The Mediaeval Stage (Volume 2); Book III. Religious Drama. Book IV. the Interlude. Appendices (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XIX LITURGICAL PLAYS (continued) fTHE ' Twelve days' of the Christmas season are no less important than Easter itself in the evolution of the liturgical drama. I have mentioned in the last chapter a Christmas trope which is evidently based upon the older Easter dialogue. Instead of Quern quaeritis in sepulchre, o Christicolae ? it r begins Quern quaeritis in praesepe, pastores dicite? It occurs I in eleventh- and twelfth - century tropers from St. Gall, Limoges, St. Magloire, and Nevers. Originally it was an Tntroit trope for the third or ' great' Mass. In a fifteenth- century breviary from Clermont-Ferrand it has been transferred to Matins, where it follows the Te Deum; and this is precisely the place in the Christmas services occupied, at Rouen, by a liturgical-drama known as the Officium Pastorum, which appears to have grown out of the Quern quaeritis in praesepe ? by a process analogous to that by which the Easter drama grew out of the Quern quaeritis in sepulchro l t A praesepe or ' crib, ' covered by a curtain, was made ready behind the altar, and in it was placed an image of the Virgin. After the Te Deum five canons or vicars, representing the shepherds, approached the great west door of the choir. A boy in simililudinem angeli perched in excelso sang them the' good tidings, ' and a number of others in voltis eccksiae took up the Gloria in excelsis. The shepherds, singing a hymn, advanced to the praesepe. Here they were met with the Quern quaeritis by two priests quasi obstetrices. The dia- 1 Printed by Du MeVil, 147; 904); it is also in . N. Lot. 1213 Caste1, 25; Davidson, 173, from (fifteenth century) and Bibl. Maza- Rouen Ordinaria (Rouen MSS. rin. 216 (Du Me'ril, 148). Y. 108 of fifteenth century, Y. 110 a The ' obstetrices' figure in the of ...