any decision not to use Christ as a redeemer); and in the fairly extensive use of allegorical figures (Mary's handmaids and the character of Mors, who comes for ^"The Resurrection of the Lord," 11. 292-321. 308 King Herod). All of these elements have closer affiliations with the continental tradition than with the English. A somewhat greater the ological interest may be noted in the scholarly vein of Jesus' child hood dispute with the doctors, not to mention Mary's pretty lisping of psalms at her own childhood visit to the temple, and in the de tailed discussion of penance in John the Baptist's sermon. A unique fsature in the production of the plays is the use of stationary, mul tiple staging at least in the portions of the play that underlie the finished cycle.. t In general the English playwrights have not attempted sensu ous effects in their creation scenes. The Ludus Coventriae "Creation of Heaven and the Angels" is no exception, but the playwright suc ceeds admirably in making the worship and service of God sound worth the effort: Ffyrst I make hevyn with sterrys of lyth In myrth and joy euermore to wake In hevyn I bylde Angell fful bryth my servauntys to be and for my sake with merth and melody worchepe my myth I belde them in my blysse Aungell in hevyn evyr more xal be In lyth ful clere bryth as ble With myrth and song to worchip me Of joye thei may not mys. ° And although God's desire for continued adoration motivates the crea tion of man— .Loke that ye not ses "Creation of Heaven and the Angels," Ludus Coventriae, or, The Flaie Called Corpus Christi, Cotton MS Vespasian D« VIII, ed. K. S. Block ("Early English Text Society,*1 Exbra Ser., Vol. CXX; London: Oxford, 1922), 11. 30-3 9. 309 yowre ffrute to encres that ther may "be pres me worchipe for to do— this, too, is pleasurable: All thynge saff this [the apple, of course] ffor the is wrought here is all thinge that the xulde plese All redy made on to thin e s e . 8 A further suggestion of peace is worked in "by an awkward discussion of the sabbath rest: My wey to hefne is redy sowth of werkyng I wole the vijte day rest And all my creaturys that be a-bowth my blyssyng ye have both Est and west of werkyng the vijte day ye sees and alltho that sees of laboryng here the vijte day with-outyn dwere and wurchyp me in good manere c thei xal in hefne haue endles pes. ? Very early in the cycle the playwright introduces the theme of redemption. The seraphim driving Adam and Eve from paradise rebuke 70 them, to be sure ("ye wrecchis vnkend and ryht vnwyse"), but they offer distant hope as well: This blysse I spere ffrom yow ryth fast here-in come ye no more Tyl a chylde of a mayd be bom and vpon the rode rent and torn to saue all that ye haue forlorn your welth for to restore. The playwright allows his particular theory of redemption to unwind through his procession of prophets. Isaiah not only foretells that a ^"Creation of the World and of Man," 11. 109-112. 68Ibid., 1 1. 121-2 3. 69Ibid., 1 1. 130-3 8. T°"Fall of Man," 1. 365. 71Ibld., 11. 372-77* 310 virgin will conceive a son, "but that Oure lyf for to saue he xal suffyr deth and hye us to his blysse in hevyn for to dwell.72 The Radix Jesse concludes his speech, A flowre xal blome of me jesse rote The which hy grace xal dystroye deth and brynge mankende to blysse most sote.^3 Micah's speech contains a finely dramatic antithesis to reflect the importance of the Marian cult in this cycle: Evyn lyke as Eve modyr of wo was So xal a maydyn be modyr of blyss. And the prophet Obadiah adds the popular hope of paradise regained: Deth xal be drevyn to endles dampnacion And lyff xal be grawntyd of paradys ful pleyn.^ 5 The brief "Contemplacio" which precedes the "Parliament in Heaven" closes with an appropriately connecting link, man as the in tended substitute for fallen angels: The Aungel lord thou made so gloryous whos synne hath mad hym a devyl in helle he mevyd man to be so contraryous man repentyd and he in his obstynacye doth dwelle Hese grete males good lord repelle And take man on to thi grace lete thi mercy make hym with Aungelys dwelle , of locyfere to restore the place. The allegorical daughters of God dispute their cases before the Fa- ^"Prophets," 11. 11-12. Cf. Jeremiah's speech, 11. 37-38. T3Tbid., 11. 20-22. ^Ibid., 11. 53-51 * - ; cf. 11. 6k-66. ^ Ibid., 11. 77-7 8. f^'The Parliament of Heaven," 11. ^1- 78. 311 ther; the trial takes a rough and ready course to its inevitable con clusion without further reference to the purpose for which it was called. In its careless construction and lack of stylistic finish, it is a poor imitation of the sophisticated French processus. Coming as it does between "The Betrothal of Mary" and "The Salutation and Con ception," it illustrates the difficulties faced by an English composer in adapting the magnificent but complex spectacles of the continental theatre to a different means of production. The playwright makes full use of the few devices at his dis posal. The repetitions of his themes appear in almost every situa tion. In the nativity scene he reviews both the end and the means of redemption. The speech in which he does so is hardly graceful; but in the alliterative bumbling of the shepherd, he may have been at tempting a rustic characterization: Heyl god grettest I grete the on grownde the gredy devyl xal grone grysly as a gryse whan thou wynnyst this worlde with thi wyde wounde and puttyst man to paradys with plenty of prys to loue the is my delyte.'' The sermon of John the Baptist picks up the repetition. This time he re-echoes the purpose of creation and combines the worthiness of the goal with an effective note of pleasure, splashed with authorita tive Latin: If that ye for-sak synne hevyn blysse xall ye Wynne Drede ye not the devyllys gynne with Angellys xall yow dwell. ^"Adoration of the Shepherds," 11. 9^-98. 312 ffor your trespas penaunce do ye and ye xall wyn hevyn del deorum In hevyn lyse ye xall wyn to he Among the hlyssyd company omnium supernorum ther as is all merth joye and glee Inter agmina angelorum In hlyse to a-byde.fS Even during the temptation scenes the playwright does not permit himself to he distracted hy the possibilities of the obedience theme. Rather he inserts considerable didactic stuffing which yet manages to reas sert his themes of angelic replacement and ransom. His moral applica tion of the first temptation is typical: Nott only be bred mannys lyff yitt stood but in the worde of god as I the say Thi body doth loue materal brede Wlth-oute the wurde of god thi soule is but dede to loue prechynge therfore I rede If thou wylt duellyn in blysse a - b o v e . ^ 9 It is an application apparently lost on Satan, for he proceeds without comment on it. Dissatisfied, perhaps, with this lack of response, Christ enforces his moral more pointedly at the end of the play: To Suffyr temptacion it is grett peyn If thou with-stonde it thou wynnyst grett mede • • • • • • Ffor god hath the yovyn both myght and mayn hym for to with-sytt evyr at nede thou hast more myght than he Whan the devyl doth tempte the, thoo Shewe thi myght ayens thi ffoo whan thi sowle partyth the froo in blysse than xal it be.°^ John the Baptist," 11. 10-22; cf. 11. 163-69. T9"The Temptation," 11. 91-10k. 8°Ibid., 11. 209-221. 313 The didactic ornamentation continues into the triumphal entry. Jesus speaks of his mission just before this definitive entry upon his pas sion: Ffrendys be-holde the tyme of mercy The whiche is come now with-owt dowth mannys sowle in blys now xal edyfy and the prynce of the werd is cast owth.°-*- A unique feature of the scene is the procession of disciples in Jesus' train assisting in the preaching during the entry. Peter thus inter prets the two great commandments: Ffyrst is to love god Above all other plesawns the secunde is to love thi neybore as thin owyn persone and yf these tweyn be kepte in perseverawns Into the celestyal habytacion ye Am habyl to gone. " ' ' It might be expected that a dramtist so incurably didactic would at tempt a fuller interpretation of the saying which brings Pilate's famous question, "What is truth?" in reply. The playwright's version removes all enigma from Jesus' words: In hefne is knowyn my faderys intent And in this we ride I was bom be my fadyr I was hedyr sent for to seke that was for-lorn. Alle that me heryn And in me belevyn And kepyn here feyth stedfastly thow thei weryn dede I xal them recuryn and xal them bryng to blysse e n d l e s l y . 8 3 Indeed, such an interpretation renders Pilate's question unnecessary, ^"Council of the Jews," 11. 179"82. 82Ibid., 11. 2k2-k5. 83"The Trial before Pilate," 11. 273“80. 31^ and, totally convinced, he declares his faith in Christ's divinity and righteousness. In the "Crucifixion" in reply to Mary's swooning lamen tations and as an appendix to her committal into John's keeping, Jesus reminds her of his purpose for humanity: And woman thou knowyst that my fadyr of hefne me sent to take this manhod of the Adam ys rawnsom to pay Ffor this is the wyl and my faderys intent that I xal thus dye to delyuere man fro the develys pray. And for to suffre A1 this for man I was horn of the to the blys that man had lost man A-gen to restore.8^ John, as he attempts the Virgin's comfort reviews the doctrine of re demption in the light of its purpose in creation: A blyssyd lady as I yow telle had he not deyd we xuld to helle Amonges ffendys ther evyr to dwelle In peynes that hen smert he sufferyth deth for oure trespace and thorwe his deth we xal haue grace to dwelle with hym in hevyn place therfore beth mery in hert. Mary quite naturally refuses the authority of this well-meant reasoning: A dere ffrende weel woot I this that he doth bye us to his blys but yitt of myrfch evyr mor I mys whan I se this syght.85 This touch of human insight renders the playwright tolerable again, and the reader presses on to an unusual reward. The scene of liberation is prefaced by the resurrection of ^■"Crucifixion," 11. 826-33* 85Ibid., 11. 923-31 * - . 315 Christ's soul; it is the Anima Christi that makes the descent into hell: Now all mankende in herte he glad with all merthis that may he had ffor mannys sowle that was he-stad in the logge of helle. now xal I ryse to lyve agayn from peyn to pleys of paradyse pleyn therfore man in hert he fayn in merthe now xalt thou dwelle. • • • • • • now wole I go streyth to helle and feche from the fendys felle all my frendys that ther-in dwelle „ , to hlysse that lestyth Ay. With some exercise of dramatic irony the playwright inserts the set ting of the watch before the actual liberation. The audience can have the expectant pleasure of watching Pilate and his guards taking pre cautions and boasting of them, knowing that not even hell will he sealed against their hero. Christ simply bids the souls of the patriarchs, Come forthe Adam and Eue with the And all my fryndys that here-in he to paradys come forthe with me In hlysse for to dwelle Ffro wo to welthe now xul ye go With myrthe evyr more to melle.°7 The souls each reply with courteous thanks in which they repeat Christ's phrases, emphasizing the overtones of enjoyment: "in hlysful place/ In joye and endeles myrthe," "now with the lord we xul levyn," "and fyndyn rayrthis many on/ In play of paradyse."00 The playwright then prefaces his resurrection scene with the 86"The Descent into Hell," 11. 971-78, 990-93- 8TIhid., 11. 13^-51. 88Ihid., 11. 1352-75. 316 "brave stage direction, "Tunc transiet anima Christi ad resuscitandum corpus quo resuscitato dicat Jhesus," Ffor mannys loue I tholyd dede and for mannys loue I am rysyn up rede ffor man I haue mad my "body in brede his sowle for to fede Man and thou lete me thus gone and wylt not folwyn me a-none such a frend fyndyst thou nevyr none to help the at thi n e d e . ^ 9 The playwright transfers the kernel of the John 1^4 discourse to the scene with the Magdalene: Say to my bretheryn that I intende to stay to my fadyr and to yowre to oure lord both god and frende I wyl Ascende to hevyn towre. In hevyn to ordeyn yow A place to my ffadyr now wyl I go to merth and joye and grett solace And endeles blys to brynge yow to Ffor man I sufferyd both schame and wo more spybeful deth nevyr man dyd take yit wyl I ordeyn ffor all this lo In hevyn an halle for mannys sake.9^ Thus it must be admitted that, for all his wanderings down moralistic byways, the Ludus Coventriae playwright has a single-minded theological point to make. He supports a doctrine of ransom for an end of worship, and now and then he injects some delight into the concept despite his generally pedestrian, inflated verse. The critical interest given the English plays ~py their rather full production records make possible the sorbing out of particular theological notions as they enter the cycles; the fascination of the ^"Resurrection," 11. 1^24-31* 9°"The Appearance to Mary Magdalen," 11. k6-57• process should not he allowed to ohscure the fact that the ultimate effect was that of synthesis. If the earlier plays of the York and Wakefield cycles combined redemption hy obedience with the end of re uniting man with God in the worship among the heavenly hosts for which he was originally created, the later revisions emphasized notions of ransom, knowledge, and enjoyment. These later additions so thoroughly intermingled with the earlier plays that the individual strands could not have been apparent to an audience. Thus the York-Wakefield plays must have had very much the same thrust in practice that the more ec lectic taste of the Ludus Coventriae composer intended to produce. Actually, therefore, the only relatively unified effects were produced by the early Chester cycle, which combined the redemptive doctrine of ransom somewhat unexpectedly with that of reunion and restoration, and by the late Eger Fronleichnamsspiel in its very carefully worked out exposition of Christ's obedience reuniting man in the service of God. The study of the cycles completes the review of medieval dramatic development. It will now be possible to coordinate the doc trinal development with the dramatic and to attempt an assessment of their mutual influence. CONCLUSION The end of man— his worth, the purpose in his creation, and his final destiny— has occupied Christian thought without becoming either a dogma or a source of controversy. The untrammeled doctrinal treatment and continuing appeal of the theme thus make it a useful means of studying the theological awareness of the medieval play wrights. That they were capable of picking up varying ideas to work into their dramatic structures is the more significant because the subordinate, supporting character of these notions in the doctrinal treatises requires something more than superficial attention. If most of the composers of medieval mysteries sensed that displays of theol ogical erudition would weaken the dramatic impact of their produc tions, still their expansions and variations of their biblical sources; can only be explained by their doctrinal sensitivity. The variety j i displayed by the playwrights in the solution of their dramatic prob- ! lems suggests, moreover, that their use of theological materials can- j not be interpreted as mere conformity to tradition. The doctrinal development of the majority of the biblical plays' becomes even more apparent when they are contrasted with the minority i of plays— less than a dozen of the sixty dramas studied— that retain j a relatively unadorned approach to their biblical sources. The j I ] thirteenth-century Trois Maries and Seinte Resureccion, the Innsbruck j i Osterspiel, the St. Gall Ascension play, the Erlau Christmas plays, j 318 319 the brief Benediktbeuern passion, the Digby Conversion of Paul, and the Innsbruck Fronleichnamsspiel have few theological referencesj yet there is nothing in such plays to contradict or detract from the fuller impressions of the remaining plays. The theme of human dignity constitutes the outstanding agree- j | ment between theologians, and dramatists. If the enthusiasm of Ficinoj and Pico della Mirandola is now generally recognized as reflecting j not merely a characteristic Renaissance awareness but a traditional, medieval viewpoint with origins in the early Church, the extent of I this tradition in both theology and drama remains impressive. The universal emphasis of the mystics on the value of man as a being capable of deification or of uniting with God contributed to ■ ! the respect for human worth which characterizes the period; even the scholastics who could not without embarrassment accept the full impli-; cations of mystical doctrine could agree on the value of man as a j creation of God in His own image. From Tertullian and Lactantius on, j j I the doctrine was so thoroughly agreed upon that it became the founda- ! tion from which other doctrines could be developed. The specific references to human worth in the plays are numer- : ous and precise. The creation scene of the Passion de Semur is partic ularly full in this respect. Grdban allegorizes man's upright bear- j ing; nearly all the other playwrights emphasize the idea of man as God's image, occasionally anthropormorphically. Generally, however, ; I they see the reason and the will as the seats of the likeness, in the I I Augustinian tradition. The worth is emphasized, as the writers of the| Vienna Osterspiel and Passion d'Arras agree, by God's own assumption j 320 of man's nature; this act of mercy not only reinforces the justice of I man's estimate of himself hut hy participation further increases it. j The plays tend to make more of the hihlical reference to man's dominion j over nature than the theologians find necessary. This may spring from j the dramatists' bondage to the text at spots theologians could skip over if their preoccupations warranted. The playwrights have an advantage over the theologians in j i their capacity for enhancing a doctrine hy action and suggestion as i well as hy specific reference. The creation plays in particular stress Adam's enjoyment of his surroundings and his wonder at his own comeliness. Here they seem to have taken up Bonaventura's naive praise of the supreme elegance of the human hody. The luxurious staging of the paradise scenes made its contribution to the impression of enjoyment for which man was intended. Additional doctrinal detail | was achieved hy Immessen in his detailed discussion of the Augustinian view of freedom. Pleasure in the created world occasionally appears | elsewhere, as in the graceful praise of the Dublin Abraham. j In addition the playwrights have made use of doctrines of re- j demption to reinforce their notions of human worth. This use has ac counted for the frequent references to notions of ransom, triumph, liberation, trickery, and propitiation even though the varieties of ; t medieval soteriology have been outside the theological scope of this | discussion. Humanity is important because of God's concern for re trieving it even though the original clarity of His image has been j marred. This emphasis upon the value of Christ's death for humankind i I may appear in plays like the Trier Osterspiel without other specific j 321 | references to man's end. Thus the plaints of the Maries in the Easter | I plays express contrition for the sin which caused such a sacrifice; thej crucifixion scenes of the passion plays have this emphasis. The j Grahlegungsspiel and the Good Friday plays of the German passions gen- j erally emphasize this theme alone. The pleas from the dying Christ, asj in the Wakefield play or the Breton passion, for love in return for his I recognition of human worth reinforce the notion. Often the only j i theological cast given the Christmas plays appears in the recognition of the coming sacrifice hy the worshipers about the creche. In other j instances, as in the Ste. Genevieve Nativite, the incarnation is in itself an expression of God's confidence in humanity. The value of redemption for mankind becomes the theme whenever the harrowing of hell is handled climactically. Wo doubt the theological emphasis is often no more than a by-product of the playwright's efforts at dramatic de velopment, but the emphasis is there all the same. Humanity is worth enough to Christ that he does battle for it. Further, the attention i to detail surrounding the climax such as that given by the Redentin i playwright cannot be merely dramatic; clearly he is consciously em phasizing a doctrine of humanity worth liberating. The totality of this kind of emphasis is therefore impressive. i It is in the treatment of man's final destiny that theologians ; and playwrights differ most in their treatment. Agreeing on the value j 1 j of humanity as a creation of God, the theologians nevertheless have I for the most part maintained separate viewpoints on the final destiny j of the human creation. Their occasional efforts at synthesis have been tentative: the balance of one gifted thinker would be lost by ; 322 his successors, or the appearance of synthesis would he achieved hy i ignoring contradicting elements implicit in the varying views making l J up the complex. Doctrinal thought has followed two main streams, union and knowledge, with additional tributaries from early notions of enjoyment, worship, and service; these have flowed together only i occasionally. The dramatic treatments, on the other hand— once they have expressed almost universal agreement on Anselm's doctrine of the ; creation of man as a replacement for the fallen angels— have mingled the notions, often unconsciously, to create continuing impressions of synthesis. Tertullian and Lactantius were responsible for a doctrine of eternal worship and service which received more emphasis in the plays than in the medieval theological writings. The creation of man as a spectator of God's works and ways obligates him not only to fear God ; but to love his fellow men as brethren sharing his worth as created beings. The fulfilment of these obligations entitles man to immor tality, since the reward of virtue is happiness and happiness is not truly so unless it is unending. This eternal happiness consists of i . worship and service in God's presence and in the company of other | virtuous immortals. The dramatic continuity of this notion is surprising and may indicate an area for further research; the theological popularizers of the period may have found, this notion more attractive than the more complex doctrines of mysticism and scholasticism. Perhaps the drama tists themselves found the adaptability of the idea to a feudal soci- j ety reason enough for its adoption and repetition. Although the flench■ 323 plays have overlaid it with other elements, the notion is particularly enduring in the German passions. It constitutes the theme of the Donaueschingen and Frankfurt passions and of the Eger Fronleich- namsspiel. The Heidelberg passion also has specific references to obedience, rewarded by ultimate rule. The English references to "building" and "edifying" seem to reflect this notion, although in the Chester and York cycles it is subordinated to other themes. In the Ludus Coventriae cycle the playwright combines motifs of worship with images of light and mirth "in play of paradise" and thereby becomes more nearly Augustinian. In the Viel Testament "Creation" and in most of the English creation scenes, the actual scenes of angelic worship exemplify the notion, even when it is merely an element among other themes. Much of the appearance of synthesis in the plays, even in those as late as the latter half of the fifteenth century, may result from a continued dependence on Augustine and the early church fathers, reinforced as they were by an occasional, but generally influential, medieval figure. Augustine's ideas were foreshadowed in the earliest of the fathers. Clement of Rome's "goal of peace" is reinforced among the Apostolic Fathers by Hermas' final city, where Christians, unmo lested, may render their joybul obedience to their Creator. Justin Martyr adds the notion of communion with God as an essential ingredient of eternal bliss. As a byproduct of his classical argument for immor tality Athenagoras mentions the unceasing delight of the soul in the contemplation of God which Christians experience as their end. The supreme development of the idea of enjoyment is of course 32^ that of Augustine. God created man solely for His own enjoyment; man's happiness in the same way finds its fruition in the enjoyment of : God and of one another in God— the peace of the celestial city, con- ! sisting of the endless vision of God, His uncloyed.love, and His un wearied praise. - | Among the medieval thinkers Anselm of Canterbury follows the i i idea rather closely, using man's end in loving God as an indication of j both man's likeness to God and his immortality. Like Augustine, | Anselm does not exclude knowledge from his concept, but the emphasis is on the fulfilment of desire, found in praise in both this and the afterlife by the return of love. Abelard continues this synthetic striving. His concept of the beatific vision seems to presuppose intellectual comprehension in some degree, but Abelard's longing emphasis at the close of a stormy life is on holiness, repose, and peace— the ingredients of the enjoyment of God. The frequent appearances of Augustine as an interpreter in i the plays, witnessing as they do to the respect in which he was held, indicate the strong influence of the Augustinian synthesis on the I drama. The notions of enjoyment and peace in the presence of God constitute the thrust of a variety of plays: the Sponsus, the Palatinus, Proven£al, and Breton passions, the Innsbruck and Redentin j i Easter plays, the Chester cycle, very generally and superficially in ! ! the light-hearted Erlau plays, the Chantilly Nativite'and Trois Rois, " the Christmas and resurrection plays of the Ste. Genevieve manuscript I (although the passion of the same manuscript seems to belong to the 1 i later kind of synthesis), the Passion d'Autun, the Sundenfall, the I 325 j Passion de Semur, the Cornish plays, and perhaps the Grahlegungsspiel. j The Christmas plays are particularly interesting in their referral of the angelic "peace on earth" to the peace of eternal life. The dramatic references are simplified, popularized, and affec- i tive. Typical are phrases referring to Christ's hirth or death for the purpose of "bestowing "ewyge freude ... in dem ewyge lehen," "dar umbs das er uns selig macht," "dy vroyde nymant can geachte noch vol denken noch trachten," paradise where we shall live with Him in | eternity "en joie, en plaisir, en liesse," "la parfaite joie," "avec les anges en feste, en joye, et en louanges." The playwrights show j considerable skill in conveying the atmosphere of enjoyment apart from j specific references. Adam's rejoicings in his surroundings are often persuasively lyrical, as in the St. Genevieve Resurrection. Augustine's notion of salvation as eternal healing and whole ness appears with some frequency. The German and English plays in par-: ticular have references to Christ as "unser Heil" in a context of heal-! ing, and the Digby plays express trust in Christ as "medsin" for human ; sickness. Echoes of the two ways, the two cities, appear from time to : time. The St. Gall Weihnachtspiel refers to Christ's birth for restor-; ing humanity to "sin alte gewonhait." j The Augustinian synthesis often persists as an undercurrent in j I plays that show other themes. The peace of heaven is a component of j | the early plays in the Ludus Coventriae, of the Viel Testament j I "Creation," of the Rouen Incarnation et nativity, and of the Jour de j Jugement. The consciously Thomist passion of Grdban has perhaps the j i loveliest echo of Augustine's "peace will be there" in his "Paix soit 326 | toute vostre possesse,/ paix soit toute vostre richesse." In Michel j S the "lieu de paix" is awarded humanity in recognition of Christ1s obe- J dience. On the whole, the preference for Augustine and the other early! church fathers may indicate a generally conservative quality in the ! playwrights. j i There are, however, some notable exceptions. Not only do the ! j Greban and Michel passions overlay the Augustinian heritage with the j j trappings and thought of scholasticism, but even earlier examples of scholastic influence exist. "Let us see him with our mind" urged Clement of Rome, and it was his rhetorical enthusiasm that coined the richly evocative phrase "immortal knowledge." As one of the first medieval sententiae com posers, Anselmus of Laon. concentrated on the idea of knowledge and failed to maintain the synthetic approach of his Augustinian master, Anselm of Canterbury. Nor was Abelard's student, Robert of Melvin, able to retain his master's synthetic grasp of the beatific vision. j i The soul's joy will be the intellectual vision of God according to ! its capacity. Again, Peter Lombard defines the saints' beatitude as | varying degrees of knowledge,, and understanding of how God in the Trinity can be three in one. Bonaventura reflects a scholastic ap proach even in his devotional works. His use of a debate among the Daughters of God provided ^ater playwrights with a framework for their i attempts at reflecting the scholastic viewpoint. Albertus Magnus and i Thomas Aquinas represent the full development of the emphasis. Their j own joy in understanding suggests for them that the enjoyment of know- j ledge is the only joy heaven requires. If Roger Bacon locates the 327 j eternal enjoyment of the goodness of God in the will rather than the understanding, he still conceives eternal hliss as primarily an in- j tellectual process. \ i Although it would he contrary to the nature of the respective i techniques to expect the rigid formulations of the medieval lecture j I hall to he quoted in the drama, the concept of end as knowledge appears! more often than the popular nature of the drama would lead one to ex- | pect. The dramatists add to their specific references the use of de- ! vices of dehate in scenes of argument and trial with which their own academic experiences have made them familiar. The Anglo-Norman Adam reflects an early agreement with the end of man as knowledge. Scho- ! lastic notions occasionally turn up in unexpected contexts. Thus hoth the fourteenth century Jour du Jugement and the late Digby Mary Magdalene casually use the Aristotelian argument that all men desire the same end. j Distinctly scholastic elements are reflected in the Passion j j d'Arras. Joy is the product of the contemplation of God's glory; the j accompaniment of aureoles and crowns is in the hest manner of the ! summists. One of the Wakefield revisers seems to refer to the cogni- ; tive aspect of the "beatific vision when he places the disciples' know ledge of the Trinity in their future life, whereas the tense of the | Biblical text is in the present. Greban, proud of his summa reading, j makes a point of emphasizing the contemplation by the blessed of "la j divine essence dont le voir tout bon cueur esjoy." Even Mary Magdalene j i expresses her hope: "que je face sa haulte volontd benigne, et la j i I vraye essence divine.'.' Michel follows Greban's lead here as elsewhere, j 328 ! I His own theological training indicates that his agreement was not j | merely mechanical. At least his statements appear independently in ; settings Grdban did not use for theological interpretation. Examples j would he his prologue reference to the angels, "leur intellection si ravie en dilection" in the presence of God, and his reference to the varying capacities of individuals to comprehend the vision. "Mein j schoepfer vor augen han" in the Eger Fronleichnamsspiel may include an: element of intellection, hut Adam's response once more returns to the i familiar "ewig friedt." If the technical use of terms like essence j and participation in the late French passions creates a strongly scholastic impression, the element is imposed upon an earlier, Augustinian heritage. The notion never appears in its simple state. Some of the curiosities of scholasticism also make their way into the plays. The Jour du Jugement at least reflects the notion that the vision of the damned constitutes a part of the eternal beatitude of the hlessed as they contemplate God's justice. j It would appear, then, that while in the drama synthesis is the rule, in the theology it is the exception. Although Ahelard rep- ; resents a pivotal point in adding the intellection of God and the en- ; joyment of that knowledge to the Augustinian concepts of repose and contemplation, he has few followers. Alexander of Hales finds such j J enjoyment in the intellection that he too often gives the impression j of synthesis without actually emhracing more than the enjoyment of an j i intellectual vision. William of Occam, as a late scholastic, almost | t denies his heritage as he uses scholastic tools to retreat from know- j ledge to faith and an earlier concept of the enjoyment of God. 329 j Marsilius of Padua seems to regard participation in eternal happiness j I as primarily enjoyment; and, using different approaches, Raymond of Sehonde arrives at a more detailed presentation of the same conclusion. The communication of God's goodness to man in its consummation will ! inspire the soul's eternal and loving surrender to Him. A final fif- j teenth-century attempt at synthesis appears in Savonarola. Enjoyment j of God follows upon the essential vision and knowledge of Him in His j glory. This combination of enjoyment and knowledge in the immediate ' presence of God constitutes— in an extremely loose sense— a union with j i Him.. Savonarola here enunciates what most of the later drama con veyed, although the dramatists arrived at their syntheses independent ly. In the Ste. Genevieve passion, as in those of Greban and Michel, the smoothness and facility with which scholastic ideas are superim posed on notions inherited from the early fathers indicates a conscious process. In the York-Wakefield cycles, even though the late revisers sometimes rewrite single plays to align the purposes expressed in i creation scenes with those of the redemption plays, the actual revision! is a product of the dividing or combining of plays necessary to satisfy; the requirements of the guilds and their resources. In the Sterzing, Alsfeld, and Heidelberg passions, as in the’late Passion de Semur, the synthesis appears fortuitous, the result of accretion. The Passion de j j Semur, however, is an unusually effective illustration of the force of ! the dramatic synthesis; if the creation scenes introduce technical ; i scholastic notions, they are balanced by notably lyrical expressions ! of the enjoyment of creation in this world and the next. 330 j j Even those theologians capable of incorporating scholastic | j ideas into a synthetic Augustinian heritage could not fully realize the mystical aspects of deification and union. It is not surprising, j therefore, that the drama failed almost entirely to follow the doctrinej j of human purpose as union with God. This venerable tradition never- j theless had a continuing vitality throughout the medieval period. The ; modification of the original notions of deification as imitation lead- j ing to immortality had a patristic lineage from Theophilus of Antioch, Hippolyhus, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Boethius, and 1 a wide following among the Eastern fathers. In its final expression by John Damascene the notion of deification became so like the Augustinian vision— consisting simply of seeing God in His glory, deriving joy from the sight, and giving eternal praise in return— that ! some of the more general dramatic references could reflect the medieval! popularity of this last of the Eastern fathers. The idea of deification was paralleled and eventually replaced j i by notions of union with God. They were popularized by Pseudo- ! Dionysius, John Scotus Erigena, and Bernard of Clairvaux with his followers, and enthusiastically revived by Meister Eckhart, Ruysbroeck,; and their more practical disciples. In its extreme forms union with God involved so close an assimilation to God that the soul lost all j awareness of itself as an entity and gained its being only from being j in God, "noughted and lost in God." The humanist Pico della Mirandola : I in his fascinated exploration of every religious thought-stream found j himself drawn at last to a mysticism which, whatever its source, found i I union with God as its goal, a goal which man's created capacity for j 33i ; unlimited growth made possible. Both the ideas of deification and j union were the only dynamic aspects of human end in the medieval theo- i logy. The possibilities for eternal growth of a soul in continually | i approaching Godlikeness or the feeling for the continuity of eternal life with this life in the loving communication between the soul and God were unique contributions from the mystical stream of thought which; even Augustine and the later synthesizers failed fully to appreciate. j The absence of these elements in the drama accounts for the static quality of most of the dramatic notions of end. The Christian who attended mass, did penance, and gave alms would achieve the reward of heaven, the eternal enjoyment of service, rest, peace, knowledge in the presence of God. There are some possible exceptions. The choice : of "Go ye out to meet Him," with the reference to virtuous contempla tion, in the Thuringina Zehn Jungfrauenspiel reflects somewhat the allegorizing approach of the mystics and utilizes one of their favorite! texts to do so. The severely literal Sponsus by its contrast tends to i verify the suggestion of influence. Occasional references to the bright clarity of heaven in God's presence, as in the Redentin Easter j play, may be popularized uses of the mystical analogies of union as air illumined in sunlight and the like. ' In another respect the dramatists had much in common with the i mystics. Whether they were imbibing the atmosphere of mystical teach- j i ing without utilizing its specific reference or whether their develop- ; j ing skill as dramatists was directing them to the religious use of j dramatic experience is not clear. There are a few plays— the St. Gall ; I passion, the Vienna passion, the Augsburg passion, the Rheinauer 332 Welt gerichtspiel, and the Donaueschingen and Frankfurt passions— that j by the absence of other synthetic elements* by their generalized ref- : erences to presence with God as the end of life* and by their repeated! t emphasis on vicarious experience give the impression that their play- j I wrights were more nearly under mystical influence than was usually the; case. The early plays in the York-Wakefield cycles also had general- ' lized references to presence with God coupled to the notion of repent-; ! ance as obedience which in that chapter were referred to loosely as notions of union* more* however to distinguish, them from the later scholastic plays than to indicate an actual mystic influence. They might as easily have been true Abelardian reflections of redemption as obedience and end as beatific vision; again* they might also have re- ; fleeted the generalized devotion of a Bernard. In any case* their growing skill at eliciting empathy from their audiences led the dramatists to discover the value of vicarious ! experience as an emotional outlet if not an expression of devotion. j t Increasingly they came to insist upon this experience* even to beg i their audiences to enter into it. The pleas in the St. Gall and other! German passions* in the late English cycles* and in the fully devel oped French passions illustrate the tendency. That they succeeded is indicated by the Breton proverb* "The crowds came singing and departed! weeping." Thus the plays themselves* if they were not inspired by thej I mystic striving for direct experience of God* at least indicate a j similar need for devotional experience of a highly emotional order. j j Thus* almost unconsciously* the playwrights seem to have syn- i j thesized more readily than the theologians in their approach to the | 333 dignity and eternal end of man. The enjoyment of God in eternal peace is not without praise and service. The service is not without know ledge. If notions of imitation and union do not appear as specific references,, the dramatists at least approach the mystics in their creation of a mood and in their striving for direct experience. They thus convey an impression of doctrinal wholeness not often given hy the theologians themselves. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY I. THEOLOGICAL TEXTS Abelard, Peter. "Dialogus inter philosophum, Judaeum, et Christianum: Dialogue entre u x l philosophe, un juif, et un chretien," in Oeuvres choisies d'Abelard; textes presentes et trad, par Maurice de Gandillac. ("Bibliotheque philosophique.") Paris: Aubier, 19^5* Pp. 213-330. Aelred de Rievaulx. [De institutione inclusarum.] La vie de recluse, La priere pastorale; texte latin, introd., trad., et notes par Charles Dumont. ("Sources chretiennes," No. 76.) Paris: Editions du Cerf, 196l. 215 PP» Albertus, Magnus. Opera omnia. T. VII: Ethicorum libri X. Ed. August Borgnet, Paris: Louis Vives, 1 8 9 1. 69O pp. --------. Quaestiones de bono (Summa de bono q. 1-10.) Ed. Henricus Kuhle. ("Florilegium patristicum tam veteris quam medii aevi auctores complectens," Fasc. XXXVI.) Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1933. 53 PP- Opera omnia. T. XXV-XXX: Sententiae. Ed. August Borgnet. Paris: Louis Vives, l893-9^. 6 vols. --------. Opera omnia. T. XXXI-XXXII: Suramae Theologiae. Ed. Stephen Borgnet. 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Libellus Pro christianis; Oratio De resurrectione cadeverum, recensuit Eduardus Schwartz. ("Texte und Unter- suchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur," Bd. i j - , Hft. 2.) Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1 8 9 1. 1^3 PP» --------. "On the Resurrection," tr. B. P. Pratten, in The Ante- Nicene Fathers. New York: Scribner, 1926. II, lk9~62. Augustine. Confessions: Texte etabli et trad. Pierre de Labriolle. Paris: Societe d 1 edition "Les belles lettres," lyhk-kj. 2 vols. ■ ..... --------. Confessions and Enchiridion. Trans. Albert C. Outler. ("Library of Christian Classics," Vol. VII.) London: SCM Press, 1955. ^23 pp. --------. De beata vita liber. Ed. Michael Schmaus. ("Florilegium patristicum tam veteris quam medii aevi auctores complectens," Fasc. XXVII.) Bonnae: P. Hanstein, 1931* 23 pp. --------. De beata vits. Trans. Ruth Allison Brown. ("Catholic University of America: Patristic Studies," Vol. LXXII.) Washington, D.C. : Catholic University of America, 19^. 193 PP- --------. De catachizandis rudibus. 3* durchgesehene aufl. der 2. ausg. von Gustav Kruger. ("Sammlung ausgewahlter kirchen-und dogmengeschichtlicher Quellenschriften," Heft U.) Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 193^. 76 pp. --------. The First Catechetical Instruction (De catechizandis rudibus). Trans, and annotated by Joseph P. Christopher. ("Ancient Christian Christian Writers," No. 2.) Westminster, Md.: Newman Bookshop, 19^- 6. 171 pp. — — ----. De civitate Dei libri XXII. Recensuit Emanuel Hoffmann. ("Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum," Vol. XXXX.) Vindobonae: F. Tempsky, l899~1900. 2 vols. 337 The City of God. Trans. Marcus Dods, George Wilson, and J. J. Smith. ("The Modem Library of the World's Best Books.") New York: Random House, 1950. 892 pp. De doctrina Christiana libros quattuor. Ed. Henr. Jos. Vogels. ("Florilegium patristicum, tam veteris quam medii aevi auctores complectens," Fasc. XXXV.) Bonnae: P. Hanstein, 1930. 103 pp. On Christian Doctrine. Trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr. ("Library of Liberal Arts," No. 8 0.) New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958. 169 pp. "De moribus ecclesiae catholicae," in Opera omnia, opera monachorum ordinis sancti Benedicti e Congregatione S. Mauri, accurante J. P. Migne. ("Patrologiae, cursus completus, Series latina.") Paris: Apud Editorem, 18^1-77. XXXII, 1300-376. "On the Morals of the Catholic Church." Trans. R. Stothart, in Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, ed. with introduction and notes by Whitney J. Oates. New York: Random House, 19^8. I, 319-57. "De quantitate animae." Texte, trad., et notes par Pierre de Labriolle in Oeuvres. Bruges: Desclee de Brouwer, 19^+8. V, 225-397. The Greatness of the Soul and The Teacher. Trans. Joseph M. Colleran. ("Ancient Christian Writers," No. 9«) Westmin ster, Md.: Newman Press, 1950. 255 P* "Enchiridion," in Opera omnia, opera monachorum ordinis sancti Benedict e Congregatione S. Mauri, accurante J. P. Migne. 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Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Pressj London: Oxford University Press, 1928. 2 vols. -------- - "Opus minus,'1 ' in Opera quaedam hactenus inedita. Ed. J. S. Brewer. ("Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores," No. 15.) London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1859- Pp. 311-90. Bernard of Clairvaux. "De gradibus humilitatis et superbia," in Select Treatises of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Ed. W. W. Williams and B. R. V. Mills. Cambridge: The University Press, 1938. Pp. 75-156. --------. The Twelve Degrees of Humility and Pride. Trans. Barton R. V. Mills. London: Society for Promoting Christian Know ledge, 1929* 95 PP* --------. Sermones super Cantica canticorum; ad fidem codicum recensuerunt J. Le Clercq et al. Romae: Editiones Cisterciences, 1957- --------. The Song of Songsj Sermones in Cantica canticorum. Trans. and ed. by a Religious of CSMV. London: A. R. Mowbray, 1952. 272 pp. Boethius. Philosophiae consolatio. Ed. Ludovicus Bieler. ("Corpus christianorum, Series latina," Vol. 9^*) Tumholti: Typo- graphi Brepols, 1957* 12^4- pp. --------. The Theological Tractates, The Consolation of Philosophy. Ed. and trans. E. K. Rand and H. F. Stewart. ("The Loeb Classical Library.") Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953* ^20 pp. Bonaventura. Tria opuscula. 3rd ed. Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventura, 1911. — ---. Breviloquium. Trans. Erwin Esser Nemmers. St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder, 19^7* 2^8 pp. --------. The Mind's Road to God. Trans. George Boas. New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1953* ^6 pp. 339 ------- . De reductione artium ad theologiam. Trans, and.introduction by Sister Emma Therese Healy. St. Bonaventure, N. Y.: St. Bonaventure College, 1939* 212 pp. ------- . La triple voie. Trad. R. P. Valentin et M. Breton. Paris: Eds. franciscaines, 19^2. 20k pp. ------- . Prolegomena ad sacram theologiam, ex operibus eius collecta. Ed. Thaddeus Soiron. ("Florilegium patristicum, tam veteris quam medii aevi auctores complectens," Fasc. XXX.) Bonnae: P. Hanstein, 1932. 32 pp. Clement of Alexandria. Clemens Alexandrinus herausgegeben im Auftrage der Kirchenvater-commission der Konigl. preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften von Otto Stahlin. Bd. 1: Protrepicus et Paedagogos. ("Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderts," Bd. 12, 15, 17, 39*) Leipzig: J. C.;Hinrichs, 1905-1936. ------- . Christ the Educator. Trans. Simon P. Wood. ("Fathers of the Church," Vol. 23-) New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 195^* 309 pp. ------- . Les Stromates. Trad, et notes de Marcel Caster. ("Sources chretiennes," 30.) Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1951- ------- . "The Stromata, or Miscellanies," trans. W. Wilson, in the Ante-Nicene Fathers. New York: Scribner, 1926. II, 299-567* De adhaerendo Deo: Of Cleaving to God. Trans. Elisabeth Stopp. Oxford: Blackfriars, 19^7* 59 PP* Dionysius Areopagita. De caelesti hierarchia in usum studiosae iuventutis, ed. P. Hendrix. ("Textus minores," Vol. 25*) Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1959* ^3 PP* ------- . Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. Trans. John Parker. London: Skeffington, l89! +* 99 PP* ------- . "De divinis nominibus," in Opera omnia quae exstant, opera Balthasaris Corderii, accurante J. P. Migne. ("Patrologiae cursus completus, Series graeca.") Paris: Apud Editorem, 1857. HI, 586-996. ------- . On the Divine Names and The Mystical Theology. Trans. C. E. Rolt. ("Translations of Christian Literature, Ser. I: Greek Texts," Vol. I.) London: SPCK, 1920. 223 PP* 34o Duns Scotus, Joannes. Summa theologica ex universis operibus eius concinnata, iuxfca orainem et dispositionem summae angelici doctoris S. Thomas Aquinatis per Hieronymum. de Montefortino. Nova ed. Rome: Sallust, 1900-1913• 6 vols. Eckhart, Meister. Deutsche Predigten und Traktate. Herausg. und ubersetzt von Josef Quint. Munchen: Carl Hansen, 1955* 547 PP* Meister Eckhart, a Modern Translation by Raymond Bernard Blakney. New York: Harper, 1941. 333 pp. Quaestiones Parisienses. Ed. Antonius Dondaine, commentariolum adiunxit Raymundus Klibansky. ("Opera latina," Fasc. XIII.) Leipzig: Felix. Meiner, 193^. 57 PP* Ficino, Marsilio. Commentary on Plato's Symposium. Text and transla tion by Sears Reynolds Jayne. ("University of Missouri Studies," Vol. XIX, No. 1.) Columbia: University of Missouri, 1944. 2k' 7 pp. Gerson, Joannes. De mystica theologia. Ed. Andre Combes. ("Thesaurus mundi, bibliotheca scriptorum latinorum. mediae et recentioribus aetatis.") Lucanti: In Aedibus Thesauri Mundi, 1958. 251 pp. Initiation a la vie mystique, presentee et prefacee par Pierre Pascal. ("Les arcades," T. 1.) Paris: Gallinard, 19*1-3. 252 pp. 'toie Gospel of Nicodemus, Acts of Pilate, and Christ's Descent into Hell," ed. F. Scheidweiler, trans. A. J. B. Higgins, in New Testament Apocrypha, comp. Edgar Hennecke, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, trans. R. McL. Wilson. Philadelphia: West minster Press, 19^3- I, 444-484. Gregory of Nyssa. "De opificio hominis," in Opera quae reperiri potuerunt omnia. Ed. F. Morell. ("Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca,") Paris: J. P. Migne, 1 8 6 3. --------. "On the Making of Man," trans. H. A. Wilson, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1893* V, 387- 427. "Dialogus de anima et resurrectione," ed. Joannis — —— _ •«. — — — —------------y ---- Christiani Wolfii, in Opera quae reperiri potuerunt omnia. ("Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca,") Paris: J. P. Migne, 1863. XIV, ll-l60. 341 "On the Soul and the Resurrection," trans. William Moore, in a Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series. Ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Hew York: The Christian Literature Company, 1 8 9 3. V. 428-68. -. The Catechetical Oration. Ed. J. H. Sprawley. ("Cambridge Patristic Texts.) Cambridge: University Press, 1903- 131 PP "The Great Catechism," trans. William Moore, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series. Ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1893* V, 471-509* Grant, Frederick C., ed. Hellenistic Religions: The Age of Syncretism. ("The Library of Religion.") New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1953* 196 pp. Hennas. Der Hirt des Hermas. Herausg. von Molly Whittaker. ("Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte," T. 48.) Berlin: Akademie- Verlag, 1958. 115 PP* "The Shepherd of Hermas," in The Apostolic Fathers; an American Translation, by Edgar <T. Goodspeed. Hew York: Harper, 1950. Pp. 97-201. Hermes Trismegistus. Corpus Hermeticum. Texte ^tabli par A. D. Nock et trad, par A. J. Festugiere. Paris: Societe d'Edition "Les belles lettres," 1945-54. 4 vols. Hippolytus. Werke: Philosophumena. Herausg. P. Wendland. ("Griechische christliche Schriftsteller," Bd. XXVI.) Berlin: Kirchenvaeter-Kommission der preussischen Akademie, 1916. "Philosophumena," trans. J. H. MacMahon, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers. New York: Scribner, 1926. V, 9-153* Hugo of St. Victor. "De sacramentis fidei christianae," in Opera omnia, accurate Canonicorum regularium S. Victoria Parisiensis, ("Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina.") Paris: J. P. Migne, 1880. CLXXVI, 183-6 1 7. On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith. Trans. Roy J. Deferrari. ("Publications of the Mediaeval Academy of America," No. 5 8.) Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1951* ^86 PP* 342 Didascalicon de studio legendi; a Critical Text "by Brother Charles Henry Buttimer. ("Catholic University of America Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Latin," Vol. X.) Washing ton, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1939• l60 pp. ------: — . Didascalicon; a Medieval Guide to the Arts. Trans. Jerome Taylor. ("Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies," Ho. 64.) Hew York: Columbia University Press, 1961. 25k pp. Irenaeus. Opera quae qupersunt omnia. Ed. A. Stieren. Lipsiae: T. 0. Weigel, 1 8 5 3* 2 vols. -. "Against Heresies," trans. Alexander Roberts and W. H. Rambaut, in The Ante-Hicene Fathers. Hew York: Scribner, 1926. I, 315-567. Isaac of Stella. "Sermones," accurante J. P. Migne, in Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina. Paris: Apud Editorem, 1855. cxciv, 1689-1876. Jan van Ruysbroeck. "Le livre des sept clotures," in Oeuvres de Ruysbroeck 1'Admirable, trad, par les B^nedictins de l'Abbaye de Saint-Paul de Wesques. Bruxelles: Vronant, 1915“38. I, 1^7-203. ------- . The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, The Sparkling Stone, The Book of Supreme Truth. Trans. C. A. Wynschenk; ed. with introduction and notes by Evelyn Underhill. London: Dent, 1916. 259 PP* John Damascene. De fide orthodoxa, in Opera omnia quae exstant, accurante J. P. Migne. ("Patrologiae cursus completus, Series graeca.") Paris: Apud Editorem, 1860-64. XCIV, 517-1228. ------- "Exposition of the Orthodox Faith," trans. S. D. F. Salmond. ("A Select Library of Hicene and Post-Hicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Vol. IX.) Ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Hew York: The Christian Literature Company, 1893. 106 pp. John Scotus Erigena. "De divisione naturae," in Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Henricus Josephus Floss. ("Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina.") Paris: J. P. Migne, 1853* CXXII, 441-1022. On the Division of Hature, Bk. 1. Annapolis, Md.; The St. John's Bookstore, 1940. 134 11. (Mimeographed.) • . Uber die Entheilung der Hatur. Ubers. Ludwig Hoack. ("Philosophische Bibliothek," Bd. 36, 40.) Berlin: L. Heimann, 1870-74. 2 vols. in 1. 1 3^3 Justin Martyr. Apologies. Ed. G. Rauschen. ("Florilegium patristicum, tam veteris quam medii aevi auctores complectens," Fasc. II.) Bonnae: P. Hanstein, 1911. ------ —. "The First Apology," trans. Thomas B. Falls, in The Fathers of the Church. New York: Christian Heritage, Inc., 19^8. Vi, 23-llb. Lactantius. Opera Omnia. Ed. S. Brandt et G. Laubmann. ("Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum," Vols. 1°, 27*) Vindohonae: F. Tempsky, 1890-97* 2 vols. —-------. "A Treatise on the Anger of God," trans. William Fletcher, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers. New York: Scribner, 1926. VI, 259-80. --------. Divine Institutes. Trans. Sister Mary Francis McDonald. ("The Fathers of the Church," Vol. ^9*) Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 19 6^. 561 pp. --------. Epitome institutionum divinarum; Epitome of the Divine Institutes. Ed. and trans. E. H. Blakeney. London: SPCK, I95OV 175 PP* Marsilius of Padua. Defensor pacis. Ed. Richard Scholz. ("Fontes juris germanici antiqui,") Hanover: Hahnsche, 1932-33* 2 vols. --------. The Defender of Peace. Trans, with an introduction by Alan Gewirth. ("Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies.") New York: Columbia University Press, 1958. 2 vols. Matthew of Aquasparta. Quaestiones disputatae selectae. ("Bibliotheca franciscana scholastica medii aevi.") Quarrachi: Typis Collegii, 191^. Maximus the Confessor. Opera omnia. ("Patrologiae cursus completus, Series graeca," Vol. XC-XCI.) Paris: J. P. Migne, i860. 2 vols. Nicholas of Cusa. Opera omnia, iussu et auctoritate Academiae litterarum Heidelbergensis ad codem fidem edita. Vol. I: De docta ignorantia, ed. Ernestus Hoffmann, Henricus Liebmann, et Raymundus Klibansky. Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1932-59* --------. Of Learned Ignorance. Trans. Germain Heron, with and intro duction by D. J. B. Hawkins. ("Rare Masterpieces of Philosophy and Science.") London: Routledge and Paul, 195^-* 17^ PP* 3^ Opera omnia, iussu et auctoritate Academiae litterarum Heidelbergensis ad codem fidem edita. Vol. VI: De visione Dei. Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1932-57* --------. The Vision of God. Trans. Emma Gurney Salter. London: J. M. Dent, 1928. 130 pp. Ockham, William, Ockham: Studies and Selections hy Stephen Chak Tomay. La Salle, 111.: Open Court, 1938. 207 pp. Origen. Werke, Bd. V: De principiis. Herausg. Paul Koetschau. ("Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderts.") Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1913* "De Principiis," trans. Frederick Crombie, in The Ante- Nicene Fathers. New York: Scribner, 1926. IV, 237-382. Orphicorum Fragmenta, collegit Otto Kern. Berlin: Weidmann, 1922. 407 pp. Peter Lombard. Libri quattuor sententiarum. 2. ed. Florence: Bonaventura, 1916- Pico della Mirandola. De hominis dignitate, Heptaplus, De ente et uno, e scritti vari a cura di Eugenio Garin. ("Edizione nazionale di classici del pensiero italiano," 1.) Firenze: Valle c chi, 19^-2. Pp. 101-165. ------- . Oratio De hominis dignitate. Ed. Eugenio Garin, trans. Elizabeth Livermore Forbes. Lexington, Ky.: Anvil Press, 1953* ^7 PP*' "Protevangelium of James," trans. A. J. B. Higgins, in New Testament Apocrypha, comp. Edgar Hennecke, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959“ I, 370-88. Raimund of Sabunde. La thdologie naturelle de Raymond Sebon, traduicte nouvellement en francois par Michel Seigneur de Montaigne. Paris: L. Conard, 1932-35* 2 vols. Robert de Melun. Oeuvres. Tome'.II: Questiones de Epistolis Pauli. Ed. Raymond M. Martin. ("Spicilegium sacrem lovaniense: Etudes et documents," Fasc. 18.) Louvain: Spicilegium sacrum lovaniense bureaux, 1 9 3 8. 38^ pp. Savonarola, Girolamo. De simplicitate christianae vitae. A cura di Pier Georgio Ricci. ("Edizione nazionale delle opere di Girolamo Savonarola.") Roma: Angelo Belardetti, 1959* 28l pp. Seneca. Opera quae supersunt. T. IV: Supplementum. Ed. Eridericus Haase. Lipsiae: B. G. Teubneri, 1898-1 9 0 7. Tatian. Oratio ad graecos, recensuit Eduardus Schwartz. ("Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur," Bd. TV, Hft. 1.) Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1888. 105 pp- --------. "Address to the Greeks," trans. J. E. Ryland, in The Ante- Nicene Fathers. Hew York: Scribner, 1926. II, 59“82. Tertullian. Opera. Pars I: Opera catholica, Adversus Marcionem. ("Corpus christianorum, Series latina," 1-2.) Tumholti: Typographi Brepols, 1954 • "The Five Books against Marcion," trans. Peter Holmes, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers. New York: Scribner, 1 9 2 6. Ill, 2 69- 474. Theophilus. Trois livres & Autolycus; texte grec etahli par G. Bardy, trad, de Jean Sender. ("Sources chretiennes," 20.) Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1948. 284 pp. "To Autolycus, " trans. Marcus Dods, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers. New York: . Scribner, 1926. II, 89-121. Thomas Aquinas. Summa contra Gentiles. Leonine ed. Turino: Marietti, 1934. 3 vols. On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa contra Gentiles. Trans. A. C. Pegis, et al. Garden City, N.Y.: Hanover House, 1955“58. 3 vols. in 4. Summa theologiae. Leonine ed. Taurini: Marietti, 1948. 4 vols. ------- . Summa theologica. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. London: Bums, Oates, and Washboume, 1912-25* 22 vols. William of St. Thierry. La comtemplation de Dieu. Introduction, ■ texte latin, et traduction de Jacques Hourlier. ("Sources chretiennes," No. 6l.) Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1959- 158 pp. Un traits de la vie solitaire: Epistola ad fratres de Monte-Dei. Edition critique du texte latin par M. M. Davy, •traduction fran9aise par M. M. Davy. ("Etudes de philosophie medi£vale," XXIX.) Paris: J. Vrin, 1940. 2 vols. in 1. 3 46 II. THEOLOGICAL STUDIES Blench, J. W. Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuriesj a Study of English Sermons 1450-c. 1600. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1964. 378 pp. Cave, Sydney. The Christian Estimate of Man. London: Duckworth, 1944. 235 PP* Cayre, F. Initiation a la philosophie de Saint Augustin. ( "Bibliotheque Augustinienne; Etudes--Philosophie," I.) Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 19^7* 317 PP* Copleston, Frederick C. A History of Philosophy. Vol. II: Mediaeval Philosophy. Rev. ed. London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, 1952. Erdmann,. Johann Eduard. A History of Philosophy. Trans. Williston S. Hough. London: Swan Sonnenschein, 18 9 0-9 2. 3 vols. Gilson, Etienne. History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. New York: Random House, 1955* 829 PP* Grandgeorge," L. Saint Augustin et le neo-Platonisme. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1 8 9 6. 159 PP* Hagenhach, K. R. Textbook of the History of Doctrines. Trans. C. W. Birch, rev. Henry Smith. New York: Sheldon, 1864, 1 8 6 2. 2 vols. Inge, William Ralph. Christian Mysticism, Considered in Eight Lectures Delivered before the University of Oxford. 31 ed. The Bampton Lectures, 1899* London: Methuen, 1913* 379 PP* Kirk, Kenneth E. The Vision of God; the Christian Doctrine of the Summum Bonum. The Bampton Lectures for 1 9 2 8. London: Longmans, Green, 1931* 583 PP* McGiffert, Arthur Cushman. A History of Christian Thought. Vol. II: The West from Tertullian to Erasmus. New York: Scribner, 1933* Maurice, Frederick Denison. Mediaeval Philosophy; or, A Treatise of Moral and Metaphysical Philosopphy from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century. London: Macmillan, 1 8 7 0. 253 PP* 347 Neve, Juergen Ludwig. A History of Christian Thought. Philadelphia: United Lutheran Publication House, 1943-1946. 2 vols. Owst, Gerald Robert. Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England; a Neglected Chapter in the History of English Letters and of the English People. 2d rev. ed. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1 9 6 1. 6l4 pp. Sackur, Ernst. Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen; Pseudomethodius, Adso, und Die tiburtinische Sibylle. Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1 8 9 8. 191 pp. S.eeberg, Reinhold. Text-Book of the History of Doctrines. Trans. Charles E. Hay. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1952. 2 vols. in 1. Ueberweg, Friedrich. A History of Philosophy from Thales to the Present Time. Trans. George S. Morris, with additions by Noah Porter. 4th ed. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1895* 2 vols. Workman, H. B. Christian Thought to the Reformation. New York: Scribners, 1911. 256 pp. Wulf, Maurice de. History of Medieval Philosophy. Trans. E. C. Messenger. New York: Longmans, 1925-26. 2 vols. III. DRAMATIC TEXTS Except in those cases where., an author can be attributed to a play with some definiteness, the following plays are listed by their conventional titles. Collections of plays appear under the names of their editors. A. French ilAdam:] Le mystere d'Adam; an Anglo-Norman Drama of the Twelfth Century. Ed. Paul Studer. ("Modem Language Texts.") Manchester: University Press, 1949* 80 pp. Adam, a Religious Play of the Twelfth Century. Trans. Edward Noble Stone. Seattle: University of Washington, 1926. 193 PP* Greban, Arnoul. Le Mystere de la passion. Pub?, par G. Paris et G. Raynaud. Paris: F. Vieweg, 1 8 7 8. 471 pp. Le Jour du jugement, mystere fran£ais sur le grand schisme. Ed. Emile Roy. Paris: Bouillon, 1902. 268 pp. 348 j Jubinal, Achille (ed. ) Mysteres inedits du quinzieme siecle d'apres lej ms. unique de la Bibliot.heque Ste-Genevieve. Paris: j Techener, 1837* 2 vols. Mercade, Eustache. Le Mystere de la passion, texfce du manuscrit 697 del la Bibliotheque d'Arras. Ed. Jules-Marie Richard. Arras: La 1 Societe du Pas-de-Calais, 1893* 297 PP- ! Michel, Jean. Le Mystere de la passion (Angers i486). Ed. Omer Jodogne. Gembloux, Belgique: Editions J. Duculot, 1959* 539 pp. | Passion d'Autun. Puh. par Grace Frank. Paris: Societe des anciens textes fran£ais, 1934* 234 pp. ' "Passion de Semur," in Le Mystere de la passion en France du XlVe au XVIe siecle. Ed. Emile Roy. Dijon: Damidot, 1903-1904. Pp. 3-189. Passion du Palatinus. Ed. Grace Frank. ("Les Classiques fransaises du moyen-^ge," 30.) Oxford: Blackwell, 1943* 8l pp. iRouen Incarnation et nativite: ] Mystere de 1' incarnation et nativite de n&tre seigneur et redempteur Jesus-Christ representee a Rouen en 1474. Ed. Pierre Le Yerdier. Rouen: Cagniard, 1884-1886. 3 vols. [Ste-Genevieve ] Nativite et le geu des Trois Roys. Ed. Ruth Whittredge.: Bryn Mawr, 194*1-. 217 PP* ! [Ste-Genevieve] "Passion de nostre seigneur," in Mysteres inedits du quinzieme siecle d'apres le ms. unique de la Bibliotheque Ste-Genevieve. Ed. Achille Jubinal. Paris: Techener, 1837* 2 vols. La seinte resurrection. Ed. T. A. Jenkins, et al. ("Anglo-Norman Texts," 4.) Oxford: Blackwell, 1943- """Si pp. "Les Trois Maries, mystere liturgique de Reims," ed. Paul Meyer, Romania, XXXIII (1904), 239“45. - [Viel Testament:] Le mistere du Viel Testament. Ed. James Rothschild, j ("Societe des anciens textes franyais publications," 11.) | Paris: Firmin Didot, I878-I89I. 6 vols. j Cohen, Gustave (ed.) Natiyites et moralites liegeoises du moyen-^ge, i publi^es avec une introduction et des notes d'apres le ms. j 617 du Musee Conde a Chantilly (Oise). Bruxelles: Palais i des Academies, 1953* 334 pp. [ 349 B. German "Alsfeld Passionsspiel," in Das Drama des Mittelalters. Herausg. Richard Froning. Darmstadt: Wi ssenschaftliche Buch- gesellschaft, 1964. (First published in "Deutsche National- Litteratur," Bd. 14, Abt. 1-3j Stuttgart: Union-Deutsche Verlags Gesellschaft, 1891-1 8 9 2.) Pp. 567-8 6 0. "Augsburg Passions spiel.," in Das Oberammergauer Passionsspiel in seiner altesten Gestalt. Herausg. August Hartmann. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1 8 8 0. Pp. 3“95* "Donaueschingen Pas.sionsspiel," in Schauspiele des Mittelalters. Herausg. Franz Joseph Mone. Karlsruhe: C. Macklot, 1846. II, 183-351. Egerer Fronleichnamsspiel, herausg. Gustav Milchsack. ("Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart," Vol. CLVI.) Tubingen: Gedriickt fur den Litterarischen Verein in Stuttgart, l88l. 364 pp. "Frankfurt Passionsspiel," in Das Drama des Mittelalters, Herausg. Richard Froning. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch- gesellschaft, 1964. (First published in "Deutsche National- Litteratur," Bd. 14, Abt. 1-3j Stuttgart: Union-Deutsche Verlags Gesellschaft, 1891-1 8 9 2.) Pp^ 379*532. Froning, Richard (ed.) Das Drama des Mittlealters. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964. (First published in "Deutsche National-Litteratur," Bd. 14, Abt. 1-3j Stuttgart: Union-Deutsche Verlags Gesellschaft, 1891-1892.) 3 vols. in 1. Gundelfinger, Matthias. "Ludus depositionis Jesu," in Schauspiele des Mittelalters. Herausg. Franz Joseph Mone. Karlsruhe: C. Macklot, 1846. II, 131-50. "Haller Passion," in Altdeutsche Passionsspiele aus Tirol. Herausg. J. E. Wackemell. ("Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte, Litteratur, und Sprache Osterreichs und Seiner Kronlander," Bd. 1.) Graz: K. K. Universitats-Buchdruckerei, 1894. Pp. 279-349. Heidelberger Passionsspiel. Herausg. Gustav Milchsack. ("Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart," Bd. CL.) TUbingen: Gedriickt fur den Litterarischen Verein in Stuttgart, 1880. 305 pp. "Hessisches Weihnachtsspiel," in Das Drama des Mittelalters, Herausg. Richard Froning. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Bueh- j gesellschaft, 1964. (First published in "Deutsche National- Litteratur," Bd. 14, Abt. 1-3j Stuttgart: Union-Deutsche j 350 Verlags Gesellschaft, 1891-1892.) Pp. 90*4-37. Immessen, Arnold. Der Sundenfall, mit Einleitung, Anmerkungen, und Worterver zeichnis neu herausg. von Friedrich Krage. ("Germanische Bibliothek, zweite Aht.: Untersuchungen und Texte, achter Bd.") Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1913.. 250 pp. "Innshrucker Fronleichnamsspiel," in Altdeutsche Schauspiele. Herausg. Franz Joseph Mone. ("Bibliothek der gesammten deutschen National-Literatur," Bd. 21.) Quedlinburg: Gottfried Basse, 18*41. Pp. 1*4-5-6*4. "Innshrucker Osterspiel," in Altdeutsche Schauspiele. Herausg. Franz Joseph Mone. ("Bibliothek der gesammten deutschen National- Literature," Bd. 21.) Quedlinburg: Gottfried Basse, 18*4-1. Pp. 109-1*4*4. Rummer, K. F. (ed.) Erlauerspiele; sechs altdeutsche Mysterien nach einer Handschrift des 15* Jahrhunderts. Wien: A. Holder, 1882. 197 PP. | Mone, Franz Joseph (ed.) Altdeutsche Schauspiele. ("Bibliothek der ; gesammten deutschen Hational-Literatur," Bd. 21.) Quedlinburg:^ Gottfried Basse, 18*4-1. 217 pp. j Schauspiele des Mittelalters; aus Handschriften herausg. ; und erklart. Karlsruhe: C. Macklot, 18* 46. 2 vols. Redentiner Osterspiel. Herausg. Carl Schroder. ("Niederdeutsche Denkmaler," Bd. V.) Worden: Diedrich Soltau, 1893* 11° pp. The Redentin Easter Play. Trans. A. E. Zucker. ("Records of Civilization," Vol. 32.) New York: Columbia University Press, 19*41. 13*4 PP. "Rheinauer Weltgerichtsspiel," In Schauspiele des Mittelalters. Herausg. Franz Joseph Mone. Karlsruhe: C. Macklot, 18* 46. Pp. 273-30*4. "St. Gall Christi-Himmelfahrtsspiel," in Schauspiele des Mittelalters. Herausg. Franz Joseph Mone. Karlsruhe: C. Macklot, 18* 1- 6. Pp. 25*4-6*4-. "St. Gall Passionsspiel," in Schauspiele des Mittelalters. Herausg. Franz Joseph Mone. Karlsruhe: C. Macklot, 18*4-6. Pp. 72-128. "St. Gall Weihnachtsspiel," in Schauspiele des Mittelalters. Herausg. Franz Joseph Mone. Karlsruhe: C. Macklot, 18*4-6. Pp. 1*43-83- "Sterzing Passionsspiel," in Altdeutsche Passionsspiele aus Tirol. Herausg. J. E. Wackemell. ("Quellen und Forschungen zur 351 Geschichte, Litteratur, und Sprache Osterreichs und seiner Kronlander," Bd. 1.) Graz: K. K. Universitats-Buchdruckerei, 1894. Pp. 3-176. "Thiiringischer Zehnjungfrauenspiel," in Das Spiel von den zehn Jung- frauen und das Katharinenspiel. Herausg. Otto Beckers. Breslau: M. & H. Marcus, 1905* Pp. 96-124. "Trier Osterspiel," in Das Drama des Mittelalters. Herausg. Richard Froning. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 196b. (First published in "Deutsche National-Litteratur," Bd. 14, Abt. 1-3J Stuttgart: Union-Deutsche Verlags Gesellschaft, 1891-1 8 9 2.) Pp. 49-56. Wackernell, J. E. (ed.) Altdeutsche Passionsspiele aus Tirol, mit Abhandlungen uber ihre Entwicklung, Komposition, Quellen, Auffuhrungen, und litterarhistorische Stellung. ("Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte, Litteratur. und Sprache Osterreichs und seiner Kronlander," Bd. 1.) Graz: K. K. Universitats-Buchdruckerei, 1894. 551 PP* "Wiener Osterspiel," in Fundgruben fur Geschichte deutscher Sprache und Litteratur. Herausg. Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben. Breslau: Georg Philipp Aderholz, 1 8 3 7. II > 297-306. "Wiener Passionsspiel," in Das Drama des Mittelalters. Herausg. Richard Froning. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch- gesellschaft, 1964. (First published in "Deutsche National- Litteratur," Bd. l4, Abt. 1-3 j Stuttgart: Union-Deutsche Verlags Gesellschaft, 189I-I8 9 2.) Pp. 305-324. "Zuricher Antichristspiel," in Fastnachtsspiele aus dem funfzehnten Jahrhundert. Herausg. Adelbert von Keller. Stuttgart: Litterarische Verein, 1853* Pp. 593-6 0 8. C. English "Abraham's Sacrifice," in The Non-Cycle Mystery Plays, Ed. Osborn Waterhouse. ("Early English Text Society," Extra series vol. CIV.) London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Triibner, 1909. Pp. 26-35. The Chester Plays. Ed. Hermann Deimling and Dr. Matthews. ("Early English Text Society," Extra series vol. LXII, CXV.) London: Humphrey Milford, l893~19l6. 2 vols. "Creation of Eve and the Fall," in The Non-Cycle Mystery Plays. Ed. Osborn Waterhouse. ("Early English Text Society," Extra series vol. CIV.) London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Triibner, 1909. Pp. 8-1 8. 352 "Christ's Burial and Resurrection," in the Digby Plays. Ed. F. J. Furnivall. ("Early English Text Society," Extra series vol. LXX.) London: Oxford University Press, 1 8 9 6. Pp. 169-2 2 6. The Dighy Plays. Ed. F. J. Furnivall. ("Early English Text Society," Extra series vol. LXX.) London: Oxford University Press, 1 8 9 6. 239 PP- "Herod's Killing of the Children," in the Dighy Plays. Ed. F. J. Furnivall. ("Early English Text Society," Extra series vol. LXX.) London: Oxford University Press, 1 8 9 6. Pp. 1-2^. Ludus Coventriae, or, The Plaie called.Corpus Christi, Cotton MS Bespasian D. VIII. Ed. K. S. Block. ("Early English Text Society," Extra series vol. CXX.) London: Oxford University Press, 1922. ^03 pp. "Mary Magdalene," in the Dighy Plays. Ed. F. J. Furnivall. ("Early English Text Society," Extra series vol. LXX.) London: Oxford University Press, 1 8 9 6. Pp. 53-136. The Towneley Plays. Ed. George England and Alfred W. Pollard. ("Early English Text Society," Extra series vol. LXXI.) London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1897* ^-15 PP* Waterhouse, Oshorn (ed.) The Non-Cycle Mystery Plays. ("Early Eng lish Text Society," Extra series vol. CIV.) London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1909* 112 pp. York Plays. Ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1 8 8 0. 557 PP- D. Latin and Minor Dialects "Benediktbeuern Ludus de passione," in The Drama of the Medieval Church. Ed. Karl Young. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1951• (First published in 1933*) I; 518-33* "Klosterneuburg Ordo paschalis," in The Drama of the Medieval Church. Ed. Karl Young. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1951* (First published in 1 9 3 3*) ^21-2 9* "Sponsus," in the Drama of the Medieval Church. Ed. Karl Young. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1951* (First published in 1933*) II, 361-6k. "Tegernsee Ludus de Antichristo," in The Drama of the Medieval Church. Ed. Karl Young. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1951* (First published in 1 9 3 3*) II* 369-8 7* 353 La Passion provemjale du ms. Didot; mystere du XlVe :siecle, put), par William P. Shepard. ("Societe des anciens textes fran9ais," t. 71*) Paris: H. Champion,1928. 1^9 pp. Burzud hraz Jezuz; le grand mystere de Jesus, passion et resurrection; drame t>reton du moyen-ckge, avec une etude sur le theatre chez les nations celtiques, par Hersart de la Villemarque. 2me ed. Paris: Didier, 1866. 259 PP* Norris Edwin (ed. and trans.) Ancient Cornish Drama. Oxford: Parker, 1 8 5 9. 2 vols. IV. BIBLIOGRAPHIES Cioni, Alfredo. Bibliografia delle sacre rappresentazioni. j ("Bihlioteca bibliografica italica," 22.) Firenze: Sansoni ' Antiquartiato, 1 9 6 1. 356 pp. ; Rudwin, Maximilian Josef. A Historical and Bibliographical Survey of j the German Religious Drama. ("University of Pittsburgh I Studies in Language and Literature.") Pittsburgh: Univer sity of Pittsburgh, 192^. 286 pp. ; i Stratman, Carl J. Bibliography of Medieval Drama. Berkeley: Univer- I sity of California Press, 195^* ^23 pp. V. STUDIES Chambers, Edmund K. The Medieval Stage. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1903* 2 vols. Cohen, Gustave. Le Thd&fcre en France au moyen-^ge. Paris: Rieder, 1929-1 9 3 1. 2 vols. Craig, Hardin. English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1955* ^-21 pp. Creizenach, Wilhelm. Geschichte des neueren Dramas. Bd. I: Mittel- alter •und Fruhrenaissance. 2. aufl. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1911. 628 pp. Duriez, Georges. La Theologie dans le drama relizieux en Allemagne au moyen-&ge. ("Memoires et travaux publies par des professeurs des facultes catholiques de Lille," Fasc. XI.) Lille: R. Girard, 191^. 6^5 PP* 35^ Frank, Grace. The Medieval French Drama. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 195^* 296 pp. ' Heinzel, Richard. Beschreibung des geistlichen Schauspiels im deutschen Mittelalter. Hamhurg: L. Voss, 1898. 35*+ PP* Kindermann, Heinz. Thestergeschichte Europas. Bd. I: Das Theater der Antike und des Mittelalters. Salzburg: Otto Muller, 1957• iPatch, Howard Rollin. The Other World according to Descriptions in : Medieval Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950. 386 pp. i iPetit de Julleville, Louis. Histoire du th^&fcre en France: Les Mysteres. Paris: Hachette, 1880. 2 vols. Prosser, Eleanor. Drama and Religion in the English Mystery Plays; a Re-evaluation. ("Stanford University Studies in Language and Literature," Wo. 23.) Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961. 229 PP* Young, Karl. The Drama of the Medieval Church. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1951* (First published in 1933*) 2 vols.

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Creator Kelly, Genevieve Ruth (author)

Core Title Theological And Dramatic Concepts Of The End Of Man In The Middle Ages

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Comparative Literature

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Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Hadley, Paul E. (committee chair), Belle, Rene F. (committee member), Crittenden, Walter M. (committee member), O'Neil, Edward N. (committee member), Queller, Donald E. (committee member)

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