Transformations of Discourse

Passion Representations in Liturgical or Religious Drama

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Passion Representations in Liturgical or Religious Drama

General background

This theme focusses on dramatic texts connected to the public ceremonial of the Medieval Church some of which – during a troubled history of scholarship – have come to be subsumed under the heading: liturgical drama. The liturgical drama features enactments of mainly biblical key narratives, and is above all centered around the Birth, the Passion, and the Resurrection of Christ. The difficulties in delimiting the ritual or liturgical from the aesthetic aspects make these texts particularly relevant for questions concerning genre and transformations of discourse.

The earliest enactments to have been included by scholars under the heading of liturgical drama are sung representations of the Resurrection narrative found in tenth-century liturgical books for ceremonies during Easter night and morning (various versions of the visitatio sepulchri). From the mid-twelfth century Passion Plays are also found; these are partly in Latin partly in the vernacular, partly sung and partly spoken, and with obvious – but not unified – ties to liturgical ceremonies during Holy Week. The individual texts referred to here have generally been treated as religious ‘dramas’ connected to the liturgy and only partly as belonging to the genre of liturgical drama.

A historical narrative of “from liturgy to drama”, traditionally applied to the notion of liturgical drama or medieval religious drama since the late nineteenth century has been challenged during the last thirty to forty years.

For the discussion, short excerpts from three different enactments of the Passion are given below with brief sections providing contextual information: First, the greater Carmina Burana Passion Play (Latin and German), probably compiled toward the end of the twelfth century and preserved in the thirteenth-century codex buranus; secondly, the Bordesholmer Marienklage copied in 1476 (Latin and German); thirdly, The Crucifixion from the so-called Chester Cycle preserved in manuscripts from around 1600 (English).

The three plays have been chosen to emphasize the difficulties involved in giving a straight forward historical narrative of “dramatic development”. The excerpts given were chosen – as much as this is possible – from the same event in the Passion narrative: the death of Christ on the cross.

The Carmina Burana Passion Play

Nothing specific is known about the performance context. The manuscript contains musical notation and the play seems to have been sung throughout. In a number of places, liturgical antiphons are quoted, though not in the excerpt provided. In other places the play also contains Marian laments which have had a separate transmission (flete fideles). Also an elaborate scene which depicts Mary Magdalene’s former life up to her conversion is included in the play.

The inclusion of a number of liturgical antiphons and the prevalence of Latin are features connecting this Passion play to the liturgical drama context whereas the use of German and of extended extra-biblical material – possibly with an intention to entertain – may point towards a new interest in dramatic representation in the twelfth century.

The extract is taken near the end of the preserved text which is probably incomplete.

Text and translation quoted from Peter Dronke, ed. Nine medieval Latin Plays (Cambridge 1994), pp. 234–35 (Dronke’s edition does not give the music. The music can only be reconstructed by way of comparison with other manuscripts).

Bordesholmer Marienklage

The manuscript is preserved in the Universitätsbibliothek Kiel and published online: www.uni-kiel.de/ub/digiport/Handschriften/Codmsbord53.html The manuscript contains musical notation and was partly sung, partly spoken.

The text is edited (with some of the music in an appendix) by G. Kühl in Jahrbuch des Vereins für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung XXIV (1898) [Norden und Leipzig 1899], pp. 1–75.

The manuscript contains a unique preface with a plethora of information. Some figures, Christ and John are to be performed by priests. The Marienklage is performed in the church in front of the choir, or, in good weather, outside the church. The preface characterizes the performance in the following way:

Planctus iste non est ludus nec ludibrium, sed est planctus et fletus et pia compassio Marie virginis gloriose. Et quandocunque fit a bonis et deuotis hominibus, in genere siue in specie valde prouocat homines circumstantes ad pium fletum et ad compassionem, sicut facit sermo deuotus bona sexta feria de passione domini nostri Jhesu Cristi. (f. 1r)

English translation: This lament is not a play nor an entertainment, but the lamentation, wailing, and religious compassion of the glorious Virgin Mary. Whenever it is done by good and pious people, it very much moves the people standing around to pious weeping and to compassion, both collectively and individually, in the same way as does a pious sermon on the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ on Good Friday.

Many of the same characteristics as seen in the Carmina Burana play are also found in the Bordesholmer Marienklage. It contains much fewer features, however, which could point to an interest in dramaticity as such – in agreement with the quoted statement from the preface. Through the spoken parts and the prevalent position of German, however, the Marienklage may still be seen as pointing to late developments in representational traditions. In terms of the ritual emphasis, conversely, it seems closer to the early liturgical drama traditions.

The following excerpt (f. 16r–v) is quoted from Kühl, p. 58, with English translation by Ian Wiltshire/Leyla Turkay from liner notes to the 1993 Sequentia recording (lines marked with an * are sung):

Chester Mystery Cycle

The text is preserved in five manuscripts dated between 1591–1607. The last known performance (before modern times) was in 1575. The practice of performing a mystery play at Chester is known from 1422. It is not known what kind of transformations the text had undergone before the preserved (post-Reformation) versions. Originally a Corpus Christi Play, it was moved to Pentecost in the early sixteenth century. From 1531–32, a public announcement of the play contained the following statement:

not only for the Augmentacion and incres <of the holy and Catholic> faith o<f our S>auior Jesu Crist and to exort the myndes of the common people <to good deuotion and holdsome> doctryne th<ero>f but also for the commenwelth and prosperitie of this Citie.

This as well as the following excerpt are quoted from David Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle: A New Edition with Modernised Spelling (East Lansing 1992), pp. xii, and 296–98.

As other English mystery cycles, the Chester Mystery Cycle contains a number of individual (more or less) biblical plays which together span a traditional Christian understanding of history, incorporating apocryphal narratives: from The Fall of Lucifer (play 1) to The Last Judgement (play 24). Each of the plays was performed by a guild, The Crucifixion by the Ironmongers. The text is spoken but in some places it includes references to music (although not in the excerpt given here), occasionally even liturgical items.

The Chester Mystery Cycle only contains a few elements which allow for it to be tied to liturgical practice, and – in contrast to the Bordesholmer Marienklage – it was not performed by clerics or monks. Historically, there is a connection to the Feast of Corpus Christi and later to Pentecost. In terms of religious contents, however, the Mystery Cycle maintains much the same balance between biblical and extra-biblical interpolations as the Carmina Burana Play.

Questions

• Is it possible to perceive motifs which have been transformed through these performative texts?
• Which motifs can be traced through the three texts and to what extent are they narrative, devotional, ritual, or aesthetic/stylistic?
• Is it possible to arrange the three texts according to the dichotomy religious/secular?
• Can the texts be said to emphasize continuity or discontinuity in the reception of the Passion of Christ?
• To what extent can the three texts be seen as emphasizing a historical nearness to the historic Passion of Christ or a ritual presence of the mythical event?

The Danish National Research Foundation: Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals • Section of Church History, The Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Købmagergade 44-46, DK-1150 Copenhagen K. Denmark • www.teol.ku.dk/kulturarv • mail • webmaster