XXII.—The Palatine Passion and the Development of the Passion Play

PMLA ◽  
1920 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 464-483
Author(s):  
Grace Frank
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
General Development ◽  
Medieval Drama ◽  
Passion Plays ◽  
Passion Play ◽  
The Common ◽  
Religious Plays

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.

Flagellation of the Son of God and Divine Flagellation: Flagellator Ceremonies and Flagellation Scenes in the Medieval Passion Play

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRIEDEMANN KREUDER
Keyword(s):  
Heart Failure ◽  
Religious Instruction ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
Passion Plays ◽  
Passion Play ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian View ◽  
The World ◽  
Common School ◽  
Religious Plays

Medieval Passion Plays appear to be no less violent than the flagellation and crucifixion scenes in Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. They were performed with what to today's eyes appears to be, in the context of its presentation in a religious play, chillingly intense and explicit violence. This suspicion is supported by surviving descriptions of performances of medieval Passion Plays in London and Metz, in each of which the actor playing Jesus in the crucifixion scene was fatally injured by the thrust of Longinus' spear or nearly died of heart failure. The expansion of what in the Bible amounts to only brief description, and its formulation in terms of drama, suggest deliberate use of the torture scenario in different Passion Plays. However, a question arises concerning the way in which the scenes of violence were able to find a place in religious plays used by ecclesiastical and municipal sponsors to propagate and affirm the dominant Christian view of the world. According to a common school of thought, the plays realistically represented, through gestural and dramatic elaboration, what the liturgy celebrated in a symbolic ceremony. In this way the plays visually communicated religious instruction to onlookers who did not know any Latin. But how can the torture scenes – on which many Passion Plays linger so long – be reconciled with the purpose of depicting the story of salvation?

II.—English Alabaster Carvings as Records of the Medieval Religious Drama

Archaeologia ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 93 ◽  
pp. 51-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. L. Hildburgh
Keyword(s):  
Medieval Art ◽  
Stained Glass ◽  
Mystery Plays ◽  
Passion Plays ◽  
Religious Drama ◽  
Great City ◽  
Religious Plays

The idea, long since accepted, that the English alabaster-carvers of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries depicted in their reliefs things times has, I believe, not seriously been questioned. As Prior, writing in 1913, put it, ‘since the scenes [as they appeared in the carvings] were those of contemporary representation in passion-plays and mysteries, the pasteboard make-ups of the religious stage, which were on view in every great city, were at hand as models to the shop-carvers. We may take it that in table-sculpture we…find…as it were, stage soldiers and property virgins’; ‘the blackening of the faces of the ruffians and executioners and heretics, as seen in many of the tables, was no doubt a stage trick’; and ‘The feather tights on angels…have the unmistakable appearance of a stage outfit’. Émile Mâle, discussing (in 1904) the effect, on medieval art, of the religious plays, had already observed that, although les érudits had posé mille questions concerning how the mystery-plays had been staged, the answer was clearly to be seen in numberless paintings, stained-glass windows, miniatures, and altar-pieces, which ‘nous offrent sans cesse l'image exact de ce qu'on voyait au théâtre’.

Imagined Exegesis: Text and Picture in the Exegetical Works of Rupert of Deutz, Honorius Augustodunensis, and Gerhoch of Reichersberg

Traditio ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 145-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Curschmann
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Mind's Eye ◽  
The Doors

Probably not long before the middle of the thirteenth century, Richard of Fournival, cleric, physician, and author, sent to an unnamed lady the autograph copy of his richly illustrated Bestiaire d'amours. In the prologue, Richard goes to some lengths to explain and justify the inclusion of pictures: hearing (oir) and vision (veir) are the doors through which collective knowledge is transmitted to the individual mind and memory (memoire), and word (parole) and picture (peinture) are the paths to these doors. Either one or the other route could have been chosen — in principle, they represent equivalent alternatives — but Richard is sending both words and pictures, because he wants to make doubly sure that the lady will indeed remember, that is to say, make his love the object of her own memory. The common denominator for word and picture is ‘image,’ and that is the notion on which the illustrator of one of the fourteenth-century copies of the Bestiaire based his introduction to the corresponding modes of reception: on folio 86v he depicted a reader who imagines what he reads (fig. 1); battle-ready warriors of romance stand before this seated figure in the privacy of his own room (indicated by the drapes), before his mind's eye, as it were, conjured up by the words of the text.

A bibliography of planctus

1981 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 12-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janthia Yearley
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Musical Settings ◽  
Passion Plays ◽  
Passion Play ◽  
The Social ◽  
Liturgical Drama ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Musical Forms

The present bibliography was originally compiled to provide a basis for my research into the relationship between words and music and the social context of the medieval European planctus. The planctus, a lament normally written at the death of an important historical, biblical or classical personage, or at the destruction of a city, has featured prominently in discussions about the development of liturgical drama and the possible origins of the Passion play; in studies of funeral verse; and in histories of the interrelation of European verse and musical forms. The relationship between the Marienklage and German Passion plays, the sequence and lai characteristics of Abelard's six planctus and the melodic style of the sequence melody planctus cygni have to some extent been studied by both musical and literary scholars. It has not, however, been possible to estimate the significance of these three issues in the history of either the planctus or of medieval monophonic song, since the planctus has never before been considered as a whole, in a comparative study which investigates both words and music. In fact, it has never been established that the planctus constitutes a genre in the first place, in what way this might be, and whether the surprisingly numerous musical settings which survive are composed in a consistent style.

scholarly journals Projecting Dynastic Majesty: State Ceremony in the Reign of Robert Bruce

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucinda Dean
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Level Playing Field ◽  
Civil Strife ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Common Purpose ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Scottish History ◽  
Funeral Ceremony

Following the murder of his rival John Comyn on 10 February at Greyfriars in Dumfries, and the crisis this act incited, Robert the Bruce’s inaugural ceremony took place at Scone in late March 1306. Much about this ceremony is speculative; however, subsequent retrospective legitimisation of the Bruce claims to the royal succession would suggest that all possible means by which Robert’s inauguration could emulate his Canmore predecessors and outline his right to rule on a level playing field with his contemporaries were amplified, particularly where they served the common purpose of legitimising Robert’s highly questioned hold on power. Fourteenth-century Scottish history is inextricably entwined in the Wars of Independence, civil strife and an accelerated struggle for autonomous rule and independence. The historiography of this period is unsurprisingly heavily dominated by such themes and, while this has been offset by works exploring subjects such as the tomb of Bruce and the piety of the Bruce dynasty, the ceremonial history of this era remains firmly in the shadows. This paper will address three key ceremonies through which a king would, traditionally, make powerful statements of royal authority: the inauguration or coronation of Bruce; the marriage of his infant son to the English princess Joan of the Tower in 1328, and his extravagant funeral ceremony in 1329. By focusing thus this paper hopes to shed new light on the ‘dark and drublie days’ of fourteenth-century Scotland and reveal that glory, dynastic majesty and pleasure were as central to the Scottish monarchy in this era as war and political turbulence.

“Death-Spectacles” in Quattrocento Life and Laude

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-31
Author(s):  
Gioia Filocamo
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
High Point ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
Religious Songs

Abstract In the fourteenth century a huge change took place in thinking about death: the kingdom of the beyond became full of dreadful suffering. This new mentality derives from the belief in Purgatory that took hold in the twelfth century, but reached its high point only in the fifteenth: the judgement of the dead would take place immediately after death. Prayers and money invested in order to obtain remission of sins encouraged the expansion of a true “economy of death” manageable from earth. The birth of the Observance movement inside the Mendicant Orders may be connected with this new sensibility, in which the faithful are more concerned with their personal salvation. The “death-spectacles” evoked by Girolamo Savonarola became lenses through which to look at life, but even before him many authors of laude – vernacular religious songs mainly composed for civic confraternities – express the same modern thought on death inspired by Holy Scripture, but excluding high poetic models. The common practice of “cantasi come …” – the reuse of music known with a different text now turned to fear of death – confirms the strong contiguity between life and death, read as a true “extension” of life.

Fourteenth-Century Western Reception of Aquinas in Meister Eckhart, Hervaeus Natalis, and Durandus of St-Pourçain

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-80
Author(s):  
Isabel Iribarren
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Dominican Order ◽  
Meister Eckhart ◽  
Common Opinion ◽  
The Common ◽  
Aristotelian Metaphysics

Meister Eckhart, Hervaeus Natalis, and Durandus of St-Pourçain represent three different forms that the reception of Aquinas’ teaching adopted during the aftermath of the Correctoria controversy. Eckhart welcomes Aquinas’ insights as conceptual tools, but feels free to adapt them to his own theological programme and imperatives. Hervaeus’ reception of Aquinas’ doctrine is hardly dissociable from that of Durandus, in that it was fashioned in reaction to the latter’s alleged deviation in a context of rising ‘Thomist orthodoxy’ within the Dominican Order. Although Hervaeus’ position relied on an Aristotelian metaphysics which allowed compatibility with Aquinas’ position, his generous use of non-Thomist sources and enhanced interpretation of certain Thomist theses suggest that what was at stake in Durandus’ censure was the preservation of the Thomist doctrinal heritage by investing Aquinas’ teaching with the coherence and soundness that could merit the relative approval accorded to the ‘common opinion.’

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