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XXII.—The Palatine Passion and the Development of the Passion Play
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The similarities of phrase, arrangement, and general development that are to be observed in so many mediæval religious plays in which divergences are nevertheless equally apparent have been variously explained as due to the common scriptural, liturgical, theological, or vernacular sources of these plays. Nor has the possibility that one play or cycle may have borrowed directly from another been overlooked. The paucity of early texts, however, contrasted with the relatively more abundant remains of the later highly developed plays and cycles, has tended to obscure the whole problem. With the recent discovery and publication of the oldest text of a complete French Passion play that has survived—the manuscript is dated from the beginning of the fourteenth century by Dr. Christ— new data has become available, and it can be shown, I think, from the relations existing between this so-called Palatine Passion and other French Passion plays that many of the puzzling resemblances in the medieval drama arise from the fact that the same texts often served as the basis for the representations given in different communities. These texts were at various times subjected to revision, and it is the successive alterations made upon them which have in many eases concealed their original connections.
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1 By Karl Christ, who edits it as : “Das altfranzösische Passionsspiel der Palatina” in Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, xl, pp. 405-488. The two manuscripts of the Autun Passion were not accessible to Dr. Christ and the Passion des Jongleurs was known to him only in the prose redaction of Jean d'Outremeuse and the mutilated version included in the so-called Roman de S. Fanuel published in Revue des langues romanes xxviii (1885). Had he seen the Paris mss. and the versions of the epic poem published by Foster, Theben and Pfuhl (see note 8, infra) he would doubtless not have suggested (pp. 413, 415) that the similarities between the Palatine Passion, the Passion d'Autun and the Passion de Semur may emanate from their common dependence upon the Passion des Jongleurs.
2 From the published extracts and discussions of this manuscript I have been unable to establish any connection between it and the. Palatine Passion. Cf. Petit de Julleville, Les Mystères, ii, 351; Le Monde, April 14, 1876; Revue des langues, romanes, x, 158.; xvii, 303; xxviii, 8-23, 53-65; xxxii, 343; Bibliothèque meridionale, Serie i, vol. 3, pp. xvi ff.; Ztschr. f. franz. Spr. u. Lit. xvii2 210, and Emile Streblow, Das Mystère de Semur, Greifswald, 1905.
3 Through the kindness of M. Lucien Foulet I was able to obtain photographs of these manuscripts. Extracts from them may also be found in the articles by Schumacher (Romania., xxxvii, 570) and Jeanroy (Journal des Savants, 1906, 476.).
4 See Christ, op. cit. p. 483, note to l. 1724. For the purposes of the following comparison, the Autun Passion may be regarded as being preserved in MS. Bib. Nat. n. a. fr. 4085. The related manuscript n. a. fr. 4356 (an incomplete and in general much abbreviated version, though containing some incidents not found in n. a. fr. 4085) parallels the latter closely in those parts related to the Palatine Passion, and the very few independent parallels between the Palatine text and n. a. fr. 4356 which are not in n. a. fr. 4085 can be explained as due to the intermediate source or sources from which all three mss. derive. Thus n. a. fr. 4356 contains reminiscences (some quite faint) of the following lines of the Palatine Passion, none of which occur in n. a. fr. 4085: 85, 94, 141-2, 272 (the healing of Malchus is omitted in n. a. fr. 4085), 582, 762-3, but some of these lines derive from the Passion des Jongleurs and others quite evidently disappeared from n. a. fr. 4085 when the narrative passages were inserted in that version. The scenes of n. a. fr. 4356 which are not in n. a. fr. 4085 (notably the foot-washing and Veronica incidents) are also absent from the Palatine text. They may be original contributions by the editor of n. a. fr. 4356, or, since they also occur in the Passion des Jongleurs, they may have been present in some common ancestor of n. a. fr. 4085 and 4356. The latter ends with Joseph's request that Nicodemus assist at the entombment.
5 His tendency, however, to regard the Sion fragment and n. a. fr. 4356 as practically one text seems to me not altogether happy. In discussing the versions of the Passion d'Autun contained in MS. n. a. fr. 4085, M. Roy hazarded the interesting conjecture that the original Passion d'Autun may have been designed not for an ordinary dramatic performance but for the use of jongleurs with histrionic talents equal to the assumption of many different roles (op. cit., p. 53∗). He was led to this conclusion by the large number of purely narrative lines imbedded in MS. n. a. fr. 4085. M. Fr. Schumacher, however, plausibly suggested in Romania, xxxvii, pp. 592-3, that the work was originally dramatic rather than narrative in form and that the narrative passages of this particular manuscript are due to remaniements. M. Schumacher's conclusions are supported not only by the relation of this text to that in MS. Bib. Nat. n. a. fr. 4356, to the Sion fragment, and to the Palatine Passion, none of which has these narrative passages (the four narrative passages in the Palatine text are in no way related), but especially by the fact that although n. a. fr. 4085 derives from the old narrative Passion des Jongleurs, its narrative passages are not taken from that poem. See A. Jeanroy, Mystères français de la Passion, Romania, xxxv, 369. M. Jeanroy indeed was led by this fact — and by M. Roy's failure to cite the other parallels between the two texts that do exist—to doubt whether they were related. Of this relationship, however, there can be no question (see infra). The narrative passages in n. a. fr. 4085 therefore are later additions to a text originally dramatic, and were probably designed to adapt it for recitation or reading.
6 The lines of the fragment which appear in n. a. fr. 4085 and not in the Palatine manuscript are lines 1-25, 38-9, and 43-end. The concluding “sermon” of the fragment, however, is expanded to twice its length by the Autun text. In the fragment and the Autun text, the awakening of the knights immediately follows the Descensus; in the Palatine Passion, which places the Descensus earlier, several scenes intervene.
7 Loc. cit. p. 46∗.
8 Modern Language Notes, xxxv, 257 ff. The Passion des Jongleurs is printed with variants by H. Theben, Die altfranzösische Achtsilbnerredaktion der Passion, Greifswald, 1909 and by E. Pfuhl (who continues Theben's work), Die weitere Fassung der altfranzösischen Dichtung in schtsilbigen Reimpaarem über Christi Höllenfahrt und Auferstehung (Fortsetzung der eigentlichen Passion) nach 5 Hss. in Cambridge, Paris und Turin, Greifswald, 1909. For an excellent treatment of the sources of this poem, for a discussion of the relations existing between the various mss., and for a text of it printed from a ms. not used by Theben and Pfuhl, see Frances A. Foster, The Northern Passion, Early English Text Society, 1916, vol. 147, pp. 49 ff. and 102 ff.
9 In the scenes common to all three texts, the Autun Passion very rarely contains lines derived from the narrative poem which are not in the Palatine Passion.
10 Any assumption that the two plays independently adopted portions of the narrative poem is rendered unlikely by the presence in both of them of parallel lines and scenes which do not derive from that poem, as well as by the occurrence and non-occurrence to so large an extent in both of them of the same passages, similarly transposed, taken from the poem. The possibility, however, that the Palatine branch of the common tradition borrowed from the poem a second time—after its separation from the version giving rise to the Autun texts—seems to me not altogether remote.
11 These fifty lines are: O. F. P. 147-62, 154, 187-90, 198-9, 213-4, 234, 469-70, 492, 494, 594-5, 895-6, 900-2, 1038, 1040, 667-8, 1043-4, 1066, 1068a-b, 1059-60, 1077b, 1083-4, 1459-61, 1463, 1436a-38, 1453-4. It will be observed that often when the Pauline text incorporates a long passage of the O. F. P. the Autun text preserves only a few lines.
Only the more striking parallels between the O. F. P. and Pal. were printed in Modern Language Notes xxxv, (cf. p. 259), and among those not cited are the following which contain lines common to all three texts: Cf. O. F. P. 55-80 with Pal. 83-96 and n. a. fr. 4085 (cited hereafter as A), fol. 146 r; cf. O. F. P. 706 with Pal. 519 and A. fol. 151 v; O. F. P. 1056, 1056 c = Pal. 690-92 = A. fol. 156 r; O. F. P. 1190-1 = Pal. 695-6 = A. fol. 156 r; O. F. P. 1063-4 = Pal. 696-7 = A. fol. 156 r; O. F. P. 1065-8 = Pal. 701-3 = A. 156 v; O. F. P. 1290-1308 = Pal. 787-825 = A. fol. 157 v; O. F. P. 1307-8 = Pal. 825-9 = A. 158 r; O. F. P. 1400-2 = Pal. 961-4 = A. fol. 160 r.
12 Thus n. a. fr. 4085 and O. F. P. contain Judas' reference to the poor (fol. 147 r; O. F. P. 93-4); the correct figure for the deniers, 300 (fol. 146 v; O. F. P. 92a); two lines echoing O. F. P. 200-1, MSS. SO' (fol. 147 v); the prediction of Peter's betrayal (fol. 148 r; 337-44, two lines very like); the dream of Pilate's wife (fol. 152 v; 1020 ff.); the purchase of the field of blood (153 r; 843); Pilate's reason for sending Jesus to Herod (153 v; 879-80, these lines quite parallel); the road to Calvary and Simon's bearing of the cross (159 v; 1317 ff.); and finally the speeches of the good and bad thieves and Jesus' reply to them (163 v; 1481-96, some eight lines similar), all of which are wanting in the Palatine text. Moreover, several scenes appear in their scriptural position in O. F. P. and 4085 which have been shifted in Pal.: the blindfolding and buffeting of Jesus during the trial before Caiaphas; the denial of Peter; the second trial before Pilate; the casting of the lots; and finally both 0. F. P. and Autun seem to follow John xix, 29-30 in making consummatum est follow spongiam plenum acete, whereas in Pal. the Longinus scene intervenes. (The difference between the Gospels and the fact that two drinks are mentioned probably account for the fact that all three versions are at variance in the order of the events following the Crucifixion. The various mss. of the O. F. P. themselves differ. Cf. Theben's notes to ll. 1390 and 1404.)
13 Notably in the scene between Peter and the host; the Planctus of Mary Magdalene before anointing Jesus; John and Peter in the courtyard; the scene at the smith's (these three episodes are in germ in the O. F. P.); the hanging of the two thieves; the second Planctus Mariae and Joseph's reply; Pilate's reply to Joseph's request (but Pilate's long apology for his action is not in Pal.); the scene between Joseph and Nicodemus (in part); Annas' dispatch of his servant to Caiaphas and the following scene between Annas and Caiaphas; the boasting of the knights; the angel's summons, and the effect of the Resurrection upon the knights. Two scenes which differ in position and development in the two texts nevertheless contain reminiscent lines: the casting of the lots (they feast and throw dice in Autun), and the Longinus episode (much longer in Autun and differently conceived, but in both versions Longinus pierces the side of Jesus before his death).
The most noteworthy differences between the two versions are: 1) the absence from the Palatine text of the prologue, the prophecy of Peter's betrayal, the foot-washing scene (only in n. a. fr. 4356), the dream of Pilate's wife, the preudome seeking an aes pour la teste Jhesu repouser, the scene between the daughters of Jerusalem and Jesus, the Veronica incident (these two only in 4356), the march to Calvary, the speeches of the thieves and Jesus' reply, Mary's rehearsal of the scenes preceding the Crucifixion, Pilate's excuses to Joseph for his action, the placing of the stone before the tomb by one of the knights, the appearance of the risen Christ to Mary Magdalene, and the concluding sermon; 2) the absence from the Autun version of the four introductory lines in the Palatine text, the greetings of the enfant d' Israel, the angel's words (ll. 184-191), the missing pieces of silver, the scenes involving Cayn and Huitacelin, Pilate and Joel, Moses and Haquin, the long diablerie, the various stanzaic Planctus, the Spice-merchant, the three Maries at the tomb and Peter's meeting with them; 3) the different development (and in some instances the different positions) of the scene in the garden of Gethsemane, the bargain of Judas, the capture, the healing of Malchus, the trial before Caiaphas, the despair of Judas, the scourging, the casting of the lots, the Crucifixion (in Pal. Jesus is nailed to the raised cross; in n. a. fr. 4085 the cross is raised later,—an addition due to the redactor responsible for the narrative passages in this version), the Longinus episode, the harrowing of Hell, and the Resurrection.
14 Le théâtre en France, pp. 10-20. Cf. also the records in Les Mystères, vol. ii, 1 ff., and in E. K. Chambers, The Mediæval Stage, ii, Appendix W.
15 Cf. e. g. the Rouen, Friesing and Orleans Christmas plays, conveniently compared in Charles Davidson's Studies in the English Mystery Plays, Yale dissertation, 1892, pp. 50 ff. One must of course assume considerable “borrowing” within the church — which may have served as a precedent.
16 Chambers, op. cit. ii, 386. Intercourse of a different nature is revealed by the presence of Wakefield, Donnington and London, actors at York (L. T. Smith, York Plays, p. xxxviii), and by the fact that the wardrobe of the Chelmsford players was loaned to other communities for their plays (Chambers, ii, 347). That actors might become “carriers” has often been posited. See Hohlfeld, Anglia, xi, 258.
17 Cf. B. Koeppen, Die beiden Valencienner Passionen in ihrem Verhältnis eu den Quellen, Greifswald, 1911; E. Franke, Untersuchung über das Mistere de la Conception et Nativité de la glorieuse Vierge Marie avesques le mariage d'icelle, la nativité, passion, resurrection et ascension… Jesucrist, jouee a Paris, 1507, Greifswald, 1907; K. Kruse, Jean Michel, Das Mystère de la Passion Jesu Christ … und sein Verhälnis zu der Passion von Arnould Greban u. zu d. beiden Valencienner Passions, Griefswald, 1907, and the related Greifswald dissertations by K. Mokross (1908), H. Schreiner (1907), and A. Kneisel (1906) and E. Streblow's Le Mystère de Semur, Greifswald, 1905; see also Roy, op. cit. passim, Stengel in Z. F. S. L., xxix2 (1906), 165 ff.; and Jeanroy, Romania, xxxv (1906), 365 ff., and Journal des Savants n. s. iv (1906), 476 ff.
18 See pp. 479-81.
19 Cf. Carleton Brown, “The Towneley Play of the Doctors and the Speculum Christiani,” Modern Language Notes, xxxi, 223, and Hardin Craig, Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays, E. E. T. S., Ext. Ser. 87, p. xxxiii.
20 Marie C. Lyle, The Original Identity of the York and Townley Cycles, Research Publications of the University of Minnesota, 1919, vol. 8, no. 3. The views of Hohlfeld, Davidson, Pollard, Gayley and Cady are there summarized and a convenient bibliography for a study of the interrelations between the English cycles has been assembled. In my opinion, however, “identity” does not exclude “borrowing,” but presupposes it. Cf. also the relation of the Shrewsbury fragments to the York Shepherds (Manly, Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama, 1897, i, xxviii ff.), and the situation in the Ludus Coventriae (P. M. L. A. xxxv, 324).
21 Die Oster- und Passionsspiele, Halle, 1889, 120-143. See also Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas, i2, 103-15, 224-33.
22 In Modern Philology, xv (1918), 565 ff., I attempted to study the Revisions in the English Mystery Plays.
23 That neither ms. of the Autun play is an “original” is shown not only by the relation of one to the other, but also by the presence in n. a. fr. 4085 of those narrative passages which have almost obscured its original dramatic form. As M. Jeanroy has said (Journal des Savants, 1906, p. 481), “les auteurs des deux manuscrits … lui ont fait subir deux genres d'altérations précisément contraires, l'un en y intercalant une foule de chevilles et de vers postiches, l'autre en abrégeant systématiquement toutes les tirades.” That the Palatine ms. is not an “original” is apparent from the manuscript itself, which, as Dr. Christ suggests, was probably intended for the use of readers rathers than of actors (op. cit. 409). The absence of rubrics, however, is not unique in the French drama, as Dr. Christ believes. Cf. the MS. Bib. Nat. fr. 837 of the Jeu de la Feuillée (described in the edition in Les Classiques français du moyen âge, p. x). Cf. also the Auto de los Reyes Magos (ed. R. Menéndez Pidal, Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, Madrid, 1900, p. 453).
24 Dr. Christ fails to note how elaborate the stanzaic structure actually is. His analysis (op. cit., p. 415-6) should be expanded and emended to include: (1) the octosyllabic stanzas of various forms in the Descensus scenes, i. e. ll. 1279-90 (aab ccb bbb bba), 1291-1303 (aab aab bba bba[a]), 1304-11 (abab abab)—this is cited by Christ, 1312-20 ([a]aabb ccaa), 1345-54 ([a]abab abab[b]), 1385-95 ([a]aabba abbaa), 1396-1401 (aab aab), 1402-9 (aabb aabb), 1410-19 (aabba abbaa), 1420-8 ([a]abab abcc); (2) the double decasyllabic seizain containing the same rhymes in both halves, each half, however, preceded by an octosyllabic quatrain monorime, 1785-1824:
xxxx8 abab bccb dede effe10
ffff8 aabb bccb dede edde10
(3) the decasyllabic couplets, 923-6. Probably strophic in intention are also ll. 1977-86 (aabbb ccbbc), 1989-96 (aabb aacc), and possibly 1951-63 (aabbbbbaaccdd) and 1914-24 (aabbaacxaaa). The (irregular) sixains, 35-52 are rhymed: aab ccb, aab bbc, aab bcc. Note also that the decasyllabic Planctus beginning l. 1071 exhibits stanzaic structure to 1. 1087 (form somewhat uncertain, probably aba bbc cdd dde edd dd), from which to l. 1115 it continues in couplets with lines of varying lengths (six, seven and eight syllables).
25 Monmerqué et Michel, Théâtre français au moyen âge, Paris, 1839, pp. 11 ff. It has no connection with the thirteenth-century fragment of a Résurrection published by P. Meyer in Romania xxxiii (1904), 240-1.
26 E. Picot, Fragments inédits de mystères de la Passion, Romania xix (1890), 260 ff. There are in these fragments (known as the Amboise Passion) a few verbal resemblances to the Palatine text, but that they are fortuitous is obvious. Similarly, the fact that in both texts the thirty pieces of silver are counted out and the Crucifixion is accomplished upon the raised cross (rather than upon a cross which is later raised) must be ascribed to a common tradition and not to a common source.
27 Jubinal, Mystères inédits du XVe siècle, Paris, 1837, ii, 139 ff.; 312 ff. M. Roy, op. cit. 55∗ ff., has justly said that the Sainte-Geneviève plays do not derive from the Passion des Jongleurs.
28 E. Roy, Le Mystère de la Passion en France, 73∗ ff.
29 The supplementary sources of the Passion have been investigated by M. Roy. He overstates, however, the influence of the Passion Sainte-Geneviève upon the Semur play. The parallels cited by him at the foot of page 87∗ and extending through p. 88∗ are unconvincing, and although the six lines of the Apothecarius' speech (p. 87∗) and the twenty-one lines of the Veronica incident are certain evidence of relationship, it can hardly be said that “la Passion de Semur n'est qu'un développement de la Passion Sainte-Geneviève” (p. 91∗), or that it is “une simple imitation de la Passion Sainte-Geneviève” (p. 69∗). These statements have been questioned by others. See Christ, op. cit. 415.
30 Op. cit. p. 85∗.
31 Journal des Savants, 1906, p. 488. Note also his conclusion (p. 490) that the Passion de Semur is composed of fragments arbitrarily bound together.
32 Roy, op. cit. p. 85∗, note 4, and supra, note 13, end. The narrative poem and the Palatine and Amboise texts conserve the earlier tradition regarding the Crucifixion. See Christ, op. cit. p. 480, note to ll. 878-926. This is one of the many instances in which the narrative passages of the Autun text are strikingly at variance with the narrative poem.
33 In such scenes as the bearing of the cross and the Veronica incident, which are not in the Palatine version but occur in the Passion des Jongleurs, the Passion de Semur and the Passion d'Autun, there are no independent verbal parallels between the Autun and the Semur texts.
34 Dr. Christ attributes ll. 742-4 to Li sergens and ll. 745 ff. to Pilates, but both the context and the Passion de Semur seem to indicate that Joel speaks ll. 742-7, to which ll. 748 ff. are Pilate's reply.
35 Cf. note 17, supra.
36 It is noteworthy, however, that Greban, like the author of the Palatine Passion (and Rutebeuf in the Miracle de Theophile), rhymes aaa3b4, a stanzaic form unknown to the other French Passion plays. Cf. H. Chatelain, Recherches sur le vers français au XVe siècle, Paris, 1908, pp. 87-8. (Chatelain's examples taken from Greban's Passion and erroneously entered under the caption aaa3b3 should be included with those from the same work correctly cited as rhyming aaa3b4.)
37 See especially B. Koeppen, op. cit. p. 13.