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The Late Medieval Cult of Jesus and the Mystery Plays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

J. W. Robinson
J. W. Robinson*
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
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Extract

Similarities between the late medieval English mystery plays and late medieval religious art have often been pointed out; parallels in literature and painting to the dramatic scene in which Christ is stretched and nailed to the cross, for example, are numerous. So far, commentators have concentrated on the similarities which concern the way in which the sequence of events of the Christian story is presented—on the narrative details in the plays, paintings, carvings, narrative poems, and glass paintings. For example, the way Christ steps out of the tomb (that is, the dramatic narrative) in the Chester Resurrection has analogies in English alabaster carvings. Such a knowledge is valuable in that it helps demonstrate the popular religious context of much of the narrative detail of the plays (Plate I). I think, however, that the religious (and social) contexts of the performances (especially the rationale of the presence of the audience) can best be understood by considering a different kind of parallel between the plays and religious art—similarities in the static, non-narrative scenes. In particular, I wish to link Christ's monologues in the plays closely to some of the images (Plate II) of the Cult of Jesus of the late Middle Ages, which share with the plays and other religious arts of the period a certain sensational realism and impassioned emotionalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 80 , Issue 5 , December 1965 , pp. 508 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1965

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References

1 Emile Mâle, L'Art religieux de la fin du moyen âge, 4e ed. (Paris, 1931), Ch. ii. For English details see, for example, Christopher Woodforde, The Norwich School of Class Painting in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1950), p. 28; E. K. Chambers, English Literature at the Close of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1945), p. 110; W. L. Hildburgh, “English Alabaster Carvings as Records of the Medieval Religious Drama,” Archaeologica, xciii (1949), 51–101; Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford, 1939), p. xxi; M. D. Anderson, Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 87–171.

2 Hildburgh, pp. 91–93.

3 I borrow this phrase from G. McN. Rushforth, “Seven Sacraments Compositions in English Medieval Art,” Antiquaries Journal, ix (1929), 100: “One cannot help being struck by the number of cults connected with the Person and Passion of Jesus which appeared or flourished in the fifteenth century.”

4 By “realism” on the stage I mean (for present purposes) the presentation by trickery of such things as torture and murder that cannot really (except under the Roman Empire) be shown on the stage. When the actor delivered Christ's monologues, speaking sometimes of his “wet” wounds, he undoubtedly bled, at least sometimes: about the only thing an “old man” recalled of a performance of the Passion at Kendal was that “blood ran down”—E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage (Oxford, 1903), ii, 373–374; see also below, n. 19.

5 See especially Mâle, L'Art religieux, Ch. iii—“Le Pathetique”; J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (Penguin Books, 1955), Ch. xiv; D. W. Robertson, Jr, A Preface to Chaucer (Princeton, 1962), pp. 207–208, 214–215, 229.

6 Plays are cited throughout from the following editions: The Chester Plays, ed. H. Deimling and Dr. Matthews, EETS, E. S., lxii and cxv (1892 and 1916); Ludus Coventriae, ed. K. S. Block, EETS, E. S., cxx (1922); The Towneley Plays, ed. George England, EETS, E. S., lxxi (1897); York Plays, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith (Oxford, 1885); The Digby Plays, ed. F. J. Furnivall, EETS, E. S., lxx (1896).

7 J. W. Robinson, “The Art of the York Realist,” MP, lx (1963), 241–251.

8 The monologue is now missing from the York Resurrection, but “once formed part of” it, apparently (The Towneley Plays, p. xix).

9 Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century, ed. Brown, No. 102.

10 P. Hartnoll, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Theatre (Oxford, 1951), p. 223(a).

11 G. C. Taylor, “The Relation of the English Corpus Christi Play to the Middle English Religious Lyric,” MP, v (1907), 8–9. Some sixty of these Testaments, or “Appeals of Christ to Man,” are recorded for the pre-1500 period by Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse (New York, 1943). The sources of the vernacular lyrical appeals by Christ are various, and include (as the editions of Carleton Brown demonstrate) the liturgical Improperio, and some Latin hymns, such as “O homo vide quid pro te patior.”

12 Cursor Mundi, Part iii, ed. Richard Morris, EETS, lxii (1876), p. 959, ll. 98–105, 110–137; A Starnaic Life of Christ, ed. Frances A. Foster, EETS, cxxvi (1926), ll. 5921–48; The Northern Passion, ed. Frances A. Foster, EETS, cxlv (1913), ll. 1755–60b; John Mirk, Festial, ed. T. Erbe, EETS, E. S., xcvi (1905), p. 113.

13 Louis Réau, Iconographie de l'art chrétien, ii, ii (Paris, 1957), 491.

14 B.M. MS. Egerton 1821, f. 7v, reproduced in Campbell Dodgson, English Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century (Einblattdrucke des fünfzehnten Jahrunderts, Bd. 88, Strasbourg, 1936), no. 12.

15 For English examples and illustrations see Dodgson, Nos. 1–12; Walter de Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Illustrated Manuscripts, with a Dictionary of Subjects in the British Museum (London, 1879), pp. 181–182 (a list of about fifty Images of Pity—not all of them English, of course); Legends of the Holy Rood, ed. Richard Morris, EETS, xlvi (1871), pp. 170–193; Christopher Woodforde, English Stained and Painted Glass (Oxford, 1954), p. 26; G. McN. Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery (Oxford, 1936), p. 310; Christopher Woodforde, Norwich School, pp. 23, 48; Rushforth, “Seven Sacraments”; Christopher Woodforde, Stained Glass in Somerset (Oxford, 1946), pp. 166, 168, 194, 196, 204; O. M. Dalton, Franks Bequest. Catalogue of the Finger Rings (London, 1912), No. 718; and, especially, G. McN. Rushforth, “The Kirkham Monument in Paignton Church, Devon,” Exeter Diocesan Architectural and Archeological Soc. Trans., 3rd Ser., No. 4 (1927) pp. 1–37, particularly pp. 21–24. Continental examples are far more numerous.

16 B. M. MS. Egerton 2125, ff. 142v, 146v, 154v. F 13v depicts an Image of Pity present at a very human Mass of St. Gregory. The MS. is described in G. F. Warner, Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Museum, Second Series (London, 1900), the penultimate leaf. The ordinary passion plays, of course, do not omit the Crucifixion itself, but in one fifteenth-century English play, which takes the tendency under discussion to extremes, the Crucifixion is omitted, and the narrative has been almost entirely superseded by the emotional lyricism (The Burial of Christ, from a Bodleian MS., printed by Furnivall in The Digby Plays).

17 B. M. MS. Egerton 1821, pasted onto f. 8v; Dodgson, No. 6.

18 Chester Last Judgment, ll. 357–436; Towneley Judgment, ll. 386–433; York Judgment Day, ll. 229–276. The York and Towneley speeches are nearly identical. There is no such passage in Ludus Coventriae.

19 Réau, p. 739; E. W. Tristram, English Wall Painting of the Fourteenth Century (London, 1955), pp. 142, 201, etc.; Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery, pp. 264–265. The Chester Last Judgment clearly stages this scene, in which Christ appears seated on a rainbow surrounded by angels holding the Instruments of the Passion. The play has this stage direction: Finitis Lamentationibus mortuorum, descendet Iesu quasi in nube, si fieri poterit; Quia secundum Doctorum Opiniones in Aere prope terram iudicabit filius Dei. Stabunt Angeil cum Cruce, Corona Spinea, lancea, alliisque Instrumentis, omnia demonstrantes (at l. 356). Again, in the paintings, Christ's mantle is draped low so that the wound in his side may be plainly visible; the Chester play has the stanza “Behould now all men on me, / and se my Blood fresh out flee, / that I bledd on rode tree / for your Salvation” followed by the stage direction Tunc emittet Sanguinem de latere suo (at l. 428).

20 See, for example, Campbell Dodgson, Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century in the British Museum (London, 1934), i, pl. xxxii(c); A. S. Tavender, “Mediaeval English Alabasters in American Museums,” Speculum, xxx (1955), No. 51, pl. vii; Joan Evans, Art in Mediaeval France (Oxford, 1948), Nos. 136, 200. The indications in the text are vague and confusing, but it seems that at York and Wakefield it is possibly this scene that is staged; there appear to be two characters, God and Christ. At any rate, Christ's suffering is here again demonstrative.

21 The monologues are readily detachable from the plays, and were clearly introduced to the drama by the vernacular dramatists, perhaps as early as the fourteenth century. The Towneley Resurrection monologue (to which the Chester Resurrection monologue is closely related verbally) and the Ludus Coventriae Resurrection monologue are found also in non-dramatic literature—see Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century, No. 102 and note; Ludus Coventriae, p. xliv. The Chester Resurrection monologue was almost certainly added to that play, by a reviser who added “popular” scenes, in the late fifteenth century—see F. M. Salter, “The Banns of the Chester Plays,” RES, xv (1939), 452–453.

22 See The Towneley Plays, p. 316; see also above, n. 8.

23 There is no evidence, outside the texts themselves, that the monologues are addressed to the audience. However, this is the instinctive and logical way to read them (as it is to read the opening boasts of many of the plays) and it is also the conclusion of the experienced producer—see E. Martin Browne, “Producing the Mystery Plays for Modern Audiences,” Drama Survey, iii (May 1963), 8.

24 A. W. Pollard, ed., English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes, 8th ed. (Oxford, 1927), p. xxii. My italics.

25 See also Rushforth, “Kirkham Monument,” p. 21. The Image of Pity on B. M. MS. Egerton 2125, f.13v (above, n. 16) is accompanied by prayers of indulgence to be said while close to it (“coram visione Gregoriana”).

26 For example, Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century, No. 103. See also the epilogue to The Northern Passion.

27 Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, ii, 349.

28 Text of the Sion play is in Romania, xxiv (1895), 87–95. The “Passion de Biard” is in Grace Frank, ed., La Passion d'Autun (S.A.T.F., 1934); the prologue reads in part (mixing religion and the boards, as is often the case): “Qui se taisera, je ly don / Sep, viii ans de vray pardon” (p. 68, ll. 37–38).

29 That is, the mystery plays were “popular” in the sense that the Greek drama was—see Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art (London, 1951), i, 100.

30 Eleanor Prosser, Drama and Religion in the English Mystery Plays (Stanford, Calif., 1961), pp. 21–42.

31 Rushforth, “Kirkham Monument,” p. 24.

32 T. W. Craik, The Tudor Interlude (Leicester, 1958), pp. 19–26; Doris Fenton, The Extra-Dramatic Moment in Elizabethan Plays (Philadelphia, 1930), passim.

33 Henriette s'Jacob, Idealism and Realism: A Study of Sepulchral Symbolism (Leiden, 1954), p. 144.

34 s'Jacob, pp. 128–144; Réau, p. 467; Dodgson, English Woodcuts, Nos. 10, 12; R. Chiarelli and others, European Painting in the Fifteenth Century (New York, 1961), p. 217.

35 For example, Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century, ed. Brown, Nos. 2, 4, 5, 6, 93, 105, etc. The opening of the Bodleian MS. play The Burial of Christ, where Joseph reports the off-stage crucifixion, is a kind of dramatic religious chanson d'aventure (ll. 15–55).

36 Towneley Resurrection, l. 281.

37 For example, Dodgson, English Woodcuts, No. 10; Dodgson, Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century, Plates xxxii(b), xxxiv(d), xxxvi(a); Joan Evans, Art in Mediaeval France, Nos. 121, 234(b).

38 See Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (London, 1938), p. 36, and John Speirs, “The Mystery Cycle,” Scrutiny, xviii (1951), 92–94.

39 L. E. Pearson, “Isolable Lyrics of the Mystery Plays,” ELH, iii (1936), 251.

40 S. L. Bethel, Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradition (Durham, N. C., 1944), passim, esp. pp. 20–42.

41 Pagan monologues balancing Christ's monologues: Towneley Crucifixion, ll. 1–28; Towneley Resurrection, ll. 1–36; York Crucifixion, none; York Death and Burial, ll. 1–32; York Resurrection, ll. 1–6; Chester Resurrection, ll. 9–16; Ludus Coventriae Resurrection (pp. 320 ff.), none—although this scene is apparently really part of the play that begins on p. 271. There are, of course, many pagan boasts in other plays, too.

42 Pilate seems to be guilty of all seven in York xxx. Professor A. Wolk first pointed this out to me.

43 For example, Digby Plays, p. 60, Towneley Plays, p. 280. The sermon speaks of bitter tears at the Passion of Christ and of his saints. The lost plays showing the Passion of a Saint would doubtless have been similar in plan to the saints' passions related in, for example, The Southern English Legendary (ed. C. D'Evelyn and A. J. Mill, EETS, ccxxxv, 1956) or Osbern Bokenham's Legendys of Hooly Wummen (ed. Mary S. Serjeantson, EETS, ccvi, 1938). The legends contain innumerable pagan tyrants, and these are (I think) the chief “influence” on the tyrants in the mystery plays (see Southern English Legendary, pp. 17, 47, 265, 292, etc., and Legendys of Hooly Wummen, ll. 505 ff., 2099 ff., 4806 ff.). There is a fifteenth-century painting of such a tyrant, madly gesticulating, in the East Window of St. Peter Mancroft's, Norwich—see Woodforde, Norwich School, p. 33; see also Anderson, pl. 11(b). Other influences, including the Saracens of popular Romance, the patristic image of Herod as the Devil and as a boaster, and the de casibus conception of tragedy, were also at work. The saints' passions are also, like the mystery plays, fundamentally concerned with repentance and pardon.

44 The blessing of the audience by a character is common; it is clearly related, in its effect on the audience, to the pagan boasts and appeals by Christ.

45 The liturgical drama reached maturity between the tenth century and the thirteenth—Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford, 1933), ii, 397–398.

46 Or at least didactic in a symbolic way only—one might say that this is true of Romanesque art in general, as opposed to the realistic didacticism of Gothic art.

47 Ed. J. M. Manly, et al., Anglo-Norman Text Society (Oxford, 1943).

48 Malone Society Reprints, 1912. In John Bale's mystery plays, both the tyrants' and Christ's monologues are missing—but they are not anticipated in connection with the subjects he deals with. In Lewis Wager's The Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene, 1566 (ed. F. I. Carpenter, Chicago, 1904), however, Christ promises everlasting mercy to the audience (ll. 1271–86).